Governor Klink was clearly not a writing teacher. And, for that matter, the social media interns from Macalester who apparently run his social media feed must have tested out of reading any actual good writing.

Long story short: The Governor’s social media feed is more cliché-ridden than Pointy Haired Boss, an Anthony Robbins seminar and your company’s marketing department all rolled together.

Examples:

So as a public service to the state of Minnesota, I’d like to run a contest to come up with more, better Tim Walz tweets.

I’d say “the more cliché-clogged the better”, but that goes without saying, doesn’t it.

Winners announced over the weekend.

To. Governor Walz
From: Mitch Berg, obstreperous peasant
Re: SInce you put it that way…

Governor Klink. Er, Walz.

On Tuesday, you – or, let’s be honest, the chirpy little intern from Macalester who manages the flood of selfies and donut shots that is your Twitter feed – twote this:

You – either of you, I guess – are right. Freedom isn’t guaranteed.

For example, society might – just might – have a leader who:

• Arbitrarily shuts down most social and business interaction
• Sics the state’s law enforcement on dissenters
• Tries to strong-arm people into complying with untested experimental procedures, on pain of losing their jobs, businesses and life’s savings.
• Hides the evidence of your errors and, as time progressed, your error turning into downright perfidy
• Lies to the people to panic the gullible into voting for them
• Positions himself, with the aid of a compliant and docile media, in a position of complete opacity to the public .

So yeah. Gotta watch out for those tyrants.

That is all.

The DFL did so much damage this past session, it’s hard to track all of it.

Rep. Hudson did a pretty good job of cataloging it – and why it matters (expand the tweet to see it all).

I’ll be talking about this extensively on the show this Saturday.

Governor Klink is all about the stolid rural individualism:

“It’s a very Midwestern value: mind your own dang business.”

This from the guy who gave us the snitch line.

If you’re a conservative in Minnesota, you’ve got friends moving elsewhere. I personally have friends, including some of the regulars here, who’ve moved or are planning to move to any of the less-insane states; the Dakotas, Tennessee, Texas, Republican northwest Wisconsin, and of course Florida – a state where expats from Minnesota are almost as big a cliche as New Yorkers.

Not me.

And not John Phelan of the Center of the American Experiment.

Phelan gives his three reasons. I agree with ’em all – and I’ve got one of my own to add:

I’m going to start at the end of the list:

Finally, and most importantly, Minnesota is still a wonderful place to live. Its scenery is beautiful, its weather varied (or challenging, depending on your view), and its people decent, none of which, of course, depends on high taxes. When you have something good it is worth fighting for even when you feel the odds are against you. Perhaps especially then.

I’m from North Dakota. The weather in southern Minnesota is like a 12 month vacation (at least since I got AC in my car and bedroom).

The larger point? I was here first.

Second, even while its economy splutters, crime rises, test scores fall, the lights go out, and residents flee in numbers not seen in at least three decades, Minnesota’s government is being lauded as an example by progressives around the country. NBC News, the Daily Beast, and the New York Times have all run pieces lately praising the state government and Gov. Walz in particular. It matters to the entire country that the sad truth about Minnesota gets out.

Because whether you live in Orono or Orlando, they are coming for you, like it or not. Might be next election cycle, it might be when your grandkids are married and having kids of their own, but they’re playiing the long game.

And here’s the big one (I’m adding emphasis):

First, the liberal grip on Minnesota is not as tight as it seems. In 2022, the DFL’s party unit took in nearly $24 million from all sources while the state Republican Party took in a paltry $1.3 million. Even so, and with the built-in advantage of a friendly media, the DFL took the state Senate by just one seat and that by just 321 votes. The DFL is governing like a party that just scored 60 percent of the vote, not because they did, but precisely because they didn’t, and they want to ram their agenda through before Minnesotans cotton on to what they’re up to.

Minnesota has eight congressional districts (for nine more years, anyway).

• Two (4 and 5) will be hard blue until some future apocalypse makes everyone a conservative.
• One (3) appears to have slid off the rais.
• Two (6 and 7) will never vote DFL again.
• Two (1 and 8) are getting redder by the year. If you’d told me 15 years ago I’d never say that about CD8, I’d have said you were nuts).
• One (CD2) might be redeemable.

That’s 4-4 – and with the right candidate in the right year, 5-3.

Yes, the DFL balllot-harvesting machine gives the DFL a huge lift with the metro vote – but if the legislature stays in play, that gives us gridlock. Not the eternal blue nightmare. And given how many Republicans stayed home last year, and how close the GOP candidates came in the Attorney General and State Auditor races, despair is premature.

They can’t overturn Roe again, after all.

And the DFL knows it.

The DFL’s awareness of this weakness is evident, too, in its attack on democracy by making it practically impossible for third parties to get on the ballot in Minnesota. Not a single reporter asked a single legislator a single question about this.

Last week, President Obama tweeted, “If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota.” He is exactly right. Our state is about to move from the “fool around” to the “find out” stage of voting for ever higher taxes, ever higher government spending, and ever bigger government. Minnesota needs its conservatives now more than ever.

Which brings us to Reason #4. The fight is worth fighting.

My ancestry is half Viking and 1/4 lowland Scots white trash. We fight just to stay awake, ffs.

What the hell is there to do in this life but fight?

I was here first. I’m not going anywhere.

Minnesota is transferring his first transgender female to the Shakopee women’s prison.

But I’m not here to talk about the obvious issue.

No – there are two issues that go way beyond putting (deep breath) bio-men into women’s prisons.

Stay In Your Lane: Shakopee is referred to as a “women’s. prison”.

Is the MN Department of Corrections a bunch of biologists?

Do are they experts in what “women” are? Like this PhD?

Which leads us to another, inarguably more serious problem.

Pronouns Pronouns Pronouns: What’s in the world “Prison?”

The word “Son”.

Since we don’t know the genders of the incarcerated (indeed, the incarcerated themselves may not know at any given time), it’s time to change the name of the facility to “Shakopee Prixyn”.

I made a series of notes to myself at the beginning of the session, re all the promises the DFL made in the wake of their “trifecta”

There were a lot of them.

Some of them won’t matter for a while, or won’t be measurable for quite some time. (Is the DFL really going to cut child poverty by 1/3 in the next year/)

But one can be tested today: “Did the DFL legalize Cannabis?”

And they did.

I’m a little surprised. While on the one hand a buzzed, stuporous electorate is a perfect DFL audience, I figured the issue was worth more to the DFL as a social wedge.

Of course, the law is full of gimmies to Big Pharma, and handouts to well-connected political insiders, and will benefit small producers not one iota. And as Colorado discovered, the taxes and regulation won’t actually affect the black market criminal sale:

Instead, in 2023, Colorado’s cannabis entrepreneurs face a perfect storm of problems: too much supply, not enough demand, plunging prices, heightened competition in other states, the allure of black market weed, a lack of cannabis tourism and more. That’s on top of the shaky economic forecast for the rest of the year, even though inflation is steadily slowing….Earlier this year, marijuana giant Curaleaf shuttered its operations in Colorado, along with California and Oregon. “We believe these states will represent opportunities in the future, but the current price compression caused by a lack of meaningful enforcement of the illicit market prevent us from generating an acceptable return on our investments,” CEO Matt Darin said.

There is ample evidence the DFL spent even less time thinking about unintended consequences than Colorado did:

The greatest effect is likely to get rid of the Marijuana parties that’ve sapped DFL votes in recent years.

There were so many promises. This’ll keep us busy for a while.

Good thing Rep. Phillips grew up with a silver foot in his mouth. If he’d had to succeed on his merits, he’d be living in a homeless camp by the Quarry.

Example:

Uh,, no. You got 1 out of 4. Roosevelt – the president who set the stage for Wilson’s “progressive” orgy – probably qualifies.

Lincoln didn’t promote slavery, so morally-consistent modern Democrats would not know what to do with him.

Jefferson would be a Libertarian; he’d hang out with Justin Amash and Rand Paul.

Washington? Someone who was given the chance at unfettered power, even declaring himself king, and demurred in favor of a constitutional Republic? Not a chance. He’d be a proto-Reagan conservative.

And JFK would get kicked out of today’s DFL. HHH was all but kicked out of the DFL of the 1970s, for crying out loud.

CD3 – please do better.

If there are two bright spots in this current legislative session, it is the emergence of Harry Niska and Walter Hudson, as two of the best state legislators in the United States.

Here, Walter finishes the job Harry started, giving the single best explanation of why the DFL, and the StarTribune, are lying about the removal of language, regarding pedophilia from state statute.

Pass this around, like it’s hot.

Members of the House of Representatives routinely vote for each other.

The Minnesota House’s hours-long floor sessions are often mundane and monotonous, the chamber regularly half full at best. But when members get to voting on an amendment or a bill, the chamber suddenly looks as bustling as a bee hive.

Members press the green and red voting buttons at their desks to cast a “yes” or “no” vote. But some of them aren’t just recording their own vote. Many stretch, lean over and press the voting buttons for their seatmates, who are gone.

Then, a handful get out of their seats to make sure all the empty seats around them have a vote cast.

Where are the missing members? And why are they surrendering their vote to their seatmates?

Which is technically a violation of the rules, but hey, rules are for peasants.

The reps involved have their, er, reasons:

House members say voting for one another is a longstanding practice and no cause for alarm — though it’s technically against the rules.

House Speaker Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, doesn’t believe the practice compromises the legitimacy of the vote.

Walter Hudson goes into the reason behind the reason:

This – the serious work being argued out behind closed doors by the Governor, Speaker and Senate Majority leader, has been a problem since at least the early years of the Dayton regime, if not longer.

The Pandemic made it worse; the state was in effect run by a junta, and the Legislature was of no more use than the Supreme Soviet.

That’s something for a future, good government to fix, if we ever get one.

To: MN Democrat Something Something Labor Party

From: Mitch Berg, Stochastic Moderate

Re: Truth In Advertising

All,

Many of us have been talking with you for years about removing the “farmer“ from your official party name.

With this speech by Rep. Lucy Rehm?

“Solar panels are the new corn?”

Its time. Lose it.

That is all.

SCENE: December 2020.

THE DFL: “The state has a $17.5 billion dollar surplus. This is a monument to the wisdom of the Walz/Flanagan Administration, and will be used to move forward as One Minnesota…

NORMIES: Uh, the “surplus”” is a combination of one-time or shor-time stimulus money from the Feds, and tax revenue driven by people spending all that stimulus money. It’s not permanent. But I bet you people are going to turn all this one time money into permanent spending, aren’t you?

THE DFL: The answer is, go forward, inclusive equity one people one leader one Minnesota!

NORMIES: That’s not an answer…

SCENE: March 2023

THE DFL: The “surplus” was always one time money, and we need to raise taxes”

NORMIES: Uh, that’s what we said.

THE DFL: As always, let’s go forward, inclusive equity one people one leader one Minnesota!

It’s a gloomy, cloudy Monday morning.

And yet my heart is dancing.

Because it’s another day alive in God’s creation? Sure. Goes without saying, but needs to be repeated anyway.

But beyond that? There’s this:

It’s the Anoka County Attorney slapping down Jamie Becker-Finn over the proposed “safe storage” bill, which would have required all guns to be stored unloaded, with ammo locked up separately from the guns, and required a carry permit to have an uncased, loaded gun in the home, allowing police wide latitude to barge in and check on the above.

It’s fairly clearly a Fourth Amendment shortcut. It would disproportionately affect Black and Latino gun owners. It’s patently unconstitutional.

And any day that starts with Rep. Becker-Finn getting water squirted on her nose is a good, glorious day.

What says “One MInnesota” better than living in a million dollar lakeside mansion on the taxpayers dime?

As Minnesotans stagger through inflation, gas prices and an economy that is teetering on the brink of crisis, the state is putting $6 million into repairing the govenor’s mansion. The governor and his family will be parked in a lakeside house on Sunfish Lake, for $17,000 a month, for 18 months.

Why so posh?

We’re told it’s partly practical:

The state had a 17-point list of qualifications and indicated that the property would need to have security features, be relatively close to the Capitol and be open to “official ceremonial functions,” as is required by state law.

Now, I’m no expert, but I suspect the state’s got no shortage of suitable places for “official ceremonial functions”. We’ll come back to that.

And, we’re told, it’s partly security:

House Speaker Melissa Hortman, the top DFLer in the Minnesota Legislature, said she understands why space, security and neighborhood considerations make temporary lodging for the governor so expensive.

“When you have folks going to protest a governor at his house, you have the entire block of people who are there, not only the governor’s wife and children but the neighbors who didn’t necessarily sign up for this,” she said. “So, I’m not surprised that it’s an expensive proposition to house a governor in a secure location.”

As Hortman’s fellow DFLer Lisa Bender said, public safety is a privilege.

As someone whose house was on the edge of the DFL’s “room to destroy”, I think it’d be perfectly appropriate for the Walzes to get a place in the city, subject to the DFL’s capricious notion of law enforcement. Maybre someplace up at Plymouth and Sheridan.

Governor Klink responded with his usual grace and evenhandedness:

“I’m pretty agnostic, where I lay my head,” Walz said. “I certainly welcome if the legislators’ job is oversight. Go do it. It’s better than banning books. It’s better than demonizing kids. Go do that oversight. I accept whatever they find.”

Speaking of “doing the job” – Governor Klink has been making himself pretty scarce. He hasn’t responded by my repeated invitations – not even a curt “F*** Off” – but even the largely DFL-friendly Blois Olson:

Olson is being a bit of a pollyanna; their strategy is to stay within the bubble wrap; the Governor comes out of the mansion to do carefully stage-managed dog and pony shows like going to pizzerias and donut shops and the occasional train derailment, surrounded by his comms people and nice tame social media droogs, for some cheesecake photos, and then it’s back in isolation.

“Official ceremonial functions?” All the governor does is stuff his face while “Lieutenant Governor” Flanagan looks on, beaming like a proud mom.

They really do think they are royalty, don’t they?

A friend of the blog, a member of a public employee union in the healthcare field, emails:

My silly colleagues are having a vote to authorize a strike (which will probably win).

Our contract that they’re negotiating already has won 6 months of maternity/paternity leave, 220 hours of PTO being carried over year to year, our company paying 85% of our health insurance, we get to remain salaried, so we don’t have to punch in/out, we got an increase in the number of people we can allow off for PTO per day, bereavement pay for extended family members, and the company has agreed to a guaranteed 2% raise for the next 3 years.

But, we’re voting to strike because the company isn’t agreeing to a $12 pay increase with a 6% pay raise yearly guaranteed.

Eye roll- glad we’re not as greedy as the company’s corporate heads- you know, the ones who per the union’s own words are at a ghastly 12 to 1 employee pay ratio…

220 hours of PTO carried over?

I’m trying to think if I’ve had 220 hours of PTO in the past two years.

I did a prerecorded show, so I could attend the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus’s annual (after a few years off) Rally at the Capitol.

Huge crowd.

Great speakers – Rob Doar, Bryan Strawser, Reverend Tim Christopher, and an array of pro-2nd Amendment legislators.

Rob – the MNGOC’s political director – was able to announce that most of the DFL’s gun bills – the semi-auto/”Assault Weapons” ban, the magazine limits, banning guns for people under 21 – are dead this session.

But Universal Registration and Red Flag Confiscation bills could still leak through. Hence the rally – and Rob’s injunction that “we need ten of you for every one that’s here”.

If you’re not in the MNGOC already, consider this your engraved invitation.

By the way: I’ve been to a lot of these rallies – like, all of them, ever – and I’ve never seen a police presence like I did on Saturday.

Rumor had it that the cops had been told to expect trouble. No specifics about who was going to cause the trouble, or who felt it; I suspect the Speaker of the House and the Governor indulged their base and wanted to put on a show of force.

Notwithstanding, ,the cops were universally friendly, even helpful. Not to project, but they knew that nobody was going to cause problems.

Last December 8, when the DFL was crowing about having a “$17.6 Billion Surplus”, I noted tha the so-called “surplus” was nothing but bIllions of dollars in federal Covid stimulus dollars, routine Minnesota DFL overtaxation (plumped up by receipts driven up by inflation in the cost of the goods being taxed, and that all of that that taxation and inflation was going on over an epipandemic surge in stimulus-swollen consumer spending that would end with the subsidies.

And I predicted:

• The DFL will turn that “$27.6 Billion in Surplus” into permanent spending
• The economy will slow into recession (as even the DFL’s cheerleaders in their bespoke press are starting to observe).
• Without the Covid stimuli, and with the economy contracting, tax receipts will crash again. “Unexpectedly”
• The state will have a multibillion dollar deficit by 2026, probably 2024.

I think it’s fair to say the first bullet is in the 10 ring:

“Seemingly”.

Of course, some are taking this as a cue to celebrate:

No word from Rep. Stevenson if making the trains run on time is next.

My ultimate prediction – billions in deficits – is now inevitable.

No, it’s not just me. Walter Hudson:

Being. a good parent (or parent-state) means making sure kids can’t get tobacco, or tobacco subvsitutes like vape, even if the vape is a way of quitting smoking (as it was for at least one young person close to me)…

…but making absolutely certain they can chemically and surgically neuter themselves without adult consent…:

The states are the “laboratories of democracy”, and ours is run by Dr. Frankenstein.

Governor Walz is “turning power over” to Lt Governor Flanagan for a few hours while he has a colonoscopy.

I don’t not expect DFL goons to roam the streets looking for wreckers while she’s in power. Fingers crossed, everyone. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

However, if all goes well, hopefully we’ll get word as to whether the endoscopist found the code for the model that predicted 20-70,000 dead Minnesotans by July 2020.

SITD Bonus: Rejected names for the post:

• They Found Esme Murphy
• Endoscopy Discovers Every Metro Newsroom
• “Nurse, What’s With All The Lip Marks?”
• Governor’s Riot Strategy Found
• MN Media Metaphor Alert

But again – I’m trying to be a better person than that. 

The Strib notes that the DFL is going on exactly the orgy of “progressive” legislating I (and everyone with a brain and a useful education) knew they would.

But I come not to talk policy.

I come to take optics.

Look at the photo:

I’ve got a couple of questions:

• Is this the most badly posed “joy” photo you’ve ever seen?
• What’s Lt. Governor Flanagan doing, not in costume?
• Am I the only one who thinks these dailiy photo ops, with staged crowds of grinning rent-a-constituents, are starting to look just a liiiiitle North Korean?
• Why does the governor look like his endoscopist told him he’s going to have to do the two-day cleanout process for his next colonoscopy?

Governor Klink released his gun control proposals yesterday.

Did he propose to push metro prosecutors to use the sentence enhancement for using guns to commit crime?

Perish the thought, simple peasant.

No, the usual California-stye gruel: magazine capacity limits, age limits, and most importantly gun registration [1].

It’s time to turn out.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus is holding its annual “Lobby Day” on Thursday morning. Come on down to the Capitol. Members of the Caucus will meet you, show you how to find your Rep and Senator in the various office buildings, and help you represent gun owners, face to face, to our legislature.

The legislature takes these days seriously since they know that unlike the astroturf clutches of biddies with ELCA Hair that ProtectMN and Moms Want Action sends waddling around the place, we represent a hell of a lot of actual voters that consider the 2nd Amendment a litmus test. And there are a lot of us out there. Enough to flip a chamber or two in 2024? Yep.

Hope to see you there on Thursday morning!

[1] They’re called “Universal Background Checks” – but the only way to make them “universal” is to keep track of which guns have been background-checked. This creates a set of linked data points – or, as they’re called in the information management business, a “database” . Ringing a bell, yet?

Amy Klobuchar should be thankful to the feminist goddess that Tina Smith is in Congress.

Because as long as she is, A-Klo is not the dumbest Senator in our delegation.

Shot:

Chaser:

To be fair, Smith says it because she knows Democrat voters don’t do critical thought.

The Senate voted to allow water bottles on the floor of the chamber.

After 45 minutes of debate.

And when I say “debate“ I mean this sort of thing from my “Senator“, Sandi Pappas.

Weird. I didn’t think Democrats believed in slippery slopes?

As someone else put it:

A friend of the blog emails:

Explain to me how adding more bureaucrats terrified of offending a DFL constituency will prevent fraud committed by a DFL constituency protected by the bureaucracy

I don’t think the governor or his staff read this space, so I will try to explain it.

It will work, because we are moving forward together as One Minnesota. with equity and reproductive rights for Minnesotans of all genders.

I may have the details wrong, but that’s what I remember from the campaign.

Governor Walz released his plan to address, rampant fraud in his executive branch.

Long story short: transfer more money to the political class.

Bill Glahn, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment who has closely tracked the case, said the proposals mainly consist of “hiring more bureaucrats.”

“That so many different state agencies are involved points to part of the problem: too many cooks, too many fiefdoms, and no central location where the buck stops,” Glahn wrote in an article this week. 

That should solve things.