October 1-11, 2015
Oct 01 16:53 McCaffrey: Putin made monumental mistake Oct 02 08:27 Cummings' outrageous op-ed Oct 02 23:01 Charles C.W. Cooke vs. President Obama Oct 05 07:56 Trump's slump starting? Oct 05 09:30 Dayton's latest diatribe telling Oct 06 06:51 Aplikowski signs TPL Pledge Oct 06 12:09 Potter the globetrotter Oct 08 13:03 Trump, the corrupt politician Oct 11 02:57 Thissen's big lie hides his extremism
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Prior Years: 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
McCaffrey: Putin made monumental mistake
Posted Thursday, October 1, 2015 4:53 PM
No comments.
Cummings' outrageous op-ed
Elijah Cummings, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee and the House Select Committee on Benghazi, penned this op-ed in an attempt to prove that Republicans hate women, especially Hillary Clinton. The first thing to know about Rep. Cummings is that he's an angry partisan back-bencher whose primary responsibility is to act angry and make outrageous statements. FYI- Rep. Cummings specializes in faux righteous indignation.
When the IRS scandal first broke, Rep. Cummings vowed to get to the bottom of things. The minute the Oversight Committee discovered that the Obama administration played a role in the scandal, though, he accused Republicans of conducting a partisan witch hunt. Rep. Cummings' vows to get to the bottom of the IRS' targeting of TEA Party organizations abruptly ended immediately.
Now he's back with another round of the Democrats' Republicans-hate-women campaign. Rep. Cummings' proof of the Republicans' alleged hatred of women stems from this boneheaded statement from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy:
'Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she's untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.'
The reason for forming the Benghazi Committee was and is to find out why Hillary Clinton didn't do everything she could've done to protect Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens' life. When terrorists blew a hole in the compound wall big enough to literally drive a truck through, Stevens requested that Hillary beef up security forces and fix the hole in the wall.
Instead of fixing the hole and adding security staff, she ignored the hole and reduced security staff.
The real question before the committee is to figure out why Hillary Clinton was either so cold-hearted that she didn't care about security in Benghazi while terrorist activity was increasing or whether Hillary was just that blissfully ignorant and incompetent that she didn't do what was required of her to keep her personnel safe.
Rep. Cummings knows that. In his job of being Nancy Pelosi's attack dog, though, he just can't admit that.
Posted Friday, October 2, 2015 8:27 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 02-Oct-15 11:01 AM
Why is it so hard for progressives to point out their members faults or disown their own like conservatives will do when a member does something wrong? Oh that's right, the ends justify the means from progressives.
Hillary doesn't care about anyone but herself. Cold-hearted, didn't care, blissfully ignorant, and incompetent pretty much sum up Ms. Clinton and the progressives all know it yet refuse to do anything about it.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 02-Oct-15 05:10 PM
They have a lengthy list of lack-of-character witnesses for Hillary. BTW, the Clintons haven't been getting out of jams all their lives. Bill Clinton has been getting out of jams all of his life. That's because he's somewhat likable. Hillary hasn't gotten out of scandals because she's, simply put, a bitch.
Charles C.W. Cooke vs. President Obama
It's a good thing for President Obama that Charles C.W. Cooke doesn't have a megaphone as big as the president's. If he did, Mr. Cooke would've already have given the constitutional law professor the beating in mock court that he deserves. This post totally obliterates President Obama's gun control arguments.
Cooke quotes President Obama from the president's press conference as saying "We know other countries in response to one mass shooting have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours, Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it." Shortly thereafter, Cooke demolishes that statement, saying that "Contrary to the president's implications, Britain and Australia are not 'countries like ours' when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms; they are completely, utterly, extraordinarily different. When the British government banned handguns in 1997, there were fewer than half a million in circulation."
The question President Obama doesn't want to get confronted with is how he figures nations that confiscate guns are like ours. The good news for President Obama is that the Praetorian Guard media will do its utmost to protect him from pesky questions like that. The bad news is that people in the heartland know the difference between nations that outright confiscate guns and the United States. That's because the difference is quite dramatic.
This exchange is dramatic:
Frankly, Mr. Cooke let Mark Halperin paint himself into a corner. Once that'd happened, the debate was over.
Posted Friday, October 2, 2015 11:01 PM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 04-Oct-15 07:54 AM
It's really no surprise that someone with actual intelligence could poke holes in Obama's BS. This is just another chance for the poser in chief to throw out misinformation to the low information voter. Never let a crisis go to waste you know.
Trump's slump starting?
Donald Trump has defied political gravity this entire summer. No matter what offensive thing he said, no matter who he offended, Mr. Trump's poll numbers stayed high or, sometimes, increased. Based on this NBC-Wall Street Journal-Marist poll , that incredible run appears to have ended in both Iowa and New Hampshire.
This poll doesn't appear to show that Mr. Trump's numbers have leveled off. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Trump's numbers have dropped -- significantly. Iowa's results highlight this perfectly. In this month's poll, Mr. Trump leads with 24%, followed by Dr. Ben Carson with 19%, Carly Fiorina with 8%, Jeb Bush with 7%, with Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal getting 6% each. That's a sharp drop-off from September's poll, which had Mr. Trump leading with 29%, Dr. Carson with 22%, Jeb Bush with 6% and Carly Fiorina and Rand Paul with 5% each.
It doesn't get better for Mr. Trump in New Hampshire:
It isn't coincidence that Trump got exposed at the last debate as not having much of a command of the issues, especially compared with Marco Rubio and Carly Fiorina. Put differently, Mr. Trump is failing the 'commander-in-chief test'.
In interviews afterwards, Mr. Trump said he didn't want to say what, specifically, he'd do in the Middle East because he wanted Putin and Assad to worry what he'd do. It sounded to many like he was dodging the question because he didn't have a plan.
Mrs. Fiorina in particular didn't have a problem telegraphing her strategy. In Mrs. Fiorina's case, she wanted Putin to know what things she'd do to Russia if she became president.
Posted Monday, October 5, 2015 7:56 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 09-Oct-15 11:46 AM
They haven't yet even started the mud slinging ads, and polls show fickle short term momentary preferences.
On the Republican side, learn to like John Ellis "Jeb!" Bush. Each party will have its organized elite doing a cramdown. It will be an unpleasant offering, each party. Situation normal ...
Dayton's latest diatribe telling
Gov. Dayton's latest diatribe is telling because of what he didn't complain about. According to the article, "Gov. Mark Dayton is criticizing Republicans' call to abolish MNsure as a way to counter hefty health insurance hikes."
Nowhere in his hissy fit did Gov. Dayton or Lt. Gov. Smith complain about health insurance premiums being to expensive for Minnesota families to afford. Gov. Dayton and Lt. Gov. Smith haven't complained that deductibles are high or that the ACA's mandated coverages are driving up the price of insurance premiums.
While it's true that abolishing MNsure wouldn't drive down insurance premiums, it would eliminate a cost from the budget. The last I looked, that should be a priority for the legislature and the governor.
If taxpayers are paying for something and not getting much out of it, then that should be a prime target for elimination. If Gov. Dayton and the DFL insists on keeping MNsure around while taxpayers pay huge premium increases, that'll tell Minnesotans that they're more worried about their ideology than they're worried about Minnesota families.
Good luck for the DFL if that's the hill they're willing to fight for. They'll need it.
Posted Monday, October 5, 2015 9:30 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 05-Oct-15 06:21 PM
Taxpayers spent millions if not billions on state run exchanges that essentially duplicated what the federal government was doing. It should have either been all up to the states or all up to the fed's to have the exchange, not both. As for it being a priority for Gov. Goofy - we won't find out what his priorities will be until a month before the session ends and then those priorities will change about a dozen times.
Response 1.1 by Gary Gross at 06-Oct-15 06:57 AM
Chad, I dig ya man but you aren't cynical enough.
Aplikowski signs TPL Pledge
Before getting into the heart of this post, and in the interest of full disclosure, I've called Andy Aplikowski friend for most of my blogging life, which started in November, 2004. I first met Andy when he was blogging at Kennedy vs. the Machine, which was in 2006. That means that I'm definitely biased for Andy.
With that said, it's time to get to the heart of the matter. Andy is running to replace Branden Petersen as the senator representing District 35. As with all districts and candidates, the Taxpayers League of Minnesota and the Americans for Tax Reform have asked candidates to sign their "Taxpayer Protection Pledges." Last night, the Aplikowski for Senate campaign issued this statement:
'We don't have a revenue problem in Minnesota, we have a priority problem. The reason Minnesota is climbing to the top of the list of highest taxed states is because of our addiction to spending. That is why I was the first candidate to have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledges with both the Americans for Tax Reform and the Taxpayers League of Minnesota. We must be honest with Minnesotans about long-term sustainable budgeting solutions instead of the spend and tax policies that have grown the state budget 30 percent in the last 5 years.'
Andy is right. We're taxed too much already. Taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill while Gov. Dayton and Sen. Bakk ship money to corrupt organizations like Community Action Partnership of Minneapolis . Here's how Community Action Partnership spent the taxpayers' money:
Auditors blamed Community Action's board, which includes several well-known politicians and community leaders, for a lack of oversight and for personally benefiting from $34,892 worth of activities that 'do not appear to serve a business purpose, and are considered waste and abuse as defined in state policy.'
Those activities included two weekend trips, between 2011 and 2013, to Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria, where board members and senior management spent $9,000 for lodging, $3,200 for food and $900 for spas. Davis defended the trips as a 'small gesture on our part to offer them a moment of relaxation or entertainment. It's not like we do this every single week of the year.'
The Andy Aplikowski that I've known for almost a decade would be a force for good as the taxpayers' watchdog.
Andy didn't stop with signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledges:
Additionally, Aplikowski signed the pledge against any new gas tax increase in the 2016 legislative session. 'Whoever wins this special election will serve in 2016. Increasing the gas tax is a potential policy that may face votes in committee and even on the Senate floor. I promise to find other methods than a gas tax to deliver real transportation solutions to the district and to the state. Safe roads and bridges are not a luxury, and demanding another $300 million from drivers for one of government's main responsibilities is unacceptable.'
I don't have a vote in the matter. If I did, though, I'd cast it for Andy. If taxpayers want an advocate on their side, I strongly recommend they vote for Andy Aplikowski.
Posted Tuesday, October 6, 2015 6:51 AM
Comment 1 by eric z at 11-Oct-15 11:15 AM
If you have a convenient web link for the Aplikowski campaign, and for its "news" web page where press releases are posted, could you post the link(s)?
Also, with Harold Hamilton chair of the Taxpayer League, does this mean that Anoka County Record will be endorsing Andy? If you know or have heard any info? They may have endorsed him already. I do not know.
Potter the globetrotter
Tomorrow, President Potter leaves for his third international trip of the year. He's heading for Malaysia, Cambodia and Australia. Monday morning, he sat down for a wide-ranging conversation with Jay Caldwell of WJON. The subject turned to the trip at about the 10:00 mark. Here's a partial transcript of President Potter's explanation of what they'll be doing during the trip:
Potter: On Wednesday, I'm leaving on a 10-day trip to Malaysia, Cambodia and Australia. In Malaysia, that has long been a place from students have come to St. Cloud State and we have a strong alumni body in Malaysia and we'll have our second -- we had one two years ago -- alumni gathering and we had 60 at the last gathering and we'll sign a couple of new agreements while we're there to send students to St. Cloud State. Then we're going to visit a manufacturing plant operated by the St. Jude Medical Devices, one of their many plants around the world. We've been in conversation with them here as for the internships for students born here in the United States and students who come to us from Malaysia and go back and be in their workforce.This is disgraceful. First, St. Cloud State is running a huge deficit. Next and more importantly, 15 SCSU librarians had the number of duty days reduced by 20 days each this year. In some of these cases, that was a $10,000 pay cut.
Then in Cambodia, the embassy has set up some visits for us to universities there because the United States is interested in increasing student traffic from Cambodia to the US and we have a good reputation in Southeast Asia and we've been invited to do that work and we're also doing the work to broaden our focus on genocide beyond the Holocaust and what Europe did in World War II to those other areas of the world where there have been other major genocides like Rwanda and now the killing fields of Cambodia.
QUESTION: Does President Potter think that the definition of shared sacrifice mean that others make sacrifices and he feels their pain while on expensive international trips?
The Faculty Senate passed a resolution recommending no more international travel. In the spirit of teamwork, President Potter ignored this resolution. Joe Biden once famously said that "a leader without any followers is just a man out for a walk." In this instance, Potter is that man. The only difference is that this man is out for an expensive international trip on the taxpayers' dime.
Posted Tuesday, October 6, 2015 1:05 PM
No comments.
Trump, the corrupt politician
When Bret Baier asked Donald Trump about his opinion of eminent domain, Mr. Trump said that "eminent domain is a wonderful thing" before saying that eminent domain should be used to get "holdouts" to sell their property.
Now Mr. Trump is dramatically changing his answer to sound less like a big government liberal .
During his interview with Bret Baier, Mr. Trump described a situation where the developer had purchased "11 or 12 parcels" but one "holdout" wouldn't sell. Mr. Trump argued that the developer, who wants to create a big factory employing thousands of people, should be able to use eminent domain to boot the private property owner out of their home. Now that he's at the center of a conservative firestorm, Trump's retreating, saying that "You can't build a road without eminent domain. In order to survive as a country, how you can not have roads?"
That's classic liberal backtracking. It's no different than Hillary Clinton saying that she doesn't support the TPP that she negotiated. Mr. Trump knows that nobody in the conservative movement objects to the use of eminent domain to build roads or other pieces of infrastructure. That isn't controversial.
The right to be secure in your property is a fundamental right guaranteed by our Constitution. It's the foundation of our capitalist system. Mr. Trump thinks that taking a person's property isn't a big deal if it's for the greater good, as long as he's the determiner of what the greater good is.
That's just a different way of saying that the ends justify the means. Either way, this proves that Trump isn't the man (or woman) of integrity we need in the White House. Having a president who would appoint justices that reinforce Kelo v. New London ruling
Posted Thursday, October 8, 2015 1:03 PM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 09-Oct-15 07:46 AM
Hummm, sounds like Trump has been taking lessons from Hillary on how to flip flop. The chaff is slowly being separated from the wheat in the GOP race and hopefully people will realize that Trump is nothing but chaff.
On a side note, isn't it funny that mother earth has more rights than a property owner? They won't build a road through a swamp but they'll force the adjacent land owner to sell so they can build the road "for the public good".
Comment 2 by eric z at 09-Oct-15 11:40 AM
The earth, apart from cosmic time scales is eternal.
You are not. You, Chad Q, are only a short term steward of land. You could make a pile of money letting your home's yard be used for toxic waste disposal. Don't you have that right? After all, you own it.
Get real.
The Fifth Amendment says no federal deprivation of property without due process of law.
What your right is, is to due process. Bounds and nuances of which are adjudicated. A body of law grows and evolves.
Comment 3 by Chad Q at 10-Oct-15 01:04 PM
Oh Eric I am real and I take care of my land (more than just a City lot by the way)a lot better than most or all of the tree hugging, yogurt and sprout eating hippies do and no I could not turn my land into a toxic waste dump (nor would I want to) unless the law "grows and evolves" to allow me to do so.
Due process eh? Due process only works if you have the money fight. City's and corporations have almost endless supplies of money to force people to sell their land for "the public good". Go ask those who were forced out of their homes where the current Best Buy HQ is. Where was the public good there?
Comment 4 by eric z at 11-Oct-15 11:08 AM
Chad Q, you argue about a clear bias in the legal system.
It is one that should be fixed. Do any of the politicians care about the high cost of litigating? It seems to be nobody's front burner issue, yet many have fallen into the cash hungry process. Few liking the process, except those using it as a club to cudgel others.
In Ramsey where I live, the town has been generous to a fault in its willingness to pay and to accommodate landowners. There was one guy with a wife on council who fought road right-of-way awards, and the town settled favorably to the individual, rather than go to trial. After substantial pretrial discovery ran the meter up, the hired law firm and town administration chose to settle. Then later a council member sold a liquor store to the town for a Highway 10 interchange improvement, and got a satisfactory award, not choosing to litigate or contest it. Not every town low-balls. In fact, since it is public money being spent, over-generous pay outs are a fault. Spending public money on a public power can be penurious or it can be overly favorable to some, if not all, in land acquisitions.
Since it is money from taxpayers, the trust should be that officials will seek a Goldilocks offer. One just right. Now, without council memberships in a family, would a Ramsey use of eminent domain be as generous? That is a hypothetical, or I suggest it is so.
Thissen's big lie hides his extremism
It doesn't surprise people that know him that Rep. Paul Thissen is telling whoppers again. In his op-ed in the St. Cloud Times , Rep. Thissen insists that Republicans promised to expand broadband during the 2014 campaign. That's a whopper and Thissen knows it. What's worse is that he knows it. What's worst is that he knows it's a whopped but he doesn't care that he's repeating the lie all throughout outstate Minnesota.
Thissen's op-ed is filled with BS. First, Rep. Thissen said "Many people in greater Minnesota began this year with high hopes given the promises Republican legislators made on the campaign trail." What's noticeably absent from that statement was that Republicans promised a massive investment in outstate broadband. Next, Rep. Thissen said "Despite a $2 billion surplus, the Republican-led House did not continue this commitment to rural broadband access in 2015. They initially zeroed-out our state's broadband investment and ended up putting just $10 million into our broadband program. They also proposed to eliminate the Office of Broadband Development."
Republicans put a higher priority on fixing Minnesota's roads and bridges than they put on outstate broadband. Still, Republicans invested $10,000,000 in expanding broadband service. It's intellectually dishonest to say that Republicans don't care about an issue because they won't spend as much money on a budget item as the DFL will.
What's disgusting, though utterly predictable, is Rep. Thissen's claim that Republicans' "top priority last session was massive tax breaks that benefit large corporations and businesses..." That's total BS. I contacted Greg Davids, the chair of the House Taxes Committee. He literally wrote the House tax bill. Here's what Chairman Davids said when I told him about the DFL's statement that his tax bill benefited "large corporations":
"My bill does not do that. Eighty percent goes to individuals. Tax relief is for the middle class.... My tax bill is tax relief for the poor and middle class."
If Rep. Thissen isn't willing to state in print that Chairman Davids is a liar about this, then he should stop with this "massive tax breaks that benefit large corporations and businesses" shtick.
Minnesota deserves principled, honest leadership. Rep. Thissen isn't honest. He's repeatedly proven that he won't hesitate in telling whoppers if he thinks that'll return him to the majority. It isn't a stretch to think that he's jealous of the positive press Kurt Daudt received this year as Speaker. Rejecting Thissen's lies would be a great first step to maintaining a Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
Speaker Daudt was a profile in leadership last year. That's how he and Sen. Bakk put together a bipartisan budget agreement. That's a budget that the House DFL didn't vote for. The House DFL voted nearly in unanimity against the Daudt-Bakk bipartisan budget.
That makes Rep. Thissen and the House DFL the extremists who didn't even agree with their DFL colleagues in the Senate.
UPDATE: Rep. Ron Kresha's op-ed demolishes Rep. Thissen's accusations. First, there's this:
Led by a strong coalition of Greater Minnesota GOP legislators, rural broadband access will continue to be a priority. In 2015, Minnesota invested $10 million for the first half of the biennium (compared to $0 invested by the DFL in the first year of their two year term in 2013-2014) and recently $80 million in Connect America funds were announced for Minnesota.
GOP legislators, private broadband companies, and federal funds are coming together to strengthen our rural broadband and I anticipate Minority Leader Thissen of Minneapolis will have an opportunity next session to support additional investments - I hope this time Democrats will join us in supporting additional resources.
Rep. Thissen's getting a lesson in 'facts are stubborn things'. It's a way of highlighting the fact that Rep. Thissen doesn't put a high priority on honesty, which supports my contention that he's qualified to work for the Alliance for a Better Minnesota.
Rep. Thissen said that the Republicans' "top priority last session was massive tax breaks that benefit large corporations and businesses..." Here's Rep. Kresha's response was to that:
The tax bill that Democrats blocked earlier this year would have provided tax relief aimed at middle-class families, college students, farmers, and parents with young children. Our bill repealed the state tax on social security and military benefits so our retirees and veterans can keep more of the money they rightfully earned.
The last I looked, middle class families and college students aren't the same as "large corporations."
Originally posted Sunday, October 11, 2015, revised 13-Oct 11:18 AM
Comment 1 by Chad Q at 11-Oct-15 08:00 AM
First off, does anyone pay attention to what Thissen has to say anymore? The guy is a know BS artist who spews lie after lie.
Second, whether it is true or not, why are we as taxpayers spending a dime to bring broadband to ma and pa out in the sticks? There are services like DSL, cellular, and satellite that will give ma and pa high speed so they can watch Netflix. If it was worth it to for the private business to bore, trench, or aerial the broadband, they'd do it on their own but it's not. Maybe we should force Menard's, Target, and Cub to build stores in the sticks so these same people have the same convenience as the city folk do too.
Lastly, the DFL is more the party of big business than the GOP is so I'm not sure what Thissen is talking about. If anyone wants proof of that, they have to look no further than MNSure.
Comment 2 by eric z at 11-Oct-15 10:51 AM
Molehill.
Not a mountain.
Comment 3 by Rex Newman at 12-Oct-15 09:32 PM
As Chad Q notes, service - good service - is available statewide, at competitive prices from multiple providers. And its getting better and cheaper every year, unlike (almost?) every other service the government provides.
