Boy, Tim Walz’s townhall last night sounds like it was really exiciting.

MANKATO – About 700 feisty and energized people crammed into a high school auditorium Thursday night to tell First District Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., that he should — and shouldn’t — support legislation to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Too bad John Kline couldn’t have been there. And too bad Warren Wolfe only took notes on the politics and not the substance of the evening. On the online page one alone the following issues are raised:

government-backed option to private insurance

health care profits

energy policy

the uninsured

scrapping all existing Congressional health proposals

government paying for abortions

rationing Medicare

And despite two and one-half hours of Q&A, here is the sum total of the substance of this article:

Waving a copy of the Constitution, Mankato insurance agent Jerry Longstreet said the founding document “does not say you can take over health care, the banks, auto dealers …” The shouting and applause drowned out the rest of his sentence. “… How can you do Obama-care?”

If you buy that, Walz shouted out, “then we have to drop [veterans] VA medical coverage and Medicare, along with the National Park System and a lot more.” The Constitution, Walz said, says Congress is responsible to for the country’s “common defense and welfare, and that’s what we’re doing.”

One contentious exchange and that’s it? All politics and fireworks? Tim Walz was a school teacher and over the course of two and half hours the only facts were that heated exchange above?

This is pitiful journalism. That or execrable editing. The comments shed more light on the healthcare crisis than the article does, and in a way that illuminates what’s going on with klieg light clarity. Some lefties with facts, lots of righties with insults, over and over and over again. Read them for yourselves if you like but among other things you’ll learn that Tim Walz is a one-term buffoon, a two-term buffoon, Nancy Pelosi clone and one of the biggest phonies in Congress; Obama is taking an expensive vacation; distortions about the VA based (I’m guessing) on the crappy treatment Vietnam vets initially got (from Jim2005Beam, really, the posting names are angry all by themselves), etc. etc.

Not to mention the threats of “angry mobs.” This is unreal. Angry people who think that leaving a comment about becoming an angry mob is a talking point!? Bluster from one reader who shrilly asserted that Walz chose a “small” 700-seat venue (instead of a 5,000 seat venue) so the tea-ruptors could be locked out. Odd how the Strib reporter omitted any mention of the thousands of people angrily milling about outside the event.

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz speaks to the problem:

[T]he media’s best efforts to report on the debate over health care reform have resulted in a public that believes any number of false claims opponents have made about the legislation. Perhaps the reason that has happened is because even though health care has been among the top issues under discussion since President Obama took office, prominent media figures remain woefully ignorant of its elementary details.

Click the link for a video of Lou Dobbs conflating universal health care, public option, and single payer, three very separate things. Gertz also defines all three so it’s a clip and save post to send to wingnut friends and family. Also from MMfA, Terry Krepel on institutional lying about healthcare.

If Americans understood the real issues, we’d be winning in Congress and not just in the polls. Not likely when ABC touts tea-ruptions as a worthy response to a complex problem and unprosecuted felons like Tom DeLay go on air and tell bizarre lies to distract us from the real issues. Fox News is working the disruption angle so hard they’re even giving camera time to our signs, probably in the hopes of keeping their mob agitated but maybe a misstep on their part.

Scott Horton looks at this mess and asks if Republicans are becoming nihilists, contrarians seeking to destroy the system rather than letting anyone attempt to fix it. A fair question given the refusal of Republicans to come up with a plan of their own.

Tula Connell reports on sheetmetal workers decision to campaign against any and all Blue Dogs who try to kill meaningful healthcare reform. And while I’m no fan of Terry McAuliffe, I guess it’s good that he’s offering to do a free fundraiser for the first Virginia Dem to take the no on healthcare reform without a public option pledge. (Still, that’s kinda like a brothel owner offering a freebie….)

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A new government report unsurprisingly shows that workplace deaths are down (fewer people working, fewer people dying), but workplace suicides are up by 28%. That dovetails perfectly with the new record productivity figures. You know, the ones that skyrocket everytime executives lay off workers and then turn the survivors into Chinese coolies working round the clock to take up the slack.

Instead of killing bad bosses, our beaten down workforce just kills themselves. We have become a nation of losers too busy losing to fight back.

Farming, fishing and forestry remain the most dangerous occupations. Good luck finding a correlation between danger and compensation because the free market doesn’t work that way (or any other way that deprives bankers and investors of their hard-earned profits).

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More on the Metro Gang Strike Force’s breathtaking corruption, but still no names of any officers. Is the Strib trying to tell us that all cops are bad? Or will they eventually tell us which ones? Literally the only names given in this story are those of the investigators and “good” cops providing details of what they’re finding as they dig deeper.

I doubt like hell that Randy Furst is choosing to withhold the names. This stinks of an editorial decision, and it’s one they should explain in an editorial.

UPDATE: The PiPress’s account explains why no names: “No officers suspected of wrongdoing are named in the report and Luger said that’s because the FBI continues to investigate.”

Good article that covers the problems and not just the smoke. Mara Gottfried gives Lugar some column inches to explain what they found and it’s increasingly clear that the Metro Gang Strike Force was a celebration of “us vs. them” cops waging war on whoever they decided was a bad guy.

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Shaming Norwegian Americans.

It’s at times like this that I feel compelled to remind everyone that Ed Gein was a German American….

And then my inner liberal makes me remind everyone that I’m a quarter German, as well.

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Brilliant video of two comedians hammering home the point that there is no such thing as “identity theft,” just banks that can’t get their security act together.

Clay Shirky is trying to organize a mass tweet of Social Security numbers so as to break the idiotic decision by many banks to use SS#s for bank accounts (like Wells Fargo forced me to do against my vehement protest).

Americans won’t stand for a national ID card so businesses backdoored our SS#s into just that, endangering not just our privacy but our savings as well.

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Fair question: Can a governor do his job when he’s constantly on the road?

Or should Tim Pawlenty do a Palin and just fucking quit already?

And under no circumstances should that be interpreted as meaning that I would look forward to having Carol Molnau as governor. My point is simply this: we need a governor in Minnesota to govern Minnesota. Given Pawlenty’s penchant for secrecy even the press corps doesn’t know where he is from day to day.

Maybe I should organize a blog pool. Leave your guesses in the comments as to where Tim Pawlenty will be when the next bridge collapses.

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RECAP is already working. A judge vacated a ruling then tried to purge the rulings from the various data bases. Too late, they’d already been archived elsewhere by RECAP users.

The ability of corporations and the rich to get “secret” justice is not in the public interest and RECAP will help diminish (but not cure) this judicial malpractice.

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My bad. I misunderstood some news yesterday but Bob Collins sets me straight. It was a Baptist preacher who called the mini-tornado “God’s message to Lutherans.”

I’m lapsed, but I do take comfort in the fact that God is still speaking to us while Baptists sit in their yards next to bushes that never spontaneously combust.

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Ha. Another 18-wheeler backing up because the driver went through the lights before he noticed the low clearance on the railroad overpass.

That overpass singlehandedly makes St. Anthony Park livable (while my south-of-the-overpass corner remains industrially noisy).

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Mike Masnick has some doubts about the first “copyright trial” in 6th Century Ireland, but Wikipedia suggests it’s all true. The trial part, anyhow.

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From my new Facebook pal Dan, a video on a newly approved drug to deal with morning chirpers.

I’m still grateful to Facebook for putting their seal of approval on my friendship with Dan. I guess the first 46 years didn’t really count.

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More free music, this batch sure to delight geeks and Moog enthusiasts while annoying the bejeezus out of musicians and jazz lovers.

I approve of this project, but please don’t send me a copy as the samples I listened to last night gave me bad dreams straight out of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.