"Live and Let Live" is the official motto of Liberland.

Or that is what Wikipedia says, about Liberland. Nothing found online suggests any intent to build a border wall.

Liberland homepage. Liberland appears to have a Twitter presence. Like Trump but less active.

A thought is to crowdsource to start a Minnesota Charter School aimed at study of the culture and history of Liberland, not religious institutions of Liberland, because the latter might test the boundaries of Constitutional church-state separation; and needlessly so, so that would remain for someone else's crowdsourcing. And then there is Fredonia disambiguated from Freedonia. There is an association with Rufus T. Firefly and the question of whether Firefly Credit Union, with websites here and here, has any tie to Rufus T.

Some have even claimed Rufus T. was a Marxist.

UPDATE: Not Fredonia. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. Blogging criticism - will I get heat and criticism for blogging about Liberland - it is all truthful to the best of my knowledge?

Soybeans.

USDA does monthly reporting, e.g., this page. Without being an Ag. expert, and hence possibly misreading web postings, a suggestion is the April report is due today or Thursday.

Wonkette, yesterday, wrote of soybeans, "Maybe Donald Trump Shouldn’t Have Handed China His County-By-County Electoral Map."

For the first time in at least 100 years, the US Cabinet has a bible study group. What do they learn? What does Donald Trump make of it? And why aren't women allowed to teach?

Really. Read all about it.

So - Can we expect this from Trump Pence-Mercer hand-picked head administrators?

Feed your head.

View the Whelan video to read the desktop accolade.

UPDATE: Whelan's other YouTube greatest hit. Critiqued.

FURTHER: Bernie. Weasels duck questions.

The question posed to Abigale Whelan was about tax havens. The public deserves quality, not divisive diversion, a/k/a weaseling. With Whelan having decided to not seek the seat again, may the successor show candor, and more importantly, wisdom instead of iron-willed off-point and divisive ideology.

FURTHER: Exit interview - Accomplishments.

RAMSEY: Vote in today's special election if you have not already.

There was early balloting. Today the polls are open in the evening.

7 a.m until 8 p.m. is a wide window for finding the time.

If you have any questions, all you need to know is posted at the City elections page. ("Quick links" giving detail.)

How to turn litmus paper decidedly red.

I do not know if it is still done by anal retentive Republican operatives but in the past they handed out litmus paper; a two-page loaded questionnaire to test the mettle of would be Republican office holders. It might have only been SD 35 doing so then, or Freedom Club, but somebody "winnowed" things with two pages of super narrow litmus paper implying precisely the answers wanted or in the alternative implicitly saying to go away. You could call it "little tent litmus paper."

From years back, person and year not mattering as much as generic impulse of the theme, the below question-and-answer loyalty oath monstrosity is presented as a true and accurate example of political imbecility:

Click each image to enlarge and read. '50's loyalty oaths were less onerous.

It is a bit dated in not asking which restroom a transexual individual should use.

Then the final step. Turn in your questionnaire in person humming "Yes, Jesus loves me" and wearing an expensive suit, Trump tie, and conspicuously sporting one of those made-for-the-GOP cloisonné flag lapel pins [made in China].

Another post on personalization of email contribution solicitations. Earlier Laura Moser in Texas was the focus. Her again, and then Lori Swanson, each with a differing approach.

MOSER: Previous Moser commentary, here. There a full email example was posted. Now, again:

This week, I wrote you about my experiences as a teenager with a heart condition, and how a combination of good timing, good geography, and good insurance helped save my life.

My twenties were a little rockier. When I suffered a comparatively minor injury to my shoulder in 2004, I no longer had the luxury of consistently high-quality health care. My husband, Arun, was also a freelancer, and also under-insured. He’d grown accustomed to spacing out doctors’ appointments and rationing pills for his ulcerative colitis.

As I’ve written before, our lives forever changed when Arun got a job working with then-Senator Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. That marked the first time in our adult lives that we’d had consistent access to high-quality health care.

We were grateful for that coverage -- and we were even more thrilled when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act. But we never for a second thought that the ACA was the end of the story. And although I haven’t asked him, I think President Obama would agree -- this fight is long from over.

Here’s what I think we need next:

- Medicare for All -- a single-payer system that covers all Americans
- An emphasis on preventative health-care measures
- Equal access to health care for everyone, including those with pre-existing conditions and disabilities

I’m the only candidate in the Texas 7th Congressional district who is fighting for a single-payer system. Will you stand with me by chipping in $5 to support our campaign?

Nobody should have to wait to get a new job in order to access health care in this country. Nobody should have to skip appointments or ration pills. It’s just that simple. And it can be that simple in Congress too, if we win this campaign together.

Thanks for everything, as always.

Your friend in the fight,

Laura Moser

[bolding and ActBlue solicitation link in original] A critique might be to have another bullet point about expanding VA bargaining power with drug companies over pricing to include all federal pharma purchasing by bargain.

SWANSON: An excerpt:

Attorney General Lori Swanson stands out as an authentic leader. Lori has built an office of talented people who have grit and determination. She recently secured the largest environmental recovery in Minnesota history (100 times the next largest recovery and the third largest of its kind in the nation’s history.) She was one of only two Attorneys General who initiated the lawsuit that stopped the unconstitutional travel ban last February. She has recovered over $100 million from pharmaceutical industry rip-offs. She is the only Attorney General to secure a verdict against a for-profit college that ripped off students. She is the only Attorney General to close down the largest credit card arbitration company. She is the only Attorney General to ban a bill collector from shaking down patients in hospital emergency rooms. She repeatedly prevailed against insurance companies that locked up the savings of senior citizens in long term and expensive investments.

Simply put, Lori has accomplished more than any Attorney General in the country.

Within the email Swanson touts an ad not yet on TV, but on the homepage

http://www.loriswanson.com/

Having noted the effectiveness of the Swanson email recitation, the ad she links to is a disappointment. It has bothersome obtrusive background music obscuring the message of effectiveness in office. (Claimed in the email as the committee's doing, you watch and ask: What effective thinking person would blare Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in Swanson's behalf?)

Setting a candidate apart from the herd is the point of advertising a candidate's appeal. Better than others in effectiveness is the heart of what needs saying. As done in the email.

If using a voiceover instead of Swanson herself speaking, it could parallel the email text with bullet items added one after the other onscreen as mentioned, since the message is to be to show an ongoing effectiveness pattern, special in its extensiveness and inclusiveness. The word "only" should receive emphasis by repeating.

The posted item is a dead-center-of-the-herd ad in styling and presentation; i.e., the ad is bad.

Perhaps a music-free opening, "Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson stands above the norm," as a beginning voiceover. When the ad hits on TV and viewers are getting up to grab a snack and a drink or to hit the pot, they will at least hear that instead of intrusive tonal dissonance.

Then Lori, stating her tout list, with each added as a bullet point on the screen as it gets mentioned, might work. Ending, perhaps with a voiceover, "There are other good Attorney Generals in the nation besides Minnesota's Lori Swanson, but why not stay when you have the best?" Yes the proper plural is "Attorneys General," but it is not what people say. And "stay" in the sentence will sound, with "stay with who you have" condensed that way and people on hearing "stay" subconsciously filling in the word. (Dog owners in particular would hear "stay" on TV as having multiple dimensions.)

Use this ActBlue page to assist Swanson's effort to hold the AG seat.

Back in 2008 there was Muslim bashing which, timewise, trumped Trump. It likely had to do with the "Obama=Muslim" smear, given timing. [ with UPDATING re the anti-establishment clause of the First Amendment of the federal Constitution]

If not knowing history the claim is a doom to repeat. This story remains online. We have today a legislative candidate with hubris enough, as an Iraq war veteran - a participant in an unneeded war where six-figure Muslim deaths resulted and five-figure American loss of life happened - openly campaigning on the web:

LIFE
I am Pro-Life. I believe in the sanctity of life at all stages. I will be a fierce protector of all innocent human life, including the unborn.

As a pacifist I find that to be morally dishonest from one who did Iraq not because he was like a Vietnam draftee not wanting to go to prison as an alternative, but as a volunteer for the activity in the Bush-Iraq situation. Whether any Iraqi was directly shot by the person, or not, volunteering for a killing-force venture - an invasion of another people's nation - seems disrespectful of "innocent human life, including the unborn." If saying "I will toe the party line on abortion hate," then dishonesty would not be a question.

Clearly, opinions can differ. But "sanctity of life at all stages" is strong language and it is fair to examine and question context.

UPDATE: The 2008 email is presented, and then critiqued and rebutted, this link. Authorship of the rebuttal is not posted, but at a guess it was not written by Katherine Kersten. That last Kersten-related link is to a David Brauer MinnPost 2008 item which interestingly concludes:

The bottom line: TIZA offers a plan, and the Ed Department agrees, subject to reasonable verification.

The Strib has occasionally provided supporting documentation for past Kersten columns, but it really needs to make that a habit when TIZA is involved. By definition, columnists aren’t your go-to folks for context, but given anti-Muslim fervor and acknowledged death threats, this is an especially hot button, punched for a story that seems to shrink as the weeks roll by.

(As has been true in the past, TIZA screws up by not engaging Kersten beyond a bland statement that, frankly, makes the school's case look weaker than the documentation suggests.)

There is, of course, delicious irony in Kersten, a small-government conservative, championing an offended bureaucrat. Crusades sometimes require marriages of convenience.

That’s not the column’s biggest irony, however: in her penultimate paragraph, Kersten approvingly quotes an Ed Department statement that “this upcoming legislative session may be an appropriate forum” for “a serious discussion about the appropriateness of sectarian organizations sponsoring publicly funded charter schools in the first place.”

Given that the bulk of those charters are Christian-sponsored ones Kersten has written about approvingly in the past, be careful what you wish for, Kate.

Yes, the unintended dog might respond to the dear lady's whistle. Yet to happen, it could. And should.

FURTHER: 2008 "news" can be a timely lesson. Kersten wrote:

March 9: Are taxpayers footing bill for Islamic school in Minnesota? -- Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA) -- named for the Muslim general who conquered medieval Spain -- is a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Its approximately 300 students are mostly the children of low-income Muslim immigrant families, many of them Somalis. - April 11, 2008 — 3:57pm - KATHERINE KERSTEN

[...] The school is in huge demand, with a waiting list of 1,500. Last fall, it opened a second campus in Blaine.

TIZA uses the language of culture rather than religion to describe its program in public documents. According to its mission statement, the school "recognizes and appreciates the traditions, histories, civilizations and accomplishments of the eastern world (Africa, Asia and Middle East)."

But the line between religion and culture is often blurry. There are strong indications that religion plays a central role at TIZA, which is a public school financed by Minnesota taxpayers. Under the U.S. and state constitutions, a public school can accommodate students' religious beliefs but cannot encourage or endorse religion.

TIZA raises troubling issues about taxpayer funding of schools that cross that line.

[...]

While also disapproving of tax money going to fund Islamic schooling, (perhaps even view it as Islamic indoctrination along with Kersten), the position here is taken out of respect for anti-establishment clause wording and intent within the First Amendment having the broadest of reasonable interpretation; which would reach the impropriety of public tax money going to fund Christian schooling, a/k/a Christian indoctrination. To any extent indoctrination funding is done via charter/voucher shenanigans, it is Unconstitutional. And that is so regardless of whether the Roberts Court might cook up excuse building. Public money to sectarian causes should never be or have been permitted by education watchdog public officials. Ditto this as Constitutionally offensive. Better now than then, the blot remains.

FURTHER: I would have no objection to a Charles Martel Academy locating itself next to TIZA as long as each is privately funded in whole and in all parts, and additional policing cost at the border of the two, if arising, would be compensated by the two private-sector parties instigating conflict, if any. That seems within the spirit of the anti-establishment clause, although private sector wisdom would suggest a distancing between any such pair of academies as best.

FURTHER: One more in the rebuttal parade.