Stewart Mills, the “Fleet Farm” owner and candidate for the CD8 House seat that’s changed hands twice since 2010, is putting up some righteous fundraising numbers:

Republican Stewart Mills III of Nisswa formally declared his candidacy for 8th district congress just last week, but came out strong Tuesday, releasing a third quarter fundraising report reflecting contributions nearly double the amount raised by DFL Rep. Rick Nolan of Crosby. Mills raised $243,826 for his bid to unseat the incumbant, while Nolan posted receipts of just $129,472, falling short of his second quarter total of $134,764 despite a strong last minute push from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Steve Israel and the DCCC just before the fundraising deadline of Sep. 30.

Nolan received slightly more unitemized individual contributions, reporting $19,497 to Mills’ $19,198, but Mills trounced Nolan in itemized individual contributions, both in number of donors and in dollar amounts. Mills racked up contributions of $218,128 compared to just $48,075 for Nolan. Analysis of individual contributions reveals that Mills raised more money from inside the 8th district, while Nolan raised the bulk of his money from donors outside Minnesota.

And only about $5,000 of Mills’ total is self-financed, so far.

This is going to be a long, expensive campaign.  Both sides are targeting it.  But so far, Mills is rocking the phones – and it’s getting noticed.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Mn/DOT says more lanes won’t reduce congestion on I-94 between St. Cloud and the Twin Cities.  Instead, more lanes will dump people at the choke points faster.  And why are there choke points?  Because Met Council doesn’t like highways, they like light rail, so they’re not willing to build highway lanes in the Twin Cities.

Most telling explanation why they won’t build more lanes: it’s out of vogue.

Ve vill tell you vhen you kan go und how you vill get zhere, und you vill like it.  Or else!

It sounds like an Abbott and Costello routine.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Obama Administration’s effort to punish ordinary Americans until they agree to unlimited debt, continues.

 Catholic priests aren’t even allowed to volunteer to serve the troops.  Why not?  What’s it hurt?  Does this affect other religions, too?

 Families of soldiers in combat aren’t getting death benefits to attend funerals.  When did the military become “non-essential?”

 The feds closed everymemorial, monument, boat launch, permitted operator,scenic overlooks and evenparts of the ocean to ordinary Americans; except open border Liberals who get to hold their rally on The Mall.  Why am I not surprised?

 Joe Doakes

The founders’ vision of theirs country was “a free association of equals”.

Obama’s is “unruly children who need to be brought into line”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

National Review’s original mission statement, from 1955. Skip down to the enumerated points, they’re outstanding and still relevant.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/223549/our-mission-statement/william-f-buckley-jr#!

My buddy points out Buckley’s doomsday talk is outdated: it’s been surpassed. Rather than leftists being nominated for awards for blaming conservatives, they actually receive the Nobel for simply winning the election. They don’t even need to even complete the narrative anymore.

Joe Doakes

I’ll be using this post to catalogue the observed problems caused by the government shutdown.

12AM:  …

Last month, Australia tossed aside its Labour government and installed a conservative one.

Two weeks ago, voters in Norway followed suit, installing a center-right government.

And over the weekend, German voters defied polls that pointed toward a slim win for Angela Merkel’s center-right Christliche-Demokratische Union (Christian Democrat Party, or CDU), giving the CDU what exit polls show may well be an absolute majority in the German Bundestag (Parliament):

An early projection by the state broadcaster ARD on Sunday evening showed Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU) winning 301 seats in the 598-seat Bundestag, enough to form a government without a coalition partner. Later projections suggested, however, that she could fall just short of an absolute majority.

Exit polls and early results put the CDU on 42.5 per cent of the vote, a lead of 17 points over the main opposition.

It had been expected that Mrs Merkel would be forced into a “grand coalition” with her main socialist opponents, the Social Democrats. The early results suggested that she might avoid this.

We’ll see.

I try not to take too much comfort in historical parallels – but in the late seventies, you saw a similar wave of countries whose voters woke up to the fact that the economic system couldn’t be sustained under the liberal status quo.

The US 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has slapped slapped an injunction on the daycare union jamdown::

Officials of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is representing Minnesota providers who oppose unionization, said they received notice late Thursday that their motion for an injunction blocking the law was granted by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

According to lawyers for the group, that means the child-care union election cannot take place until the injunction is lifted. The appeals court said it wants to wait to see if the U.S.Supreme Court decides to hear an appeal on a related case dealing with unionization of home-care workers. That case is called Harris v. Quinn.

Its just a stop in the way – tw battle isn’t nearly over.

But its great news anyway.

Rep. Franson, one of te leaders in the fight against the jam down, released a statement

“While the legal battle over this law is far from over, I’m happy Minnesota moms and dads and their childcare providers can be breath a little easier for now as the threat of forced childcare unionization is no longer imminent.”

The good guys and gals have ha to work themselves to exhaustion against an exceptionally well-funded union push. This ha to feel good.

I switched to WordPress in November of 2006, right before the mid-term elections. 

And in that time, I (and my various co-authors over the years, Johnny Roosh, Bogus and First Ringer) have published 9,999 posts. 

And this is number 10,000. 

(That’s on top of about 2,400 published under my “Movable Type” system, from 2004-2006, and probably 1,800 more on the original blog on Blogger.com, going back to 2002). 

Apropos not much.  Other than “wow”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Fast food protests for minimum wage hike.

I wish reporters would ask more questions. Notice the language of the signs being held by the workers. Some are English, some are Spanish, but all are in the same colors and type font. Plainly, they were professionally printed specifically for this event.

By whom? Who put up the money to rouse this rabble? And where did THEY get the money?

It would be annoying to learn some non-profit community outreach group is being funded by my tax dollars to promote this nonsense. Or worse, if this were just a union tactic to increase their own wages by legislating an increase in the floor wages since they can’t negotiate a raise in this economy.

Annoying?  Certainly. 

But looking at the production quality of the signage, I’m not betting against it.

As I pointed out a few weeks back, people who use the word “Disrespect” as a verb are nothing but trouble.

Ripped from the headlines? Proof (with emphasis added):

Aloeng K. Vang, 19, of St. Paul, told police that he shot Jeffrey T. Elling as the victim answered the door of his home in the 1400 block of York Avenue, according to a second-degree murder charge filed Tuesday against Vang in Ramsey County District Court.

The men had argued a short time earlier after Vang allegedly turned onto Elling’s street at a high rate of speed, nearly striking Elling and his girlfriend as they crossed York Avenue. At the time, Vang was headed to a cousin’s house on the same block — a residence where people had driven recklessly before, the charges say.

During the altercation, Elling pushed Vang to the ground, and Vang, who had appeared to be intoxicated, felt disrespected…Initially, Vang, who turned himself in to police at the scene, told authorities he been driving around in an effort to cool off.

He later admitted, however, that he had gone to his house to get a gun, according to the complaint. He rang Elling’s doorbell, hid behind a tree and then fired two shots when Elling answered, Vang told police.

He added he didn’t mean to shoot Elling, only to scare him.

“I should have just whooped [him],” the charges quote Vang as saying.

Once people use the term “disrespect” as a verb, we should just through them in jail to protect whomever they might hurt in the meantime.

Glossy signs at well-fed protests scheduled with impeccable precision nationwide. 

High-profile politicians pushing the idea in full view of their compliant media.

Yep – the push to jack up the minimum wage is being pushed from every angle by the usual lefty suspects.

And it may be the apotheosis of the liberal campaign strategy – all full of Alinskyite sturm und drang, coupled with an onslaught of gauzy guiltmongering and the idea that we should increase the minimum wage not merely For The Children, but because it just plain feels good.

I caught this last night on MPR, on “The Story”, a North Carolina Public Radio production that seems to be aimed at being a downmarket Terry Gross. 

 Go ahead, check out the interview with Ms. Elisha St. Laurent, who is a woman…

…no.  Ms. St. Laurent is not a person.  She is an archtype, one that’s becoming inescapable in the media’s coverage of the issue – the “single mother and student” who was trying to make it on minimum wage (which, in San Jose, is already $8, albeit in one of the most expensive metro areas in the country).  She’s one of the bunch of – I kid you not – San Jose State sociology students who who organized a voter drive that led to the city jacking up its statutory minimum wage to $10/hour.  The measure passed with – no big shock – the Bay Area voters, and went into effect in March. 

You’ll listen in vain to the interview – clogged as it is with references to “empowerment” and “finding voices” – to any reference to the jobs that are being cut around San Jose.  Indeed, you have to look a solid dozen paragraphs into this story, in the San Jose Mercury, to hear that there is a downside to artificially raising the price of unskilled and semi-skilled labor. 

Apparently small businesses aren’t as “empowered” and haven’t “found their voices” yet.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

There are 300 million people in the country and those Nasty Evil Republicans who implemented the sequester plan devised by John Kerry’s Super-friends Super-committee cruelly will afflict 57,000 children who can’t go to Head Start this Fall.
The article lists the complaints. No free daycare. No free dental screening. No free lunch.

Wait a minute, I thought Head Start was intended to give poor kids a leg up so they could compete academically. If it’s just another welfare program that affects a vanishingly small percentage of Americans, and those only because of hard policy choices made by a bi-partisan committee hand-picked by the President . . . what’s the problem?

But wait, it’s not only kids who are affected. 57,000 kids account for 18,000 government-funded jobs to be cut or reduced, a ratio of 1-3. That’s W-A-Y better than the ratio of Maria to the Van Trapp kids, and they managed to learn somehow anyway, during the war even.

Joe Doakes

But Julie Andrews paid no union dues, so nobody cares…

…but there are people in this world who I wouldn’t mind hearing had been chained in a basement and eaten by mice. 

Just saying.

For years, I’ve thought that it’d be a good idea to hold prosecutors – say, Mike Nifong – criminally liable for malicious prosecution. 

And the fallout from the Zimmerman case isn’t changing that belief even a little.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

•  I’ll be on from 1-3PM.  I’ll be talking with MNGOP gubernatorial candidate Dave Thompson about the evolving 2014 governor’s race.  I’ll also talk with Representative Mary Franson about the status of the battle against the daycare union jamdown.
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Brad Carlson is on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my new UStream video and chat channel (don’t ask)
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Here’s the scenario making the rounds of Liberal blogs:
“Imagine your daughter is walking home from the store, and a man in a car starts following her.
She tries to take a route that his car can’t follow, and he gets out to chase her on foot.
She stops running and defends herself (knees him in the groin, pepper sprays him, whatever).
He doesn’t even try to defend himself with hand-to-hand, he just pulls out a gun and shoots her.
Suddenly, she is called the aggressor and he gets off on self-defense.
Would you still be celebrating? Would it make a difference if your daughter had ever smoked pot?”

Self-defense law is fact-specific. A tiny change in the facts makes all the difference to the outcome. Start from the basic premise that we want people to avoid physical violence, which is why self-defense law includes a duty to retreat if safe. Now tinker with the facts a bit . . .

Suppose Daughter is a 20-year-old Olympic-class runner and Stalker is fat, flabby and forty. She could easily outrun him but instead chooses to turn and knee him. Result: she’s the aggressor and he has the right to defend himself from her wrongful attack but only using proportionate force, not deadly force. If he shoots her, he goes to prison.

Suppose Daughter and Stalker are age, size and condition. She can’t outrun him. She can’t safely retreat. She turns to face him. He says “Hi, new around here? Where you running to?” so she smashes him across the nose with a bat. He staggers and falls on his back. She stands over him lying on the sidewalk, beating his head with the bat. Result: she is the aggressor and he has the right to defend himself from her wrongful attack using deadly force. If he shoots her, he goes free.

Really, is it that hard to understand?

Joe Doakes

If the left couldn’t oversimplify complex issues into meaninglessness, they’d be pretty mute…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

lady, you were on the jury; if you thought he was guilty of murder, why didn’t you convict him? “The law couldn’t prove it.”

Now wait a minute. If the law couldn’t prove he committed murder, then he didn’t commit murder. You are the one who sat through the entire trial, heard all the evidence, heard the jury instruction, and found him not guilty. “Murder” is a specific crime. He didn’t commit murder. You said so.

Yes, Zimmerman killed a man. Lots of soldiers and cops have killed men, too. But none of them committed “murder.”

She’s accusing him of a horrible crime that she, herself, decided he didn’t commit. That’s slander. Somebody should tell her to pipe down.

Joe Doakes

When I first heard the story, the first thing I thought was “George Zimmerman should have a pretty righteous defamation case”.

The second? I think it was PJ O’Rourke who said the problem with our justice system is that your fate is decided by 12 people who couldn’t get out of jury duty…

Joe Doakes deform Como Park emails:

I didn’t understand my rights or responsibilities under the contract for deed.”

“ Okay, we’ll have the high-volume Contract for Deed Seller give you legal advice.”

Because otherwise where could you possibly find anybody who might know something about buyers rights or responsibilities under legal documents? It’s not like we have 30,000 lawyers in Minnesota, all looking for work. Granted, many of them don’t know as much about real estate as the professional flippers do – but seriously, you’ve put the Seller in the position of being Buyer’s legal advisor and you think that’ll stop fraud? Only a DFLer could make sense of this stupidity.

Maybe the idea isn’t to stop fraud. I suspect it’s much more the plan to just set the flipper up for the ethics claim. Flipper makes a profit (since all flippers make huge profits, none of them ever lose money on these shacks). Government can’t have flippers make profits, since like landlords and other business owners, we know they are rich and need to be punished. So to take the perceived profits from flippers we now impose on them the affirmative duty to be responsible for the buyer in the contract process. that way the claim is set up for the attorneys to pursue. Flipper had an affirmative duty to make sure the buyer got the best deal possible–from the flipper.

Hell, why stop there? Let’s make this the law for car salesmen too. And plumbers. And bankers!!

Joe Doakes

It’s about creating the impression one has “done something”.

Battlefield Earth may have competition for the worst movie ever made

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Fannie went broke in 2008 so Congress put them into conservatorship to bail them out. Private firms invested in Fannie and Freddie assuming they’d continue to be bailed out but in 2011, Congress changed the bail-out terms. The investors are suing the federal government for making changes to the bail-outs for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It’s gotten to the point where people not only expect bail-outs, they expect better and more generous bail-outs, and sue to get them.

Stop the madness. No more bail-outs.

Joe Doakes

Our society needs a 12-step group; Free Money Anonymous.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’m off on assignment. E.J. Haust fills in from 1-3PM. She’ll be talking with Jason Hoyt.
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Brad Carlson is back on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my new UStream video and chat channel (don’t ask)
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When I was a lad, there were Colored People. They became Afro-Americans for a while, then African-Americans, then Black and now are Persons of Color, which seems to be full circle but apparently is not.

Persons of Color is politically correct but Colored People is a deadly insult, even though the nation’s largest enforcer of political correctness – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – still uses the deadly insult as an essential part of its own name.

I don’t know about you, but speaking for myself as middle-aged White Male Americans, it’s getting harder every day to remember who I’m oppressing and who I’m subsidizing.

Joe Doakes

It does get confusing.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Uh oh, Snowden has supporters among other whistle-blowers? So he’s factually correct about NSA’s programs?

Nah, rogue agents, all of them. And scalawags, liars and traitors to The First Black President.

Who to believe? Are Conservatives too willing to believe the worst because of Who is in control right now? I doubt it. Especially since as the pressures mount the admissions trickle out. It’s the same story pattern always:

1 it never happened.
2 it probably didn’t happen, but if it did it was an isolated incident by some low-level rogue person in that department/agency/office.
3 it might have happened; but if it did, it was very limited to just one or two rogue persons and it was something that was justified and necessary in any case.
4 it was necessary and LEGAL and everyone knew it and besides it was carefully limited to just what was needed.
5
6
7
8

(escalation of excuses)

17 This is the first Obama and anyone in seats of power have heard anything about it. What is this about again?
18 This is old news, we’ve already addressed it. What difference does it make anyway?
19 We refuse to talk about this anymore because it’s old news, it doesn’t matter, everyone else agreed to it anyway, and it was Bush’s fault.

Joe Doakes

it’s the extension of the old Clinton play book: deny, delay, destroy. B

Seven dead and many injured in the city that actually has the gun laws that Heather Martens, Jane Kay and Michael Paymar dream about:

. Seven people were killed and at least 32 others were shot in violence that plagued Chicago over Father’s Day weekend.
Six of the fatalities and 13 other shootings occurred overnight Saturday leading into Father’s Day, including the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy.
On the Southwest Side, five people were shot, one fatally, in two shootings in the Little Village neighborhood.
At 10:50 p.m. Saturday 21-year-old Ricardo Herrera was killed and two others were shot in the 2500 block of South Ridgeway Avenue, police said.

But the kids are all black, so they don’t matter to Twin Cities gun grabbers.

If only they liked more like future NPR execs, right?