Signs Of The Gathering Storm

The not so sublte hints from the anarkids just keep coming. Just take a look at today's sumbission: "Learning from the 'Battle In Seattle' - If protests had started earlier, it may have been possible to stop the WTO"

On Wednesday, in Room 205 of Blegen Hall, the yeast gathered to discuss protest
and possible "direct action" strategy far in advance of the Republican National Convention.
They are the Students for a Democratic Society, which took its name and inspiration from the 1960s activist group which helped organize massive protest and resistance to the Vietnam War.
On Wednesday in Blegen Hall, these SDS "usual suspects" gathered with their shiny-eyed idealism, their colorful scarves and their love of granola to watch a movie called "This Is What Democracy Looks Like," which tells the story of the massive 1999 protests at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle.
I'd never seen the movie before, but I was there in 1999 so it made me teary-eyed and it almost gave me flashbacks as gas canisters were fired in the direction of the camera person's lens.

Oh the nostalgia.....seriously - I worked very closely with some folks who put up with the WTO protests in Seattle. Their memories of the time are probably less than fond ones....

What gets me is that the author of this opinion piece was a student in 1999 and is STILL a student. NINE YEARS LATER!

For years I've thought, "How could it have been done differently?" My conclusion: if one of the participants had tossed a few fliers into the Starbucks store explaining why this was a radical political action targeting a particular corporation, and not just some stupid, ugly, inarticulate act of vandalism and looting, then the media "spin" would have been totally different.
I don't support window- smashing except, perhaps, to exit a burning building. But I am particularly opposed to window-smashing lacking any articulated political argument. So to all the bandana-masked anarchists out there I say: this time around, be slightly less stupid.
(Oh, yeah, I'd also like to point out Minneapolis-St. Paul is full of vacant houses abandoned by folks involved in mortgage fraud. Hint, hint.)

Emphasis mine. won't hold my breath waiting for Coleen Rowley's swift condemnation of THIS implied threat of violence.....after all, the author is not Chris Baker or some other "right-winger"...Maybe David Mindemann can mention it....after all he is sooooo concerned about accuracy and all.

Second, we made a grave tactical error by starting the big protests on the first day of the WTO events and ending most of the street demonstrations around the time the conference collapsed. If massive protests had kicked off a week early, it may have been possible to stop the WTO conference from ever happening.

We failed, big time.

Take note Minnesota.....the troublemakers (I refuse to call them anarchists because you can't organize anarchy) are organizing and they are getting ready. It is time for responsible citizens to stand up to these losers and tell them that their "actions" are not representative of Minnesota and they are NOT WELCOME HERE!

Hyperventilating Over Nothing

OK - so I have had a wealth of material to work with today and then Mitch hands me yet one more piece that begs to be written.

How uncanny that exactly 40 years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated during the Vietnam War (and some think possibly because of his opposition to the Vietnam War), we would turn on our radios to hear a Twin Cities radio host re-applying the principles of Hermann Goering to plans for the upcoming anti-war march on the Republican National Convention (RNC). If you listen (here), you won't hear anything resembling "Minnesota Nice" on Chris Baker's show yesterday, the program that comes on before Rush Limbaugh's. His vitriolic, denouncing rants came in bursts between interviews with a Minneapolis Assistant Police Chief and Minneapolis Police Federation President John Delmonico as to how the right-wing radio host "can't stand these protesting varmints", "these spitting, frothing at the mouth lunatics", including his opinion that "protesting is an industry funded by billionaires and communist organizations (and) they are well coordinated and incredibly dangerous."

Weep oh citizens of the 2nd District....this could have been representing you in DC this year instead of Congressman John Kline!

Seriously folks, Ms. Rowley....take a chill. I listened to the program in question. Yes, Mr. Baker was over the top however, if you take a look at what some of the websites that are organizing the anarchists activities in both MN and Colorado, you would understand his concern! All of these organizations are already advocating violence against the police and the convention or have a history of doing so!

The absolutely worst tirade, however, comes towards the end of the program after the interviews with the police, when KTLK host Chris Baker lets go with this ostensible incitement to violence: "So we've been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming. There seems to be a big debate over whether or not police officers will be able to wear helmets, carry shields, use pepper spray and tasers on this crowd. You know, I'll tell you what works on a crowd like this--a machine gun, that always works very well." "Mow 'em down, baby!" excitedly adds Baker's co-host "Jordan".

Now I know that Jordan is not Baker's co-host....I want to say he is Baker's producer....but then again why let a few minor things like facts get in the way of a good spittle flecked rant.

It doesn't take an expert on the First Amendment to recognize that suggesting the "good ole boy network" hand out ax handles and machine guns be used to mow a crowd down comes close to inciting violence. This inflammatory rhetoric looks no different than the reason we are not allowed to falsely yell "fire" in a crowded theatre. I can also speak from personal experience--having worked almost 24 years as an FBI agent--that such remarks would almost certainly elicit investigative concern if the tables were turned and such speech came out of the mouth of someone critical of the government.

I'm just curious what Ms. Rowley's remarks were when "progressive" talk radio host Mike Malloy called for the "physical torture of the Bush crime family" or if she waxed poetic in outrage when Randi Rhodes of Air America suggested that someone "Like Fredo, somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw. ”Rhodes then imitated the sound of a gunshot." Or maybe she spoke out against Sen. Dick Durbin's quip "Judge Marovitz used to say that his mother believed that President Lincoln was Jewish, Durbin said. After all, his first name was Abraham, and then, to confirm it, she learned that John Wilkes Booth shot him in the temple."? Somehow I suspect not.

Seriously, Coleen...honey....this is talk radio. The hosts that don't go over the top as Mr. Baker, Ms. Rhodes and Mr. Malloy did usually end up getting fired. They don't bring in ratings and they don't get callers and advertisers.

Lighten up Coleen.....it's just talk radio....

UPDATE: I sent a link to this post and Coleen's post to Chris Baker last night. This morning I got the following response from Chris.

Somebody forwarded that to us and I had to laugh. Thanks for the response which is dead on by the way.
This type of stuff comes with the turf, it's an opinion based medium so this is not the first and it will not be the last time someone decides to be offended.
Let's not forget that it was me the hate filled talk host who has supported the right of these moon bats to protest at the convention, as long as they obey the law. It has been me who criticized the so called "protest zones" because it keeps the protestors and their targets so far apart.
I invited Coleen Rowley on the show but so far she has not responded.

Emphasis added. Again, why let a few inconvenient facts get in the way of a good spittle flecked rant eh?

I suspect that Chris will be waiting a long, long, long time for Coleen to respond to his invitation. Just call it a hunch.

She's BAAAACK....

Coleen Rowley is back in the news, thanks to this puff piece in todays St. Paul Pioneer Press.

On a busy Eagan street corner, a former FBI wiretap specialist is
not-so-secretly hoisting and waving banners, demanding: "Support the
Constitution - End the War - Support the Troops - End the War - Support the
Bridges - End the War."

OK - so now the bridge collapse was caused by the war????? Oy vey!

Her trademark hyperactivity may have played more than a small hand in
dooming her 2006 congressional bid against U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., an
ardent conservative. Out-funded 2-to-1, Rowley's failed campaign required her to
take out a second mortgage on her Apple Valley home.

First off what doomed her campaign was her complete and utter failure to connect with any of the 2nd District voters that were not the far left anti-war crowd. I recall seeing Coleen at the Scott County Fair last year. She and her husband walked into the fairgrounds just ahead of me. She did not try to engage any of the fairgoers that were around us - they just walked straight in. I saw them again, about an hour later, sitting on a bench tucked between two food booths...again not talking to anyone around then and just yards away from two very crowded dining areas that were full of potential voters.

These days, Rowley, 52, is mired in almost $40,000 of personal debt, irked by
what she feels is complacency in the public and the media, and determined to
never, ever again run for public office.

Uh yeah - the media is so complacent....that is why they PiPress is running this little fluff piece on you right Coleen?

Today at 1:30 p.m., Rowley and her husband, Ross, will join the "Out of
Iraq! End the War Now!" march from the Cathedral of St. Paul to the state
Capitol. The march, organized by a coalition of anti-war groups, is expected to
draw peace activists by the hundreds.

"If nobody utilizes their rights, it's
like muscles: They atrophy," Rowley said. "People may think (protest is) silly,
but it gives people an outlet."

Several of my fellow True North compatriots are also exercising their rights to protest people like Coleen. I'm sure they will have pictures and video soon.The puff piece then went back to the subject of Coleen's Quixotic crusade for Congress.

...With Ross, a stay-at-home dad, helping behind the scenes, she ran
against Kline in the 2nd Congressional District, which includes most of
Republican-leaning Dakota County.

She lost. And big.

"Even a tidal wave couldn't lift this leaking rowboat," wrote a political
writer for the Minneapolis-based alternative weekly newspaper, City Pages, just
after the election.

The 16-point poll difference between Rowley and Kline wasn't the only
campaign scar. She doesn't laugh when she says that the two youngest of her four
children - son Jeb, 12, and daughter Meg, 14 - will be paying their own way
through college.

I again go back to my comments about Coleen's appearance at the Scott County Fair. We ran into her many times during the campaign at local parades and events. Every time she was there she was aloof and almost unapproachable - not a good thing when you are trying to get people to vote for you.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why this is "news". There are a lot of people at the Code Pink/WAMM/Anti-War Committee protests today. Coleen was just one of many (according to preliminary reports)...why focus on her? Could it be that this is our local presses way of giving free publicity to the anti-war rally by focusing on one of the movements fallen "heros"? Coleen (and the anti-war movements) calls for defeat in Iraq were rejected by the electorate in the 2nd district. However, that does not stop our local media from fulfilling their roles as the PR organ for the defeat at all costs crowd!