So, here’s a picture of Governor Walz with Lt. Governor Flanagan, taken back during the “trifecta”.

She was inescapable. She was in every photo with Walz. Her name may have been more prominent on their campaign signs.

The media actively dolled her up:

The camera and their photo selection didn’t do half bad by her.

At times it seemed as if the local media were just as much her PR firm as Walz’s. 

And now – this:

And this:

That – combined with the Rochelle Olson/Ryan Faircloth piece we talked about earlier – makes it look like Walz is trying to distance himself from Flanagan.

Why?

Because polling isn’t showing “DSA whackjobbery” is doing well?

Or because they’re both going to be running for Governor?

Tim Walz is back

And he’s pissed. 

It seems a bit of a squabble has broken out between his camp and Lt Governor Flanagan‘s:

Walz was asked in a recent interview if there was tension when he returned given Flanagan would have succeeded him as governor if the Harris ticket had won.

“No,” Walz responded. “There would be time to figure out all that afterwards. I was solely focused on making sure the state of Minnesota was going, we were getting things done. The lieutenant governor was here doing the work that she needed to do, reaching out to community.”

Others who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Walz team was not pleased at steps Flanagan had taken to assume the governorship, conferring with potential key hires and preparing for a possible run herself in 2026. “If the people of Minnesota want me to continue to serve, I am absolutely open to that,” Flanagan said at the State Fair in August.

The Walz camp was especially irked because Flanagan had tapped Walz’s gubernatorial campaign fund without authorization for some work, multiple sources said.

Walz is claiming to know nothing, NOTHing, about the matter. But I’m not the only one thinking something’s amiss:

Steven Schier, Carleton College political science professor emeritus, said it’s not uncommon in Minnesota for the governor and lieutenant governor to maintain a distance from each other. “What is notable are the timing of this and the apparent reasons for it,” Schier said. “Peggy Flanagan and Walz were joined at the hip for six years and now they seem separated by their individual ambitions.”

Joined at the hip is an understatement. I rarely recall seeing Lieutenant Governors consistently appearing with the Governor before Walz. One rarely saw Tina Smith or Mae Schunk or Joan Growe outside the odd campaign event or the State of the State.

But Flanagan was in every photo this past six years.  They had hundreds of shots of the two of them cavorting about the Fair, her feeding him corn dogs and playing fetch with him.  Her name was arguably more prominent than his on their campaign signs:

And the optics – literally – are absolutely strange on this.

More later today. 

Governor Klink – who two years before had arrogated emergency powers that Francisco Franco would have envied, who sicced the Attorney General on anyone who defied him – as the trifecta started marauding: “You got political capital, you gotta use it”.

Two years later and facing two years of tie votes in the House: “I hear NOTH-ing! I see NOTH-ing”:

But wait – it gets worse.  

You may think this is just a matter of the Governor and his media noise machine working to transfer the DFL’s little massive fraud problem to the House, abetted by the DFL’s noise machine and the subservient media. 

And you’d be partly right. 

But it’s worse than that:

That’s right – the governor who arroraged to himself the power to cancel Thanksgiving, to pack nursing homes with sick people, and to sort Minnesotans into “essential” and “nonessential”, apparently gave away the power to actually control his own executive branch. 

Looking to get someone to explain this madness on the show after Christmas. 

1. Create a problem:

2. Keep on letting it stew. Let the “steam” build:

3. Go “I’m shocked, shocked that there’s a crime problem!

4. “Ride to the rescue” with a meaningless band-aid that doesn’t come close to addressing the cultural crisis you, yourselves, fomented:

Of course I’m not the first or only one to notice this:

Apparently “chaos” and “crime” aren’t polling well enough to overcome the loss of the ‘Trifecta’.

The big that confuses me so much about this story – the DFL jamming down a $10K appropriation to help one of their colleagues settle an issue with her “day job” outside politics – isn’t that the DFL is basically pickpocketing taxpayers to help one of their own with a private matter. (Emphasis added):

This all started when Rep. Bianca Virnig of Eagan was elected to the House as a Democrat in a special election and sworn in last January serving a district in the Eagan-Mendota Heights area. Her new position as a state lawmaker created a conflict with her employer, Brightworks, a non-profit established by the Minnesota Legislature in 1976 to provide services to public schools and school districts, according to its website.

“When she returned to her employment her employer dramatically cut back her hours and her pay based on her new job she held as a part-time state legislator,” Rep. Jamie Long, DFL Majority Leader, said at a House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday. “Since this was related to her work as a Minnesota representative we are proposing we pay for those legal costs.”

No, after years of DFL corruption eating up hundreds of millions of dollars, seeing something in five digits almost feels like watching “The Andy Griffith Show”.

The part that fairy astounds me is that, after getting elected to the legislature, either Rep. Virnig or “Brightworks” had a problem with the arrangement.

The DFL set up the non-profit/industrial complex specifically to serve as a farm team and lobbyist ranch for their regime.  A potential politician starts working with one of the state’s maze of public unions, pseudo-parties or poiltical/social non-profits, spends a few years making contacts and learning who buried the political bodies, and then run for office, already fully groomed as a DFL candidate – who goes on to do their mentor group’s bidding, and eventually to lobby for them and/or groups like them when and if they leave office

So the corruption doesn’t confuse me. The fact that either Virnig or Brightworks had a problem with each other does.

In 2022, I predicted $17.6B “surplus” would disappear under DFL rule.   

I’m not wrong on the inevitable end result. Just the timing:

Revenue dropping. Spending ballooning. And the productive class “going Galt” and moving to Texas, Florda or Tennessee.

Things didn’t get quite as bad quite as fast as I thought – but it’s really just teasing us.

PS: Whoah. I spoke too soon – but boy, was I correct:

So I’d figured $2-3 Billion. $5B plus?

Oh, the hits do not quit:

Great job, #MNDFL

It’s always the food photos with Governor Klink.

Only this time it’s not Pronto Pups:

Huh. For the past two years, we’ve been told Minnesota’s economy is boooooooming.

Now that a Republican is president-elect, the GOP will own Congress, and the DFL trifecta is dead…well, you see how this works.

So let’s translate this from MSM to English: “Governor who claimed MN economy was booming and promised to “reduce poverty 30%” by squandering a $19B surplus, now trying to get ahead of zooming poverty by spending >1% of what DFL constituents defrauded in “Feeding our Future”.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Thank you to everyone who Voted as Hard as They Could.  It paid off.  The election was not stolen. 

I have a parenthetical thought that doesn’t pertain to Joe. I don’t want to interrupt the flow, so I’ll hit that at the bottom of the post.

Back to Joe, who has the same question I had the day after the election:

But I still have a lingering question or two.  What happened to those 81 million 2020 Biden voters?  They didn’t go to Trump – he got fewer votes this time than last.  They didn’t stay home – Kamala got as many votes as Hillary.  

Did they ever exist?  Or is this graphic proof of a stolen election after all? 

My first principle is to never assume malice when stupidity and sloth are equally possible. The drop in Trump voters indicates that it’s at least partly the expiration of Covid-era voting rules that allowed people to submit ballots via their DoorDash driver, or by blinking three times during a Zoom meeting.

But that is a lot of disappeared Democrat voters. Which may speak just as well to the “sloth” thing.

OK.  Discuss.

Deferred Parenthetical Thought: And again, pinky swear, isn’t aimed at Joe – I get the point he’s going for (or at least the one he will go for when I’m done interrupting), but could we retire the phrase “Vote Harder?” Smug anarcho libertarians have beaten that one to death.

We get it. You’re splendidly above the muggles and our quaint delusions. 

I’m old enough to remember when “election denial” was the highest of crimes and misdemeanors.  And if you’re much over four years old, so are you.

But (predictably) not as re Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania:

Donald Trump’s stubborn denial of his defeat — his refusal to accept the legitimate election results of 2020 — was bad. January 6 was terrible.

But we saw a similar rejection of election results from Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams two years earlier, and she became a Democratic hero — literally wearing a cape in one photoshoot — and a favorite subject of the Democrats’ celebrity-industrial complex. (And remember, she’s apparently exempt from masking for Covid, while kids sitting right next to her had to stay masked.) She may never become governor of Georgia, but she can always be proud of holding the position of President of United Earth (selected, not elected).

To review, Abrams’s denial of election results was forgivable, Trump’s was the trigger for “the worst attack on democracy since the Civil War,” in Biden’s words, and now Casey’s denial is just a prudent desire to see every vote counted. You don’t have to be Columbo to recognize a suspicious pattern in which a Democratic candidate’s denial of election results is excusable, but a Republican candidate’s denial of election results is a dangerous threat to American governance.

I had a hunch that pendulum was going to swing back, and hard, yet again.

Last night, someone on social media had a slightly different angle on the weekend rally featuring Governor Walz. 

Earlier in his failed VP bid, he said “to some people, “socialism” is just neighborliness“.

And over the weekend, the guy who called over half the nation “Nazis” hopes we can look at each other as neighbors.

So apparently his goal is to come back to Minnesota, take your stuff, and put you in a camp?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Election officials in Trump-trending Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philly, sent a police officer to turn away voters standing in line, waiting for early voting.  The line was closed at 1:45 pm instead of 5:00 pm as advertised.  A judge later reinstated early voting after Republicans sued.

There is no election fraud.   There may be occasional errors but not enough to change the outcome. It is impossible to steal an election. The last election was the fairest one ever, except for this one, which is even more fair.  All we need to do to win, is to show up and vote. Anybody who says otherwise is an election denier and a threat to Our Precious Democracy.  

 

Joe Doakes

Seems a little…irregular.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

After 265,000 absentee ballots have already been accepted, NOW they’re going to consider putting Republicans on the Absentee Ballot Board to decide which absentee ballots can be accepted in the future:

 

There is no election fraud.   There may be occasional errors but not enough to change the outcome. It is impossible to steal an election. The last election was the fairest one ever, except for this one, which is even more fair.  All we need to do to win, is to show up and vote. Anybody who says otherwise is an election denier and a threat to Our Precious Democracy.  

 

Joe Doakes

It’s all feeling a little Orwellian, isn’t it?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Around a dozen ballots in Mesa County were stolen from registered voters in the mail and submitted fraudulently.

State officials said Thursday they discovered the thefts this week through the signature verification process in Grand Junction, prompting an investigation by state and local officials.

 

This caught THIS dozen but how many others, in how many other counties, were not discovered?  Enough to swing the election?  How will we know? 

 

There is no election fraud.   There may be occasional errors but not enough to change the outcome. It is impossible to steal an election. The last election was the fairest one ever, except for this one, which is even more fair.  All we need to do to win, is to show up and vote. Anybody who says otherwise is an election denier and a threat to Our Precious Democracy. 

 

Joe Doakes

It’s enough to make you wonder. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

There are no standards for printing ballots.  Different counties use different print shops to print election ballots, but some ballots cannot be scanned.  Not all voters got the defective ballots and nobody knows whose votes were counted versus whose were rejected.  In counties where the red-blue split is close, rejecting red voters could swing the election.

There is no election fraud.   There may be occasional errors but not enough to change the outcome. It is impossible to steal an election. The last election was the fairest one ever, except for this one, which is even more fair.  All we need to do to win, is to show up and vote. Anybody who says otherwise is an election denier and a threat to Our Precious Democracy.  

Joe Doakes

The Constitution enumerates some powers to the states.   It’s both a strength and. weakness.  And unfortunately, the Federal and State governments are both run by government workers.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Virginia Governor Youngkin issued an order in August directing the state to remove ineligible non-citizens from the list of eligible voters (dead people, non-residents, illegal aliens, fraudulent registrations).  Democrats sued to keep ineligible persons on the eligible voter list, the district court decided the state could not remove ineligible persons within the “quiet period” before the election, Republicans appealed to the Supreme Court which decided the “quiet period” does not protect ineligible persons since they’re ineligible to vote in the first place. 

If the Supreme Court had not acted, ballots from those ineligible persons could have been harvested and votes cast for Kamala, potentially tipping the election.  Remember the felon votes for Al Franken?  Same idea.

 

There is no election fraud.   There may be occasional errors but not enough to change the outcome. It is impossible to steal an election. The last election was the fairest one ever, except for this one, which is even more fair.  All we need to do to win, is to show up and vote. Anybody who says otherwise is an election denier and a threat to Our Precious Democracy.  

 

Joe Doakes

The crime, to the left, is noticing the crime.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I have been pelting you with emails on a certain theme. Now Laughing Wolf takes up the refrain:

“I highly recommend going back and re-reading Larry Correia’s excellent takes on the 2020 elections, here and here. There are some other good ones out on that election, and 2022, but those do a very good job of establishing the patterns. Patterns we are already starting to see in Colorado (passwords, multiple other issues, trying to keep Trump off the ballot), Minnesota (multiple votes same voter ID number, etc.), Michigan (Chinese student voting), Pennsylvania (closing lines, voter intimidation, etc.), and, well, there are more.”

The evidence is clear that Democrats are blatantly trying to steal this election.

I don’t want to hear Republicans say, “There is no election fraud. There may be occasional errors but not enough to change the outcome. It is impossible to steal an election. The last election was the fairest one ever, except for this one, which is even more fair. All we need to do to win, is to show up and vote. Anybody who says otherwise is an election denier and a threat to Our Precious Democracy.”

Instead, I want to hear Republicans tell Democrats right now, “You are cheating and we won’t sit still for it. If you cheat to steal the election, we won’t quietly go along. We will burn it all down before we submit to a usurper. Stop cheating, play fair, or face civil war.”

Of course the media will lose their minds. Of course RINOs will be aghast.
Of course Democtats will point and rheeee.

So what? What’s Option B? Let them cheat to steal the election and what, lose gracefully? Claim that Trump was a bad candidate, too divisive, we need to run someone more moderate next time? And when Democrsts steal that election, and the next, and the next, then what?

Which one is the hill to die on?

Joe Doakes

Discuss.

Since we have an election coming up, let’s take a trip down memory lane.

Here’s Rep. Dave Pinto, progsplaining last session why DFL prosecutors won’t go after straw buyers – because the sentences are “too low”…

…before joining his entire caucus in voting down a bill that would have increased the sentence.

Pinto will get re-elected. He’s in a nauseatingly save DFL district.

But if you live somewhere in play?

Your mission is clear.

Do the world a favor and vote against Karl Procaccini:

A friend of the blog notes, for those with shorter and less-photographic memories:

He was the legal architect of the lockdown in MN. His appointment was payback for his ability to defend any bad judgment policy Walz had, constitution be damned. Hack. Don’t vote for him, don’t leave it blank, vote for his opponent.

He’s basically Tim Walz’s hired legal help.

It’ll take a miracle to affect a SCOM race – but if we don’t work for miracles, they never happen.

How It Started

This, of course, is the campaign Tim Walz is used to running: carefully curated photos of him holding animals, being fed corn dogs by Peggy Flanagan, and occasionally spouting risible strawmen via social media.

An “Instagram” Governor.

The bit above may be the perfect metaphor for Tim Walz, 2004-2023.

How It’s Going

Klink, while pheasant hunting with “influencers” over the weekend:

Now, I’ll give him half a pass on this: automatic shotguns are a pain in the ass. I hate ’em. And they are nothing like handling an M16/M4, the “weapons of war” Walz carried in the Guard and on the war-ravaged (checks notes) airfields of Italy.

But only half a pass.

Because when you’ve curated your entire public image as being a “progressive” who also fixes gutters and eats Fair Food and dresses like Elmer Fudd and shoots things for fun, one might think you’d take a little care – maybe check the piece over before the cameras show up – and maybe get it right when doing…

…y’know…

…your big instagram op.

Can Kamala Harris ride “Vibes” and “Rizz” all the way to the White House?

Pessimistic as I am about the collective intelligence of half our population, I’m not always optimistic.

But Jim Geraghty has his doubts:

The Harris campaign’s entire theory of the case is wrong. Reminding people about what they couldn’t stand about Trump and emphasizing “joy” and “vibes” is not sufficient to close the deal with an electorate. It completely misreads the mood of the voters, who have been coping with runaway inflation and a high cost of living for most of the past four years, who have a growing sense that no one is in charge at the border, who worry about a genuine post-Covid rise in crime, and who see an international scene beset by invasions, terrorism, and massacres, all presided over by a doddering old man who was hidden from the public by a staff that took Edith Wilson as a role model.

This past weekend, Peggy Noonan asked the question the Harris brain trust should have asked: Is this the right moment in American life to proclaim a new politics of “joy”? “Do you want to feel joyful?” is the wrong question; almost all of us would prefer to be happier. The question is: Do you look around at the state of the United States and the world today — and the performance of this administration for the past four years — and feel like joy is the appropriate response?

 

My semi-related theory:  Democrats have been using Minnesota as a testbed for their approach in campaigning; running for high office on pure social media happy-vibing and platitudes, abetted by a mostly-in-the-tank media, worked well for Walz and Flanagan (and Dayton before them).

Why wouldn’t it work for Harris?

The answer – the fact that a few reporters, and “reporters”, didn’t get the message:  Harris could screw up scrambled eggs:

(As noted on yesterday’s Three Martini Lunch podcast, let’s just take a moment to savor the irony that Sunny Hostin asked Harris the question that did so much damage.)

Much more in the next couple of weeks.

During the last couple of legislative sessions, the DFL wrote a whole bunch of moral checks.

Since we’ve got an election coming up, how about we see how many of them bounced?

Abortion

Unrestricted abortion is one promise the DFL trifected promised and delivered on. 

Perhaps very very overdelivered.

The DFL brought a certain brusque brutality to the issue:

And delivered on it with teutonic precision, leaving no potential abortee behind:

And have brought a certain totalitarian panache to trying to erase all dissent

Green Energy

Was your powrer cheaper?

Why, no. It is not.


Social Security Taxes

Remember when the DFL ran on eliminating taxes on Social Security?

They are certainly hoping you don’t:

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – For the second time this month, Minnesota Senate Democrats voted against eliminating the taxation of Social Security benefits – despite a massive projected budget surplus of $17.6 billion. Five of those Democrats have also already broken promises to end the taxation of social security benefits and did so again today; Sens. Hauschild, Gustafson, Kupec, Putnam and Seeberger all voted to maintain the tax again after doing so earlier this month. The Republican Party of Minnesota issued the statement below in response:

“This latest vote shows that Democrats in St. Paul are only interested in one thing – partisan politics. Instead of voting to provide much-needed tax relief to seniors by ending the tax on Social Security benefits, the Democrats voted to kill this bill for the second time this month. Meanwhile, Democrats in the legislature along with Gov. Tim Walz continue to push tax increases and one-time political gimmicks. With a budget surplus of more than $17 billion, Minnesota taxpayers deserve more than petty partisan games. Democrats need to stop the petty politics and work with Republicans to pass real, permanent tax relief for Minnesota families and businesses.” – Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman David Hann

“Fully Funding Education”

The term was intentionally misleading – when you finally got a DFLer to admit what this little word salad starter meant, it boiled down to rolling back a Pawlenty-era accounting shift. 

Forget for a moment the flurry of teacher strikes and headlines about districts running out of money – as the DFL wants you to forget them – because it was never intended as anything but a campaign slogan to gull the gullible.

The results are self-explanatory…:

…provided you can read and do math which, fortunately for the MNDFL, more and more Minesotans can’t.

“Reducing Poverty 30%”

That was a promise they made before the 2023 session – and abruptly stopped once they started legislating.

Because while the stats aren’t in for this last few years yet…:

…the leading indicators just aren’t that good.

Just want to keep that memory hole exhumed for election time.

Last week, we talked about Gene Pelowski (DFL, HD26B) about his reservations about the DFL’s trifecta.

Now, retired GOP Senate leader (in both the majority and minority) Paul Gazelka is publishing a book about Tim Walz.

And it‘s not a flattering look (emphasis added):

During his time leading the Minnesota Senate, Gazelka had a front row seat to observe Gov. Walz’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 riots that occurred in Minneapolis, and many other facets of Walz’s time in office. As such, Gazelka has written a book documenting the “daily battles” he fought with Gov. Walz.

“Now that Governor Walz has been elevated to the national ticket, I believe I have a duty to inform the nation’s voters about Walz’s failed leadership record,” the former majority leader said in a statement. “For that reason, I moved up the release of my book that chronicles Walz’s missteps handling the pandemic, freezing under pressure during the George Floyd riots, mishandling the state budget and more.”

This oughtta be good.

Why yes, I will be interviewing the Senator on my show. Saturday, 2PM.

Hope you can tune in.

The DFL and Media (should almost be one word, shouldn’t it) are howling about allegations of domestic abuse against a GOP legislator, six weeks before the election:

In 2008, Dotseth was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic assault and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct. In a sworn affidavit by his ex-wife when filing for divorce, she detailed years of alleged abuse, according to the newspaper, including that he allegedly kicked and choked her in one incident and in another, pinned her against a wall.

Anyone but me getting deja vu, here?

I’ll help you out – 2006, during Keith Ellison’s first run for Congress, when the Strib put out a hatchet piece against GOP congresisonal candidate Alan Fine, dredging up domestic abuse allegations from his first marriage, but never managed to add a few things to the story: there were no convictions, Fine got custody of their son, and the wife went on to get arrested later on for…domestic abuse.

I’ll wager a shiny new quarter the allegations were brought up by an ex-spouse and her sleazebag lawyer to try to put a thumb on the scales during a nasty divorce – which is far from unprecedented, and in fact likely accounts for a huge percentage of domestic abuse allegationws.  Husbands and fathers are guilty until proven innocent, at least as far as the media and political class are concerned – as we saw with Fine. And it’s why the story is coming out today.  

I say nobody should even talk about leaving a race until Keith Ellison comes clean about his own, much better-documented history, not to mention Nicole MItchell leaving office and Judd Hoff leaves his legislative race. 

My two cents: This story means one or both of two things:

• The race for the state legislature is closer than the DFL is letting on. .
• Some oppo researcher, somewhere, is about to drop a big domestic abuse allegation against a DFLer. 

Any action on that bet?

The Minnesota DFL Regime. 

They don’t talk with the press, unless they’ve been vetted as utterly innocuous (Esme Murphy, Jason DeRusha) or affirmatively friendly (Rochelle Olson).

No, the sum total of the regime’s “transparency” is this time of the summer, when you get video of them wandering about the State Fair in their “Just Plain Folks!” costumes, eating junk food on camera. 

I mean, I suppose it’s easier than answering actual questions…

This can’t be good news for Democrats:

I’m waiting for the inevitable ACLU lawsuit in response.