Walz Cooperation With Law Enforcement Deserves Praise, Not Punishment

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In the past, one thing that Democrats and Republicans could always agree on is that “cooperating with law enforcement” is a good thing.  As near as I can tell at this stage, that’s what the Walz Administration and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison did when they learned of Covid relief funding being misused. 

As an aside, this is much more than I can say about Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen who apparently has absolutely no problem with Governor Ron Desantis (R-FL) using millions of dollars Covid relief funds to shamelessly abuse vulnerable asylum-seekers for political purposes.  The Washington Post reports:

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) appears to have turned to an unexpected funding source to help pay for his plans to fly migrants to liberal-leaning communities: the interest earned on his state’s federal coronavirus aid.

A little-noticed part of Florida’s recent budget dedicated about $12 million to the relocation campaign, an escalating effort that saw the state send two planes filled with dozens of migrants — children included — to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., on Wednesday.

When Republicans learned about DeSantis’s fraudulent use of Covid funds, they not only didn’t notify the FBI, they cheered on Desantis.

But I digress.  Let’s recap the basics of what seems to have happened in the Minnesota case.  When the Walz-appointed education officials suspected misuse of funds, they reported it to the FBI. They cooperated with law enforcement.

When the FBI reportedly asked the state education officials to not tip off the investigation by cutting off funds, the Walz education appointees and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s staff again cooperated with law enforcement.  Pioneer Press:

“’The FBI repeatedly made it clear to the Attorney General’s Office and MDE that it should not disclose the existence of the investigation in Feeding Our Future’s state court lawsuit so that it could proceed without tipping off Feeding Our Future and the target of the investigation,’ Ellison’s office said Monday.”

(Note: At this point, the FBI can’t publicly verify that they asked the state officials to not cut off funding. As we’ve seen in dozens of cases over the years, the FBI won’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Still, there is no reason to believe that all of these state officials are lying, knowing full well that the FBI could eventually expose them as liars.)

Likewise, when the judge reportedly said that cutting off funds during the investigation could be a problem for the investigation, the education officials didn’t create such a problem for law enforcement.  The Pioneer Press’s Dave Orrick explains:

Judge John Guthmann never ordered the state to make payments, according to the court record and Guthmann himself. However, he did, in at least one court hearing held over Zoom, tell an attorney for the state that they could have a “problem” if they didn’t keep making payments.

Why would the FBI not want the Walz Administration to immediately cut off funding?  That’s a very fair question. But there is a perfectly reasonable answer. Former federal prosecutor and current University of St. Thomas law professor Mark Osler explains:

“Think about a drug network,” Osler, who prosecuted cocaine rings in Detroit, said in an interview with the Pioneer Press. “Often, if we want to take down an entire drug network, you have to wait. It’s better to take it down with the whole story known and the key players identified. … I think pretty much anyone who’s worked in law enforcement at a higher level will say that fast isn’t always good and sometimes you do need to hold.”

And yes, Osler said, speaking generally and with no direct knowledge of the Feeding Our Future investigation, that can included allowing money to keep going out the door to suspected criminals. “A lot of the time, that’s done with the confidence of trying to get the money back later, and they’ve begun that process,” he said.

Indeed, federal authorities have said that of at least $250 million they’ve alleged to have been stolen, they’ve recovered some $50 million.

Despite all of this, Walz’s increasingly desperate gubernatorial opponent Scott Jensen, who is consistently trailing the polls, wants to convince Minnesotans that this is the equivalent of the Teapot Dome scandal or, like, you know, “BENGHAZI!” or “HER EMAILS!” 

But to me it looks like, yawn, Walz’s education appointees “cooperating with law enforcement” to do what they were told to do in order to prosecute some pretty extensive fraud that they initially uncovered. 

As such, the Walz Administration deserve praise, not punishment.

If You Think Republicans Can’t Ban Abortion in Minnesota, Look No Further than Iowa

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Though Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen told anti-choice extremists that he would work to ban abortion, he has since been busily telling more moderate general election voters that he can’t, due to a Minnesota Supreme Court Ruling which held that the Minnesota Constitution guarantees a right to get an abortion. 

But here’s how quickly Minnesota’s current reproductive health care protections can disappear. 

  • Step One: A few weeks from now, Minnesota voters elect Jensen and a GOP Legislature.
  • Step Two: The GOP majority appoints anti-abortion judges, who overrule the state constitutional right to abortion at the first opportunity.
  • Step Three: Republicans enact legislation banning abortion, which the far-right U.S. Supreme Court now empowers states to do.

Bam, reproductive health freedom could be gone in Minnesota that quickly. 

If you think it can’t happen, look no further than Iowa. Planned Parenthood’s Tim Stanley explains in the Minnesota Reformer:

Much like current abortion protections in Minnesota, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that “a woman’s right to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy is a fundamental right under the Iowa Constitution.”

Reynolds and her predecessor have appointed five Supreme Court justices, building a strong conservative majority on the bench.

Fast forward to June 2022, the Iowa Supreme Court didn’t think twice about “stare decisis,” fulfilling the role they were put there to do: They overturned past judicial precedents and reversed the decision that purported to secure a right to abortion in the state constitution. 

Now, with nothing protecting abortion in Iowa, the Iowa Legislature can completely ban abortion, which it is unfortunately expected to do.

As the Iowa example clearly proves, an abortion ban is on the ballot in Minnesota. Elect Republicans and it will happen pretty quickly.

Russia, Ukraine and My Seven Months with YouTube

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1420 - YouTube

Permit me to say something in favor of YouTube. In general, the effect of social media algorithms, designed by tech savants to “sustain our engagement” with ever more provocative content, is appalling, and a significant contributor to the radicalization of the most credulous among us.

But … since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last winter I’ve found YouTube to be invaluable in feeding me information and analysis only lightly covered in standard news outlets, like even The New York Times and The Washington Post. The past week’s dramatic acceleration of the Ukrainian counter-offensive has only increased my appreciation for a tech platform that delivers me programming like multiple, new video interviews daily via London Times Radio, The Economist, the English-language service from Germany’s Die Welt and a dozen European and Russian vloggers.

A handy list of my regular go-tos for the past seven months.

The Role of the Siloviki in Russian Society | Mark Galeotti - YouTube

London Times Radio: Eight to ten different hosts interview military and intelligence experts on developments in the war. Interview segments are generally edited down to 10 minutes or less. Particulary good are frequent appearances by Mark Galleotti, a British expert on international crime and Russian security. His basic takeaway: The Russian military has been so thoroughly corrupted by the Putin-era kleptocracy that its personnel is so essentially hopeless in the face of modern, well-trained opposition that medieval, long-range bombardment is it’s only real skill set.

Conflict Zone : DW : September 8, 2022 5:30am-6:01am CEST : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive

Die Welt: A broadly-focused CNN-like news org which much deeper sourcing in Europe than any American outlet. Field reports from the war zone are often given 10 minutes of airtime, compared to maybe 20 seconds on ABC, NBC, etc. Particularly good though are interviews on a show called The Conflict Zone, by a Brit, Tim Sebastian, a kind of Walter Cronkite-meets-Mike Wallace eminence gris of the staff. His 25-minute interview with Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow and president of European rabbis, was fascinating for his unwillingness to let the rabbi … the rabbi … who recently fled Russia and is now urging other Jews to follow, avoid answering the question of why after so many years of Putin he waited so long to lead vocal opposition. This sort of intelligent, but still confrontative interview never happens on American political chat shows.

Joe Blogs - YouTube

Joe Blogs: The name of this channel is the British equivalent of “Joe Schmoe”, meaning it is meant to convey that these are the thoughts of just some average guy. But the host of this series is — according to his “about” page — is a finance and economics professional. And while I began by applying high skepticism to his breakdowns of Russian industrial production, sanctions-crippled tech sectors, brain drain and international shipping issues, I’ve come around to grant him a solid three and half stars out of four for reporting and fair-minded correlation of data. This video, supported by a recent (lightly reported on) Yale study, is a good example of what he does. His nearly daily videos, all broken into chapters for those too impatient to sit through all 25-30 minutes, paint a very convincing picture of the economic hellstorm falling ever heavier on Russia. 350,000 – 500,000 well-educated professionals have fled the country. Auto production has crashed by over 90%. The airline industry is cannibalizing the planes it stole from European lessors and is unlikely to survive a full year more without access to parts and software. Likewise, with each passing week the oil and gas sector is further imperiled by technology breakdowns it cannot repair or replicate because … Russia simply has no comparable home-grown technology. And forget about finding new buyers for all the oil and gas it absolutely needs to support the war and the economy. Russia can’t build pipelines to India and China, who are already getting as much as 30% discounts on each barrel that arrives (very slowly) by tanker. All in all, “Joe” is really good stuff.

1420: Nearly every day a kid by the name of Daniil Orain walks around central Moscow doing five-to-ten minute man-on-the-streeet interviews with the roughly 10-20% who’ll stop and talk to him. The questions are remarkably provocative considering Putin’s police state. “Would you leave Russia if you had a chance?” “Can we protest?”. “Do you think this conflict was necessary?” And, “Do you feel guilty?” The kid has some affluence going for him, as he has filmed in Russia’s Far East, Dubai and recently, Florence, Italy. But he takes pain to remind viewers — he speaks English — that today’s Russia is a deeply (deeply) bifurcated place, where the very European cosmopolitan look and feel of central Moscow — with vaping hipster interviewees in pink and blue hair and ubiquitous Beats earphones bears almost no resemblance to the rest of the vast country, rural areas in particular. (Putin dares not risk a draft of this crowd. In fact very few conscripts are from Moscow and St. Petersburg.) As you might expect, older Muscovites — Soviet-era Fox News types — consume only state TV and defend everything Putin does, while the young, with VPN, are well aware of the calamity befalling them. If you watch, try to count the ethnic and racial minorities you see anywhere in the frame. You’ll only need one hand.

A dead village in Russia with only one inhabitant. What happened here? - YouTube

Vasya in the Hay: You want a shot of harsh reality, Russian style? Check out this channel, regularly linked by the 1420 kid. It’s the country cousin counter balance to upscale, European Moscow and St. Petersburg. And … good lord … maybe the opioid “hollers” of Kentucky and West Virginia are as grim. But the host, travelling around wide swaths of rural Russia gives viewers a startling feel for the reality of an enormous percentage of “modern” Russians. Amid the decaying infrastructure, alcoholism, drug-addiction and 19th century housing, Sergei the (English-speaking) host plays samaritan angel, helping old women living in shacks without roofs, teenagers desperate to get away from a family of violent alcholics and interviewing nurses and caregivers doing what they can with virtually no support from Putin’s government. Worth noting is that Russian military conscripts are drawn heavily from this distressed population, simply because it’s a check — an income — they can’t get where they live. As you might expect, their willingness to play cannon fodder for an insane war is very minimal.

Is the Jensen-Birk Campaign Minnesota’s WOAT?

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RELEASE: Birk to Join Dr. Scott Jensen's Gubernatorial Team

Despite cruising at freeway speeds, I had the camera ready to snap a shot of the giant billboard hanging over the I-35W/I-35E interchange up by Forest Lake. I had blown by it a couple times before without getting a shot and was determined not to screw up again.

But it was gone. Replaced. And it wasn’t even Labor Day.

What was it? What did it say? It was a Jensen-Birk campaign ad, in Golden Gopher colors, with their two smiling faces and a tag line that read, “For lower gas prices.”

That’s right, folks. Vote for those two and they’ll bring down the price of gas. Because? Well, maybe because they’re on a first name basis with the Saudis and can convince them to pump more oil to Minnesota. Or maybe it’s just another thing they (very) clumsily hope/assume their voters are dumb enough to believe.

My blogging compadre, Joe Loveland, aka El Jefe, covered the miserable-to-dire state of the Jensen-Birk campaign in his last post, so I won’t retrace his steps. Other than to add this … even by the deeply debased standards of our Peak Polarization era, these two, a (presumably) licensed physician and a Harvard graduate are engaged in one of, if not the most, inept political campaign our fine state has seen since Harold Stassen’s 13th or 14th gubernatorial runs.

Like many of you, I often ask myself, and hear the question asked by others, “Do you think they really believe any of this [bleep]?” The “they” usually being Trump-era Republicans defending the indefensible or blithering about the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory du jour. (You’re following the latest? How the real issue with Trump stealing and hiding Top Secret nuclear documents is … the FBI and DOJ leaks about it?)

To many, politics is all about winning, so it hardly matters what you believe. That is not a news flash. Politics is a sales game. You say whatever you think you need to close the deal. We all get that.

But as with so many other examples, the equivalency factor — where “they all do it” — things are gravely, absurdly, farcically distorted in our current era. True, every year Democrats will warn voters that Republicans are coming to take away their Medicare and Social Security. But when you’ve got characters like U.S. Senators Ron Johnson and Rick Scott saying essentially that, the worst you can give Democrats is One Pinocchio. Because it’s, y’know … kinda … not-so-remotely … possible.

But Jensen and Birk. OMG.

I’ve met Birk — the Harvard grad and ex-football player. Casual event. Cordial conversation. He presents well. He’s upright, groomed, doesn’t drool and speaks in complete sentences. But, good lord, what is he possibly thinking when he spins out medieval, fundamentalist Mormon idiocy like how liberal culture promoting abortion rights encourages women “to have careers?”

You could have flunked out of North Pokegama Community Tech and known that “the gals” — 51.7% of the state’s workforce — would hear a line like that and think, “What a [bleeping] idiot.”

Then just recently Birk, who may have impulse control issues, took the bait in a Twitter war with the well-known, and very publicly reformed-Republican insider, Michael Brodkorb. Responding to Brodkorb’s entirely fair observation that current polling looks bad for Jensen-Birk, the Harvard grad blasted back, “Michael – never heard of you so I looked you up. Google says your expertise is in adulterous affairs and driving while drunk – nothing about politics. Might want to sit this one out bud.”

Again … OMG.

And have I mentioned Jensen comparing to the Walz administered COVID lockdown to … the Holocaust?

Much like bringing down the price of gas — (the cheaper for Birk to commute back to his gated, $4 million Naples, Florida home) — Jensen and Birk, chastened by the national blowback to the repeal of Roe v Wade, are now all over crime, and how “Walz failed.”

Crime of course is a campaign standard, like cutting taxes (and Jensen has … wait for it … vowed to eliminate Minnesota income taxes). But what sort of potential voter actually believes they could do anything to stop (gang banging) gun violence? I mean without serious gun reform?

More to my point here, what level of cognition are educated guys like Jensen and Birk projecting on their ideal persuadable voter?

Answer: Only angry fools would actually buy what they’re selling. Which is why they’re exuding a palpable scent of contempt for the voters they’re appealing to.

The Jensen-Birk miasma is of course a new standard in Republican campaigns. And it flows downhill from the master.

As a recent Politico piece, titled, “How Trump Taught Everybody to Be Obnoxious and Cruel” said, “… [it] might be that Trump is not the cause of the new crudeness and rudeness of contemporary politics — just an especially florid manifestation of much deeper trends. The paradox of modern technology, especially as harnessed by social media, is that it is especially proficient in unleashing primitive dimensions of human character. That suggests a renaissance of insult, indignation and conspiracy theory — the signatures of the politics of contempt — is going to be with us for a long time to come no matter what happens to Trump.”

A lot of campaigns are not ready for prime time. But Jensen-Birk are sliding into a rarefied zone, especially since they can’t explain away their astonishing blundering and crudeness to a lack of quality formal education.

Which leaves me only to mention … Judy Dutcher. The DFL’s 2006 lieutenant governor candidate is credited for sinking Mike Hatch’s race against Tim Pawlenty with one … one … screw up. Not a half dozen every day.

Scott Jensen’s Dramatic Fall Shows Ads Still Matter

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Among campaign professionals, debates continually rage about whether to invest in field organization or advertising. 

Advocates for organizing – phone-banking, door-knocking, yard sign placement, volunteer recruitment, helping voters vote, etc. – say that the best way to persuade and activate someone is one-on-one, preferably face-to-face.  They make the case that saturation advertising is increasingly tuned out by ad-weary voters and therefore is largely ineffective and a massive waste of limited campaign resources.

Those folks need to pay attention to the Minnesota gubernatorial race between incumbent DFL Governor Tim Walz and challenger Republican Scott Jensen.  KSTP-TV explains:

“There could be many explanations for why Republican challenger Scott Jensen has fallen so far behind incumbent Democrat Gov. Tim Walz two months before Election Day, but Jensen’s initial position on abortion and the resulting millions of dollars of TV ads on the issue is likely the biggest factor.

According to our exclusive new KSTP/SurveyUSA poll, Walz leads Jensen by 18 points, 51% to 33%. In our May survey, Jensen trailed by just 5 points.

“The results of this current poll are nothing short of stunning,” says Carleton College political analyst Steven Schier, citing the barrage of TV ads criticizing Jensen about abortion and education funding as difficult for the Republican to overcome. “The Jensen campaign has no money for messaging compared to the Walz campaign and the Walz campaign allies.”

As of late July, Walz had 10 times more cash on hand than Jensen, nearly $5 million compared to just over $500,000 for Jensen. Plus, a special interest group supporting Walz, Alliance for a Better Minnesota, pledged millions to run TV ads attacking Jensen.

Walz and his supporters have used advertising to put Jensen in a deep hole with only two months to go. The ads frame Walz as a unifying Governor who managed the state well during a difficult pandemic and is now presiding over a booming economy. They describe Jensen as an extremist whose own words show he wants to ban abortion and cut school funding, which are both unpopular positions in Minnesota. 

During the time those ads have been running, there has been a massive 13-point change.  Even if that poll is off by half, which is possible but unlikely, that still would be a very significant shift. 

Just as importantly, the pro-Walz ad campaign also frames the abortion issue as being about respecting doctor-patient relationships, and difficult, highly personal choices that women face. That is in stark contrast to the “baby-killing” arguments that anti-abortion candidates and groups have used to good advantage over the years.

In other words, progressives are, for once, using their advertising budget to play offense on this issue. It’s working, particularly with women voters who would be most affected if Jensen were elected and was able to ban abortion in Minnesota.

The race in this purple state — the only state in the nation with a divided state legislature — is sure to tighten over the next couple of months, in part because the cash-strapped Jensen will eventually start advertising his own charges and defenses at a time when inflation is high and the Democratic President is unpopular. But the last three months are a strong case study illustrating the power of advertising.

So yes, community organizing warriors, continue to knock on those doors and make those calls! (Just not at this crotchety introvert’s house.)  But campaigns also must continue to invest in repetitive messaging through carefully targeted, multi-media advertising.  As the beleaguered Scott Jensen will tell you, that still matters, a lot.

Did the Vikings and NFL Just Blacklist Another Left-Leaning Player?

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I’m not a great NFL offensive line talent evaluator, but I’m told a player named J.C. Tretter has had himself a fine eight-year career as an NFL center. 

At the same time, the center position just happens to be a chronic weakness of the Vikings.  First round draft choice Garrett Bradbury has been a huge disappointment, which particularly limits their passing game and endangers their skittish franchise quarterback. The Vikings don’t appear to have a good Plan B to replace Bradbury.  

The good news, it seemed, was that Mr. Tretter had interest in coming to Minnesota. But alas, according to Sports Illustrated (SI) the interest was not reciprocated by the Vikings’ front office:

The former Browns center, one of the best, most durable players at his position over the past five seasons, had interest in playing football in 2022. After being released by Cleveland in the spring, Tretter and his representation looked around to see if they could find him a new team in free agency. He told Sports Illustrated’s Alex Prewitt that his list of ideal destinations included the Panthers, Cowboys, and Vikings. Tretter cheered for the Vikings as a kid and felt that playing for them would “put a bow on (his) childhood.”

Despite having a major need at center due to Garrett Bradbury’s struggles, the Vikings apparently never returned his call. They declined to comment for the SI story. Minnesota wasn’t the only one, though; per the story, “none of the seven teams that his camp contacted reciprocated his interest.”

So Tretter, feeling at peace with his career, announced his retirement on Thursday.


Now, I’m certainly open to the possibility that Tretter was too beat up to play any more, though he denies that. But why wouldn’t the Vikings, or any other NFL team, at least conduct a physical and do some diagnostic scans? That refusal to even investigate his health just doesn’t pass the smell test.

I’m also open to the possibility that Tretter, at the ripe old age of 31, had no more gas in the tank. But offensive lineman frequently pay well into their thirties, and just last year Tretter still had plenty of game left in him, according to statistics compiled by Cleveland Browns blogger Barry Shuck.

With the 2021 season, Tretter played 1,038 snaps and allowed only one sack. His Pro Football Focus grade this past year was 78.7 and was ranked the #6 center out of 39 candidates.

So what could have caused an accomplished veteran like Tretter to get the cold shoulder from the Vikings and every other NFL team’s front office?  Some, such as Tretter’s former teammate Joel Bitonio, make a very convincing case that Tretter, an Ivy League (Cornell) graduate, has been effectively blackballed by the NFL because he was an outspoken two-term President of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), the labor union that represents players in negotiations with the NFL’s billionaire owners on issues such as pay, benefits, workplace conditions, racial equity, health, and safety.

“When you have a guy that’s top-five, top-10 at center in the league and he’s not on a roster, you know, and he’s the NFLPA president and maybe some of the owners don’t appreciate what he brings to the table on certain topics when he’s trying to protect player safety and things of that nature, it seems a little suspicious to me,” Bitonio said, via Mary Kay Cabot of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “But, again, I don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors. I don’t know what his conversations have been with teams and stuff, but just from an outside perspective usually players that are close to the top of their game get picked up. Teams want to win in this league. So it’s an interesting topic, for sure.”

Mike Florio, an attorney and NFL analyst for NBC, profootballtalk.com, and KFAN radio in Minnesota, agrees that it is very possible:

Would it be crazy to think that owners are shying away from Tretter because he has become an agitator to the oligarchs? Nope. That’s another reason why high-profile (and highly-compensated) quarterbacks should be more involved in union leadership. They’re far less likely to be blackballed, and they’re far more likely to take command of the rank and file if/when a line must be drawn in the sand — even if it means a work stoppage.

For now, it makes sense to pay attention to what happens with Tretter. If the goal is to keep him out of the league because he helps run the union, ignoring it makes it easier for the owners to pull it off.

kluwe_censored

Keep in mind, the NFL and the Vikings have a history here.  As I have written on this blog, there are strong arguments that both the Vikings and the NFL engaged in blacklisting others — racial equity champion quarterback Colin Kaepernick and gay rights champion punter Chris Kluwe — who dared to speak their minds about what the NFL considers to be “political issues.”

Interestingly, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had no concerns with former Vikings center Matt Birk, who was an outspoken advocate of banning abortion long before he started his gaffe-filled run in Minnesota politics. Birk’s position could have been considered by the NFL to be “controversial,” given that surveys show that two-thirds of the nation opposes banning abortion.

But the NFL not only didn’t blacklist Birk, it hired him as a top executive, Director of Player Development, after his playing career was done. The NFL owners’ political leanings are in full view here.

Again, keep in mind, when the analytics publication Pro Football Focus (PFF) ranked the top half of centers in the NFL, they put Tretter near the very top, at number five. PFF didn’t even list the Vikings current starter Garrett Bradbury in the top half of options.

Yet Bradbury, who Vikings Head Coach Kevin O’Connell continues to question, will be the Vikings starter again this year, and Tretter apparently can’t even get his phone call returned by the Vikings front office.

The Vikings’ billionaire owners Mark and Zygi Wilf love to assure long-suffering fans that they will do whatever it takes to bring a Super Bowl Championship to Minnesota, the state that paid half a billion dollars for a sports palace that has caused the value of the Wilf’s NFL franchise to skyrocket by over a billion dollars.

Unless, apparently, that means employing players who advocate for racial, gay, and worker rights.

Student Loan Forgiveness and The Ghost of John Kline, (Who?)

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Rep. John Kline

I know and you know that if a Democrat president signed a bill tomorrow giving every kid a pony, every hard-working goober a shiny new truck and every family a week’s pass to DisneyWorld, Republicans would leap up and howl about how unfair all that is to … kids who wanted a dog, guys who just bought a new truck and families who agree with Ron DeSantis that DisneyWorld is a woke cesspool of transgender grooming.

As the parent of a (fully employed) kid who stands to get roughly $8900 wiped off his monthly bills, I am pleased with Joe Biden’s long brewing decision to wipe out chunks of federal loans. It is certainly a lot of money — up to $500 billion by some estimates — and I don’t see what if anything it does to suppress the rampaging rate of tuition increases. But hey, removing $8900 in bills from mostly middle-class family ledgers counts as a good day to my way of thinking. Those people will almost certainly turn around and (inflation hysteria alert!) spend it on something other than a check to the government.

But while we’re listening to the usual hytperbolic ranting from the usual suspects — Marjorie Taylor Greene, (a bail out for Ivy League brats!), Ohio Senate candidate J.D.Vance, (so unfair to D+ kids who couldn’t get accepted to Hillbilly Ellegy Community Bible College!) and Mitch McConnell (a reckless giveaway to the takers!) let’s pause and consider Minnesota’s own John Kline.

You say you’ve already forgotten old John? The guy who parked himself in Congress representing southern Minnesota’s Second District for 14 years? The guy whose most noteworthy accomplishments were hoovering up prodigious amounts of campaign contributions from for-profit colleges? In turn for proposing more and more legislation that let those, um, conservative benefactors, burrow ever deeper into taxpayer-supported federal guaranteed loan programs? Where they mined fat profits off their hefty tuition costs? While quite often delivering dubious-to-worthless degrees to students then saddled with serious decades-long debt?

That guy.

Here’s a quote from a (U of M) Minnesota Daily editorial back in Kline’s day: “Kline and two others introduced the bill, titled ‘Supporting Academic Freedom through Regulatory Relief Act’, July 10. [Think about that name for a second as you read on.] It would prohibit the Obama administration from restricting federal student aid from schools whose students graduate with lots of debt and have low repayment rates. The for-profit college industry became the subject of much criticism after a 2012 investigation by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee revealed excessive tuition prices, abhorrent recruiting practices, poor student outcomes and wasteful use of taxpayer dollars. The investigation reported taxpayers had spent $32 billion on companies that run for-profit colleges, but the majority of students who enrolled later dropped out. Federal data also shows that a majority of for-profit colleges receive more than 70 percent of their revenue from U.S. government programs.”

Point being — and I realize I don’t have to point this out to you, dear informed reader — but the howling of today’s MAGA-nauts about the “unfairness” of Joe Biden’s “giveway” is 99.9% pure hypocrisy and bad faith. They led the fight to game the federal student loan program, which certainly did not drive tuition costs anywhere but up while saddling thousands of kids from “hard-working, middle-class families” with a mountain of debt and a generally value-less degree.

And THAT is before we mention ol’ Mitch’s signature accomplishment in the Trump years, namely the $2.3 trillion worth of tax cuts Republicans gave away to, you know, “benefactors”, “productive Americans” and people who don’t blink at $30 cocktails at the 19th hole of their private club. [If you’re scoring at home that’s four times the size of Biden’s student loan forgiveness] Maybe you bought a new Porsche with your winnings off that sweet deal, but my taxes jumped up about $900 the next year.

So, as usual, let’s ignore the raging of cynical fools.

Bottom line here is that I suspect Republicans will go hunting for a judge who will slap an injunction on Biden’s executive decision. And, whether it stands or not, loan forgiveness will do next to nothing to stall out the 130% increase in tuitions since 1990.

Oh, and one more thing, entirely unrelated I’m sure, did you see where the University of Alabama just signed football coach Nick Saban to a contract extension worth $94 million over eight years?

And have you forgotten that the highest-paid public employee in the vast majority of states is a … basketball or football coach?

The Number of White Teachers About to Get Fired is Exactly … Zero.

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Anytime there’s a school or teacher flap in the news it helps to have an expert right here on the premises. Ladies and gentlemen, I offer you The Lovely Mrs., a veteran of 37 years teaching senior high English in the great state of Minnesota.

If you have a Trumper in your social orbit you no doubt heard bone-on-bone caterwauling the other day about the Minneapolis school district going “full woke radical” and laying off white teachers regardless of seniority. I certainly did, without quite understanding what ignited the outrage that was built into the new contract language months ago.

But lordy, lordy! A quick Google search of “Minneapolis … white teachers … fired first” found more than 30 “news reports”, the most-trafficked from Murdoch-owned operations howling about the blatant “racism” in the radical socialist hell hole we know as Minneapolis. (Gotta love the sources for their reporting.) And if you need video, there were selected black folks on Sean Hannity’s show railing against the injustice to … mmmm … white folks. Teachers, to be specific.

Color me very confused.

i ask you, “Who in the hell is getting fired? Or laid off? Or in the coagulated verbiage of the Teachers Union’s contract, “If excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the district shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population’.” (“Excessing?” … for chrissake, who writes shit like that?)

The short answer to the question of which Minneapolis teachers are getting canned and forced to work at the Wendy’s drive-through is … exactly … no body.

That’s because every day there are a half dozen other stories reporting the 200, 300, pick-a-scary number of teachers the Minneapolis district needs to … hire … right now … in order to have enough to educate our little savants this coming school year. So no. The answer to the Pop Quiz: “How many patriotic white men and women are going to be cruelly axed to satisfy woke liberals?” is … zero. Certainly today and for as far into the future as any actual education expert can predict.

But, you know, when you’re in the outrage business, woke liberal blue state racists destroying the careers of decent white people is absolutely irresistible. Get it in the “A” block and sell it!

But back to The Lovely Mrs, who has no end of horror stories of incompetent faculty colleagues and incompetent school administrators. The latter being guilty of failing to do their job, which includes culling out the lazy, lazier and laziest regardless of color or seniority. The crowd as she often says who “laminated their lesson plans 20 years ago and haven’t updated anything since.”

This unfortunately connects to stories of administrators perpetually conniving to run off people who they simply took a personal disliking to.

Human nature. It’s a bitch.

But, no. Just no. Exactly like the outrages over Critical Race Theory (get a furious Trumper to even explain what he thinks it is), the IRS kicking down the door of your trailer to collect back taxes or Ilhan Omar mandating Sharia Law on the Iron Range, this one has no connection to a real and imminent reality.

But, don’t let me ruin your fun. Howl away.

That Vote for Secretary of State? It Now Actually Matters, a Lot.

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Beginning on September 23rd, when early voting begins, Minnesota will be choosing an overseer of Minnesota’s free and fair elections, the Minnesota Secretary of State. 

Stop yawning, because this issue has become a big deal.

This is an era in which Trumpist Republicans now scream “fraud” any time they have fewer certified votes than their opponent. Because of that, the choice of Secretary of State has suddenly become one of the most important choices on your ballot. 

Republicans have nominated someone named Kim Crockett to run against DFL incumbent Steve Simon. Having effectively and efficiently managed the election system with the highest turnout in the nation, Simon has earned reelection.


Meanwhile, Trumpist Crockett, the former head of an ultra-conservative policy think tank, champions anti-democratic views.

  • Denying Certified Results. Crockett is an election denier who rejects the findings about the 2020 presidential election, which were checked and re-checked and re-re-checked by dozens of non-partisan election officials, auditors, and judges. Her partisan attitudes about non-partisan vote counting and auditing in 2020 telegraph the partisan manner in which she would oversee vote counting and auditing in the future. It seems clear that she would reject foundational democratic values in favor of partisanship, and that could effectively disenfranchise many Minnesota voters.
  • Dismantling Proven System. Despite the fact that Minnesota has the best voter turnout in the nation, Crockett insists that Minnesota’s current must be destroyed and rebuilt to her liking.  She wants to make voting more difficult, not easier, such as by pushing to restrict mail voting, erecting participation barriers, and shrinking early voting periods. Unconscionable.
  • Promoting Bigotry and Elitism. Crockett even questions whether Americans with disabilities and non-English speakers should be permitted to vote:

    “So, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that indeed you can help an unlimited number of people vote if they are disabled or can’t read or speak English, which raises the question, should they be voting? We can talk about that another time.”

    No, how about we talk about that now?

So, please do your research on this race, and don’t stop voting after the top few choices at the top of the ballot.  This Secretary of State vote matters a lot more than it might seem at first blush.

Liz Cheney Ain’t Going Nowhere in This Republican Party

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There are easily a dozen ways to help you understand Liz Cheney — daughter of the spawn of Beelzebub and Darth Vader and holder of the most famous name in Wyoming politics — losing by 40 points to the GOP’s latest example of terminal cynicism. But spending a couple days with Mark Leibovich’s new book, “Thank You for Your Servitude” helps square the edges and color in between the lines.

I’m an unabashed fan boy for Leibovich’s writing and style of reporting. If you’ve read nothing by him — he recently moved to The Atlantic after 16 years with The New York Times — start with “This Town”, his 2013 classic. It’s a [Tom] Wolfian dissection of the DC social scene, where TV anchors, pundits, well-heeled reporters, society grande dames and perpetually self-serving politicians interwine incestuously to reap the benefits of the prestigious game of … mmm, public service. Written during the Obama administration, it’s a scene-setter for characters and fault lines that cracked wide open during the Trump epidemic.

Having just finished “Thank You for Your Servitude” — (thanks again to Sir Richard the Noble for sending it over as a gift) — Cheney’s predicament was not only fully predict-able, but perfectly understandable as well. She is, as many have said, a creature from a party, an “ethos” if you will, that quite literally no longer exists. In interviews with the likes of Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy and various other modern Republican “leaders”, Leibovich lays it out with kind of morbid hilarity.

I quote mark “leaders” because they are all quaking in terror of the Trumpy base. From Mitch McConnell on down each of them live as a hostage in a Circus Maximus where a mere whispered criticism of a character all regard (but only in private) as a ludicrous fop has become an excommunicatable offense.

Chatter this morning is where Cheney goes from here? She seems to have hinted at running for President. But how? And as what?

Delicious as it would be to have her up on a debate stage with Landslide Donny, I see no one imagining how she mounts a primary campaign as a Republican, if only because of security concerns. As it was in her home state of Wyoming, with her family name slapped on countless buildings, she didn’t dare announce her campaign visits more than a couple hours in advance for fear of locked and loaded Trump-o-nauts showing up to protect their … you know … freedoms … from radical socialists like … Liz Cheney.

So maybe she runs as an independent? Walking point for a reimagining of Daddy Cheney’s kind of conservative politics? The kind with all the sweet tax cuts for Halliburton board members, evisceration of social safety nets, deregulation for any drilling operation that sees money in national parks, wildly disproportionate paranoia about feckless dictators and … gotta love this … the mythical Unitary Executive, where buffoons as unqualified as, oh I don’t know, a multiply bankrupt reality TV “star” can do whatever he damn well pleases once “POTUS” is part of his official title.

Face it, independent = futile, electorally. Although given Cheney’s standing via the January 6 committee she’d be guaranteed plenty of free media if Trump himself is in the 2024 race.

And if Trump isn’t? Well, as Leibovich points out repeatedly in his book, even absent Trump the Candidate, no Republican who hasn’t bent the knee, slurped the lifted loafer and kissed the sprawling booty of Donald J. will have any traction with the cult of chronically pissed off D+ students who have total control of the party today and for the forseeable future. There simply is no infrastructure for a new-breed-like-just-the-old-breed Republican like Liz Cheney.

If Trump declines to serve again, the Republican base circa 2024 is primed for a much smarter and far uglier version of a loathsome freedom(s) fighter. I give you Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley, etc. ad infinitum.

Jensen’s Abortion Ban Promises Come Back to Haunt Him, Thanks to Oppo

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Particularly in closely contested purple states like Minnesota, the game for Republican candidates has become to run as an extreme right-winger in Republican primaries, then pretend to be a “moderate” in the general election by walking back much of what you promised in the primary. 

This “pivot to the center” is done to appeal to “swing voters,” or voters who tend to swing back and forth between voting for Democratic and Republican candidates. These voters often prove to be key in general elections.

There’s one impediment to politicians’ deceptive strategy–opposition research.

A lot of people tend to think of campaign opposition research, or “oppo” for short, as being unsavory or unethical. They envision political hacks “digging up dirt” about opponents, private investigator style.  In reality, opposition research is most often just documenting the opponents’ public statements. Typically, a relatively low-level staffer is hired to catalog news coverage and go to the opponents’ public events to record what the opponent is saying. 

Gathering and organizing this information is horribly tedious work — more like an archivist than a private investigator — but the messaging fodder it produces can be decisive in close elections. And it brings more transparency to politics.

For instance, in the Republican primary, Scott Jensen promised Republicans in unequivocal terms that he would try to ban abortions in Minnesota.  MinnPost summarizes his position during the Republican primary campaign:

“In March, before Roe was overturned, Jensen told MPR News he would ‘try to ban abortion’ if elected governor. And in a May interview on WCCO radio, Jensen, a practicing family physician, said he wouldn’t support exemptions for rape and incest…”

ABM even says Jensen told the St. Thomas University Young Republicans in December 2021 that he would throw a party if he was able to limit abortions.

“If I get a chance to sign a pro-life piece of legislation, we’re not just going to sign it, we’re going to have a party.”

But alas, abortion banning statements that produce thunderous ovations from ultra-conservative primary voters produce lusty boos from more moderate swing voters.  After all, about two-thirds (65%) of Minnesota voters oppose new severe abortion restrictions. Most Minnesotans clearly don’t view abortion banning as party-worthy.

Therefore, once Jensen won the primary, he began frantically trying to walk back his promise, saying he would grant exceptions in the case of rape and incest.  (Or as Jensen’s running mate Matt Birk might put it, Jensen “played the rape card.”)

For a while, it felt like Jensen’s flip-flop was working a bit. The news coverage of his flip-flop muddied the waters and made Jensen seem more moderate than he is (e.g. Based on his policy positions, Jensen has a 100% rating from the extremist anti-choice Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life).

But thanks to a behind-the-scenes opposition researcher, a devastating ad is currently being heavily aired by the progressive Alliance for a Better Minnesota (ABM). The ad is holding Jensen accountable for his primary election promises.  (I’d provide a link to the ad here, but ABM inexplicably doesn’t seem to be making it available online.)

The ad captures Jensen’s original promise to ultra-conservative primary voters and plays it back to more moderate general election swing voters.  It also includes a chorus of Minnesota women expressing outrage about Jensen’s abortion ban promise. It’s powerful.

Though news media coverage exposed Jensen’s flip-flop on abortion, the ABM ad does several important things that news media coverage can’t.  For instance, ads provide brevity for voters who don’t have the patience to dig into detailed news stories.  They are carefully targeted to reach persuadable voters who often don’t follow the news closely, or at all. Finally, unlike news coverage, ads deliver message repetition, which makes the issue and the messaging stick in voters’ minds.

So, if Governor Tim Walz ends up being reelected this November because pro-choice suburban voters swing in his direction, don’t give all the credit to the candidate, field organizers, and his big-buck political consultants.  Remember to give a little love to the lowly bottom-feeding staffer who captured and shared that audio clip to prevent Jensen from deceiving his way into the Minnesota Governor’s  office.

We Present You Trump’s Deposition, More or Less Verbatim.

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As we know, Donald Trump went full Carlo Gambino yesterday, taking “the Fifth” over 440 times in a deposition for New York’s Attorney General Letitia James. A deposition not about inciting a riot that ended up killing a half dozen people at the U.S. Capitol, but simply how he did business in New York for 30 or so years. Through a rush filing of an FOIA (Freedom of Imagination Act) the Wry Wing Politics legal team has obtained a partial record of said deposition. As a public service, we present it to you here.

State of New York (SONY) : Is your name Donald J, Trump?

Trump: I take the Fifth because I’m still the President and I don’t take lip from uppity black women.

SONY: So you believe you will incriminate yourself by admitting who are?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Very well. Have you ever done business in the state of New York?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Um hmm. Have you ever paid taxes in the State of New York?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Have you ever resided in the State of New York?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Really? We’re simply asking if you’ve ever lived here. You believe that will incriminate you?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Okay. Let’s try this. You own a property up the Hudson. You purchased it for $6.9 million. Yet you later claimed a $21 million tax deduction on the same property and then wildly over-valued it again to secure a loan to buy a football team. How do you explain this?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: (Growing exasperation.) Mr. Trump do you or do you not have children?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Ok. Are any of these children mentally competent? Can they feed and groom themselves?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Are any or all of them house trained, and this includes Eric?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Mr. Trump are you at this moment awake and conscious?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Do you or do you not have a full size poster of Kid Rock over your bed?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Have you ever read a book?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Alright. Mr. Trump we have evidence that without the laundering of money Vladimir Putin-supported oligarchs looted from Russia you would be destitute and selling hot dogs on Sixth Avenue. This is true, isn’t it?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Sir, are you currently incontinent, or can you explain what I’m smelling?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Sir, during your term in the White House did you ever spend more than 45 minutes on any given day doing anything remotely like actual work?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Mr. Trump, do you believe in the Easter Bunny?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Mr. Trump, that thing, whatever it is on your head, is it made of hemp, and what color would you say it is?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Sir, at any point in the past 25 years have you weighed less than 300 pounds?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: And can you recall any day in the past 25 years when you didn’t lie you ass off about everything, pretty much all day long?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Just a couple more, sir. Can you spell your name for us? Or, excuse me, do you know how to spell your name?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Mr. Trump have you had breast augmentation surgery?

Trump: Fifth.

SONY: Okay, finally, sir, there are several globs of some kind of thick goo on your absurdly long red tie. We suspect it is Kentucky Fried Chicken sauce. If so, which flavor is it?

Trump: It’s classic ranch, you vicious, deep state idiot.

SONY: Thank you for your cooperation, sir.

What Would Trump Steal That is So Ultra Top Secret and Why?

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When I heard last night that the FBI had raided Trump’s garish Florida mansion, my first reaction was, “Jesus, what took them so long?”

There’s a line of thinking that the public explanation about searching for public documents Trump illegally airlifted out of the White House is merely a cover for executing a raid that very likely will sweep evidence of all sorts of other Trump malfeasance. And that would surprise exactly no one who doesn’t sleep with a Trump-as-Rambo poster over their bed.

Among all the things that have astonished me in the context of Trump’s appeal to “conservatives” is the blindered unwillingness to see the guy as the “fraud” and “con man” his fellow Republican candidates told us he was back in 2015. Why? Because Trump’s astonishing disregard for business ethics, tax laws, SEC statutes, immigration laws and, well, you name it, was abundantly well known to anyone who did business with him in New York and anyone with a passing interest in business reporting by credible national newsapers. There was never any excuse for the Rewpublican managerial class not knowing this long before he descended on the gilded elevator. It was a known fact shortly after he began stinking up the real estate/gossip column scene in the early Eighties.

And yet … to this day … the guy has never been indicted. Hell, we’re to believe his taxes from over a decade ago are still under audit!

And a bit further down the rap sheet, there doesn’t appear to be any on-going investigation of the extremely shady, Russia-assisted “banking” he did with Deutsche Bank, the only crowd of money changers willing to loan him money … even after he sued them … after he refused to re-pay the loan they gave him for Trump Tower Chicago. (I strongly encourage anyone interested to read “Dark Towers”, New York Times financial reporter David Enrich’s briskly-paced tale of the bank’s myriad nefarious executives and endeavors, including those buttressing Trump at his most desperate moments.)

Whether this raid is the first of many dominoes to fall in the clearly broadening, deepening investigation into Trump’s January 6 behavior we must wait … a while longer.

But after consuming 48 hours of reporting and pounditry on this FBI raid. my lizard mind has focused with acute fascinatioin on the nature of these Top, Top Secret documents/information the Feds clearly believe he still possessed. This the information so ultra top secret it can not even be described.

Really? Wow.

But we do know a few things abut this stuff.

A: The Feds absolutely believed Trump had the info, and convinced a Federal judge to let it raid the home of a former President to get it back.

B: Trump quite obviously lied about having whatever it is and did not include it in the 15 boxes of trinkets and souvenirs and whatever the Feds toted away last spring.

C: The Feds and the judge agreed that Trump was unlikely to ever hand it back in a polite, professional manner.

And D: They had good reason to believe Trump would destroy what they were looking for if they gave any notice that they were coming to get it.

Hence, a raid, much like kicking in the door on a meth dealer in Albuquerque.

So then I ask myself, “What would Donald Trump steal and cling to so desperately that he’d risk this scene?”

And I answer by reminding myself that we know two things about Trump with absolute certainty, namely everything is about him and money. This leads me to suspect that whatever Super Double Secret Probation information he stole has to have very high value in terms of either protecting him from some kind of prosecution and/or can be monetized in a negotiation with another party … most likely in a highly nefarious context.

(One of the facical aspects of this episode, as one national security expert pointed out yesterday, is that Trump was obviously too stupid to realize that as POTUS he had the authority to de-classify anything, including whatever the Feds are looking for now, and therefore could have avoided this whole mess.)

Finally, as fans of John LeCarre certainly understand, whatever the Feds are looking for is not one-of-a-kind. There would be copies somewhere. Which means that other than the illegality of iut, the peril her, the risk to national security is who has this information.

And in that case it is the as-yet-unindicted careeert fraud and con man Donald Trump, who long ago demonstrated he will do anything to get what he wants.

OMG, Democrats Are Criminally Bad At Marketing What They Accomplish

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I get this weird twitching sensation in my neck every time I hear some Republican voter or official or Trump sycophant talk about, “How much we accomplished.” It’s a thing with them. They’re conditioned to say it every time someone sticks a microphone in their face … and fails to ask the natural follow-up, which is, “What the [bleep] are you talking about?”

These days most post-Trump attention is being paid to The Big Lie and inciting a violent attack the Capitol. Important stuff. But every so often some wonk points out how astonishingly little Trump and Trump kow-towing Republicans accomplished during his four year dumpster fire. Other than the long sought after deficit-doubling Paul Ryan/Mitch McConnell tax cut, (mine went up $900, FWIW), I am not aware of any … any … significant legslation Trump and crew passed in four years. Put another way, as we know all to well, today’s Republicans are not in the policy business.

And yet … and yet … they have successfully sold the message, to their base, that they have delivered for them. Which they have as long as you count culture war attacks and grievance-mongery as “accomplisments.” (Which I believe they do.)

This all by way of contrasting the modern GOP and their entertainment echo chamber with the gross, borderline criminal ineptitude of Democrats selling their accomplishments to the general public.

Want an example? Try this on for size.

Allow me to excerpt a couple key takeaways.

“The bipartisan infrastructure deal (BIF) was a historic achievement that few thought possible. But since its passage in November, the law has done little to move voter opinion in Democrats’ favor. To find out why and what to do, Third Way and Impact Research conducted a survey of 2000 likely 2022 voters to investigate voter opinion on the BIF and its messaging.“

“Quite simply, voters do not know the bill was passed. While voters express high levels of support for the deal once they hear about it, only 24% of voters think the bill is law. Meanwhile, a plurality (37%) says they “don’t know” the status of the bill, 30% say “it is still being worked on in Congress but isn’t law yet,” and 9% believe it is not being worked on in Congress and will not be passed. Given that a large share believes the deal is still being worked on in Congress, it is clear that voters are confusing the BIF with BBB, which, of course, has not passed. In selling this legislation, the first order of business is to remind, inform, and convince voters that it is now law.“

The sound you hear is me bashing my head against a wall. An unprecedented trillion dollar bill to, you know, actually accomplish stuff. Repair roads. Rebuild bridges. Expand and improve airports. A trillion dollars worth of work for blue-collar worker-voters. And three-fourths of the public doesn’t even know it’s happening.

Jesus [bleeping] christ.

To paraphrase Joe Biden, “Here’s the deal, kids.” In modern America there is no reality unless it’s on TV. (I believe it was ex-George W. speechwriter David Frum who first said this.) All those “hard working Americans” we’re always valorizing? They’re not paying attention to legislation. They’re far more interested in who was on “The Masked Singer” and if the Vikings can win a play-off game this year.

You have to tell them …, over and over and over … what you’ve done for them. And you have to tell it to them where they are, which is watching cheesy primetime TV and sporting events. You have to rub their faces in what you accomplished for them.

Like the legendary Mayor of Chicago, Dick Daley, always did. No road or bridge in the city was ever repaired i.e. accomplished without a sign next to it saying that he, His Honor Dick Daley, made this happen … for you … much-loved fellow citizen of The Windy City.

I vividly remember back in 2010, sitting in my local roadhouse bar in Wisconsin, listening to a couple neighboring yobs piss and moan about Obama screwing things up and what a loser “that guy” was. Meanwhile, at that very moment, out the window not forty yards away a crew of a dozen guys was trenching in fiber optic cable next to the highway. A vital piece of work done by blue-collar guys a lot like the boys at the bar, and paid for by Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

I also remember someone asking Obama at one point why more people weren’t aware that this was something he signed off on, and maybe wasn’t the eye-glazing name, “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” kind of obscuring the identity of who made these jobs and improvements possible? To which Obama — a Chicago guy, mind you — said something to the effect, “What do you want me to do? Put my name on it?”

To which I screamed at the time, “Yes! Damn it! And a big picture of you pointing at it saying, ‘I did this’.”

Of course if this kind of thing were left to me not only would I slap my picture on every sign next to every construction site I’d add a line reminding “hard working Americans” that their local Republican congress critter and Senator voted against this “accomplishment.”

How could Trump possibly have lost re-election? How?

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by Noel Holston

Disingenuous or not, Donald Trump continues to maintain that he couldn’t have lost his re-election bid. After all, his rallies were so big and his supporters love him so much. The supporters agree because, well, the rallies were so big and they love him so much.

Nonsense. Anybody who applies simple common sense to this question will understand how he could — and did — lose.

Start with the 2016 Presidential election. Trump did win that one. No question. Hillary Clinton got more popular votes — 65,844,954 (48.2%) to Trump’s 62,979,879 (46.1%) — but Trump won more states and triumphed in the Electoral College.

In 2020, the election went the other way, with Biden getting 81,282,916 popular votes to Trump’s 74,223,369 and flipping enough “battleground” states to win the Electoral College. That’s a margin of just over seven million votes, which is pretty freakin’ emphatic and impossible to fake.

To which Trump and his flock still say, “No way, not possible.”

But it was more than possible. It was entirely predictable.

Photo by Noel Holston.

Think about it. Trump lost at the ballot box in 2016 by almost three million votes to a former First Lady who is despised, vilified and mocked by right-wing Americans and isn’t exactly beloved by members of her own party (including me).

So why should it be shocking that a far less polarizing, avuncular Democrat could beat him in 2020? Especially after Trump had had four years to outrage Democrats, disgust traditional Republicans and sour independents with his endless, inescapable displays of pettiness, deceit, egomania, meanness and willful ignorance. Millions may love him, but millions more were sick of the sight and sound of him.

True, some of these very characteristics endeared him to his faithful — or were possible for them to ignore given his Supreme Court appointees. He got more than 11 million more votes in 2020 than he got on 2016.

But Biden’s getting 15 million more votes than Clinton did and seven million more than Trump, far from impossible, was inevitable — a tribute to Trump’s unparalleled ability to annoy, sicken and motivate the liberals and moderates he thought he was “owning.”

It’s time for MAGAs from Trump on down to cool it with the absurd claims of theft and get on with tapping Greg Abbott or Ron DeSantis or Archery Terror-Alert Greed to continue their plans to transform the USA into Gilead or Oceania or Hungary. There was no steal. Trump gave the election away.

And here’s the kicker. He has probably given away 2024 as well. If he had just submitted to an orderly transfer of power like 44 Presidents before him and kept his mouth shut, he’d be in a better position to retake the Oval Office in two years. But he couldn’t help himself, and he still can’t. As it stands now, he may be wearing a jumpsuit that matches his face.

Trump does have many enemies, but none worse than himself.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He regularly shares his insights and wit at 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.

Screw China, let’s Taiwan on

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By Noel Holston

From The Washington Post’s August 3 editorial page:

“However much the 82-year-old Ms. Pelosi might want a capstone event for her time as speaker — before a likely GOP victory in November ends it— going to Taiwan now, as President Xi Jinping of China is orchestrating his third term, was unwise.”

I don’t ordinarily disagree with the WaPo’s editorials. Like MAGAs  who turn to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity to get their daily marching orders, I depend on the left-center Post to tell me who to vote for and what issues to support — or to at least ratify what I’m already thinking. Not only do I read the Post with my morning coffee, I drank java the Post recommended.

But I part company with its editorial board on Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Let Xi be pissed. We need to show support for this most Western of Eastern democracies every which way we can.

President Biden, instead of doing “damage control,” should’ve hopped on Air Force One and been in Taiwan to fist bump Pelosi as she departed.

Secretary of State Anthony “Winkin’” Blinken should have been there on Joe’s heels if not his plane.

And then. . . and then, the wave. We should steady stream of American politicos and icons, both singles and groups, including:

The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus

Stephanie “Flo” Courtney

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Snoop Dogg

George Takei.

The Congressional Anti-Bullying Caucus

Tom Hanks

Beyonce

The Boston Red Sox

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Dolly Parton

Kelly Clarkson

The Texas Southern Ocean of Soul Marching Band

Spongebob

The Congressional Shellfish Caucus

Tool

Dwayne Johnson

Elmo

The Beach Boys

The Congressional Rice Caucus

Ted Danson

George Clooney

George Clinton

Lizzo

The Log Cabin Republicans

The Squirrel Nut Zippers

Oprah

Clint Eastwood

And if “President” Xi starts World War III over all this tourism, so be it. We either do the right thing or we don’t.

Which reminds me:

Spike Lee!

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He regularly shares his insights and wit at 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 (200-2005) 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.

Why Is Doc Jensen Still So Obsessed With His Long-Disproven COVID Claims?

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Minnesota GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen has one huge advantage over DFL Governor Tim Walz – rural voters.  If Jensen wins in November, and he might because of frustration over crime and inflation, it will be because he successfully energized rural Minnesota. Rural areas have gotten reliably Republican, so yesterday’s FarmFest debate was the Twin Cities resident’s big opportunity to close the deal by stressing his rural development ideas.

Photo credit: Dana Ferguson, Forum News Service

But instead of using all of his time to make that case, Jensen apparently spent quite a lot of time emphasizing what he always seems to emphasize — COVID-related cray-cray.

I just don’t understand why Jensen is convinced that this is such a winning political issue for him.  Early on, when little information was available, Jensen became a star on conservative news outlets like Fox News recklessly speculating about how the pandemic might turn out. But now that actual research has emerged, it’s clear that Jensen’s early guesses have turned out to be spectacularly, embarrassingly wrong.

Still, Jensen just can’t stop himself from going there:

  • Quite incredibly, Jensen, a physician by training, still remains unvaccinated. Keep in mind, over 95 percent of physicians are vaccinated, putting Jensen in a very small minority of extremists in his profession. Moreover, an overwhelming majority of Minnesotans made a different decision. Seven out of ten (3.946 million) of them have gotten them fully vaccinated. Among the states, Minnesota has the second best rate of residents that have been boosted.
  • Jensen also still expresses skepticism about vaccine effectiveness. But the facts are now in. They show that the vaccine has been highly effective in reducing hospitalizations and deaths, and have enabled Minnesota’s society and economy to return to normal. Despite all of this, Doc Jensen apparently still thinks preaching anti-vax myths to the small group of holdouts is wise political strategy.
  • Beyond Jensen’s incessant vaccination nonsense, he somehow continues to recommend Minnesotans use the antiparasitic drug ivermectin. The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved ivermectin, because a number of medical studies have proven it to be ineffective and dangerous. But apparently Team Jensen is convinced that pushing this discredited quackery is going to get him elected.
  • And then there is public health. Jensen maintains that Walz’s public health measures to limit COVID spread were unnecessary and ineffective.  But the facts are now in, and Minnesota under Walz had one of the region’s best rates of COVID deaths per capita. If Walz had adopted the conservative hands-off public health approach used in neighboring South Dakota, 5,000 more people would have died, according to an analysis done by Dane Smith.  That’s roughly equivalent to the population of Minnesota towns like Circle Pines, Luverne, Redwood Falls, Lindstrom, and Morris. Still, Jensen apparently is convinced that championing the demonstrably deadly South Dakota model is the best path to victory in November.
  • Finally, Jensen claims that Walz protecting Minnesotans during the deadliest pandemic in a century destroyed the Minnesota economy. Again, the facts now tell us a very different tale. Minnesota currently has the lowest unemployment of any state in the nation (1.8 percent), a historic low.  Minnesota’s state budget outlook is strong enough that it also recently had its bond rating upgraded to AAA for the first time in nearly 20 years.  But Jensen remains convinced that Minnesotans will buy his contention that Walz’s pandemic response made the state into a dystopian economic hellscape.

Stop, Doc, just stop! Take it from fellow Republican Bill Brock: “Let me tell you about the law of holes: If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

The next time Jensen gets in front of a group of farmers and rural residents, he should abandon his stale, disproven COVID kookiness. Instead, he should try focusing on things that actually impact his audience’s lives, such as drought relief, broadband expansion, education investment, paid family and medical leave, health coverage affordability, and road and bridge improvements.

I Still Take Omar Over Samuels

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It’s a running discussion, whether newspaper endorsements mean anything in a modern world where crazy Uncle Steve and a few hundred Russian bots can create a groundswell of enthusiasm for the dimmest of political bulbs. But this morning’s Strib shout-out for Don Samuels over Ilhan Omar in next Tusday’s DFL primary may be a bit different in that, unlike a Republican primary, it’s talking to a mostly sanity-based audience.

The endorsement comes within a (very) long recitation of Samuels’ activist-within-the-accepted system bona fides. And there’s no disputing that at age 72 he’s covered a lot more ground than Omar, who is 39.

But as I read the endorsement I was reminded again of something I tell cranky lefties rolling their eyes at positions the Strib Op-Ed page takes on a range of issues. And that is that big newspapers (TV news doesn’t risk opinionated stands) are almost by definition a status quo entity. They see themselves playing a stabilizing role, calming and shushing the hormonal impulses of the fringes. In football terms, news organizations like the Strib prefer, and with their opinions they play a game between the 40 yard-lines. A little wiggle over this way, then a little wiggle back. Never too far or too much. But rather everything at mid-field, far from the over-heated end zones.

This is by way of me saying that I’ll vote for Omar again next Tuesday. Not necessarily because I see her as a more disciplined bureacrat, or even as the Strib argues for Samuels a more imaginative legislator, but because I see value in what the Strib sees as her excesses.

Omar is invariably lumped in with “The Squad”, the band of firebrand liberal women that includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. The women, all under age 50, representing barely 1% of the current Congress, yet are constantly irritating Washington’s Democratic leadership with loud demands for an aggressive, progressive agenda. And on the flip-side they are perpetually inflaming the nightmares of Trumpist Republicans who see all women of color as the deepest kind of threat to “the American way.”

These are both qualities hard to quantify but which I find appealing … and valuable.

It’s absolutely true that Omar has stepped in it more than once. In her first term, she exuded more than a bit of the entitled attitude that comes with being a good-looking woman — (a lot like the ‘tude that comes with star athletes, guys like Aaron Rodgers for example, who have pretty much always lived a rareified, revered existence substantially different than their peers.) She seems to have learned to modulate her public comments a bit more in her second term.

I suspect that her much-quoted remarks about Israel and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and Muslims in general did very little to stoke her appeal to the Twin Cities’ and U.S. Jewish community. But, for what it’s worth, what I heard in what she was saying, or trying to say, was that today’s Israeli government, only recently and perhaps only temporarily, released from the claws of the rigidly conservative, deeply corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu was the central issue … not simply that Israel is a Jewish state and all Jews are racists.

And what informed audience is going to deny that about Netanyahu and Israel’s version of our bat shit conservatives?

More central to my point here, what American political figure is going to make a consistent point of that? Of drawing regular attention to the crude and frankly ugly, counter-effective ways conservative Israeli governments have behaved in the Middle East?

I know nothing about how well Omar’s office has provided constituent service, but if it’s average it’s good enough, and if it pays particular attention to the Fifth District’s Somali population, that too is tolerable.

The Strib clearly sees Samuels being a better agent for Minneapolis’ black community. But I have a hard time imagining Omar neglecting the north side’s problems, despite her, um intemperate anger over name-your-favorite-Minneapolis-cop-killing of an unarmed black constituent.

And a final note to the bad faith crowd forever playing purely team-oriented politics. Ilhan Omar, AOC and the rest of the scary hyper-liberal “Squad” bear no resemblance — none — to the appalling freak-show idiocy and recklessness of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Bobert, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert, Madison Cawthorn, Jim Jordan and on and on … and on and on … down there in the Republican end zone.

Omar still has plenty learn. But she’s engaged in serious, valuable progressive messaging and legislation. And she remains a unique voice in a Congress badly polluted by authoritarian dimwits and musty, status quo bureaucrats.

So yeah. I’m voting for her, again.

Angel With an Orange Face

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By Noel Holston

I’ve been thinking about Donald Trump and Angels with Dirty Faces.

You know who Trump is. You may need a reminder about the movie. It’s a classic 1938 crime melodrama in which James Cagney and Pat O’Brien costar as boyhood pals whose lives went in opposite directions. Cagney’s adult Rocky Sullivan is a vicious gangster, O’Brien’s Jerry Connolly a Roman Catholic priest.

The movie wraps up with Rocky getting convicted of murder and being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Father Jerry visits him on death row. He pleads with Rocky to drop his cocky defiance and beg for mercy so that the young hoodlums from the old neighborhood who idolize him — the “Dead End” kids — will feel betrayed and rethink their own criminal ambitions.

Rocky refuses, telling Father Jerry that his reputation is all that he has left. He’s going to walk the last mile with a swagger and “spittin’ in their eyes.”

Jerry walks the corridor with Rocky and shakes his hand farewell. Then Rocky suddenly breaks down and screams for mercy. The guards have to drag the whimpering tough guy to the chair. He dies a coward’s death, and the delinquents who revered him, upon reading the news of how Rocky “turned yellow,” start to question their choices.

In the Trump remake, soon to be a major motion picture —I mean, like, HUGE — the former President of the United States, a career con artist, is finally brought to justice after giving John Law the slip so many times. For his role in facilitating and encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and the deaths it caused, he gets 10 years in a federal prison for reckless endangerment and depraved indifference — life, essentially, given his age and obesity.

Still, he loudly maintains that his “landslide” win in the 2020 election was stolen from him and his backers, including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

As he awaits the van that will take him to a secure federal prison, Trump gets a visitor. It’s not a boyhood friend. He has none. It’s not an adult running buddy. Jeffrey Epstein is dead. It’s not a priest or a minister. He doesn’t really know any that well. It’s his daughter, Ivanka.

She pleads with him, for the sake of the divided country, to disavow the “big lie” that he was a victim of election fraud and to tell the Proud Boys, the evangelical Christians and the everyday MAGA millions that idolized him that he was always in it for his own gain and glory and never gave a flying fork about them or their issues.

Like Rocky Sullivan, the Donald refuses. He says all he has left is his notoriety, his image as a badass who speaks for America’s beleaguered conservative citizens and isn’t afraid to insult or belittle anybody, regardless of race, gender or disability, who gives him any lip.

Ivanka rides with her father on the golf cart to the prison van. She hugs him farewell. And then, suddenly, Donald J.Trump breaks down, begging not to be put away in a cell without a seat on its toilet and apologizing to all the voters who trusted him and cheered him at countless rallies.

And his followers, including the Proud Boys, watch his pathetic, whimpering display live on TV, and begin to question what they’ve believed and done in his name for the past six years.

OK, the remake’s a fantasy. So was the original movie.

Note: Noel Holston is a freelance writer who lives in Athens, Georgia. He regularly shares his insights and wit at 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 (200-2005) 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.

Minnesota Legislature, What Are You Chewing?

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For years, Minnesota legislators from both political parties with puritanical and law-and-order instincts have fought hard to preserve the prohibition of marijuana, a plant that is much less addictive and lethal than already legalized alcohol. 

But marijuana prohibition in Minnesota is now effectively over, kinda sorta. The Star Tribune explains one of the most surprising and senseless moves the Minnesota Legislature has made in my lifetime:


“A new state law took effect July 1 that allows Minnesotans 21 and older to buy certain edibles and beverages containing small amounts of THC, the ingredient in marijuana that produces the high associated with the drug.

The new law allows the sale and purchase of edibles — such as gummies, hard candy or chocolates — and beverages that contain up to 5 milligrams of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) per serving and 50 milligrams per package, and no more than 0.3% THC by weight. Products containing THC, as well as those containing cannabidiol (CBD), must be clearly labeled and can only be sold to those 21 and older. Edibles must be in child-proof and tamper-evident packages and carry the label “Keep this product out of reach of children.” Serving sizes must also be clearly defined.

THC products sold in Minnesota must be derived from legally-certified hemp containing no more than 0.3% THC by weight, according to the law. Marijuana flower and all THC-containing products derived from it remain illegal in Minnesota for recreational use.

The law places no limit on how many CBD and THC products can be purchased and does not regulate who can sell them.”

This shocking development is at the same time encouraging and frustrating.  Legislators have lots of high-minded (sorry, couldn’t resist) explanations about how they were merely trying to keep Minnesotans safe from low-THC hemp with new regulations. But regardless of actual intent, the Legislature has legalized intoxicating THC products. That’s great for those who partake and don’t want to go to jail, but bad for those who care about sensible public policy.

The Legislature, wanting to show their constituents that they’re being prudent with “low and slow” dosing, essentially created the THC equivalent of 3.2 beer, or beer with no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight.  Anyone who came of age in the 3.2 era knows that past generations of Americans did street research and discovered a clever workaround for that law:  Consume more weak product, and get as wasted as your heart desires.

Similarly, there is a fighting chance that today’s Minnesotans will make a similar discovery about the Legislature’s new half-baked model. Obviously, Minnesota’s relatively low-THC gummies can get you every bit as high as the higher-THC gummies available in states where marijuana is fully legalized. More bites begets more buzz.

Equally stupid, the Minnesota Legislature is also requiring that companies produce the THC-containing gummies in the least efficient, most expensive way possible.  In Minnesota, companies are required to make THC-containing gummies out of relatively low-THC hemp plants, instead of high-THC marijuana/cannabis plants.  

This is like requiring that companies produce sugar from tomatoes rather than sugar beets.  It’s feasible, because tomatoes have a relatively small amount of sugar in them, but why do it that way? The massive inefficiency of this hemp requirement ultimately causes huge additional growing and processing costs to be passed on to inflation-weary Minnesota consumers, for no good reason.

But that’s not all. Because legislative hemp regulators quietly snuck into the back door of THC edible legalization without wanting to wake sleeping prohibitionists, they didn’t include any taxation provisions in the new law. As a result, hundreds of millions of dollars in THC product taxes will not be collected to fund badly needed public services, such as education, early learning, or environmental protections.  That’s a huge missed opportunity.

Worst of all, the Legislature didn’t expunge the criminal records of Minnesotans whose lives are being needlessly harmed because of past marijuana-related convictions.  As of July 1, 2022, Minnesotans can now legally get high as the IDS Tower at the same time their fellow Minnesotans — disproportionately people of color, because of shameful racial bias in Minnesota’s law enforcement and judicial systems — continue to be harshly punished for having consumed the very same chemical.  That’s layering an outrageous new injustice on top of the outrageous old injustice.

To summarize, Minnesota’s THC edible legalization framework offers a good buzz, but no consumer cost-containment, public improvements, tax relief, or justice. We can now “get stupid,” but we will never get as stupid as this regulatory framework.

Despite all of those flaws, THC edibles are now finally being enjoyed by Minnesotans of all political stripes.  Because of that, this product will quickly get more normalized in Minnesota society. As a result, bringing back prohibition, as some Republicans propose, will be more unpopular than ever.

Ultimately, that normalization should pave the way for the future passage of a more thoughtful, comprehensive legalization framework, presuming a wave of extreme marijuana prohibitionists aren’t swept into office in the 2022 midterm elections. That could happen because of voter frustration over crime and inflation, but it won’t be because of this issue. Minnesotans support marijuana legalization by a 14-point margin.

The Minnesota Legislature will probably eventually get to a sane legalization framework that produces lower consumer prices, better funded government services, and justice for thousands. Winston Churchill famously said that “The United States can always be relied upon to do the right thing — having first exhausted all possible alternatives.”  Unfortunately, marijuanaphobic Minnesota is currently in the process of exhausting a particularly ludicrous alternative on its path to the right thing.