Category Archives: 2022 Election

Fundy Christians, MAGAjerks, Proud Boys, School and Library Board Members, Ban-Burning Books

2022 Election, 2024 Election, Books, Education, MAGA terrorism, Minnesota, Politics, , , ,
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I use the word “burning” metaphorically. But it might as well be literal. If you ban a list of books in a system of libraries, the libraries have a bunch of recycling to do, and eventually … to the county incinerator go the books.

Book Man
In fact, I give you no truck, no room, no wiggle-space, if you even look at a book funny, because that is how it starts. I am champion of the books, all the books, and I am not alone, not by a long shot.

Here is a recent, disturbing, but typical example. Christians in Boundary County, Idaho, mobbed the local public library board, demanding the removal of a large number of books, including Gender Queer: A Memoir* by Maria Kobabe**, a book the library did not actually have.

These thugs intimidated the administrator of the libaries, Kimber Glidden, into resignation, in which she noted:

“My experience and skill set made me a good fit to help the district move toward a more current and relevant business model and to implement updated policy and best practices. However nothing in my background could have prepared me for the political atmosphere of extremism, militant Christian fundamentalism, intimidation tactics, and threatening behavior currently being employed in the community.”

Gidden told reporters at Route Fifty that “If [this] was really about banning books, we’d have to have the books.” Food for thought. They don’t care about the books, they only care about being bullies, and intimidating people who love books, and the kids the books are there for.

In another case, MAGA-Republicans and Fundy-Christians took over the Lafayette, Louisiana library last year and this happened:

  • The library board rejected a grant to fund a program about voting rights, saying it was too left wing.
  • A display about Pride Month was cancelled, and today library displays are forbidden about any distinctive group — even French Cajun culture, of which Lafayette is the unofficial capital.
  • And this summer, when a popular librarian, Cara Chance, ignored that order and put up a display that included queer teen romance books, the board tried to fire her.

The actual police showed up at the Granbury High library in Granbury Texas to investigate a complaint made by book-burning-fundies last May. Five books were subsequently removed from the library shelves. The removal of these books was targeted harassmement of Trans students and other non-heteronormative-binary people by the school admins. This sort of thing has caused loss of life among school children. Even in relatively liberal Minnesota suburbs, a school board member went out of his way to indicate his discomfort with non-heteronormative school children, as noted in this LTE written by Yours Truly:

Plymouth Sun Sailor, Aug 11, 2022.

Locally, where the Jay Hesby problem recently emerged, we have an open seat on the Wayzata School District board. Hesby is one of a few candidates running. Sheila Prior, an active member of the school community especially interested in reading education, is also running, and she is by a gazillion miles my choice for the upcoming special election. (Feel free to visit her web site and donate ten bucks or more to this great cause. I just did!)

I gets scarier. Recently in the Reno Nevada area, suited up members of the “Proud Boys” (I call them Cucked Children) actually entered a library to disrupt a children story time because they did not like the book that was being read. They did the same thing near San Francisco, South Bend, Indiana, and Woodland California. There was violence. Over books. At events involving children. Derek Chauvin got extra time on his murder sentence because he carried out violence in the presence of children. For christakes.

Notes:
-* Links to books on Amazon help support this blog, see note below
-** From the publisher:

2020 ALA Alex Award Winner
2020 Stonewall — Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Then e created Gender Queer. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fan fiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: It is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

This special deluxe hardcover edition of Gender Queer features a brand-new cover, exclusive art and sketches, a foreword from ND Stevenson, Lumberjanes writer and creator of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and an afterword from Maia Kobabe.


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Democrats are the good guys. Extremists MAGA Republicans are the bad guys.

2022 Election
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There. I said it. But you probably already knew it.

Democrats like health, Republicans prefer misery and death

All of our recent improvements in health care have come from Democratic administrations, including the most recent expansion of the ACA by Joe Biden, to add 5,800,000 new customers.

The MAGA Republicans hate health care, and do everything they can to take it away from us. Remember, it was the first Republican effort to kill Obamacare that caused the uprising known today as Indivisible.

Democrats protect and nurture rights and dignity while Republicans are misogynistic anti-freedom creeps

Years of progressive activism brought us to a point where women’s bodily autonomy was guaranteed, we can marry whom we love, and we recognize the widespread rights of dignity and freedom of choice.

Then the Republican-packed Supreme Court took that away and threatens to do worse, while extremist Republican governors and legislatures across the country are doubling down on enslaving women and taking away basic human rights.

Democrats = the good guys.
Republicans = the bad guys.
Vote Blue, in Minnesota vote DFL.


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Terrorism has a color and the color is red

2022 Election, Violence and Guns
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President Biden, like his Democratic predecessor President Obama, killed the number one foreign terrorist leader in the world (not personally, of course).

Meanwhile, MAGA President formed and expanded the largest terrorist organization to operate in and attack the US ever, which most recently produced a stochastic attack on the FBI.

One of the MAGA_GOP candidates went so far as to publicly call out the FBI so he could kill some of them:

Meanwhile, the gun-nut lobby, a largely MAGA Republican production, and it’s fundraising branch known as the NRA, kill tens of thousands of Americans a year.


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Republicans break, Democrats fix

2022 Election
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Democrats build, Extremist Republicans prefer rot

It has become axiomatic that Democrats build infrastructure (this has been true of northern Democrats since the time of Lincoln, and those northern democrats voted for Abe). This continues with the largest infrastructure bill ever, which is changing the face of our country for the better. Much of that infrastructure upgrade is required because of MAGA Republican neglect. Republicans like bridges that collapse. Democrats build bridges to the future.

The Biden Economic Recovery is developing at a rapid pace, outpacing previous Democratic administration recoveries such as the Obama-Biden recovery of 2009. In Minnesota, DFLers proposed important infrastructure upgrades and the extremist Republcian Senators who ruin everything good have put a halt to that. Speaking of infrastructure, you should check out my Senator, DFLer Ann Johnson Steward’s infrastructure shorts, mainly on You Tube. (Note, in Minnesota, the word “ramp” is used for “elevated parking garage.” We don’t often refer to highway ramps, but sometimes call them “metered ramps.”) Continue reading Republicans break, Democrats fix →


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Turns out you can buy less misery

2022 Election, Education, Environment, Politics
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Over the last year and a half, the Democratic White House and Congress carried out an amazingly successful experiment in small scale personal guaranteed income, with the expanded Child Tax Credit and similar programs. Democratic Governor Walz in Minnesota has been trying to do something similar.

Minnesota Extremist Republicans have not only fought tooth and nail the famous “Walz Checks,” they also left billions of dollars in federal money on the table, a huge state surplus that could be used to fund education, give money back to families, and do other good things, for one reason only: to have a bigger and better hissy fit than otherwise possible.

Demand the extremist Republicans running the Minnesota Senate either do their jobs or step aside. Then, even if they do (they won’t) vote them out in November.

Vote #DFL. For example, these candidates.


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Climate Chaos is an existential disaster caused by Republicans

2022 Election, MAGA terrorism
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Democratic President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress passed the biggest climate change fixing legislation ever passed in this country, or in any country, in history.

Extremist Republican Former President (Biden won) under investigation for stealing, retaining, documents that were not supposed to leave the White House.
The same week, we discovered that the former MAGA Republican president and his cronies apparently stole highly classified documents, including some related to nuclear weapons, lied to the FBI about having those documents, and then pretended that the FBI planted the documents, which he had previously de-classified (in his own head).


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All Minnesota Republicans Have Extremist Anti-Women Positions

2022 Election, Politics, , ,
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GOP Extremist Erik Mortensen
“Mortensen [invited] Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison to his home for a Thanksgiving weekend party last year during the pandemic, in defiance of public health orders at the time that discouraged … gathering to limit the spread of COVID-19.” -Minnesota Reformer
As far as I can tell.

Want me to go over them one at a time? OK, fine.

Let’s start with The Mort.

Republican Minnesota House representative Erik “The Mort” Mortensen (Shakopee area, southeast of the Twin Cities)* wants all civil and legal rights granted to a fertilized human egg. Mortensen only barely won his most recent race, and is running for re-election against Brad Tabke, DFL endorsed**. Marijuana candidate Ryan Martin is also running in this race, and is likely to spoil the election for the DFL as he did last time, allowing a rabid anti-abortion member back into the house (and forestalling the legalization of Marijuana***).

Mortensen has staked out his position on abortion very clearly in legislation he has introduced: He intends to control women’s reproductive choice by using a draconian law, and will do so if the Extremist Republicans running in the North Star state take over the government.

GOP Extremist Erik Mortensen
Mortensen recently got into trouble for doxx’ing a fellow legislator in the Minnesota house. A DFL woman, of course. He has no sense of boundary or respect.
If you want to protect reproductive rights in Minnesota, consider helping out Brad Tabke in this key race. If you want to see Marijuana legalized in Minnesota, do not support the legalize marijuana candidate, that won’t do it.

There are Republicans who will tell you that Mortensen is not so much one of theirs. He has, in fact, been in big trouble with the Minnesota Republican caucus (in the house), but not because of his extreme policy views. Rather, he has complained openly to and about the Republican leadership, and how they handle the process of making sausage, er, laws, from bills. Mortensen, in effect, knows nothing about how the legislative process works, so when he sees something he does not understand, he thinks about it carefully and learns, becomming a better person. Only kidding. What he actually does is to go off the handle and complain. He is not smart enough to figure out what to actually get mad at vs. what to learn from.

The problem with the MN GOP washing their hands of Mort is that Mort is right on board policy wise, and is a leader in the anti-choice movement within the Party of Strong Dislike****. The abiding truth is that the Republican Party has a single position on each issue, and it is easily discerned: Whatever makes liberals cry. In this case, as they see it, taking away the rights from each and every woman and giving those rights to a cell.

GOP Extremist Erik Mortensen
Mortensen drew an HR complaint on his first day on the House Floor when he spoke inappropriately to two DFL women, one of which happened to be Speaker. What an offensive dummy.
*Fort those outside of Minnesota, that’s Erik with a “K,” which goes along with Mortensen with an “en,” and the town is not “Shake -0- pea” (like when you make a veggie smoothie with legumes) but rather “Shock -a- pee” (like when you are shocked about something and have to pee). We also pronounce the K in Knute and Knife. Well, one of those anyway.

** DFL is Minnesotan for “Democratic Party.”

*** Yes, there appear to have been times when a Republican faked being a legalize Marijuana candidate in order to help another Republican win, though I’m not saying this is the case here. But it is. This particular candidate, Ryan Martin, is known to be a Republican and has ties to a known spoiler of this nature who ran for Congress in Minnesota’s second Congressional district.

****(Minnesotan for “hate.”)

Sources:
New House Republican caucus gives Shakopee lawmaker the boot

Shakopee GOP lawmaker doxxes DFL colleague in Facebook post, could face ethics complaint

Freshman Shakopee lawmaker jokes about getting HR complaint on first day

Emergence of ‘Mort’ draws scrutiny of race where pot candidate pulled votes


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We Commemorated January 6th

2022 Election, MAGA terrorism, Politics
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And by “we” I mean “they” not “I” because of Covid related issues and childcare. But we all were there in spirit.

All around the country, people from a wide swath of the political spectrum, but mostly Centrists, Liberals, Progressives and such, gathered in various places but usually near the seats of government, and in various manners memorialized the attempted coup staged by failed twice impeached Republican President Trump and his white supremacist terrorist allies on the street and in the halls of Congress. This coup is still in progress. The roots of the coup go back father in time. We are still fighting it. But January 6th is the convenient date for the opening salvo, the Fort Sumter of the current culture war turned Civil Rift.

The people who went to these event did not break into their government buildings. They did not threaten to murder elected officials. They did not destroy property. They did not beat up police officers. They did not kill or injure anybody. To the right wing, that makes them chumps, but to us, who make up the core of our democracy, that makes them True Americans.

Meanwhile, the Right Wing mostly sat around simpering. The leaders and organizers called for celebration, but no one moved a muscle, no one showed up. Perhaps they are embarrassed. Perhaps the illegality of it all dawned on them, and they didn’t want to make their situations worse. Perhaps their more sensible spouses, friends, parents, kids, told them to take it down a notch and go back out to their porn-decorated garages and pretend to work on their motorcycles. Probably all of those reasons pertain.

We commemorated January 6th with a time honored democratic process. We stood on soap boxes, yelled and sang. (Again, by “we” I mean the great and brave “they” and I thank them.) Later we will work for campaigns and vote. It is undemocratic to physically attack and try to kill those with whom we disagree. That is literally the definition of terrorism. Democracy and terrorism do not mix.

Please consider writing a letter to your local paper that says something nice about democracy, some time over the next few weeks.


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Justice will be slow for the Republican crooks.

2022 Election, 2024 Election, Politics
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On February 14th, 2018, Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people and wounded another 17, at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. According to reports. Alleged, not proven. Yet.

The fourth anniversary of this horrific event, which had absolutely zero impact on gun related policy or legislation because we live in a country where the slaughter of innocents is a day to day event that we expect and do not care about, at the level of government (stop pretending that we might, folks, just admit who we are) will occur a few weeks before Cruz’s trial starts.

Filmed, countless witnesses. It happened. He did it (sue me, Cruz). But the judicial process goes so slowly that the dead children would have been in their early 20s (or almost so) had he not killed them, by the time sentence is passed on this murderer.

When we ask why the Department of Justice has not thrown the Trump Gang into prison yet, we might remind ourselves that justice is as slow as molasses. We might also note that this is in large part by design. We are supposed to have expedient justice, but the system allows the accused to put on the brakes at many points. Trump and his gang have the clout to pump the brakes so many times that a simple procedure can take six months. A mass murder suspect apparently has similar abilities. Other trials are started sooner. Duante Wright was murdered by a Brooklyn Center police officer on April 11 2021, and Officer Potter was convicted just a few days ago, all within one year. George Floyd was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25th, 2020, and convicted almost exactly one year later, though other defendants in that case still await trial.

So big bad things can take a year to reach a settlement, or they can take 4 years. We are coming up on 2 years for the start of full on investigation of the Trump Gang, which we assume was hampered during the entire period of the Trump Dictatorship. So maybe we should start seeing results (or more results, there have been a few results) soon.

I’m not complaining, I’m just calibrating. Specifically, I’m making this point: When you vote randomly, or vote for the nutbag (like Trump, but there are others) just to “shake things up” or show the people in Washington a thing or two, you help condemn the rest of us to a potentially very long slog of ruination and distress, which does not actually end when the rest of us finally throw the bum out. It keeps going much longer, because the wheels of justice turn slowly.

The Watergate Plumbers, who had been involved in numerous nefarious and illegal activities for years, got caught breaking into the Democratic Party national headquarters on June 17th, 1972. Convictions of key players happened between 1974 and 1975, with court procedings continuing into 1976 (but not convictions). About 20 Republcian bad guys went to jail or were fined. Nixon, the mastermind behind all of it, resigned in August 1974, two years after the break-in but probably six years or so after the first nefarious acts by his gang, but other than a forced retirement he was never punished, but was rather pardoned by one of his Republican buddies. So the time scale of justice for Watergate runs from 2 to 6 years, depending on which illegal act and which act of justice one uses to calibrate.

Iran-Contra happened during the reign of Republican strongman Reagan. The illegal acts started in or around 1981, peaked around 1985, revealed in November 1986. There were subsequent indictments, but in the end everybody was pardoned by other members of the Republican gang. So the time scale on Iran-Contra is: No justice ever, but there coulda been on about a two to five year time scale had the whole thing not been pushed under the Republican Rug.

There have actually been hundreds of federal level scandals, many involving illegal activities, and the time scale tends to be about a few years from discovery to rug-lift-and-sweep, or in some cases, just resolution. Longer if the scandal is made up.

Again: When you vote for a bone-headed right winger, you are guaranteed to be contributing to the start of some nefarious activity or another, followed by much gnashing of teeth and rending of cloth by all of us, all because you are a voting moron. If you vote for the Green Party in a tight race, any third party, or for the bad guy just to show ’em, you are being a voting moron. If you don’t know that the trouble you help cause will go on for years, and may in some cases never be resolved, you are voting moron. And if you defend the voting morons because you can’t do electoral arithmetic, you are worse than that.

The moral of the many stories: 1) Be patient with the system of justice but also 2) don’t be an idiot when you go to vote.


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One Person No Vote: Listen to Carol Anderson et al

2022 Election, 2024 Election, Race and Racism, ,
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My new favorite podcast is Now & Then, with Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman (formerly one of the “American History Guys”).

Several issues back, Richardson and Freeman invited Carol Anderson, author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy* to talk about voting suppression.

“On this episode of Now & Then, “Voting Rights: The Big Picture,” Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman talk about the history of voter suppression with Carol Anderson, professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of One Person No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy and The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. The trio discuss the concept of the “consent of the governed” during the founding period, the emergence of Jim Crow laws after the Civil War, and the evolution of voting suppression efforts in the modern era. How have politicians justified restrictive voting policies? How do these policies damage American democracy? And what strategies might protect the franchise today? ”

The podcast is here.

One of the great features of Now & Then is that the hosts spend a lot of time running up to the body of the work laying down foundations and drawing in context. Very Maddowesque. But for this reason the podcast can have a slow start. In this episode, it takes a while for Carol Anderson to get the mic and start her thing, but once she does you will be blow away, even if you thought you knew stuff about voter suppression (and voting rights, not the same thing).


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Yes, CRT is being taught in our schools, if this is CRT:

2022 Election, 2024 Election, Education, Race and Racism
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Everyone knows that CRT, aka, Critical Race Theory, is a law school or graduate level subject that is not taught in American K-12 classrooms. More precisely, and I quote Wikipedia, “Critical race theory (CRT) is a body of legal scholarship and an academic movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who seek to examine the intersection of race and law in the United States and to challenge mainstream American liberal approaches to racial justice.”

Everyone also knows that when Right Wing Goons, Contaminants, and Bloody Insurrectionists talk about CRT they are not actually talking about the law school class. They are using CRT to refer to things that are actually being taught in KL-12 schools, that they don’t want taught there. Continue reading Yes, CRT is being taught in our schools, if this is CRT: →


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Anti CRT? That makes you a racist.

2022 Election, MAGA terrorism, Race and Racism
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Sorry, had to say it. Had to say the truth.

There might be some other problems too.

If you are anti-CRT being taught in K-12 schools, you are a moron, because it isn’t. If you are one of the emerging gaggle of goons who now insist that “liberals are denying CRT being taught in schools” then you are a moronic paranoid eejit.

Maybe you don’t really know much about CRT and realize that, but you have been groomed an organized by a right wing think tank to use CRT as a scare tactic to raise money and run a campaign. The Trump Criminals have a word for when you are being used by someone else, a word I don’t like to use but if fits; You are a cuck. At least you might be less of a moron in this case.

If, however, you understand that CRT is a buzzword for curriculum that honestly addresses history, talks about things like slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and the systemic racism that exists in so many area of our society, then maybe you are a person who does not want the finger pointed at you. Maybe you make the argument that you don’t want kids to feel bad about their past, but that is bullshit. What you really don’t want is for your kids to come home and look at you, listen to what you say, realize what you do, figure out how you think, and realize their daddy is a Nazi.

Kind of a sensitive subject, I know, but if you are working to get CRT out of our schools, you are not a good person. In the old days (ten years ago) you would know to sit down and shut up. Please consider doing that now.

Anti CRT? That makes you a racist, and more specifically, a white supremacist. Not a good look.


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