In my native North Dakota, 35,000 people have lost or will be losing their insurance so far.
Against that, 30 have successfully signed up.
Hint to the national GOP; “hope for change” might be a good tack to take.
If you can actually offer either, naturally.
In Virginia last night, the Republican and Libertarian votes together totalled 53% – including about 8% for the Libertarian candidate. Macauliffe got 47%.
Now, not every Libertarian votes Republican – but it’s a safe bet that most of the Libertarian voters in Virginia – a state where the Libertarian party has barely gotten into single digits in the recent past – were more likely to vote Republican than Democrat.
And Republicans are pointing out that this – the Democrats pumping big money into spoilers that undercut the GOP vote – is the wave of the future.
And like so many of the most noxious trends in current politics, it got its start here in Minnesota, where in 2010 Mark Dayton was saved by a concerted Democrat effort to peel off Republicans to fake Republican Tom Horner.
Horner got 10% of the vote – just enough more of them from Republicans to hand the race to Dayton.
Minnesota’s past, America’s future?
Perhaps.
Path for Minnesota “libertarian” candidates to get into that Bentley they’ve been looking at in the next election?
What do you think?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The President did not lie about letting people keep their health insurance. The problem is right-wing kooks keep mis-spelling the President’s carefully chosen words in their wicked efforts to confuse and panic the public. The whole thing was caused by a scrivener’s error.
“If ewe like their health insurance, ewe can keep it.”
Ewe are sheep. You are not a sheep. Therefore, you cannot keep your health insurance.
Don’t call the President a liar just because you can’t spell, you ignorant racissssssssss.
By the way, the problem of journalists not knowing how to spell is not a new problem. William F. Buckley, Jr., pointed it out when George Bush the Elder was in office. The President said:
“Read my lips, no gnu taxes.”
The President did not lie. Your gnu was not taxed. But Democrats pounded him for something he didn’t say and the media was too embarrassed to fess up to their stupid blunder in transcribing his remarks.
History is repeating itself on the other foot, with Obama in the crosshairs. Ha! About time.
Joe Doakes
And re Sarah Palin?
She was worried about “cross heirs” – peevish trust-fund babies. Like our current governor.
It all makes sense now.
There’s been very little talk about Paul Ciancia in the mainstream media, compared to most of the major spree shootings.
Perhaps it’s because “only” one person died. Maybe it’s because the shooting spree was ended before it really got started by good guys with guns.
Or maybe it’s because Paul Ciancia’s story ties in nicely with the NRA’s line on mass shootings; it’s not the gun, it’s the mental illness:
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said on Sunday the suspect’s “mental illness” was a chief reason behind the shooting at Los Angeles International Airport.
Of course, there’s been no dispositive diagnosis yet – but if I were a gambler, I’d go long on “crazy” in this case. As I have in every recent mass-shooting incident. And won.
Of course, there’s a problem: mental illness data isn’t getting to the NICS system, the national database that provides the “go/no-go” answers on disqualifications for buying guns.
The data Minnesota reports, in particular, has gaps in it – gaps that were supposed to be fixed over a decade ago. The DFL – which has controlled the process one way or another that entire time – has dragged its feet on improving the system.
Most recently, the Metrocrat Extremists – Representatives Martens, Hausman and Paymar and Senator Latz – blocked the “Good Gun Bill”, which would have fixed the gaps in Minnesota’s data reporting.
Before that? Governor Dayton – who, let’s remind you, ran as a “Second Amendment Friendly” governor (with a pair of .357 Magnums in a gun safe, doncha know) vetoed Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill, which would have likewise fixed the gaps in the data we report.
So why do Democrats support mass murderers?
I’ve said it a few times; Sally Jo Sorenson of the outstate leftyblog “Bluestem Prairie” is one of the few Minnesota leftybloggers who don’t deserve to be under some kind of police surveillance.
But that doesn’t mean she gets all that much right.
Or maybe when your target is “voters who don’t think that hard about voting”, “getting it right” isn’t the goal.
I’ll commend to you this piece on…
…well, apparently the Sibley County GOP thinking Things That Make Sally Jo Sorenson Angry Even Though She Doesn’t Appear To Understand Them All That Well.
I’ll add some emphasis here and there:
Bluestem’s favorite Minnesota Republican Basic Party Operating Unit (BPOU) is at it again, promoting an informational town hall against the court-delayed organizing of home-based daycare providers, while simultaneously asking the readers of the New Ulm Journal to dream of a future where moms can stay home and care for their own kids.
Yes, indeedie: Emily Gruenhagen and her fellow executive board members are here to save daycare so they can destroy it…The more recent epistle, Childcare Unionization Town Hall Meeting, repeats standard talking points against the organizing drive by AFSCME, before asserting this vision for a better Minnesota:
“Imagine a society with taxes and utility rates so low that mothers have the economic freedom to choose to stay home with their children, again…”
Yes, indeedie. Those days of women staying home in the glory days of the 1950s and 1960s (or 1850s and 1860s) had absolutely nothing to do with wages, and everything to do with low taxes and utility rates.
And yes indeedie-doo, the market for daycare today is all about women with degrees in Arts Admin from Saint Olaf having time to run off to their day job at an arts-education non-profit to negotiate a visit by a Bulgarian women’s therapeutic drum circle co-op.
Sure. Sometimes it is.
But much more often, it’s about low-income women (and, uh, men) needing someone to watch the kids while they earn a living – something that Sally Jo Sorenson’s Democrat party just made a whole lot harder, especially in rural Minnesota.
And daycare unionization will do absolutely nothing for those families – or the daycare union providers – but make it less affordable.
Sorenson swerves through a krazy kwilt of other bits of outstate un-PC before returning, eventually, to the daycare topic:
Representatives Glenn Gruenhagen and Dean Urdahl, along with Senator Scott Newman and anti-daycare union advocate Hollie Saville, who shares the belief that allowing daycare providers to vote to choose or reject representation amounts to “forced unionization,” will speak at the meeting, the letter notes.
According to the Sibley County Republicans, “the lying DFL” isn’t concerned about low income people, just “more money for unions, which everyone knows their leaders run the DFL.”
And here we thought it was George Soros, with the billions he was making in shale gas, along with Alida Messinger, who ran the DFL.
The good ol’ “if you can mock it, it must be false”. Never seen that one before from every single Minnesota “progressive” blogger. Nosirreebob.
But there are two objective facts that every “progressive” supporter of the union jamdown is either ignorant about, or just lies about:
So Sally Jo Sorenson is pushing a rigged election that will lead to a jamdown the licensed providers don’t want (they can already join the union, although 99.5% don’t), that will lead to hikes in Minnesota’s already-high daycare prices, pricing more working families out of the market for daycare.
I’m going to guess Sally Jo Sorenson has never been a parent in one of those poor working families. I have. Daycare costs more than rent for many families; it did for mine, twenty years ago. Jacking up that bill for no benefit other than giving the public employee unions (and the DFL they own) a new $2 million annual revenue stream isn’t just cynical; it’s cruel.
Why does Sally Jo Sorenson hate working families?
Oh, you don’t have to believe me. Hollee Saville – one of the leaders of the brilliant grassroots campaign against the DFL/AFSCME/SEIU’s well-funded push – tried to leave Sorenson a comment. Now, Sorenson doesn’t often post critical comments – and never without writing her response first, which is certainly her right; it’s her blog. But it sorta screams “insecure”, doesn’t it?
Anyway – goodness only knows if Saville’s response will ever see the light of day on “Bluestem Prairie”.
So with her permission, I’m posting it here. Below the jump.
The “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” – the attack-PR drones financed by Alida Messinger and a group of plutocrats with deep pockets to make toxic, sleazy attacks on their opposition – stepped in it last night, to the point that even the Twin Cities mainstream media had to report it (with emphasis added):
The DFL-supporting Alliance for a Better Minnesota took its mockery of a Republican candidate a step too far, it admitted on Thursday.
In a Halloween-themed blog post, it suggested that Republican gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson should dress as Patrick Bateman, a serial killer in American Psycho, because he is “seemingly nice but actually pretty evil inside.”
Carrie Lucking tried to bury the evidence – but the Internet sees and knows all:
Leaving aside the obvious question – what should Alida Messinger and Carrie Lucking dress as? – it appears as if the smooth-running messaging machine at ABM is trying to break in some new amateurs.
But have no fear. Lucking explains it all (again, emphasis added):
Carrie Lucking, the group’s executive director, said within 10 minutes being alerted to the post they took the image down, removed the reference to Bateman and changed what it said about Johnson.
Instead of calling Johnson evil, the site says that he is “seemingly nice in public, but actually the policies he supports are pretty evil. It also appended an apology to its post.
Ah. Disagreement is “evil”. That’s much better.
How very Alinsky.
“The original image and text for Jeff Johnson was removed and the costume changed because it was an inappropriate reference to a fictional character. We apologize for this error. It will not happen again,” the web site said.
Yes it will – because every time ABM writes about Republicans, they’re writing about “fictional characters”. Alinskyite “framing” is all about turning real people and real ideas into characters and catch phrases that have little or nothing to do with reality. “Tom Emmer is angry”. “Jeff Johnson is evil”. “King Banaian is Arab”. Little bits of mental chaff that ABM is hoping – indeed, paying big bucks to prove – will stick in the minds of people who don’t think that hard about politics come election time.
It’s dishonest. It’s also how the Democrats do politics.
But I Promised A Brilliant Plan, Didn’t I?: Watch ABM’s coverage this past couple of days. Their flailing at Johnson was only the tip of the iceberg; I wrote earlier today about their calling Julianne Ortmann a “Genie”, with video of a blonde, jiggly Barbara Eden helpfully added in case you thought Lucking was referring to the “Djinn” of Arab mythology.
The election is a year away, and the attacks are already…
…unhinged.
And it occurs to me – maybe that’s a good barometer for the GOP races? Whichever candidate is drawing the most unhinged, scabrous “coverage” from ABM can be presumed to be in the lead?
A look at ABM’s front page this morning shows two weak-gruel attacks on Jeff Johnson.
That’s probably good news for the Johnson campaign.
The challenge for the Thompson campaign is obvious.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
In October, when Republicans were trying to de-fund or delay Obama-care, Democrats said: Republicans hate poor people. They want them to die. That’s why Republicans don’t want my friend, Poor Crippled Timmy, to OBTAIN medical insurance to pay for medical care. In the face of that vicious onslaught, week-kneed Republicans caved.
Confident prediction: in January, when the temporary continuing spending resolution expires and Republicans are hinting at de-funding or delaying Obama-care, Democrats will say: Republicans hate poor people. They want them to die. That’s why Republican don’t want poor people like my friend, Poor Crippled Timmy, to RETAIN the Obama-care medical insurance he just obtained to pay for his medical care. In the face of that vicious onslaught, week-kneed Republicans will cave, again.
Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, John McCain and all the other Republicans desperately trying to find a way to placate the Republican base and also appease the Democrats in Congress, here’s a news flash: Democrats hate you. They hated you in the past, they hate you now, and they will hate you in the future. Their friends at the New York Times and the Star Tribune hate you, too. No matter what you do, what you say, what bribe you give them, they will say bad things about you, attribute to you the most wicked motives and refuse to compromise with you.
Once you accept that, you have a choice: stay and abandon your principles; stay and fight for your principles; or quit.
One of these choices makes you a Republican. The others make you a weasel. Pick one.
Joe Doakes
It’s time for a reference to Berg’s Law – in this case, Berg’s Eleventh, which comes to the fore at campaign time:
Berg’s Eleventh Law of Inverse Viability: The conservative liberals “respect” for their “conservative principles” will the the one that has the least chance of ever getting elected. Here are all the references I could find to Berg’s 11th Law.
The McCain Corollary To Berg’s Eleventh Law: If that respected conservative ever develops a chance of getting elected, that “respect” will turn to blind unreasoning hatred overnight.
The Huckabee Corollary the McCain Corolloary To Berg’s Eleventh Law: The Republican that the media covers most intensively before the nomination for any office will be the one that the liberals know they have the best chance of beating after the nomination, and/or will most cripple the GOP if nominated.
The Reagan Corollary To The Huckabee Corollary the McCain Corollary To Berg’s Eleventh Law: The Media and Left (pardon the redundancy) will try to destroy the conservative they are most afraid of.
More on that later today.
Minnesota’s media talking head-bots continually bellyache about wanting Minnesota politics to be “more civil” and “more like it was back in the good ol’ days”…
…but they give a continual pass to the antics of “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, which every single day makes Minnesota a cheaper, dumber, uglier place to do politics?
A mediator ordered the Dayton Administration to pay the legal bills for the plaintiffs against his “unionization by decree” stunt.
From a news release from MN Majority (with emphasis added):
Governor Dayton and the Bureau of Mediation Services yesterday settled to reimburse $60,000 in attorneys’ fees to the home-based child care providers who sued to halt Governor Dayton’s unlawful executive order establishing a unionization procedure for the providers. In Swanson, et al. v. Dayton, et al, the court found that the governor’s executive order exceeded his constitutional authority, struck down the order and awarded attorneys’ fees to the prevailing plaintiffs. The Administration paid these fees in compliance with a Minnesota Court of Appeals’ order earlier this year which said the fees were owed because the Governor was not merely wrong in issuing this unionization order, but had no substantial legal justification to do so at all under Minnesota’s Constitution and laws.
Mark Dayton: The Law and the Constitution are for peasants.
The providers aren’t done:
Plaintiff home-based child care provider Hollee Saville said: “This is a great day for the small-business child care providers who resisted the schemes to force unionization, dues and fees on our entire industry, and we plan to continue to resist the new unionization legislation, which is also unlawful.”
And I love the closing quote so much, I’m going to add emphasis to it:
Plaintiff Becky Swanson commented further on the fee payment made yesterday. “This fee payment illustrates that the real ‘extremist’ in the child care unionization scheme is the Governor, who ignored the constitutional limitations on his own authority to do political favors for his union friends, not us self-employed child care providers who resisted this overreach, and whom he arrogantly derided as ‘right wing extremists.’”
It’s the only line they know.
Suck it, commies.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Might be time to buy oil futures, regardless what Al Gore thinks. Barak Obama as a Jimmy Carter re-run is looking like a best-case scenario. Remember the oil embargo in 1973? Might be time for another.
Representative Chris Van Hollen, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Democratic leadership, told Reuters’ Washington Summit on Tuesday that the Saudi moves were intended to pressure Obama to take action in Syria.
‘We know their game. They’re trying to send a signal that we should all get involved militarily in Syria, and I think that would be a big mistake to get in the middle of the Syrian civil war,’ Van Hollen said.
‘And the Saudis should start by stopping their funding of the al Qaeda-related groups in Syria. In addition to the fact that it’s a country that doesn’t allow women to drive,’ said Van Hollen, who is close to Obama on domestic issues in Congress but is less influential on foreign policy.
Gasp. They don’t let women drive? I guess they don’t respect human rights like say Iran, or North Korea, so they can’t be negotiated with like those nations can. And where was Van Hollen last month, when invading Syria was a fierce moral imperative?
They had me at “don’t allow women to drive”.
Kidding. Kidding.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Gotta hand it to the President, he pays keen attention. But to whom?
He learned of the Fast and Furious gun-running operation by . . . seeing
it on the news.He learned of that Air Force One flight that caused panic in Manhattan
by . . . seeing it on the news.He learned of the IRS targeting conservative groups by . . . seeing it
on the news.He learned of the Justice Department seizing AP reporters’ records by .
. . seeing it on the news.He learned about the attack on Benghazi by . . . seeing it on the news.
He learned how badly the Obama-care computer program was crashing by . .
. seeing it on the news.Now it seems he learned the NSA was spying on Angela Merkel, the German
Chancellor by . . . her calling him to complain about it. What, did he
miss the news that day? Guy’s slipping up.joe doakes
Maybe he gets his news from a new government website?
October 14: delaying the individual mandate is “sedition”.
October 28: delaying the individual mandate was always a good idea, Winston.
Perhaps you’ve heard; Minnesota’s new “Teacher of the Year”, Saint Paul science teacher Megan Hall seems to have answered the question “are today’s public schools nothing but left-wing indoctrination centers” with a rousing “Hell yeah!”
This is from her acceptance speech, with emphasis added by me:
Teachers are persistent and responsible and generous because we believe that every child in America, regardless of circumstances of birth, deserves a decent chance at a good life. [Applause] From where I stand, teachers create equality of opportunity. From where I stand, teaching is a profession that takes a gritty patriotism. And from where I stand, teachers are American democracy’s last line of defense against the tyranny of the 1 percent
Don’t believe me? Here’s the video
How over the top was it? Even the City Pages’ Aaron Rupar seemed to feel a little uncomfortable: “Yeah, maybe that would’ve been a good line to save for when you’re having beers with your liberal buddies after the speech”.
For all I know Ms. Hall is a perfectly adequate teacher – and in my experience in the Saint Paul Public Schools, adequate would have been pretty superlative.
But I have to wonder: if Ms. Hall is protecting the students from “the 1%”, who is going to protect them from the Saint Paul Public Schools?
Because between the child abuse, the brain-dead kommissariat masquerading as a bureaucracy, and the massive horde of intellectually-walking-dead union members Ms. Hall shares a district with?
I’ll take my chance with those gol-durned rich folks, thanks.
But look at it her way; I suppose if I taught for a district with the worst major-market achievement gap in the United States, with a minority graduation rate lower than Miley Cyrus’ neckline, a district that minority parents were decamping from as fast as they can find open spaces in charter schools or suburban schools via open enrollment, I’d look for a scapegoat too.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
President Obama famously promised that if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor under the Affordable Care Plan.
Well, you can keep him IF he joins the new plan. He doesn’t have to. And many won’t. So here’s your shiny new Obama-care card. Now go try to use it.
Also, Obama-care will save money, Congress will have the same deal as we, and Gitmo will be closed.
Joe Doakes
We’ll have hope, along with all of that change…
“Today’s GOP wouldn’t endorse Reagan!”
It’s an ofay little meme that’s been trotted out for the last couple of years by a bunch of liberals who might, on a good day, stick to trying to whiz on Reagan’s grave, with the aim of trying to undercut the “independent” vote going to conservatives as they did for Reagan.
They note that Reagan passed legislation controlling guns, legalizing abortion and raising taxes. The first was an error of judgment while governor of California for which he more than atoned later in his career; the latter two, errors involving trusting Democrats to hold up their ends of deals; in the case of the taxes, the “increases” were both results of Tip O’Neil’s perfidy and a small fraction of the cuts he’d implemented earlier in his administration; they happened at a time when the economy was humming along, rather than on life support; dumb, but not dumber.
But the meme almost rises to the level of a Berg’s Seventh Law violation – because while Reagan would likely do just fine in today’s GOP (his strength was in building coalitions of diverse people toward common ends, something the GOP needs today even more than it did in 1980), the great Democrat hero, John F. Kennedy, would get run out of most Democrat meetings on a rail:
Today’s Democratic Party — the home of Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Al Gore — wouldn’t give the time of day to a candidate like JFK.
The 35th president was an ardent tax-cutter who championed across-the-board, top-to-bottom reductions in personal and corporate tax rates, slashed tariffs to promote free trade, and even spoke out against the “confiscatory” property taxes being levied in too many cities.
He was anything but a big-spending, welfare-state liberal. “I do not believe that Washington should do for the people what they can do for themselves through local and private effort,” Kennedy bluntly avowed during the 1960 campaign. One of his first acts as president was to institute a pay cut for top White House staffers, and that was only the start of his budgetary austerity. “To the surprise of many of his appointees,” longtime aide Ted Sorensen would later write, he “personally scrutinized every agency request with a cold eye and encouraged his budget director to say ‘no.’ ”
On the other hand, he was a Cold War anticommunist who aggressively increased military spending. He faulted his Republican predecessor for tailoring the nation’s military strategy to fit the budget, rather than the other way around. “We must refuse to accept a cheap, second-best defense,” JFK said during his run for the White House. He made good on that pledge, pushing defense spending to 50 percent of federal expenditures and 9 percent of GDP, both far higher than today’s levels. Speaking in Texas just hours before his death, he proudly took credit for building the US military into “a defense system second to none.”
Read the whole thing. And send it to your Democrat friends.
JFK, whatever his foibles and peccadilloes, would puke his guts out at the legacy of John Kerry, much less Barack Obama.
The Lightworker’s Gallup ratings are down in Dubya territory.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The House Stenographer was hauled away when Republicans were voting to cave in, shouting about God and Freemasons. Apparently, she’s had enough.
I know just how she feels.
The Washington Generals always lose to the Harlem Globetrotters but at least they play the whole game, they don’t quit and start high-fiving each other. I wonder where I can get some Washington Generals jerseys to send to Boehner, Cantor, McCain . . . .
Joe Doakes
Some days, being a Republican feels like being an offensive lineman for Cumberland College.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Boehner: “Tell you what, Barry, I’ve got a little popularity problem with my own party so here’s what we do: we let the right-wing crazy people shut down the government for couple of weeks, you punish the public by closing the parks and have your buddies in the media savage the Tea Party. Send some of your bureaucrats out to tell everybody the sky is going to fall. Meanwhile, the other senior leadership and I will fumble around not doing much until we can declare that the public pressure is too great and sensible people must step in to restore order and save the day. Then we’ll give you a blank check to kick the can down the road for a few more months and we can all go back to the cocktail parties but without those pesky Tea Party types, who won’t have any clout so they won’t be invited. How’s that sound?”
Obama: “Yeah, okay. Now kiss my ring and bow as you leave my presence.”
Joe Doakes
By outward appearances, that’s not too far off.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
President Obama declares a National Day of Gloating
It’s true. He basically did.
We’ve written before about “Moms Demand Action”, the gun-grabber astroturf group financed entirely by liberals with deep pockets, and “run” (and, I suspect, almost solely inhabited) by Jane Kay, a woman whose hatred of the law-abiding firearms owner is so toxic as to frankly make me worry about her well-being.
Jane Kay (l) with Rep. Heather Martens (DFL – 67A) and Rep. Michael Paymar, at last spring’s gun grab hearings.
Mama Jane has a website, now. And through the miracle of Web 1.0 technology, it gives the Moms and the group’s “member” their sympathizer or two the ability to put lies, long-debunked research and bobbleheaded long-discredited scare stories out in front of Congresspeople via Twitter in bulk loads. Sort of the “Ugly Black Gun” of Twitter interfaces, designed to spit out untruths as fast as a group of orcs can click.
Or to put it in IT terms, a Spam Generator.
They’re using the #gunsense, #Savethe9 and of course #momsdemandaction tags.
If #MomsDemandAction had more than a few members, it’d be fun to jack the hashtags.
But of course, the point of groups like Moms Demand Action and “Protect Minnesota” isn’t getting members, or even producing social media. It’s getting the compliant media (like the MinnPost, which is sponsored by the same groups that sponsor both of the gun grab groups) to present them as if they’re real groups, to gull the gullible into believing that there is an organized, organic gun-grab movement.
There isn’t. But you’ll never hear it from Doug Grow.
(SCENE: In the rotunda of the New Jersey state capitol in Trenton, at the swearing-in ceremony for Corey BOOKER, new junior Senator from Exit 18 on the Garden State Parkway. BOOKER is being sworn in by Governor Chris CHRISTIE, in a ceremony attended by a clot of various Jersey dignitaries).
(Fade in on CHRISTIE administering the last part of the oath of office)
BOOKER: “…to the best of my ability, so help me Sinatra”.
(Round of applause as BOOKER waves to the audience and CHRISTIE steps back to the dignitary seating. BOOKER steps to the mike).
BOOKER: Thank you. Thank you. (Applause dies down). Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
(Audience trades glances as hall falls silent).
BOOKER: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.
(Audience stirs)
BOOKER: Thanks. First, I want to thank Governor Christie for giving me the most eloquent introduction since the one I gave at the funeral of my old friend, T-Bone the Crack Dealer. He became a close confidante after trying to kill me with a chain saw after he accused me of cheating at cards in a pick-up 3-card monte game at a casino at Atlantic City in between rounds of my World Series of Poker championship, where I was partying with Kim Kardashian and her father Robert, talking about the time I held a dying Nicole Simpson in my arms after she was shot by Biggie Smalls. T-Bone told me “You are without a doubt the most competent, sensitive, and yet totally boss brother in history”, just before I hit my four million dollar jackpot. And then hit it with…Amy Adams. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Not since I was governor of Philadelphia have I felt such a sense of profound calling…
CHRISTIE: (Sotto voce) Er, Senator? You were mayor. Of Newark.
BOOKER: Er…really? Newark?
CHRISTIE: Yes.
BOOKER: Are you sure?
CHRISTIE: Yep.
BOOKER: I need a second opinion. Mr. Springsteen?
SPRINGSTEEN: Yep. Newark.
BOOKER: You wrote “Rosalita” about me, didn’t you?
SPRINGSTEEN: (stares blankly, mouth moving, but no sound coming out)
BOOKER: And about that city with the giant Exxon sign?
SPRINGSTEEN: Er – that was “Jungleland”
BOOKER: You wrote “Jungleland” about me? And T-Bone?
CHRISTIE (Sotto Voce to an aide) Maybe Booker was “Eddie” in “Meeting Across the River”
BOOKER: Anyway – not since I was archduke of Manhattan have I…
CHRISTIE (exasperated): Mayor of Newark!
BOOKER (impatient): Are you sure? Newark? Really?
CHRISTIE: Really!
BOOKER: What state is that in?
(And SCENE)
Ryan Winkler (DFL St. Louis Park) is beating the bushes around Minnesota to try to gin up a push for a massive hike in the minimum wage (and cobble together some positive name recognition to try to rescue his rumored ambition to run for Secretary of State after the avalanche of negative publicity he got by calling Justice Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom” over the summer).
Now, Winkler is from a solid blue district. He can demand a minimum wage of $20 an hour, and the voters in Saint Louis Park and most of CD5 will applaud and stomp their feet and send him back to Saint Paul with 20 point margins of victory. Such is life.
But outstate? In parts of Minnesota with functioning two-party systems, where the majority don’t work for government? Especially in parts of the state represented by extremely weak DFLers like Ben Lien?
Winkler, one of the most extreme demigogues in the entire Legislature, needs to try to appear “bipartisan”.
This video was shot by a Winkler staffer at a town hall in Moorhead recently.
So at the start, he says the support for his $9/50/hour minimum wage proposal from a House Select Committee on the minimum wage is “bipartisan”.
Around the 90 second mark, a Town Hall attendee presses Winkler on the support his proposal is receiving – and whether the Republican members of the Select Committee on the Minimum Wage actually signed off on his presentation.
Winkler quickly answers “no” before moving right along.
No wonder why. Here’s the presentation Winkler’s making:
Rep Winkler’s Living Wage Presentation
That it’s full of lefty puffery and junk stats about the minimum wage is no surprise.
But forget about the actual facts for a moment.
Why would Winkler claim “bipartisan support?” This would lmean the Republicans on the Select Committee – Representatives Jenifer Loon, Pat Garofalo and Andrea Kieffer – supported his stance, and the points on his presentation.
Sources say Winkler’s repeating the claim at other town hall meetings where – unlike the Moorhead meeting in the video – nobody’s pressing him on the claim.
Pat Garofalo has spoken against Winkler’s proposal in the House. I talked with Rep. Garofalo – he opposes the $9.50 minimum wage, and has not changed his mind one iota.
And a source close to Representative Loon tells me that not only does Loon not support the $9.50 minimum wage, but that the DFL, possibly including some DFL members of the Select Committee, might not entirely support Winkler.
Finally, I talked with Representative Kieffer. She does not support Winkler’s proposal, and does not approve of the points in the presentation. She’s even written an op-ed on the subject, which has circulated to some local newspapers around the state; it’s below the jump. It flenses Winkler’s claims about the minimum wage in general.
But here’s the money quote from Kieffer in re the “bipartisanship” of Winkler’s support:
First and foremost, the implication that there is “bipartisan” support for his presentation is disingenuous. During meetings that I attend, I consistently voice my concerns to the data presented, ask for more specifics, and maintain that the committee is focusing on the wrong part of the economic picture.
And Kieffer is right.
So why is Ryan Winkler misrepresenting the Select Committee’s position as “bipartisan” support for his proposal around greater Minnesota, when not only are the Republicans not on board, but even the DFL has qualms?
It’s not bipartisan. It’s not even entirely monopartisan!
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Star Tribune says Keith Ellison (D-Minneapolis) is pushing for an increase in the minimum wage to $9.50. This is so obviously idiotic I thought it might be the result of a blow to the head during his recent arrest while protesting in favor of illegal aliens. But no, here’s a Youtube video of him from 2007, beating the same dead horse.
But then I realized he might not be an idiot, he might be a stealth advocate for the Zimbabwe approach to managing the national debt. We just re-value the dollar and we declare minimum wage is now 30 bucks an hour. The dollar becomes worth 1/4 what it had been, the debt becomes manageable for another few months since it’s owed in dollars, not real assets, and we can print as many dollars as we want. Viola, problem solved! Plus, it has the advantage of having been invented in Zimbabwe by Black people, so nobody can oppose it without being racisssss.
Give the man credit, he might be more clever than he looks.
Of course, the long-term result still will be the squalor and despair that is ordinary life in Zimbabwe for everyone who is not In Charge. But to the Obama Administration and its minion, Keith Ellison, that might be viewed as a feature, not a bug.
Joe Doakes
Of course it’s a feature.
The DFL has been doing the same thing with Minneapolis and Saint Paul for decades.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Schools have time and money to send home fat letters, whether the kids actually are fat, or not. Part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign?
Schools have time and money to run prevention programs about cyber-bullying.
But schools graduate little more than half their students. And how many of them actually know anything, versus got passed along by the system?
Plainly, schools need more money. For the children.
Joe Doakes
It’s always worked so well before.
When your liberal friends, or even your less-informed Republican friends start yapping about the imperative to hike the debt limit, have them read this. It’s John Hinderaker, and it points out that the government doesn’t constitutionally have the option to default:
So what will actually happen if Congress doesn’t increase the debt ceiling by approximately October 17? The government’s debt obligations will be paid, but reductions in other spending will start to become necessary. In effect, leaving the debt ceiling as is would function as a spending cut. This is why the Democrats hate the idea so much. They know there is zero chance of default, but they are horrified at the prospect that voters and taxpayers may find out that there is a relatively simple way to bring about spending reductions that would create, in effect, a balanced budget. Hence the hysteria.
And hence the ratcheting rhetoric.
Look for a racial angle any day now.
You are currently browsing the archives for the Democrat Party category.
