June 1-5, 2017
Jun 01 08:59 Al Franken hearts Kathy Griffin Jun 02 09:16 Defining essential health benefits? Jun 02 14:16 Chuck Schumer, drama queen? Jun 03 13:28 Susan Rice, unhinged Jun 04 22:17 DFL intentional misdirection Jun 05 08:18 SCSU's leadership gap Jun 05 12:33 Gov. Dayton caves again Jun 05 23:22 Republicans playing hardball
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
Al Franken hearts Kathy Griffin
This article makes clear that Al Franken is as depraved as Kathy Griffin. In the article, Sen. Franken is asked whether "Griffin can recover from the controversy over her photo shoot that featured her holding up a bloody head resembling President Donald Trump." Without hesitating, Franken replied "I think she did the right thing asking for forgiveness and acknowledging that this was a horrible mistake, so I think she can."
Whether Griffin can recover is irrelevant. She's devoid of comedic talent who planned this stunt to boost her career as a political activist. Sen. Franken hurt his political career by saying that "he still plans to appear with Griffin in July as part of a promotion tour for his new book." Then Franken went too far by saying "Kathy's a friend and she's a terrific comedian , but this had no business being in our public discourse. And I talked to her. She has apologized -- a real, fulsome apology. She's actually begged for forgiveness, and I believe in forgiveness."
There's nothing sincere or heart-felt about Ms. Griffin's 'apology'. Ms. Griffin says that she pushed the envelope but that she cross the line. That isn't what happened. She intentionally planned this. What's worse is that Sen. Franken said that he's still planning on appearing in public with her:
I wish I could say I'm surprised but I'm not. Franken has always been a jerk with a temper. This isn't surprising considering who he's been and what he's done in the past. What's surprising is that Franken will be seen with Griffin in public. Right now, Griffin's approval rating is roughly the equivalent of ants at a picnic.
Posted Thursday, June 1, 2017 8:59 AM
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Defining essential health benefits?
When Mary Katherine Ham debated Chris Cuomo about health care, things got more than a little heated. Cuomo essentially insisted that these coverages needed to be part of the ACA because states weren't requiring health insurance companies to cover things.
Mary Katherine Ham questioned whether it was essential to require single men with no children to buy a health insurance policy with "pediatric dental". Cutting to the chase, it isn't important for single men to buy health insurance for pediatric dental. It only drives prices higher. It doesn't provide anything essential to single men. The better term might be 'required health coverage' because intrusive government requires this coverage.
The definition of essential is "absolutely necessary; indispensable." The definition of required is "to ask for authoritatively or imperatively; demand." It's clear that required is the better choice for this situation because the government is demanding that single men buy policies that have pediatric dental coverage.
Mary Katherine got justifiably upset with Cuomo during the interview:
Suffice it to say that Mary Katherine got the better of the exchanges.
Posted Friday, June 2, 2017 9:16 AM
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Chuck Schumer, drama queen?
The headlines in the media about President Trump and his decisions have been so over-the-top that they can't be believed. The latest headline that shows the Democrats' inability to connect with blue collar workers quotes Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying that President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement is "a devastating failure of historic proportions."
The truth is that few people will notice the difference.
In total, Sen. Schumer said "President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement is a devastating failure of historic proportions. Future generations will look back on President Trump's decision as one of the worst policy moves made in the 21st century because of the huge damage to our economy, our environment and our geopolitical standing."
Sen. Schumer is getting pushed around by the people behind the Resistance Movement. He doesn't believe the things he said. It's just that he's forced to say those things to keep the money coming in from those special interest groups. Republicans should highlight the fact that Sen. Schumer (and the rest of the Democrats) listen more intently to the special interests than they listen to Main Street:
It's becoming clear that the Democratic Party is the party of uncontrolled hysterics and the party of the special interests.
Posted Friday, June 2, 2017 2:16 PM
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Susan Rice, unhinged
Susan Rice's NYTimes op-ed is like her term as President Obama's NSA. It's dishonest, intellectually imprecise and long on bloviating.
For instance, Ms. Rice said "With shocking speed, he has wreaked havoc: hobbling our core alliances, jettisoning American values and abdicating United States leadership of the world." First, it's uncertain that Ms. Rice could identify America's core values. Next, it's impossible to picture anyone in the Obama administration understanding or exercising leadership on the world stage.
When President Trump brought together more than 50 Arab leaders together in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that was more leadership than the Obama administration did in 8 years in office. When President Trump told those leaders that the days of Iran's hegemony in the region were over, those leaders breathed a huge sigh of relief. Compare that with the Obama administration's overtures towards Iran, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, and their releasing $150,000,000,000 to Iran.
That isn't leadership. That's 21st century appeasement that Jimmy Carter would be proud of.
And now the president has pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, putting us at odds with virtually the entire world. Europe and China stand together on the Paris accord, while the United States is isolated.
Of course, China supports the Paris climate agreement. They don't have any major obligations for the next 20+ years. They get to continue polluting at obscene rates for the next quarter century. Meanwhile, the U.S. promises to continue cleaning the air. Why wouldn't China support such an agreement?
Further, China gets to keep building coal-fired power plants for the foreseeable future, thereby gaining a significant competitive advantage economically. It isn't surprising that we lost ground economically the last 8 years.
That's the face of dishonesty and appeasement. Listening to her will put you at risk.
Posted Saturday, June 3, 2017 1:28 PM
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DFL intentional misdirection
During Friday night's Almanac roundtable, Ellen Anderson hinted that Republicans delayed the 10 budget bills until the last minute in their attempt to force Gov. Dayton to sign bills that he didn't like to avoid a government shutdown. This is intentional dishonesty on multiple fronts.
First, Gov. Dayton hasn't hesitated in shutting down government. This was the third time he waited until a special session before agreeing to the budget. In 2015, Speaker Daudt worked out a bipartisan budget agreement with Senate majority Leader Bakk. Gov. Dayton still vetoed the budget bills. It's nonsense to hint that Gov. Dayton would hesitate in shutting down the government.
Next, the House and Senate had their budget targets established in late April. They invited Gov. Dayton to join them to start negotiations almost a month before the end of session. Gov. Dayton initially accepted the House's invitation, then late reneged on that commitment.
Gov. Dayton was directly at fault for everything going down to the last second, not the Republican legislature . Gov. Dayton isn't a leader. He's a lifelong politician. (BTW, so is Ellen Anderson. So is Tim Walz.) What Minnesota needs now is legitimate leadership. As long as Almanac interviews political hacks like Ellen Anderson and Mike Hatch, they'll be a B-list (or worse) political show.
Posted Sunday, June 4, 2017 10:17 PM
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SCSU's leadership gap
If anything shines through in this op-ed , it's that they're suffering from a long-term leadership gap. The way that's shown is by the repetition of MnSCU's chanting points. Specifically, I'm referring to when Angie Witte, part of the MSUAASF bargaining unit at St. Cloud State University, said that the decline in SCSU's enrollment is "unquestionably true that the decline has more to do with demographic changes in our state."
That's BS and Ms. Witte knows it. At the time that enrollment at SCSU was declining, enrollment was increasing at Metropolitan State and Mankato State. In fact, over the past 5 years, St. Cloud State's declines in enrollment were greater than all of the other MnSCU universities combined.
Ms. Witte also neglects to talk about the negative outmigration from Minnesota to North Dakota and Wisconsin over the past 10 years.
In her op-ed, Ms. Witte wrote "Everyone has been impacted: administrators, academic faculty, clerical, maintenance and student service professionals. All have experienced significant budget reductions and regardless, remain committed to student success." It's indisputable that these people have been affected at St. Cloud State . Thanks to the University losing millions of dollars on their lease with the Wedum Foundation the past 5+ years, huge budget cuts have been forced on faculty and other parts of the University staff.
These paragraphs are pure blather:
A college degree signifies more than just the completion of courses to satisfy graduation requirements. Universities that provide comprehensive, holistic student experiences which enhance leadership skills, communication skills, critical thinking, the ability to work independently as well in groups, problem solving, creativity, and personal and professional development will ultimately create stronger and wiser leaders and a responsive workforce while strengthening our communities.
These skills are attained through curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular engagement and mentorship with administrators, academic faculty, clerical, maintenance, and student service professionals throughout the entire campus.
This is what makes St. Cloud State University a vibrant and vital university capable of preparing students for life, work, and citizenship in the 21st century.
If SCSU is such a vibrant learning center, why isn't enrollment increasing? They're losing ground (dramatically) to Mankato.
It's time for new leadership at SCSU. Some might say it's time for leadership of any sort there. The late Earl Potter and Ashish Vaidya certainly haven't provided leadership.
Posted Monday, June 5, 2017 8:18 AM
Comment 1 by Crimson Trace at 06-Jun-17 11:16 AM
Great discussion about SCSU this morning on KNSI. Ryan did a great job taking Angie Wittie to task about her argument that changing demographics is to blame for SCSU's declining enrollments. The fact is that SCSU's enrollment decline had exceeded the total enrollment drop of the other 6 MnSCU campuses combined. That's not truly a demographic problem...that's a local university problem. When will our local legislators concern turn into action is the million dollar question.
Gov. Dayton caves again
It isn't surprising that Gov. Dayton caved to another special interest group this weekend. In a statement to illegal aliens, Gov. Dayton wrote "The un-Minnesotan provision that Republicans insisted be in the Public Safety Bill is divisive and destructive to all Minnesotans. I understand the anger, and share the very legitimate concerns, of Minnesota's immigrant communities, and will continue to fight with them to remove this hateful provision from state law. I will meet with members of our immigrant communities very soon to listen to their concerns and explore their suggestions to make Minnesota a more welcoming place for all people. As governor, I will continue to do all I can to protect our state's hard-working immigrant communities from the destructive immigration policies of the Trump Administration.'
That sounds nice but it doesn't mean a thing. Gov. Dayton signed the bill. Republicans won't change their mind. Illegal aliens won't get drivers licenses until there's a DFL majority in the House, a DFL majority in the Senate and a DFL governor. Based on how things are going, the next time there's a unified DFL majority government might be a decade away or more.
What's interesting is seeing the speed with which Gov. Dayton caved:
The groups, including ISAIAH and SEIU local 26, issued a statement Friday afternoon saying in part, 'We have held negotiations with the governor and have come to some agreements we know are necessary to keep our families safe. We have asked the governor to explore every last piece of executive power afforded to him to protect the community. We look forward to the governor honoring his commitment to continue to meet with the immigrant community directly.'
The other interesting thing worth highlighting is Gov. Dayton essentially saying that it's "un-Minnesotan" to obey the law. Think of how radical that statement is.
Posted Monday, June 5, 2017 12:33 PM
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Republicans playing hardball
Based on this article , it sounds like Republicans are planning on playing a little political hardball. After Gov. Dayton unconstitutionally vetoed most of the legislature's operating budget for the next biennium, Speaker Daudt spoke about Gov. Dayton's demands for another special session. Speaker Daudt said "I'm not going to sit down with the governor to renegotiate something he has already agreed to."
Gov. Dayton thinks that he's dealing from a position of strength. He's demanding that Republicans eliminate tax breaks on tobacco products, cancel changes to the state's estate tax that would impact Minnesotans who die with estates valued at more than $2 million, or farmers and businesses valued at more than $5 million, eliminate a freeze on statewide business property taxes, remove a measure that explicitly prevents undocumented Minnesota residents from obtaining a state driver's license and amend changes to the state's teacher licensure system that were included in the omnibus education finance bill.
In this post , I quoted from Gov. Dayton's letter about giving drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Gov. Dayton started the letter by saying "The un-Minnesotan provision that Republicans insisted be in the Public Safety Bill is divisive and destructive to all Minnesotans."
In that sentence, Gov. Dayton essentially stated that Minnesotans oppose following the rule of law. That's as asinine as the time he told St. Cloud residents they should leave the state:
Rest assured, those types of statements aren't playing well in Minnesota. If anything, they're alienating Minnesotans from the DFL. Further, Gov. Dayton's demands won't play well in rural Minnesota. If Gov. Dayton thinks he's helping the DFL with these statements, he's foolish. He's driving Minnesotans away.
Posted Monday, June 5, 2017 11:22 PM
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