Honestly, with some of these lefty s**tpost farms, I’m not sure why I bother fact-checking anything.  They don’t care, and they bank on their audience not caring as well. 

But there’s always the off chance that I’ll catch someone who hasn’t checked all of their brain in at the lefty claim check, who is looking for an honest answer to a stupid question.

To wit:

So let’s get this straight:  in the past 60 years, the United States has spent $22 Trillion dollars – more than the annual gross domestic product of China, or about 3/4 of a year’s GDP of the USA – to “eradicate poverty” and its effects. 

But, on top of all that spending (which is ongoing, and has accelerated well ahead of inflation), taking a small tax onto the small number of billionaires is what it’ll ackshyually take to fix the problem?

Huh.

We’ve been so close, all along!

OK.  Now let it sink in.  

Then press flush. 

Governor Walz, throwing Saint Paul’s ailing downtown a much-needed bone, calls state employees back to the office…

…a little:

Sure, much of the private sector never left the office (or work site), and much of the rest of the free market world has re-adapted.

But not Minnesota’s oh-so special state government union employees:

And they’re putting teeth into their whining:

My big question:  how many of them need to come back, not only to the Saint Paul, but to Minnesota. 

Or the US.

Or Earth?

I thought I was getting a little carried away with that last one, but the more I think about it…

I’ll allow that it’s possible that between David and I, Minnesota might get a little over-covered here at Hot Air.  

But I’ve got a theory:  national Democrats are trying out a lot of their national strategies and tactics in Minnesota; conservatives following Minnesota politics got a fair amount of deja vu during the ’24 presidential campaign, and that was even before Tim Walz got the (inexplicable but providential) nod to run for VP.   The accession of Minnesota DFL chair Ken Martin to the head of the DNC supports the theory.  So hear me out. 

The DFL in Minnesota has a bit of a crime problem:  their one vote majority in the State Senate (until Senator Eichorn is expelled for his arrest) hangs in the person of Sen. Nicole Mitchell, who is accused of multiple counts of burglary; the Walz administration is mired in a persistent series of non-profit fraud scandals, one of their elected representatives was tossed from office when it was revealed he didn’t live in his district (with the full knowledge of the DFL’s former Speaker of the House), and there’s the usual assortment of DUIs, not to mention the DFL taking the “20%” side of a lot of 80-20 issues (“stand your ground”, boys in girls sports, and so on).  

The response appears to be…

…slander all Republicans.  

State Senator Erin Maye Quade is a long-time progressive activist – think of her as a home-grown AOC.  Her terms as a state representative and state Senator from the south Twin Cities suburb of Apple Valley were interrupted by a brief run for Lieutenant Governer, along with current Minnesota Senate majority leader Erin Murphy – who, significantly standing next to Maye Quade outside the Senate chamber as she said (read the thread, via Tom Hauser at KSTP-TV):

She said this with the Majority Leader standing right there.  You can see it. 

That’s about as close as you can get to declaring all Republicans potential sex criminals in advance, just to save the trouble.  

So I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and predict that Democrats nationwide are going to embark on a colossal campaign of name-calling.  

I’ll admit it – two months of DOGE has made me a little inured to stories about outlandish things that the Federal Government spends our money on.  

Promoting DEI in Serbia?   Transgender comic books in Peru?  Yaaawn.   Get back to me when you’ve got something interesting.  

So when I heard that there was a fracas about funding universities in Australia, a part of me thought of course there is.   Why would we not be funding universities in Oz?”

What I didn’t figure on was that there would be so much of it the risk of losing it would cause a national emergency down under.  The Trump administration is asking seven Australian universities, not to do without all that American aid money, but to justify the aid money they are getting, in terms of American nationional interest.  According to the Guardian:

The Trump administration told Australian university researchers a push to promote administration priorities and avoid “DEI, woke gender ideology and the green new deal” was behind a “temporary pause” of funding, according to a memo seen by Guardian Australia.

University sector sources say the US has severed research funding at six universities – Monash University, Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, University of New South Wales and University of Western Australia – since Donald Trump came to power, including some as early as January. ANU is the first university to publicly acknowledged it.

Which is, according to Sky News, an urgent enough matter that Australian PM Tony Albanese is being urged to drop everything and get on the case:

A memo sent by the US office of managament and budget to an Australian university project on January 27 and retrieved by The Guardian, declared financial assistance for the researchers was a waste of taxpayer money and explained federal spending priority would go towards “the will of the American people”.

“Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again,” the memo said.

“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”

The cuts would leave a $600M hole in Australian research budgets. 

And if you guessed some Ozzie academics would refer to Americans wantintg American money to serve American interests as “foreign interference” – well, you’ve been paying attention this past four years (and you know that public unions are pretty much the same around the world):

“The Federal Government must push back on the Trump administration’s blatant foreign interference in our independent research in the strongest possible terms.” – Alison Barnes, NTEU National President

Read the full media release here 👉 https://t.co/vUg4if1lJw@AlisonBarnes25 pic.twitter.com/rGDB2mUIlY

— NTEU (@NTEUnion) March 13, 2025

The National Tertiary Education Union’s (NTEU) national president Alison Barnes slammed the missive, and said the Albanese government had to “guarantee Australian researchers would be protected.” “The federal government must push back on the Trump administration’s blatant foreign interference in our independent research in the strongest possible terms,” she said.

Not to mix my metaphors, but “the first three weeks of a new diet are the. hard part” seems appropriate under the circumstances.  

So, what’s worse? 

Empty real estate?

Or vacant lots?

Evan Ramstad – who’s in a hammer-and-tongs battle with Jennifer Brooks for “worst Strib columnist” – says “empty lots”

Now, that could make some sense, if there was some intense craving for downtown real estate – perhaps to build the “housing” that “urbanists” are fantasizing about.  

But Minneapolis already has a glut of overpriced “luxury” housing, and rent control (albeit not quite as stupid and myopic as Saint Paul’s version) and unicorn-style zoning are choking out the supply of middle-class construction.   

So I’m trying to see how this ends up as anything but a downtown full of lots suitable for graffiti, “encampments” and all the other bits and pieces of. urban blight that the Minneapolis City Council and the Strib columnist bullpen seem to think the city deserves. 

During his 2018 and 2022 gubernatorial bids, Minnesota governor Tim Walz ran under the motto and hashtag “One Minnesota”.   Now, if you’re a student of certain problematic eras in European history, the hair on the back of your neck might stand up when leaders start talking about making the place they want to govern “One…” of anything.  It’s kind of hte opposite of “E Pluribus Unum”, if you think about it. 

Especially when you compare to the Harris/Walz 2024 Presidental campaign, where the candidates spent a few cycles calling Republicans “Fascists” and “Nazis”.  

The election results showed that the results, er, came up a little short. 

Or…did they?

I’m of two minds about this story. Either:

• Tim Walz only has one setting, “defamatory gaffe”, or
• someone in the Democratic brain trust running Walz’s none-too-subtle 2028 Presidential pre-bid knows something we don’t about the hunger swing voters have to demonize half of their fellow Americans, with a little election denialism thrown in for good measure.

If I’m being consistent with my post on Walz and the team behind him from a week or so ago, I’d urge you not to rule out the second option too soon. 

This past Saturday, March 22, Walz spoke at a rally in Rochster, Minnesota – the largest city in the Minnesota First Congressional District, the district Walz represented in Washington from 2006 to 2018 (and which has, interestingly, voted for Walz’s opponents in two gubernatorial races and last year’s White House bid).   These…things, were found floating around the event.   As reported by Liz Collin, from Minnesota conservative outlet “Alpha News”:

On the one hand, “86” is a reference to the military (and bar industry) slang term for “permanently throw out”.   Which is the goal of politics.  Not a big deal.  

But “Bury Fascists?”

On top of all the other calls to violence, subtle and, er, not so subtle, in recent weeks?

And I did mention election denialism, didn’t I?

There are ways to not read that as denying the election results; delusion, magical thinking, or playing to a base that is more or less in intense denial about the Democratic party’s current state are the ones that jump to mind.  

Dean Phillips – former congressional representative and Democratic presidential candidate, and a Democrat who has found a niche as the Democrats’ and Minnesota DFL’s critical nagging conscience – is a little concerned about his former Minnesota political colleague:

Now, we don’t know who was handing them out, or how many were in circulation, or whether Walz was involved.

But this jibes with what Walz is saying, doing and, er, encouraging in his followers,

Before the inevitable half-assed walkback, anyway:

Learn more about the Minneapolis Republican Party.

Today’s music list!

I’ve actually started doing some writing for HotAir.com.

Those who’ve been paying attention may remember that I actually did write for HotAir, between 2009-2012.  

But this time I’m actually getting paid.   Which is kinda cool. 

This shouldn’t affect SITD. 

Saint Paul’s “Tony Soprano”-style trash collection system – which has morphed over the past decade from individually-contracted vendors to a dozen or so vendors allocated across the city by a city plan that drove most of them out of Saint Paul, to now one single contracted vendor that sucked up to the city properly, is facing a shutdown before it really starts:

After years of bitter debates that came be called “the trash wars,” the start of the new garbage hauler’s contract on April 1 is supposed to mark a turning point in the city’s bid to take a more central role in managing the service.

t. Paul City Council members voted 5-0 on Wednesday to block the new hauler, FCC Environmental, from placing its truck yard on a lot the company purchased last summer off West Seventh Street, just blocks from the Schmidt Artist Lofts.

The vote stems from a January appeal filed by a neighborhood group, which has argued the trash facility would undermine long-term plans for residential, mixed-use, transit-oriented development in the area.

Lesson #1 – the most powerful people in Saint Paul are white upper middle class “artists” living off government “humanities” grants in lofts. They may be even more powerful than white progressive 60-something livelong DFL women from Mac Groveland.

Hard as that may be to believe. 

Lesson #2 – White Saint Paul progressives apprently think that trash goes to the same place food comes from; some magical building. 

To: The MNDFL
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Pick A Side

So, profiles in courage that you are, you’ve decided to take a bold stance against (checks notes) iopeople attracted to minors. https://x.com/MinnesotaDFL/status/1902478708142702817

Pretty icky.

But wait – it was just two years ago that the DFL-controlled legislature passed a law, signed by Piglet, that removed “Minor Attraction” from the list of exceptions to the MN Human Rights Act.

The media’s Democrat-fluffery industry breathlessly told everyone it didn’t “protect pedophilia“.

And that’s true – technically.   It doesn’t make sex with underage people legal.  

What it did was open the door to litigation the next time someone who is attracted to minors suffers any form of discrimination if their attraction becomes public knowledge. 

Which is, let’s be honest, where slippery slopes start.

So – the DFL is being hypocritical about this one two levels – they started paving the way to make this sort of behavior acceptable (in Democrats), and as the GOP leads the way to expelling Eichorn, Nicole Mitchell – equally accused of a couple of felonies – remains covered by the DFL’s code of omertá and the network of DFL judges.   

Sometime after 1900, a recent graduate of what would become the university of Minnesota school of pharmacy, Sven Hendrickson, who as a 15-year-old young man had moved by himself from Steigen, Norway to Minnesota to work on a farm , moved from Minneapolis to Dunseith, North Dakota. He set up a pharmacy, and along with his wife, Jeanette, an immigrant from Quebec, had four children, including a daughter, born on March 17, 1912, and inevitably named Patricia . The Hendricksons  moved around a bit, and wound up in Jamestown, a scrappy little railroad town about halfway between Fargo and Bismarck

Sometime after that, in about 1922, Oscar Berg, the son of Swedish immigrants, who had worked as a farmer and a street car conductor in st paul, moved to that same little town, Jamestown, to start a photography studio. He did it with the help of a couple of women from Northern Minnesota, who had made quite a career of getting people started in the photography business. A few years later, when the studio was successful enough for him to need to look  for an assistant, he reached out to those two women, who recommended their niece, who was working at a studio in Bovey Minnesota.

The niece, Beatrice Gresley, the daughter of a couple of Norwegian immigrants, took the job and moved there in about 1928. Sometime after that, in about 1932, Oscar and Beatrice got married. 

Somewhere around the time that Oscar and Beatrice were working away at the studio, Sven and Jeanette’s daughter Patricia decided to attend the little college on the North Hill of Jamestown . There, she would major in English, become homecoming  royalty, and meet a strapping young all American four letter athlete and chemistry major, Donald Hall, from Starkweather, North Dakota. They  would marry not long before Oscar and Beatrice had a baby, at the new hospital just down the hill from the college . That baby would be about five years old when Oscar died of a heart attack, leaving Beatrice to run the photography studio for the next couple of decades.  This was about the time that Sven moved to Wahpeton North Dakota to start a new pharmacy. 

Pat and Don would go on to live in Devils Lake, Grand Forks, Aberdeen, and, finally, Bismarck. They had three kids, the oldest of which , Jan, would go back to Jamestown to go to college, and meet Oscar and Beatrice‘s only son. They got married, and not long after that I came along. The son, Bruce, was a high school teacher – maybe the best high school teacher in the history of high school teachers – for about 40 years. And their daughter and I both went to that little college on the North Hill before we and our little brother moved to bigger places with more opportunities.

My parents split up a few years later, and my mother moved to Turkey for five years, but came back to Minot, built a dream house with her second husband (another Jamestown native who’d joined the Navy but kept a foot in the state) and lived there until they both died, in 2020 and 2022, respectively.

Oscar died in 1942.   Sven, in 1948.   Don and Pat moved to Arizona in the ’70s.   Beatrice passed away in 1980.

And last week, I moved my father from Jamestown to Billings, Montana, to be closer to my sister, her husband and her four kids, all of whom love doting on dad/grandpa. 
And so for the first time in about 120 years, there are no Bergs, or blood relatives of mine, in North Dakota. 

That’s a weird feeling. I lived there for 22 years, but they were the first 22, so my sense of place is still very rooted there.   I’ve become more of a homer in the past 20 years or so, as I see some of the virtues of the place I left behind 2/3 of a lifetime ago. 

What does Tim Walz fantasize about?

Well, not in a debate, he can’t. 

Suddenly, the DFL is stoked.  Nikki the Ninja is no longer the juiciest (alleged) crime story in the MN State Senate. 

For now, anyway.  Sen. Justin Eichhorn got arrested for soliciting a “16 year old girl” who turned out to be a police decoy.  

The Bloomington Police Department said Eichorn, 40, of Grand Rapids, solicited sex from a detective posing as a 17-year-old girl online. Eichorn and the detective arranged to meet near the 8300 block of Normandale Boulevard.

Eichorn was seen arriving in his pickup truck at the rendezvous point and was taken into custody just after 5:45 p.m., police said.

As of this publishing, Eichorn remained in the Bloomington Police Department’s custody awaiting transfer to the Hennepin County Jail. Formal charges have yet to be filed.

The DFL…well, they tried to have a field day with it. It didn’t end well:

So let’s recap: Republicans immediately demand their reprobate’s resignation. The DFL has been stalling on any meaningful action on Nicole “Nikki the Ninja” Mitchell for almost a year, now.

Which isn’t stopping them from try to deflect:

The DFLers are using this to deflect from their hypocrisy on Nikki the Ninja. The Repubulicans were clear, then and now: both both need to go. Stat.

KARE’s Jana Shortal, whose prospects of that MSNBC gig seems to be shrinking by the day, sounded off:

So apparently Democrats are going to take a break from burning Teslas to tell us “there’s no such thing as Trump Derangement”.  

Or maybe not:

Oh, DFL…

Notwithstanding the fact that Governor Walz was an imaging disaster during the past presidential campaign…

…there seems to be a convenient – dare I say, too convenient groundswell of social media support for him this past few days.

So with that in mind, it’s well and good to remember the real Tim Walz.

Today’s the anniversary of Minnesota’s Great Leap Backward.

Me? I was on my way home from the office, listening the governor on MPR as he announced the most draconian set of emergency powers in Minnesota history. On the way, I stopped at a Total Wine. The store has eight checkout lines, of which two are normally operating; I’ve never waited in a line longer than three deep, even then.

All eight registers were humming, stacked 6-7 people deep, and the store was packed. 

They needn’t have worried; big box liquor stores, and big box stores of all kinds, found themselves exempted from the Governor’s swerve into autocracy.  

But small businesses were forced to close – unless they were lucky enough to be Walz contributors – and were utterly gutted.

And schools remained closed for a year and a half – and children still haven’t recovered.

And while state government beggared the whole notion of “science”, it was fairly clear early on that the most dire predictions were going to fall flat.

So no. I’m not ready to make nice yet. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I confidently predicted Trump would force a government shutdown to compel real cuts in spending, which is why he had the D0GE team hunting for a trillion dollars of fraud, waste and abuse.  But Trump supports a continuing resolution which increases defense spending by $6 billion, cuts other spending by $13 billion, and leaves the rest of the spending in place, financed by borrowed money.  

Shaving a lousy $7 billion off $7 trillion won’t balance the budget. We will still have a $2 Trillion dollar deficit and interest on the debt will still be more than we spend on defense.  This continuing resolution is like claiming to be dieting by eating one less french fry in your Happy Meal.  It’s worse than a joke. It’s an insult.  I’m insulted. 

My buddy claims I just don’t understand Trump’s strategy and the scope of everything he’s dealing with.  He wanted Congress to do a real budget before he was seated.  He wanted them to do the cuts under Biden.  But of course Congress simply kicked the can and made the problem come due a few weeks into Trump’s term.  

My buddy says Trump’s not giving up the fight, he’s merely pushing it out a few months while inflation tames; while the fraud and waste gets identified and publicized; while he gets the Hawaiian judges’ orders overturned; while he ends the money laundry in Ukraine; while he knocks some sense into Mexico and Canada; while he secures the border; while he gets the rest of his cabinet installed; while he claws back billions, if not trillions shoveled out the windows just before he took office ….

I sure hope he’s right.  Otherwise, it looks as if the Democrats and RINOs won this round, dragging us one step closer to the fiscal cliff.  Dang, and I was so hopeful.

Joe Doakes

 

Until someone has the guts to go after the big entitlement programs, it’s all performance.  The best case is that Trump curbs the chaos long enough for the economy to switch to “puree”, which might forestall but not prevent the inevitable reckoning. 

Can we get to that without getting to this?   Or will events and Democrats stall Trump long enough that a recession tanks Trump in the. mid-terms, and sparks a leftist backlash?

Have at it.

What could possibly go wrong?

Today’s music list:

Democrats lately have had a lot of fun hopping up and down on the fact that there are no 300 year-old people giving Social Security checks; it’s just a database problem.

As if learning that the fact that our government data is that sloppy is all that much more reassuring.

All of that, notwithstanding, I fully expect the Democrats to keep trying to focus on that, to deflect away from this

I’ve had a long-standing suspicion that Minnesota under Democrat rule has been a national prototype, not only for how progressive politics is done, but for how progressive loot the public treasury.I’ve had a long-standing suspicion that Minnesota under Democrat rule has been a national prototype, not only for how progressive politics is done, but for how progressive loot the public treasury.Is Minnesota the disease, or the symptom?

Not sure. Either way, he’s hoping the chemotherapy does something useful.

As we pointed out yesterday, governor Klink is apparently getting things set up to try to run for president

he must be serious; he wants to hold a “Townhall meeting”, which is something he hasn’t done in Minnesota since Jensen humiliated him far fast

At any rate, this is the tack he wants to take

Minnesota’s educational achievement rates have, of course, fallen behind Mississippi. 

Which confirms my thesis; even more than most Democrats, Walz counts on “his” voters being even dumber and less well-informed than most Democrats do.

Tim Walz appears to be doing more than exploring re a presidential run in 2028:

On the one hand – I’m not sure on what planet his national stock rose after his VP bid. He was an embarassment.

On the one hand – if he is delusional enough to think he’s got national legs after all that, maybe he’ll opt out of running for governor again?

Decisions.  Decisions. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

The auto-pen pardons look bad, but I’m certain they will be upheld.  It’s a matter of federal law but examples from Minnesota might be illustrative. 

A deed to convey real estate is not valid without the signature of the grantor.

A signature is any mark intended to authenticate an instrument.  Making your X on the deed is a “signature.”  The law does not discriminate against the illiterate.

And a signature may be made by the signer, or by rubber stamp bearing the signer’s name, or made by another at the direction of the signer.  The law does not discriminate against the handicapped.

Given the broadness of the concept in widely different areas of the law, I am confident the courts would have no trouble upholding everything Biden signed by autopen the same as if he personally signed every document.  

They have to – otherwise there’s no end to the chaos caused by acknowledging that he was mentally incompetent and somebody else was running the country.  Can’t admit that publicly even though everybody knows it. 

Joe Doakes

The fact that Biden’s actions were protected by the same measures that protect illiterates and incompetents somehow takes a little sting off.

…that the people who most need to read articles like this (I’m not going to pull-quote it; it deserves a quick read) will be the last to actually read it.

Of course, those who have been through the history of the various characters in this blog’s comment section know that while the tendency flowered under Trump, it didn’t start in 2015.

Namecalling during the 2024 Presidential election turned out not to be a “wonder weapon” for the left.

Turns out bullying, castigating and defaming people doesn’t win them over.  

It’s a lesson most people learn by middle school.

The Minnesota left still hasn’t learned it, oddly enough:

VanDassor, a Highland Park Middle School teacher, was first elected president of SPFE in 2021. Her union is a champion of left-wing causes, including “restorative practices,” which are a “model for a healthy, racially equitable school culture.”

In her statement, she said that SPFE members “will continue to do what we have always done: care for and educate ALL of our students. Feed them. Keep OUR schools safe for them. Teach them the full history of our country.”

VanDassor asserted that “fascist regimes” always begin by “targeting the most vulnerable populations and by making it a crime to tell the truth.”

Hmm. Making it a crime to tell the truth, you say? Huh.

I’m hoping they never learn.

If you live in House District 40B – northern Roseville and southern Shoreview – and you’ve seen enough of how the DFL acts when it’s got all the power it wants, get out and vote for Paul Wikstrom today. 

Drag your friends and family out to do it too. 

Got kids who live there?  They owe you.  Twist that arm.

Elderly relatives?   Get them to the polls.  

Wikstrom has raised more money in this race than some CD4 Congressional candidates have in recent races – so there’s support and interest.  This is at least in the running to be not a DFL walkover.  

Destroy the trifecta!

What’s the saying?  Oh, yeah.

Yes, we can.

(If “we” live in 40B).