Hateful, spiteful control freaks waste time while real issues exist.
There is budget.
There is capital project planning, bonding.
There is long term mining policy and consequences.
There is diddling while others do the real work.
Hello, Ms. Whelan. Wake up and do the real job.
Voting straight party leadership commandments on the real issues, and then Bachmanning on the crap is not representing anybody.
UPDATE: This link. We have too many like minded in kind, if not in details of doctrine.
FURTHER: Another blog takes a more extended viewpoint. Friend Abigale did forget one point, whatever your gender identification or attraction; she'd rather you don't leave the seat up. Leaving it up shows gender bias. Birth-certificate gender bias.
FURTHER: Well gee. Today is my day to apologize. I went and confused "news" a day ago, with "news" a year ago.
Now how could such an error happen. I suppose for hatred and ignorance the motto is: revive to thrive. Or is it: reprise the lies? Or: an annual event, transgenders - "Repent." Whatever -
How about those first-stone throwers; ain't they really something? Never letting a year pass by.
FURTHER: Apologies again. It is not Bozo; but Bozos in the plural. Bozoes? What's the plural form of Bozo? Do you add an "es" or only an "s?" Abigale and Warren should know how that's pluralized. Like a murder of crows; is it a squad of bozos, or a collective of them? How about, of course, a Brigade of Bozoes?
FURTHER: A Tangle of Transphobians?
FURTHER: While possibly drawing criticism for the observation, two images of Whelan from the same right wing outlet; the recent item here; earlier a two-fer, here. From that, subjectively, she at least appears a more serious legislator to be taken seriously, without the warpaint.
FURTHER: Faint praise, but at least giving some credit, Whelan's chief author bill on fetal tissue use in U. Minn. research aims not that all such research be forced to cease, but that only tissue from stillborns should be considered appropriate; in a manner similar to a distinction Dr. Ben Carson was reported to have stated. Not a total troglodyte; thought ninety percent there. Only partial troglodytism there, hinged onto choice hatred. Other coverage has not yielded that degree of attention to detail - recognition that less than a total ban is proposed in the Whelan bill.
Whatever other criticism I have for Whelan I do not doubt she will have the intellectual honesty to continue that in-between distinction into the future, even perhaps during a Republican governorship where a bill such as her present one might be less a total grandstanding exercise in futility by bill sponsors:
I am in no position to, nor particularly disposed to attribute an equal degree of intellectual honesty and integrity to Whelan's fetal tissue research constriction bill's cosponsors.
The crystal clear insight, however, from this Whelan bill making the stillborn exception is that it is an anti-choice bill, pure and simple, as now drafted with the utility of aborted tissue Verboten, but at least it is not a bill wholly repudiating the advancement of medical science. Choice hatred at least being a lesser evil than science hatred, which is the norm in Bible-as-unalterable-word-of-God Bachmannistan, where evolution is repudiated as counter-Biblical. There are degrees of bozodom.
LAST: Transphobic mindset commentary in the context of Ted Cruz pandering for votes; this item.
The strategy seems to be to narrow the scapegoat population yet further than those hated against via the failed Minnesota marriage amendment circus. Transgender folks are fewer than the entire gay-lesbian segment of the population, so go after them.
If you want a really small group for focused hatred; what about that list of bill sponsors? Twenty to twenty-five individuals; a sound hate-focus number well below the number of Minnesota transgender identifiers among us, and who knows, among that list there may actually be some harboring a healthy degree of merited self hatred and loathing. Likely not, but who knows?
FURTHER: One thing that really honks me off about Whelan, via this video she talks about district need, particularly related to traffic, and via a somewhat late-in-session bill number she's gone through the motions; this link. However, Peter Perovich running for that seat aggressively promised to bring back a parity in what the district pays the state, and what it gets back in public spending in district. Whelan then in her public statements while running against Perovich co-opted his agenda as hers; got elected that way; but she's not delivered jack.
Going through the motions of throwing a text into the bill hopper at the legislature is quite less than getting the allocation for the district's achieving a parity in payments - what's paid by the district into the state coffers coming back for project needs within the distinct in something like balancing numbers. Now, the session's not over, something however unlikely may happen, and if it does a less harsh view of Whelan capability and actual priorities may be merited. But is that how the smart money would bet the odds?
This page, 482 days in the legislature collecting pay checks; and she's focused on this kind of Strib op-ed publicity-oriented marginalia; not the core job. She was not elected to serve Jesus and the fetuses, to get that ticket punched, she was elected to do the clear job of capably representing the needs of the district. She's failed. She's fiddled, the district got the Armstrong interchange largely because Jason Tossey and others on the Ramsey Council supported it and made annual payments to Elwyn Tinklenberg to lobby, and because Jim Deal can get things done with Democrats holding statewide office. Jim Deal's done Whelan's job while she's put time into ticket-punching op-ed nonsense along with others:
[...] Abigail Whelan, R-Anoka, is a member of the Minnesota House. This commentary was also submitted on behalf of the following legislators, all Republicans: Sens. Michelle Fischbach and Warren Limmer. Reps. Mark Anderson, Jeff Backer, Brian Daniels, Bob Dettmer, Steve Drazkowski, Sondra Erickson, Steve Green, Glenn Gruenhagen, Dave Hancock, Josh Heintzeman, Kathy Lohmer, Eric Lucero, Tim Miller, Jim Nash, Marion O'Neill, Cindy Pugh, Peggy Scott, Dennis Smith, Anna Wills.
It appears Jim Deal has to be doing Whelan's job because she is either insufficiently interested or insufficiently talented to do it herself. Bottom line. Pure and simple.
That listed bunch of "no aborted fetus shall defeat us" conniving nonsense peddlers will not be the ones getting our district's parity in payments for us, nor will she. It is time for a broom. Sweep things clean and start over.
FURTHER: This from Strib:
Tensions are rising between Gov. Dayton and GOP leaders as Minnesota legislative session winds down --
Dayton, Republicans stand fast as taxes, transportation remain unfinished.
By J. Patrick Coolican Star Tribune - April 29, 2016 — 7:48am
[...] Dayton said he relented on a few policy provisions in 2015 because they were tucked inside key budget bills needed to keep state government running for two years.
Not this year, Dayton said, refusing any negotiation over GOP measures like restrictions on which bathrooms transgender people can use and the defunding of Planned Parenthood. He called these provisions “pandering to their extreme right wing base.”
Daudt replied: “We had a very pleasant breakfast, and he didn’t bring up any of those things to me, so I wonder if he was potentially doing it for the cameras. I don’t know.”
Daudt gave no indication of backing down. “We feel like we’re in a great position because we’re on the side of the public,” he said, citing support for tax cuts and transportation spending that are at the heart of the GOP agenda.
Being unnecessarily hateful toward transgender people is not really what Minnesota nice is about, nor fitting to the parable of who should be stoning "sinners." Not that transgender people should be called sinners, but unfortunately pseudo-Christians more into power-tripping than gospel insights are afoot, feeding demonizing biases as much as they can, with mischief in mind, dark in their hearts. Let us hope Dayton holds firm against bigotry. Bigotry and budget are, and must remain two separate things. Giving something in one, to secure favorable things in the other, is not long-term sound government. It would be exactly what Dayton termed it; "pandering." To the more base moods afoot now in the nation, being inflamed as they are, by who we clearly see stoking those dark, unpromising fires.
FURTHER: In terms of pandering to the worse of the Minnesota north-metro GOP Gestalt, do notice Peggy Scott right on up there on the lists with Whelan. The Batman and Robin of the female gender of that GOP segment's hate squad. Not too much to say for either. They reinforce the worse in one another. Whelan uses less makeup.