A WARNING ABOUT THOSE CLEVER MILLIONAIRES

Some right wing wankers have set up a fake blog for me. Don't be fooled. If anyone was operating under the assumption that this is just an Unsolved Mystery that can be tied up with a bow and put on the history shelf, it may be time for a reality check. It's the Powerstooge guys and their deep pocket friends like Little Davey Strom and the Tax Evaders League. A bunch of egomaniacs with little lives.

Those bloggies out there aren't to be trusted. It's not just the media that are infested with jackals these days. There's only one authentic fake Nick Coleman blog.

Welcome aboard, blog reader.

Top Cop Identifies State's Biggest Threat

Corporal Timothy Jenson is the President of the Minnesota State Patrol Troopers Association. He's seen a lot of horrible things in his 24 years of service. In the latest union newsletter, he details his involvement responding to the 1983 murders of two Federal Marshalls and several civilians by radical tax protest group Posse Comitatus.

1982 was not 1970 and the Posse was protesting paying their taxes, not race issues. If they had been, someone as influential as former St. Paul Police Chief William Finney might have said:

"This was a 'To Whom It May Concern' killing. There was a whole lot of conflict going on between the African-American community and the city of St. Paul and the police, and there was a whole lot of anger. Things were changing from the way they had been to the way they were going to be. We were all revolutionaries back then, but we didn't all take the same path."

As evil as the murderers of the Posse were, they only killed a handful of people. The "We Don't Want to be Taxpayers League of Minnesota" wants to dismantle the safety net that protects the poor, eliminate public and higher education, build 15-lane highways named after Ronald Reagan and turn Minnesota into Haiti. All for the sake of a few million bucks in a few millionaires pockets.

THOSE RIGHT-WING SHOCK JOCKS HAVE GONE TOO FAR

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the right-wing-nuts have absolutely no sense of decency. Now some monkey shock jocks have started a “satirical” talk show on some 5-Watt radio station in which they pretend to be me spouting illogical nonsense. They couldn’t even come up with a “host” who sounded remotely like me (I have a much deeper, manlier voice than that monkey). And the “satire” is incredibly bad. The comments they attribute to me should at least be in the same galaxy as rational thought.

Today they had on a caller, supposedly from Edina, who stated that the enlightenment led to the French Revolution which led to the American Revolution and then accused the religious right of not knowing anything about history. Very funny, ha ha ha.

Of course, no one is actually foolish enough to believe that a journalist with my non-partisan reputation would ever do a partisan show – especially a partisan show that airs from 7AM to 9AM. A fancy banker might be able to get away with showing up at work after 9 everyday, but not a working-stiff journalist. Besides, I couldn’t possibly do 10 hours of radio a week AND do all the research, interviewing, and fact-checking needed to write three Coleman-quality columns each week.

Those shock jocks better steer clear of me.

No More Apologies

I guess I’m way cool now that I have a blog. Maybe I should be like that fancy banker who writes for Power Line, Scott “Little Trunk” Johnson, and go after poor people as if I were a rabid dog. But no, I’m still just a boring old journalist who’s interested in quaint old things like, say, comforting the afflicted, and, oh, I don’t know, afflicting the comfortable.

Speaking of The Little Trunk, he was on the O’Rightwingnoise Factor last night, whining about my paper not apologizing for running a column by the distinguished journalist Bill Moyers. Of course, O’Rightwingnoise didn’t ask, and Little Trunk didn’t offer whether James Half-Watt (or some other wingnut sugar daddy) was paying him for his vicious attacks on Moyers. Bill Moyers has received the Harvard Medical School's Global Environment Citizen Award. The best award Scott Johnson has received is the Nick Coleman Littlest Trunk of the Year Award.

Little Trunk and his Powertool friends like to pretend that they are good Christians, but since when has it been Christian to bear false witness against an ordained Baptist minister like Bill Moyers? I guess I missed Sunday school that day.

I’m proud of my paper for refusing to apologize for the Bill Moyers piece. We’ve been doing way too much apologizing to the rum-swillers lately.

A CRISIS AND A SCANDAL

They all had names and they all had gifts, the homeless Minnesotans who stood by the side of the road and asked the schoolkids for money in 2004. They all needed money which is why they were finally made the subject of the Star Tribune's Mindworks feature in February. This month Mindworks tried to distract us from shopping and get us to think, for one night, of the needy of money by asking students:

"If you saw a homeless person begging at the roadside, would you stop to give him or her money? Why or why not?"

That's right: we finally ask the students about something less glittery but more important than the usual stuff.

And it's a scandal what they said. Two-thirds of the 3,000 students responding wrote that they would not give cash to a panhandler. Students today are so hip and cool they can make fun of the poor and disadvantaged while working out of carpeted classrooms. In fact, one worthless little cur wrote:

Alex Quiding, 12

Red Wing, Minn.

Twin Bluff Middle School

I would not give this person money. Giving him money is not going to help them from being homeless, and I do not know what they would spend the money on. I would rather give the money to the food shelf, or some other organization that helps people in need.

Hey Alex! Maybe you ought to consider becoming a Christian. After all, once upon a time, a homeless couple came to Bethlehem, looking for shelter. They didn't go looking for a food shelf.