SCENE: A “domestic” set in a media production room in DC. Two Staffers, CHAD and JOSHUA, and two Harris staffers, COURTNEY and CLAUDE, are going over footage from an attempt to shoot a video.
COURTNEY: OK, try take 45:
KAMALA HARRIS (on playback) “Hey, I’m Kamala Harris, and I spent the past week or two getting unburdened by what has been, raging on Jäger shots and weapons-grade weed, and trying to…
CLAUDE: That’s not gonna work.
COURTNEY: What else we got?
JOSHUA: Well, let’s just say this ad campaign is…um…
CHAD: Unburdened by a great take.
CLAUDE: Well, I’m afraid that means the best take is…
COURTNEY: 63.
CHAD: Hard to say. She smelled like a three day bender the whole time.
COURTNEY: (shrugs shoulders) Let’s try and see it again.
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”.
Glad they’re learning to love federalism and separation of powers. It’ll be a great precedent when some other Democrat tinpot tries to do a “Mandatory Gun Buyback”.
By the way – doesn’t this seem just a skosh insurrection-y?
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.
Why are Democrats pushing so hard to bring Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia into the union as states?
The answer will become pretty clear in 2032. People are voting red with their feet. And Congress and the Electoral College are going to change.
Texas and Florida appear likely to gain two seats apiece. The Carolinas, Georgia, Arizona, Utah and Idaho are all contenders for another vote apiece.
In the meantime, New York and California appear likely to lose 1-2 seats apiece. Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and West Virginia all appear to be contenders to lose seats.
A swing of as many as (checking my math) nine electoral votes (and House Seats) from the Democrats to the GOP appears likely.
The population of Puerto Rico has about the same as Utah, which has six electoral votes (presuming an honest census – which I do not, but for sake of this argument let’s say it is for bow). DC? Yep – three electoral votes.
Progressives – in this case, a guy who was telling us Joe Biden was stronger and more with it than Chuck Norris in his prime until two hours before Giggle defenestrated him – are not cool with RFK Junior running the DHHS:
The irony…
RFK Jr. is now aiming to dismantle the very agencies and programs his uncle fought tirelessly to fund, like the NIH and Medicaid.
Before his death, Ted Kennedy championed universal health care, calling it “the cause of my life.”
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.
SCENE: In a conference room at the headquarters of Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes, a blindingly Scandinavian-looking suite of offices in a pre-war building in Saint Paul. On one wall, a window looks out on a stunning vista the Mississippi River. Through the other, rows of cubicles staffed by interns making fund-raising calls, as a couple of college-age boys tear down Kamala Harris posters and throw them in the trash.
In the conference room are:
Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, community engagement manager. She’s wearing a blue bracelet.
Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, head meme-buffer. She sports a new, blue Celtic Thorn tattoo on her wrist.
Gretel STROMBERG, executive director. She also has a blue bracelet.
Ken MARTIN, Chair of the MN DFL
Martina ROBBINS, Liaison director for Planned Parenthood of Minnesota. She’s wearing blue bracelets on each wrist.
Chad MANBUNFRONDSON, Democrat National Committee field staffer based in Minneapolis, and current romantic partner of Gretel Stromberg.
MyLissa SILBERMANN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, and no way no how an active participant in regional progressive politics. Her hair is newly-died blue.
All look visibly cried-out.
STROMBERG: OK. So, that could have gone better. But (she says, visibly trying to convince herself), it’s a new day. Onward and upward. What do we say?
EVERYONE (grumbling). We’re not going back.
BIRKENSTOCK (slightly more chipper): Tuuuuurn the page!
(The exhortation is met with grumbles).
STROMBERG: OK. We’re going to get on top of the new plan. Inge?
CARROLL: Yes. We’re going to get women to adopt the “Four Bs – it’s a South Korean trend where women swear off dating, sex, marriage and having kids with men”.
BIRKENSTOCK: I already broke up with my boyfriend.
STROMBERG: I actually ditched my partner .
MANBUNFRONDSON: You what?
STROMBERG: Oh, yeah. I’m not going back…
MANBUNFRONDSON: But…but… (tearing up a bit) Not even if I wear the Schoolgirl outfit?
MARTIN: (a little perplexed). Hang on, Gretel. Isn’t Chad always an ally? I mean, he wears an unironic man-bun and ran White Dudes for Harris of Minnesota…
STROMBERG: The cause is the cause.
(The women all nod. Martin looks around, fall silent. MANBUNFRONDSON leaves the room, in tears)
SILBERMANN: So that means…
CARROLL: No dating. No sex. No marriage. And noooooo babies. None. Complete cut-off.
STROMBERG: Sounds like genius.
(Everyone applauds – even Martin, gingerly – except for ROBBINS)
ROBBINS: Wait. No sex?
CARROLL: Yep. Even for your husband. Sorry.
ROBBINS: Oh, that train left the station five years ago. No, here’s the problem (pulls out iPad, shows it around the table):
Govenor, you called me and half this state “Nazis”.
You will never be my “neighbor”. There will be no forgiveness.
More generally? Call me cynical, but no, he’s not extending an olve branch. He’s rebooting – from two years of absolute power (“When you have political capital, you use it!” was his line when the trifecta started its ravages) to trying to set the stage for having to convince Repblicans to work with him.
And, if I may be even more cynical, to set himself up as the plucky, peace-seeking victim when they shoot down his agenda in total.
And just to be clear – the MN GOP had better shoot down the Walz/DFL agenda like Capone’s guys bouncing the rubble of Bugsy Moran’s crew at the Valentine’s Day Massacre. We’ve waited a long time to be shown an alternative. It’s time.
Not that there’s a lot of doubt – the last Democrat I voted for was in 1996, and that was probably the only one since I voted for my mom in 1984.
But yeah, while Trump isn’t my favorite human on earth, and I wrote in Scott Walker in 2016 and held my nose voting for him in 2020, I’m voting for Trump and Republicans down the ticket for better reasons than usual this time.
Because May Lor Xiong, GOP candidate for CD4, actually shows up in the district.
Because violent crime, even after “dropping” since 2020, is still up by about a third over 2018.
Because there are better ways to reform a police department than gut it.
Because unlike earlier crime waves, this time the governments of Minneapolis and Saint Paul think the criminals have a point…
…and that you’ve kinda got it coming.
To spite everyone in “George Floyd Square”
And “Anti”-Fa
And the Minnespolis Go-Pro Bros.
And all the “pissed off women” trying to turn their emotional instability into a political weapon.
For families trying to make it as families in this messed up world .
To stick it to Deniece Specht and Randi Weingarten.
Because the DFL squandered $19 Billion in “surplus”, which they knew well was not really a surplus in the first place…
…and raised taxes 40%
Because Governor Piglet passively coddled the rioters in 2020.
Because Gwen and Hope Walz actively supported them.
Because Piglet excused the rioters depredations.
Because Ilhan Omar would be tickled pink if Hamas had managed to exterminate all the Jews.
And to whiz on Betty McCollum.
To support the Somali who broke with the DFL last weekend.
To show solidarity with the good Republicans of CD8, who over the past few years turned a solid Democrat district into solid Republican territory…
…and with the folks in CD7, who won’t send another Democrat to DC for generations.
And with the folks in CD1, who have been warning the rest of the nation about Governor Piglet with their votes since he left Congress (they voted for Johnson in 2018 and Jensen in 2022).
Because while I am a forthright non-fan of Donald Trump, he will do much less damage to this nation’s constitutional fabric than Giggles and Piglet.
Because Tim Walz ran on “One Minnesota” – and promptly made it clear he was talking a about authoritarian, forced “unity”.
Because Tim Walz lied about the science during Covid, and then covered it up.
Because Tim Walz had the worst record of any governor regarding long term care patients…
…and nobody dared hold him accountable.
Because Walz created a snitch line.
And because the DFL enacted a thought-crime database.
And the DFL passed a law that protects “attraction to minors” under the MN Human Rights Act.
And while if you are a noncustodial parent who brings your child to Minnesota for a private education, the state will beat you like you owe it money, they will use the State Patrol and the Attorney General’s office to protect your spouse with Munchausens by Proxy, provided they steal your kid to bring them to Minnesota for “gender affirming care” – aka chemical and surgical neutering.
To end the “Trifecta”.
To make Tim Walz a lame duck, and give his successor – Flanagan? Hortman? – an uphill road to getting the office.
To chastize the local media for letting Piglet skate for 20 years with no scrutiny whatsoever.
In the hope of draining the swamp.
To persuade all our vacuous, useless celebrities…
…and overwrought influencers, to actually follow through on moving to Canada (even though, shhh, Canada doesn’t want them).
To drop a Daisy-cutter in the Culture War.
Because a Trump victory will put the entire Star Tribune, KARE11, MPR and WCCO newsrooms on Paxil for the next year. And I’ve got a bunch of Glaxo stock. #WinWin!
Trump believes America is a land of opportunity, not a cesspool of inequity that targets the”outs”
I’m voting for Trump because he hasn’t called me a deplorable.
Or a bitter, gun-clinging Jeebus freak.
Or garbage.
Or a Fascist, or a Nazi.
And he doesn’t represent people who think men are, as a gender, superflous…
…or the enemy.
To show modern academia who’s boss.
Because the Electoral College is a vital part of helping a nation full of people that don’t like each other much, actually function.
Because the threat of the filibuster helps filter out a lot of bad ideas – it’s what stands between us and being a cold Greece.
And because the Supreme Court needs to remain independent of Executive Branch control
Because Trump is a meritocrat, who favors rewarding innovation and entrepreneurship…
…and Democrats are the opposite of that, always.
I’m voting for Peanut the squirrel. Because he can’t…
…although if he lived in Chicago, Newark or Seven Corners, he probably could.
A Harris win will give DEI a new tank of gas.
To teach all of our “best and brightest” that they are responsible for their own “safe spaces”.
Because Piglet passed a universal gun registration program…
…and an “ex-spouse empowerment ” law…
…and supported a bill that would have confiscated 2/3 of all firearms in MInnesota in a generation.
And Kamala Harris wants a forced buyback of AR15s…
…while condescendingly cooing “nobody’s coming for your guns”. There are few things I hate more.
For families – which Democrats are trying to subordinate to the state.
To stick it to Erin Maye Quade.
While tariffs are a bad idea, Trump used them before to enforce good behavior among other nations.
Because “America First” under Trump means looking out for our interests (not our “social purity”) first.
Because I miss a foreign policy where dictators are afraid of us.
Because the border should mean something.
And so should citizenship.
To start the process of pushing progressives back down the route of their “long walk through the institutions”.
To throw a finger at the deep state.
To hopefully compel all those celebs and influencers who wannt to “move to Canada if Trump wins” to do it.
Because any step toward taking the Minnesota executive branch is a step closer to finding out the truth behind our electoral system.
Because under Trump’s first term, the world was a safer place. The world’s tyrants were legitimately worried about that bump in the night, and showed it. There’s a reason Putin, Hamas and Xi held their water from 2017-2021.
And there’s a reason 2021 saw the collapse of Afghanistan, 2022 the invasion of Ukraine, and 2023 the invasion of Israel.
And there’s a reason Israel and Ukraine are ramping up their efforts now; they’ve been worried about a possible win by Giggles and Piglet.
To honor the solidiers of the 1/125 Field Artilllery, who went into the Sandbox without their Command Sergeant Major so Klink could run for Congress.
I’m voting against Giggles and PIglet because they think the road to peace in the Middle East is for Israel to let Hamas re-arm and try again.
And because Trump got the Middle East to the brink of peace, and may just finish the job.
I’m voting Trump for a free Iran. . God willing.
I’m voting Trump so there’s at least a chance the five Americans being held hostage in Gaza right now to come, alive – or ever.
Wages grew way faster than inflation under Trump’s first term. No – way faster.
Because Harris wants to replace Equality with Equity.
Because Harris wants to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on doling out political patronage to people the Democrats want to vote for them.
Because Harris is obsessed with Marxist-style class politics…
…and government spending to rectify the non-problem.
Harris promotes a culture of supporting sustained weakness to enabling strength, economically, and in foreign policy terms.
Because Harris thinks she and Biden put in a good day’s work with the collapse in Afghanistan.
For the 13 servicepeople killed at Bishops Gate….
…and all the Afghans who died trying to get out, and since then (thanks to SmithStCroix).
And all the Afghan women who got stuffed back into burquas afterward.
Because Harris wants to systematize the view that all imbalances are the result of discrimination.
Because the fact that the DNC thought Tim Walz would score votes among regular guys.
To spite “White Dudes for Harris” – the worst piece of patronization I can recall ever.
And to mock “the Handmaid’s Tale” and everyone who refers to it.
Because, whatever you think about the slogan, Trump does believe America is great…
…and will work on a policy level to keep it that way, and
Harris and Walz don’t, and won’t.
And that, right there, is all we should need to know.
Because I want to make Orwell fiction again.
For my kids, who are trying to create a life in the big world…
…and my oldest granddaughter, who spent way too much time locked down in a state of artificial panic…
…and so her little sister never had to go through that again to benefit the DFL.
For everyone immigrant business person burned out during the riots…
…and every business smothered by Piglet’s idiot approach to Covid…
…and every cancer patient who died while Piglet locked down clinics…
…while opening bars and big box stores.
…and every senior – every grandma and great-grandpa – who died, alone, their families barred by the police from visiting them in their final days.
And for my mother, whom I didn’t dare move to Minnesota after her husband died, leaving her in a memory care in North Dakota for six miserable month.
For that alone, I need no more reason. Fuck Tim Walz, and anyone who puts him on a ticket.
Here’s your state rep, Luke Frederick, comparing people of faith to slave holders for dissenting from the left on trans ideology:
Another Minnesota Democrat, Rep. Luke Frederick, displaying open contempt for religious testifiers at a House committee today who asked that their religious liberty be protected against claims of gender identity discrimination. Frederick compared the testifiers to those who… pic.twitter.com/n2UY2Dmv7c
Please shock the world on election day, and send this hamster back to whatever coffee shop he was working at before he latched onto the DFL gravy train.
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”…
Rep Dave Pinto, arguing AGAINST hiking the penalty for straw purchasers, says that criminals are not charged under the existing law because it is only a gross misdemeanor and not a felony.
Rep. Scott's bill would have increased the penalty from a gross misdemeanor to a felony. pic.twitter.com/LwZLdk6QX0
— MN House GOP Rapid Response (@MNHRCWarRoom) March 14, 2024
…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.
Visited a different church this weekend, and heard a new song. The musicians on stage played and sang. The congregation was instructed to shout, “That’s My King” when appropriate. Like all modern churches, they have giant tv screens hanging above the stage showing the words. I’ll skip to the part of the song that I found interesting:
That’s my God That’s my shepherd My protector That’s my king
That’s my rock That’s my anchor My defender That’s my king
Most Americans think of “king” as a picture on a playing card, not a part of the government. We mistakenly believe Our Precious Democracy is the ultimate form of government. I think that’s simplistic and dangerous. The Seventeenth Amendment, the effort to pack the Supreme Court, the demand to abolish the electoral college, these all move us away from checks-and-balances and toward absolute rule by whomever counts the ballots.
One need only look to the French Revolution to see why pure mob rule is a terrible idea. Elections aren’t everything – Hitler, Castro and Putin won their elections, too. Ben Franklin quipped: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner.” Robert Heinlein wrote: “A king is the people’s only protection against tyranny . . . especially against the worst of all tyrants, themselves.”
Throughout history before the Constitution, the most common form of government was kingship, partly because Might Makes Right, but also partly because Stability Brings Order. The subjects owe allegiance to their king, sure, but as the song from church points out, kings have a responsibility to their subjects, to protect them from enemies foreign and domestic. When there’s a vacancy on the throne, there’s chaos in foreign relations and confusion in domestic politics. That’s one reason some Founders wanted George Washington to agree to be king. He was a natural leader and a gracious gentleman whom ordinary people could admire and respect.
Looking around at the chaos caused by the vacant Rose Garden Throne in America today, and considering the two contestants for the office, only one strikes me as the sort of leader who can inspire people to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and get busy restoring this nation to greatness. Only one of them is fit to be king.
Joe Doakes
Some historian – I forget who – described the British monarchy of myth, from its origins until probably the 1600s, as the old-world equivalent of Mafia factions duking it out for the position of Capo di Tutti Capi, only with no FBI to prevent slop-over to the wider society. It took over 400 years, from the Magna Carta to the bitter end of the English Civil War, to turn the British monarchy into the most relatively small-l liberal significant monarchy (shaddap about Denmark) in the modern world.
And the greatest glory of the American experiment was that we were able to not only short-circuit that 400 years of dynastic tree-pruning and blood-batheing, but do it via elections and an orderly process, and implement it in 15 short years and keep it running smoothly for almost 250.
Who’s the best choice to try to keep that record going?
SCENE: In a conference room at the MN DFL headquarters. Chair Ken Martin is sitting along one side of the table with Gretel STROMBERG and Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, the executive director and chief social media meme-buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”, the state’s primary non-profit political action committee that is no way, no how connected with the DFL, you racist pig. Across the table sits Chad MANBUNFRONDSON, upper midwest outreach director for the Harris/Walz campaign
MANBUNFRONDSON: So for some reason the Harris/Walz campaign is having trouble among men, especially whyte men.
I don’t need a lot of reasons not to vote for Kamala Harris next week. I’ve documented many of them.
She’s vapid.
World leaders – the ones that aren’t really just French or British or German version of her, anyway (including the Cartel leaders, who are the de facto leaders of Mexico and are world leaders in a sense in their own right) – have contempt for her, and are clearly drooling at the things they’ll be able to get away with if the American people screw this up.
The policies she does support are disasters, for the economy, liberty and the American republic.
She’s not a lot better at assembling a coherent thought than Biden, or go offscript without screwing up than Trump.
And that’s enough.
But it ain’t everything.
She’s got a pretty tenuous grasp of right and wrong.
The LIttle Girl Who Cried “Hitler”
Out of useful ideas, the Giggles/Piglet camaign is resorting to perhaps the Dems’ most loathsome trope: their opponents are “Nazis” and “Fascists”.
Auschwitz Survivor, Jerry Wartski: “I know more about Hitler than Kamala will ever know in a thousand lifetimes. For her to accuse President Trump of being like Hitler is the worst thing I've ever heard in my 75 years of living in the United States." pic.twitter.com/KXwCr9Gz8L
I stay pretty relentlessly civil – but there is nothing more loathsome, in part because it trivializes one of the most evil ideologies in history to try to win votes from stupid people.
For which she should rot.
Then there’s the little matter of her own little problem with authoritarianism.
“My Authoritaaaaaaaaah”
Giggles clearly enjoys the perks – the power – of being in office.
And flexing that power – especially against those who can’t defend themselves against her:
One of the most brutal ads you’ve ever seen against a politician. Wow. Just watch. 🔥🔥🔥 https://t.co/pPhtYARzwJ
During a hearing to repeal abortion regulations, including protections for infants who survive abortions, Rep. Scott asks Rep. Liebling when a baby becomes a human. Rep Liebling calls the question “completely irrelevant.” pic.twitter.com/Il8oCUODcH
A newly released analysis of fiscal policy ranked all 50 states with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ state coming in first and Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in last.
The libertarian Cato Institute released the report, which graded states by spending, revenue and taxes. The top ten states in the rankings starting at the top are Iowa, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, South Dakota, Montana, Hawaii, Georgia, Idaho, and Vermont…
In 2019, Walz’s budget would have added ‘$2 billion more in new spending and taxes would increase by $1.3 billion to pay for it, with the rest of the money coming from an existing surplus.’ But he compromised with the legislature, and the final tax increase was about $330 million annually. Walz also pushed for higher gas taxes and higher vehicle fees to raise about $1 billion annually for transportation, but those increases were rejected.
Walz pushed for more tax hikes in 2021. He proposed adding a new individual income tax rate of 10.85 percent above the current top rate of 9.85 percent, a surtax on capital gains and dividends, and a hike to the corporate tax rate from 9.8 percent to 11.25 percent. The proposals—which would have raised about $1.6 billion annually—were rejected by the legislature…
Walz hit the middle class with HF 2887, which raised taxes and fees on vehicles and transportation. The increases included indexing the gas tax for inflation, increasing vehicle registration taxes, raising fees on deliveries, and raising sales taxes in the Twin Cities area.
SCENE: In a conference room at the MN DFL headquarters. Chair Ken Martin is sitting along one side of the table with Gretel STROMBERG and Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, the executive director and chief social media meme-buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Conservative Causes”, the state’s primary non-profit political action committee that is no way, no how connected with the DFL, you racist pig. Across the table sits Chad MANBUNFRONDSON, upper midwest outreach director for the Harris/Walz campaign.
MANBUNFRONDSON: So here’s the new ad we’re thinking to get out the vote in Minnesota.
(MARTIN, CARROLL and STROMBERG look at each other. The silence is a little awkward).
MARTIN (finally): It’s pure genius!
(CARROLL and STROMBERG applaud politely in the background)
MANBUNFRONDSON: We just figured that after seeing her husband’s performance during Covid, where treating the state like a bunch of addled infants for 19 months got him re-elected, that we literally couldn’t go broke betting on the stupidity of MInnesotans.
STROMBERG and CARROLL (simultaneously): You got that right.
MANBUNFRONDSON: So, presuming the media vetted the Governor and his wife sufficiently…
(MARTIN, CARROLL and STROMBERG look awkwardly at each other. before bursting out laughing. MANBUNFRONSON, late to the joke, joins them).
MANBUNFRONSON: (Catching is breath) Yeah, I know. No matter how often I come here, I still can’t get used to this place.
MARTIN (Summoning a butler with a clap of his hands): Let’s celebrate!
And People can vote for whoever they want to. It’s still a fairly free country.
But I’ve had a few people in my circle say they’re voting for Harris and Walz to “save democracy”.
When I read that ,I try to grasp how much one must ignore – willfully or not – to believe that Harris and Walz [2] support the American republican (small-r) system of popular, federalist government.
How do I count the ways?
1. Harris wants to abolish the Filibuster.
So what, you say? The filibuster gets in the way of “Getting things done?”
That’s the point. Most of what makes America great is that unless there is *overwhelming* agreement about something, it’s either going to get watered down, or just go away.
And that’s a good thing – a 50%+1 vote majority can’t jam everything it wants down on the other 49%. Both sides are *accountable*, and both sides *matter*.
WIthout the filibuster, the US will turn into France or Greece – with policies seesawing back and forth with changes in power.
Getting rid of the filibuster destroys a key pillar of trying to run a country where people don’t necessarily always agree with, or even like, each other.
Governor Walz, for his part, ran a snitch line, and signed into law a “thoughtime database”. There is no way for a citizen to get *into* the database or find out what’s in it.
It’s not just Harris, and it isn’t just statements from 2019:
Which is, literally, a promise to disinform the public.
If a Republican had done anything of the sort, Democrats would be screaming about the “chilling effect on dissent and democracy” that is.
*And they’d be right*.
3. Harris supports gutting the 2nd and 4th Amendments.
Since you’ll ask – the 1st and 2nd Amendments *are* litmus tests to me. How someone treats your right to speak, your freedom of conscience, to organize, and to protect your life, family, property, community and freedom, tells you a lot about how they’d treat other civil rights.
My whole life, the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) has been left-of-center or (from about 2000 to 2017) pretty much deadlocked. Democrats were fine with that – “elections have consequences”. So we conservatives got some good SCOTUS appointments – and the Democrats are going crazy:
https://kamalaharris.com/issues/
“[Harris] will also support common-sense Supreme Court reforms—like requiring Justices to comply with ethics rules that other federal judges are bound by and imposing term limits—to address the crisis of confidence facing the Supreme Court.”
And who’s going to enforce those rules and limits?
The executive branch.
The Supreme Court, which is supposed to check and balance the power of the Executive and Legislative branches, will become subordinate to the President; the executive branch will be able to yank the leash of any justice that displeases them.
If you don’t think that’s a direct attack on how “democracy” is run, I’d love to hear how.
The Electoral College (EC), along with the structure of the Senate, was part of the agreement that smaller states – Delaware, Rhode Island, Vermont – made with the bigger ones (Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York) to ensure that American “democracy” wouldn’t turn into the equivalent of “two foxes and a chicken voting on what’s for breakfast”.
Without the EC, the President will always be decided by California, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas and maybe Ohio. There will be no need for Presidential candidates to even show up outside those states.
And it’d violate the contract by which the smaller states agreed to share power with the Federal Government. And what happens when you violate a contract? [3]
6. And all of that is just about “protecting democracy itself”.
It doesn’t get into the many other reasons I could never support Harris or Walz.
– A foreign policy that *enables and encourages* the likes of Xi, Putin and the Mullahs. Diplomacy only works if it’s combined with the sense that there’s a nasty surprise behind it. Harris – the “last person in the room” – has been involved in more Biden administration fiascoes than any human should be allowed to; the Afghan collapse, Ukraine (Biden publicly told Putin he could invade *just a little* [4]), and the conflagration in the MIddle East (hint: saying “Israel has a right to exist, BUT they need to give Hamas and Hezb’allah a cease fire so they can re-arm, reorganize and try to exterminate Jews again later is *not* a coherent policy).
(Trump, for all his flaws, brought more progress than the Middle East has seen since 1978. Harris and Biden are benefitting, btw, from that – the fact that the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordan aren’t joining in with Iran against the Israelis is something kind of new.)
And for all the palaver about Trump “disrespecting” NATO, it served its purpose – starting NATO on the path toward becoming a serious defensive military alliance, rather than yet another bureaucratic salon.
Look, Trump is far from perfect – I didn’t vote for him in 2016, and I remain a Trump skeptic on many levels. I can’t stand his personality cult (or any personality cult in politics).
But January 6 was a riot, and even the FBI has cleared Trump of any substantial involvement. His statements about the 2020 election were way out of line…
…BUT even if Trump *was* trying to undercut democracy, our federalist system *did its job*, exactly as designed. In the grand scheme of things, nothing Trump did (or was alleged to have done) affected the handover of power, or the functioning of our institutions.
But the things Harris is proposing [5]? They WOULD change how our democracy works. Very much for the worse. They are a bigger threat to American self-government than anything Trump did, and certainly more than anything he’s *seriously(* proposed doing [6].
Joy doesn’t keep the world safe. Brat vibes don’t put food on the table. The American federalist system is stronger than mean tweets.
So I’m voting for Trump – *to protect our democracy”.
(PS – I’m a relentlessly civil guy. But responding with one of those passive-aggressive “laugh” emojis is going to get you called out).
[1] But everyone else is doing it, so sue me. Not literally, of course. It’s still a free-ish country – Walz’s “thoughtcrime” database notwithstanding.
[2] When I say “Harris” or “Walz”, I’m also including plenty of prominent Democrats who are likely to be influential in any administration they run.
[3] “Haha, Merg. That was settled in 1865!”. Well, no. It was settled in 1776.
[4] The “Just the tip” of diplomacy – and as we’ve seen this past two years, it’s worked about as well on the world stage as it did after prom.
[5] Saying “That was 2019! She’s changed!” ain’t gonna cut it. She herself says “My principles haven’t changed”. And if you’re holding things Trump said in 2006, in completely different contexts, against him, we need to have a word about this.
[6] And if you come back and say “he SAID he wants to be a dictator on day one!”, that was yet another dishonest edit. He’s going to roll back a slew of Biden executive orders, and reinstate a few of his own – all legitimate Presidential duties. Getcher shinebox.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking to a GOP fundraiser in one of the Twin Cities. He walks around a corner and almost slams into a distracted Avery LIBRELLE.
BERG: Er, excuse me…oh, hi, Aver…
LIBRELLE: Shut up Merg. Drumpf did a completely fake staged appearance at that McDonalds!
BERG: Huh. A politician doing a staged, fake appearance for purely political reasons?
LIBRELLE: Yes and…hey, the world is going cloudy. What’s up?
For a while, after winning complete lopsided electoral sweeps in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, the DFL victory parties would break out into chanting the line in the title.
Ownership has its privileges, as they way – but local DFLers sure seem to be squiggling away from any responsibility for that ownership.
A friend of the blog emails:
It was a town hall meeting to talk about the mess that is the Hamline Midway Neighborhood. The question was what is the city doing with Snelling University. The corner is so trashy, there is litter everywhere.
Our council member for the area, Mitra Jalali, proposes that the priority is trees and bicycle lanes.
She says it’s either that or a place for people to park their cars.
I mean, I suppose if we eventually get rid of all of the residents and businesses in the area, then no people will be there, thereby eliminating litter.
But, I have to believe, looking towards the thriving areas of St Louis Park’s West End or the shopping area in Eagan that Jalali is probably prioritizing the wrong thing.
All of Melo’s reporting of quotes on X from that meeting are pretty entertaining as the elected people try to dodge any responsibility for where we are today in St Paul.
This tweet is one from a rather large thread on the meeting. Worth a read.
Thats right, Councilwoman Jalali – it’s the design of the streets.
I’m adding emphasis to this next bit:
Worth looking at- Sandy Pappas saying she actually rides Green Line (but was getting a ride home from husband after the meeting). Leigh Finke saying that millions of dollars were given to DNR for trees and “they spent it in outstate which didn’t need it” so this year, gave “even more money” to Met Council “who has to spend it in the metro area.”
Yup, our problems are not enough trees …
Until the city gets serious about crime, drug-dealing, vagrancy and vandalism – all of which are epidemic at Snelling and University – the new trees would just serve as canvasas for taggers.
Sort of like that freaking Loon at the southwest corner of the intersection.
