In times like these, what’s a Big Coal paper to do?

If you want to know what a quintessential Mesabi Daily News editorial looks like, check out today’s offering. In some random protest in Washington, D.C., a protester shouted “No coal, no oil.” Because of that (outrage!), readers are told we need the “clean coal” boondoggle Excelsior Energy on the Iron Range — a project bloated with government favors and funding that has no logical reason to exist. Also climate change is bogus.

Huh? What? Why? Oh, you really should just read this and get a taste of what Iron Range newspaper readers see most days.

The MDN loves to use straw men arguments. Point out a radical argument to make your position sound like the only reasonable option. It’d be cute if they weren’t the only paper writing daily editorials on the Iron Range. To be fair, there are days where I agree with the MDN and usually point that out here. But the editorials have a way of declaring debate to be closed, rather than prompting discussion and attempting to convince people to share the position in question.

Here’s an editorial of my own: let’s build a nuclear power plant on top of the Mesabi Daily News. Think of it! Clean, baseload power for five generations. All factors considered, it’s about the same price as the Mesaba Project if it were to actually sequester carbon and probably more profitable for its private investors. I’ve got it! I should form a new nuclear power company called Awesome Energy. Once I get the computer graphics done I bet the IRRRB will spot me $10 million … $12 million if those pictures are extra fancy and I promise a suitably large, vague number of jobs. We’ll fill in the other details later. Don’t worry; I checked and the paper doesn’t ask questions about this sort of thing.