The Friday Link for 8/26/16

I'm so mad at the Twin Cities news media.

Let me see if I can break this down:  For some inexplicable reason, the Minnesota Republicans failed to fulfill their state Constitutional mandated requirement at their convention.  According to state law (not GOP bylaws, STATE law), they were supposed to nominate a President and Vice President, 10 electors to serve on the Electoral College, and 10 alternate electors.  They never elected the alternates, something which HAS to be done at a convention, by constitutional law.  They also waited until the last minute to get their paperwork to Secretary of State Steve Simon in order to have their Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates listed on the November ballot.  The deadline to get those names in, along with the names of the electors, alternates, and all other proper paperwork, is Monday, August 29th.  It was at a MNGOP meeting on Wednesday the 24th where the wheels of the party came off.  They realized their mistake about the alternates, and, illegally, tried to amend the rules and nominate the alternates within this small group meeting, something they can't do.  The alternates have to be voted on by the party, at the convention, not hastily in a conference room by party leadership.  They then had MNGOP party chair Keith Downey certify the "results," and sent them off to the SOS, knowing they had a mess on their hands, a mess which could end up being a valid, stinging legal challenge.  The end result could be Donald Trump not on the November ballot in Minnesota.

Wow, that's incompetent!

The story of all of this was broken by Michael Brodkorb, a former blogger and columnist for the Star Tribune, who now works independently.  The media in this town, partially due to resentment they didn't discover the story, partially due to the undeniable pro Republican slant of media and news media today, and partially due to many journalists forgetting how to do journalism, pretty much ignored the story.  Their 'nothing to see here' mentality is mind numbing.

Journalists, you owe it to the public to ask questions!  Why haven't you all asked "why weren't the alternates chosen at the convention?"  How about "when you realized the mistake, why did you take a course of action which will clearly be challenged in court?" "Didn't you do a massive disservice to rank and file Republicans by appointing alternates which were supposed to elected at the convention?" "What will be your response if Trump's November ballot placement is challenged?" "Considering the Republicans have insisted they're the party of voting integrity, how does the party codify such a clear violation of voter and election law?"  And I haven't even gotten to the biggest question, "who exactly is responsible for this mess?"

For the news media of Minnesota to willfully ignore a legitimate and important news story is inexcusable.  It was bad enough when you guys allowed a billion in tax payer dollars to be spent on a football stadium with little or no question until AFTER the stadium was approved.  It was bad enough you went out of your way to avoid talking about the Tara Mack/Tim Kelly sexual encounter story, even though they both were married to other people, they both came from the political party which insisted marriage was between one man and one woman, both served on the House Ethics Committee, and they initially went after park police who discovered them.  It was bad enough you allowed an extremely questionable credit card debt forgiveness for Speaker of the MN House Kurt Daudt to go unchallenged, even though the credit was forgiven in an incredibly suspicious manner, the law firm who forgave the debt wasn't Kurt's, but rather the law firm for the credit card company itself, and the law firm has a lobbying wing in St. Paul.  The news media made plenty of excuses for why they couldn't, or didn't want to, cover these stories, even though it's not their place to determine what news they get to cover.  This is intentional incompetence, for whatever the reason.

Sigh...

If I'm stuck with looney tunes news, then I guess I'll embrace funny news for today.  Here are a series of top notch news cuts from Newsradio, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and a phenomenal piece form Murphy Brown.  Enjoy!

Newsradio

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Murphy Brown

Try to have a great weekend!