CAE losing its mojo?

If the Center of the American Experiment holds a "Fall Briefing" and no one writes about it, did it actually happen? The CAE must be losing some of its mojo as its event the other night went unreported by the Trib, the PiPress, Powerlineblog, Katherine Kersten, and even Doug Tice in his blog. But they probably don't have anything to worry about - I'm sure MPR will soon broadcast the whole ugly affair unedited like they usually do over some noontime.

Over at St Thomas, Dennis Dease says through his dummy that Cris Toffolo can file a grievance over her firing as the university’s peace and justice studies program head. Way to step up to the plate Dease.

Tutu turns up the heat on St Thomas, William the Bloody in town, and the WaPo's coverage of Richard Mellon Scaife's divorce trial

Today the Mpls Star Tribune reports that Desmond Tutu has turned up the heat on the University of St Thomas, stating he wouldn't appear at the school unless it reinstated professor Cris Toffolo as director of the university’s peace and justice studies program. Tutu shouldn't hold his breath waiting for the right wing school to do the right thing.

"William the Bloody," aka Bill Kristol, speaks tonight at the "non-partisan" Center of the American Experiment's Fall Briefing.

The Washington Post yesterday published a fascinating and hilarious tale of Richard Mellon Scaife's divorce trial (his second one). What makes it interesting, in the words of writer David Segal, are three little words "No. Pre. Nup." A sidebar, relying on data from Media Transparency, shows which right wing organizations are the major recipients of Scaife's philanthropy. View the video tour of the "Funding Father of the Right"'s divorce.

Friday cat blogging

Here's another picture of Molly (just to piss off Mark Gisleson).

Looking for a leader

Over at Open Left Matt Stoller has an interesting post up looking at the Netroots' growing frustration with Barack Obama:

It goes back to Obama's unreliable behavior during the Lamont campaign, his shrinking violet act during Military Commissions Act, and his constant chiding of the secular left.

Stoller says Dems are increasingly demanding leadership:

I think this is a positive development, as it suggests the environment has become more difficult for those who will not lead...To put it in evolutionary terms, the 'fitness function' that selects for politicians is now prizing leadership more aggressively than rhetoric and money.

Let's hope so.

George W. Bush, Mafia Don

Yesterday President Bush commented, when asked about the possibility of Turkey invading Iraq, that he was trying to convince the Turks it "was not in their best interests" to invade. If Bush was an adult with a conscience he would speak honestly, attributing the desire for the Turks not to invade to himself. A simple declarative sentence would do, something like, "I think it would be wrong for the Turks to invade Iraq." But no - he couches his admonition in the parlance of a mafioso threat, i.e. it is not in their best interest to attack Iraq. What's he gonna do, kneecap Turkey if they don't comply?

UPDATE: For a good explanation of Bush's creepy religious language, check out this story by Juan Stam from the Nation a few years ago, and this report by David Domke on Bush, God and the Media over at Mediatransparency.org.

A tale of two routs

Look closely at the two Star Tribune covers above; one is from the day after the so-called "Republican Revolution" election of November 1994, and the second is from the day after the 2006 rout of the Republicans, both in the State of Minnesota and around the nation.

The 1994 cover defines a narrative of the overall election with the top headline on the page: "REPUBLICANS WIN ACROSS U.S." The 2006 front page didn't define any narrative; instead, it is a collection of shorter headlines reporting the results of each race, without any summing-up of the drubbing suffered by Republicans across the nation. The top headline is a double-decker blaring "IT'S PAWLENTY AGAIN; KLOBUCHAR WINS BIG." Underneath in much smaller type and not in bold it says "Democrats take control of U.S. House; Senate hangs in balance."

While technically true, the headlines nonetheless avoid characterizing the election as a Democratic sweep as the 1994 headline had done. And it was a comparable sweep for the Dems. In Minnesota they won many more House and Senate seats than the Republicans had won in 1994. Nationally the Republican wins in the U.S. House and Senate in 1994 were bigger than the Democrats' wins in 2006, but in both cases the U.S. House changed hands.

One interesting fact is that in 2006, for the first time in the history of the United States, no Republican captured any House, Senate, or Gubernatorial seat previously held by a Democrat. The Democrats even won a majority of state governorships. The election was an historic repudiation of Republican governance, both at home and across the country. Why didn't the Trib lead with a headline such as "DEMOCRATS WIN ACROSS U.S."?

Now look at the lead pictures on the two front pages. The 1994 front page had two large photos of winners from the victorious Republicans - one of Rod Grams who won a U.S. Senate seat and one of Arne Carlson who won reelection as governor. On the 2006 front page there was only one lede photo - and it was of the Republican Governor Pawlenty, who won reelection by one percentage point in a three way race. He was virtually the only top Republican to win reelection. Republicans lost every other constitutional elective state wide office. The photo shows Republican Pawlenty, messiah-like, receiving adoration from his supporters. So in 1994 you have two photos of winners from the winning party, but in 2006 you have one photo of basically the only winner from the losing party.

Why was the photo of Pawlenty chosen to lead the front page when there was a truly historic victory in the fifth congressional district where Keith Ellison won election to congress as the first Black and first Muslim from Minnesota ever elected, and the first Muslim elected to Congress in the nation's history! Ellison won despite a dishonest and unethical campaign against him by the Trib's own news columnist, conservative movement ideologue and Center of the American Experiment product Katherine Kersten. Now Ellison is a national and international political and media figure.

David Brock famously wrote in his book The Republican Noise Machine that the right, above almost all else, wants to prevent its ideological enemies outright victories. Even on issues where Republicans are the big losers partisans of the right spin them one way or another to achieve at least a tie. The goal is always to define the narrative, and when losing, at least muddy the waters so as to fool some of the people. As the saying goes, nothing succeeds like success, and nothing fails like failure. Or, at least the electorate's perception of success or failure.

Here in Minnesota, where, despite the Blog Chihuahua's protestations, the Minneapolis Star Tribune has made an intentional rightward turn. The placing of Doug Tice, a movement conservative ideologue, as political editor and Katherine Kersten, another movement conservative, as a news columnist have given the paper a rightward list, and sometimes an out-and-out racist tilt.

The 1994 front page, from a time prior to the Tice/Kersten era defined a narrative: Republicans kicked butt, all over. The 2006 Democratic victories, similar in scale to the Republicans' wins of 1994, with Tice as political editor, were reported on the front page as isolated wins, with no overall narrative. Yes, there were "teaser" pictures from Ellison, Walz and Bachmann's wins, and about an eight point teaser that the Democrats had taken the state house, that a Democrat had won the state Attorney General position, and five or six other news bits.

I'm not alleging that Doug Tice alone, or Doug Tice with others, somehow conspired to take some of the sting out of coverage of Democratic victories in 2006, although that is the end effect. I don't even know for sure whether he participated in the makeup of the front page on the night of Tuesday, November 7, 2006, although it would be highly unusual to not have the political editor lead or help makeup the front page for the day after a major election.

But whoever designed the front page for the day after the Democratic victories in 2006 made radically different decisions than the people who made it up the day after Republican wins in 1994. The main decision they made was to minimize the systemic losses suffered by the Republicans (which, by the way, extended other recent losses) and deny that the Democrats had dealt them a severe blow.

Readers may reasonably think I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill; however there is a history over the past few years of the Trib going easy on Republicans, spinning their losses as ties or questions still open to interpretation.

Given recent polling and Republican retirements and indictments, the 2008 elections may be as bad for them as 2006. How will the Trib cover it this time? Don't hold your breath for narratives showing voters sick and tired of the GOP.

Mark Rotenberg's fog machine

Kudos to Spotty over at The Cucking Stool for his take-down of Mark Rotenberg, the chief counsel for the University of Minnesota and his dishonest "defense" of letting Desmond Tutu speak at the University of St Thomas, which appeared on the op-ed page in Sunday's Trib.

First Rotenberg claims Dease was "under no pressure" from local Jews to dis-invite Tutu. But that's not what Dease said through Doug Hennes. Secondly, Rotenberg goes on to say that American universities "are awash with anti-Israel sentiment," which is complete bull. American universities may have a smattering of critics of the Israeli government policy regarding the Palestinians, but that does not make them anti-Semitic, a jump in logic that Rotenberg would like readers to make to essentially cut-off all legitimate criticism of Israel.

As Spotty correctly points out:

It takes a lotta damn gall, make that chutzpa, Rotenberg, to claim, as you do, that criticism of Israel is "dabbling in a dangerous cesspool of prejudice."

Juan Cole writes that it was Tutu who was smeared by the Zionist Organization of America, a slight that Dease, Doug Tice and Rotenberg all bought.