Remember 1998? 

Minnesota was doing so well that we could play a practical joke on ourselves.   

We were one of the most successful states in the union.  The combination of “good government” Democrats – naive, misguided but not actively malevolent – and a Republican Party that in retrospect still hadn’t caught up with the Reagan Revolution gave us a government that on the one hand did too much, but on the other hand kind of left things alone enough for them to work.  

Things were so good that we could elect a professional wrestler as governor.  

And things stayed good, or at least acceptable, until…

…well, sometime after 2010.  I can’t quite place it – sometime between Mark Dayton’s election and 2020 – that that ended.   Maybe it was the fourth tier of taxes, or the takeover of Minneapolis and then the DFL by the DSA, or Walz’s idiotic response to the pandemic.  

But in that time, Minnesota has gone from one of the good states to somewhere between “laggard” and “death spiral”.  

I’m not mongering doom – I think the state can be saved.  But the slice of time where that’s possible is flying on by.  

With that in mind?  It’s convention weekend.   

The DFL

The DFL’s convention is happening in Rochester.   And the only real question is, “will it matter”?  Klobuchar is going to win the nomination and, barring an epic October Surprise on fraud or corruption from the Feds, she’ll likely become governor.   More on that when we come to the GOP side.  

The Senate race – which is no longer a race – is more interesting.  Angie Craig yesterday announced she’s headed straight to the primary, after learning 75% of the delegates were pledged to Peggy Flanagan.   

In 2010, knowing the delegates were insane, Ken Martin stepped in and poured on the money to overthrow Margaret Anderson-Kellihers endorsement at the primary, with Mark Dayton.  Eight years  later, after the convention gave the nod to the Karen twins, Erin Murphy and Erin Maye Quade, as well as actual Communists Matthew Pelikan for attorney general, Martin brought in the money and the public union clout to jam down Walz and Flanagan as well as the relatively moderate Ellison in the primary. 

Peggy Flanagan is likely the weakest statewide candidate the DFL has endorsed in my memory.   She could be beaten – more on that below – and I suspect smart DFLs know that Craig would be a much easier sell outside 494/694.   

If it we were talking about Ken Martin and a DFL before, say, 2020?  No question about it, the statewide DFL leadership would yet again nullify the convention and jam down a more electable candidate.  

But the DFL has changed since 2018 – they took their defeats in 2018 and 2021 (on the police funding question in Minneapolis) as a signal get really serious about taking over the DFL.  And you can say two things about Richard Carlbom; no way, no how does he look like a young Hermann Gôring, and he’s no Ken Martin.   

I wouldn’t put it past the DFL, though. I know if I were a GOP Senate candidate, I’d much rather face Flanagan.  

The MNGOP

The Governors race appears to be a tossup between Speaker of the House Lisa Demuth and Kendall Qualls, although Mike Lindell has been doing well in Central Minnesota and has some strong delegate support as well.   I suspect Demuth will win the endorsement, and I’m going to guess it goes to a. primary.  I like both Demuth and Qualls (Lindell’s got a great story, but in the general he’ll make the GOP long for the good old days of Kurt Bills), and I think Demuth has the lead with delegates so far, but let’s be honest – the real key to this election lies with the Feds, and if they drop a huge string of indictments against key DFLers in October.  And the media will be doing its best to mute even that.  

And it’s a shame, because getting a Republican – any Republican – into the executive branch to check and balance the DFL’s depredations may be the only sustainable hope the state has to pull out of the tailspin it’s in.  

So fingers crossed for the Feds.  

For the Senate race?  

This is the first time I’ve harbored any genuine hope in a Minnesota senate race since the mugging they call the 2008 election – mostly because Peggy Flanagan is such a very weak candidate. 

The three contenders are Adam Schwarze, Michelle Tafoya and Royce White.  

I follow the Buckley Commandment – vote for the most conservative candidate who can win. 

White has his proponents – mostly among the “burn it all down” crowd pushed by “Action4Liberty”.   A4L has cracked the code on weaponizing ignorance of politics and, along with “Minnesota Gun Rights”, profits from defeat. I don’t see him getting the nomination, “rocks and cows” support notwithstanding.   He will , I suspect, have enough oomph to be a kingmaker or to deny any endorsement at all.  

It’s going to be be between Adam Schwarze and Michelle Tafoya.   Schwarze likely has the lead among the delegates, although Tafoya has been working the room pretty hard for someone who is generally considered to be headed for the primary.  

Schwarze has all the things that delegates and activists love – a former SEAL, impeccable conservative credentials, and a vow to abide by the endorsement.  He’s also got next to no name recognition outside party activists, and will have to buy some by November.   

Tafoya has some cons – a stance on abortion that is simultaneously too accomodationist for many GOP activists and identical to Donald Trump’s position (12 weeks), and a “path to citizenship” stance on immigration that is a poor sell at the convention but likely not a problem in Maple Grove.  She’s also got name recognition, is raising serious money, and has at least some polling showing her close to the margin of error against Flanagan.  

I’d pay money to see either of them debating Flanagan or Craig.  

So – who is the most conservative candidate who can beat Flanagn or Craig?

As if telling the least stable people in our society that the President and his supporters are part of a crowd that our grandparents spent the best years of their lives killing eighty years ago, the incentives for leftists to commit violence against their enemies just keep piling up. 

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

A brewery owner in Minocqua, Wisconsin promised free beer on the day President Trump dies but alas, another failed assassination attempt. No free beer today.

Now every Democrat in the nation and half the RINOs in Congress are hoping:

Wel, that is the point of incentive structures, after all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Trump is threatening to send 10,000 troops to Iran, boots on the ground,  which moderate Republicans fear would be crossing a “red line” and would cost Republicans the midterm elections.

The fear is that if we lose seats in the midterm elections, then we won’t have power so we won’t be able to get Presidential appointments confirmed or judges confirmed or the Save Act passed or DHS funded.

Which would be different from now, how, exactly?

Maybe the problem is not lack of Congressional power but lack of willingness to use what power we have. That problem won’t get solved by backing down from Iran. 

Joe Doakes

 

Yep. I think we’re past the point where timidity is the prescription for the midterms.

I started hearing blips last week that Governor Walz was going to get defenestrated from the Governor’s race.  The big donors that run the DFL were worried he’s going to be a drag on the ticket.  

It got a little more official last night:

Reports say Amy Klobuchar may get in the governor’s race. 

This is, of course pretty brilliant for the DFL.   Rumor has it they want to run on an “Anti-Fraud” platform next year.  Klobuchar hasn’t been implicated – so she’ll make that a little less incongruous.  And if she loses, she keeps her Senate seat, and if she wins, Walz appoints her successor.   

The only two risks?  

• The GOP getting its act together and running a well-funded, universally supported candidate that can deliver the right message with enough force to get past mid-Minnesotans Fudds and their attachment to two generations of the Klobuchar name, and
• The Feds bringing in a lot more indictments that make, er, other parts of the ticket squirm a little.  

I’m thinking “B” is more likely, but I’ve love to be suprised. 

Trump adding his name to the “Kennedy Center” is causing the usual screaming and incontinence. 

And it doesn’t need to be this way.  

So in the interest of comity, I propose another name change:

The Mary Jo Kopechne Center.  

I think we can all go forward now.  

Four things can be true at the same time.

We will come back to that. 

————-

Some of you may remember Bill Gleason, esteemed professor or chemistry at the Minnesota medical school. Starting in about 2007, for probably the next 7 to 10 years, he tweeted about me between 20 and 150 times a day, seven days a week. For literally years.  He left a few comments here before I blocked him, too.

Many of you remember – he started a blog about me, mostly involving insane rambling about, well, things he thought I was doing. 

He once started passing word around that I had had a DWI. Democrat bloggers back in 2012 were a lumpen unimaginative bunch, so a whole lot of them repeated it. Turns out he’d read one of those spam “public records” websites, where you can pretty much type in any name and it will say “so and so has a DWI – send us $20 and will send you what we’ve got.“. I actually had a pretty solid defamation case against him – but those involve a $20,000 retainer and no guarantee of a payoff even if you win. 

Anyway, eventually, Prof. Gleason died. Turns out his fixation on me wasn’t the only manifestation of mental illness. 

I wrote my condolences to the family, and left it at that. I was a decent human being. He wasn’t – but by that point those who needed to know, knew, and for the rest it didn’t really matter. 

—————

So – four things can be true.

First: Rob Reiner was a pretty brilliant guy. A Few Good Men and This is Spinal Tap are two of my favorite movies ever. And almost nobody deserves to get murdered, certainly never by one’s own child.

Second: President Trump’s statement on Truth Social about Reiner’s passing was fairly tacky and tasteless. But it’s not like it sprang from the middle of nowhere, because…

Third: it is a fact that Reiner spent the last 10 years of his life pretty much railing nonstop about not just the President, but Republicans in general. It was some pretty seriously demented twaddle. Like, Alex Jones calling him and saying “Rob, bubbie, dial back the crazy a slosh”. I ended up muting the guy on Twitter years ago,, because the signal to noise ratio was pretty much nonexistent. 

The fourth? I don’t feel any need to participate in some performative critical ticket punching. The president was tacky, and if Reiner had been a conservative this past decade, he would have been written off as a conspiracy fruitcake.  My condolences to his family, the film world and his fans. Of whom I was one, when he wasn’t running his fool mouth on Twitter.

Hope I’ve settled that for good.

FFS.  Hasn’t this state suffered enough?

Look, I love the pillows.  I have several.  Make pillows.  

But Mike – who came in third at the State Central Committee straw poll with something like 15% of the vote, for now – is backed by Action 4 Liberty, which is to conservative politics what Minnesota Gun Rights are to, well, gun rights: a group that weaponizes ignorance to make more money from defeat than from victory.   

Somone make it stop. 

Among Reagan’s greatest strengths was a pretty maniacal sense of focus on what mattered.  Peabrains like Matt Walsh mutter “what did Reagan ever do for the pro-life movement”, ignorant that Reagan was dealing with a Democrat House for his first six years in office; he only had so much political capital, and he spent what he had (beyond the bully pulpit) on his two big priorities; rebuilding the economy and destroying Communism.   

With that in mind Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Trump has too many irons in the fire, he needs to focus.

 Ukraine is a lost cause, stop trying to be peacemaker, let Russia win.

Hamas is a lost cause, stop trying to be peacemaker, let Israel win.

 Everything Trump did by executive order, his successor can undo by executive order.  He needs to start kicking Congress to pass legislation to codify his changes.  He’s got maybe one year before they start running for re-election and then nothing will get done. 

Focus. 

Joe Doakes

I don’t disagree (on most of it, anyway).   

But let’s be honest – Trump does most of. his own unfocusing.  

I’ve been generally more impressed with him this term – fewer pointless squabbles with staff, more focus on getting things done – but he provides plenty of his own distractions. 

Joe Doakes, ex-Como Parker, emails:

Had the in-laws over for dinner. Things were going fine until my brother-in-law had to tell me all about Trump remodeling the Lincoln bathroom, how excessive it is. Not the East Wing ballroom, a different project that I had never heard of. 

Trump really does live rent-free in Liberals’ heads. Wonder if it’s lonesome in there, wandering around in all that empty space?

Joe Doakes 

 

Oh, empty is one thing it’s not.   Lots and lots of ’em wandering around in that space.  

My question:  what will they replace it with in 2029?

I suspect we all know the answer to that.  

I’m not sure what Walter Hudson’s political plans are.   

But this particular video reminds me of Reagan’s “A Time For Choosing”:

It’s a difference choice – good vs. evil, as opposed to freedom vs. communism.  

And so maybe not all that different at all.  

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

D0GE identified $100 billion in fraud, waste and inefficiency

The recession bill cut $9 billion.

 

What happened to the rest?

 

Joe Doakes, ready for more winning

“Less losing” was good for starters.

But yes.  More, faster. 

December 6, 1941: “A modern war would inevitably turn into a trench quagmire like the First World War”

June 24, 1950: “The next war will be, at best, a mobile industrial clash of titans, and likeliy end with mutual nuclear annihilation”

March 7, 1965: “This war is going to be a conventional war to contain Communist aggression”

August 1, 1990: “This war is going to devolve into a quagmire that will destroy a generation and enervate a nation”

October 3, 1993: “American technological power and training will enable us to walk all over these primitive tribesmen, and restore order just the way we did in Kuwait”

October 18, 2001: “As we discovered in Mogadishu, the Islamist terrorist’s willingness to die will make any war between us an endless quagmore

March 19, 2003: “American technological prowess and our experience liberating Afghanistan in record time will enable us to prevail against the Iraqi Army, Republican Guard and Fedayeen in short order.

June 22, 2025: “Iran will inevitably be another Iraq”.

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Why fly deportees to Africa?  Is Trump trying to provoke a constitutional crisis?

My understanding is that the animals being deported are so vicious that their own countries won’t take them.  They’re being sent to the only place that will accept them.  Yes, it’s a Third-World shithole. What’s your point?

I’m wondering why the country-of-origin issue isn’t being addressed more forcefully.  If any nation refuses to take their own scum back then the immediate finding by the President should be then NOBODY from that country is allowed to enter or remain here.  Refuse entry to everyone, including diplomatic staff.  Throw all them all out.  Don’t think you can dump your problems on us.  

And maybe take it one step farther:  “The criminals being deported are so vicious that their country of origin won’t take them back.  It’s unfair to American taxpayers to feed and house them forever.  But we recognize the courts have said these criminals must be given due process.  Therefore, we intend to give them a free lawyer and a fair trial after which they will be given a first-class hanging.  If any nation objects to the death penalty and wants to take them, let me know and we’ll pay the freight to ship them to you. Be aware that if you let them go and we catch them again, they will be summarily executed and the cost will be recovered from you in the form of higher tariffs.”

That ought to put the cat among the pigeons.

Joe Doakes

That “summary execution” thing will set a lot of district judges injunction printers abuzz. 

But I suspect it’d get the message across.

For years – longer than just about anyone – I’ve been writing about “Minnesota Gun Rights”, a group from Iowa whose “business” model is to raise money on ignorance about gun control legislation. 

The usual cycle is a little like this: 

1. They raise a hysterical alarm about some piece of legislation that may or may not be moving in the legislature.  
2. They accuse Republicans of going soft on guns.  Given that no Minnesota Republican has voted “yea” on a final bill supporting any sort of gun control in almost thirty years, these are usually lies – in one case, accusing Republicans they’d endorsed (inevitably in safe districts) who’s been 100% pro-2nd Amendment with ‘betrayal’.  Because “betrayal” is a nice inflammatory take that promotes hysterical fundraising. 
3. For whatever reason, they are silent about Democrats.  
4. They go back to Iowa and spend the money.  

“Action For Liberty” seems to have a pretty similar business model.  The group is a byproduct of the Tea Party, and started out as a fairly run of the mill conservative group.

But somewhere along the way, it started walking, talking and quacking like Minnesota Gun Rights.  

The problem with the MNGOP, according to A4L, isn’t losing elections – it was “RINOs”.   A Republican In Name Only – the definition of which is any Republican, elected, appointed or hired, who’s ever had to try to get anything done with Democrats.  

Remember the old Reagan saying – someone who agrees with you 70% isn’t your 30% enemy?  To A4L, being a 90% friend makes you a 100% enemy. 

Because “betrayal” sells. 

This has been the top story in intraparty politics this past few weeks.  The last MNGOP State Central meeting elected a slate of leadership that are, if not A4L sympathizers, at least very amenable to rapprochement.  (I just used a French word.  Maybe that makes me a RINO?)

Case in point:  over the past few weeks, A4L has been attacking Republicans for voting for the Health and Human Services Omnibus bill, which includes a contribution to Medicaid, which pays for abortions.  Abortion is bad. 

Stipulated in advance – Omnibus bills need to be banned.   If we ever get a GOP trifecta, in fact, we need to demand it.

But that’s life.  Omnibus bills are inevitably s**t sandwiches, full of “poison pills” to be lorded over the other party in the next election. 

But in the case of the HHS omnibus bill, the problem would be the same if it were a clean single-subject bill;  court decisions hamstring the state; the Medicaid money has to pay for abortions.  States have no say in the matters. 

But Action For Liberty knows as well as you do that that’s a pretty abstruse fact, and not hard at all to spin as “BETRAYAL!”. 

And so we’ve been feted (there’s another French word.  Maybe I’m turning into David French?) with the absurdity of A4L calling solid conservatives like Mary Franson, Walter Hudson, Jim Nash and Elliot Engen “RINOs”.  

And I’m gonna guess they’re going to call Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) “PLINOs” after this broadside:

I try to be “Switzerland” when it comes to intra-party politics – but if someone can make a case that Action For Liberty doesn’t run off of monetizing cynicism and ignorance, I’m doing to take some convincing.

Have your people call my people. 

Democrats, Two Weeks Ago:   “No government official is a king!”

Democrats today:  “What?  You can’t arrest a judge!   Judges can’t break the law!”

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Scott Johnson from Powerline has a column explaining why Trump’s tariffs are calculated incorrectly and are therefore too high.  He gives a formula from some academics showing that the inelasticity of trade was improperly factored into setting our new rates.

Missing the point, Scott.  The point is foreign governments have been taking advantage of our generosity for years and it’s time to fix that. Yes, we’re a party to GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) but renegotiations have been stalled for decades – too many rice bowls at stake – so Trump’s unilateral new tariffs are a way to break the stalemate.

 

The specifics of Trump’s tariffs don’t matter, 10% on penguins or 90% on Vietnam, these numbers are just the opening round of negotiation.  It’s like the guy selling sombreros on the beach in Mazatlan, or the guy selling rugs in the souk in Marrakech.  His opening offer is ridiculous because you are expected to bargain with him. That’s the accepted practice in that culture.  So, too, in every real estate deal, which is where Trump learned his lessons.  You always set the listing price high to give yourself room to negotiate down.  And now we’re seeing it’s also true in setting foreign trade policy, as more than four dozen countries have already lined up to renegotiate their trade policy with us.

 

Scott’s column is so typical for RINOs. The other side can state any lie and it’s accepted at face value while our facts are scrutinized and debated endlessly, with the result that the opposition’s policies get enacted but ours get nibbled to death by ducks quacking around our ankles.  With friends like that . . . . . . .

 

Joe Doakes

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is pondering the tragedy that is his backyard garden when Avery LIBRELLE, riding a recumbent bike, rides up the alley, unbeknownst to BERG.

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Ohhhhhh fuuuuun seeing you Avery…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.  Robert F Kennedy is making Americans sick. There’s a huge measles outbreak.

BERG:  Huh.  And that’s RFK’s fault?

LIBRELLE:  Absolutely.  He’s anti-Vaxx.

BERG: Whereas an enlightened country like, say, Canada won’t have any trouble with that kind of thing.

LIBRELLE:  Of course not. They’re enlightened and progressive!

BERG:  Huh.

LIBRELLE: Wait – is this another one of those things where you…

(BERG opens a link on his iPad):

Surely they must do better than the United States at controlling communicable diseases, right?

Yeah, well, not so much. Quite the opposite, actually.

While the numbers are inherently unreliable to some extent, we can get a rough estimate of the relative risk of somebody getting Measles here vs in Canada. Both have advanced healthcare systems that collect a lot of data, and both have active media environments that love to focus on scary stuff like spreading diseases.

Want to know the relative risk? Americans contract Measles at a rate of 1.1 per million more or less, while Canadians have a rate of 12.2 per million.

Canadians are more than 11 times more likely to get the disease than people in the United States. And they don’t have any mean, nasty conspiracy theorists like RFK Jr. to spread conspiracy theories. The English, a similar society to both Canada and the United States, has a rate 5 1/2 times the US. France and Germany have rates similar to ours, if a tiny bit higher at the moment.

LIBRELLE:  Dammit! Why do you always do that?

BERG:  (Not very interested) Do what?

LIBRELLE:  Shoot down everything I say, and make me look like some kind of idiot?

BERG:  It’s a blessing and a curse.

And SCENE

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I notice a common theme running through Berg’s Third Law (disasters) and Mother Jones Corollary to the Tenth Law (vicious lies) and 18th Law of Media Latency (48 hour rule): the media rushes to lie about Conservatives, so thoughtful readers will wait for the dust to settle an the truth to be revealed.

I wonder if a similar principle should apply to President Trump?

He proposes a course of action, the media loses its mind, Democrats and RINOs panic, the feared apocalypse does not occur. It happens over and over. He wants fair trade with Canada; Canada threatens to punish every American; tariffs are proposed; media, Democrats and RINOs panic; Canada backs down. If everybody had waited a week or two before setting their hair on fire, it all would have blown over.

Generally takes longer than 48 hours so how about a two week rule?

Joe Doakes

The committee is taking it under advisement. 

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.  

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…

…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.

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). 

It’s become a bit of an easy trope on the right:

1. Star with “You think you hate the media?”
2. Add some bit of loathsome leftymedia depravity
3. Button it up with “You really don’t hate them enough”.

It’s a progression with no end; every day brings new loathsomeness.  It’s entirely possible it’s a barrel with no bottom to scrape.

But Nicole Wallace has to be getting close to that metaphorical nadir:

So let’s break it down:  Wallace:

• Condescendingly snarks about a kid with brain cancer, in order to
• spread the fiction that “right wing terror is the real danger facing the US”- a horse they’ve been trying to flog into a slow trot for sixteen years, now. 

So maybe you can hate Big Leftymedia more than you do.   But beyond this, doesn’t it all kind of blur together?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Why is Trump in such a frantic rush to issue executive orders, fire employees, deport people, surrender Ukraine to Russia?  Is he out of his mind?

No, he’s out of time.  Congress’ most recent continuing budget resolution runs out March 14th. Trump has three more weeks to set the stage for the budget showdown. He knows every Democrat will vote against spending cuts to balance income against outgo. He knows at least some Republicans will join them.  He needs to act fast to get public support on his side so he can stand up to Congress and say,  “No more.”

Elon Musk and his team of auditors continue to find examples of fraud and waste that piss off normal people. Why are we paying for stupid stuff like that?  The judges who refuse to let the auditors do their job and who halt layoffs, piss off normal people. Why are you leaving the thieves in charge of the checkbook?  The politicians screaming about deporting illegal alien criminals piss off normal people.  Why are you putting scum ahead of citizens?  Why not put Americans first?

And it’s working.  Trump has extraordinary approval numbers. He is going to need that public support when he tells Congress, “No more,” and when he tells Ukraine, “No more,” and when he tells rogue federal employees (including some judges), “No more.”  

It’s all coming to a head in a few weeks. The media will scream. Democrats will scream.  Europeans politicians, Catholic bishops, liberal judges, and Hollywood celebrities will scream. Let them. Elections have consequences. It’s our turn now. 

Get ready.  

Joe Doakes

More tomorrow.