Thursday, October 22, 2026

Crabgrass has been easier on the stupidity (or is it ol' boy gile) of the man than the man himself, in speaking.

among his peers

 This is an ignorant, shallow, posturing. walking, talking, humanoid misinformation machine.  

Liking the sound of his own voice over having a single well tempered or thoughtful thing to be saying. 

An Elon humanoid robot would score higher on an IQ test. (And seem less disingenuous because the robot would stoop less to simplistic name-calling.)

UPDATE: Can Emmer publicly talk without looking, as Trump also looks, as if he is talking down to people because he has little respect for them? It is either that, or he is limited. Either way, why cut him any slack? Doug Chapin is running against Emmer, and does not talk down to people. There is nothing bafoonish about Chapin. Chapin could do the job of hearing people say what they want, and seeing ways to provide it to them. It goes beyond a matter of style. It goes to seeing people on tenterhooks and saying that should not be, vs saying it's good for them because they don't get so uppity. 

Think it over. 

FURTHER: This is interesting - https://mediabias.news/politics/tom-emmer-calls-democratic-candidates-communists-on-abcs-this-week 

It appears those posting that site may have used AI summarization. 

Sunday, October 18, 2026

Emmer in on board the "who 'dat" bandwagon. Two sides of a glossy mailer. Trump unmentioned. Toxicity has no better evidence than Emmer distancing.

 And the fucker is not bashing a single Somali, nor the Somali people generically.

Just a nothing burger thing, no opinon about Iran, tariffs, but "Delivering for Minnesota Families."

Believe that or do not. You'd think the nation consumed no fossil fuels, just - springing to mind

kumbaya

noun

  1. The title of the etymological folk song, used with varying degrees of sincerity or sarcasm to refer to the song's evocations of spiritual unity and interpersonal harmony.
Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License • More at Wordnik

Emmer. Yes. That guy. The days were longer and warmer back in the end of June: remember when:

Jun 25, 2026U.S. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, at a Wednesday evening Capitol Hill event, said that Somali immigrants who don't assimilate "should go the hell back to where they came from" — remarks that ...

Him. With a tortured smile, and an aura. And you know what? Back at the end of April, there was a featured different delivery man. And Emmer was praising that man, and not patting himself on the back. IInstead, the author of a empassioned paaen to his perception then of excellence: remember when:

If your delivery man fucks the moose, the tune is okay, just name yourself. It's not like abandoning a sinking ship.

 

It's finger to the wind time for your trusted Republicans. That's all. Just explain to me how a waffle can hold a finger anywhere.

 And, okay, he's a politician, a man, and not a waffle. The term hypocrite fits better.

 

Friday, October 16, 2026

Republicans and truth.

  Early in the item

Demuth, alongside nearly every other Minnesota Republican, voted against capping the price of co-pays for prescription drugs that treat chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, at $25 per month in 2023. This was one of the many pieces of legislation the Democratic-Farmer-Labor trifecta passed without the help of GOP lawmakers. In 2019, Demuth also voted against cost-sharing limits on insulin that would have reduced the price for consumers.

Demuth did vote in favor of an insulin pricing law in 2020 that allows people to acquire a one-time, 30-day supply of insulin for $35 on an emergency basis.

It’s unclear whether Demuth’s claim of voting to cap insulin prices in questionnaires from WCCO and AARP Minnesota is related to her 2020 vote regarding emergency insulin. Demuth’s campaign did not respond to the Reformer’s request for comment.

The 2020 law was called the Alec Smith Insulin Affordability Act after a 26-year-old man who was unable to afford the $1,300 monthly cost of insulin and supplies died in 2017. Smith aged out of his parents’ health insurance, and he rationed his insulin because of the cost. His family lobbied the Minnesota Legislature to support the bill.

When the 2020 law was first proposed, it included a cap on insulin co-pays, said Rep. Mike Howard, DFL-Richfield, who was the chief author of the legislation.

Republicans controlled the Minnesota Senate and Democrats controlled the House, and Howard said Republicans in 2020 did not want to pass the bill with the cap on insulin, so lawmakers had to compromise.

A cap only passed when Democrats took full control of state government.

Howard said it’s misleading for Demuth to claim she voted for an insulin cap, even if she voted in favor of one for emergency supplies. He said that’s not what an average person thinks when they read of a cap on insulin prices.

 

 

RawStory - red flags.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-economy-2678093618/ 

In part -

Trump officials looked the other way as the president's allies apparently cashed in at everyday Americans' expense, an economic analyst warned.

Economics columnist Catherine Rampell laid out the case in a Thursday piece for The Bulwark, arguing that what she called "beet-red flags" around a string of suspiciously well-timed trades this spring were waved away by Trump appointees.

In March, roughly 15 minutes before Trump announced he was backing off threats against Iran, traders placed billions of dollars' worth of contracts betting oil prices would drop and the stock market would climb. They were right. Federal commodities regulators opened a preliminary review, but Bloomberg reported this week that a senior adviser to the Trump-appointed chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered staff to pull back a referral that could have triggered a full investigation.

Rampell stressed that the stakes reach far beyond Wall Street. If the trades were driven by inside knowledge, she wrote, "it would not be a victimless crime." Someone took the losing side of every winning bet, and she described those people as "the chumps whom the insiders got to steal money from."

"Sure, some of those chumps might have been rich, unsympathetic Wall Street traders," Rampell wrote, "but some of them might have been your pension fund."

She argued the episode is no one-off, calling such apparent wrongdoing "one of the defining characteristics of the Trump era." She pointed to Trump Media's push to sell Wall Street firms early access to the president's Truth Social posts, a Wall Street Journal report that a White House aide championing a stablecoin bill was collecting millions from the industry's biggest player through a company he co-owns, and a leaked list, published by the Washington Post, of donors who together gave some $330 million toward Trump's ballroom.


 

Readers are urged to try search = trump diesel merz

 Interestingly, the lead three hits, with images, were all Yahoo, here, here and here.

 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-news-merz-says-trumps-russia-diesel-deal-out-of-question-for-europe/live-79636427

 

Heather Cox Richardson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehn-DsZkyaQ

 Trump going softer and softer on Russia, in its incursive aggression against Ukraine. Western Europe has a stake in things and Trump seems a problem to their interests into keeping Ukranian borders intact. Plus more.

The issues as she has described them should have an Internet presence readers can easily track down.

For now, this link is all that Crabgrass is posting on HCR's linked discussions.

This post is a 100% endorsement of the video. Watch it please. 

UPDATE: William Kristol is not a left leaning pundit. Sarah Longwell got a shout-out from HCR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r25bQ0MfhKs Stylistically different from HCR, but parallels can be found.

FURTHER: search = ukraine russia russian money trump energy truce

Try that, and see if you see Trump putting a thumb on the scale against Ukraine - Europe. Yes/no? 

FURTHER: Try search = Medicare for All as an issue today 2026 election impact

Do you wonder why Michelle Toyfoya seems to recently have backslid on her Trump train ride? Cause and effect? Versus her ultimate likelihoods if she ever gets near to a U.S. Senate seat. Do you trust her Trump turn-away? One of conscience or convenience?

I do not credit that recent distancing very much. It is a subjective thing and opinions can range wide.

Superficial things and people do not impress me. I have Medicare and Social Security, they are not superficial, and I want to keep them. That factors into my voting. Not that anyone is directly pointing at me and saying "His Medicare and Social Security cost too much, so strip him." But feeling are feelings.

 

  

After listening to the MPR session with Peggy Flanagan, and Michelle Tafoya, there is the believability test that moves me more than much else.

 Tafoya says she will not be a rubberstatmp for Trump. I don't believe that. She says it, I doubt it.

What I do know - in my heart - Peggy Flanagan will not be a rubberstamp for Trump.

What else?

Is there anything else? Besides Medicare for All. Which Flanagan supports, Tafoya opposes.

Which opposition looks a lot like a rubberstamp for Trump's opposing widespread healthcare in the nation.

And I have already voted. For Flanagan. I trust Peggy. End of story.

 

EmptyWheel has a new post about litigation involving Kash Patel and the sealed Jack Smith Report II over Trump's taking classified records to Mar-a-Lago and storing them wrongly.

 I am still reading through Marcy Wheeler's post. It requires sharp attention to detail, so it is a slow read.

However, there is the appearance that this matter will grow legs. Should the blue wave happen, Congressional hearings may overelap matters Wheeler analyzes.

This is a shout out that while a complicated read, it is a ground floor possibility to understand things a Democratic majority Congress might investigate.

With Judge Cannon having embarged the Smith II item as secret, some detail might nonetheless emerge from this employment related litigation (wrongful FBI firings).

Bottom Line: It might avoid confusion later if interested readers check out:

 https://emptywheel.net/2026/10/16/the-kash-patel-impeachment-referral-inside-the-employment-lawsuit/

The Crabgrass guess is the situation will grow post-election legs. How big the legs? We wait to see.

 

 

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has told Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a meeting in Azerbaijan that Israel should stop and reverse its “forced establishment” of West Bank settlements, China’s foreign ministry said in a statement. Wang told Herzog that China has consistently viewed the Palestinian question as the greatest historical injustice of this century, the ministry said in the statement on Friday.

The headline is running together the two opening paragraphs of AJ reporting. 

 

It snuck up on me, tomorrow, Oct. 17, No KIngs will hold an "Early Voting" rally.

Guardian, where Crabgrass first saw this morning the story. Too Big to Rig.

The No Kings homepage: https://www.nokings.org/ 

Using the Guardian headline in the search = 'Too big to rig': No Kings movement heads to the polls to boost early voting

That is enough. From there active individuals can find their locale for expression.

And of course, those door knocking volunteers are doing a separate and more needed GOTV effort, so Crabgrass salutes both the door knockers and the rally goers. Early voting is a way to leave only a handful of voters lining up on election day, where the weather might be nasty and the ICE thugs present.

Vote Early. But, don't vote often.

you know who they mean

UPDATE: An example report, here, emphasizes that if a record turnout happens, spreading it out by early voting will help the election judges and other officials to get results out cleanly and quickly. And voters can plan and dodge the elements of early November wind and snow. 

 

Thursday, October 15, 2026

A post here on process as well as substance, in Crabgrass doing a post now and then triggered by an occasional check of ZeroHedge content.

 I like the site. Today, this:

Trump Admin Floats Unfreezing Russian Assets In Big Move To Restart Talks

by Tyler Durden
Thursday, Oct 15, 2026 - 08:40 AM

President Trump appears to be busy rolling back years of entrenched Ukraine policy. Starting last week he announced the controversial diesel deal with Putin, and this week Ukraine's Zelensky is complaining that intelligence-sharing has been throttled, and possibly even cut off.

The possibility or even likelihood of this heading to another TACO moment aside, what's next? New reporting in the Financial Times gives an idea. The United States has floated a proposal that European countries unfreeze some of Russia's sovereign assets and deposit them in an entity controlled by Washington.

So, the original source given, but paywalled. The next obvious thing =

search = the zero headge headline - that is

search =Trump Admin Floats Unfreezing Russian Assets In Big Move To Restart Talks

popping up among other returns a mainstream vanilla Reuters item beginning 

BRUSSELS, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Billions of euros' worth of Russian assets frozen in Europe after the invasion of ​Ukraine should stay under the region's control, German Chancellor ‌Friedrich Merz said on Thursday, after a report that the United States may seek supervision over some.
"Those are assets that are frozen ​in Europe and they should remain frozen in Europe. ​This is our business and we are deciding over ⁠it," Merz said in Brussels ahead of an EU ​summit.

From there the outline is apparent, and the story real and of interest, but largely spelled out already.

Trump suggests easing sanctions and Merz says, "No way." And the diesel play has already been kicked around the news, the upshot appearing to be Russis's no surplus and minisucle amounts do not matter.

But that is the quick Crabgrass way of seeing something, and deciding whether and what to post that might interest readers as it has been viewed to be of interest here.

This post being intended to help readers understand Crabgrass editorial simplicity, but with good intent.

 

 

Strange things show up online. ZeroHedge posts about abusive behavior toward one's AI models.

 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2026-10-13/be-nice-claude

The purveyors tailor their interacting AI to not be abusive to users. Why would they?

 

Fake news.

MS NOW Retracts Report That FBI Director Kash Patel Landed In Russia

by Tyler Durden

 Read that story and then tell me two things, from it, can you tell whether MSNow got faked, or this report shows ZeroHedge got faked to post it? Second, does it matter? At all, or in comparison to consumer price inflation?

 

Further worry about Tafoya's simplistic but loaded troublesome proposals.

 A screen capture from here -

 

 

 

 You have to ask what, "Disrupt Gangs Online" and "Hold Big Tech Accountable" mean, to her, or should mean to us.

Online content censoring and regulation of the Internet are complex multi-faceted questions without any sound simplistic answers; nor have they an amenability to being bent wrongly for someone's "public safety" suggestions. You cannot simply "bend it a little" without free speech and content liability of providers being impacted. There is very much need for some sensible detail of what baby will be pitched away with the bathwater in what Tafoya is saying.

Teenageer gang gun battles do endanger the general population. They are a thing that can spring out anywhere, and that means at a time and place where regular citizens may be in crossfire. Some people can obsessively worry about that, even when actual probability is near zero as we shop at Walmart.

But the problem Tafoya glides and slides on is the handgun proliferation problem. 

It is as if scared to say what really needs to be curbed and better regulated are the NRA, and firms profiting from making and selling hand-held killing devices in exceptionally profligate ways. She declines to even mention that problem, never mind having any sensible policy position she'd state. It's the classic nothing to see here, look over there, a young male Somali with two, three Somali friends. The glide and slide of ignoring the core concern and instead saying censor web use and wtf does she mean when saying hold high tech "accountable"?

That is phraseology in the "future of AI debate," not in the problem of guns in childerns' hands. 

 Tafoya's declining to address the actual heart of the problem, gets papered over with simplistic single sentence window dressing words. Do any other nations on earth allow the handgun proliferation that is permitted in the U.S.? And how does that affect immigrant integration into all social avenues of our complex Amerian value sets and beliefs?

The campaigning will be moving on from teen gunfights, but Crabgrass believes hand-held killing devices are the problem, and any so-called solution ignoring sanely regulating that for political reasons is a band-aid hoax aimed at a real problem. Or if not intended to mislead, misleading anyway.

 

 

MinnReformer publishes, "Noncitizens trying to vote? Vanishingly rare."

 https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/10/07/noncitizens-trying-to-vote-vanishingly-rare/

Mid-item

Consider what it took to round up these 10 cases. A recent report by ProPublica details how the Trump administration scrambled to find voter fraud in Minnesota and other states, assigning scores of agents from Homeland Security Investigations to fan out across the country and deploying a vast federal database of citizens’ personal information. The agents were so ill-informed and the database so error-prone that a federal prosecutor called the effort “dysfunctional.”

Despite this massive effort, all it produced was 10 cases of alleged fraud over two election cycles, a period when Minnesotans cast 5.8 million votes. An additional 1.3 million votes were cast during primary elections in that period. 

Moreover, these are just allegations — and court records show that most people charged with voter fraud in Minnesota are never convicted. Considering the Trump administration’s record of failed indictments — from the sandwich thrower to the reflecting pool vigilante and all the Minnesotans wrongfully detained during Operation Metro Surge — we should be skeptical that even these 10 indictments will produce convictions.

It’s really no surprise that Trump’s team could find so little voter fraud in Minnesota. In the two general elections from 2018 to 2020, Minnesotans cast roughly 6 million votes.

Court records show there were just 40 convictions for registering or voting illegally in those years. That’s just 20 convictions in each cycle — or 0.00067% of votes cast.

Why the federal DOJ money is being pissed down this rathole has little to do with importance and all to do with Trump. 

BOTTOM LINE  He lost to Biden in 2020. And, election fraud is as likely ellection error by a handfull of people among many millions of ballots cast. Trump has an inefficient focus here. But it is not his only one. 

 

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Over at EmptyWheel, "Stephen Miller Desperate to Stave Off Accountability for Losing Texas"

Stephen Miller Desperate to Stave Off Accountability for Losing Texas
Link

 

 

Two things. First a hat tip to Gary Gross for finding the thing. Then the thing. Hate on Somalis, something MN Repubs are experienced at. Pablam if you'd been expecting content..

Gary's post, embedding the video tweet. https://x.com/Michele_Tafoya/status/2110138240028098861

Minnesota families are tired of excuses about violence in our communities. That’s why I’m releasing a five-point plan to stop gang violence and make our state safe again. 1. Name the problem. 2. Disrupt gangs online. 3. Hold Big Tech accountable. 4. Speed up federal prosecutions. 5. Support our law enforcement. We can’t keep electing the same career politicians who created this mess.
00:00

She names the problem as Somalis.

She'd impinge on First Amendment speech, per her points 2 and 3. 

She does not know better? No need for the Constitution on the sideline?. That is worrisome. Censorship is nobody's good answer to tons of guns loose in the community because Trump and the NRA kiss back and forth and sideways.

Speeding up federal prosecutions is flipped off by the good lady as her say, they obey. 

They're busy doing Trump retribution and she knows it, but, nevermind. 10 noncitizen voting prosecutions going in MN, federal courts, DOJ, with parallel show boating BS in other federal DOJ offices. That's reality. Two million or more voters, no fraud to speak of, ten fish caught somehow, costing what,  but she is on the war path. Her priorities, not DOJ's to govern, flippintly presented. Who does she think she is, Melania? She does not call Trump's shots, Trump does. Big insight for the lady.

And who's the geek standing with her? Mr. Ameriprise? The portfolio guru? 

* * * 

10 noncitizen voting prosecutions going down in MN, with parallel show boating in other federal DOJ offices. That's reality. She's blowing that other 5 point stuff out her shorts. Probably where her $9 billion fraud number's coming from as well. Actually, a GOP prosecutor invented that number, not Tafoya.

The cops don't endorse the best and brightest. Remember, they endorsed Doug Wardlow.

Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and AOC back Flanagan. The guy next to Tafoya backs her. With her in denial mode about Trump being her leader. It is weird. Surreal. Non-MAGA.

She does not buy gas or groceries on a tight paycheck, and acts as if she's never heard of Renee Good or Alex.

Somali Fever, for a while, but she'll get over it. If she'd just leave it to the law enforcement officials who know what they are doing except when endorsing in politics where any nonsense goes.

Sorry for being a bit snotty. But it steamed me, no substantial policy - dump a load on Somalis as if there's not a good soul in the community. Not paradigms of virtue like her pro football players. But say nothing real.

Steps one, two, three and four of taking the guns away, Susie, tell me those details. Run a dragnet, via racial profiling? The way ICE handled that so well? Figure it out, readers. An empty glass.

 

 

Reminder - A wilderness cannot speak up for its own cause for integrity, while a "corporate person per the Roberts court" can buy as much speech as it cares to afford.

 Link. Please do help.

 

AJ reports of inflation and Albanian unrest arising out of the "Flamingo Revolution."

 Respectively, here and here. Musk and Iran.

 Oil. And - more stuff --

United States federal agents have arrested a Saudi national and charged him with planting a hidden audio recording device in a conference room at the California offices of OpenAI, where he was working as an engineer.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, had been working at the AI company since ⁠July 2025, the US Department of Justice said in a statement on Tuesday.

Recommended Stories

list of 2 itemsend of list

OpenAI discovered the device plugged into a USB port behind a television in an executive conference room at one of its San Francisco buildings on September 30, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Following the discovery, the company placed a camera in the room, which captured Alfozan entering last week and checking behind the television where the listening device had been installed, the FBI alleges.

The case highlights growing security concerns around sensitive AI research as companies and governments compete for the best talent and technology with the potential to alter regional economic and strategic dynamics.

 

 

 

Education is how civilized societies aim to prevent savages from savaging government out of ignorance or indifference to others.

 MinnesotaReformer: Klobuchar, Demuth have school plans, but neither addresses funding challenges

 After largely dissecting overlapping areas of agreement -

Demuth includes several other policies in her education plan, including expanding funding for student safety to include private schools; opting Minnesota into a federal quasi-voucher scheme; allowing districts to opt-out of state mandates; and removing “woke standards” adopted during Walz’s tenure, though she hasn’t offered specifics other than anything that is “pushing our kids away from the basics of reading, math and science.”  

This "woke" business, would a compare and contrast lesson of the early culthood hate suffered by the Latter Day Saints with their Prophet Joseeph Smith shot point blank dead by a mob, with the Janet Reno burning alive of a Waco cult of her time - one by a mob the other the government - be woke if there were also teaching of the Mountain Meadows Massacre? But not "woke" otherwise? I have trouble with boundaries and evenness, Jefferson and Hemmings and a Virginia law of their time that freed Negros had to leave the Commonwealth, where those not in bondage were at the time unwanted. Hemmings was kept in bondage, stuff like that, is it what "woke" means?

Hemmings was an octoroon as was Plessy in Plessy v. Ferguson. Not to distract from memorization of multiplication tables, or doing square roots.

And when we teach of the Turing Test and WW II code breaking, is Alan's death "woke?" Or but at a time and place evidence of then current, but changing, public value systems? As in I "woke" from a sleep a changed man? And 7 x 8 = 56. 

Tafoya candidacy seems weak. Trending weaker. Lacking any substantial stated anchor. As if empty and adrift. With no wind in the sails. Hiding now from a Trump endorsement/shoutout? Unrealistic statement instead of policy commitment? Polling?

There are signs that Tafoya is trending down. Polls. Local MN reporting -

Michele Tafoya just got what most Republican candidates crave more than anything: President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

She demurred.

“I heard about that,” Tafoya said when asked about it Tuesday. “Look, this campaign is about bringing all Minnesotans together, whether they voted for President Trump or whether they voted for Kamala Harris.”

This is significant, Trump is toxic in Minnesota, but she dismisses the Trump base, and then says going to the US Senate is not about federal politics but about "bringing all Minnesotans together." That is pure crap. She states no Iran or tariff opinions, as if a school board candidate. That is fantasy. She cannot be taken seriously for a senior federal office, except as a straddle/waffle who'll put a finger to the wind.

Why run if not on your beliefs? Or, what? She's stated none. Speculation is fair, on an illl-stated nothingburger policy stance, and a tactic of downplaying Trump's perception of closeness. So - What's up?

Before the MN primary, MinnPost reported:

Tafoya, who is married to Mark Vandersall, a private wealth advisor, reported that she and her husband’s assets were valued at between about $17 million and a little more than $33 million.

The couple’s assets, which do not include the value of a personal residence, included mutual funds — many of them invested in aggressive growth stocks — exchange traded funds (ETFs), cryptocurrency and individual stocks that favored the tech sector, including Nvidia, Alphabet (Google), Apple and Tesla.

Tafoya’s financial disclosure report also shows that her husband invested between $5,000 and $50,000 in the U.S. Oil Fund, a mutual fund based on West Texas crude futures that has boomed since the start of the war in Iran and the subsequent disruption of global petroleum shipments.

Candidates for the U.S. Senate are required to report income, assets and liabilities, but they do so in wide ranges so only a broad view of their financial disclosures are made public.

Tafoya’s report only listed one liability: a 4% interest loan from RiverSource Life Insurance Company valued at between $250,000 and $500,000.

(highlighting added) Portfolio directing Vandersall is not running. Tafoya is. He's got a business set to benefit if the name recognition w/o substance moves anyone's needle, so why not do the wife's dilettante-looking low out-of-pocket gamble? As an investment move.

That's how Crabgrass weighs the circumstances. 

Sideline Susie goes to DC? Access would be very likely to insider information if somehow Susie ends up making it into the seat. Pecuniary upside potential. Low cost run. Cost-benefit decision making says, "Why not?"

Come on. There has to be substance somewhere or bury the candicacy because a sound idea-oriented progressive is running on the other party's ticket. And leading the polls. What's to vote for with Tafoya besides a name and a portfolio? 

SPECIFICALLY - When she games over Trump recognition, not for it, not against it, wtf? 

Where's the sense in things?

Crabgrass has earlier kind of posted of this run for the roses before, but time has shown no substance, and now hiding from Trump, while solid issue-oriented opposition is in the DFL. 

Policy commitments are there with Flanagan. Tafoya is an empty glass. And you can fairly speculate why.

* * * 

In the Governor's race there is Klobuchar. Big-Stage Track Record, like it or not, it's there. Repeatedly reelected. Demuth, aside from the State House Party Caucus lead, what? Vouchers against full public education priority funding? Bleeding funds away that have been raised by taxes paid by those who have been childless and by those with adults who've left the nest, as well as paid by parents still in the system. Everyone having paid on an equal taxing basis for a Constitutionally mandated public good and not for anyone's faith-based or private whims or indoctrinations. 

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61e598971a0fa753c382bcb2/c42445f4-2738-4c8c-b046-50a10a8a68af/Niska051726-0155av.jpeg?format=1000w
Vouchers steal from public education.

 

 ____________________UPDATE__________________

"Bringing Minnesotans together" for politically connected investment advice rings the Crabgrass bell less than the thought of Medicare for All, the end of endless wars, tariff sanity, getting along with Canada, and ICE behavior constraints. Just me, I guess, but how it is. 

Monday, October 12, 2026

Nobel Prize, Econ

 The Hill reporting.

 

This is a sick man.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5vCT2bWR40

He is not well. I am two years older, and holding up better.

He is not on top of his weight either.

 

Twenty-six minutes of horseshit. Yes, that might not inspire you to listen. But it in its way it is educational of who Heritage Foundation sucks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbIdD6sOEZE 

Parallel =  https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/the-conservative-coalition-we-need-save-the-west

This is the identical script, (words changed, likely by AI rewrite), that Rubio spun in Greece.

Manifest Destiny out of the dustbin. And the man gives an awful haulting reading of his speech text.

There is value in -- More shameful sunlight shined onto Heritage Foundation for the dogmatic cesspool it should be seen as. This guy is a stiff.

Watch because the curtain gets pulled aside without Toto needed. As to Project 2025 and other sins out of Heritage. Roots exist. Ties exist. Keep them closeer than your friends.

 

 

Raiding Ihlen Omar's home? This is the power-on-the-thraot of the federal boot, based on Donald J. Trump's mental deficiencies.

 It is nothing other than that, and it is wasteful of federal money taxpayers had to sweat to earn. It is disdainful toward those - all those - paying tax of any kind to Trump's administration, and whatever that administration sees as good judgment and good actions to be. It insults every single voter in Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District and above that, it insults the entire State of Minnesota in a way the next ballot box should mirror. 

It shits on the public interest.

Link: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/12/ilhan-omar-home-raided-dhs-immigration-investigation.html 

Todd Blanche is a whore to be doing this. Entirely unprincipled. 

 UPDATE: Guardian wrote -

Donald Trump and key allies have accused Omar of fraud related to her family’s immigration history, fantasizing openly about denaturalizing her and expelling her from the country.

The congresswoman has consistently denied the accusations, though Trump has repeatedly made them national news with gratuitous attacks against Omar, who along with Representative Rashida Tlaib became the United States’s first Muslim congresswoman in 2019.

But even amid a presidency known for political and legal retribution against his critics, the search of Omar’s DC home just three weeks before a crucial midterm election day will surely lead to new accusations that Trump was using the government for his own political ends.

Trump is off his rails. Not "political ends." Bonkers. Pure bonkers. JD has the 25th Amendment, but not the balls to use it.  Or call that a grassroots opinion where others might think differently. JD, for example.

 

 

Show trials were for Stalin. Not for the U.S. of A. Those wanting show trials on our soil are un-American.

 I was forwarded an email Rep. Tom Emmer put out under his badge and honor -

Dear Friend, 

Last week, I wrote to you about the Voter Vouching Transparency Act, which would require states with voter vouching policies, like Minnesota, to report basic information to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission about the vouching practices used in federal elections. This week, I am writing to you about the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recent indictments of noncitizens for voting in multiple Minnesota elections. 

Recently, the DOJ announced that a federal grand jury indicted ten individuals for voter fraud, charging them with false claims of citizenship in order to vote in Minnesota’s elections, including the 2022 and 2024 general elections and the 2026 primary election. This confirms what commonsense Minnesotans have known all along: Minnesota’s elections are not secure, and it’s Minnesota’s lenient election policies that got us here. 

In response to these recent indictments, I led Minnesota’s Republican congressional delegation in sending a letter to Governor Tim Walz and Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, demanding that they take action to secure our state’s election process. It’s simple, only citizens should be able to vote in our elections. 

This is not the first time that we have written to Governor Walz and Secretary Simon about our concerns in Minnesota’s elections. We have been sounding the alarm on this issue for years. In 2024, we wrote to them after Minnesota’s driver's licenses for all and automatic voter registration policies were implemented and reports of noncitizens receiving primary ballots followed. The combination of these two policies opened the floodgates to voter fraud. With consistent reports of various election fraud year after year, we are urging our state leaders to take election security seriously. It should be easy to vote and hard to cheat. 

I won’t stop fighting for safe, secure elections. It’s time Governor Walz and Secretary Simon do the same.

Sincerely, 

Jesus, Tom, you can't be fucking serious about that waste of time and federal money.

Ten fucking people, Tom.

THINK!!!

Why not instead do your job, which is to tax and spend wisely, instead of fomenting discord because you can. I want Chapin as my rep as he'd never have anything to to with anything this fucking stupid.

And, with only one lawyer present, a grand jury can indict ten ham sandwiches. Get fucking real.

You should be ashamed of yourself. 

UPDATE: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-indicts-ten-aliens-voter-fraud-minnesota 

A sample pro forma indictment online here.  Compare what EmptyWheel is reporting today. These people are using valuable resources for show and tell stupidity. Real "dangernousness" crime does exist. But they don't care. The victims do. You judge.

 

Slogan for the day. Don't mine the Strait of Hormuz -AND- don't mine the Boundary Waters!

For those unfamiliar with the second clause -

search = Boundary Waters Minnesota sulfide mining issue

"Mine" being a flexible noun and verb.

UPDATE:https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/twin-cities-marathon-canoe-bwcaw/  

FURTHER: The entire world should be outraged at the insultingly dismissive viewpoint of giant international mining conglomerates that want to endanger an absolutely unique and irreplaceable wildlife area for but a tiny share of their giant annual profits. People worldwide should write or email Minnesota's DNR to voice opposition to the narrow-minded profit-seeking of these greed heads. There should be an international uproar, Don't Do It 

Your message to the DNR need not say more. If they are inundated with that message, they will figure it out. Trust Me. They are intelligent, but under intense greed-flexing pressure, and might even welcome greater issue attention: 

https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/aboutdnr/commissioner/index.html 

Also, the Agency's contact page (although perhaps an inundation top-down might ring more) 

https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/contact/index.html 

A fitting message might be, "Don't permit greedhead sulfide mining anywhere near the Canoe Wilderness. The danger is unjustified because these giant mining companies mine worldwide, with less unique risk in other places, where people there will be equally vigilant. Just Say NO!"

If every reader of Crabgrass over the next few days into November were to take a few minutes to send the MN DNR an email they would  have to recognize it is a worldwide concern to protect unique environments where alternative readily exist. It just makes sense.

FURTHER: One more, a cc of an email to DNR can reach another branch of state government:

Rep. Zack Stephenson (DFL) District: 35A
DFL Caucus Leader
5th Floor Centennial Office Building *
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-296-5513
E-mail: rep.zack.stephenson@house.mn.gov
Email updates: Click to subscribe
Full-size image

A message there, separately, that a statute protecting the BWCAW and treaty indigenous water rights the federal government negotiated would help define the intent of the State of Minnesota. 

Please take the time to do this if you believe it wise.

ALSO - If you wish to add the address online of this post

https://zaetsch.blogspot.com/2026/10/slogan-for-day-dont-mine-strait-of.html 

to show it is an individual grassroots suggestion that people do email, and not something bigger than that, that is okay. 

 

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Harry Nisska - yes, very local politics that will not interest the world - but the man had the awful judgment to lie in a mailing that came to the house. The only thing the Repubs have to run on is fraud, and he does, but the fucker uses the $9 billion lie, instead of simply fudging the number. His brochue/flyer says "Clerked for two 8th Circuit judges" so he knows misrepresenting facts is wrong, that is to say the guy KNOWS BETTER.

A nothingburger mailing. He also never mentions vouchers, which is a key thing to him, but there, the generic Repub fraud chant is a part, with the made-up number. The man is intelligent. He could say real things voters could weigh one way or the other but --

My impression is he carelessly let Emmer's people design the thing for him, since both of the Niska spouses are close to Tom. And it was a very mediocre mailing. Again suggesting Emmer. 

Harry may be reelected, the hope here is not, but the mailing is itself a fraud. It names a number somebody invented! Bigger than calm, and honest, reality could ever justify.

Also, you don't say nothing, both sides of the mailing, pablum with a gratuitously added lying number, and deserve being reelected. It shows disrespect.

No war opinion. It says, in effect, if you elect me again I will return to the legislature. Zippo beyond that. 

A lying number from somebody who knows about evidence and makes a nine billion dollar lie because he let somebody inept script his brochure is not fit to be my representative. I want better.

Figure out what that indifference to a true but unknown number says about him and what his regard for voters really is. Here is his text, he makes four focus items, first -

Stopping Fraud 

Minnesota has lost at least $9 billion to fraudsters while Democrats did nothing. Harry led the charge to create the independent watchdog to stop fraud and implemented dozens of new fraud prevention measures. 

Lying on the number was unnecessary to the message, for Christsake, and he went and did it anyway.

Or he allowed it out into the public as his bond and honor, without even editing it carefully, either way being faulted.

Figure that. I can't.

Meanwhile I had a few days of emergency medical hospitalization. The Methodist Hospital did well, and it could not be running without immigrant workers. I need to shout that out. You will never hear a hint of that side of things from Stephen Miller or Marco Rubio (who's on a Manifest Destiny speech binge in Greece). 

At Methodist Hospital there was one staff doctor who took time to chat who I'd guess could be Somali, at a guess, who she was an impressive and worthwhile person to society, (as a legislator if rightly motivated could be). More than Harry and Jen Niska put together this doctor seemed a higher quality human being. (A judgment, not a representation of fact, i.e., not like the Harry about an invented nine billion written down as Fraud!, about fraud by others. There simply was no fucking nine billion of fraud anybody has proven and Harry knows he is blowing smoke, but must like the effect.). 

This doctor was a woman who I wish I had more time to talk to, an interesting human story, all that which is hard to put into words. On an unquestionably decent human career path different than politician/lawyer. 

And Harry is one of the smarter Repubs, not dumb-as-a-board-stupid as are some. (Both parties being at fault there.) Intelligent enough to know better, but careless enough to show he does not care enough to do it right.

There are some who would not know better than to let clowns design a mailing, and then put it out under their name and honor, but Harry knows better and went and did it anwyay. 

Not to say professionals design political mailings all the time and make a living doing it, but ask yourself, why would Niska let a nonprofessional do that if he gave a shit? 

And I believe a hundred percent it was Emmer's people who he let put him there.

Harry's moved to that careless side of things, and is intelligent enough to have not done so. I voted already and voted Brian Walker. Brian has characteristics that I believe make him better suited to represent me and my world, than Niska. 

Harry likely could do an excellent job as my lawyer if I needed and could afford him, but as to voters, he has insufficient respect at all for them and their judgment to be putting out that false and insultingly meager mailer without taking time to THINK and edit it decently. 

Sloppiness is nobody's virtue. Luckily I encountered none in the hospital. In the legislature it is not helpful either. If you don't care that a mailing be fastidious, why waste my time mailing it to me?

It bothered me for that reason. Why fucking bother, Harry? 

 

Saturday, October 03, 2026

So, AJ has election news that seems to imply a Democratic Party GOTV door knock and other effort should pay off on election day, never mind the Republican gerrymandering.

Trump launches midterms campaign blitz amid record low approval ratings

 

US consumer confidence hits its lowest level since 2014 ahead of midterms

 

Most Americans say US-Israel war on Iran not worth fighting: Poll

 

‘Bordering on angry’: The state of play as US midterms enter final month

 And have you seen diesel prices? Gasoline?> Groceries? And Canada seems happy and in solidarity over  tariff war actions. Also, where's ICE these days?

PPress carries the AP feed, " Former GOP Rep. David Rivera sentenced to 10 years for secret Venezuela lobbying --The longtime friend of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been jailed since being found guilty in May of failing to register as a foreign agent and conspiracy to commit money laundering".

 Link -

By JOSHUA GOODMAN

MIAMI (AP) — A former Republican congressman and longtime friend of Secretary of State Marco Rubio received a 10-year prison sentence on Friday for concealing a $50 million lobbying campaign on Venezuela’s behalf during the first Trump administration.

David Rivera of Miami has been jailed since his conviction in May for conspiracy to commit money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for the government of Nicolás Maduro.

Rivera, 61, appeared stone-faced as Judge Melissa Damian denounced him for betraying his life’s mission. His many friends in Miami would surely judge him harshly had the millions of dollars come from Cuba’s communist regime instead of its allies in Caracas, she said.

“Nobody would accept that’s ok and I don’t think this is different,” the judge said. “There’s no dispute this money came from the Maduro regime.”

The case offered a rare glimpse into foreign influence campaigns aimed at shaping U.S. policy toward Latin America, highlighting Miami’s reputation as a magnet for both anti-communist crusaders and corruption among its sizable exile population.

President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas and a top Washington lobbyist all testified, saying Rivera had never mentioned his mammoth consulting contract with a U.S.-based affiliate of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA.

Rivera was charged in 2022, during President Joe Biden’s administration. Charges of illegal foreign lobbying have plunged since Trump returned to the White House. Rivera’s lawyers have applied for a presidential pardon, and plan to appeal while also defending him against a related foreign lobbying case in Washington, D.C. Still pending is Damian’s ruling on the government’s request that Rivera forfeit $20 million in criminal proceeds.

Prosecutors described how Rivera worked GOP connections for Delcy Rodríguez

Rivera was tapped by Maduro’s Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez — now Venezuela’s acting president — to get the first Trump administration to normalize relations.

As part of the charm offensive, Rivera and a co-defendant, political consultant Esther Nuhfer, sought to manipulate influential friends, including Rubio and Sessions. But they didn’t disclose the lobbying as required, fearing it would ruin Rivera’s reputation as an anti-communist stalwart, prosecutors argued at trial. Nuhfer received a five-year sentence.

“The United States and the public were the true victims of this fraud,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Cruz said. “He used his position of trust — and betrayed it consistently and repeatedly.”

Rivera denied being a two-faced grifter. In an emotional 20-minute address, he traced his life’s journey from a childhood without a father in an immigrant Miami neighborhood to the halls of Congress — always “fighting the good cause,” he said. Holding back tears, he begged for leniency, telling the judge that it was tantamount to a “death sentence” due to his age and lingering effects from a battle with prostate cancer.

Prosecutors said betrayal featured coded figures — ‘Sombrero’ and ‘Miss Clairol’

Trial evidence showed how Rivera set up an encrypted chat group called MIA — for Miami — with his main conduit to the Maduro government: Venezuelan media tycoon Raúl Gorrín, who was subsequently charged in the U.S. with bribing top Venezuelan officials.

Group members used playful code words: Maduro was the “bus driver,” Sessions “Sombrero,” Rodríguez “The Lady in Red,” and their windfall payments “La Luz,” Spanish for “The Light,” according to copies of text messages presented to the jury. Rubio was known as “Miss Clairol,” because rubio means blond in Spanish.

[...]

Rubio’s former housemate faced scandal before, but Cuban Americans support him

Before serving in Congress from 2011-2013, Rivera was a high-ranking Florida legislator and shared a Tallahassee home with Rubio, who eventually became the Florida House speaker.

Rivera faced earlier controversy, including allegations that he secretly funded a Democratic spoiler candidate in a 2012 congressional race — a case federal prosecutors eventually dropped after a sizable fine was thrown out on appeal. Rivera was also investigated — but never charged — for alleged campaign finance violations and a $1 million contract with a gambling company while serving in the Florida Legislature.

Despite all that, Rivera continues to have support among Miami’s Cuban American establishment and in circles of power beyond.

Friends of the former congressman, including the former president of Florida International University and Miami-Dade County’s supervisor of elections, packed the courtroom to show their support. Sessions also sent a letter seeking leniency, referring to his former congressional colleague as a devoted defender of democracy.

Crabgrass has not yet found any online link to court papers which might flesh out more. 

 

 

 

Pope Hegseth I

 https://upolitics.com/news/hegseth-creates-pentagon-office-of-religious-affairs-drawing-constitutional-concerns/

According to the memo, the office’s director will serve as principal adviser to Hegseth and his deputy on religious matters. The office will oversee the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, issue religious affairs policy on the secretary’s behalf and represent him in dealings with Congress, other federal agencies and civilian religious endorsing organizations.

It is also charged with securing funding and resources for chaplains and their training, chapel youth programs, faith-based homeschool support for military families, and contracts with faith-based outside groups. Each military department has 90 days to deliver an inventory of its unfunded and underfunded religious affairs requirements.

Details on the office’s leadership, staffing and budget have not been released.

The Pentagon said the office will not compel religious participation or favor any one faith, and that it will not diminish the rights of personnel of any belief or none. Chaplains will remain the primary providers of religious support, with the new office acting as their advocate at the department’s highest level.

Part of a broader overhaul

The move builds on a string of chaplaincy changes Hegseth has made this year. In March, he cut the number of officially recognized religious affiliation codes from more than 200 to 31 and ordered chaplains to replace rank insignia with symbols of their faith on combat and working uniforms. He also hosts monthly evangelical worship services at the Pentagon.

The initiative fits within a broader Trump administration effort to elevate religion in government, including the creation of a White House faith office and new religious freedom divisions across federal agencies.

Critics push back

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told USA Today his organization condemns what he called Hegseth’s “unconstitutional actions,” arguing they violate the First Amendment’s bar on government establishment of religion and its protection of free exercise.

[...] The Freedom From Religion Foundation has also launched a Freedom of Information Act investigation into the office and is calling on Congress to examine its creation, authority and funding. The group said the inquiry will help determine whether legal action is warranted.

Hegseth, who frequently invokes his faith publicly, has said service members’ spiritual health is as important as their physical and mental health.

As necessary? As wise? As an affront to secular killing in war? As a pet Hegseth thing, and power play?

As bad as Trump is, . . . Trump seems less unhinged most times, but other times . . .

MJ has a look: 

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new entity within the Pentagon: the Office of Religious Affairs. The office, Hegseth promised the assembled troops in Quantico, Virginia, would “report straight to the top. No staff filters, no bureaucratic dilution, a direct line to the secretary.” Chaplains would “finally have an advocate at the highest levels.” What’s more, “policy and resources will serve the mission, not smother the mission.”  

A hallmark of Hegseth’s tenure at the Defense Department has been his muscular Christian religiosity. Earlier this year, he spearheaded an initiative to bring prayer services to the Pentagon. Shortly after the start of the Iran War, during one such event in March, Hegseth prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Hegseth’s own faith is relevant here: He is a member of a conservative denomination called the Communion of Reformed Evangelicals Churches (CREC) that explicitly advocates for Christians to exert their faith’s influence over the government. As I reported:

At a February Pentagon prayer service, the featured speaker was Doug Wilson, the Moscow, Idaho, pastor who founded CREC. Wilson, who has described his vision of “a network of nations bound together by a formal, public, civic acknowledgement of the lordship of Jesus Christ and the fundamental truth of the Apostles’ Creed,” has long argued in favor of Christian nationalism, and he has likened his fiefdom in Idaho—which includes a church, school, college, and publishing house—to a “working prototype” of what Christian nationalism could look like.

The new Office of Religious Affairs isn’t explicitly Christian; a memo (PDF) published yesterday specifies that “Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to compel religious participation or to diminish the free exercise rights of any Service member, civilian employee, or family member of any faith or no faith.” Yet earlier this year, the Pentagon released a new list of 31 religions officially recognized by the US Department of Defense, drawn from the 200 that had previously been accepted. On the new list, 22 of the 31 groups were Christian. Atheists, pagans, and humanists, all on the original list, had vanished. 

Details about what exactly the Office of Religious Affairs will do have not yet been released, but yesterday’s memo offers a few clues. In addition to moving chaplains directly under the control of the new office and overseeing the groups that decide who can become a chaplain, the office also will “sponsor and oversee research, technology, and analytical tools to support and assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience.” It doesn’t define those terms, but Hegseth’s track record speaks volumes. As I reported a few months back:

In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, Hegseth writes that the Geneva Conventions are unfair because the United States and Europe are the only ones that follow them. Instead, “America should fight by its own rules,” he declares. The nation’s soldiers should be “the most overwhelmingly lethal as they can be.”

Hegseth also bemoans a defense force infected, he writes, with the “fucking scary” disease of progressivism, which “will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!” He warns, “Sometime soon, a real conflict will break out, and red-blooded American men will have to save their elite candy asses.” In July, Hegseth announced an initiative to screen troops for low testosterone and offer hormone replacement therapy to those found deficient.

Hegseth has also long been preoccupied by what he sees as a “spiritual battle” between secular and Christian culture. Shortly before he became Secretary of War, Hegseth appeared on CrossPolitic, a podcast owned and hosted by Gabe Rench, whose brother, Aaron, is a co-owner of Doug Wilson’s Canon Press. In the episode, Hegseth accused liberals of using “patriotism to untether us from timeless truth, from the Bible” and praised classical Christian schools for providing “a comprehensive worldview that prepares them for the battle to come, because we’re in a spiritual battle, and otherwise we’d be sending our kids in as fodder.”

[...] Notably, Wilson’s Canon Press publishes popular homeschool curricula. “Education is warfare,” the website says. “Canon curriculum is designed to help you raise faithful, dangerous Christian kids, one subject at a time.” 

Wacko Warfare brought on by the man with the Crusader's Cross tattooed over his heart. 

searh = women's role in wilson's Idaho church  --- JPR had an item in the return list:

Wilson is a self-described Christian nationalist who wants to repeal a woman's right to vote, has defended slavery and believes homosexuality should be a crime.

His beliefs are extreme, and not long ago they were considered fringe. But today, Wilson's teachings are entering the mainstream, according to religion and history scholars, including Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne.

That's why Morning Edition's Leila Fadel sat down with Wilson at his Moscow, Idaho, church for NPR's Newsmakers video podcast.

In a wide-ranging interview, Wilson said he opened a D.C. "church service" because of the number of Christians who adhere to his church's teachings within the Trump administration.

The entire thing - best outsider-looking-in  judgment - wholly unnecessary and burdensome to a degree on taxpayers. 

And stupid. Hegseth stupid. Dangerous stupid.