With Labels, Listen to Affected Populations, Not Activists

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If you go to a legislative body, an academic institution, or a progressive rally these days, you will hear a lot of “BIPOC,” “LGBTQ+” and “Latinx” flying around.  That might lead you to believe that maybe you should be shifting to use those terms, if you haven’t already. I’m not convinced.

Shifting to new terms is challenging and irksome for inflexible old dogs like me, but that’s not what is giving me pause. I’m very willing to adjust if need be. 

The Golden Rule and common decency dictate that I call others whatever they prefer to be called.  It’s not okay for me to stick with a term because it’s what I have always used in the past, or what strikes me as best.  My preferences don’t matter; theirs do. 

This leads me to this question: Are terms like BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and Latinx that are embraced by many progressive elected officials, academics, and activists really what the affected folks prefer to be called?  The question matters to me, both because I make an effort to avoid being an ass, and because I communicate for a living. 

For me the metric to monitor here is not what activists, academics, and politicians say, but what surveys find the majority of the affected populations prefer we say.  They’re not necessarily the same thing.

Gallup has consistently found that a relatively small slice prefers either “Black” (17%) or “African American” (17%), while by far the largest slice indicates that they don’t care (58%).  Therefore, if you use either Black or African American, three-fourths (58% plus 17%) are content.  When forced by the survey questionnaire to choose, a narrow plurality prefers to be called “Black” (52% prefer) over “African American” (44% prefer). 

Gallup didn’t offer up BIPOC as an option. But only 6% of Black Americans indicated “other,” so there doesn’t seem to be a popular groundswell to be called BIPOC.  Therefore, I use “Black” in most instances.

Similarly, 57% of surveyed Hispanic Americans indicated that it “does not matter” whether they are called “Hispanic (23% prefer),” “Latino (15% prefer),” or the more trendy gender-neutral term “Latinx (4% prefer).” When Hispanic American respondents are required to choose, 57% choose to be called “Hispanic,” 37% went with “Latino,” and 5% prefer “Latinx.” 

Therefore, I go with “Hispanic,” not Latinx.

As far as I know, Gallop didn’t survey Native Americans, and I can’t find anyone who has.  It would be helpful to know whether most prefer “Native American,” “American Indian,” “Indigenous American,” “Indigenous,” or something else.  I want to get it right.

I also can’t find surveys of Americans who aren’t heterosexual about what they prefer to be called.  That also would be instructive.

This issue gets most challenging when you need to use an umbrella term for many multiple groups, which is how we end up with well-intentioned acronyms such as BIPOC and LGBTQ+.  But when some insist that the most inclusive alphabet soup be used in situations where it’s not really necessary, one side-effect is to wash out the individuality of each group in the acronym. 

For instance, if some Indigenous folks people prefer to be called Indigenous rather than lumped into BIPOC, I could understand why. Acronyms can feel cold and overly formal.

Again, we need to be calling our friends, neighbors, and colleagues what they prefer to be called, not what we or a narrower band of vocal activists, academics, and politicians declare to be acceptable.  That’s why these kinds of surveys matter to me. I hope we will see more of them. They identify societal consensus and give well-intentioned people defensible guidance for showing respect and avoiding corrosive battles.  America needs that right now.

Biden’s “Junk Fee” Fight Should Include Broder’s Deli as Well as Las Vegas

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Currently lost in all the excitement about Chinese spy balloons and Marjorie Taylor Greene discovering that the feds sent $5 billion to one Illinois elementary school to teach kids that being white is a bad thing is the announcement yesterday that Joe Biden is going after … junk fees … or zombie fees if you’re into the whole “Last of Us” thing.

I couldn’t say, “amen” any louder if I had Metallica’s sound system. There’s no end of things that can annoy the living bejesus out of you (if you let them), but this pervasive and ever-growing gaming of otherwise straightforward retail pricing is truly out of control. The Biden gang says specifically they’re after …

  • excessive online concert, sporting event and entertainment ticket fees
  • airline fees for families sitting together on flights
  • exorbitant early termination fees for TV, phone and internet services
  • surprise resort and destination fees

This is the kind of populist-oriented legislation you’d think would rally the masses and engender wide bi-partisan support. But I’m not going to get carried away with reckless hope. Lobbying pressure from the likes of Live Nation/Ticketmaster, Delta and United et al, Comcast and Las Vegas will likely convince those lawmakers perpetually giving lip service to “hard working Americans” that this idea will only suppress our great and wonderful entrepreneurial spirit, not to mention negatively impact shareholder value.

Simultaneous with reading about what they’re calling the Junk Fee Protection Act my wife was following a blow up on Next Door, the local community site usually overrun with stories of feral cats, porch pirates and baroque theories of gross mismanagement if not outright corruption by city administrators … in Edina, in our case. The kerfuffle was over mandatory, ill-defined fees creeping into the tabs at local restaurants. In other words, the zombie virus-like spread of “service fees” slapped on top of the cost of whatever you eat and drink … plus tip.

In our cozy corner of the world a restaurant/deli operation called Broders announced it was instituting a 15% “service and equity fee” on top of everyone’s order while still … you gotta love this … allowing patrons to tip another 15%, 18% or 25%. The Next Door trolls were not happy. And rightfully so.

However Broders and other venues want to ‘splain it, it’s tacky price gaming no different than that Vegas hotel you booked for $150 a night plus tax hitting you with a 30% “resort fee” as you hit the check out button. Or, to use another current example, Live Nation/Ticketmaster collecting an extra $20, $30, $40 in “service fees” on top of the $150 they’ve already charged you for booking that Kid Rock concert … via a computer.

What makes it all even more annoyingly laughable is the constant refrain that this fee-upon-fee-upon-tip scam is something they’re doing to benefit their overworked, underpaid staff in the back of the house. Because, you know, actually paying the busboys, salad choppers and dishwashers $18 – $20 an hour is an obligation that must fall upon the customer, not the restaurant’s owners.

And which it would under any rational, gaming-free system, where a business meets its cost of doing business, including compensation for employees, by … dare we say it out loud? … raising prices to cover all costs and show a profit. It’s an insane concept I concede. Likely a radical socialist conspiracy if Marjorie Taylor Greene gets wind of it. But until the private equity boys and hard-driving Type A business school grads picked and tossed their chump customers into the deep end of “fee world” pool it worked just fine.

Capitalism. Insane, I know.

Want a room in Vegas? Well, based on demand that’ll now cost you $180 a night. Don’t want to pay that? Fine. Stay out in Primm and drive in to catch the animatronic Grand Funk Railroad Tribute Band at the Sahara. Want a pound of prosciutto from Broder’s for your next elegant soiree? Well, based on the rising cost of hiring competent staff and everything, that’ll now cost you $16 instead of the $13 it was last year. If you want to tip the kid that wrapped it and rang you up another couple bucks, knock yourself out.

Just stop with the word salad explanations and the pretense that bullshit price gaming is the only fair way to sustain your business. And by that I mean gibberish like this from the owner of Broder’s: “We’re trying to create a compensation structure that looks different than it did before the pandemic … and strive for pay equity between front-of-house and back-of-house service members.”

To which I say, “No you’re not. You’re simply attaching yourself to an obnoxious trend that others have successfully got away with … until now.”

Dueling Visions for Minnesota: Scandinavia or South Dakota?

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Elections in a purple state can give you whiplash. 

After red wave elections, we’re led by Republicans like Tim Pawlenty who push for low taxes, poor services, and culture wars.

After blue wave elections, we’re led by DFLers like Tim Walz who push for higher taxes, better services, and cultural tolerance. 

After elections with more mixed results, legislative stalemates cause us to keep the prevailing status quo frozen in place.

That makes every election cycle extremely consequential.

The South Dakota Vision for Minnesota

In 2022, a decidedly purple Minnesota – at the time, it was the only state in the nation with one chamber of the state Legislature controlled by Democrats and the other controlled by Republicans – held a particularly high-stakes election. 

If Minnesota voters had elected ultra-conservative former physician gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen and a Republican Legislature dominated by far-right Trumpers, Minnesota would have become a conservative promised land, much like its neighbor to the west, South Dakota. 

During the campaign, Jensen and other Republicans proposed a race-to-the-bottom on taxes, including eliminating the state income tax, which would have led to dramatically worse services.  Republican spinmeisters prefer to say “smaller government,” but the reality is that it would have meant much worse services. The anti-vaxxer Doc Jensen also pledged a South Dakota-like war on public health and culture war initiatives to force conservatives’ thinking on gays, guns, God, and gynecology on all Minnesotans. 

In other words, think Kristi Noem, with a stethoscope prop.

The Scandinavia Vision for Minnesota

Fortunately, 192,408 more Minnesotans voted for incumbent Governor Tim Walz than Jensen. More surprisingly, since it was predicted to be a historically horrible year for Democrats, Minnesotans also elected narrow DFL majorities in the state House and Senate.  The all-important Senate majority is especially razor-thin at 34-33.

Walz and the DFL-controlled Legislatures are armed with a $17.5 billion budget surplus and are offering a vision that is more like a social democratic-led Scandinavian country in the 1970s than South Dakota in the 2020s:

  • Paid family and medical leave;
  • An enormous funding increase for public schools;
  • A targeted child tax credit to dramatically reduce childhood poverty;
  • Free school lunches for all students;
  • An opportunity for people without employer-based health insurance to buy into public health insurance (MinnesotaCare/Medicaid), instead of only being able to choose private insurance;
  • Down payment assistance for first-time home buyers, homelessness prevention, affordable housing, and rent vouchers;
  • A huge package to save the beleaguered childcare sector and make child care free for poor families and more affordable for middle-class families;
  • Large subsidies for weatherization, electric vehicle infrastructure, and solar energy expansion to combat climate change;
  • A range of gun violence prevention reforms, such as universal background checks, red flag laws to prevent people who could be perceived as a threat to themselves or others from getting guns, raising the legal age for obtaining military-style rifles to 21, and banning high-capacity magazines;
  • Legalized marijuana and expunged records for past offenders;
  • Driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants;
  • Automatic voter registration;
  • Enfranchising felons who have served their time; and
  • A capital gains tax hike for the wealthiest Minnesotans.

The list goes on. Overall, think Bernie Sanders, with a Fargo accent.

This is the most dramatic swing of state policy in my lifetime, and perhaps in the history of the state. And if somebody you may have never heard of, Judy Seeberger (DFL-Afton), had received just 322 fewer votes in her state Senate race, most of those changes would never have been possible. Without Seeberger’s handful of votes in the eastern suburbs of the Twin Cities metropolitan area, Minnesota would still be stuck in limbo between the South Dakota vision and the Scandinavia vision. 322 votes.

What Does Hamline Not Understand About Academic Freedom?

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There are several people in my immediate orbit with ties to Hamline University and I can safely say none of them are pleased with the school’s response to an adjunct professor showing an image of the Prophet Mohammed in an art history class. In the recent history of self-inflicted wounds, this one — by an otherwise respectable liberal arts college — is a doozy.

The story burst to light via a New York Times story following a vigorous complaint by PEN America, the free expression advocate shortly before Christmas. (Why no local news outlet caught wind of so provocative a story as this or followed up on it is interesting in itself.)

The details are now well known. But in essence, the young adjunct — teaching an art history class, mind you — carefully and by all accounts respectfully warned her students that an image of Mohammed would be shown and that they were free to look away in the brief time it was being displayed.

But … at least one Muslim student did not, and quickly registered her offense with Hamline’s administrators who quickly caved, apologized to the student, fired the adjunct and released a gob-smacking statement saying among other, um, provocative things that, respect for Muslim students, “should have superseded academic freedom.”

Excuse me, what?

At the moment, Hamline’s knee-jerk “superseding” response is the target of most of the outrage. And yes, we live in a time when outrage is a staple of public conversation. Unfortunately we seem also to live in a time when administrators not of some insulated, fundamentalist religious school, but an American liberal arts university in a distinctly liberal-minded metropolitan area seized up in terror at the possibility of being internationally branded as “Islamaphobic.”

Had Hamline’s adult leaders sought full advice and education on the incident they might have heard something like this from the Muslim Public Affairs Council:

“As a Muslim organization, we recognize the validity and ubiquity of an Islamic viewpoint that discourages or forbids any depictions of the Prophet, especially if done in a distasteful or disrespectful manner. However, we also recognize the historical reality that other viewpoints have existed and that there have been some Muslims, including and especially Shīʿī Muslims,  who have felt no qualms in pictorially representing the Prophet (although often veiling his face out of respect). All this is a testament to the great internal diversity within the Islamic tradition, which should be celebrated.  … The painting was not Islamophobic. In fact, it was commissioned by a fourteenth-century Muslim king in order to honor the Prophet, depicting the first Quranic revelation from the angel Gabriel.”

Or maybe they did seek counsel and chose to ignore it. Whatever, again at this moment, it is Hamline’s administrators  looking at career-shredding public ignominy and not the young adjunct.

But there’s a lot to provoke in this episode.

Shall we perhaps discuss the student who complained after multiple advisories from her professor? Do we regard her intentions in tuning in regardless, getting “triggered” and summoning the wrath of nervous administrators as entirely honorable? I’ve got a few questions there.

Or how about the PR calculations Hamline’s administrators ran?

Ignoring or underplaying the student’s complaint risked … well, pretty much the indignant reaction they’re getting, only in 180 degree reverse. Instead of fundamentalist Muslims from here to Riyadh screaming “Islamaphobia!”, by shouting Islamaphobia first and Hamline’s seers have triggered and angered the kind of good, check-writing alumni liberals who they presumably once educated to believe that … wait for it, academic freedom supersedes religious superstition. (“Superstition” being my word.)

And then, perhaps above all, we have the fascinating discussion of when and where exactly some one’s religious “beliefs” take a back seat to science or full, bona fide scholarship/academic freedom?

During the COVID pandemic it made no scientific (or ethical) sense to excuse critical personnel from vaccine treatment on the grounds that the shots violated their “beliefs”. Believe whatever you want in your own home, but if you’re in a position to spread a demonstrably fatal virus, you either get the shots or … stay in your home and massage your beliefs.

The Hamline situation is not physical life or death. But the ability of any lone student to raise their hand and shut down a thoughtful, scholarly college course and get the instructor fired by fretful administrators is a frightening virus of another kind for freedoms of curiosity, research and dialogue in a so-called democracy

I’m tempted to go all Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins here and rant on about I’ve about how I’ve had it with religion, and religious fundamentalism in particular, getting its pious hands around the throats of public institutions.

I won’t. But I think we can agree that Hamline is getting a well-deserved acid bath in what not to do when one person — quite possibly acting in a variation of bad faith — asserts victimhood and religious persecution.

As With Alcohol, Mitigation, Not Prohibition, Is the Answer

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These days, there is a chorus of opining about the hellscape Minnesota will become when marijuana soon is legalized.  Impaired driving! Health problems! Underage use! It’s starting to sound like a 2023 remake of the classic propaganda film “Reefer Madness.” 

Though the concerns are exaggerated, they are valid. Yes, driving while stoned is dangerous and will increase.  Yes, legalized marijuana products will fall into the hands of minors and that can be dangerous. Yes, marijuana use can be unhealthy, particularly for younger, developing brains.

At the same time, similar issues have long existed with already legal alcohol, and are often much worse than we’re seeing in the many states with legalized marijuana. 

  • Impaired Driving. In 2017, 24,862 Minnesotans were arrested for driving while impaired. Most of those were abusing alcohol.  
  • Underage Use. In 2011, a national found that 39 percent of high schoolers drank alcohol in the last 30 days, 22 percent binge drank, and 8 percent drove after drinking alcohol.
  • Health Problems. According to the Minnesota Department of Health, in 2020 alcohol contributed to 35,889 inpatient hospitalizations and 43,217 emergency room visits.  Between 2015 and 2019, 2,151 alcohol-related deaths happened.

Despite these alarming alcohol-related statistics, I don’t know of a single supporter of marijuana prohibition who wants alcohol prohibition reinstated. 

Many folks delivering red-faced warnings about the dangers of the devil weed have themselves used alcohol before it was legally permissible, made their health worse by drinking alcohol, and/or driven while impaired by alcohol use.  Raise a glass to hypocrisy!

While marijuana use is vilified, particularly by older Minnesotans, about 59 percent of Minnesotans heedlessly use demonstrably dangerous and addictive alcohol products. And mainstream culture romanticizes and celebrates them. 

As I’ve written here in the past, some of the marijuana tax revenue should be used to mitigate the impacts of expanded marijuana use, such as a public education campaign to warn people about the legitimate concerns about underage marijuana use, marijuana use for people with certain conditions, and driving while high on marijuana. 

Those kinds of measures, not prohibition, are how we attempt to limit the downsides of alcohol use, and those measures, not prohibition, are how we should limit the downsides of marijuana abuse.

We are a free country that allows people to take risks.  The risks associated with marijuana are not insignificant, but they pale compared to the risks alcohol users routinely take.  That being the case, marijuana pearl-clutchers should shift from pushing to perpetuate the disastrous marijuana prohibition experiment to advocating for reasonable efforts to mitigate the harms of marijuana use.

Hey, Senate DFLers, Don’t Forget The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact!

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As thoroughly satisfying as it is to watch Republicans bury the schadenfreude needle with their public humiliation of Kevin McCarthy, (who couldn’t deserve it more), there’s been a fascinating and telling split-screen on display these past few days as Democrats took over full control of Minnesota government.

One one side we had hapless, spineless McCarthy, a man of no detectable policy interests, suffering his ordeal in the public stocks. On the other we had our local Democrats — i.e. “radical socialists” if you drink the MAGA Kool-Aid — gleefully reminding constituents of the very long list of laws and programs they intend to pass with their new and (likely) transitory majority.

Armchair cynics invariably roll their eyes every time some liberal runs down their legislative “to-do” list. The end credits for a Hollywood super-hero blockbuster are shorter than what liberals vow to do — by god — if they ever get full control of the gears of gummint.

But, lo and behold! That is pretty well what Democrats find themselves being able to do here in Minnesota, at least until the end of the 2024 session of the legislature.

Given both control and an eye-watering surplus, every wish on the DFL’s long list is within reach, presuming the absence of a local version of Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema.

High on that list is certifying abortion rights, and shoring up family leave and voting processes, followed closely-to-simultaneously by bills to address climate change, making prescription drugs affordable, reducing gun violence, boosting education resources, controlling rent costs, filling potholes, re-building bridges, building out broadband and … and … well you get the idea.

Essentially everything that rational taxpayers expect government to do is suddenly possible … for the next two years.

But, as Peter Falk’s Columbo so often mumbled as he exited a scene, “There’s just one thing … .”

To me and a few others the juvenile McCarthy v. Matt Gaetz et al farce in D.C. is a vivid testament to the sewer we’re all forced to live in under minority rule. And there are few better systemic cures to blunting minority rule and the the institutionalized anarchy of modern conservatism than doing away with or at least neutering the Electoral College.

In 2019 the DFL-controlled Minnesota House signed on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. You can read all the clauses of the compact, but basically it really is this simple : It is “an interstate compact to award member states’ presidential electors to the candidate that receives the most votes nationwide. The NPVIC would go into effect if states representing at least 270 electoral college votes adopt the legislation.”

In other words, for all those “originalists” sentimental about the Electoral College, which in recent years has given us George W. Bush and the epic disaster of the Iraq War, followed by Donald Trump’s start-to-finish dumpster fire, the College would remain. But states signing on to the compact would agree to assign all their electoral votesa to whoever won the popular vote … nationwide.

This thing has been winding its way through legislatures for years and at present has 15 (all blue) states and D.C., representing 195 of the 270 votes needed to give it authority.

Did I mention that the Republican-controlled Senate stifled the vote here in Minnesota four years ago?

If Minnesota’s new DFL Senate majority gets on board, the national number rises to 205, leaving a pathway to 21st century election fairness and actual majority rule in the hands of states like Pennsylvania (20), Ohio (18), Michigan (16), and Virginia (13).

I hold little hope for Ohio these days, but the idea may have some possibilities in Arizona and Georgia.

Obviously, Republicans with their cro-magnon view of originalism and the glorious Founders’ affinity for … minority rule (!?) … will fight the Compact with everything they’ve got.

Why? Well, because they, like you and I, know that without the tortured, anachronistic conventions of the Electoral College, Al Gore would have presided over the 9/11 response and very likely not have gone rampaging into a country that had nothing to do with the attack. And likewise, Hillary Clinton would have steered the ship of state from 2017 until at least 2021. That would have meant, among so much else, a coherent, coordinated, science-based early response to COVID and a leadership that would not have persistently pandered to white nationalist fever dreams and incited a mob to attack the Capitol.

Politics, I’m told, is a game played incrementally and opportunistically. So all I’m suggesting is Minnesota’s Senate Democrats take advantage of the rare opportunity they have and move the ball of actual democratic majority rule another couple yards down field by voting “yea” on the NPVIC.

Looking at the McCarthy farce I think we can all agree that everything would be better off with fewer fools and frauds steering the ship.

Low Expectations and Dark Hopes for the New Year

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The arrival of a new year always brings a heightened level of giddiness, accelerated by blind hope and a largely fact-free belief that things will be better this time around. It’s part of the stories we tell ourselves to get out of bed in the morning and … go out and do exactly the same things we’ve done every previous year.

For Catholics it’s a bit like the “confessional effect” where we go in and tell the priest all the miserable things we’ve done, said or thought, get exonerated and set free in the wild to start all over again.

That said, on this the third day of the new year I’m enjoying my coffee and watching the D.C. press horde scurrying after the Capitol’s new power brokers … Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and, um, Kevin McCarthy. They are the center of attention. Because they are now, for the moment at least, the critical characters in the present (and future) Congressional drama. Put another way good friends, the United States really is reduced to caring what Lauren Boebert has to say about … anything.

No one knows how this election for Speaker of the House will play out, but what is abundantly clear is that the delusional mass psychosis that is Trumpism has not yet been expelled from the Republican party. It’s at least one more cycle of defeat and chaos from exhaustion.

The great natural cycle of rebirth has delivered the same mutant baby. For this moment and likely for the next two years, MAGA narcissism and all the dysfunction and corruption that it engenders will have it’s hands around the throat of the House of Representatives.

But — and here comes the “hope” part — all this chaos points to where 2023 could likely take the Grand Old Party.

For all the accusations people of my ilk hurl at conservatives for their nihilism, their willingness to torch the whole damn ranch in pursuit of some undefined “total victory”, a nihilistic denouement is clearly where “the crazies” are going in this McCarthy/Speaker fiasco.

Related and more significant in the realm of gross nihilism, their intellectual leader, the Orange Former Guy, holed up in Mar a Lago has been hinting broadly that if professional Republicans don’t stop blaming him for the election disaster of last November and being nicer to him, he’ll run as an independent in 2024.

I see a lot of Trumpian logic in that.

Being notoriously lazy and undisciplined, Trump has to regard a campaign free of all the bureaucratic exertions, rules and formalities of a party nomination as immensely appealing. Money wouldn’t be a problem. Hell, he grifted a quarter of a billion off his MAGA congregation for a bogus legal defense fund. If he confined himself to occasional airport rallies, daily Truth Social videos, and all the free airtime Newsmax and Mike Lindell TV will feed to his forever fervent, deeply retrograde “base” he’d easily match the return all that icky, sweaty, expensive hand-shaking people like Mike Pence would have to do to get 1/100 the attention.

Of course Trump couldn’t win election to the White House. But his (currently) assured support from even 20% of Republican voters would seriously confound the strategies of other candidates, to the point they, like McCarthy with his “crazies”, would have to offer him undigestible, self-defeating concessions to preclude him from attacking them. He’d “win” by maki ng them lose. In other words, a narcissistic nihilist’s fever dream.

So, my apologies for the semi-bummer here so early in this new year. But irrational exuberance just ain’t my thing.

Minnesota’s Wealthiest Social Security Beneficiaries Shouldn’t Be First in Line for Help

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Minnesota’s Social Security recipients don’t have bills for child care, which for infants in the Twin Cities metropolitan area child care center are averaging about $18,000 per year.

Most retirees no longer have to pay any of the costs for raising children, which averages about $233,610 per child, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

 Oh and by the way, that USDA figure is only until age 17. After that, many families face massive bills for public college tuition, books, and housing bills, which are averaging about $17,606 per year, per child.  That expense is also in the rearview mirror of Social Security beneficiaries.

Keep in mind that many in this generation of young families facing those daunting expenses are also starting off life with huge student loan bills that dwarf what today’s retirees paid.

In the face of these figures showing the crushing expenses facing Minnesota’s young families, the Minnesota Legislature is fixated on a large $510 million tax cut for Social Security recipients. 

As MinnPost explains, that cut won’t be helping the neediest Social Security beneficiaries.  Low-income Minnesota retirees already pay no taxes on their benefits, as do many middle-income retirees.

Right now, about 55 percent of the roughly 400,000 people who receive Social Security in Minnesota don’t pay taxes on the benefits. The bulk of the elimination would help taxpayers who have $100,000 or more in total income, according to a Senate analysis.

That Senate research found people with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 a year would save an average of $733 per year. Those making more than $500,000 would save $2,397.

So why is the Minnesota Legislature considering putting the state’s wealthiest Social Security recipients at the top of its gift list? Because wealthy retirees need the help more than young families in their heaviest spending years? Nope.

Because retirees vote.  According to U.S. News and World Report, in 2018 voter turnout for 18 to 24-year-olds was 30%. For voters over 65, turnout was more than twice as high at 64%. Politicians who want to hold on to power are all too aware of this fact. That’s a terrific political argument, but it’s a terrible equity argument. 

If the Minnesota Legislature can find a way to finance universally accessible quality child care, adequate k-12 education funding, paid family and medical leave, low-income housing to address the homelessness crisis, enough food to help all hungry children, and significant public college tuition relief, maybe it can then find enough to help some more middle-income retirees. Maybe. But can we at least require Minnesota’s wealthiest Social Security recipients to pay their fair share for helping struggling young families and children?

Time to Limit HOAs’ Solar Panel Policing Powers

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Who stands in the way of the expansion of residential solar panel use?  You’ve likely heard about politicians who are protecting the dirty fossil fuel special interests in order to tap into huge campaign contributions. And then there are the people who spread false information that solar is more expensive than fossil fuels or will deplete the sun’s energy.

But you might not have heard as much about the barriers Home Owners Associations (HOA) present.

Home Owners Associations — those earnest guardians of neighborhood uniformity, conformity, and banality — are a substantial barrier for those who want to use solar panels to cut their energy bills and/or reduce their impact on climate change. 

Many HOAs have bylaws that directly or indirectly forbid the installation of rooftop solar panels. They apparently view solar panels as something that adds too much unsightly variation to their carefully planned cookie-cutter housing developments.

While solar panels are not works of art, they now blend in much better than in the past. We’re all much more accustomed to seeing them, and solar panel products are more attractive and unobtrusive than they used to be.



More importantly, the benefits of solar panel use — limiting catastrophic climate change and defraying significant household costs — greatly outweigh any slight aesthetic cost. It’s not a close call.

Still many HOAs are doing what they do, enforcing their rules. That’s substantially limiting the use of solar panels.

I have a personal story to illustrate how this works. For the first time in my life, I recently moved into a home governed by an HOA. Shortly after moving in, I emailed the HOA contact to ask if there are any limitations related to rooftop solar panels. (I should note that I had not yet secured the all-important spousal approval and appropriation, a daunting hurdle in itself, but I first wanted to see if this was even an option.)

The HOA contact swiftly emailed me to deliver a non-rejection rejection:

“…there are currently no specific restrictions on solar panel installations, other than they must not be visible from the public right-of-ways.”

About that “other than” clause: Since all pitched roofs are visible from public rights-of-way — streets, sidewalks, and alleys — the HOA is effectively telling me, in an indirect “Minnesota Nice” way, that there is no way in hell they are going to let me or anyone else install solar panels in their development.  So, I dropped it.

How many Minnesotans does this impact? According to Iproperty Management:

“There are 7,780 HOAs in Minnesota. Roughly 1.52 million people in Minnesota live in HOA communities. 26.6% of Minnesotans live in HOA communities. 13.7% of Minnesota homeowners are part of HOAs. An estimated 583,462 homes in Minnesota are part of HOA communities.”

This is not just a “woke” liberal issue.  Because homeowners with rooftop solar panels are saving thousands of dollars in energy bills, this is also a significant financial issue. It benefits the 20% of Americans who still somehow don’t believe climate change is happening, but want to save thousands of dollars in energy bills. Now that the price of solar energy systems has decreased significantly, and energy costs are skyrocketing, the payoff from solar panels has never been more lucrative.

I hope this is the year that Minnesota HOAs will be stopped from standing in the way of solar panel use.  Over the last two years, Minnesota legislators considered a bipartisan bill authored by State Senator Karin Housley (R-Stillwater) and Representative Ami Wazlawik (DFL-White Bear Township) to regulate the HOA regulators. The Housley-Wazlawik bill would have allowed the HOA to impose limits, but the limits could not decrease production by more than 20%, or add more than $2,000 to the cost.

 Since my HOA’s “not visible from the public right-of-ways” restrictions effectively decreased production for any pitch-roofed home near a street, sidewalk, or alley by 100%, it would seem to be an illegal restriction, if a bill like the Housley-Wazlawik bill passes.

With the Minnesota Senate controlled by Republicans during the 2020-2022 legislative sessions, the Housley-Wazlawik bill languished.  Moreover, last year’s partisan-divided Legislature ended in a stalemate that left most business undone. 

Now the Minnesota Senate, House, and Governor’s office will be controlled by DFLers. These are folks who promised on the campaign trail to address climate change and help Minnesotans “make ends meet” during a time of historically high inflation. Now they need to deliver on those promises. Therefore, it would sure seem that the legislation’s likelihood of passing have improved significantly. Here’s hoping.

Now, does anyone know a good lobbyist I can hire to persuade my wife?

Pop Quiz: “How Many People Actually Know What’s Going On?”

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It was another of those “convergence moments.” I’m out having breakfast at my local supermarket restaurant, which is kind of a Rick’s Cafe for beautiful Edina. Everyone goes there.

And as I waited for my Denver omelette, doomscrolling through the news, three old geezers at the next table, two dressed in matching Elmer Fudd-red plaid flannel got going on politics. And in that same moment I came across the story of freshly-elected Minnesota state representative Walter Hudson, holding court at some local MAGA-naut Republican meet-up.

I’d never heard of the guy but listening to him speak I immediately consigned him to the over-stocked Rush Limbaugh wannabe hall of infamy. Basso profundo. Theatrical pauses. Repetitive phrasing. Yadda yadda. All the stuff that convinces the dull-witted you’re a serious guy in the know. (So corny … yet, after all these years, still effective.)

Alongside a dais of head-bobbers Hudson told the room, “You are equivalent to a plantation owner who enslaved Black people and forced them to work for you if you, today, as a medical professional or just a member of the populace, demand that your neighbor take a vaccination to keep you safe.”

Incoming GOP lawmaker compares medical professionals to slave owners - KSTP.com Eyewitness News

A million-plus extra deaths later and these deep thinking, attention-hungry libertarians are still flogging the “tyranny” of … vaccines. Otherwise known as life-saving medicine. Talk about a stale playbook.

(Predictably, Hudson has a … talk radio show … “Closing Argument with Walter Hudson.” I haven’t seen the ratings. But I’m kind of imagining Robert DeNiro as Rupert Pupkin in Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy”, cos-playing a Johnny Carson-like star in his home basement studio.)

Meanwhile, the geezers, each nursing a lonely cup of coffee, were getting worked up. The most talkative and putatively most “informed” was well into a riff/lecture on the “out of control” crime problem … in Edina, presumably (it’s a free-fire zone, I gotta tell ya) … and how Democrats are responsible because of the way they “restrain” the cops. I can’t be certain because of the ambient clatter from other patrons, but I thought I heard him spout out a “50%” increase over the last few years.

The element that glued this together in my alleged brain was a passing exchange in a recent podcast between a bunch of political pundits. I think it was David Axelrod/Mike Murphy’s “Hacks on Tap”, but it might have been Charlie Sykes’ “Bulwark” show. I was driving and drinking coffee and eating a donut at the time so I couldn’t write it down.

The context was the latest example of cluelessness on the part of some too well known politician, which led to the question, “What would you say is the percentage of people who actually know what is going on? I mean really know and aren’t just best-guessing it?”

They were talking politics, but I instantly applied this to myself and my life experience and came up with the number, “Five percent.” Tops. Of people who truly know who is zooming who and why, and how all the thread stretched between pins on a wall actually connect.

The pundits more or less agreed on “20%” … of characters they knew and interacted with practicing or reporting on the political game.

Being pros, they would know better than me, but I still put 20% in the category of “that’s generous, kids.”

I won’t belabor this, but whether the conversation is football, art, street cleaning, fashion, cooking, dog training or bar stool philosophizing I am forever amused at people prattling on on topics they clearly understand in only the broadest and usually most cliched terms.

Now, The Dude once wisely said, “Well, that’s just like your opinion, man.”

It’d be nice if all opinions rested on a solid foundation of facts — “information literacy” if you will — but no one expects that. You think the sun rises in the west, or Donald Trump is one big hunka hunka burning love … fine. Opinion.

The bafflement, for me, sets in when guys and gals like Hudson, the House Freedom Caucus, Kari Lake, geezer pundits, more than a few film critics I read, financial experts and major investors in FTX, paranoid neighbors and so on insist they’re dealing with facts. Not opinions. Facts! Horrible, terrible indisputable facts! Facts that place themselves (and usually they alone) at the center of the axis of veracity and authority.

Obviously, as a blogger supremely proud of my opinion and bizarre transmutation of facts, I have to place myself among the 95% you and yours should carefully vet before accepting anything I say as … mmm … bona fide.

But in my defense, out of sympathy and respect for my usually bored and annoyed audience, I try … try … to qualify my gas-bagging and separate what I know and what I only think I know.

Sinister Skullduggery Needed for Sinema

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Up in my ever-expanding pantheon of Rogues and Reprobates I reserve a podium for those of Lesser-Though-Still-Extraordinarily-Annoying Vices … like Gross Self-Absorbedness, Negligible Ethics and First-in-Class Twittery. So it comes as no surprise that Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is stepping up and taking a place alongside the usual suspects … The Former Guy, Valdimir Putin, Mexican cartel leaders, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and so on.

As others before me have already said, Sinema deciding to go “Independent” and leave-but-not-really-leave the Democrats is so “on-brand” for her it’s amazing no one saw this one coming. I mean, there were several actual days there after Herschel Walker got tackled just short of the goal line that Sinema was both out of the headlines and written off as anything of consequence in a 51-49 Senate.

Her fun was over!

So … she had to do something to make all those dull, serious people in dull-colored clothing look at her again.

Kyrsten Sinema is 'Senator Madonna' because of her dress? Get over it

Early punditry sees Sinema’s move as a hedge to stop any other Democrat from running against her in the 2024 primaries, (central Phoenix-area) Cong. Ruben Gallego being the most likely challenger. By re-branding herself as an Independent, she is putting Arizona Democrats in the position of either continuing to put up with her constant antics or nominate someone else … which would very much risk splitting the (oh-so) thin Arizona majority Democrats have down there and handing an easy win to pretty much any Republican lunatic who wants the job.

Can you say “Kari Lake 2024”?

The thing is, that same scenario means Sinema also loses, since she’s at the point where she has few if any friends among committed Democrats and only a few among Republicans. Given her voting record — the most conservative of any Democrat — the truly honest thing for her to have done was flip entirely over to the Republicans.

But it’s possible abject batshit, Arizona-style Republicanism may be a fashion even the gaudy Ms.. Sinema can’t stomach.

Kyrsten Sinema gets her make-or-break moment with Republicans - POLITICO

But my interest at the moment is the move allegedly sinister, Deep State, Soros-funded national Democrats make to render Sen Non-Binary I/Me/Mine Sinema irrelevant. I mean, if that cabal really exists I expect them to gather in their latter-day Bohemian Grove and skulldug a plot to … well … destroy her.

Is that too harsh?

We’re not talking physical harm here. Not even something so traumatic as setting fire to her wardrobe. Just a humiliating departure from all future news cycles. Ok … it doesn’t even have to be humiliating (ruin my fun), just … you know … conclusive.

How Kyrsten Sinema Sold Out | The Nation

Because I so love twisted, cynical thrillers soaked in the mendacity of the 1%-ers, I’m letting my imagination run all possible storylines involving the (figurative!) knee-capping of a U.S. Senator. So far I’ve got nothing, or “nil” as soccer fans always say.

This will take some creativity. It’s tough to rid ourselves of louses.

We truly have reached a depth where no scandal, no vice or perversity is ugly or hypocritical enough to preclude the nomination of any Republican. We know that. I mean if Herschel Walker’s punch card of three abortions (that we know of) meant … nothing … to white evangelicals what is that crowd ever going to get upset about?

Sinema could walk out in Old Town Scottsdale, shoot a flour-sack white tourist from Minneapolis, and Republicans at least would still vote for her.

But from what I know from following AZ politics, committed policy-focused Democrats despise the woman. And what “independents” really think of her is a true curiosity, since pretty much everyone knows her blitherings about “everyday Arizonans” is eye-rolling bullshit.

No one who cares has forgotten the shameless, naked way she stood up for … hedge fund/private equity tax advantages … while jacking around with Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act, a stunt that earned her well over $1 million in Wall Street contributions.

The Republicans have a Mormon Choir-sized pantheon of frauds and embarrassments. The Democrats’ is quite a bit smaller. But largely-unproductive Sinema is basically daring her “colleagues” to punish her for what by 2024 will be six years of narcissistic theatrics.

Don’t tell me people crueller and more dastardly than me aren’t thinking about how to do it.

Prada socialist' turned centrist wields power over Biden's agenda | Financial Times

This Just in from Twitter/ Sarah Palin

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@ICanStillSeeRussiaPalin

Lovers of Freedom, Big Honkin’ Firearms and Anyone Who Ever Played Football! Keep the faith! Radical Socialists have stolen another election from us! Terrible, pizza-eating pedophiles have seized offices meant for people like myself (mainly) but also other pretty much smokin’ hot gals like Kari Lake, who is so obviously way better looking than that frumpy liberal whose name I forget.

“Stolen”, I say! From qualified, tireless public servants. People who know how to apply mascara, have a keen hunter’s nose for where the camera is and always look hot in tight skirts whatever their age.

Right now, fake news stooges like The Wall Street Journal and that elitist socialist rag, The New York Post, are trying to convince you that this latest stolen, rigged election where so many people were allowed to vote for Democrats was all because of Donald Trump.

This is moosepucky, as we say when we’re out in the bush hunting grizzlies here in Wasilla. We owe everything we are today to Donald! Everything! (Although, you know, I did come first. Just sayin’.)

Which is why, while I wait for the recount here in the state that’s bigger than Texas, I am twitting today and urging every freedom-loving, concealin’ and carryin’, snow-machine ridin’ American to open their hearts and their checkbooks for the man who has brought the Republican party to the Mt. McKinley kinda heights we have achieved.

(BTW, I have launched a new Super PAC, called Grizzlies for Freedom. And with two simple clicks on your Google thingie you can send 20% or 30% of your Social Security check automatically to me each month, after which I’ll pass quite a bit of it on to President Trump to protect you and me from those awakey or wokey or whatever liberals. It’s so easy to give! And fun, too! (I have a limited number of autographed pictures of myself … with Todd cut out. So the first 200 of you who donate $100 or more can have one for only $20.)

But, back to President Trump, (the only legitimate President we’ve had since that old actor guy way back before I got my first L-Oreal Makeup Kit … which BTW is still available on Amazon for $99.99, just enter Gobs-O-Shadow/GrizMom-’24 for 5% off.)

Midterms elections 2022: Sarah Palin's last chance | USA | EL PAÍS English Edition

Down at his beautiful home in Florida tomorrow, (which I visited once and have several pieces of silverware to prove it), President Trump will announce he is willing to return again to the White House, in Washington D.C., to finish up all the important work we started six short years ago.

It’s so easy to forget all that he accomplished (with NO HELP FROM LIBERALS!) what with all that’s going on in the world. You know like the next episode of “The Masked Singer”, or who’ll be on “Dancing With the Stars” next, and what those crazy cute Kardashian girls are doing today … oh! and “The Real Housewives” of wherever — let’s not forget that! Even though they should have a “Housewives of Wasilla'” show, if you know what I mean. Hint, hint.)

But people! Remember The Wall? And how beautiful it is? Well, we need just a few more thousand miles of it and no one will ever get in OUR country again. No one! And by “OUR” I mean yours and mine! Real Americans who don’t run leaf blowers at 7 in the morning! President Trump will complete the wall and we’ll all finally be safe from those scary, MDX-28 rappers with all those tattoos (ick!).

Oh, and how about that crazy COVID stuff? Under President Trump it was over by Easter so we could all go on vacation back down to Florida without those stupid “science” rules and not have to wear those liberal face diapers that Todd hated so much, not that I even think about Todd anymore.

And this whole Russia-YouCrane thing. It’s totally confusing. I know, because I live practically across the street from Russia, which is actually a lot like Alaska only with even less scary black gang people.

These people fighting President Putin are so weird. He’s very strong, y’know. (He even still looks pretty OK without his shirt on, although not as good as Todd before he let himself go … after I dumped him.) President Trump will stop all those crazy U-Crainians, or whatever you call them, from being so mean to the Russians. I mean remember how much they did for freedom right here in America by supporting President Trump in the two elections he actually won, (but one was stolen from him, don’t ever forget.)

Oh, oh and one more thing. Judges! Judges that will do what needs to be done to protect you and me. Think of it. Courts that’ll allow us to arm our kindergartners and grade school kids so we don’t have another of those Sandy Crook things — which I know, might have been fake, but … well … never mind. Judges in courts that’ll let us sue anyone who gives us a stink eye … and boy did I get one from some frumpy liberal-looking bitch (in sweat pants and no makeup at 9 in the morning!) when I was gassing up the F-350 Super Duty today.

More President Trump will mean more Super Top Notch judges on the Supremest Court!

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. I am available to serve. In fact you contribute now to my other SuperPAC, “RealJusticeInTightSkirts”. At the $50 a month level you get a souvenir tote bag from the 2008 campaign I did with that crabby old guy who was never nice to any of us, including Todd, who if you really want to know kind of deserved it after he drank all that tequila and said that stuff about Arizona women and their leathery neck wattles.

Yeah, It Could Have Been Worse. But We Ain’t Seen Nuthin’ Yet.

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The most oft-heard line yesterday — the day after election day — was, “Well. THAT could have been worse.” To which my standard reply was, ‘No sh*t’.”

Something happened that almost nobody quite predicted. Certainly not me. (The record will show I played my customary Low Expectation Game with remarkable brilliance.. Especially in this MAGA era, one must guard oneself psychologically. Assume the very worst and be heartened if it’s … not that bad.)

According to exit polls from different areas of the country, abortion — i.e. Republican gaming of the Supreme Court — actually was a driving force for Democrats. Crime and inflation played about as vigorously as “threats to democracy.” And … this is less well established by the current data … voters appear to have reacted quite negatively to what we’ll refer to as the tone of The MAGA Revolution.

While dozens-to-hundreds of utter trolls were re-elected, including Ron Johnson next door in Wisconsin, (and hoo boy, the second guessing there over running a slick, Obama-like black guy), Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordon and various other leading lights of the modern conservative intelligentsia, places like Kentucky (!) voted to protect abortion and both Minnesota and Michigan hit a liberal “trifecta”, winning control of both houses of their legislatures and re-electing Democratic governors … you know those “tyrants” who bought into the COVID-19 hoax.

But while we take a (very) brief moment of comfort in a (slim) majority of sanity, we must turn our attention to … the next election … the campaign for which has already begun. Particularly on the Republican side.

Our raging, policy-averse conservative friends are already trying to digest the one-two punch of Donald Trump’s election night faceplant, and Ron DeSantis’ 20-point wipeout of Democrat(*) Charlie Crist. More to the point, practically overnight DeSantis has been effectively anointed as “The Next Crass White Hope” by Rupert Murdoch and other big money players.

So, that said, let me offer a fresh dystopian prediction.

Trump has already declared he will make “a big announcement” at Mar a Lago next week. Other than blaming Melania for picking Dr. Oz to run in Pennsylvania, the assumption is he will tell the world he is once again ready to return to the golf course, the White House dining room or the Presidency, whichever gives him more “executive time.” The Presaidency being the one that was stolen from him by pedophile satanist liberals and is owed to him through the divine hand of God. (Ask any white evangelical.)

But given DeSantis’ performance Tuesday night, his relative youth, his every-bit-as-cruel theatrics and Trump’s vividly evident failures in this week’s elections, DeSantis now has even less-to-no reason to concede the stage. And as I say, while Logan Roy, excuse me, Rupert Murdoch, has already made his choice known, you can bet other tycoon-level Trump benefactors, like Chicago Cubs owner Todd Ricketts, now see a far, far better bet in DeSantis than another date with a whiny, obese, flagrantly incompetent three-time election loser. (2018, 2020 and 2022 for those of you scoring at home.)

This morning’s Murdoch-owned NY Post.

I regard this as a given: As the pile-on against Trump from people like Murdoch continues, DeSantis will move ever closer to announcing his candidacy. Which presents you, me and anyone who can bear to watch with a solid, two-year race to the deepest pit of ugliness and cruelty.

And that’s just what they’ll do to each other. Never mind what they propose for immigrants and anyone who isn’t clustered in The Villages.

DeSantis’ situation is a bit trickier of course, in that he still can’t know how adhesive MAGA nation is to Trump and Trump alone.

DeSantis after all is not a TV celebrity. (Insiders regard him as “a weird dude.” Not that Trump isn’t. But Trump made MAGA laugh.) DeSantis is not a character gullible TV addicted geezers actually believed is fabulously rich, glamorous and all-knowing, despite constant, powerful evidence to the contrary.

Trump drew hundreds of thousands of astonishingly aggrieved chumps out from under rocks, largely because … they saw him playing a tough-talking rich guy on TV. But unlike The Big Money Boys who have keen olfactory lobes for losers and bad bets, pitiful MAGA nation may remain so deluded by Trump’s faux majesty that they will stick with him, and continue tithing their Social Security checks to “Donny 2024” come hell or high water.

Which makes DeSantis’ best play … the “Trump-is-a-Loser” card. “Loser” being the “brand” Trump, he of “so much winning” infamy, hates most.

DeSantis game will be to steadily, persistently convince the saddest of sad Trumpers that their former God-King is now a loser. A creaking hulk incapable of delivering them the meat they yearn for most, which isn’t lower gas prices or less crime but rather constant, ever more ugly slap-downs of woke liberals.

As for Trump, along with needing to hoover up every nickel of chump money he can for the 15-20 legal cases he’s fighting, (all of which should accelerate given his weakened political standing), the two facts we all know with absolute certainty are thEse:

1: Trump is simply not psychologically capable of responding to taunting competition with anything but more and worse ugliness.

And 2: He is can not under any circumstance admit and accept final, total defeat.

Not that DeSantis doesn’t deserve every bit of the ugliness and viciousness Trump will hurl at him.

In my many long years of despising and spleen-venting over cynical politicians, including of course Dick Nixon, I have never been more repulsed by a viable presidential contender than Ron DeSantis. This guy is truly, unequivocally rancid … and so content with being despicable, that ugliness and cruelty is actually what he’s selling.

So yeah, this one wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But if an obscene sh*t show is your idea of background entertainment, that act has already begun.

*Former Republican and treadworn politician Charlie Crist was the best the Democrats could do? Jeeeeezus.)

What I Learned Over One Cup of Coffee Yesterday Morning

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I’m weak. All things considered it was a pleasant weekend up in northern Wisconsin. A bit mmm, “moist” on Saturday, but Friday and Sunday were crisp and sunny. Good weather for putting on storm windows, stockpiling firewood, enjoying a beverage around a bonfire.

So why did I spoil it all by checking out the latest news yesterday morning? Even if you’re not like me, someone who believes things will go quite badly tomorrow, no one in the reality-based world expects this next election to go well for the forces of sanity.

As proof, I give you these anecdotes gleaned over one … one … cup of coffee.

We begin with a few clips from a story by Ed Pilkington of The Guardian, covering an evangelical/MAGA bash in Branson, Missouri.– for which some of the faithful paid $500 a pop.

“There is a man by the name of Donald,” the voice on the recording says. “God said, ‘You have been determined through your prayers to influence this nation … I will open that door that you prayed about, and when it comes time for the election you will be elected.” Three thousand people are packed into an overflowing auditorium, many with arms raised and eyes closed in prayer. The recording to which they are listening is from April 2013 and of Kim Clement, a late South African preacher, as he prophesies the first coming of Donald Trump. In a clip from the following year, Clement again purports to channel the word of God: “Hear me, for I have found a man after my own heart and he is among you. He is one of the brothers, but singled out for presidency of the United States of America.”

And …

“They will hear the former president’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn, who is revered in this setting as ‘America’s general’, warning that a new world tyranny is approaching. They will listen as Mike Lindell, the so-called My Pillow Guy, launches an incoherent rant about how foreign forces are infiltrating voting machines and using them to subvert US elections. They will give a standing ovation to the beloved leader’s son, Eric Trump, who will fire them up almost to the point of ecstasy with talk of ‘doing it all again’. And at the end of the day more than 200 of them will line up by a swimming pool for a full-body immersive baptism in the name of the Lord, spiritual and political. The show is part Trump Stop the Steal rally, part charismatic religious service, part QAnon and anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory all rolled into one. It also subscribes heavily to the church of merchandising – there is a large vendors’ tent with several stalls devoted to the peddling of snake oil (‘Redox Worx: patented cell-signalling technology. Improve health on a cellular level’).”

And …

“Twice the event has been shut down or forced to relocate, in New York and Washington states. Now when you are sent your ticket it is labelled as a ‘Fresh-roasted coffee-fest and expo’ to disguise the show’s real focus.”

And …

“We are ready to go to war with the enemy, to bring this country back,” Clark says as he orders the blowing of the shofar – horns seen as spiritual weapons that herald the unleashing of God’s power. [This heady brew is the creation of Clay Clark, a former wedding reception DJ from Oklahoma turned ThriveTimeShow podcaster who came to prominence protesting Covid lockdowns.]”

And …

” … speaker, Sherri Tenpenny, says that Covid vaccines were turning people into ‘transhumanist cyborgs’. Covid shots have killed 20 million people around the world and caused 20 billion injuries, she says.”

And … “It’s unthinkable what these people are doing to this nation,” [Eric Trump] says. “This is cognitive war, and I don’t say that lightly – I’m not, like, a tin-hat wearing guy.”

Then we have this from John Wagner at The Washington Post:

“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) vowed Thursday that ‘not another penny’ of U.S. funding would be spent to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia if Republicans take control of Congress after the midterm elections. Greene spoke at a Save America rally in Sioux City, Iowa, staged by former president Donald Trump to boost Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), among others, on the ballot. ‘The only border they care about is Ukraine, not America’s southern border’, Greene said of Democrats. ‘Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. Our country comes first. They don’t care about our border or our people.’ The view of Greene, a conservative firebrand prone to controversy, has become more prevalent with GOP ranks in recent months. … House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in an interview last month with Punchbowl News: ‘I think people are going to be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine’.”

And then this from Madeline Halpert for Forbes …

“Nearly half of Republicans think the U.S. is sending too much support to Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion, according to a new poll from the Wall Street Journal, a figure that has jumped in recent months, as some key GOP lawmakers threaten to cut back on U.S. aid to Ukraine.”

Combined with this from Steven Lee Myers at the New York Times …

“The user on Gab who identifies as Nora Berka resurfaced in August after a yearlong silence on the social media platform, reposting a handful of messages with sharply conservative political themes before writing a stream of original vitriol. The posts mostly denigrated President Biden and other prominent Democrats, sometimes obscenely. They also lamented the use of taxpayer dollars to support Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces, depicting Ukraine’s president as a caricature straight out of Russian propaganda. The fusion of political concerns was no coincidence. The account was previously linked to the same secretive Russian agency that interfered in the 2016 presidential election and again in 2020, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, according to the cybersecurity group Recorded Future.”

And then as a capper, just to curdle the cream in your coffee …

” … the former president told rally attendees to expect an announcement ‘very, very soon’. ‘You’re gonna be surprised at how soon, but first, we have to win a historic victory for Republicans in November’, Trump said. Axios reported on Friday that Trump’s team is looking at November 14 as a possible date to formally announce his 2024 candidacy.”

In other words, by the time a freshly re-elected Marjorie Taylor Greene blows the shofar horn to summon the krakens of conservatism to wage holy war against all the woke liberals opposing the Russian liberation of Ukraine, the rock will have been rolled back and we will have already begun the two year march toward Second Coming of Donald, Our Savior.

Can I freshen your cup?

“How many of you believe that Jesus is king, and that Donald Trump is the president?” he asks. Almost every hand in the house shoots up.

You Want to Laugh at Liz Truss and The Brits. But It’s All Too Familiar

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Purely as a distraction you understand, I’ve spent a bit of time these past few weeks keeping up on British politics. I mean, there’s only so much Trump and Herschel Walker you can take before your brain turns to grey sludge. Besides, the Brits usually play the political game with … a lot … more wit and cheek than we do. Even their farcical charlatans — Boris Johnson — demonstrate a passing acquaintance with literature and history. Not so many Marjorie Taylor Greenes clogging the aisles of Westminster, y’know what I mean?

But lately. Oh, my [bleeping] god.

Thanks (again) to the miracle of YouTube a Yank in the Midwest can observe in something close to real time the gobsmackedness (not a real word) of BBC, SkyNews, ITV and other mainstream news orgs, anchors and political pundits as Britain’s conservatives eat each other alive. As they throw the country’s finances into a death spiral and generally make a mockery of the idea of being serious adults. And then you get to British wags, the fringe characters vlogging from their disheveled apartments and cadging on-the-street interviews with dazed and confused citizens.

(This one with Scottish MP Mhairi Black is particularly good, even if you need sub-titles.)

It’s a mesmerizing entertainment. At least until you get to the stories of pensioners watching their power bills double over night, the interest rate on middle class mortgages jump a few hundred dollars/pounds a month as the conservative/Tory fire brigade announces that the only way to get the trains back on their tracks is to … wait for it … reduce spending on basic social services.

Predictably, much of the attention was focused on Liz Truss, now the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history. But as stiff, out of touch and clearly incompetent as she was, I couldn’t help but see Truss and the whole fiasco she was nominally managing as fully emblematic of conservative economics and performance here in the States. After all, as George Bernard Shaw is reputed to have said, we are “Two countries divided by a common language.” Point being, our political impulses are very similar.

Let’s take brief note of just a few of the key elements of Britain’s current dystopia. And please stop me when any of this sounds familiar.

1: Brexit. The membership of the Tory party — which is anyone of any age who can pay roughly $25/yr — is upset about stagnant growth and immigrants pouring in to allegedly “take jobs away” from Brits. Bolstered by fear-mongering on social media, the conservative government consents to holding a binding referendum, without any plan whatsoever of what to do if the “leave” forces win, which they do.

2: A leading player in the “leave” (without a plan) campaign is Boris Johnson. He denies he and his fellow conservatives have accepted millions in sketchy cash from wealthy Russians and Russian-linked players. This is proven false.

3: Post-Brexit, a bi-partisan investigation is launched into the influence Russian trolls played in inflaming anti-immigrant and anti-European Union sentiment. The conservative government is credibly accused of not even wanting to find out if this actually happened. The facts are ignored.

4: Lacking any kind of a serious plan, the departure from Brexit by the conservative government is unmitigated chaos. Far from improving Britain’s financial affairs, nearly all major economic indicators drift further downward.

5: Johnson himself is embroiled in a seemingly endless series of personal scandals, the impression being that rules, norms and laws apply to others, not him.

6: As Johnson’s situation worsens, fellow conservatives begin maneuvering even more aggressively for the backing of the party’s most impassioned members, the majority of them older and heavily opposed to the on-going influx of immigrants. Amid this, the criticism of “wokeness” on the part of softer conservatives and liberals becomes a popular rallying cry.

7: Johnson is finally forced to resign and conservative members, representing barely .2% of the British population, select hard-Brexiteer/Libertarian Liz Truss to lead them. She immediately selects “trickle down economics”, with fat tax cuts for Britain’s most wealthy, as the solution to the country’s problems. Markets go into convulsions.

8: Truss’s very Reaganomics/Bush-o-nomics/Trump-o-nomics/standard Republican-like plan is reversed within hours by a new chancellor who broadly hints that the next solution will be … serious cuts to social services, like the National Health Service.

9: Truss resigns and among the candidates considered as replacement is … Boris Johnson, who his own party canned barely a month ago, calling him “unfit to hold office.”

So yeah, as I say, the saga comes with a lot of familiarity for us Yanks. The stark exception being that after as much if not more gross corruption, malfeasance, incompetence and a deadly riot, our conservatives remain in lockstep adoration of their feckless leader.

It Seems Democrats Are Blundering Badly (Again) with Their All-Abortion, All-the-Time Campaign

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Given the farcically erroneous, back-to-back double whammy of political polling in 2016 and 2020 there’s very little reason to get all sweaty and anuguished about the numbers here in 2022. But … if you self-identify as a liberal you are by that definition a morbid pessimist. You know full well that the grifters and fools have us outnumbered and that no matter what any poll says … things are bad and only getting worse. That’s just who we are.

That said, the current, mid-October trend lines are … all grim. Utter morons — here’s looking at you Herschel Walker — are within a “margin of error” of defeating Democrats who unlike them graduated from college, worked at serious jobs, can do basic math, study public policy and just generally don’t genuflect to a twice-impeached clown car insurrectionist or some dope who can’t remember how many children he has.

If by some miracle the polling holds up next month and the Democrats lose Senate seats they should have won — like in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — there’s going to be some kind of reckoning over the strategy of running hard on “pro democracy” issues like abortion as opposed to counter-blitzing the usual, time-tested Republican hysteria-mongering over gas prices and “rampant, out-of-control crime.”

Last week’s New York Times-Siena College poll produced all sorts of gasping and wailing at the sight of suburban, mostly college-educated women, flooding away from Democrats and back to Republicans in reaction to (also) “out of control” inflation and … crime. While dismaying as it is every election cycle, I’ve lost to ability to find this surprising.

If you’re aware of and follow posts on NextDoor, the neighborhood site that some of us use to see who’s tossed hosta, paving bricks and used lumber out on the curb for whoever gets there first, you know that what’s indisputably rampant is crime hysteria. Every fire or police siren sets off a fresh torrent of panicked terror. Every Ring doorbell is picking up murky, horror-film scenes of “strange young men” casing the building … or maybe just looking for their dog, no one can say for sure.

I have perfectly nice neighbors who are astonished I’d dare go listen to music at the Cabooze or First Avenue. For them, downtown Minneapolis for anything other than a Sunday afternoon Vikings game is a “no-go zone”, based on what they see on TV, read on Facebook and hear from campaign ads. “Democracy” is not a life-or-death concern for them.

I can’t remember who or where, but I recall a barroom conversation where the (self-professed) social anthropologist broke down the three key phases of modern American adulthood. As he explained it, from our late teens to late 20s it’s all about getting laid. From our late 20s to late 50s it’s all about achieving status and financial security. And finally, in the years from career apogee until we drool in the Jell-O and turn out the lights for the last time, it’s all about protecting ourselves and what we’ve accumulated.

I’ve heard more elegant breakdowns of the chapters of life, but you have to admit he’s on to something.

Point being … it is a serious, fundamental mistake to think anything … and I by “anything” I mean issues as high-minded and mostly abstract as “democracy”, “Constitutional order” or “a woman’s right to choose” will ever drive a majority of older, white voters in the way $3.50 gasoline and constant, wall-to-wall fear-mongering over street crime will. And never mind nuances and the modulating statistics.

If Team Fear has the dials cranked to 11 shrieking 24-7 about “out of control” gas prices and carjackings, the general concern about a sub-culture of fat-assed authoritarians retracting basic 21st century rights — i.e. abortion — is pretty well reduced to a fringey, optional, luxury of a campaign matter. “Democracy” is something we can get back to and protect once crime and price increases are “brought under control.” (In the Times-Siena poll abortion has sunk to 5% as the “most important issue.”)

Maybe the polls will be wrong again this time. And maybe, unlike so many elections before, and to my ever-lasting amazement, worries that democratic basics are being cut apart at the seams will win the day. Maybe that fringey “democracy” issue will win out over the (nakedly implausible) assurance that packs of policy-averse right-wing politicians will somehow reduce the cost of tanking up the family Yukon or Escalade. And that they’ll flood the streets with so many (competent?) cops every black kid will think twice before trying to jack it out from under you.

Maybe that’ll happen. But being a liberal, all I see come January is the swearing in of Herschel Walker, J.D. Vance, Dr. Oz and Ron Johnson.

With Enemies Like Scott Jensen, Who Needs Friends?

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Up until this weekend, I haven’t been much of a fan of Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen.  But maybe I’ve been too hard on him. I wanted to give him credit for some really great work over the last few days.

I am sincerely grateful that Scott Jensen did DFL Governor Tim Walz a solid by holding a news conference that resulted in highlighting a credential that Walz too infrequently spotlights himself – the fact that Walz volunteered for National Guard service for 24 years. 

By holding that news conference, Jensen arguably delivered better front-page PR for Walz than Walz’s PR staff ever has.  In the process, Jensen exposed Walz’s opponent to be an incompetent hypocrite who refused to enlist as Walz did.  I hope Walz sent Jensen a thank you note and some nice flowers.

Here’s hoping that Jensen will continue to similarly publicize other Walz achievements.

Perhaps Jensen could hold a news conference exposing the fact that Walz only dedicated himself to the noble public service career of public school teaching for part of his life, instead of his entire life. 

Or Jensen could lambaste Walz for only coaching Mankato West High School to its first ever state football championship, while failing to win the championship every single year.

Maybe Jensen could publicly scold Walz for only being named Outstanding Young Nebraskan and Nebraska Citizen-Soldier of the Year, while totally failing to win those honors in any other state. 

Bring it on, Scott!  With enemies like Scott Jensen, who needs friends?

Scott Jensen’s Unanswered $15,000,000,000 Question

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Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen proposes to eliminate the state income tax.  At first blush, that might sound good to inflation-weary taxpayers. But to balance the state budget, such a change would necessitate $15 billion per year in service cuts and/or increases in other types of more regressive taxes.

Quite irresponsibly, Jensen won’t say what services he would cut, or what taxes he would increase, to balance the state budget.  But make no mistake, serious pain would result.  Jensen’s plan would necessitate massive cuts in education and/or health care, and/or a huge increase in property taxes, or other types of taxes that are more regressive than the state income tax. 

Shifting from the progressive state income tax to the regressive property tax is popular among the wealthiest Minnesotans, because that change would greatly benefit them. The progressive state income tax requires that the wealthiest Minnesotans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than is paid by the poorest Minnesotans.  On the other hand, regressive property, sales, and/or excise taxes put more of a burden on lower-income Minnesotans compared to the wealthiest Minnesotans.

Wealthy doctors like Jensen, multi-millionaire professional athletes like his running mate Matt Birk, and the most financially privileged Minnesotans who disproportionately fund Republican candidates don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes.  This is a political payoff to them.

Jensen’s proposal not only is a grossly inequitable giveaway to the wealthiest Minnesotans, it’s also dishonest.  Jensen only discloses the benefits – no more income tax bill! – without disclosing the costs – crippling school cutbacks, slashed health care services for vulnerable Minnesotans, and/or crushing property tax increases. All of those costs are enormously unpopular with Minnesotans, so Scott Jensen simply refuses to answer that critical $15,000,000,0000 question.

Jensen isn’t explaining the downside of eliminating the state income tax, but reporters should be doing that. Unfortunately, it’s barely happening.  Compared to heavy front page reporting on Walz’s actions related to a nonprofit fraud prosecution and the debate over the number of debates, this hugely consequential policy proposal has received relatively scant coverage.

One exception is the Minnesota Reformer. Though the Reformer has relatively light readership, it has done thoughtful and constructive reporting, such as this: 

“Minnesota has a steeply progressive individual income tax, meaning households with higher incomes have a higher tax rate as a share of their income compared to lower income households. Eliminating individual income taxes would disproportionately burden low-income Minnesotans while giving huge tax cuts to the state’s wealthiest.

‘Progressive income taxes are integral to having budgets that can meet the needs of all citizens, and they’re also really important in ensuring racial and socioeconomic equity,’ said Neva Buktus, state policy analyst for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. ‘Eliminating the personal income tax would completely throw that out the window.’

Each year, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy creates a ranking of state tax systems and how they foster income inequality.

The six least equitable in the U.S. are among the nine states with no individual income taxes. Minnesota’s progressive personal income tax makes it one of the least regressive in the country — 47th out of 50. That means our lowest income earners get a better deal than nearly every other American when it comes to state and local taxes. 

‘If you’re going to eliminate the income tax, there’s no way to spin it. It disproportionately benefits the wealthiest Minnesotans by a long shot,’ Buktus said.”

At other major news outlets, my best guess is that reporters are shrugging off the issue relative to other issues because they believe that elimination of the state income tax could never pass the Legislature.   

It’s not reporters’ jobs to gauge likelihood of passage.  After all, no one knows what the future makeup of the Legislature might be if voters sweep Republicans into office, as historical trends portend.  Instead, reporters are supposed to explain the candidates’ major policy proposals and analyze the consequences so voters can make fully informed decisions.

That’s just not happening as much as it should. Whatever the thinking in Twin Cities newsrooms about Jensen’s most radical and reckless policy proposal, their silence on the topic has been deafening. 

Why Should Tim Walz Even Bother “Debating” Scott Jensen?

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Given all the attention Herschel Walker is getting, it’s hard to focus much on Tim Walz, um, declining the opportunity to debate Scott Jensen on Twin Cities TV. But shortly after getting back to town last week I caught a local radio personality riffing on what a sad state it is when an incumbent governor won’t man-up and go face-to-face with his opponent.

And in very general terms I’d agree. In a healthy democracy it’s what every candidate should do. No matter how weak or delusional the competition.

But that “general” business implies a couple fundamentals. Like, for example, a close enough obligation to good faith and a foundational respect for facts. In other words, an opponent who may disagree with you on nuances, interpretations and timing of solutions to issues … as opposed to someone, a licensed physician in the case of Scott Jensen, who denies the impact of an international pandemic that has killed millions, who plays loose and cynical with the results of a free and fair election and who lately has been babbling incoherently about school children urinating in cat litter and identifying as semi-human “furries.”

To that, Walz has every good reason to roll his eyes and say, “Why bother?” His opponent, Dr. Jensen, is by every indication a clueless-to-shameless charlatan slinging every can of MAGA-world sludge against the walls in the reckless hope of sealing up the vote of the intellectually incompetent.

Jensen is, to put it bluntly, the embodiment of a bad faith candidate.

In the hardball political context, Walz sees Jensen as the classic opponent self-immolating so badly there’s no reason to concede the legitimacy of a meeting-of-equals like a televised debate. (Walz has agreed to radio debates and some out-state TV.) Add to that Jensen’s poll numbers and Walz has even less tactical reason to step out on the same stage with him.

Now, the calculation might be a bit different if there was assurance that debate moderators would frame Jensen’s positions on election denial, pandemic denial and kitty litter with the aggression they deserve. But you, I and Walz know that the operative standard for fair and equivalent Minnesota journalism is not only to treat all candidates as serious, good faith actors, but also avoid aggressive follow-ups, even when confronted with reckless nonsense.

Call it The Chuck Todd Syndrome. Ask a tough-sounding question. Let the candidate bloviate and … “leave it there.”

I of course am still of the mind that given the prevalence of The Big Lie as a fundamental base issue for modern Republicans, the first question any serious, fair-minded reporter should ask any candidate is: “Do you believe Joe Biden won the 2020 election freely and fairly?” To which any response other than, “Of course I do”, means the interview is over and the candidate can go look for free media somewhere else.

The future of debates, Lloyd Benysen v. Dan Quayle, much less Lincoln-Douglas, does not look bright.

Given the Republican party’s wholesale dive into the looniest, furriest idiocies, what’s the upside to any Democrat sharing a stage with reckless fools?

Tackling a Dummy

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By Noel Holston

In gridiron in terms, what I am about to say would be called piling on. Many political writers nationwide have already weighed in on onetime football star Herschel Walker’s U.S. Senate candidacy and his staggering lack of qualification.

But I live in Athens, Georgia, home of the University of Georgia, where Walker won a Heisman Trophy in 1982 and became a celebrity, a Peach State icon, so here I go, jumping in. Throw a flag if you want.

If elected, Hush-uhl, as the good ol’ white alumni say, would be biggest dunce in the Senate. Maybe ever.  

His candidacy represents a new low for GOP cynicism and disregard for the larger public good. Everybody knows he’s as ignorant as a tackling dummy, but while Democrats and old-line Republicans find that alarming, the MAGA wing of the Grand Old Party doesn’t care as long as Herschel can win and flip the Senate red.

And he just might. 

In November 2020, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, primary minister at Atlanta’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church, once the home Dr. Martin Luther King, made history when he won a special election for the Senate seat opened by Republican Johnny Isakson’s early retirement for health reasons. Warnock narrowly beat a white, Republican woman, Kelly Loeffler, in a fierce, costly race to become Georgia’s first African-American Senator. 

But the prize he won was only the remaining two years of Issakson’s six-year term. Warnock is now running as an incumbent for his first full term.

The GOP turned to its dirty trick playbook. The bosses know that Warnock, only 53, is not just one of the most charismatic Democrat to emerge since Barack Obama; they know he’s already making a mark in the Senate and that his national recognition is growing. So they didn’t bother with another white candidate. They embraced Walker, a pigskin superhero in a football-crazy state, a Donald Trump-defending (and endorsed) black celebrity who is acceptable to white conservatives and could very well peel off enough black votes to trim Warnock’s winning margin. 

Walker is such a big deal in Georgia that his campaign signs don’t even show his last name. Like Prince and Adele, he’s mononymous: Herschel.

Photo by Noel Holston. Vandalism likely by the wind.

On the downside for Republicans, Walker has been accused of domestic abuse by an ex-wife and has documented history of exaggeration and fabrication with regard to his life and accomplishments. Here’s a man so oblivious to his own prevarication that he has claimed to be valedictorian at UGA when, in fact, he did not graduate. He left school early for the pros.

Walker has said things, not just unawares on hot mics but in public forums, that make his backer Trump’s incoherent word salads sound like a TED talk. 

After the horrible school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, for instance, Walker told an interviewer on Fox who asked about his views on gun control, “Well, you know, it’s always been an issue…People see that it’s a person wielding that weapon, you know, Cain killed Abel. And that’s the problem that we have. And I said, what we need to do is look into how we can stop those things. You talk about doing a disinformation, what about getting a department that can look at young men that’s looking at women, that’s looking at their social media? What about doing that?”

At a campaign stop, Walker said, “Warnock, I remember hearing him say, ‘America need to apologize for it whiteness.’ That’s not in a Bible I ever read. Our Founding Fathers already apologized for its whiteness. Because if you read the Constitution, it talks about every man being treated fair.”

I will wait while you, dear reader, scratch your head and try to figure out what the heck any of that gibberish means. And it typical of what Walker say.

This is why his campaign ads show him smiling his mega-watt smile, running with a football, mingling with adoring fans and reading simple sentences from a TelePrompter. It’s also why Walker’s handlers have so far avoided even scheduling a debate with Warnock, much less putting him on a stage with the vastly quicker minister. They know that in a clash of wits, intelligence and knowledge, Warnock is the Heisman-quality talent and Walker is a water ___.

You can fill in the blank. I won’t say the word because I am white and might be accused of making a racist remark even though I am just making another football analogy.

This, however, does underscore a serious potential flaw in the GOP’s strategy, the other side of a double edge. Warnock can say things to and about Walker that a white Democrat could not. 

So far, though, Warnock has mostly stayed above the fray. TV ads in which he’s featured on camera focus on who he is and things he’s already accomplished, such fighting for help for American soldiers ill from burn-pit exposure. 

Warnock ads that don’t feature him hit Walker hard. One spot, culled from a 2008 CNN interview, shows Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, tearfully claiming Walker put a pistol to her temple and threatened to blow her brains out and, another time, threatened to cut her throat.

Walker hasn’t quite denied these allegations. He’s has, however, attributed past misbehavior to his suffering from dissociative identity disorder, or DID — what we used to call multiple personality disorder.

Comforting, no? I mean, we’re used to politicians being two-faced, but Herschel may be taking us into Three Faces of Eve territory. He could be a Sybil servant.

I am hoping and praying Georgians of the right-ish persuasion have a come-to-reason moment and either stay home on election day or vote for the preacher from the Savannah projects.

As for Herschel, well, I agree with what the Auburn cheerleaders used to chant:

Push him back, push him back, waaaayy back.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He serves as Georgia Correspondent for Wry Wing Politics. He’s also a contributing essayist to Medium.com, TVWorthWatching.com, and other websites. He previously wrote about television and radio at Newsday (2000-2005) and, as a crosstown counterpart to the Pioneer Press’s Brian Lambert, at the Star Tribune  (1986-2000).  He’s the author of “Life After Deaf: My Misadventures in Hearing Loss and Recovery,” by Skyhorse.