Readers who are political blog followers likely already know Sally Jo Sorensen has relocated to South Dakota after long blogging in Minnesota prior to the move. She also dropped the blog, in favor of substrack.

She kept the Bluestem Prairie title, https://bluestemprairie.substack.com/  

It is timely to note that, because her most recent post at the time of writing this is about early voting.

Since Crabgrass always votes early at the County Admin and Courthouse complex, linking to Sorensen's Dakota details covers the relevant ground, there is no value to plowing twice.

In particular, anybody worried about ICE or other scoundrel presence at the polling place on election day, or concerned about long lines in bad weather, should do the early vote step and dance.

You pick the convenient time, you drave there, no lines, and an election official witnesses your early ballot. Same ballot as you'd have gotten election day, but you pick the time frame and dodge the lines.

Enjoy early, then wait. You will know that the car breaking down on election day will not keep your ballot out of the count. They are nicer autos now, however. Breaking down seems a past consideration.

In any event, do vote.

UPDATE: https://www.twincities.com/2026/09/17/early-voting-in-minnesota-starts-friday-heres-what-to-know/ 

That is today. If you do not trust Trump's mail, that link says you can, then you can vote in person at your county's election office. You have to trust somebody, and election office personnel are the gold standard. And nobody is rushed and hence more likely to make some mistake, if you go in early.

 

 

Sideline Susie trys a straddle. One foot near the truth. The other foot aligned fully with Donald J. Trump. AND - We all know how distant Trump is from Truth.

https://www.ontheissues.org/Social/Michele_Tafoya_Abortion.htm  That file, in relevant part -

	Michele Tafoya on Abortion

I'm not going to BS you; I'm a pro-choice Republican

Michele Tafoya doesn't believe that her support for abortion rights will hurt her campaign for Senate as a Republican in Minnesota. "Family is incredibly important to me," she said. "But I'm not going to BS you. I'm a pro-choice Republican. There are some of us out there." 

 

 GUESS WHAT. SHE IS BULL SHITTING US. BIG TIME. Or I'll give the evidence, you decide.

5 Things to Know About the Minnesota Senate Candidate Michele Tafoya

 

 Wouldn't you rather see the field of play? See the players you tuned in to watch, instead of some ditz with a mic blathering about nothing worth watching, and taking her time doing that?

At any rate, from that item - after their lead photo, relevant text.

 Her last broadcast was of Super Bowl LVI, in 2022. (The Los Angeles Rams won.) She went straight into politics, serving as a chair of Kendall Qualls’s Republican campaign for governor in 2022.

She supports access to abortion for the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy. Ms. Tafoya has long called herself a “pro-choice” Republican. In an open letter published on her campaign website, she describes enduring five miscarriages and says abortion is the issue she gets asked about most. She writes that she supported the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to end federal abortion protections and that she believes states should set abortion laws. But she adds, “I do not support an outright ban on abortion, and I believe there should be reasonable access in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.”

She has embraced an electability argument. Minnesota has not elected a Republican in a statewide race since 2006, but Ms. Tafoya has argued that her approach could help put the state in play in the national Senate battle. [...] Still, she has embraced the Trump administration’s handling of immigration after its deadly crackdown in Minnesota in the winter, which polls suggested was unpopular. Ms. Tafoya’s campaign website says the “American people overwhelmingly agree with President Trump [...]

So, pro-ICE, trying to straddle the abortion issue, and she's big BIG LIE about saying there's been nine billion dollars of fraud when there is absolutely no proof in the public record establishing such a figure. None! 

Former sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, the GOP nominee for senator in Minnesota, told Newsmax Wednesday her state needs Republican leadership.

“We've been going 100 mph in the wrong direction for a long time now,” Tafoya said on “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “And it's all happened under single party establishment rule in St. Paul. It's led us to this place of $9 billion worth of fraud, a total national embarrassment.

“Crime is going up while test scores go down. And Minnesotans are tired."

“For those of us who love this state, this is heartbreaking,” Tafoya continued.

“I met my husband here. We raised our kids here. I grew my career here, and I'm not going to sit by and let all of these businesses continue to flee Minnesota and have it so unaffordable that our kids can't stay,” she said.

The woman ignores a tariff trade war and a firing-and-bombing acutual war financed on credit, i.e., financed by record deficit bond levels being irresponsibly issued by Trump and Bessent, and that the economy sucks because of the bond market calling bullshit on that, and nothing else impacts the economy as badly as Trump-Bessent ignorant financial policy.

And she's always saying $9 billion as if it were true. It is a number a Republican DOJ prosecutor made up for no good reason, and Susie just repeats it time and again as if saying so makes something so. She did not embellish things as much sidelining because we could see the game and see through any lies about it. 

In what appears to be a non-paywalled Strib op-ed item, she is called out for the lie by, Tim Stanley is chair of the Planned Parenthood of Minnesota Political Action Fund.  (someone who knows what prochoice is, and what's a phony straddle by one who's scrubbed the campaign website, (https://micheletafoya.com/life-letter/) re abortion as a show of character and transparency and bona fide good faith as Republicans understand such things to mean in practice. 

Stanley writes:

Four years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Minnesotans are being told abortion rights are a settled issue. Michele Tafoya, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has even called it a “moot point,” arguing: “In the United States Senate, we’re not going to be dealing with this issue.”

At Planned Parenthood, we’re not buying it.

Challenges in federal courts still threaten abortion access; lawmakers continue to introduce abortion bans and restrictions in the Minnesota Legislature, and just last year President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress defunded Planned Parenthood as part of their ongoing crusade to eliminate abortion access in the United States.

The reality is that the U.S. Senate has been and will be dealing with the issue of abortion for the foreseeable future. In fact, since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion access can never be taken for granted.

Which is why it’s curious that within days of Tafoya’s becoming the Republican nominee, a previously published page titled “A Personal Letter from Michele Tafoya” was deleted from her campaign site.

A/k/a scrubbing the website. Something a wise and credible politician does not do. The op-ed continues -

The letter clearly suggests that Tafoya supports banning abortion after 12 weeks.

A 12-week abortion ban, like any other ban, is not rooted in science, autonomy, health or safety. It fails to acknowledge some of the most complicated reasons someone would need an abortion after 12 weeks — such as rape, incest or medical complications — and is yet another way to take away people’s power over their own bodies, their lives and their futures.

The letter clearly stated her support of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, the monumental U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that overturned the fundamental right to abortion.

Since then, bans have eliminated all or some abortions in 20 states. Here in Minnesota, protections exist because leaders have fought for them. [...]

And that's the truth. Something Tafoya might possibly recognize, in passing. That leaders have fought for proper protection of womens' ability to control their own bodies, 12 week arbitrariness being trash.

In short, she was a pain in the ass Sideline Susie, and now lies to us and scrubs her website.

We don't need that in the Senate of the USA. We need quality there. We need a Democrat there.  A truthful one, specifically, a truthful native american woman, Peggy Flanagan. Who is also a progressive. and hence a candidate offering a two-for-one bonus. Vote smart.  Deny U.S. Senate enabling of Trump in the new Senate the November election will give us. Produce a Democrat majority there and in the House.

UPDATE: Sideline Susie is not alone in the Republican Big Lie about $9 billion in fraud. Lisa Demuth trolls that lie also.

https://politiquote.gigafact.org/quotes/lisa-demuth-6a706e/the-9-billion-number-came-from-attorney-joe-842c02/ 

So who the fuck is Joe Thompson, instigator of the Big Lie, and why the fuck should any rational human believe his bogus guess as if it were gospel? It's a GOP lawyer talking pure bullshit. Making up a number.

Nothing else. Republican candidates. Get that fact through your biased thick skulls, and that includes you too, Mr. Harold Niska.In short, Harry, you know better than to state a lawyer's guess at anything without seeing sound evidence. You should affirmatively disavow that number for what it is. 

An ill-informed lawyer's preliminary inflated guess is all that number is! 

Inflated grossly for whatever reason the man can offer. Ask him Harry. He's your Party partner, he'd answer you honestly. You could even submit his answer as a possible op-ed in Strib. 

But, Harry, you know better. And you're trolling fraud as bad as any of the rest. Somalis never did anything to you. You've no reason to demonize them, other than the Feed Our Future situation, where a white woman got the longest sentence for time in prison for here ringleader status (an actual fact in evidence which nobody disputes).

 FURTHER:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E1q017V03A&t=656s 

To say, well, we are talking about Minnesota, social services fraud, this is not a federal election, well, a Trump enabler, Tom Emmer, is running for national office, and Sideline Susie is running to become a federal Senator.

Go figure. 

FURTHER: https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2026/01/16/trump-pardons-convicted-fraudster-for-the-second-time-in-five-years/ 

 FHRTHER: A Pardon Industrial Complex?  Two last items, here and here.

In Animal Farm all the animals were equal, "four legs good two legs bad" until the pigs started walking on two legs. And the one lady candidate, even a dollar of fraud . . . 

That lacks a perspective of scale.  Fraud is fraud, you can say, but ---- really! 

Show me $9 billion. I have not seen it, not a third, not a half. Kiting the scale is inexcusable. It is lying.

News

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkalPSPLlUY

 

 

Spinning out a theme noted earlier in another post.

 https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qe7KB1AqhH4

Watch the video and you do not need to buy the book. Or is that cynical? 

 

UPDATE: 

   

 And the Appocalypse can happen before we understand dark matter. While the space probes are still moving and sending back data.

 

 

https://minnesotareformer.com headline = Minnesota recreational cannabis sales hit $150M one year in

 https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/09/15/minnesota-recreational-cannabis-sales-hit-150m-one-year-in/

The $150 number suggests before the State legalized and taxed and regulated the trade, a hell of a lot of Minnesotans were breaking the law.

It is similar to the nation's experment with Constitutional prohibition of alcoholic drinks, during the early 20th Century. And the repeal because people kept drinking, only it was illegal then to do so.

What the good sign in things is, government nanny state stuff gets ignored, and citizen judgment that way is a solid thing for Libertarians in particular. There today are Flock camera concerns, where readers not familiar with the groundswell objection should search = flock camera unrest

The success in Minnesota of mj legalization is no surprise at Crabgrass, having lived through parallel but earlier legalization in Washington State, with Seattle going from a friendship network thing where someone knew a dealer, to having retail stores. Sanity replacing untaxed, men with guns stuff with licenses and tax income streams. If people do it, legalizing and taxing is best. Tabacco is taxed so high that many have ceased smoking it, with the lung cancer risk being a parallel information channel designed to discourage that practice.

 Having in Seattle cleaned glass bongs with salt and rubbing alcohol to keep the tar down, and thinking that's what bubbles through the water is what you lungs get, was an incentive to quit. But there was a time * * *

One wonders about practices in nations still aggressive in regulating/criminalizing mj, which really is not a gateway drug as the disliking fraction of people may believe, having been propagandized into the belief. 

What the propaganda did, is make a minor gateway effect boost, because people smoking mj said, "They're bullshitting us," and that led to experimentation which likely would have not happened absent propaganda mention of other drugs. 

It is as if there was somebody (CIA or others) motivated to get people to transition  to more dangerously addictive drugs, since the CIA in IndoChina and later Afghanistan needed the drug trade income to finance black-op shenanigans that no sane government financing mechanism would tolerate. MKULTRA and such. That being its own story where much is online about speculation where definitive admissions are absent and unpublished online.

Legalizing mj has been a sane thing, and, from government, no less.  Tune time. Do note the date.

 

There are network TV news, there is FOX, but Crabgrass has gravitated to one outlet, and this is Sept. 14, 2026, on that outlet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOsQI8yKDFs

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! giving a daily news summary (beyond special feature programs too).

Sometimes it shows up on YouTube sidebars when other items are being watched, sometimes you do not see it, but a day or two later you might encounter the sidebar link and view it.

This particular item is offered now because of the opening AI segment, and they see beyond it how you like format, presentation and mood. Again, gravitating to it, nice news presenter mode.

It is there. If you like it, keep with it, and if not, you at least know it exists.

 

Gary, the St. Cloud blogger falls into the trap that a statement of goals, is not a plan. A plan has implementation detail. Aside from Lisa Demuth saying she'd opt into a tax credit voucher provision, no plan. Just hopes.

 https://libertyprosperityblog.blogspot.com/2026/09/lisa-demuths-plan-for-education.html

Read all about it. Goals, stated as hoped for to somehow be reached, is not a plan. A plan includes actual steps to be taken to implement clearly stated steps that would be assured of reaching a particular result; as in steps stated that would be reaching the sought after goals. Nothing there - that way.

See: https://zaetsch.blogspot.com/2026/09/politics-in-local-sense-is-normal.html 

There the Demuth "plan" was dissected to be shown as less than a real plan, and a reach for vouchers.

Gary in the posted body of opening link fuzzes unnecessarily about the $1700 voucher plan. By not mentioning it, in text. It only gets mentioned in a video he posts, and there, sorry, but it is fuzzed there too. No link, no explanation. Just a vague mention.

She has no plan. Saying she'd like safe schools, sure, everyone would, but what, put a cop in every classroom? Something more or less than that? Teachers armed with handguns? Or AR-15s? What? Perimeter razor wire fencing eighteen feet tall to where only student on student bullying is the concern?

It is an unfortunate fact of U.S. politics that a candidate can get away with empty sound bites, saying nothing concrete or binding. Both parties do it. Republicans more than Democrats.