Star Tribune pimps deranged MN lege bigot

I’m not going to bother putting a link here; it’s right there on the front page of this morning’s print edition.

The article notes Rep. Steve Drazkowski’s (R-Mazeppa) little splinter-group nonsense, but ignores other key facts. Apparently the ridiculous image of the pitiful ignoramus gazing portentously into the distance, like some true far-seeing statesman of old, is judged more worthy of newsprint.

I was able to find an excellent old item about the real Draz. The links therein are unfortunately to a crashed website and therefore broken, but you’ll readily get the point.

Update: An absolute must-read from Developers Are Crabgrass.

MN-06: How about some real anti-Semitic stereotyping?

I think the stress of failing as NRCC chairman is really getting to someone.

A letter sent by National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) Chairman Tom Emmer that said wealthy Jews “bought” Congress has been called anti-Semitic by local Jewish leaders...

The letter by Rep. Emmer, who represents Minnesota’s Sixth District in the U.S. House, says “the news of impactful, real progress on turning our nation around was undercut by biased media and hundreds of millions of dollars of anti-Republican propaganda put out by liberal special interests, funded by deep-pocketed far-left billionaires George Soros, Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg.”

                    “These left-wing radicals essentially BOUGHT control of Congress for the
                    Democrats,” the letter continues. Soros and Bloomberg are Jews; and Steyer
                    had a Jewish father. - American Jewish World

Of course as far as Minnesota’s “mainstream” media is concerned, no politician’s statement is anti-Semitic unless it comes from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). The facts that she is at least twice as intelligent, and probably more like a hundred times more reality-connected than Emmer, notwithstanding.

Norm Coleman's outfit desperately tries to keep Ilhan Omar-bashing alive

From a couple of days ago:

A political organization closely aligned with the Republican establishment is launching an advertising campaign this week to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota over her comments earlier this year that were widely condemned as anti-Semitic.

An official from American Action Network, a conservative advocacy nonprofit group, told CNN the organization will spend six figures on digital ads that criticize Omar...

AAN, which was founded by former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, also of Minnesota, and the recently deceased GOP donor Fred Malek, has close ties with Republican House leadership. The group is affiliated with the Congressional Leadership Fund, a well-funded political action committee focusing on supporting GOP House candidates. - CNN

I can understand this from the perspective of, what else are Minnesota Republicans supposed to do? I saw somewhere that they’re trying to get Doug Wardlow to run against Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) in 2020, as Karin Housley is apparently not up for a rematch. That’s just one indication of how desperately thin - indeed, emaciated - the GOP bench is, in this state. House Minority Leader Kurt Daudt (R-Crown) seems uninterested in bigger game. Perhaps you see Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka (R-Nisswa) as just dripping with political charisma, but I wouldn’t state the case that way. Anyway:

So my simple point is this: Whether or not you agree with Omar’s remarks, whether or not you were personally offended, anyone who tells you that these nonstop, bipartisan political attacks on her are about fighting anti-Semitism is gaslighting you. - The Intercept

MN-05: Do Rep. Ilhan Omar's Dem critics know Israel probably helped Trump win? - Update

This has been around for a while, but I’m thinking a reminder may be useful.

Much ink has been spilled on the role of the Russia-backed Internet Research Agency’s engaging in disinformation tactics to help the Trump campaign. The intelligence firm and thirteen individuals connected to it are the targets of an indictment brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in February (2018). The indictment finds fault with the IRA for “posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences” and then using those assets to spread disinformation designed to interfere in the election. But a little known private Israeli intelligence firm may well have done precisely the same thing...

The New York Times was the first to report on a meeting between Donald Trump Jr., Erik Prince and George Nader in August 2016 that included Joel Zamel, the founder of PSY-Group, an Israel-based private intelligence firm that sold social-media manipulation services. The meeting was in part to pitch PSY-Group’s proposal to use “thousands of fake social media accounts to promote Mr. Trump’s candidacy on platforms like Facebook.” - Just Security

Those who insist that the current Israeli government was wholly uninvolved in the above may as well keep their heads in the sand.

Addendum: I'm adding a link to an article by someone who was there for Rep. Omar's speech.

Attacks on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar are rising. One of the first Muslim women elected, Omar is also black, an African immigrant, a former refugee from Somalia, and wears her hijab in the halls of Congress. She is under attack from the leaders of her own party for anti-Semitic statements she never made, for anti-Jewish prejudice she never expressed, for hatred of Jews she doesn’t hold. And the Democratic Party leadership is considering a resolution whose early text, at least, while not mentioning Omar by name, is clearly aimed at accusing her of precisely those things, despite the fact—ignored by the Speaker of the House and other top officials—that she never said or believed any of those words. - The Nation

Update: Those who sought a high-profile public shaming of Rep. Omar for telling it like it is have been forced to back down.

Young progressives are the future of the Democratic Party. In fact, they’re its present, when it comes to actually winning elections. And they want, among a lot of other things, for the party’s DC establishment to get its collective nose out of AIPAC’s stinkin’ butt. Now.

It’s no surprise that Minnesota’s corporate “news” media is trying to play this for all it can. (This is no fun to type, but I must regrettably include MPR and TPT with that. In recent years, they’ve become in many ways every bit the false equivalence-mongers that the state’s overtly for-profit media have long been.) They tried the same thing with another African-American Muslim in 2018. What better way to appeal to their own old, white, right-leaning base? But, electorally, it didn’t work with Keith Ellison, and it won't work for 2020.

MN-05: How dare Rep. Omar tell it like it is!

Perhaps you saw the headline across the top of the Minneapolis Star Tribune this morning, assuring its ornery old subscriber base that someone is being put in her place. The following is quoted from the sort of reality-based item that, in a better world, would be the stock-in-trade of corporate media like the Strib as well.

It should be pointed out that Rep. (Ilhan) Omar (D-MN) has been relentlessly hazed because she is a Somali Muslim and critical of Israeli policy toward their Palestinian semi-chattel. One of her critics is close to the hate figure Frank Gaffney, purveyor of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories of the sort the Nazis used to circulate about Jews...

She may be wrong about the motives of some of her opponents. The anti-Palestinian politicians in the United States may have come by their determination to keep millions of displaced people stateless and without basic human rights honestly. That is, many may just be racists who believe that brown people should be kept down.

Nor should consideration of the Israel lobbies only focus on money. Their propaganda techniques, for instance of equating any criticism of Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank to terrorism, are also extremely effective. - Informed Comment

I get that it's not just Republicans who are spouting off about this. That fact is a big part of the real problem, here.