Spring in Minneapolis

March 31. My backyard.

Star Trib vs. some blog

As Iraq sinks ever deeper into civil war, the Star Trib this morning was leading its website with the story headlined "Bush says recent rash of violence in Iraq is 'Defining moment' for fragile government." Over at the blog Booman Tribune, the headline is "Iraq imploding before our very eyes." Which is more accurate? Not a tough question - the Strib treats the liar-in-chief like he's telling the truth, which he hardly ever does, especially about things he views as important. There could literally probably never come a moment when the Strib wouldn't treat the preznit with "respect" by treating his utterances as false. I don't claim that the destruction of the newspaper's credibility is a major factor in the financial losses it has suffered over the past few years, but it can't have helped.

Saturday cat blogging

Here's a picture of Simon out in the yard today, where it's sunny and 30 degrees. The face is because he saw a bird fly by.

William F. Buckley and conservative philanthropy

A lot has been written (blogs, news, technorati) and said over the past few days about the passing of conservative icon William F. Buckley. I personally like this one from Jane Hamsher over at firedoglake where she argues that Buckley was far preferable to today's Straussian Republicans who will say anything to achieve their aims, whereby Buckley was very upfront, i.e. he argued honestly, about his sometimes repugnant (and factually wrong) views.

It is an ironic fact that the career of the uber-capitalist free-marketeer was in large part underwritten by monies from conservative philanthropies and the American people, and that this subsidy has gone unreported in all the eulogies. His Corporation for Maintaining Editorial Diversity in America, the publisher of National Review magazine, was funded by the conservative philanthropies with at least $700,000. The tab for production of his public TV show Firing Line was funded with at least $2.3 million from the conservative philanthropies. The rest was picked up by the American taxpayer as part of the bill for that bastion of liberal media PBS.

Here comes the wave

In New York state last night Democrats won a special election in a state senate district that had been held by Republicans for a century, and where Republicans hold a 2-1 advantage in voter registration. Don't be surprised if something like this happens in Minnesota in November, where Democrats have been on a roll, especially in swing areas like around Rochester and in the Twin Cities' western suburbs. If and when that happens expect the Strib to lead the post-election coverage with the amazing story of how one or two Republicans bucked the tide.

Democrats in Minnesota better be ready to run against the Star Tribune

As I've written since I started this blog, the Minneapolis Star Tribune has shamelessly promoted Republicans and smeared Democrats for at least the past five or six years. Today again their story describing the McCain scandal is fronted by a headline exonerating the Republican presidential candidate, even as reputable news organizations illustrate the lies he is caught in. This is the third story run by the Strib in this scandal that deliberately distorts the story by covering for McCain.

Today the headline on the McCain story is: "Ex-Paxson president says he never met with McCain about FCC delay, and doubts CEO did, either." Problem is, they DID meet with McCain to lobby him, BEFORE he sent letters to the FCC, which the FCC deemed extremely inappropriate. And McCain lied about meeting with them until it came out that he admitted just that in a deposition, and he did change his vote in committee to save the company.

Also today the Strib ran with a Nedra Pickler story that smears Barak Obama that is dependent on perspective from disgraced Republican political hit man Roger Stone, who started a website against Hillary Clinton with the acronym C.U.N.T. Of course the story provides no background on the disgusting history of Stone.

A little while ago I asked how low the Strib can go, and thought we might have reached the bottom. Pimping a story featuring a Hillary Clinton hater who basically calls her a cunt in public plumbs new depths, even for Doug Tice and the Star Tribune.

...adding: How pathetic is it that we have to go to conservative British newspapers to get the straight dope on this story? From the London Times:

John McCain’s denials start to unravel in tale of the blonde lobbyist
The Republican saviour is looking rattled after claims of a sex for favours scandal

And from the Guardian:

Whiff of scandal envelops McCain's campaign
The Republican frontrunner faces fresh allegations over lobbyist links

Strib's love affair with McCain continues

So today the story from the Washington Post is that McCain is a guy whose campaign is made up primarily of lobbyists (59 federal lobbyists are raising money for his campaign), but who makes his political living railing against Washington lobbyists. The Post headlined the story "The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists."

But in Strib, the headline reads "McCain defends lobbyist ties," while the subhed says:

Sen. John McCain said Friday that while lobbyists serve as close advisers to his presidential campaign, they are honorable and he is not influenced by corruption in the system.

See, John McCain isn't a hypocrite - he's just isolated the "honorable" lobbyists. And remember that when this story first came up two days ago the Strib introduced it with a story headlined "McCain says report suggesting inappropriate relationship with female lobbyist is 'not true."

In the end I think this Republican bias in places like the Strib may work against the Republican party because we can't really know how much power these new memes will have in the weeks and months ahead, but it could be significant. Right now the Republican talking heads on MSNBC and FOX news are claiming the episode is good for McCain because it gets his base behind him. Maybe. But the longer this goes on the more McCain's soft spots may be exposed to a skillful orator and politician, like, say, Barak Obama. Not to mention that, Karl Rove like, it cuts into McCain's strengths.

...adding: Maybe McCain was right when he called this an organized campaign against him. Now Michael Isikoff of Newsweek is writing that McCain lied in his response to the New York Times article on him when he said he had never been lobbied by Paxson Communications, the telecom company at the center of this scandal. Turns out McCain himself gave a deposition where he admitted to it.