12:00 PM | Posted in
To whom it may concern,

I recently joined with five other bloggers who I count as friends in the hope that we could create a different kind of blog. A blog that was less about pandering to one side of the political spectrum and more about a discussion of issues and good campaign politics versus bad campaign politics. I was more excited about blogging than I had been in a long time.

Unfortunately, what began as a fun collaboration turned into an absolute nightmare with the introduction of one post. If you are unaware of the post to which I am referring, then count yourself lucky. If you are aware of the post to which I am referring, then I am sorry.

I did not write the post, I don't know who did, and frankly I don't really care to ever find out. All of that is beside the point of this post though because I bear an equal culpability. Rather than stay silent on the matter or do the right thing and express disappointment I jumped on the twitter account for Northstar Liberal and fanned the flames. I went after Robin Marty and Jeff Fecke for no other reason than they were coming after my blog. I have no other excuse than to say it was a momentary lapse in judgment and I regret it. To both those individuals, I am deeply sorry. I take full responsibility for that behavior and can only hope that those people involved accept my apologies.

To that end, I will no longer be blogging, tweeting, or participating in DFL politics. I have not been very enthusiastic about blogging and politics lately as it is and this event simply demonstrated to me that it is time to get out. To those of you who I have met in person along the way, I hope we can stay in touch. To those of you who I have not met in person, it was fun interacting with you and I wish you the best.
Category:
��
7:00 AM | Posted in , ,
On Sunday I posted an interesting tweet from Representative Tom Emmer indicating that he would have Minnesota not participate in a "federal health plan". From the statement, it was unclear as to which federal health plan he was referring and I patiently await an answer to clear things up.


There is another, slightly humorous, FAIL element to this story which I conveniently left out yesterday. Very quickly after this tweet and several others by Representative Emmer were sent out and I began questioning them, they disappeared. I was able to preserve them from my tweetdeck and they are featured on the left but why did they disappear? Was there something in them that Emmer thought twice about posting?

Aside from the idea of removing us from Medicare, Medicaid, and Vet federal health plans there wasn't anything I could see which was terribly offensive or inappropriate. What then could be the reason for removing all of these messages?

After some very serious searching and exhaustive investigative measures were taken (not really, but I like to sound like I was putting a lot of time into this) I discovered that it wasn't Emmer after all. Apparently, someone named Harry Niska had hijacked the Emmer account. OK, Maybe he hadn't hijacked it but I still am wondering why he has access to the twitter account of Tom Emmer. Are Emmer's tweets not his own?
��
12:00 PM | Posted in ,
I am learning something about this world of #tcot. The vast majority of tweets are to simply express solidarity with some other person who has tweeted something outrageous. That being said, here we go again...



Wait, what? We have hijacked the term Christian? I've got nothing here...



Well of course, nothing says ACORN like Charles Manson. Because apparently the right didn't think they had demonized ACORN quite enough?



Nothing says slavery like trying to extend health care to everyone in the country!
 


Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

��
7:00 AM | Posted in
You can read all about the details over at I Don't Hate America but you can view the video right here. While it's slightly difficult to hear at times, this super guy is about to tell you that the Violence Against Women Act is little more than a way for illegal immigrants to gain legal access to our country. And here I thought I had heard everything...

Category:
��
5:00 PM | Posted in ,
Bring on the crazy...


HA HA, that guy called President Obama a prostitute AND a drug addict. Wait, isn't the guy retweeting this the Secretary of the SD15 Republican Party here in Minnesota? Yep, that's him. You stay classy Leo!



I can completely understand disagreeing with the policy decisions made by this President. Are they really evil though? Sorry, I forgot about cash for clunkers. THAT EVIL BASTARD!



Oh, top conservative on twitter, you are totally policy based and about opposing the agenda of President Obama. You are totally NOT about spreading hate...




So, we learned some very valuable lessons today from the top conservatives on twitter. Barack is a prostitute, drug dealing, secret Muslim while Michelle is a whore and a secret Muslim. 

Now keep in mind that these are tweets I have found by simply giving #tcot a passing glance now and then. Otherwise, they are tweets which have been sent to me. What we are learning is that there is very little substance on #tcot and a whole lot of vitriolic uselessness. So, keep them coming...
��
10:13 AM | Posted in , , ,
An interesting tweet scrolled across my screen yesterday from potential Republican Gubernatorial nominee, Tom Emmer, in regards to "federal health care plans":



What is not clear from this particular tweet is to WHICH federal health care plan Mr. Emmer is referring. Is Emmer referring to Medicare which is a federal health care plan? Is Emmer referring to Medicaid which is at least partially federal? Or, is Emmer referring to the federal health care plan for veterans?

One wonders how seniors, the poor, and veterans will react to the potential of having their federal health care plans pulled out from under them by a Governor Emmer in the name of states rights. 
8:05 AM | Posted in ,
A huge thanks to DJ from I Don't Hate America and Sally Jo from Bluestem Prairie for documenting this event at the Capitol:

Watch the slack jawed look on the faces of protesters by the end of the speech. PRICELESS...

Category: ,
��
I just visited Gary Gross's website just to "check it out" and not at all to see if there was something, ANYTHING that I could piss and moan about in regards to Gross. While I couldn't put my finger on it right away, I just KNEW there was something missing that I could in turn make political hay about.

Yes, it has the obligatory Tarryl Clark was mean to me once so I am going to whine about it even nearly two years after the fact post. There are 175 other truly hard hitting substantive articles accusing Tarryl of every "liberal" sin in the conservative handbook. There's a "Donate" button too.

Then it dawned on me. Gary doesn't have anything to whine about today so he decided to go to the old standby of obsessing about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING his arch nemesis Tarryl Clark does, says, or sometimes doesn't say.

Why won't Gary just tell us with the authority that only HE has what Tarryl believes on the not at all loaded terms "Cap & Tax" and "Pelosicare"? I would stipulate that Gary has already gone through the trouble of assuming to know what Tarryl will do when it comes to taxes so why put us through this waste of time storyline about how he just wants to see where Tarryl stands on these other issues.

Still, it is entirely possible for Gary to manufacture a list of beliefs for Tarryl because only GARY GROSS knows what Tarryl Clark REALLY believes. And that is not because he spends every waking moment obsessing about more ways to bash Tarryl. He really was just going over to peak at her website and browse around.

Gary Gross knows FOR A FACT that Tarryl Clark wants to institute that communist single payer health care stuff and he knows FOR A FACT that Tarryl Clark would have maybe voted for the Stupak Amendment but she wouldn't have liked it. He knows all this because one time Tarryl attended a forum where the words single payer were spoken! Nevermind the fact that Gary's buddy Steve Gottwalt attended the same forum. TOTALLY DIFFERENT!

Gary Gross knows FOR A FACT that Tarryl Clark would vote to destroy America because she has a 100% rating from some group.

Gary Gross knows FOR A FACT that Tarryl Clark would vote to spend every dime IN THE WORLD because she didn't have the foresight in 2007 to know that Republicans had so screwed up the financial sector that an impending financial crisis would occur in 2008.

Gary Gross knows FOR A FACT that Tarryl Clark will do whatever her union overlords tell her to do because he has been there for every conversation that Clark has ever had with a union member and all she does is say "Yes, master" to them. Nevermind the fact that she was prepared to, as a leader in the State Senate, to cut the education budget far more than even the Republicans. Also nevermind the conversation I had with her at lobby day for Education Minnesota where she told me straight out to prepare for cuts.

There are a lot of blanks that voters need to be lied to about with regards to Tarryl Clark and Gary is more than willing to help. (It's obvious that Tarryl is hiding something by not putting up an issues page).

Gary's assumptions about Tarryl's actions & priorities are way different than they are about Michele Bachmann. For Tarryl, talking to some news outlet (which is obviously a communist rag) means that she already doesn't have time for her constituents. For Michele though, having more press people than policy people and going on every conservative news outlet she can on a daily basis totally means she has time for her constituents.

Hopefully, Gary will find out soon what Tarryl puts on her issues page. That way he can stop pretending to know what Tarryl believes and then lie about it and just simply lie about it.

Stop by this blog frequently to stay updated on the next Gary Gross manufactured Tarryl Clark hit piece. I'm doing the job that Gary Gross will not tell you he is actually doing.
12:00 PM | Posted in ,
Yesterday I rolled out a brand new feature here on Liberal in the Land of Conservative seeking out the stupidest, funniest, or down right craziest comments to be found on the #tcot (top conservative on twitter) stream. Remember, if you run across one of these, then simply send me a link or screen shot by email (political.muse.litloc (at) gmail.com)

Without further ado...


Well, I guess he's not QUITE AS BAD as 9/11 so there's that...



Now, lest you think that these are just silly wackos who do not represent parties as a whole I would like to point out that this fine fellow is apparently the Chairman of the American Reform Party.



 Now I am not entirely clear how someone can be faithless (perfidious) AND Muslim AND a Godking but somehow that damned GodKing does it!



I love it when conservatives say, "SEE I HAVE A BLACK FRIEND". So there are black conservatives. I would be MORE concerned if there weren't ANY black conservatives.
��
11:46 AM | Posted in
Have you seen them? The ones that show upper middle class homes being terrorized by intruders. The ones that are supposed to make you so scared that you will invest in one of their security systems. Every time I see one of these I have to roll my eyes and wonder just how many people out there watch and become so paranoid of the criminals running rampant through their suburban neighborhoods that they buy one.

Well, if you are one of those people, then this video is for YOU:



BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID!
3:11 PM | Posted in ,
Don't know what #tcot is, you say?

It is a hashtag used by those people on twitter who want their tweets added to a specific stream of tweets thus making them easier to find. There are humorous hashtags, event specific hashtags, and what I would call long term hashtags. Specifically, #tcot stands for "Top Conservative On Twitter" and would fall into the latter category of long term hashtags although a serious argument could be made that it also falls under the humorous category.

Inspired by twitter user @schmiss who began sharing some of the hilarity that can be found on #tcot, I decided to turn this into a regular blog feature.

How will it work? Well, starting today I will post screenshots of some of the more crazy and incoherent claims made by conservatives on twitter through the #tcot hashtag. Your job will be to vote on your favorite in the comments.  If you are on twitter, take a glance at #tcot every now and then and send the links to any particularly humorous #tcot tweets to political.muse.litloc (at) gmail.com and perhaps they will make it onto the next edition of Best Thing On #tcot.

So here we go...


I am not sure if Dear Citizen realizes but we re-vote every four years...


 

I haven't got any idea what sheeple are or how you "suscribe" to sheepledom but Sue damn well ain't gonna do it!


Oh birthers, you provide me with so much enjoyment. NEVER. EVER. CHANGE.
��
12:01 PM | Posted in ,
h/t to twitter user, @schmiss for this video...



Seriously, I wonder all the time why, if a libertarian economic system is the best according to Republicans and conservatives, I cannot find a single country in the world actually using such a system. Come on conservatives, help me out here...
Category: ,
��
Aren't we proud here in the 6th District of Minnesota? While Democrats came to the floor yesterday prior to the debate on Health Care legislation for simple procedural statements, our very own Michele Bachmann tripped over herself to object to each and every one. In some cases objecting before the speaker had even opened their mouth. Ah, the pride we feel about our freedom loving representative:



Interrupting the legislative process is not something new for Bachmann. Let us hearken back to when she was in the Minnesota State Senate:



You gotta love her definition of freedom...
By Taxpayingliberal

Michelle Bachmann held a press conference on the steps of the Capital last Thursday. It was called a press conference because she failed to get a permit for a rally. Freedom loving Americans won’t allow legal technicalities to get in the way of their right to threaten anybody they see as un-American. This press conference was made to show the power of the mob.

Bachmann loves the mob. It’s this mob that gives her power and she feeds it and it feeds her. The mob is mindless, angry, and confused and in it Bachmann feels that the mob can give her the power that the democratic system has denied her. The mob sends her money and brings her fame. The mob is followed by TV cameras and Bachmann was made for TV. In Congress her vote is meaningless. She has yet to author, co-sponsor, or sign onto a single meaningful bill, a failure by any definition of the word.

But on the street she has power. The mob shouts that the President is both a Marxist and National Socialist and Bachmann smiles and tells them they are “beautiful” and they love her for it. The mob says the President is not an American and Bachmann tells them that they need to be armed and dangerous and they have been waiting years to hear that. The mob says the President is both a Muslim and part of the Jewish conspiracy and Bachmann tells them to go forth and spread the word.

Bachmann didn’t create the mob, that job was done by others most notably Fox News. But Bachmann saw that the mob had no leader and that opportunity was hers for the taking. History is filled with examples where the mob elevated the leader to power. The signs that the mob is carrying show two examples of the mob giving power, Hitler and Mao. The fact that they are using the same technique that elevated these tyrants is lost on them but not on her.

A mob feeds on hate and Bachmann is a master at channeling their fears. Turning the mobs anger towards minorities is her stock and trade and she wouldn’t be standing here today if she hadn’t mastered it. The teabaggers are the mother lode of modern mobs. It’s the first corporate sponsored mob in history since the 3rd Crusade. She’s brought them here under the pretext of opposing a bill. But she knows that they are here for a very different reason. They are here because they fear the future. They say they are here because the future will be controlled by a god hating Muslim, Jewish, Rev. Wright Christian, Maoist, Nazi, new world order liberal. They are really here because of racism. And in Bachmann's home district there is no problem with that.

Bachmann and her mob have no equal. There is no effective response to the mob because the opponents dismiss the mob. They continue to cling to the hope that sanity and reason will prevail and it’s that hope that allows the mob to grow unchecked. “Bachmann is crazy” they say, yet she has not lost an election since her first for school board many years ago. Bachmann knows that she will find plenty of demons for the mob to hate and feed on while her opponents will bank on moderation to inspire their campaigns. In the end as Bachmann knows, hate is her best bet to win.
Representative Steve Israel is calling on Representative Bachmann to apologize for the use of Holocaust imagery during the rally she organized against health care reform on Thursday, November 5th.

9:47 PM | Posted in
Rep. Tim Walz was on Hardball w/Chris Matthews tonight discussing Afghanistan:



Category:
��
9:59 AM | Posted in ,
By Jeremiah Liend

So I’m watching CNN, because I like pain, and this commercial comes on. This lady is shopping and her son comes up and asks to get a book, and she says, I’m afraid not, it’s not in budget, and the child is sad, but he knows that they cannot afford this book. Then the lady looks at the camera and says that there is legislation on the floor to put taxes on juice drinks and soda, and that working class families can’t afford anymore taxes.

My response; Don’t feed your kid soda. I sent a letter to the editor of our local paper months ago suggesting that if we are going to instate taxes on smokers we should tax the hell out of soda, and for once the system appears to be listening to me. Real juice will not be taxed, just the ones that have 1% fruit juice with the rest being high fructose corn syrup. Delicious corn syrup. Years from now my tax dollars are going to be paying for your kids diabetes because you are apparently unaware that Coke is not good for you.

Where is this coming from? Republicans? Soda advocates? Do the Pepsi people have lobbyists? Soda is a multi-million dollar industry, and if we can pay for children with spina bifida to get surgery because your son or daughter just HAS to get some Mountain Dew, then good. Great. The system works.
Category: ,
��
I can take you out!

I assume that most of us at one point or another growing up heard this phrase from our parents. It was that warning to you that you had better behave yourself and do what you are told or else you might be punished by those who created you. Unfortunately, some of us have not learned that lesson well.

It was nearly six months ago that this blog brought Maureen Reed into this world by announcing her candidacy publicly and creating buzz throughout the blogosphere. Without that announcement, her roll out might well have been quieter and thus less effective. At the outset, I was excited about this candidate whom I helped into this world and have held back in going full force in for Tarryl Clark who came later to challenge her for the DFL nomination. That is to say, until now...

It is time to take Dr. Reed out of this race. As of yet, she has added little or nothing of substance to the conversation of issues. A young man I spoke with on the phone the other night touted her lack of a voting record as the reason we should be supporting her over State Senator Tarryl Clark. That's right, support me because I stand for nothing thus cannot be attacked for anything. Reed has been so vague, in fact, that Eric Black made it the focus of his interview write up:

Dr. Maureen Reed, candidate for both the DFL and Independence Party endorsements for Congress in the 6th District, will not say whether she will abide by the endorsement process, says that on abortion it would be inaccurate to characterize her as either pro-life or pro-choice, and is unwilling to express a preference among the various ways to get to universal health care.

Being vague is perhaps something we could understand at this point in the game and claiming that a lack of voting record might make for a decent reason to claim you can avoid certain attacks (although I can guarantee that will not stop Bachmann). However, using the same playbook that one would find in the conservative blogosphere is entirely unacceptable:

Reed says Clark's electoral success is limited to one of the most liberal pockets of the district. Clark won her St. Cloud Senate seat in a 2005 special election. She won re-election in 2006, and is currently the assistant Senate majority leader.

So, if Dr. Reed has decided to go all in and use the classic conservative playbook which Bachmann would use against HER regardless of whether she is a conservative, moderate, or liberal Democrat then this blog and this Democrat are officially going to go all in for Senator Tarryl Clark.

So, I say to my friends who have been sitting on the fence with me patiently awaiting for this race to begin, it has begun and the opening attack was thrown by the candidate who has NEVER won an election and whose mere existence on the ballot in 2006 helped to re-elect Governor Tim Pawlenty. It's time to take her out and you can begin by clicking on the banner above to donate to Senator Tarryl Clark...
5:34 PM | Posted in
The Week Magazine, which if you have never heard of it is worth a look, has compiled a Top Ten List of Michele Bachmann moments in response to the recent glowing review by George Will:

1. On ethnic riots in Paris (November 2005): On the face of it, Bachmann observed, “multicultural diversity … sounds wonderful. But guess what? Not all cultures are equal. Not all values are equal. And ... those who are coming into France, which had a beautiful culture, the French culture is actually diminished, it’s going away.” Watch

2. On evolution (October 2006): Bachmann provoked viewers by claiming that a significant portion of the scientific community rejects the theory of evolution: “There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.” Watch

3. On Terry Schiavo (October 2006): Bachmann provoked ridicule by describing Terry Shiavo, who lived in a permanent vegetative state, as “a woman who was healthy. There was brain damage, there was no question. But from a health point of view, she was not terminally ill.” Watch

4. On anti-Americans in Congress (October 2008): “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?” Watch

5. On the threat of a ‘global currency’ (March 2009): “I’m very concerned about the international moves they’re making, particularly … moving the United States off the dollar and onto a global currency, like Russia and China are calling for.” Watch

6. On the effects of greenhouse gases (April 2009): “Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.” Watch

7. On Democratic presidents and swine flu crises (April 2009): “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.” Watch

8. On the threat posed by the U.S. census (June 2009): “I think there is a point where you say enough is enough to government intrusion.… Does the federal government really need to know our phone numbers?” Watch

9. On the government bailout of GM (June 2009): The congresswoman famously called the Obama administration a “gangster government.” Watch

10. On health-care reform’s potential to dupe parents (October 2009): “Does that mean that someone’s 13-year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have [her] abortion, be back and go home on the school bus? That night, mom and dad are never the wiser.” Watch


Well readers, is it accurate? What would you include in a Top Ten List of Bachmann Moments?
Category:
��
5:01 PM | Posted in , ,
Don't you think if you love Ronald Reagan that much and would like to create a new political party using his name that you should SPELL HIS NAME CORRECTLY:



��
10:59 PM | Posted in
I caught this tweet from a local conservative:




Now perhaps I am reading this wrong but it looks like this particular conservative is telling us that providing care to people who don't have the ability to pay for that care is a "liberal principle". Really? Doesn't this seem like something we should have ALL agreed upon, that we don't let people die just because they cannot pay for the procedure? You heard it here first, caring for the poor is one of them there liberal principles! The new Republican Party, if you can't pay, then take your health condition somewhere else!

Seriously, am I reading this wrong because I am at a loss for words...
Category:
��
9:17 PM | Posted in
I like Media Matters but I wonder if this is just a little but too hyperbolic...

What do you think?

Category:
��
6:05 PM | Posted in ,
In the Sunday issue of the St. Cloud Times there appeared an article about an Otsego man who took the government for $53,000 by filing fraudulent tax returns.

Roland Chapaye Pour, 35, plead guilty Oct. 19. Pour, a tax preparer, filed 13 false U.S. Individual Income Tax returns between Jan. 24 and March 9, 2005, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.

What you didn't find in the St. Cloud Times either that day or since that day was the story of a local legislator who owns a bank, sits on the board of directors for said bank, and who took the government for $28 million by running that bank into the ground and forcing the federal government to bail it out. So, while some insist on slamming the Star Tribune for running the story but then subtracting mention of Kiffmeyer (apparently because there isn't enough space on the internet for the word Kiffmeyer), just realize that the regional newspaper near her district chose not to publish anything at all.
��
9:54 PM | Posted in
My first year teaching Civics, I was searching for a resource on the internet that had a variety of examples of propaganda using campaign commercials. What I stumbled across was from the Museum of the Moving Image and its 'The Living Room Candidate' collection of what I assume is almost every Presidential campaign commercial dating back to the 1952 campaign.

The site has become more functional since I last visited way back then but it is still a really cool look at the history of our elections through campaign commercials...

My favorite? Check this out from 1952:



I would totally vote for Ike!
Category:
��
6:00 AM | Posted in
This coming Monday in St. Cloud we will see the re-opening of the De-Soto Bridge and as such there will be elected officials on site to get their photo taken and take some level of credit for its creation:

The event starts at 8 a.m. Attendees are encouraged to gather at the Kelly Inn parking lot.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, DFL-Minn., and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., will attend with other local officials.

The DeSoto Bridge closed March 20, 2008, after the discovery of bends in the gusset plates. Construction of the Granite City Crossing bridge that replaces it is near completion.

While I don't begrudge most politicians their photo op, there is a certain level of outrageous hypocrisy for Michele Bachmann to be anywhere near this bridge or ANY transportation project for that matter.

Way back in 2007, I detailed a case in which Bachmann appeared to give the Clear Lake Fire Department a check after having voted against the bill in which the funds were authorized. Prior to that, there was the incident in which she voted to adjourn just before the House of Representatives was to take up the emergency funding measure for the I35W Bridge. Add in the fact that Bachmann voted against the transportation bill from last year and you begin to see how showing up to take a photo next to a bridge you had no role in funding or building is the essence of hypocrisy.

Yet, it doesn't end there because we also have to remember that when the City of St. Cloud and the Chamber of Commerce came calling for help in building a new bridge, Bachmann told them she would not help to obtain the necessary funds. So, with all of her other media appearances we really must come to the conclusion that the 6th District has nothing more than photo op representation.
Category:
��
4:59 PM | Posted in ,
Category: ,
��
11:08 AM | Posted in ,

Yesterday, it was reported that the bank has now been shut down:

Riverview Community Bank, an Otsego firm that attracted national media attention several years ago for espousing prayer in the workplace, has been shut down by state regulators.

The six-year-old bank, which has $108 million in assets and branches in Otsego and Anoka, was an aggressive real estate lender, once boasting the fourth-highest concentration of real estate loans-to-capital among community banks in the state. The bank was hard hit by the wave of foreclosures that began hitting Wright County in mid-2007.

As with the April reporting, what is not mentioned is that former Secretary of State and current Representative from District 16B, Mary Kiffmeyer, has an ownership stake in this bank. The importance of this connection is due in no small part to the ideology Kiffmeyer represents. An ideology that decries government involvement in nearly every aspect of our economic lives. Now we the taxpayer's are on the hook for $20 million to bail out her bank?


So apparently, limited government help and involvement really only extends to those OTHER people. You have to wonder if THIS is the type of conservatism we really want running our government...
��
10:19 PM | Posted in ,
OUTRAGED I TELL YOU! The folks over at everyone's favorite bigot site in Minnesota, Anti-Strib, are really super mad because that President Obama supposedly wrote something really bad about the Constitution in a thesis paper (prepare yourselves to be OUTRAGED!):

Brian Lancaster at Jumping in Pools reported on Obama’s college thesis, written when he was at Columbia.  The paper was called “Aristocracy Reborn,” and in the first ten pages (which were all that reporter Joe Klein–who wrote about it for Time–was permitted to see), the young Obama wrote:

“… the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”

Yep, this arrogant asshole thiknks he is smarter than Thomas Jefferson. His historical ignorance is astonding in it's depth and ignorance. Blacks were still slaves and he though the re-distribution of wealth should have been included.

You need no further proof that Obama is a far left moron.


See? Aren't you MAD? What a really really bad guy this Obama is and we should really be fuming about this story. Why won't the mainstream media take us seriously and report on this stuff? But wait, what is this?



And there is more...


Don't you hate it when you get pwned when all you had to do was open your eyes?

But, hey, the bright side is that you can go and view illuminating commentary on the pretended thesis and giggle about how these people really believe that President Obama wrote this stuff.



In honor of the proverbial stoning that the crowd over at Anti-Strib is working themselves into, it is time for a little Monty Python:


Category: ,
��
7:15 PM | Posted in ,
In case you missed it, I was on the Minnesota Matters Show on AM950 last night. Check it out HERE
��
6:03 PM | Posted in
Caught this headline in my rss reader from the BBC:

'Epic humpback whale battle filmed'

Being male and enjoying animal on animal violence, I immediately clicked onto the article to read about this EPIC battle and view the video:

A BBC natural history crew has filmed the "humpback whale heat run", where 15m long, 40 tonne male whales fight it out to mate with even larger females. During the first complete sequence of this behaviour ever captured, the male humpbacks swim at high speed behind the female, violently jostling for access. The collisions between the males can be violent enough to kill. The footage was recorded for the BBC natural history series Life.


I have to tell you though, I was a little disappointed...
8:30 PM | Posted in , ,
A couple of weeks ago over at Bluestem Prairie, Sally Jo Sorensen took a look at potential birtherism within the ranks of the Republican Party in the 6th Congressional District. In particular, Sorensen questioned whether a member of the Executive Committee here in SD15, Leo Pusateri, was in fact a birther.

I deciding to spend a little time chasing it, hunting it down. In fifteen minutes of browsing, I found that conservatives in Minnesota did indeed show interest in the topic. Take, for instance, blogger and Senate District 15 GOP Secretary Leo Pusateri.

There are other examples in the state. Read about Mr. Pusateri's interest in the controversy and that of other two other conservative Minnesotans below the fold.

Mr. Pusateri  currently blogs at Psycmeister's Ice Palace and Freedom Dogs, as well as cross-posting at True North.

He's brought up questions about Obama's birth certificate a number of times. Here's one such post, from his personal blog in  July 2008begins:
It appears that Obama's alleged birth certificate has been deemed a forgery, calling to question whether Obama was born in the United States, which would be a Constitutional prerequisite for his ability to legally run for President.
In a February post at Freedom Dogs, he wrote:
A cultural and spiritual awakening...is this why the agenda media were willing to overlook and/or gave short shrift to many of the Obama scandals, from his friendships with Tony Rezko, Rev. Wright and William Ayers, to the flak over his birth certificate?
That should give readers a flavor of his take on the matter.

Well, let us add another tidbit to that collection of evidence:


I really have to wonder who is running the Republican Party around here and if the general populace knows that they could potentially be voting for this level of crazy. Does the rest of the Executive Committee in SD15 believe that President Obama was not born in the United States? Would they be willing to come out in opposition to Mr. Pusateri and his tin foil hat viewpoint?
7:38 PM | Posted in
I regularly hop over the political divide into the realm of conservative political blogs for reasons of research but also because, frankly, some of them are interesting and well written. One of those conservatives that I visit almost daily, Mitch Berg, is regularly vilified by those on my side of the aisle and on many of those occasions I have thought those attacks unfair.

However, it is hard to defend Berg when he posts something like this:

And the realization that Minnesota, even its vast hinterland, wasn’t as safe as it used to be helped erode support for the DFL’s traditional “catch and release” policies, and built support for reform of Minnesota’s paternalistic, racist handgun permit laws over the following decade. [emphasis mine]

While this piece taken alone appears to be nothing more than the regular old line about how Democrats are soft on crime, it is important to realize that this attack was written into a post that began as a very thoughtful post about the twenty year anniversary of the Jacob Wetterling kidnapping.

You know, Mitch, when you cannot even put away the partisan blinders for a touching piece on a tragic event such as this one you come off like an ass. So you stay classy Mitch...
Category:
��
6:09 PM | Posted in ,
This political take on the iphone "There's an App for that" campaign is hilarious:

Category: ,
��
10:14 PM | Posted in ,
By Jeremiah Liend

The future governor will be a creature evolved past politics. He who governs least governs most leaves us a governless people. The future will be commanded by pioneers, not by politicians. We have given them their chance and their system a fair shot, but we cannot survive without advancement. We live in a global society and in the eyes of nature we are all of us equals. The horizons will not be explored by a party member. The parties are not working.

For whatever reason, our fundamental craving for conflict has polarized us on a number of silly issues. We are being manipulated by agendas not our own. What is a Republican? What is a Democrat? Fail to sell them food and they are both of them starving. Global famine ravages the third world and I cannot imagine trying to explain the parties to the hungry.

“You see the Republicans have a modestly more conservative stance on civil liberties, and the Democrats fight, very casually, to get elected again.”

The party is going on even while we shoot people. The party is happening when you sleep. The partiers rally around the bullies in the playground and chide one another for whatever ill conceived wrong grown people can throw at one another. The American Dream is out there somewhere on the fringe. Waiting to see when the party will end. Looking at the clock and wishing everyone would go home. The party is rich men and women in expensive suits negotiating our ability to live. Who deserves to be healthy. The price we put on death. Over cocktails and sushi and steak they barter our freedoms while trying to contend with the surreal acceptance of it. The Status Quo of the party has mired us, as a people, and we need to begin electing powerful ideas, and idealists. Individuals with a Plan.

We are left to redefine the dream and resurrect it’s greatest tenants. How do you create business? America knows how to create business, it simply chooses not to. Industry has been given to the less developed nations to provide us with a variety of shoes. Our lavish existence has created a false covenant with materialism. Humanist pack rats collecting and trading things to get other things. Cast aside the wool Pepsi and Coke have placed over your eyes, blinding you as sure as diabetes one day will. How do you create business? You make things people like and then you sell it to them. The mystery is a fallacy! I have the solution!

We make factories to make factories. We harvest the only commodity that will matter in the future; Power, from natural resources and then sell it to people who need it. We will make electric car factories. Solar dirigibles. Colossal kinetic harvesting arrays. Not a series of plants building slightly different variations of last years models. Factories like we want to make things. The shipping containers will go the other way. We will ship them out of Duluth to anywhere, and by and through the grace of the global market we will be rich. I would work in an electric car factory, wouldn’t you? Get a living wage for once in your check to check existence? Wouldn’t it be nice not to worry about losing your home? Wouldn’t it be nice to provide your child with everything they need? Including a future?

The Republicans are partners to industry and the free market, and lack but ideas to lend form to their grand scheme of global financial dominance. He who governs least governs not at all. The Future Governor must lead both parties if we are to have an accord. The Democrats are champions of the people, and lack but the confidence to commit to a plan. Without the partisanship and illusory conflict between the parties we can fire into office and station an individual battling for the whole, the all, the everything. The Future Governor will Govern the Future and I will show you the way.
Category: ,
��
8:12 AM | Posted in
For some time now I have been on the lookout for an addition to this blog. I am pleased to announce that after considerable searching in the deepest darkest recesses of Minnesota, some negotiation, and perhaps a bribe or two, there will be another writer here to bore the crap out of you who insist on returning to this place day after day.

He bills himself as a 2010 gubernatorial candidate (That's right, I have a gubernatorial candidate writing here so suck it MNPublius!) and as such he will have much to say about the direction of this state as well as of the country. Now I am not entirely certain what will be said nor am I entirely certain that this individual is the best person to be taking over the reins of Minnesota government although I am not sure he could do much worse than the last two individuals who cluttered up that office. What I do know is that he has some sort of opinion on some sort of issue.

I will allow him to introduce himself more thoroughly...
Category:
��
7:38 AM | Posted in
Regardless of politics, Dave Thul is right on this one:

Grace hits the military derangement trifecta, showing ignorance of the military (the uniforms worn are clearly wrong), ignorance of a thing called Google, which shows that the 'new' photos have been floating around the internet for several years, and ignorance of basic standards of journalism by repeating a story that was debunked as false more than 5 years ago.

On behalf of the US military, I will be waiting for a retraction and apology from MN Progressive Project and Grace Kelly. I wont hold my breath.


I have only met Grace on one occasion but I certainly hope she takes steps to retract the post and apologize for her mistakes. Check out Blue Man for more...
Category:
��
6:46 PM | Posted in
Category:
��
Just received this in my inbox from the Clark Campaign:

Earlier this week, Michele Bachmann sent an emergency email to her radical supporters asking them to "send a message" to the rest of us. It raised more than $100,000 for her reelection campaign.

Now I’m asking you to send Michele Bachmann a message: forward this message to five friends and ask them to sign up for our campaign or to donate today. Ask them to join the thousands who have already stepped up to join our campaign, to finally bring an end to Michele Bachmann's brand of inflammatory politics and bring back common sense.

I've said all along, we're going to win this campaign on the ground, and that's going to take our own army of support. We're already well on our way - but we need your help. Join our campaign today, and ask your friends to join us as well.

Even with Michele Bachman’s national network pullling out all the stops, we're neck-and-neck in this campaign. In just 9 weeks we matched her nearly dollar for dollar and built a network of thousands ready to take her on. That's exactly what it’s going to take to win - so let's do it again. Please send Michele a message and make a contribution to our campaign today.

Seriously people, its time to step it up and get to donating...
So this is perhaps less of an episode of Gross Inaccuracies and more of reminder to Gary Gross about the things he conveniently left out of his most recent hit piece on Tarryl Clark.

Apparently now you only have to be in the room with single payer advocates to be counted as one of them:

I’ll clear up Tarryl’s supposed indecision surrounding the public option. I attended a health care forum that Tarryl called at St. Cloud’s Whitney Senior Center. Tarryl’s special guest that night was Sen. John Marty, the most outspoken and consistent advocate for single-payer health care.

From the outset of the event, the focus of the conversation was almost exclusively about Canadacare and single-payer health care.

As you will recall, Gary, I too was at this event and if we used your logic we might also have to wonder if Representative Gottwalt (who was also there) is a single payer advocate. Oh but wait, I actually took some video of the event and put it up on youtube. Let's review what Clark said about health care reform:



Weird, for all your guilt by association rhetoric, I don't hear Clark saying anything one way or the other about single payer health insurance. But this isn't the best part of the Gross attack piece. He brings up this little exchange:

From the outset of the event, the focus of the conversation was almost exclusively about Canadacare and single-payer health care. Loretta Linus spoke enthusiastically, though a bit combatively, about CanadaCare:

“The doctors are wonderful. You get good care. And it just makes me mad when they talk about how they have to come over here to get good care & that’s not true. Now they say that Canadians have to come over here for good treatment. Well don’t you believe it. Don’t you believe it one bit. That government is so good to all its people. I don’t care if you’re rich or poor. They take care of you. And so many of the people come & they talk crap about how awful their system is. Well, don’t you believe it. Single payer is wonderful if it’s run right.”

She wasn’t the only single-payer advocate to speak that night.


Hey Gary, did you let your readers know what your good friend Steve Gottwalt was doing while this elderly woman expressed her opinion to those people who you consistently claim "work for we the people"? Oh, let me remind them:



Your "adopted representative" immediately began smirking, raising eyebrows, and generally mocking this woman and her opinion. That's right, while a constituent spoke, your "adopted representative" sat there and immediately dismissed her opinion. In fact, he did more than that. He took it one step further and openly mocked her to the audience WHILE SHE SPOKE! Given that this is completely acceptable to the Republican Party in St. Cloud due to the endorsement it received from local party leadership, I wonder why you didn't include this little exchange to your hit piece on Clark.
8:56 AM | Posted in , ,
The local grocery store in St. Cloud, Coborn's, and their public relations guru, Steve Gottwalt, have been taking a bit of a hit lately after it was revealed they were sending letters to employees about health care reform and unionization urging them to oppose them.

From the St. Cloud Times:

The St. Cloud-based grocery chain in September asked its employees in a letter to contact their congressional representatives to oppose two pieces of legislation — one of them a House version of health care reform legislation.

...

Steve Gottwalt, spokesman for the company, said someone — not an employee — asked whether the letter was a threat. He said it is not at all a threat and employees are free to take any stance on the legislation without risk of retaliation.


Now an LTE appears in the Times:

In the discussion of the pending health care in Congress, we have heard the vast rumors of death panels to pull the plug on Grandma, increased abortions and others so silly they are not worth the ink to include them.

I recently received a copy of a letter sent to Coborn’s employees stating that if passed, the health care bill would among other things “result in layoffs.” The letter, reported in Sunday’s Times, went on to say that it would be a “destructive government takeover of health care.”

The letter also informed the employee that the pending “unionization bill” was not good for the company, saying it would bring a “loss of benefits.”

We don’t see a head of a company ever looking out for issues that might help the employees, do we?

I find the letter sent out by Coborn’s President Christopher Coborn very troubling by putting pressure on its employees to take political sides on issues that affect them today and in their future.

Putting employees in fear of loosing benefits and even their jobs so that critical legislation is not completed is over the top. I hope that each Coborn’s employee can think on their own what is best for them.


I have three relatively simple questions for Mr. Coborn and his PR flak, Gottwalt:

1. What percentage of your employees do you provide health insurance to?

2. If employees are free to take any stance on the legislation (as Gottwalt claims), what would the purpose be in urging them to oppose the legislation? Also, if someone had to ASK if it was a threat, then doesn't it stand to reason that it has crossed some line?

3. Can you explain, with detail, how this legislation (especially health reform) will negatively impact your business? Is it because you will be required to give your employees health insurance?
��
I noticed today that Representative Bachmann sent out a fundraising blast (obviously because she was scared into it by the fundraising numbers of Tarryl Clark):

Send them a message they simply cannot ignore. Make a contribution today to the woman that drives the Left CRAZY. Please give what you can to show Washington that Michele Bachmann stands for the Constitution and she stands for the People! Help her stand strong against the Left’s march toward socialism!


As a member of the left I can assure you Representative, you don't drive me CRAZY. It's more like the look you get from people when you have done something so monumentally stupid that they can do nothing but stare in disbelief.


Anyway, my thought is, why aren't we countering this Bachmann fundraising drive by holding a Tarryl Clark fundraising drive? Come on people, you can visit either the Act Blue page set up for Clark or you can go directly to her website. We cannot allow this Bachmann fundraising push to go unanswered...
So did you catch these tweets from our good friends Marty Seifert and Paul Kohls this past weekend?

Well that seems pretty innocent, another gubernatorial forum hosted by some candidate running for the state legislature.

Yes, but it was hosted by JEREMY LINDMAN!

So?




Oh, perhaps you didn't hear that this particular Republican candidate for the state legislature is also a CONVICTED FELON.

WHAT, A CONVICTED FELON YOU SAY?

Yes, a convicted felon. Didn't you read about it in the Star Tribune and on the blog of Dusty Trice?

Jeremy Lindman is running for the Legislature, hosting a Republican gubernatorial forum and trying to get a felony removed from his record.

Let me get this straight, the Star Tribune broke this story on Friday and a full two days later Paul Kohls and Marty Seifert were tweeting about being in attendance with a CONVICTED FELON?

Yep.

So does their attendance at said forum mean that they have also ENDORSED a convicted felon?


That's a good question. Perhaps Ms. Stassen-Berger will do a follow up and find out whether the Republican Party of Minnesota is in the business of allowing convicted felons to run for office as official Republican candidates. While she is at it, perhaps she can do more than simply repeat Mr. Lindman's version of events...


Do you also wonder if they called it the Felony Forum?
5:47 PM | Posted in , ,
According to Aaron Brown of Minnesota Brown, the premier blog covering northeastern Minnesota, there was a straw poll held in Itasca County on Thursday, October 8. Given that we have two range candidates on the DFL side, you would think that one or the other would come away as the winner. You'd be wrong...

I was speaking in a different corner of the Range yesterday but heard this morning that the straw poll yielded an interesting result:

Matt Entenza won. Iron Range legislators Tom Rukavina and Tom Bakk finished second and third, respectively. Other candidates there included Susan Gaertner, Steve Kelley, Mark Dayton and Paul Thissen (though I don't know how the rest finished in the poll).


Brown adds a caveat...

Now this result is fascinating to me, but should also include an asterisk. The candidates who weren't there: Margaret Anderson Kelliher, John Marty and R.T. Rybak are all people I predict will carry some level of support in Itasca County and greater Minnesota in general (particularly Kelliher, with her farm roots, and Marty, with his support from progressive groups). Their absence affected the outcome.

While I would not necessarily disagree with Brown, it seems equally as likely that those candidates not there would have taken more votes from the other candidates and the Entenza victory would still have happened. Regardless, the support for Matt is out there. All he has to do is continue building...
��
I caught this little piece of 2010 election news in my google reader today:

Severson ponders secretary of state bid

SAUK RAPIDS — Rep. Dan Severson of Sauk Rapids has filed the paperwork to explore a run for secretary of state.

Severson would be seeking the Republican nomination to challenge DFLer Mark Ritchie, who was elected in 2006.


While I hate to pile on this early, it seemed like a good time to take a little stroll down Dan Severson memory lane. What have I learned about Representative Severson in the past year and a half?
To top it off, there are the numerous reports that come to me from unrelated sources indicating that Severson is really just the face and his wife truly wields all the power from behind the scenes. So, we have a guy who appears to hate Mexican Americans, Arab Americans, and homosexuals and we are supposed to entrust him to keeping elections fair and ensuring that ALL Minnesotans have the right and opportunity to cast a vote? I don't think so...

Learn more about Severson and stop back from time to time as 2010 elections near...
10:33 AM | Posted in , ,
I noticed today that Barbara Banaian wrote a piece about the recent protests held at Lake George here in St. Cloud. How coincidental that Barbara is the spouse of King Banaian at SCSU Scholars who spoke at the event and is good friends with the event organizers, Gary Gross of Let Freedom Ring and Leo Pusateri of Psycmeistr. The column reads like a propaganda filled infomercial whose premise is that these protests cross party lines implying a Republican/Democrat coalition.

The idea that these protests are anything more than a fringe element of the Republican Party though is completely laughable unless we are talking about the line between the most conservative elements of the Republican Party and the most perhaps slightly more anti-government elements of the libertarians coupled with independent crazies who deny the citizenship status of the President.

A few items from the article caught my eye:

According to Gross, we need to send a message to Washington that old-style politics must end. They are patronizing and condescending, he said, and it is wrong to think the average citizen cannot understand what transpires in Washington.

Says the blogger who never misses a chance in his writing to be completely condescending to every Democrat or Democratic idea. If there is one thing I have learned from reading Gary Gross, it is that he is interested only in calling people childish names and demonizing anything and everything that is not a Republican Party idea. Essentially, he is a tool of the local/national Republican Party and exists only to do their bidding. To believe that Gross wants to end "old-style politics" is to be foolishly naive. Gross doesn't want to end old-style politics, he simply wishes that old-style politics would have given his party a win last November and that old-style politics might bring his party a win in 2010.

If there were any clearer example of the partisanship of these protests and their organizers it is this quote:

Pusateri agrees. “The direction of this country since January of 2009 has been a veritable sprint toward ever-encroaching governmental influence and control over many aspects of our lives, and an accompanying erosion of individual choice and liberties. I have spoken with Republicans, Independents and even some Democrats who are alarmed not only at the size and scope of the growth of government, but also its breathtaking rate of growth.”


Really? It is just since the election of a Democrat in January of 2009 that government has "encroached" over our lives? I wonder what specific day to day things/activities Mr. Pusateri or others in this movement are unable to do that they were able to do prior to January of this year. To be honest, though, I would expect nothing less from Pusateri, a leader of the SD15 Republican Party (totally bipartisan), who is perhaps even more partisan and hateful than Gross. A man who has spent the last few months repeatedly calling or implying that this President is Hitler.

I was always under the impression that Professor Banaian was the most sensible of this triumverate but it is becoming increasingly clear that neither he nor his wife is willing to call out the more hateful rhetoric found at these rallies and are more than willing to simply propagandize them. Is there any hope for moderation in the Republican Party?
��