SCENE:  MInnesota DFL headquarters.  Inga “Lucky” CARROLL (acting assistant chair of the DFL while on temporary leave from her day job as Head Meme-Buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Liberal Causes”), Secretary of State SIMON, House Minority Leader Melissa HORTMAN, progressive influencers Edmund DUCHEY, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, Gutterball GARY and Avery LIBRELLE, and Senate DFL Communications manager Evan Micah BRYAN are gathered in a conference room as undocumented domestics fetch beverages and change garbage bags.

CARROLL:   So – not much went right in this last Presidential cycle.  Orange HItler even got within four points in Minnesota (group looks angrily at a sheepish SIMON).   So – before we get to what we did wrong, let’s talk about what we did right.

HORTMAN:  Well, we called them “white supremacists” a lot.

CARROLL:  Good.

LIBRELLE:  Racists, every one of them!

BRYAN: Anti-LGBT!

DUCHEY:  Misogynist!

BIRKENSTOCK: And Fascists! (Murmurs of assent)

GARY:   Nazis! (Thrum of excitement)

CARROLL: So – Republicans are all racist sexist misogynist Nazi fascists.  So – did it work? 

BRYAN:  And, most importantly, do we continue using this as our primary, if not only, messaging going forward?

(Mixture of skepticism and assent from the group)

LIBRELLE:  Wait – this just came in from the national party.

(Video comes up on the screem)

BRYAN:  Hey, its Ken! (points at Ken MARTIN, chair of the MNDFL, currently running for chair of the Democrat National Committee)

CARROLL:  OK, so that’s a solid “Yes” on the “message going forward” thing.  Next order of business…

(Papers rustle)

And SCENE

How it started: Mayor Frey bleating “Minneapolis is back, baybee!”

How it’s going: Ameriprise Tower in Minneapolis sells for pennies on the dollar:

That tower used to generate $2.5M a year in property taxes. 

I don’t think the city’s spending has dropped 97%.  That burden is all going to residential property owners. 

A years and a half ago, in a series of pieces I wrote about people who had huge impacts on my life, I devoted a story to Bob Richardson. Bob owned KEYJ, my first radio station. He hired me when I was in high school. He started me on my first career and my most enduring avocation and side hustle – and in a lot of ways, played an exceptionally disproportional role in me becoming who I am today.

Bob – he was always “Mister RIchardson” to me, well into adulthood – died on Monday, apparently after complications to heart surgery in Fargo. He was 93.

And among “pillars of the community”, Bob was a titan:

    He married Norma Rolle September 2, 1952, in Glen Ullin, ND.  They lived in Jamestown, ND, while they were in college.  They moved to Moorhead, MN, for one year before returning to Jamestown.

     Richardson was sports and staff announcer at KSJB radio in Jamestown while a student at Jamestown College.  He was then assistant manager of the classified ad department at the Fargo Forum.  Returning to Jamestown, he was one of the organizers of KEYJ (now KQDJ) radio in 1954 and became sole owner of the station in 1968.  He sold the station in 1980, after which he became Director of Development, Alumni and Public Relations at Jamestown College, then Vice President of the Jamestown College Foundation, retiring in 1999.  He was part-time Development Director of the Jamestown Area Foundation and an Associate of the Borr*Strawhecker Group Resource Development Counsel from 1999 to 2004.   He was instructor of Jamestown College radio courses from 1956-1960.

     Richardson was active in many organizations, serving as President of the Jamestown Chamber of Commerce; the North Dakota Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives; the North Dakota Broadcasters Association; the Jamestown Twilight Baseball League; North Dakota Amateur Baseball Association; the Jamestown Volunteer Firemen’s Association (he was a volunteer fireman for21 years); the Jamestown College Alumni Association; the Jamestown Airport Authority; Jamestown Quarterback Club; North Dakota Independent College Fund; and chairman of Republican Party Districts 48/29.

Did I say I was done?

     He also served as Assistant Chief of the Jamestown Fire Department, a Trustee of Jamestown College, and was a member of the Jamestown Industrial Development Commission board, North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations board and a member of the Jamestown Eagles Lodge.

And he taught a couple generations of high school kids, myself included, not just how to do radio – that’s easy – but how to expect better of ourselves, how to live up to responsibilities from getting the news right to being a solid member of the community, and how to think.  

So much of what I am, I owe to Bob. (And this guy. And this one. And my father, of course, who is at least still with us).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Everybody knows that All Star Wrestling was rigged.  The wrestlers themselves were big and strong and skilled, no doubt.  But the outcome was never in doubt.  The “Good Guy” always won because they were in the entertainment business.  It made for better television and that’s where the owners made their money – tv advertising revenue.  Which, incidentally, is why Hollywood is going broke now – too much emphasis on the Misunderstood Bad Guy.  He’s not misunderstood. He’s Bad.   That’s his job, to play opposite the Good Guy and eventually fail, like the Harlem Globetrotters beating the Washington Generals.  Nobody wants the Bad Guy to win and nobody will pay to watch it, time after time.  

People are talking openly about the NFL being similarly rigged.  The league is an entertainment business, too.  Sure, the individual franchises have separate owners but they play by league rules under league refs and the league has a vested interest in making sure the Good Guys win to maximize tv ad revenue.  Which explains why the officiating is such a big deal – it looks as if the league puts its thumb on the scale to affect the outcome. 

Make every play instantly reviewable, put a chip inside the ball for accurate spotting, transparency is possible with technology.  Unless that would force the thumb off the scale.  That might let the wrong people win.  That would be BAD.

Now let’s talk about elections. 

Joe Doakes

 

I suspect after this past two years that the DFL has a lot to cover up, and the rigging is going to be over the top.  WIth a little luck, perhaps too over the top

Let’s talk about moral myopia for a moment. 

It’s been interesting watching DFLers who two years ago were chanting “when you’ve got political capital, you use it” with a one-vote Senate majority, suddenly…

…whinging like stuck cats now that President Trump is, y’know, using political capital.

Did I say “interesting”?  I meant funny.

Almost as funny as watching people who set up badthink databases and Covid snitch lines, who cheered Twitter and Meta censoring opposition and demanded that the unvaccinated people lose their jobs and get hauled off to camps and be shunned from society at large…

…pretend that they wouldn’t have turned in Ann Frank for a Starbucks gift card. 

If you’d told me 20 years ago that this would happen…

…I might’ve also said you were nuts.

If you live in Senate District 60 – the U of M, Dinkytown, Marcy Holmes – get out and vote for Abigail Wolters for the MN Senate.

If you know someone who lives in the district and is sick and tired of DFL lawnessness, or especially of U of M student who’s looking at the life the DFL has mapped out for them – being a purposeless unit of consumption – then get them to get out and vote for Abby. 

This’d be a great week to shock the world.

So the GOP apparently had a pretty full agenda for hearings on corruption in Minnesota, before the Supreme Court unexpectedly re-edited the quorum provisions in the Minnesota Constitution. 

In the meantime, the DFL had protesters outside the committees press conference…

…apparently protesting for fraud.

Here’s the Scandal Tracker, produced by Bill Glahn, that Rep. Robbins referred to.

 Rep. Robbins reports over two dozen whistleblower reports, and already some tampering and intimidation of whistleblowers,

And, amazingly enough, House hearings on a whisteblower protection bill were canceled as well. 

Who’da thunk it?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Check out this thread at Thread Reader App,

Since Threadreader may or may not launch from the link depending on your browser, I’ve provided the entry point on Twitter. It’s a long thread. Read it.

“Draining” is too good for some parts of the swamp.  They need to be hit with napalm.

So – why are the DFL playing hooky from office?

Because fraud is a way of life under DFL governance.

No, literally – they said it out loud:

They literally admitted it.

And the GOP caught that.

And like “Feeding Our Future”, its’ just the tip of the iceberg:

The GOP was scheduled to hold hearings on the subject yesterday – inonveniently  canceled by the utterly unrelated Supreme Court decision that the quorum was really 68.

No, really.

More tomorrow.

It’s become fairly clear over the past two weeks that the MN DFL isn’t playing hooky from the House because they care about Brad Tabke or the voters of 40B. 

They are hiding – my opinion, here, but I’ll stand by it – that they are doing it because GOP majorities on committees mean investigaions and public hearings:

GOP rule at sny level will mean looking at harsh truths about Minnesota government.

The idea that 15 years of DFL rule have left it a cold Chicago is hard to assimilate.  And our media and establishment (ptr) will work overtime to make sure that soothing notion doesn’t get disturbed. 

I think most Minnesotans deep down still think MN is still the state of Humphrey and Anderson, or even Tim Pawlenty and Mike Hatch – that it’s a “Good Government” state no matter which party wins.

And until that happens – until this state “bottoms out” – there will be no fixing Minnesota.

For the first time, I’ve got one degree of separation from two members of the Trump cabinet.

Well, one and a half.

Defense Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth was the first guest ever interviewed on the NARN, back in March of 2004.  I think I’ve interviewed Hegseth 2-3 times over the years.

And closer yet, the wife of Doug Burgum – software mogul, two-term governor of North Dakota and now the Secretary of the Interior – is my high school classmate and homecoming queen Kathryn. 

And she’s got quite the story to tell, herself:

Not that it landed me an invite to the inauguration or anything, but still. 

On January 6 a bunch of idiot rioters tried to hijack the Constitutional process for transferring power. And they failed; the process in the Constitution prevailed and, hysterics and partisan hyperbole side, succeeded fairly easily.

On January 24, at the behest of 66 petulant ninnies, seven partisans in goofy robes ruled that the legislature reports to the court on matters of its own organization; that despite the plain text of the Minnesota Constitution, a quorum is a majority of *chairs*, not the people sitting in them.

It’s almost makes comical sense for the party that thinks guns magically shoot people, and that sex is ephemeral,, and that “you can keep your doctor” means you lose your doctor,  to rule that inanimate chairs, not the peole in them, are the part of a legislature that really matters.

But the laughing stops – if you care about the Constitutional order, which apparently not a single DFLer does – when you realize this decision means the Legislature reports to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Orwell and Solzhenitzyn showed us what happens when the only objective reality is getting and holding power. Y’see, that’s the problem with democracy – everyone has to agree to the basic terms. The DFL in all three branches showed they don’t, in as many words.

(There are no doubt some in the audience who’ll say “I bet you wouldn’t be saying this if the roles were reversed!”. I most certainly would. But it’s academic, because no Republican-run institutions have ever gutted the Constitutional separation of powers quite this brazenly. ).

Old and busted:  Curtis Johnson, the DFLer whose election to House District 40B was overturned in court a few weeks ago, accidentally endorsed someone who didn’t live in their district.  Perjury, schmurgery – it can happen to anyone. 

New flava:  The DFL – including former DFL rep for 40B, Jamie Becker-Finn, knew all along.  That’d be according to the noted conservative firebrand…

…er, Ryan Winkler?

Now, the claims are mutually exclusive.   One of them, at least, is lying. 

Hey, look!  Governor Walz is back to playing governor!

Well, hey, look who showed up! The guy who’s been governor for six years!

The guy who squandered an $18 billion surplus.

The governor under whom our water is dirtier and more expensive, our infrastructure is more aged, public is less safe and housing is less affordable (except for the occasional market valuation crash, which goes back to the “less safe” thing) than it was in 2017.

What did national voters know that Minnesota voters don’t?

But hey – at least the Governor is getting back to something akin to his actual job.  My “representative”, Samakab Hussein [1], tweeted yesterday:

Uh, that’d be former co-chair Pinto.

Unless we’re making up new titles for each other now.  If that’s the case, I’ll take “First Sea Lord” and maybe “Anna Kendrick’s boyfriend”. 

Deal?

And, uh, “work”?  He did a zoomer with another DFL that’s playing hooky.  Even if they talked the business of their fictional committee.

[1] Say what you will, Hussein is a better rep than his predecessor, Rena Moran. It’s a low bar indeed, but never let it be said I won’t tell the truth.

Elon Musk – a socially awkward guy, most likely out on the spectrum somewhere – gesticulated that he’s “throwing his heart out to the audience”…

…in a way that no lefty troll can possibly resist.

Er…I’m sure that’s just an isolated…

Huh. Well, they’re kind of old and in the way…

Ooof. Well, that’s just pouncing on a political bete noir…

Oh, my.

I’ve spoken with a few Twin Cities journalists about their complete collapse (I’ll be charitable, as to “collapse” there would have needed to be some actual intent to cover the issue) in re the coverage of Tim Walz (not to mention Ilhan Omar) over this past six years and, for that matter, the Legislative DFL over this past week.

Adjectives fail me, of course; disgraceful, pusillanimous. fawning, obsequious, impotent?

An abomination against whatever “Journalism” was supposed to be?

So on the chance that any Twin Cities journos (outside the half dozen or so that do seem to try to do the job) are tuned in – I present this as a lesson on how interviewing a politician is supposed to be done:

Now, this isn’t a journo – its a member of London’s city legislative body. 

But when I heard it, I thought “if this is a journalist interviewing politician about an important issue, this is how it’s supposed to be done.

They’re not at work. Oh, no no. no.

But they are doing this (language not remotely safe for work):

And yes, it’s directly linked to the DFL’s walkout; the person with the megaphone was acting in conjunction with a “rally” being thrown by Leigh Finke

Which went about as well as you could expect on a day when it around four degrees with a stiff breeze:

But then, the action was always going to be indoors, wasn’t it?

By the way, we’ve run into the person with the megaphone before.

If the MNGOP doesn’t run this on an endless loop for the next two. years, they deserve to lose.

Anonymous source, seemingly implausible conclusion – but Gary Gross at “Liberty and Prosperity” says there’s a rumor afoot at the Capitol – emphasis added:

This past Friday, a loyal reader to this blog informed me that there were rumors were swirling around the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul that 2 DFL legislators were thinking about switching from the DFL to the GOP.

At first, I thought that this type of talk is typical when margins are this close. This friend assured me this wasn’t typical gossip mill fodder. This friend told me that these DFL representatives are tired of the DFL’s win-at-all-costs stunts. I’d assume that this includes the Curtis Johnson fiasco in HD-40B.

Its fun to think about. I find it implausible (if you’re on top of this rumor, drop me a line), but then everything about this past six months in national politics, and two weeks in Minnesota, has been implausible as well.

All modern gun control is build on the National Firearms Act.   Gun Control Act of 1968?  Hughes Amendment?  Arbitrary BATFE power?   Most arbitrary local regulations?  Yes, yes, yes  and yes.

And tinkering with any of the arms of the octopus without going for the head is merely treating the symptoms. 

Rep Burleson (MO7) is going for the head.

The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) was the first federal law to impose limitations on firearm ownership. It requires Americans to pay a $200 tax, register, and undergo an application process to own certain firearms and accessories.

For decades, unelected bureaucrats have attempted to use the NFA to impose new regulations on gun owners without Congressional approval. This month, the ATF published a rule to reclassify firearms with pistol braces as short-barrel rifles (SBR), meaning millions of law-abiding Americans will become felons unless they submit to the NFA’s unconstitutional tax and registration scheme.

Here’s an explainer – the first of many.

Even with GOP control in DC, it’s quixotic.

But it’s a step in the right direction.

I’ve never made bones about the fact I’ve been a Trump skeptic.  Eight years ago I voted for Scott Walker, and thought that Trump’s term would be a disaster, hopefully mitigated by a good SCOTUS pick.   I was wrong – mostlly, anyway.  His behavior in 2020 cost the GOP the Senate, and he had an uncanny habit of endorsing bad candidates.  But I held my nose and voted for him.

There was no holding my nose this time – although I make no bones about the fact that I’d really like to see more of the Focused Donald than the Twitter Donald. 

Yesterday was a good start.

Itwas the first inauguration I watched live since Jimmy Carter.  But I picked a good one.

Trump’s speech was the best I’ve seen him give. 

It clocked in at 29 minutes – and didn’t include (many of) the rhetorical tangents that make so many of this speeches feel like rhetorical slalom runs. 

It was by turns pugnacious and intensely optimistic.   I was glad I had a chance to see it.  I think it recapped the tone of his campaign – especially since the first assassination attempt – and laid out the agenda far more clearly than he ever did in his first time.  It was…bracing. 

Side issue – my father, a speech teacher, used to say that nobody in the modern world embodied classical oratory like Southern Baptist ministers.

Rev. Lorenzo Sprewell certainly made the case:

It was a genuine wonder and joy to behold. 

And as someone who grew up seeing “dead air” as the enemy, and believes taped backing tracks are a plague on society, Carrie Underwood did one of the most amazing things a performer can do – took a compete technical clusterf**k and. turned it into a triumph:

Let the metaphors fly. 

Rep. Leigh Finke wanted to show “MAGA” who was boss. 

Here’s how it started:

Here’s how it looked ten minutes into the…er, meeting?:

To be fair, it was a brisk-ish day by southern MInnesota standards; 5 degrees and Minnesota-windy. 

But the optics just are not good, are they?

Finke might do better off just going back to work.

…we’ve seen no governnent-sanctioned display quite as bizarre at this address to the New York State Drag Queen Regulation Board.

Just kidding.  It’s…

…well, the tweet explains it:

On the other hand, had the DFL held the majority in the House this session, this would likely have been not only the State of the State, but how Senate votes were tabulated .

This week appears likely to bring a decision from the Minnesota Supreme Court on the issue of the quorum in the Minnesota House. 

There’ve been two interesting points of view on the subject.

U of M Law Professor Ilan Wurman wrote an op-ed in the Strib. Here’s the conclusion

Walz and the Democrats have, in short, effectively prorogued the Legislature, invoking one of the royal prerogative powers of King George III against which the American revolutionaries rebelled. For four years, Democrats have been accusing Republicans of attempting to thwart democracy. But who is the real threat?”

…but the whole thing is worth a read, and I urge you to do so.

And Professor Dave Schultz of Hamline University – who has replaced Larry Jacobs as the most. ubiquitously quoted person in Twin Cities media – points out that separation of powers means, y’know, separating powers:

In the disputes now between the Democrats and Republicans fighting over control of the House, the Minnesota Supreme Court should decide not to decide. While in the short term it might be expedient for the court to resolve the legal issues here, it sets a horrible precedent. It sets precedent for the court to intervene in future disputes in the Legislature. If today it is about quorum, tomorrow about committee structures or the selection of officers.

Additionally, were the court to intervene it would take the legislators off the hook to be responsible to themselves and the voters for their own behavior. Instead of working it out themselves, they would go to court to resolve their disputes. Letting the court resolve the disputes now only weakens the Legislature, while giving the court undue influence over the legislative process.

Left to their own, the House Democrats and Republicans will be forced to find a solution. Failure to do so could mean a government shutdown and punishment at the next election for their bad behavior. We elected them to do their job, not the Minnesota Supreme Court. This is what our state constitutional framers intended.

 

One thing has become obvious – the DFL’s position has nothing to do with the election litigation in House District 54A, or even 40B.  Its about stonewalling a GOP Speaker and committee chairs under any circumstances.  I’m presuming it’s to continue concealing the skeletons in the DFL’s closet. 

The last time I watched a Presidential inauguration live on TV was when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated.  I was in junior high, and they wheeled a TV into our history classroom. 

I missed Reagan’s (twice), Bush I, Clinton (twice), Dubya (twice), Trump’s first, and Obama (all three times). 

I may break my streak today.   Partly to see history.  Partly because I’ve become an accidental, skeptical Trump supporter.  Partly because, let’s be honest, I suspect some lefty is going to try something stupid.

And I don’t mean just this guy:

Speaking of danger:  remember when George W Bush took office?   And the departing Clinton staffers, in a fit of juvenility, pried the “W” keys off of all the computer keyboards in the west wing?

Biden’s pardons, and some of his other efforts to stymie Trump from the great political beyond, are like that – only actually damaging, as opposed to juvenile and spiteful.

So much so that even the elder statesman of “Never-Trump” is sounding off:

Side note:  “Incandescently stupid” is going into my quick-reference lexicon.