It's Walsh, and the lawyers at Powerline, Minnesotans all, have long known him and long despised him

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Here’s a sample:

Posted on July 26, 2024 by John Hinderaker in 2024 Election, Minnesota, Tim Walz

Tim Walz for Veep? Take Him, Please!

I am not sure why Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has wound up on some observers’ short lists as a candidate for vice president. He doesn’t seem to bring any obvious advantages to the Democrats’ ticket. But just in case, my colleagues John Phelan, an economist, and Bill Walsh, our Communications Director, had an op-ed in yesterday’s Star-Tribune: What America Needs to Know About Tim Walz of Minnesota.

During his first term as governor, Walz faced two major challenges: The riots following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and COVID-19. He fumbled both.

As the Twin Cities burned for three days in May 2020, Walz froze, terrified of upsetting his party’s activist base which sympathized with the rioters, for whom Kamala Harris raised money. Walz hesitated to commit the National Guard – whom he dismissed as “19-year-old cooks” – but when they finally were deployed, the violence ceased immediately.   

This concern for criminals over law abiding citizens has contributed to Minnesota becoming a high-crime state for the first time in recent history, with part one crimes, such as murder, aggravated assault, and rape, now above the national average. Indeed, Minnesota’s crime rates began climbing in 2018, when Walz took office and two years before George Floyd’s death. In 2024, violent crime in Minneapolis remains 29% above 2019.

Walz’s administration has caused Minnesota to become, for the first time in our history, a high-crime state:

While Minnesota’s uptick in crime began before the George Floyd incident, Walz’s incompetence during the rioting that followed certainly made things worse:

In response to the second challenge, COVID-19, in defiance of the science, Walz shut down schools, churches and businesses and instituted draconian mask mandates and shelter in place orders. This was driven by a computer model cooked up by a couple of graduate students over a weekend and which was such a failure it was quietly abandoned. Walz spent $7 million on a morgue to hold all the forecast bodies. This, too, was quietly sold without ever housing a single body. Walz’s failed nursing home policies resulted in over 5,000 deaths from COVID, one of the highest percentages in the country. And the man who likes to talk tough on cable news, telling Republicans to “mind your own damn business,” created a phone line for people to snitch on their neighbors who violated COVID regulations.

For all this government activity in response to COVID-19, Walz still managed to oversee the largest COVID fraud scheme in the country, with $250 million stolen. Millions more have been wasted in other fraud schemes throughout his time in office, but no one has been fired or held accountable. 

Walz’s tax and spend policies have hurt Minnesota’s economy. For the first time ever, Minnesota’s per capita GDP is now below the national average:

Walz has overseen a massive explosion in spending on K-12 education, while the actual achievement of Minnesota students has declined sharply. This is because under the current far-left regime, schools are training kids to be left-wing activists rather then teaching them to read and write:

More money, worse results. It is a classic liberal failure–or it would be, if you assume these people actually care about education as opposed to lining their own pockets. At the same time that our schools are failing, the Minnesota Department of Education oversaw the biggest single covid fraud in the country, somewhere between $250 million and $500 million in the Feeding Our Future scandal.

The acid test for any state is whether people are moving in or moving out. Minnesota, like California, New York and Illinois, is a state that people are fleeing. The only income range in which Minnesota attracts residents from other states, on a net basis, is 0 to $25,000:

Apropos of nothin' in particular ...

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Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great New Mexican philosopher, Fr. Anthony!

Speaking of the Olympics, some politically incorrect trivia: 

1) although Hitler was not happy that a non-Aryan was so victorious, and thought that black athletes had an unfair physiological advantage, it is not true that he refused to shake Jesse's hand. By the second day of competition, when Owens won the 100 meter race, it had been decided that Hitler would not publicly greet any competitors. But Owens remembered that Hitler waved to him and he returned the wave as a courtesy to his host. He was very popular among the German sports fans. Although he then received a ticker tape parade in New York, Franklin Roosevelt refused to receive him at the White House so as not to offend Southern Democrats in that election year. Owens said in a speech, "Hitler did not snub me but the president snubbed me.... The president did not even send me a telegram." Owens was an ardent member of the party of Lincoln, and as a Republican he publicly endorsed Alf Landon for the November election.

2) the carrying of a flaming torch to open the Olympics was the invention of Albrecht Speer, based on Wagner's Siegfried raising a sword. As a Nazi ritual, it had no Olympic precedent.

3) as the world's fastest man, Jesse Owens smoked a pack of cigarettes each day is. That was common amongst athletes. He died at the age of 66 of lung cancer.

 And from the shores of Ole’s Creek, this:


Just another Times reader/Dem voter, but fun all the same

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“chiroptophobia” :n an irrational fear of bats. No, I didn’t know that word, either

Hayward: “When I saw this headline in the New York Times, I first assumed that the Times had been taken over by the Babylon Bee:

A Bat Flew Into My Bedroom and Reminded Me of All We Take for Granted

By Belle Boggs

[Ms. Boggs is the author of “The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine and Motherhood” and other books.]

One night a few weeks ago I went to bed early, bothered by the oppressive heat and dismayed by that week’s political news. . . and very early the next morning a bat flew into our bedroom, through a screen door left open by accident. What happened over the next few days restored my faith in the systems in our country that keep us safe. . .

Hayward:

“And you’ll never believe what happened next! Actually of course you would. The article turns into a homily about how we have to stop Donald Trump from destroying the administrative state. Yes, it really is that stupid.”

“This tweet offers a better summary than I can do:

I had hoped that reader Burning Madoff was jokingly substituting one Jared Bernstein with another, but to my horror, he wasn't

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Burning Madoff wrote, “As long as Jared Bernstein is still head of the Council of Econ Advisers we should be good.”

From Wiki:

Bernstein graduated with a bachelor's degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied double bass with Orin O'Brien. Throughout the '80s, Bernstein was a mainstay on the jazz scene in New York City.

He also earned a Master of Social Work from Hunter College as well as a Doctor of Social Work in social welfare from Columbia University's school of social work in 1994.

Bernstein has taught at Howard University, Columbia University, and New York University. His areas of interest include "federal, state and international economic policies, specifically the middle class squeeze, income inequality and mobility, trends in employment and earnings, low-wage labor markets, poverty, and international comparisons."

In 1992, Bernstein started working as a senior official at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a liberal think tank with a focus on issues affecting low- and middle-income working people.[4] From 1995 to 1996, he served in the United States Department of Labor as deputy chief economist. He then returned to the EPI, as senior economist and director of the Living Standards Program, until he was selected by Biden. His designated job on the vice presidential staff is a new position, created because of "the critical nature of the economic challenges facing America." Upon his appointment, some journalists claimed that it "contrasts sharply with the more centrist views of many of president-elect Barack Obama's economic advisers."

Bernstein sits on the Congressional Budget Office's advisory committee. He is a contributor at the financial news network CNBC. He also was appointed executive director of the Middle Class Working Families Task Force and is responsible for direct management of the project.

Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics and a noted progressive columnist, argued in November 2008 that the centrist makeup of President Barack Obama's economic inner circle, the new Economic Recovery Advisory Board, could be used to "give progressive economists a voice," and he mentioned Bernstein and fellow EPI economist president Lawrence Mishel among others as progressive economists who might be suitable for the board.

Biden administration

On September 5, 2020, Bernstein was announced to be a member of the advisory council of the Biden-Harris Transition Team, which was planning the presidential transition of Joe Biden. Subsequently, President Joe Biden selected Bernstein to serve on the Council of Economic Advisors in January 2021.

In February 2023, Bernstein was nominated as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers by President Biden, replacing Cecilia Rouse.

On May 11, 2023, the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs advanced Bernstein's nomination by a 12–11 vote. On June 13, 2023, the United States Senate invoked cloture on Bernstein's nomination by a 50–49 vote. He was confirmed later that day by a 50–49 vote

"Fork you", declares this cone-licking, pudding-spoon-using nonagenarian

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our replacement ice cream czar

A pending nuclear war got you worried? Economic collapse making you sleepless? Illegal aliens swamping tghe country and overloading the welfare system? Not to worry, Team Biden’s got your six.

Biden administration will ban federal government using plastic cutlery to combat climate change

"[T]he Biden-Harris Administration is announcing a new goal to phase out federal procurement of single-use plastics from food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035," the White House said. "Meeting the new goal… will further agencies’ obligations under the [previous] Executive Order." 

Biden's prior executive order aimed to reduce the sale of single-use plastic products on public lands. 

We'll have to wait a bit to see how things settle, but as of this morning, this May 24th Tweet isn't looking so good

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UPDATE:

The White House released this statement about Gene Sperling's departure:

When I took office, our economy was reeling, a pandemic was raging, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country were at risk of shutting their doors. Having run Recovery Act implementation for President Obama, I knew I needed an American Rescue Plan Coordinator with the expertise and experience to hit the ground running. I'm glad I picked Gene Sperling.

Gene joined my administration as the only person to have ever directed the National Economic Council under two presidents, and has helped me execute a rescue plan that has led to one of the most equitable and resilient economic recoveries ever. His work helped nearly 40 million working families get unprecedented child tax cut relief and over 8 million renters get emergency assistance to help keep their families housed. Under Gene's leadership, the American Rescue Plan has delivered economic relief to cities and counties across the country, protected millions of union pensions, made the largest-ever federal investment in public safety, and kept thousands of small businesses afloat.

I also looked to Gene as a trusted advisor on the economy and gave him some of the toughest assignments, including serving as my liaison to the Big 3 automakers and UAW as autoworkers fought for - and secured - record contracts.