Rachel Maddow, I'm begging you

Don't let your lawyers move to dismiss Bradlee and Jake's two-man circle jerk until they've explored the grifter empire known as You Can Run But You Cannot Hide and they have taken Bradlee and Jake's deposition.

Oh sure, it's a bush league complaint, entirely without merit and dismissable on its face, but please, don't pass up the chance to reveal these charlatans for who they are.

Bradlee and Jake go further 'round the bend

Persons in the more remote precincts may be unaware that Bradley Dean Smith and the You Can Run But You Cannot Hide patent medicine show and affiliated filling station grifters sued NBC, MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, The Minnesota Independent, and MinnIndy's reporter Andy Birkey for defamation to the tune of [hysterical laughter; sorry] $50 million.

Of all of the colossally stupid things Smith may have ever done, this one is going to prove to be right at the top.

The suit is about, as most readers know, the re-publication (by MSNBC and MinnIndy) of remarks that Smith made on the radio about the morality of Muslims because at least they have the good sense to execute gays (I'm paraphrasing here). In spite of what Smith says now, it is no stretch of the imagination to believe that he made the comment because he thought it was a Really Good Idea. The radio archives are replete with remarks by Smith and his radio sidekick, Jake, over a long period of time making it abundantly clear that Smith's protestations of innocence now are bunkum.

Smith is really seeking to have Maddow and Birkey take back Bradlee's own words, but they're like toothpaste: when they're out of the tube, they're out. He could apologize now, say he was wrong, and beg forgiveness of the God he pretends to worship, but that's not Bradlee's style.

The suit cannot be won. Smith has a better shot at being hit by a meteor. As a shameless, pandering media hound, Smith is obviously a public person; in addition to proving material untrue statements were made about him (which he can't; see the paragraphs above), it has to be proved that the defendants bore actual malice toward him. In other words, the defendants had to know the statements were false and intended to harm Smith and his "ministry."

In one of the more endearing passages in the complaint, Smith pleads malice "on information and belief."

You cannot allege the fact central to your case - malice - on information and belief. On information and belief, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and therefore I ask the Congress for a Declaration of War.

It is also reported somewhere - I cannot remember where - that, according to Smith, MSNBC's slogan "Lean Forward" is also evidence of the network's liberal homosexualist anti-Judeo-Christian agenda.

Boys and girls, allegations like these are why the word "flimsy" was invented.

To win a defamation suit, you also have to prove that your reputation was harmed. How was Smith harmed? Tom Pritchard won't call him any more? If anybody's reputation was harmed, it was Michele Bachmann's for the score or more times she's mentioned in the complaint.

On top of all of this, the lawsuit does not belong in District of Columbia where it was filed. The complaint identifies Maddow, NBC and MSNBC as New Yorkers. MinnIndy and Andy Birkey are Minnesotans; so are the plaintiffs. None of the parties is domiciled or resides in D.C.

It is claimed that the defendants "do business in the District of Columbia," but the only reason I can see for filing the case there is that Smith's lawyer, Larry Klayman, is licensed to practice in D.C. It's pretty unusual to venue a case for the convenience of the plaintiff's lawyer.

This suit is laughable on so many grounds. I personally hope, though, that it survives long enough for discovery about YCRBUCH's operation to take place and for Bradley and Jake's depositions to be taken. You really have to wonder what kind of investigation Klayman took before filing this stinker.

Ken Avidor at Dump Michele Bachmann has a post about Bradlee and Jake's efforts to raise money for their legal defense. Which is curious, of course, because they are the plaintiffs, not the defendants. That's where I got the link to the complaint.

The dim prophet of doom

David Strom wrote an op-ed piece in the Strib this morning. Strom suffers from a disabling case of Ryan's Hysteria, the definition of which will, sometime in the future, read:

A mental affliction distinguished by the fixed and unwavering belief that the sky is actually falling. Named after an early 21st century Republican Congressman from Wisconsin in the former United States who held office shortly before Congress refused to pay its bills and the economy collapsed. There is no known treatment or cure for Ryan's Hysteria.

Strom is a former college instructor (in political science, not economics), former executive director of the Minnesota Taxpayers League, former executive director of the Minnesota Free Market Institute, former Patriot radio host and occasional front man for a couple of his advertisers, precious metal and currency swap scam artists now in or on their way to the can, and most recently, he's been saved from a life on the streets by the Republican Caucus in the Minnesota House.

I heard Strom described recently as a "desperate huckster," and I certainly don't disagree with that.

The first time I ever heard spittle-flecked rantings like Strom's about how we were under a mountain of debt, that it was going to kill the country, we were on the road to financial perdition, and that we needed to get rid of welfare and Social Security, was when I was about twelve (half a century ago). It was relayed to me, in all seriousness, by a friend of mine, a child in an extended family of Bircher-types.

So you see, Ryan's Hysteria predates, well, Ryan. It was nonsense then, and it is nonsense now. We don't have a debt crisis; we have (as a tweet I read said), a hostage crisis. Strom, in fact, complains that he and his misguided brethren are described in those terms: terrorists, hostage takers, or suicide bombers.

Why, according to Strom, they're the ones who see the light. Just like all the other messianic zealots and fools of history: David Koresh, Jim Jones, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Bud Grant (I always like to throw that one in there because of his leadership on the Indian fishing treaty litigation; that one ended so well), and well, the list is near endless.

One of Strom's rhetorical tricks is to project deficits out for fifty years. All of the debt prophets love to do this. But you should look at Strom's argument this way: it's like observing a car crossing the border into Minnesota on I-35 and predicting confidently that its final destination is Thunder Bay, Ontario.

If a publically-held company made fifty-year financial projections to investors, its CEO and CFO would be sharing cells next to Strom's precious metal and currency swap huckster buddies.

It is curious that the debt hysteria always surfaces during Democratic administrations, when in fact, more debt is run up at a faster rate when Republicans are the president. Bill Clinton was the president the last time we had a budget surplus, and you'll remember it was Alan Greenspan who said we needed to cut taxes to keep from paying off the national debt too soon. The nineties were a lot more prosperous time in America than the aughts and the era of the Bush tax cuts, too.

What needs to happen now is to prevent the Zippo raid on the United States by Strom and his zealot pals. The village does not need to be burned to be saved. In any near or medium term, it isn't even in need of saving.

Just letting Uncle Alan and George Bush's tax cuts expire would go a long way toward fixing the problem. That and cutting a military that spends as much as the whole rest of the world combined.

Update:

Some words from one of my correspondents:

I borrowed these numbers from David Cay Johnson's site: In 2000, individual tax receipts averaged $4500 per person. In 2010 they were at $2900. That's a 39% decrease (to say nothing of an overall decrease in corporate taxes, which fell 27%) during a period where we suffered a major terrorist attack, fought 2 wars, added on an unfunded Medicare extension (Part D), suffered a horrific natural disaster (Katrina), bought a non-Keynesian stimulus package (mostly tax cuts and individual/state aid) and bailed out Wall Street. [ ] We're running head first into global warming and default and [ ] one of the main political parties doesn't believe in anything going on in the real world.

This will be sobering news to the boys and girls in Edina

You might want to check in with Eric Paulsen about this:

Moody's rating agency began notifying 177 local entities across the U.S. on Thursday that their AAA ratings could be in jeopardy if the U.S. government bond rating is lowered. The bond rating for local governments impacts the cost of borrowing for projects like schools, roads, affordable housing and other infrastructure.

All told, the potential downgrades in districts across the country could affect $69 billion in outstanding local debt. Other AAA rated local governments in Minnesota that have been notified include:

Dakota County, Edina School District, Maple Grove, Minnetonka Schools, St. Louis Park, Washington County, Wayzata city and school district.

Although the Hot Dish Politics post doesn't mention the City of Edina itself, it too, would likely be affected. You know all that street replacement going on in Edina (well, and elsewhere, too) right now? It's all going to be bonded and charged back to the "benefitted" homeowners through special assessments.

The higher the bonding cost, the higher the assessments. Pretty simple.

Echo comment system is down

The comment system is not working, at least for some readers. Occasionally, if you click the comment button early enough, it will take you to the old Blogger comment system, but don't be fooled, no one will see those. Let me investigate.

By 2-1 margin, Minnesotans blame GOP for shutdown

MinnPost's first poll fills a void in the local media, finally asking the question "who do you blame for the shutdown?" 42% of those polled blame the Republican-led Legislature, 21% blame DFL Governor Mark Dayton. Even worse for Minnesota Republicans? Independent voters were even more likely to blame them.

But the key swing group of self-identified independents was also much more likely to blame Republicans than to blame Dayton. Among independents, 46 percent "blamed" the Republicans, 18 percent blamed Dayton and 25 percent both.

And this leads to the bottom line: because of the shutdown, those polled are less likely to vote for Republicans in 2012.

The MinnPost poll asked Minnesotans whether the shutdown will make them more likely to vote for Republicans or for Democrats in 2012, or whether the shutdown will not affect their vote either way. The results:

More likely to vote for the Repubs: 17 percent

More likely to vote for the Dems: 30 percent.

Won't affect my vote: 42 percent.

No opinion: 11 percent.

By the way, I mentioned this is MinnPost's first poll. They're seeking donations to help defray the expense and to allow them to do more polling in the future. I think it's valuable to have more media organizations gauging public opinion, so I plan to make a donation. I hope you'll consider doing the same.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Bradlee Dean takes Manhattan!

Unsatisfied with simply hijacking the end of the Minnesota legislative session, the Right Reverend Bradlee Dean has set his sights on a national audience. Wednesday, Dean will hold a Manhattan press conference to announce he's suing Rachel Maddow, MSNBC and others for defamation.

Tim Pawlenty's campaign clumsily tried to discredit Michele Bachmann with the Daily Caller migraine story, and failed. Now comes Bradlee Dean, who might well succeed, even though he's trying to help Bachmann:

In an interview earlier this year, MSNBC's president Phil Griffin admitted that the network, to boost its ratings, caters to the so-called "progressive left". This explains the malicious attacks on Bradlee Dean and his ministry, which are being used to harm the presidential campaign of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who is a conservative Christian.

In the past, Dean and his ministry have been complemented by presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (who prayed for the ministry) for their work in promoting values for the nation's youth. The left wing media's effort to defame Dean is an obvious way to try to harm Bachmann's presidential prospects, who they fear and despise. Other left wing media outlets have followed MSNBC and Maddow in their slanderous efforts. This suit may just be the first in a series of cases meant to protect the fine reputation of Dean and his ministry.

Oh, goody, there might be more? Please, pretty please!

Actually, given who Dean's retained as counsel, there probably will be a string of lawsuits.

The lawsuit is filed by attorney Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, in DC Superior Court and seeks in excess of $50 million in damages. However, money is not the issue. "This case is filed as a matter of principle," stated Klayman. "We need more Bradlee Deans in the world and hateful left wing television commentators must be made to respect not only his mission but the law," he added.

Klayman's famous for suing the Clinton administration repeatedly over every scandal from Vince Foster to Monica Lewinsky. Since then, Klayman's suffered through an ugly legal battle with Judicial Watch (which he founded), and come in last in the Republican primary in a run for Senate in Florida. Dean may be his ticket back into the big time. It's certainly more high profile than digging into the cost of Michelle Obama's parties at the White House.

The best part of this is that Bradlee Dean, in his quest for media attention, might finally get people to understand the close embrace of his ministry by Bachmann and other Minnesota Republicans. As he defends his "fine reputation," let's hope he gets the attention he seeks.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz

Drone strike bears the hallmark of al-Qaeda

Charles Davis reports:

A missile from what witnesses described as an unmanned aerial vehicle left dozens of people dead and countless more injured in Pakistan's volatile tribal region this morning, a deadly strike that experts say shows all the classic signs of Islamic terrorism.

Carried out just before dawn, Pakistani officials say the attack killed at least 55 people, including dozens of women and children. According to experts, the obvious ruthlessness and casual disregard for innocent life are clear signs al-Qaeda – or maybe some other Muslims – were behind the strike.

“Killing people is a tried and true tactic of Islamists,” said One Important Expert who picked up the telephone. Indeed, the expert notes al-Qaeda first burst onto the scene with the novel idea of taking the lives of others with the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 – the first recorded intentional killings since the time of Jesus Christ, renowned savior and author of the Declaration of Independence.

Well, that's obviously a sendup of the jumping to conclusions that many right-wing pundits did after the massacre in Norway. It's a different way of looking at the drone strikes, too.

A thump of the tail to Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution.

David Hann and Wimpy's Hamburger Economics

For a hamburger today, I will gladly pay you on Tuesday

We all know Wimpy's pitch from the Popeye cartoons. (Thanks to Kevin Staunton for the original imagery.)

Let's say Wimpy gets his hamburger and does, in fact, pay for it on Tuesday. Then he turns around and asks for another one on the same terms. The burger shop is always financing Wimpy one hamburger.

And so it is with Sen. David One Hamburger Behind Hann's logic about school aid shifts.

One Hamburger Behind said in a recent interview on public radio that once you get past the initial shift, the accounting shifts don't mean much, because like the hamburger shop, the schools districts are getting paid for money allocated to them in the past before they are asked to defer current money.

This is all laid out in the Minnesota Public Radio PoliGraph (tm) article at the link. The article labels the claim accurate, but with a caveat. The term of art for "accurate with a caveat" is weasel-y. Why is it weasel-y?

That first hamburger.

Just like Wimpy, the state may be cash flowing its obligation, but it still owes the schools districts for the first hamburger. Or the last hamburger, take you pick, but it is always one hamburger behind.

Wimpy's Hamburger Economics have been the hallmark of budgeting in Minnesota for multiple biennia now. It is really borrowing money to finance current operations. But it's kind of off the books - think Enron - and therefore doesn't have to be counted in figuring out whether we have a state budget that balances.

But it isn't off the books to the school districts who were promised the money would be made up at the time the state took the first hamburger. They have had to cut budgets, cut teachers, cut programs, and borrow money.

Not to mention raise local property taxes. Local school board levy referenda (or referendums, if you prefer) are likely to be popping out this fall.

The tobacco bonds, incidentally, are functionally the same thing: funding current operations out of future revenue streams.

Drawing from here.

In other shooting news

A four-year-old boy was shot in the temple - and perhaps it is unnecessary to relate, died - while fishing with his father. A friend of the family described it as a "freak accident."

The father and son duo were fishing on a pier when a neighbor decided, in a drunken haze, to shoot out a light on the pier. The shot went a little wide! Unknown to this writer is whether the boy was on the shooter's curtilage.

I think the family friend got it almost right: it was a gun freak accident. Law enforcement authorities, having no sense of humor whatsoever, are calling it reckless homicide.

In the same article, there's a report of another Indiana four year old who "accidentally shot himself at a suburban Chicago liquor store."

I'm not making that up.

This brings to four the number of Indiana children's deaths from gun violence in the last three-and-a-half weeks.

According to the Brady Campaign, over 30,000 people a year die from gun violence in the United States, and twice that number survive a gun shot.

I mention all of this because the Second Amendment types are already beginning to wail that guns would have been the answer to the right-wing terrorism in Norway. Even after yesterday, however, the rate of death from gun violence is still much lower in Norway than say, Texas. Far lower.

Some security one the island would have been a good idea, but the idea of a bunch of teenagers packing as the solution to this event is ludicrous.

Jason Lewis: dirty hippie

Even the blind squirrel finds the occasional nut

In the Strib today, Jason Lewis says it is time to reconsider the war on drugs, or Prohibition II. Lewis brings in a few conservative luminaries to support his point, naturally, and he cannot resist a swipe at ATF and the Justice Department. But he does make a couple of good non-ideological points:

The drug habits and demand for drugs by U.S. citizens are killing Mexico, not just Mexicans, but Mexico itself:

Imagine a nightmare in which terrorists brutally murder 40,000 people in just five years. Now imagine that their base of operations is not across the globe, but directly adjacent to the United States. No doubt, hearing of such a thing, many of my conservative colleagues would be demanding a massive mobilization against the latest evils of Islamofacism.

But the real-life killers I have in mind, who revel in decapitating their victims (Al Capone's got nothing on these guys), aren't Muslim fanatics. They're narco-terrorists exploiting Mexico's failed war on drugs.

Most of the latest carnage appears to have been spearheaded by the Los Zetos gang, a group of former Mexican military men who simultaneously commit heinous acts of violence while building roads, schools and clinics for the impoverished. Sound familiar? It should -- because whether you're talking about the Taliban or Mexican drug cartels, both employ similar tactics that result when governments grant them de facto monopoly status in the distribution of illicit drugs. And the sad irony is that the exorbitant black-market profits used to finance their operations are a result of prohibition itself.

Some commentators will tell you that the 40,000 figure that Lewis quotes is conservative.

The war on drugs is killing us, too:

Nearly 80 years after the end of alcohol prohibition, the Global Commission on Drug Policy declared the war on drugs a failure with "devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." Most of the deleterious effects reside in urban America, where young people find it much more lucrative to deal than to learn a trade. For all of the problems associated with alcohol, and there are many, you simply don't see gangs shooting one another (and innocent bystanders) over a six-pack of Bud.

I would quarrel with Lewis about the ease of learning a trade or getting a job afterwards, especially for kids in the inner-city, but I take his point. The incarceration rates for young black males is just unacceptable. As intolerance of ex-offenders only grows in the United States, the number of people who have received economic deaths sentences also grows. This is something we really cannot afford.

And holy mackerel, the war on drugs is expensive:

The United States alone has spent $1 trillion on narcotics enforcement over the last 40 years, and Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates the total budgetary impact to state and federal governments at around $88 billion per year, including lost tax revenue.

Lewis' policy prescription falls short, though. He says we should turn to the states as laboratories of reform of the drug laws.

Let's say we did that and Minnesota decided by itself to declare an end to the war on drugs, marijuana especially [as legislation by Ron Paul and Barney Frank would apparently permit]. We could look forward to only 39,500 people being killed in drug violence in Mexico in the next five years?

Current drug policy is nationally crafted and is the work of both national parties. As long as transportation and distribution of drugs remains a federal crime, the efforts of individual states will mean very little to Mexico. We might, however, be able to affect incarceration rates and the long terms effects of a marijuana bust in Minnesota; that would be a good thing.

After swinging by the pawn shop

With their pawn shop bidness behind them, Amy, Kurt, Junior the Deputy, and Matt took their Buddy Can You Spare a Billion, or Even Two or Three? tour on the road, stopping at schools in every hamlet in the state to nick anything that wasn't cemented in place:

As expected, the hydrogen bomb at the center of [the K12 bill] is the nonpolicy decision to balance the budget by allowing the state to withhold 40 percent of education funding for a year after it’s due, and nothing even approximating a roadmap for paying it back.

And the devastation the shift will cause is where most of the educators canvassed on Wednesday would like the public’s attention to stay, given that the cumulative deficit it has caused is about an eye-popping $3 billion. That’s some $3,000 per pupil, or more than half the annual general fund appropriation.

Beth Hawkins at MinnPost has a great article explaining the education bill, from which this quote is taken, at the link.

There is no estimate at the time this is written of the T-shirt revenue expected from the tour.

Lining up at the pawn shop

Amy, Kurt, Junior the Deputy, and Matt are all standing there in line. They each have a stack of papers that have Tobacco Bond printed on the top. What they are proposing to do is trade these bonds for a loan of $700 million dollars.

These tobacco bonds represent a promise to repay that loan: IOU's printed up really nice. The thing that's uncertain is what the pawn broker is going to want in interest. The higher the interest, of course, the less net money is raised by the bonds.

So, Amy, Kurt, Junior the Deputy, and Matt are understandably nervous. Because, you see, these bonds aren't exactly AAA. Well, nothing in Minnesota is AAA these days, but the tobacco bonds border on flim-flam artistry: they aren't exactly investment grade.

The tobacco bonds aren't the general obligations of the State of Minnesota; they are backed only by a revenue stream to the state made payable under the tobacco settlement that was made way back when Skip Humphrey was the Attorney General. It was supposed to be kind of an annuity to help defray the health care costs to the state associated with smoking by its citizens and for anti-smoking education efforts.

These payments are not in a guaranteed amount, and they are only the promise of the tobacco companies. Companies never borrow money nearly as cheaply as governments do, and when you factor in the fact that the amounts payable are uncertain, you can be sure that the pawnbroker is going to demand a pretty high interest rate.

Experience elsewhere teaches us that the risks of tobacco bonds are subject to a lot more vagaries than general obligation bonds, and the prices they fetch reflect that. Here are a few grafs from the linked 2003 article:

In addition to New York City, there are a number of counties across New York State that will begin losing access to millions of dollars in annual revenues starting next spring because of the structure of their tobacco bond deals.

The counties include Nassau, Westchester, Monroe, Erie, Niagara, Ulster, Rockland, and Rensselaer. In addition, a number of other counties participated in two pooled New York county tobacco deals.

As a result of the unexpected budget hit, which was triggered by the hard and fast fall in tobacco company credit quality, some of those counties could follow New York City’s lead and begin reviewing a restructuring of their tobacco debt.

The impact on the underlying credit of the issuers “depends on the structure” of their tobacco bond deals, said Robyn Kapiloff, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service. “It varies [from issuer to issuer] whether it will be a short-term event or a long-term event.”

In all, New York City, the New York counties, Iowa, and the District of Columbia, have sold nearly $4 billion in tobacco bonds that are structured with so-called trapping mechanisms. The mechanisms were built into early tobacco bond deals to provide additional security to bondholders, requiring the issuer to fund additional reserves if tobacco company credit quality fell below investment grade.

One of two things is likely to happen in the pawn broker's office.

If Amy, Kurt, Junior the Deputy, and Matt offer a straight tobacco payment stream deal, they won't get beans for the bonds. (The interest rate will be very high.)

If they offer bonds with a "trapping mechanism" as described above, there is a risk - a substantial one - that funds will have to come out of future state budgets to keep the tobacco bond holders happy.

And never mind, as Rep. Ryan Winkler points out, we're just borrowing money to fund general fund matters; we're not getting a bridge or a building or even just a shiny new car.

Comforting the Comfortable

And Afflicting the Afflicted



Way to go Republicans! As Mike Meyers notes in an op-ed in today's Strib, at least the well to do among us are spared the tragedy of domestic claret.

In gratitude, every person saved from this humiliation should celebrate and hire a second pool boy or gardner. It's the least they can do.

But who will twist the arms?

One of the jobs of the assistant majority leaders at the Legislature is to twist arms in the caucus to enforce the leadership's positions. Who are they in the Senate? David Hann, Doug Magnus, Dave Senjem, and Dave Thompson.

You do see the problem here, don't you?

"I don't know what the outcome will be," said Assistant Senate Majority Leader David Thompson, R-Lakeville. "I have some concerns, certainly, but I am not sure what I am going to do yet."

I have made some fun of the Senate - especially - leadership but the followership ain't so hot either.

There could easily be more defectors in the list of assistants. David Hann is one name that comes readily to mind.

Rhetorical self-demolishment

Gary Gross, writing at Let Freedom Ring, says (well, he heard somebody say) it's Mark Dayton's Commissioners who are cocking up the budget deal. But in the very next breath, he says this:

Gross goes on to give a laundry list of policy changes -- including several that he admits are controversial -- but clearly, it's the Commissioners who are the problem in his fevered imagination.

Rarely, in the field of rhetorical endeavor, has anyone so quickly demolished his own argument.

Our hats are off to Gary.

And just parenthetically, the King's "budget prioritization" idea is little more -- probably no more -- than saying let's do what Republicans want, and we'll assign things like HHS a lower priority, and if we run a little short of money, we'll let few poor people die in the streets.

Leading the children onto the ice!

If I made up this quote, it would be slander:

House Speaker Kurt Zellers, R-Maple Grove, acknowledged recently the blow to school budgets. "It will lead them out on to the ice, but they won't fall through."

C'mon kids! Follow me! It'll be fun! Don't worry about all the cracking noises!

This is the guy, by the way, who actually seems to have his caucus in order.

Kurt's right hand guy, Matt Dean, explains why Kurt is so effing satisfied:

"The most important thing is that we are not going to have tax increases," said House Majority Leader Matt Dean, R-Dellwood.

Is it really necessary to mention that Matt Dean is a nihilist moron?

The linked article reports:

In two budget cycles, the state will have rung up $2.1 billion in IOUs to its public school districts. As a result, schools scraping to keep students competitive must try to borrow money just to manage their own cash flow.

Of course, this won't bother you if you've don't have a child or grandchild in public schools, aren't an employer hoping to hire educated Minnesotan in the future, or aren't a homeowner hoping to avoid having to deal with a property tax levy for operating funds for your local schools, or, well, you get the idea.

Does leading Minnesota's schools "out onto the ice" seem like a prudent plan for the future, just so we can have "no tax increases?"

I thought there was a deal

Of course, there was. But because Amy, Junior, and Mikey cannot count to thirty-four, the reports were premature. A lot of people (including me) have judged Republican leadership as amateurs all along. These people cannot deliver pizza.

Katherine Kersten wrote again today

Yawn.

That's all I have to say.

Revenge of the Steaming Shitburger!

Sources say that the Republican caucus in the Senate may have as little as, well, not nearly enough votes to pass the budget compromise. I posted about Mike Parry's tantrum earlier, and MCCL is now in on the act, so you know that can't be good.

C'mon, Amy, Junior, and Mikey! Pull on your oars. You're the ones who served up the Steaming Shitburger of Revenue.

Now, in a moment of supreme irony, it looks like they're going to have to eat it, too!