I had the honor of speaking to SD63 on blogs last night along with Jerry Plagge and Mitch Berg. (Gary unfortunately could not make it.)

I’m very impressed with SD63. Here they are in the belly of the beast that is Blue Minneapolis, and on a Tuesday night, they manage to get Congressman Mark Kennedy who is running for the US Senate, Col. Joe Repya, and 3 great state legislature candidates. Not to mention almost 100 or so attendees.

Congressman Kennedy did a fantastic job of giving his own take on media bias. This was one of the best speeches I saw Kennedy give yet. Sure it could have been that I was seated 4 feet to the right of him, but he is really a great speaker now. Don’t believe a word the lefties say, he is going to tear Klobuchar limb from limb in debates. (please please keep your expectations of him low lefties, please.)

He brought up stories about some of his accomplishments that have been twisted and spun by the media. Like how the Wisconsin AP ran a story about how he was able to get Meth provisions attached to the Patriot a Act, but when that same story came across the river to Minnesota, they happened to leave out the fact that Kennedy was the person that put the Meth provisions in there. He also went over an event in St. Cloud that the media completely forgot to mention that he hosted. Oh sure, they praised the event, but not one nod to the guy who put it on. He said that he was hardly surprised since he is running against the media’s daughter, Amy Klobuchar. Her father was a bit of a heavy weight in the local media back in his day so it is a given that they’d bury any and all news of his successes.

Jerry, Mitch, and I spoke about blogs and how we use them to expose the liberal bias in the media.

Jerry did a great job bringing home his special talent for a locally focussed political blog. He is the central repository for all things SD63, and has even been a go to for the MSM on the local races. He is taking blogging to an all new level, down to the precinct level. His blog will benefit SD63 SO MUCH!

I went through why I started RF, and how I use it to both be a watch dog on the media and on Republican officials. I encouraged people to read and participate in blogs as they are becoming the next form of political discourse. I talked about how I now think of the MSM as the ‘Down Stream Media”. I likened the news to a stream, and the media sitting in a canoe drifting down it. They have no desire to get to the source of the stream, and they don’t really want to discover what might be there (ahem, Good News for Bush.) So they just drift on down the river and away from the truth. Meanwhile the bloggers are busting their rears up stream to the source, the truth so we can tell people about it.

Mitch, well, he of course stole the show. I’m sure you’ve all heard him take over the NARN radio show, but I had never heard him give a speech before. Let’s just say that he’d be a heck of a tough act to follow. He went through how bloggers can be ’schmucks’. In fact he was a schmuck. He walked us through some of the bigger stories that the blogs have uncovered. Most notably the Dan Rather/Mary Mapes Bush smear. He went through how it wasn’t just Powerline that broke that. In fact it was a thousand schmucks all taking little bites out of the story by CBS. Sure Powerline connected all those and went public, but the document in question (and Rather’s career) died the death of a thousand cuts. ( Mitch’s own take one & two )

The highlight for me though was Col. Repya. He is back home right now taking care of an injury from before he went to Iraq. Wait, some background. He was the guy behind the ‘Liberate Iraq’ yards signs and the 20,000 person rally at the capital to support our troops. HE was one of thousands of retired veterans who on September 12, 2001 offered to re-enlist. He was one of 300 who were re-activated and has been in Iraq for a few months. He told us that he can’t wait to get back to Iraq, and in fact he was hoping to celebrate his birthday there next month. His 60th birthday.

Of course the crowd responded well to this. I was inserting this image of Col. Repya in my mental dictionary next to the word ‘True American Hero’, but he said that he was not the real hero. That the troops were not the heros. The real heros in his mind are the wives, children, and families of the troops overseas fighting for us. They are the ones making the real sacrifice.

He also is amazed that the media is so blatantly hiding the positive direction of Iraq’s rebirth as a nation. The amount of positive news and accomplishments of the US forces over there is staggering, and it is a disservice to America’s military that the true story of Iraq’s liberation is being censored.
We also heard from a couple of great candidates for local office as well. If they can get the Minneapolis voters to give them a fair shake and actually vote for the best candidate in November, all 3 of them will be serving in St. Paul next year.

I’d like to thank Rob Hewitt for the chance to speak again, and congratulate SD63 on having such a great operation down there. Amazingly in Minneapolis last night there was a real conservative gathering. I have a sense of glee that maybe, just maybe, there will be a couple splotches of ‘red’ popping up there in November.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 10:19 am and is filed under Blog Stuff, MN Campaigns, Minnesota, War on Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.