Between them, Marco Rubio and O. J. Simpson have killed two people.
Among them, Marco Rubio and Bernie Madoff scammed people out of $20 billion.
Together, Marco Rubio and the Minnesota Vikings have lost four Super Bowls.
Marco Rubio and Keith Ellison have, together, 40 unpaid parking tickets and 11 moving violations.
Get right on that.
What? Donald Trump running for President again?
Good lord, who the hell cares?
Well, Kevin Williamson does, if only long enough to write the title of the day for yesterday:
Oh, yeah -and an article worthy of the title.
Enough is enough.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
My neighbor just renewed her Permit to Vote. She’s good to go for another five years.
You didn’t know about that? Oh yes, it turns out that voting is not a Right protected by the Constitution, it’s a Privilege given by the government to those who qualify. Applicants must be over 21 years of age, reside in this country legally, take a class at personal expense, demonstrate proper technique before a certified evaluator, show photo ID and submit an application with payment of fees to the County, authorize release of medical data and criminal history . . . it’s fairly involved, requires planning ahead and costs a bit of money. But the permit is necessary to ensure the integrity of the election process which is the foundation of American government, so it’s a common sense voter-control requirement.
Wait, did I say Vote? I meant Carry. Sorry, my bad.
Joe Doakes
This could lead to all sort of “Vote Safety” legislation
Congrats!
After a couple of years of diligent reporting about the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and Saint Paul’s coverup of priests’ involvement in sexual abuse of minors (especially by MPR), you have convinced the Vatican to completely toss the Archdioce’s leadership.
Bully.
Now, when the scent of that glorious celebration (at the Amsterdam? WA Frost? The Lex?) has faded from your journalistic nostrils, we’ve got a couple more stories for you to cover.
Bill Clinton, beloved of our cultural elites (including most of you in the media, whom he treated like the old pals you longed to be), has been linked at the hip with an industrial-grade pedophile.
And the AP found that 2,500 teachers have have been punished for one degree of sexual abuse of students or another in the past five years. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve not heard of any time at which 500 priests per year were being rung up on sexual abuse charges. Have you?
You’ve spent the past couple years investigating the tolerance of tolerance of sexual abuse in high places within a major institution. Well, we’ve got another major institution for you to look into, and involvement in still more in some very high places to dig into.
Never let it be said I’m not here to help.
Sales figures for the first couple of days for Trulbert: A Comic Novella about the End of the World As We Know It are coming in:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#5,713 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
#16 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political
#31 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Political
#77 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Humor & Satire > General Humor
I guess that means I’ve made at least one best-seller list…
Fresch Fisch, from Saint Paul, emails:
Currently happening, June 11 to 16. Alexandria MN. 5600 students high school Trap students participating in the MN High School Clay Target Championships! Six full days, six divisions, 900+ students per day.
You say, just what does the largest shooting competition in the world look like? A drone’s eye view!
I was there Sunday and it was totally awesome.
Not only is it the fastest growing high school sport in Minnesota and America, but it gives the world’s Bloombots acid reflux.
And that alone is an unalloyed good.
I heard Steve “Spotty” Timmer on the lesser talk station the other day. He’s leading a “movement” to petition Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk to resign his leadership role.
Now, I periodically refer to regional progressive bloggers as “people who don’t belong under police surveillance. And how about those Twins?
However, if you are a Minnesota progressive, Timmer is exactly right. You need to excise Tom Bakk from power forthwith, or all of your “progressive” chatter is just baked wind.
You must rise up and remove Bakk from power by all means necessary.
Accept nothing less than progressive perfection!
Get on this, folks. It’s vital.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
We are informed that Sex is biology – XX chromosomes, female, XY chromosomes, male – but the Genders “man” and “woman” are a social construction. One may be born male but feel like a woman trapped in a man’s body. Since Gender is only a social construct, an individual can change it. Changing one’s gender in the face of cultural bigotry is bravery . See: Bruce Jenner.
We are informed that Race does not exist – there are individual genes for characteristics such as skin color or eye folds – but Race itself is merely a social construction. Therefore, logically, it must be possible to be born looking like one “race” but feel like another “race” trapped in the wrong skin. And since Race is only a social construct, an individual should be able to change it. See: Rachel Dolezal.In the olden days, Black people tried to “pass” as White so they could get better education, jobs and awards. Nowadays, White people try to “pass” as American Indians or Blacks . . . so they can get better education, jobs and awards. That’s what makes the Twitter account #wrongskin so interesting. Godfrey Elfwick claims to be a Black Woman trapped in a White Man’s body and therefore entitled to stand in solidarity with Rachel and by implication, to claim the benefits currently reserved for Blacks. The comments are illuminating, as he applies the same “logic” on his critics that is accepted without question when used by trans-gender advocates.Whether #wrongskin is a parody of the present or an intimation of future, it illustrates the wisdom of Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote in 2007: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” If society didn’t base education, jobs and benefits on race, nobody would bother trying to “pass.” Then, and only then, will The Dream come true.
Joe Doakes
I’m just going to call myself a trans-superathlete, rather than a cis-schlub.
It’s become an article of faith among some conservatives that Islam is, always and forever, an aggressive, threatening, dangerous faith.
And it’s true that there are aspects of Islam that are giving large swathes of the world headaches (I’m a master of understatement) right about now.
Of course, those critics ignore the broad swathes of the planet where Muslims coexist just fine with the rest of the world. India, Indonesia, Bosnia, Senegal are all places where Islam is not synonymous with unrest, extremism and anger.
And now, Turkey – a majority Muslim country which many in the west had seen as sliding into the Wahhabi fold in recent years – has staved off the Islamists under Recep Erdogan, dishing out serious electoral losses to his Islamist party and forcing him to moderate is once-concerning rhetoric.
It appears Turkey’s experienced voters, the beneficiaries of Ataturk’s vision, gave a would-be strongman a lesson.
Erdogan began as a reformer pursuing free market economic reforms and battling corruption. For a decade (roughly 2003-13), Turkey’s economy grew. He was popular. However, he also used his single-party majority to collect and solidify power for himself and his close supporters.
At times, the reform mask fell, revealing a bully with a penchant for jailing critical journalists and using highly questionable prosecutorial tactics to jail respected senior army officers on vague charges of terrorism.
Erdogan was on the verge of becoming Turkey’s biggest political problem, which is why his loss of majority control has enormous implications.
He sought a two-thirds AKP parliamentary majority. He then could have amended the constitution and imposed a powerful presidency on the political system. Opposition parties feared Erdogan’s goal was imposing by insidious osmosis — “rule by the big man’s whim” — for who would have become this empowered super-president bossing a less democratic and ever-more majoritarian government? Why, the fellow whom critics refer to as Sultan Recep. Prior to the June 7 election, the AKP had 327 seats in Parliament. Based on the most recent count, it now holds 258, far short of two-thirds. Single-party government control in Turkey requires 276 seats.
Erdogan had his positive aspects; he was an economic conservative, by European standards, and Turkey’s economy showed it.
But his drive toward being an Islamist strongman was justly concerning, as was any traction he gained among Turkish voters…
…which, it seems, may have turned.
The lesson for right now? Islam and secular democracy can coexist, although there are tensions.
Just like in any other democracy.
When I first got involved in politics, and political punditry, 30 years ago the gun control movement was pretty much at its apex.
The media glibly reported that “85% of Americans favored gun control” (although naturally they never broke out what form of gun control those 85% favored).
Accurate and honestly reported or not, the surveys had a point; a plurality, if not a majority, of Americans were uncomfortable around guns.
I’m not exactly sure what the answer to this poll question would’ve been in 1985 – but the verdict today is unmistakable:
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% of Likely U.S. Voters would feel safer living in a neighborhood where nobody was allowed to own a gun over one where they could have a gun for their own protection. Sixty-eight percent (68%) would feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed, while 10% are not sure.
The national survey of 977 Likely Voters was conducted on June 8-9, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
This poll is not grounds for complacency, much less overconfidence.
But it does show how powerful at least one facet of conservative ideology can be, when a group of motivated grassroots people search their minds to it, and devotes the time and patience it takes to make the changes stick.
Welcome, Instapundit Readers! Thanks for stopping by! By the way, one of Glenn’s commenters referenced “Berg’s Law” – here they are.
My first book, Trulbert, hits Amazon on Monday; it’ll be available for Kindle and compatible e-book readers.
The book asks the rhetorical question “What if the world shrugged before Atlas did?”
What if every Libertarian purist, every anarchist, everyone who ever walked out of an IRS audit, got their fondest wish, and – poof – government disappeared overnight? What would happen?
Would the world spontaneously sort itself into a functioning order, and society – now the assortment of individual, autonomous bits of pure reason that some of the Founders dreamed of – prosper and be perfectly happy? Would mankind spontaneously order the world into the Best Possible one?
Or would the baser impulses of human nature – laziness, demagoguery, evil, or unfamiliarity with the works of Ludwig Von Mises – rot the utopia from the outside in?
The book explores those questions through mankind’s greatest analytical tool – broad, tongue-in-cheek hamfisted satire.
The book takes place from the perspective of a group of neighbors in South Minneapolis:
Together, these people and a cast of thousands navigate a world where the old assumptions are as obsolete as an iPhone 3, and are changing faster than Google’s definition of “evil”; a world with simultaneously no authority and infinite power.
A world pretty much like ours, only upside down.
Trulbert: A Comic Novella about the End of the World As We Know It is available for pre-order today and tomorrow, and will be released on Amazon on Monday!
King Solutions website is right here. Ask for Mike Patterson.
And here’s where to pre-order Trulbert: A Comic Novella about the End of the World As We Know It, on Amazon. You don’t need a Kindle to read it – there are other apps available.
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on from 1-3PM today!
Today on the show,
Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
One of the state officials responsible for “crafting” Minnesota’s medical marijuana law…
…is taking over at one of Minnesota’s new medical marijuana companies:
A Health Department official charged with overseeing Minnesota’s medical marijuana program has been hired away by one of the state’s new cannabis corporations.
LeafLine Labs, which is growing half the state’s supply of medical marijuana, announced Thursday that it had tapped Assistant Health Commissioner Manny Munson-Regala as its new chief executive.
“I’m thrilled,” LeafLine co-founder Dr. Andrew Bachman said Thursday. “I have incredible respect for Manny and he has helped to motivate and inspire our organization in this journey.”
And doesn’t this response seem just a little… precious to you?:
Munson-Regala, who had been overseeing the rollout of the Office of Medical Cannabis for the better part of the year, said his reaction when LeafLine approached him last Wednesday was a startled, “What?” In the end, he was attracted to the idea of helping to build a fledgling industry that sits “at the intersection of public policy and health.”
And in the clutch almost reads like a journalistic “April fools” joke, state official is quoted as saying Munson-Regal didn’t make any decisions about medical marijuana “in the past week”.
Well, then…
A woman in Detroit shows why magazine limits lead to dead innocent civilians:
DETROIT, MICHIGAN — Around 3am Tuesday morning, 5 men entered a Detroit home, however they became quickly aware that they picked the wrong house.
The 34-year-old woman inside the home is a concealed carry permit holder, and she wasted no time firing on the suspects. The suspects ended up exchanging shots with the woman, and she suffered a gunshot wound to her leg.
Of course, being a news media story, it is entirely focused on irrelevancies – she was in her house, so her carry permit was irrelevant.
The real point is this; sometimes thugs are the obliging enough to come to you in ones and twos.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Just got this email from Administration:
***
If you plan to attend the employee BBQ and haven’t responded, please do so by tomorrow at 4:30pm so we have a count for food. Please bring your $5 to [redacted] or I by Wednesday June [redacted]. We will have beef, turkey and veggie hot dogs to choose from.
***
I notice the hot-dog menu is Pork-Free, no doubt in sensitivity to our Jewish and Muslim staff. They’re having trouble getting turnout from everybody else. Wonder why?
Joe Doakes
You mean people pay attention to the meat that’s in hot dogs?
SCENE: Mitch BERG is picking out a cordless drill at Menard’s. Egbert FLEGEL, Chairmain of Liberty Uber Alles Minnesota, almost literally bumps into BERG.
FLEGEL: Hey, Merg.
BERG: Hey, Egbert. What’s new?
FLEGEL: Oh, we’re just carrying on the fight for liberty. We’re about to put together the Liberty Uber Alles 2015 scorecard on the Minnesota Legislature.
BERG: Ah. So what issues does the scorecard focus on?
FLEGEL: Well, the Minnesota GOP got in the way of restoration of felon rights, marijuana legalization, raw milk legalization, they didn’t fight hard enough against photo license readers, they stood in the way of marjuana legalization, they dropped the ball on data deletion, they didn’t work hard enough to kill the “Kingfisher” cell-phone-eavesdropping system, they didn’t fight hard enough for Constitutional Carry, they didn’t do enough to atone for opposing gay marriage, they didn’t work for marijuana legalization, they’re still pro-life, they allowed the DFL Senate and Governor to increase the budget, they didn’t decriminalize Marijuana, they failed to legalize gambling, they failed to roll back the taxpayer subsidies of stadiums, they didn’t roll back property forfeiture, and they didn’t legalize marijuana.
BERG: Huh. Not very liberty-friendly.
FLEGEL: Nope!
BERG: How about the DFL?
FLEGEL: The who?
And SCENE.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The newest racial incident involving police:
I had to laugh early in the tape when I heard a girl with a Black accent yell at a cop “I’m calling my mother on you.”
Honey, if you had a Mother worthy of the title, you wouldn’t be threatening to call her on the cops; you’d be praying to God the cops didn’t call her on YOU.
If I went home and said: “Mom, the cops were mean to me at the race riot,” I’m dead certain her response would NOT be: “Those dirty sons of guns, oppressing your First Amendment Rights, we’ll sue them.”
I’m dead certain her response would be: “You went to a race riot? What the Hell is wrong with you? Wait till your Father gets home.”
Of course, I had a Mother who gave a damn and a Father who came home. I guess I need to check my privilege.
Joe Doakes
The “Texas pool party” incident has been interesting on a couple of levels.
Counting Those Chickens: The burgeoning “Cops are guilty until proven innocent, because Video!” crowd that is so in vogue on the left and among some Libertarians should get some pause with this case, as it seems – if you believe the pushback from the police union, anyway – that there was a big ugly incident before the video starts, with trespassing and fighting and assaults, which the local, mostly black, residents called in to the police.
I said “Should”. They won’t, of course. Dogma means never having to say you’re sorry.
Pathology Verging On A Berg’s Law: As we’ve learned after every high-profile mass-shooting, as well as after every controversial, racially-tinged event in recent years; the mainstream media will get all the basic facts wrong for the first 2-3 weeks. Any impression of any ambiguous event will be colored by the fact that the mainstream media – everyone from CNN to MPR – will, without exception, be simultaneously be playing the story for sensationalist ratings, and have coverage that is entirely at the mercy of sources who are in the bag for one side of the story or another (and that side is usually the “progressive” one).
The media won’t give honest coverage to a story like this, or Ferguson, or Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, until it’s not a “sexy” headline-grabber anymore.
Hobby Horses: Don’t get me wrong. I have a serious beef with bad cops – and lazy, entitled and incompetent ones, too. I’ve encountered some of each in my time in Saint Paul – along with good, even excellent, ones who came through when my family and I really needed it.
And I understand why young (and not-so-young) black males and their supporters are concerned about prejudice and the dangers it brings. I say this while remembering that young black males do commit a disproportionate amount of crime.
And, most interestingly, while the “Cops are guilty until proven innocent” crowd has a thin veneer of urban activists, that veneer is wrapped around a lot of white liberals – and, increasingly, libertarians, who, God bless ’em, are as white as it gets.
More interesting still? I’ve seen research that shows black inner-city residents support aggressive, strong policing. Not every aspect of it, and not everything aggressive cops do, of course – but they, the people who live daily with the worst that urban culture provides, tend to want the cops to have a solid, aggressive (and fair, and just, and even-handed) presence in the neighborhood.
As with most such stories? I’m pretty much sick and tired of everyone.
I got this in the mail from Minnesota’s largest Iowa-based gun rights group:
Dear Helmut,
SHUT UP AND GO AWAY.
That’s the message supposedly “pro-Second Amendment” State House Leaders in St. Paul are sending to Second Amendment supporters all over Minnesota on Stand-Your-Ground.
Now, I’m counting on you to remind them who they were elected to represent in the first place!
Of course, as we noted a few weeks back, Minnesota’s legislature not only passed five fairly important pieces of Second Amendment human rights legislation – Permit Reciprocity, barring confiscations during emergencies, eliminating the capitol felony trap, and legalizing federally-permitted suppressors and buying long guns in non-contiguous states – but they passed it with a bipartisan majority in both chambers, including the DFL-controlled Senate, and Governor Dayton signed it. He’d promised to veto any bill including legalized suppressors, but – here’s the amazing part – he was actually convinced, in a rational, factual, lucid discussion with a Second Amendment activist, to change his mind.
Let’s make sure we’re clear on this: the Governor flipped on suppressors after a second amendment activist who’d spent years building relationships at the capitol got a five minute window to argue the case.
Not by stomping and banging the table.
Which brings us back to the letter, from “Minnesota Gun Rights'” Chris Dorr:
The truth is, after the results of the 2014 elections –-where gun-grabbers were defeated in droves at the polls — I know many Second Amendment supporters were counting on the new House majority to keep their promises to defend and advance critical self-defense legislation. . .
Which, as noted above, they did.
But that’s apparently not what the letter is about:
But just recently, several Minnesota State Representatives signed an open letter plastered all over Minnesota’s political blogs stating Stand-Your-Ground was going nowhere!
I can’t tell you how incensed I became when I read this open letter!
Mr. Dorr – please do tell us how incensed you were.
Also, please tell us about this letter that said “Stand Your Ground” was dead. Because I can only remember one open letter from legislators this past session; this one.
And I’d love to know what you’re talking about, since “Stand your Ground” wasn’t really on the agenda this session. The Governor vetoed it, and after a year of propaganda after the Trayvon Martin circus, it’s kinda a hard sell in a DFL-led Senate. It’ll be back, someday – ideally with a pro-Second-Amendment Senate and Governor.
‘Til then, it’s just…well, stomping your feet and pounding your desk.
Of course, I know many weak-kneed and anti-gun politicians hate organizations like Minnesota Gun Rights because we don’t cut smoky backroom deals, or hit the cocktail circuit with them at the state capital.
Y’see, Chris, that’s the kind of talk that impresses people who’ve never had to try to convince a politician, or a voter, to change their vote.
In fact, the only “convincing” that Minnesota Gun Rights has done this past session was to persuade 16 pro-Second-Amendment legislators that MGR was all flannel shirt and no Paul Bunyan:
Included in the list are all the authors of all five Second Amendment bills that passed. And Tony Cornish, the chair of the House Public Safety committee, who shepherded all five bills through the House unscathed, and a genuine Second Amendment hero in Minnesota.
And – let’s let this sink in for a moment – Steve Drazkowski, author of our last Stand Your Ground Bill.
The bill that Minnesota Gun Rights is wrapping itself in in this letter.
And now, the call to action:
That’s why I’m counting on your IMMEDIATE action.
With session out, the time to identify, prepare and mobilize for 2016 is now, and I’m determined to turn up the heat like never before…
That would actually be entirely accurate; any actual heat from MGR on the issue would be unprecedented.
…with a massive program, including:
>>> Generating 25,000 YOU WORK FOR US! petitions from all over Minnesota insisting the State Legislature passes Stand-Your-Ground;
>>> Using email, social media and Internet ads to mobilize an additional 10,000 Minnesotans from all over the state;
>>> Working the blogs and granting media interviews to explain exactly why Stand-Your-Ground would make Minnesota freer and safer;
In other words, stuff that any guy can do for free, on Facebook and via email.
>>> Paying for hard-hitting radio, newspaper and internet ads to ensure politicians are feeling the most heat right before they’re forced to vote.
Which brings up an interesting question.
“Minnesota Gun Rights” has been raising a lot of money for a long time now. In the 2014 cycle, they dropped literature in one district (Roz Peterson’s), which had no discernible effect on the race, and a few in Ron Latz’s utterly safe DFL district, which was really more of a frat prank than a campaign activity. Reportedly, four of them, airing on one day before the election, on AM1130 – 99% of whose audience would vote pro-Second Amendment no matter what. For a grand total of about $800-1,000. Not “before they were forced to vote”, but before election day.
For all that fundraising, we get Facebook, a few reams of literature, and one day’s worth of radio ads targeting people who are going to vote pro-gun anyway.
For this, they’re fundraising?
So please sign your YOU WORK FOR US! petition and submit it to me along with your most generous contribution of $100, $50, $30 or at least $10!
For Freedom,
Chris Dorr
Executive DirectorP.S. Just a few weeks ago, several Minnesota State Representatives signed an open letter plastered all over Minnesota’s political blogs stating Stand-Your-Ground was going nowhere!…
Wait – didn’t we read that already?
It’s like…deja vu.
In so many ways.
I was on Walter Hudson’s Fightin’ Words podcast yesterday, talking about my upcoming book Trulbert: a Comic Novella about the End of the World As We Know It, as well as larger subjects of anarchy and freedom.
Make sure you listen to Walter regularly – he’s one of the best around.
joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
A federal judge said the President lacks the constitutional power to enact his amnesty scheme, and enjoined it.
The Federal Court of Appeals held there was little chance the government could prevail on the merits of its case, and upheld the injunction.
The government chose not to appeal that decision. The injunction stands.
The President derides the individual federal judge who issued the injunction, failing to mention the Court of Appeals’ finding that the government’s case was a loser.
In Minnesota, it’s a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct to engage in conduct that’s prejudicial to the administration of justice. I believe Minnesota lawyers have been sanctioned for verbally attacking judges, because that conduct brings the entire judicial system into disrepute. Too bad that level of cordiality doesn’t apply outside our borders.
Joe Doakes
Remember when people said Obama’s purported background as a “constitutional scholar” was a stellar qualification for the job? And I responded that the president needs to know no more about the Constitution that a good policeman does – in other words, “follow it”.
Being right all the time is getting tiresome.
No it isn’t. Just scary.
This is actually a post about state politics. But there’s a tangent.
Along about thirty years ago, Holly Dunn – a twangy honky-tonk girl, and one of the highlights of country-western music at a time when the genre was still suffering through the last of its “crossover” mania – had a huge, but controversial, hit with “Maybe I Mean Yes”.
It was a bouncy ditty about romantic mind games. It was also controversial, even in those much less silly times, among feminists for, according to the PC police of the era, “making rape and domestic abuse acceptable”; the teapot-tempest thereafter caused a few country stations to pull the single, making Holly Dunn one of the first casualties of modern political correctness – which is a shame, because most of your Gretchen Wilsons and Miranda Lamberts owe her a huge debt.
But this article isn’t about eighties honky-tonk music. It’s about Governor Flint-Smith.
Dayton. Governor Dayton. Sorry. I have no idea how that happened.
In a legislative session in which the Governor’s “top priority” changed from spending the surplus to, literally, “everything” as a top priority, to synchronizing traffic lights to taking farmland out of production to transportation something or another to passing a universal pre-kindergarten bill that neither the legislature nor school administrators statewide wanted (but the teachers union does) to trying to justify Rebecca Otto’s electoral existence, it should be no surprise that he’s changed “top priorities” again:
Gov. Mark Dayton on Monday said he was dropping his insistence that lawmakers change language dealing with county audits but cited three other, previously unmentioned, objections to the Legislature’s special session plans.
Just last Thursday the DFL governor said that he and the House’s “major remaining difference” had to do with the state auditor. But on Monday, he said that he and the House were still in disagreement over three other issues: funding for programs for the disabled and mentally ill, energy net metering and lower electric rates for industries in northeastern Minnesota.
Apparently, the GOP House and DFL Senate majorities are doing better at reaching agreements than Dayton figured.
Oh, yeah. If we take care of these three “top priorities”, he’s got a bunch more waiting in the wings:
“Before I can call a special session, it remains necessary for us to reach agreements,” on the three other issues, Dayton wrote. He also listed four other issues –an increase in broadband grants, funding for a new sex offender facility, rail grade crossing safety projects and clarification of language dealing with Rochester’s Destination Medical Center — that he urged be addressed.
When the Governor says “shut down”, he means maybe, and then maybe he means yes.
…is those layers and layers of gatekeepers.
Last week, the MSM and its greek chorus in the lefty noise machine were all a’-chortle over Marco Rubio’s driving records.
Such as they were; two dismissed tickets and two trivial moving violations in 18 years. No innocent women drowned; he apparently paid the fines, unlike a certain sitting celebrity Minnesota congressman.
And how did that happen (emphasis added)?
A couple of Times reporters spent Friday morning basking in praise for their “nice scoop” — the less-than-remarkable public knowledge that Marco Rubio was written four traffic tickets over the course of two decades — but, as Brent Scher of the Washington Free Beacon pointed out, neither of the reporters in the byline — Alan Rappeport and Steve Eder — nor the researcher also credited by the Times for the piece — Kitty Bennett — ever accessed the traffic records in question. But somebody did: American Bridge, a left-wing activist group, had pulled the records just before the Times piece appeared, and the Times employed some cagey language, with the relevant sentence beginning: “According to a search of the Miami-Dade and Duval County court dockets. . . . ” A search? Yes. Whose search? A piece of the news that apparently is not fit to print.
It’s not just national politics, of course; for a decade and a half, the vast majority of “reporting” on Michele Bachmann was done by her stalkers in the lefty alt-media, with few questions asked other than “how fast can I type my byline on this pre-written story?”
The Strib reports on the weekends “tar sands resistance” protests.
Thousands of progressives swarmed the streets, and DFL scientific and economic illiteracy was on full display…
… But I repeat myself:
Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, said many frame pipelines as a safer alternative to oil-carrying trains but that it shouldn’t be a choice between the two.
“Pipelines leak and explode and so do trains. The choice is: Are we going to continue our dependence on oil or get serious about conserving?” said Hornstein, who called the debate a symptom of “America’s gluttonous appetite for oil. The science is in, the data is screaming at us. And what goes on inside here,” he said pointing to the Capitol, “is unfortunately not helping.”
Let’s ignore the whole “data is screaming at us” bit – I’m sure something is screaming at them, but it sure isn’t data.
I have a question for representative Hornstein, on the chance that he actually answers questions from plebeians: the road to a petroleum free future is paved with prosperity. Without prosperity, there can be no innovation.
So, representative Hornstein – can you name any societies that have ever conserved their way to productive prosperity?
And Jack Tomczak caught this one on Facebook:
Demonstrators at Saturday’s march varied in age and demographics and included protesters from out of state. Megabuses brought in several hundred from Wisconsin to participate, while the Madison chapter of 350.org drove five hours to stand in solidarity with locals.
Help me out here – are Megabusas powered by sails? Or are they hydroelectric?
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