My ballot is in. Others have the vigor, will, inspiration, and inclination to door-knock; bless the young and dedicated -- on the correct side of course.
Possibly a sidebar update if/when Strib does an AG endorsement, or if Timmer, Sorensen or Dan Burns posts something between now and then so special that it begs for recognition.
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Counterpoint to Strib endorsements: Blaha. Radinovich.
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False Prophets and "Law and Order." Think about it. False to deny the humanity of something besides "one man one woman for life" when spoken without qualification by one on a second marriage. Order is the important part. A disordered state exists when there is no universal simple access to healthcare needs. As with food and shelter these are essential needs. If government turns away from essential needs, and the private sector takes advantage of that, if some rig the tax and wealth situation in their favor and to the disadvantage of everybody else, that is disorder. Not order. The failures to function decently in DC, the churning of negative half minute soundbites with voiceover and image manipulation, that is anything but orderly. Manipulation is disorder. Using the courts for something - demonizing others - is manipulation of what should be justice. That is truth and simple truth not needing much exposition. This in the context of Strib punting on fourth down instead of going for it. Opinion here is not equivocal, as Strib is.
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Link. Second link. Decide whether either rings false in your heart and mind.
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Current items: The American Jewish World, link. Pioneer Press, link. City Pages, link. City Pages, separate item, link. JTA, link.
Past items: Powerline, months ago, link. Wikipedia, re 2004, link. City Pages, 2006, link. JTA, a year and a half ago, link. HuffPo, Dec. 2016, link. WaPo 2006, link. Crabgrass, early October, link.
In a class by itself, MinnPost, link. All for now.
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Judgment of our peers? LTE sampling offered by Strib, Nov. 1, link. Will Tell Stories for Food, link. A letter. KSTP Channel 5, link.
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See updating of this earlier Crabgrass post.
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Latest Strib item on AG contest, link. With luck the garbage truck is coming for Wardlow, Bob Kroll, ADF, Dobson, Freedom Club, Andrew Parker, the bunch, so please put them curbside next Tuesday. Vote Ellison and have a place in your heart for the DFL volunteer door knocking helpers. Bless them, and GOTV. Between now and poll closing, if you've not voted yet, DO IT.
Dan Burns, link; including his link to the TC Daily Planet voter guide, helpful for urban dwellers more than in the hustings.
After seeing references, the actual Wardlow agenda item is posted at realdougwardlow.com; something I had not seen there until taking a full look at those postings. His item does state he would institute things he suggests to would-be volunteers; i.e., it goes beyond talking points to agenda points, a distinction that matters.
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Same realdougwardlow.com site - when he talks of "law and order," to the extent that means playing by the rules, as an upstart Tea Party zealot on his first and only MN House term, he breached or appeared to breach his own party's rules. Would such actual action pattern carry over if he is elected this cycle, or would he keep the doubtful promise of not being political if AG? The question is a hypothetical only to the extent he could be defeated by voters, otherwise it becomes very practical and troubling.
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After Strib declined to state an AG endorsement, there are two contesting counterpoint submissions; here and here. One thing voters need to retain in memory, the AG budget, like all budgets, is finite so that priorities beyond the historical focus have to be at the expense of that focus, so if you like how the office has functioned recently and for decades, be aware of the "robbing Peter to pay Paul" aspect of allocating a finite amount of budgeted money. To the extent a voter sees differences in priorities between the two candidates in such a context that voter will have to decide who represents the better track record and better set of goals.
A question, have county attorneys been inadequate in handling their duties, especially as to prosecuting crime? The reelection of county attorneys in urban centers is a historical fact suggesting voter satisfaction. There is no information known here to suggest rural county voters are unhappy with their county attorney performances, in general, with changes in office expected over time. In Anoka County where I live, there was a regularly unopposed county attorney, Robert Johnson, until he retired with the next election installing a county attorney from within the office, not an outside candidate - even when the outsider was Robert Johnson's son, working in another jurisdiction. Since then, there was reelection of the incumbent. It is a fact question for each voter in the county in which they reside and vote.
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There have been a number of Republican office holders over the past decade and a half. Have any of them endorsed Wardlow? It would be putting their credibility at issue if they do, but it seems reticence is the rule. Ellison's counterpoint was submitted to Strib by two prominent Democrats willing to say, "Good man. Exceptional record." Ellison features endorsements on his website, personal ones. Either Wardlow does not value personal endorsements, or has none. Monanan's lawyer, Andrew Parker, Wardlow's former boss, has been reported to have solicited support and money for Wardlow on his talk radio show. Other than that, Bob Kroll, it is unclear. Durenberger, Boschwitz, Coleman, Amy Koch, Kurt Bills, Arne, seem to have not been asked or if asked, declined. Strib, in 2013, reported:
Accompanying mismanagement and legislative missteps is the increasing ideological insularity of the state's GOP. In 2010, the state party's central committee imposed a two-year expulsion from party activities upon former GOP U.S. Sen. David Durenberger and former Govs. Al Quie and Arne Carlson for ideological deviations.
A tiny group of fewer than 26,000 activists appeared at 2012's GOP precinct caucuses. Their unrepresentative opinions gave the unelectable Rick Santorum the caucus victory in the presidential nomination race and left eventual national nominee Mitt Romney in third place.
Once Santorum dropped out, GOP activists gave a large majority of the state party's national delegates to another unelectable candidate, Ron Paul. Minnesota's GOP delegation was one of only three state delegations with Ron Paul majorities at the national convention, and it cast the most Paul votes of any state's delegation.
Kurt Bills, the party's state convention U.S. Senate endorsee, voiced Paulite positions and wound up with 30.5 percent of the vote in November -- the worst electoral performance by a major party nominee for U.S. Senate in decades.
The Minnesota Republican Party has to decide whether it wants to govern or engage in ideological self-indulgence. [...] The sole GOP-endorsed candidate to win a U.S. Senate race since the national GOP "wave" year of 1994 was Norm Coleman in the extraordinary 2002 election, marked by DFL Sen. Paul Wellstone's October death in a plane crash.
Rick Santorum. "Ideological self-indulgence" is an interesting term. It could be applied to Santorum. To Monahan re psycho-babble. To Wardlow. To Kroll and to Parker, each in his own sandbox. As well as to Jeff Johnson. Wardlow and Michele McDonald, per a screen capture from here:
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| click to read |
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Taxpayers of the U.S. of A. pay for jet fuel for an idiot pairing, briefly, at the airport before anoth4er fueled jet idiot pairing in Wisconsin, guess the other one of the idiots in that pair:
Wardlow greeted Pence with a Minnesota Vikings jersey after the vice president stepped off Air Force Two at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Saturday. Pence was passing through to attend a rally with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Hudson.
If that brief Hi-ya has any influence on any substantial number of voters we, as a nation, are in dire straits.
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Timmer officially endorses Ellison, "An unreserved endorsement." Good reasoning. Good writing. Unimpeachable conclusion. Backed up with links.
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The one thing not yet written about Doug Wardlow, he astoundingly defies the Peter Principle, having risen well past his level of incompetence to be taken seriously as a choice for Attorney General against a better person, one better in all ways imaginable, but particularly in not being loose with truth. This Alpha News propaganda hit piece, at 2:20 min into the vile character assassination attempt, displayes a trained, graduated, practicing lawyer deliberately lying about a proposed upper marginal taxation rate as if it were to apply to you and me and "every dollar you get." We are not folks in the stratospheric brackets, like Wardlow similarly is not. He knew the truth and he shaded an absolute unquestionable lie, with no real benefit to doing so but appearing as if done simply out of a feeling he could get away with it. Such scorn for actuality shades his saying he'd apply the law evenly, if elected, even when the policy of established law does not square with his prejudices, the shade being he's throwing shade at us because, again, he thinks he might get away with it. He does that. He bullied another kid in school, the record seems fairly certain on that, and then in a letter to a school board he says bullying is bad and nobody should suffer it. The man is unprincipled. That way. Many ways one can argue, but in playing a game with truth, he shows himself in a less than stellar light. In being a plain bigot, he should be shunned, not even considered as fit for a job he would horse up in ways we regular people may be pressed to imagine.
Dobson's dope is nobody's hope, and nobody of credibility has endorsed him. Figure out why. Mondale and Skip Humphrey stepped up to the plate for Ellison, per Strib, while Wardlow had to sing his own praises because such a song would stick in the craw and be stillborn if any public figure besides Bob Kroll were asked to sing it. Kroll, having a credibility and temperament equal to Wardlow's, is a cold-comfort surrogate. Like Wardlow, he appears inadvisedly overeager to test limits. Another link.
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With somewhat fast web downloading at home, this site even loads slowly for me. Apology to any/all readers with more limited access web bandwidth, for slow site loading. Fewer images in the posts and the sidebar likely would speed things up; but images are a part of the communication without which the communication is incomplete. Again, apologies for it being as it is.
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Greg Laden's blog, re Indivisible:
http://gregladen.com/blog/2018/11/02/keith-ellison-for-mn-ag-statement-from-indivisible-leaders/
Another link. Another.
This City Pages link. Posted earlier, the link suggests an anti-Jewish bias on Wardlow's part because he caught himself into mouthing anti-George Soros platitudes, a common thing among ignorant ultra rightwingers. That latter Soros-based point is clear from the City Pages item reposting Wardlow Tweets. However, criticism of Soros is not the same as criticizing Jews, which also is apart from opposing some of the worse politics of rightwing Israeli leaders, or being a skeptic of Zionism itself. Wardlow would not have Andrew Parker's support if he displayed anti-Jewish or anti-Israel sentiments. Parker, if anyone, would know to distance himself were it the case, Parker being active in the Minnesota Jewish community and a pro-Israel voice, e.g., here, here, here and his radio talk show description, "Andrew Parker hosts The Victory Hour every Sunday, from 4 - 5 p.m. on 1280 AM, The Patriot. Discussing Israel, politics and the law. [...]." One of these links mentions a Parker and Nauen presentation, with Nauen being DFL-linked. That is mentioned to disarm any misreading of the question as suggesting the Minnesota Jewish community has any bias favoring Wardlow/Republicans.
The Soros boogeyman thing actually is pretty tiring the more that drum gets beaten by aggressive politicians getting a ticket punched. But Wardlow is Wardlow. Truth is truth. Blowing smoke is blowing smoke. Wardlow is Wardlow.
Were Wardlow tweets ever proven true, instead of Wardlow just blowing smoke it would show Soros less a knee-jerk Islamophobe than Haim Saban, if nothing else. Although there of course is more to Saban's politics than that. Background fact is always worthwhile. Ellison has opposed the big donor control of the Democratic Party and has championed grassroots; while Soros is a big donor. Go figure. What we do see is Wardlow and that truth thing popping up, yet again.
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Many may have seen this, but it is worth a replay, short, sweet, from 2015, and having the beltway pundits laughing up the thought. The beltway pundits like their punditry, cash flows included, actually preeminent. It might be my favorite Ellison YouTube item. It shows a level of understanding of the political process the Republicans REALLY want to keep out of Minnesota's Attorney General seat, and all they've got to interpose is a tightly programed automaton, Doug Wardlow.
They and their situation is, to use a word favored by another; sad.