tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4238689990825055252024-03-12T19:06:14.654-05:00Minnesota ConservativesOptimism Is Cowardice
-SpenglerJohn Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comBlogger638125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-88754708826226186052022-05-16T08:49:00.004-05:002022-05-16T09:07:35.185-05:00David Hann's Triumph: Minnesota Republicans Get Out Of Their Own Way<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeAsVq1J_dC2k9Y0YO7MoiI5tRN0ChuxKPG5FZVFSnGy2q9EeJ6OCs96eBXyYRzq8qx8mXhYTorXEGFKsn2YHRW-lVaGamppmFUm3Mnql974svrxqn1Tw5Oi4vG29hNzsyAkHx_JiwCOJ4xVyaBcb1VlpELtDdsfrklFjLe22ouo5twVMM75OtevZm/s1536/Jensen-1536x1024.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1536" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeAsVq1J_dC2k9Y0YO7MoiI5tRN0ChuxKPG5FZVFSnGy2q9EeJ6OCs96eBXyYRzq8qx8mXhYTorXEGFKsn2YHRW-lVaGamppmFUm3Mnql974svrxqn1Tw5Oi4vG29hNzsyAkHx_JiwCOJ4xVyaBcb1VlpELtDdsfrklFjLe22ouo5twVMM75OtevZm/w400-h266/Jensen-1536x1024.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>Saturday in Rochester, Minnesota Republicans endorsed Dr. Scott Jensen for Governor, Kim Crockett for Secretary of State, Ryan Wilson for State Auditor & Jim Schultz for Attorney General. </p><p>Despite an initial, severe backlog of delegates and alternates being registered that delayed the start of the convention proceedings, what proceeded was a testament to the new Chair of the Minnesota Republican Party, David Hann. Hann was elected after the previous Chair, the sociopath Jennifer Carnahan, resigned after groundbreaking reporting by my friend, independent journalist Rebecca Brannon. </p><p>Minnesota Republican politics is high school writ large. I've said this forever. I haven't written here since October of 2020 because I'm not a writer content with repetition or having nothing new to say. And although there have been plenty of new things since then, they were mostly being said by many others ad nauseam. But have you heard that the Covid 19 pandemic was a scam? Because it, assuredly, was. Much like the 2020 election. Cue (and click on) Leonard Cohen's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxd23UVID7k" target="_blank"><i>"Everybody knows." </i></a></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * </p></blockquote><p>Friday boded both poorly, then well, for the fate of the convention's success. Initially, reports on Twitter were that the long lines were because computers were not being used. This seemed inconceivable and it turned out to be wrong. The flow of people, the configuration within the Mayo Convention Center, was not optimal and this accounted for the snake like lines of people. The Republican endorsing convention started a mere two hours late. Not great, not fatal. </p><p>What saved the day, and indeed the convention as a whole, was that David Hann and his team was able to convince the delegates that the electronic voting system they had purchased for the event was, yes, reliable, secure and transparent. There were well meaning people who insisted that only paper ballots could be trusted. This is true of primary and general elections but not so true within a closed, contained event. The vendor Hann selected had great success at other Republican endorsing conventions. </p><p>A majority of delegates were able to successfully distinguish between the two scenarios and chose to go with electronic voting. Like death or pregnancy, it made all the difference. The races, they were off to.</p><p>In quick succession, the delegates endorsed Ryan Wilson who, having no opposition, was easy even for Minnesota Republicans. Then came Kim Crockett for Secretary of State. She was heavily favored and had campaigned hard. I know Kim a bit (I'm not the overly familiar American, the kind who says "I had lunch with Kim once and I know her like a book." Spare us those types, please) and I've always been impressed by her keen intellect and, the more so because it's rarer in this state, her courage. Steve Simon has the first real electoral challenge on his hands since commandeering our election system years ago.</p><p>The only interesting wrinkle on the first day was for the Attorney General endorsement. Doug Wardlow, the previous candidate last time out, was the heavy favorite by dint of exhausting tenacity and not a small bit of money, MyPillow or otherwise. Reader, it was not to be.</p><p>Tad Jude, a Prince among men, withdrew after the first ballot (or second, I wasn't exactly glued to the Twitter minute by minute) and supported the cipher Jim Schultz, who looks like a bugman that has weak orgasms and is a creation of the local swamp. But, do I need to remind you?, this is Minnesota.</p><p>Doug Wardlow came closest to his opponent in the last election than any other Republican candidate on the ballot that year. I find this deserving of respect. But even though we're still in the Age of Trump, who is clearly running in 2024, Doug failed to discern that his people want to win. Possibly now more than ever. Mike Lindell, an honorable man of integrity and success but also some wackiness, proved a millstone around his neck, not a luftballon.</p><p>And, as a friend of mine never fails to remind me: "Gilmore, he's on the spectrum." Certainly harsh, possibly true. </p><p>And so it came to pass that the bugman got the nod. With surprising good sense, the delegates had enough self confidence, deserved for a change, to call it a day and start eating and drinking. Mostly the latter. Wouldn't any of us? If I'd attended, which my so called friends Howard Root & Rebecca Brannon, among others, strongly encouraged me to do, I'd have been outside smoking with Sue Jeffers, had she temporarily lost her mind and showed up. Life is short, people, live it while you can. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">Saturday was the main event: endorsement for Governor. A fair amount of drama ensued because how could there be any large scale, consequential, gathering of Minnesota Republicans without it? Did I mention high school?</p><p style="text-align: left;">I refuse to recapitulate the blow by blow because that makes for boring writing given we all know the outcome. Neil Shah, a strangely interesting man in a traditionally ho hum Republican political landscape (I hope he doesn't go away, stays involved), threw his support early on to Mike Murphy, who is something of a scamp but I'm Irish, so I always have a soft spot for scamps. No one saw this coming; most thought the reverse likely. </p><p style="text-align: left;">From that point onward, for a time, it seemed like a deadlocked three way tie. No endorsement for the top of the ticket. Disaster. </p><p style="text-align: left;">But then text messages emerged showing that Kendall Qualls was the empty, hack, Black suit anyone with an ounce of intuition and discernment could have said. Murphy took the stage to denounce him as "a sellout," which I thought was rather generous because he's never had anything to sell. He's always been available for purchase. </p><p style="text-align: left;">People like Ron Ebbensteiner, now ensconced at the Center of the American Boomer, also known as the Center of the American Experiment, donated generously to not White Qualls. He was formerly a chair of the Minnesota Republican Party when my (legit) friend, Earl Gray, mopped the courtroom floor with him. Ron left the party 750K in debt, never once since then having lifted a finger to retire it. Such people deserve your contempt. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Bugman, Jim Schultz, is also mostly a creation of his. It's too bad because Tad Jude was the far superior candidate but people like Ebbensteiner don't cotton to him because he's his own man. </p><p>I'm glad, I suppose, that the CAE exists but if it vanished, it would make no practical difference in Minnesota politics. I wrote the truth about them years ago, in 2017, for Alpha News and it made me, satisfyingly, persona non grata: <a href="https://alphanews.org/tom-cotton-red-pills-center-american-experiment/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">Tom Cotton Redpills the Center of the American Experiment.</span></a></p><p>What we have is a deeply insecure "president" of it who has hired his own daughter. And paid Candace Owens (married to a White man) three times (at 30 to 35K a pop) to appear on stage with him so he can fend off lingering fears of a corrupt media accusing him of being waycist. These people are the past, which is to say Boomers, of whom we can't rid ourselves quickly enough in Minnesota if this state is to have a chance of surviving. <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><i><a href="https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/are-the-kids-altright/" target="_blank">"Bronze Age Mindset"</a> </i></span>should be assigned reading to everyone there. I'm available to be sherpa.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * </p></blockquote><p>Because I know my audience, thank you always for reading, I know some, if not many, will ask me IRL why I claim this to be to be David Hann's triumph. </p><p>It's because if it had been a clusterfuck, he'd be the first person you'd blame, whether he was responsible or not, and we all know it. It's so easy to be lazy. I'm not exempt. </p><p>This is the pattern of Minnesota Republican politics, the internecine sniping that prevents us from winning. Ask yourselves: why just a few miles east in Wisconsin are Republicans vastly more successful? Could it be that there's an embedded group here who profits from continuous losing? Because there is.</p><p>David Hann has his detractors but I'm not one of them. I specifically, and only, went to Pete Hegseth's 2016 Christmas party to apologize to his face for having gotten the repulsive Amy Koch/Michael Brodkorb pathology entirely wrong. He was gracious but somewhat taken aback by my doing it in person. But it's who I am: I'm from South Dakota, not Minnesota, so I understood his surprise. Passive-aggressive is unknown in my birthplace of Sioux Falls. </p><p>It's okay to be wrong, fear of it prevents us from saying many true things. I wrote about it here if you care to click on it:<span style="color: #cc0000;"> <a href="https://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/12/what-i-saw-at-pete-hegseths-christmas.html" target="_blank"><u>"What I Saw At Pete Hegseth's Christmas Party."</u> </a></span></p><p>But when you are wrong, it's liberating to own up to it. I also apologized, to his face, then Senator Dave Thompson before he and the frugal Mrs. T decamped to North Carolina. I asked him to extend my apology to his running mate, Senator Michelle Benson. Is there anything better than a clean sweep? "Know Thyself" was over the entrance to the oracle at Delphi. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * </p><p>Who was a better person to take over the shipwreck of the party after the sociopathic reign of Jennifer Carnahan than David Hann? Most of you won't stand for election, nor run for party office. I'm in your company. But too often we forget what it takes to do either. </p><p>I suppose the Vineland Vines types (hi Peter), or the grifters at the 1858 Group (hi John, hi Kurt, cringe low I.Q. Andrew, Ben probably lurking around $omewhere) would say something juvenile about Batman and a hero. And then there are the truly talented ones who escaped (hi Maggie). </p><p>But I'm an adult. </p><p>So is David Hann. </p><p>With this successful endorsement convention behind him, Hann has begun to restore the Minnesota Republican Party to something other than a joke at D.C. cocktail parties. And it was, literally.</p><p>That's not nothing. Believe me. </p><p><br /></p><p>Photo credit: Alpha News</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-18873389811080226562020-10-11T11:02:00.002-05:002021-09-29T01:35:24.195-05:00Keys To The Zeitgeist: The Cathedral, Bioleninism & Anarcho-Tyranny <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX68-dSLWuXBa0LpK-0DUl89bTp3432ewkomHMEOza1rUQ8_MR1XCu2W9lqO2KFb8ddu5X6Z1lAym8MtzBbmqwOYyF5ba_CcX2d09AVLS_L9by-bgXEJj49-RYC81BTjxSRNeLCDxmOz4/s1000/2001.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX68-dSLWuXBa0LpK-0DUl89bTp3432ewkomHMEOza1rUQ8_MR1XCu2W9lqO2KFb8ddu5X6Z1lAym8MtzBbmqwOYyF5ba_CcX2d09AVLS_L9by-bgXEJj49-RYC81BTjxSRNeLCDxmOz4/w400-h225/2001.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>For a variety of reasons, the usual ways of understanding politics have become inadequate to the task. This is true for culture as well, the shopworn trope of Andrew Breitbart "politics is downstream from culture" notwithstanding. Conservatives pretended to understand what that meant but the way in which they deployed it, undergirded by their actions or lack thereof, demonstrably showed that they didn't. Even that original insight no longer applies completely because culture now has become indistinguishable from politics<p></p><p>Instead, far from the useless Left/Right divide, or the meaningless accusations of "socialism is bad!," several terms exist that provide, in my view, a far greater understanding of the times through which we're living. Without them, previous ways of thinking and understanding leave us still adrift, unable to articulate what is going on. And if you can't adequately describe what is going on, you'll never be able to answer, as Lenin once put it, what is to be done?</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">I've written previously about the Cathedral and have tried to mainstream it, somewhat, through my Twitter account. I'm a Twitter guy, Facebook being of the devil, where I only post memes and run away, or links to my columns here, which go unread & unengaged with. Q.E.D. and all that.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The Cathedral was a concept invented by Mencius Moldbug, real name Curtis Yarvin, in 2008. It's a simple but revealing idea which, once understood, changes forever the way in which you look at things. He defined it this way:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">"The great power center . . . . is the Cathedral. The Cathedral has two parts: the accredited universities and the established press. The universities formulate public policy. The press guides public opinion. In other words, the universities make decisions, for which the press manufactures consent. It’s as simple as a punch in the mouth."</p></blockquote><p>He recently <u><a href="https://graymirror.substack.com/p/3-descriptive-constitution-of-the" target="_blank">elaborated upon it:</a></u></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>"The Cathedral is information: truth, philosophy, ethics, narrative, art and intelligence.</p><p>Its inner circle, the Brain and the Voice, includes all professors, journalists, serious artists, published authors, etc. Its outer ring, the Conversation, is the whole upper social class. Its funding division, the Foundation, is the whole upper economic class. Its teaching division, the School, gets to indoctrinate almost everyone for over a decade. And its doctrine, the Dream, defines good and evil for all decent people.</p><p>The importance of the Cathedral is defined by its monopoly on legitimacy. A school which is not the School is not educating. A voice which is not the Voice is not informing. A brain which is not the Brain is not thinking. There is nothing legitimate about miseducation, disinformation or unreason.</p><p>Prestigious information passes from Brain to Voice, and Voice to Conversation. This process is subtle enough, and its product is of high enough quality, for the Conversation to believe it is actually making up its own mind—from filtered inputs. The Conversation—all of legitimate public opinion—always admires the System. It thinks of this as a completely voluntary and spontaneous critical assessment.</p><p>And the Conversation, which is the discourse of the upper social class, is always the discourse of fashion. For the nobility (rich or broke), fashionable ideas are de rigueur. Against the middle social class (rich, doing okay or broke), they are political attacks. Épater la bourgeoisie is the official sport of every nobility. It is the role of the weak to accept these attacks, internalize them, and use them to loyally flagellate themselves.</p><p>The arrows of fashion rain down constantly from every direction. The kulaks cannot resist them for long and will surrender to the nobility’s latest definition of cool; not soon enough to be cool themselves; soon enough for this victory over themselves to be expected and taken for granted, and some new demand for further coolness launched.</p><p>And hell will freeze helium before the kulaks convince the nobles of anything at all. Even the truth will have a rough time if the kulaks somehow get hold of it first.</p><p>This may seem like a brutal process—but frankly, isn’t the nobility usually right? Aren’t nobles just cooler, better people? They certainly have higher IQs. The best of them are in the Cathedral. The rest at least hold Cathedral ranks. Surrender, chuds."</p></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">Bioleninism is our next stop in this brief tour of how best to understand the Zeitgeist. <u><a href="https://thewardenpost.net/bioleninism/" target="_blank">The Warden Post</a></u> describes it this way and it's as good a definition as any other. You're certainly left in no doubt:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">Developed by Spandrell (alias, Bloody Shovel) it takes the basic Leninist model of building a Party to rule the state out of the dregs of society, and shifts this to the realm of biology, wrong-think biology in particular, building the party out of people who are permanent losers within the social order. Naturally, this refers to the non-white, non-heterosexual, non-viable forms of life we’re forced to prostrate ourselves to as the living saints of the religion of diversity. This is for the very simple reason that those with zero status in a sane society stake their entire lives on accumulating social capital through the Party and will revert back to that position of zero status if the party ever loses power, thus ensuring their undying loyalty towards the party and undying enmity towards those who aren’t lacking in status – whether we’re talking about the ne’er do wells of old Russia or the degenerate and swarthy masses of the modern West. In other words, Bioleninism is a system through which the governing Globohomo powers ensure that those most problematic of peons – white, Christian, heterosexual men (and the women married to them) will always be outvoted (and therefore expropriated, disenfranchised and ultimately eliminated) by the aforementioned non-viable life forms.</p></blockquote><p>You only have to look at the makeup of the Minneapolis City Council to see Bioleninism in action. In fact, most of Minnesota politics on the Left is a grand exercise in it. The lower the I.Q., the more unaccomplished, the freakier the freak, the more exalted they become by the powers pulling the strings and setting the stage. This was the attempted new normal long before the Wuhan virus.</p><p>By contrast, loving your straight wife or straight husband, including the miracles which proceed from perfect sexual complementariness, children, is to be abjured, preferably mocked and belittled outright. </p><p>You can find Spandrell's three part essay <u><a href="https://spandrell.com/2017/11/14/biological-leninism/">here.</a></u></p><p>Other commentators have noted that a singular feature of Bioleninism is the assault on the middle from the top and the bottom. The uppermost & the lowermost are in a kind of war against that middle, in order for the top to rule more effectively because they can and do easily manipulate the bottom strata of society. The losers, the very targets, are the middle class, normies. To date it's been wildly successful because those who fight against it don't fundamentally understand what the "it" is. </p><p>We're awash in Bioleninsim because the Cathedral promotes it incessantly. Hand, meet glove.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">Finally, the concept of anarcho-tyranny is played out daily in 2020 and while the incidents of it--strange, baffling, flat out wrong--are everywhere, too few understand the screenplay of this movie.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><u><a href="https://parallaxoptics.com/2020/09/26/a-n-a-r-c-h-o-t-y-r-a-n-n-y/" target="_blank">ParallelOptics</a></u> has a depressingly accurate description of what it is:</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>"An amoral system of asymmetric law enforcement</p><p>Administered through a bureaucratic labyrinth of selective rule application</p><p>Under Anarchotyranny the ruling class aims to control its subjects so that they cannot coordinate / oppose the Regime </p><p>This constitutes the tyrannical aspect</p><p>Instead of controlling the ‘real’ criminals / reining in the Regime’s own de facto paramilitary forces</p><p>This causes distributed anarchy</p><p>Meanwhile the law is interpreted and enforced selectively / asymmetrically depending on what is perceived to be in the interests of the Regime</p><p>Anarchotyranny is a demonic Hegelian synthesis </p><p>The Regime tyrannically / oppressively regulates citizens lives yet refuses to enforce fundamental protective law </p><p>Violent riots are incited by the Regime</p><p>While self-defence is effectively criminalised</p><p>Real criminals evade justice as long as they are ideologically aligned with power</p><p>While law abiding citizens are cast as criminals for protecting what belongs to them."</p></blockquote><p>If you want a concrete, recent example of anarcho-tyranny, just think of the McCloskeys, the Saint Louis couple being legally persecuted by Soros prosecutors simply for defending themselves and their home with lawful firearms. If people don't wake up, this will eventually be their fate in some fashion or another. Because it's designed to be their fate. </p><p style="text-align: center;">* * * * </p><p style="text-align: left;">Together these three concepts explain the current times in far greater depth than any other. My brief explanation of them can be seen as a black pill, certainly, but I prefer to see it as something else: a way out. Because if you don't understand what is happening and why, you have no ability to find ways with which to extract yourself, your family, your culture and your country from it. The future, in other words, is closed off if you don't know the "what, why or how" of what's happening.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Once you do, however, everything changes because clarity brings insight. And insight allows previously obscured courses of conduct to become visible. What might initially be thought of as a black pill is actually a red pill. The nice thing I like about red pills is that they frequently lead to white ones. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-4929299511355046262020-09-24T07:59:00.002-05:002020-09-24T08:17:40.819-05:00Minnesota Republicans: Sleepwalking Thru 2020<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ83ZF9i7Y_9tL8U5VpIvBcGS_NvLFjwu4AOifdst6fIqujTkOCCUnvr42kZb8T8e1YhOyimEwet57H2e_gbhtEmyYfQQ9sQrov-mfFLB0wW6C0u8It97ezMynw3tGEVYBFtmoCs82Xh4/s318/bluepills.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="316" data-original-width="318" height="398" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ83ZF9i7Y_9tL8U5VpIvBcGS_NvLFjwu4AOifdst6fIqujTkOCCUnvr42kZb8T8e1YhOyimEwet57H2e_gbhtEmyYfQQ9sQrov-mfFLB0wW6C0u8It97ezMynw3tGEVYBFtmoCs82Xh4/w400-h398/bluepills.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I haven't written anything in more than four months because I haven't had anything to say, or, more precisely, to say in public. But coming off of some slight involvement in a recent "activist" activity, my experience of which could only charitably be characterized as "no good deed goes unpunished," I realized that it was of a piece with Minnesota Republicans overall in this strangest of years. There's both a lot to discuss and very little: absence is like that and absent is what Republicans have largely been. <div><br /></div><div>One has to come to a full stop in order to appreciate how astonishing it was to see them disappear in real time. It's hard to imagine what life was like before the mid-March declaration that we had "fifteen days to slow the spread." Since then, the spread of the Wuhan virus has indeed been slowed but the spread of power grabs and petty fascism engaged in by both Democrat & some Republican governors in America was fast and disturbingly permanent.</div><div><br /></div><div>Gov. Tim Walz, the personification of everything that's mediocre about Minnesota, was no exception. Invoking "peacetime emergency" powers, thirty days at a time, he badly bungled the state's response to the virus. From criminally wrong "models" of deaths & ICU hospitalizations, to the hysterical overreaction in buying a seven million dollar morgue (now used as a closet, as one local outlet put it), to allowing virus patients to be placed in nursing homes and long term care facilities making Minnesota the third highest ranking state in killing its elderly, to a useless mask mandate issued five months after the "pandemic" began solely because he didn't get a bonding bill, Walz demonstrated the poverty of actual governing talent that plagues modern politics. </div><div><br /></div><div>Local media supported and covered for him every step of the way, of course, echoing his preposterous talking points, joining in his deflection by blaming President Trump for Walz's shortcomings and failures, and refusing to ask any serious, probing questions about both the hypotheticals generated by a model whose code was kept hidden for months, as well as demonstrable failures in what had been done to date. Remember the "moonshot" that never happened?</div><div><br /></div><div>The traction of this approach could never last because it became clear to Americans that how various parts of the country succeeded, or not, was largely a function of a state's governor and not the Leviathan of the federal government. Women took the lead in the Minnesota Department of Health and women reporters did most of the covering of them. The result was predictably awful, like women cops or firefighters.</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The pandemic torpor was suddenly and violently replaced Memorial Day Weekend with the death of criminal and porn star auteur George Floyd. Instead of being released promptly, Islamofascist Attorney General Keith Ellison kept the police body camera footage hidden from the public, allowing the false narrative that Floyd dindu nuthin to take hold, resulting in arson, looting and rioting breaking out across the country. There's no length people like Ellison won't go to destroy America. When the Daily Mail published surreptitiously recorded video of the footage, the narrative collapsed almost at once. But the damage had been done and damage and division was always the goal. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Minneapolis City Council, which resembles an outtake from the "Star Wars" cantina scene, rushed headlong into defunding city police. It also embodies a concept known as "bioleninism," about which I'll write in the near future, along with anarcho-tyranny. More recently, it has climbed off the ledge upon which it sanctimoniously climbed when confronted with an unsurprising crime wave. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As a side observation, the huge spike in crime in Minneapolis, as well as in St. Paul to a lesser but still disturbing degree, is overwhelmingly caused by Blacks, Hispanics, Somalis and Native Americans. Despite race being all, don't look for that angle in your local news coverage. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Minnesotans are already marking their calendars for a reprise of this mindless violence next year when some or all of the officers charged in Floyd's death are acquitted. With real life having been reduced to a series of interchangeable stage sets, it doesn't take much to see the future. Think of it as kabuki but without the aesthetics. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Once Minnesota got past its costly spasm of destruction things reverted, somewhat, back to the suffocating conditions Gov. Walz had imposed. It didn't go unnoticed, however, that for weeks on end, sometimes seemingly endlessly so, the virus—mirabile dictu!—disappeared as thousands, even tens of thousands, of people around the country gathered to protest, commit crimes, whine about imaginary grievances, and engage in public displays of pathological narcissism, all encouraged & fawned over by our corrupt and dishonest media who saw in this behavior a chance to finally defeat Donald Trump. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When the contradiction between virus hysteria and "protesting" became too great to ignore, the Cathedral promptly promulgated the notion that waycism was important enough to disregard the heretofore sacrosanct edits that deprived citizens of their most meaningful freedoms. In no small part, this led to many Americans realizing that everything had been politicized by the elites in 2020 (remember impeachment?) in order to defeat Trump in November. The thing about illusions is that once shattered, they're never repaired. This is as true in politics as it is in life and love.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Minnesota Republicans can be forgiven for being as disoriented as the rest of us in March and much of April. But even then there were signs that the pandemic wasn't going to be as disastrous as advertised. By May a great deal was already known about the virus, given the worldwide crash research into it, how it functioned, the best practices in treatment for those afflicted. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">During this time there was no counter narrative from Republicans, no response to the regular briefings from girl bureaucrats in the MDH, demonstrably over their heads. As a result the narratives that Democrats wanted, and which could be reliably amplified by a complicit local media delirious to do their own small potatoes thing to help get rid of Orange Man, shaped most public opinion. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It rarely occurs to Minnesota Republicans to go on offense and this has never been more true than in 2020. Every state that borders us is freer, more open, and with substantially lower death totals. Leave it to the MNGOPe to refuse to look around and use the best comparative evidence available. Provincialism is a bipartisan affair in Minnesota.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In their defense (and it's always defense with this group), they'll say they refused a bonding bill, something the parasitical Walz was keen to get. True enough but how low must the bar be set before it can be said they passed it? While it's true that it would have been political malpractice for them to have agreed to one, they commit such malpractice frequently enough that I suppose we should be glad they didn't this time. Not all low expectations are bigotry.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Slightly better was the Republican led Senate in refusing to confirm two of Walz's commissioners. It was something but a bit on the too little, too late side. I'm dubious that it creates any real barriers to the Governor getting done what he wants and on his terms. Of course, they didn't have the testicular fortitude to take out the manifestly incompetent head of the MDH, Jan Malcolm. "You're killing people" the Leftist freaks would shout and they would cower, not knowing how to respond because they rarely do.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Last week Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died because of course she did, is this still not 2020? It seems all but certain that her replacement will be nominated and confirmed before the November 3rd election. This has had a profoundly dispiriting effect on the Regressive Left and I can't get enough of it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It seems likely that Trump will win unless the election is rigged post-voting and I wouldn't be surprised if Republicans not only keep the Senate but take back the House. A mighty backlash is coming after a year of nonsense and insanity. A similar backlash occurred in India when Narendra Modi won his second term as Prime Minister. The opposition Congress Party was destroyed. I want a Modi level landslide. The American people are patient, at least the ones who aren't low impulse. They've bided their time and now that time is coming soon.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Friends and acquaintances of mine, staffer types, lobbyist types, knaves & rogues, apparently are being taken in all over again by polling. They think, once more, I don't know what I'm talking about despite being right about 2016. Of course, being right then is no guarantee I'm right now. You'd think they'd be less gullible about polling, though, but you'd be wrong. We'll see soon enough.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If the results are good for Republicans, then in Minnesota we have to go on offense and take advantage of the situation. This requires new thinking from our sclerotic Republican class and I'm not at all sure they are up to it. But they can't coast going forward in the next two years. It would help if they could decide whether or not they actually believe in anything.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I'm obligated to mention the 2022 gubernatorial race because that's all the political class will be talking about after November 4th. Minnesota politics really is boring. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That said, Mike Lindell cannot defeat Tim Walz despite what Republican Party chair & sociopath Jeniffer Carnahan intimated on Twitter recently about him being the nominee. It's not that I don't believe his approval is low in greater Minnesota and deservedly so. It's that two years is a long time and simply not being Tim Walz isn't a path to the mansion on Summit Avenue. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Republicans will have to want to win for a change, really want to win, if they are to make Tim Walz the one term governor he should be. But it will take more than the old thinking which has led to 14 years without a GOP statewide win. Most organizations would reassess strategy, tactics and messaging with a loss record like that but not Minnesota Republicans because the same people get jobs and make money regardless. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A message of economic populism and nationalism would find a receptive electorate in this state. Who could be that messenger? It remains to be seen but the apparatchiks are terrified about anything that is not Chamber of Commerce, the enemy of the American people, approved. The closer to Trump, the further away they move. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Remember, in the 2016 Minnesota presidential caucus, these people gave little Marco one of his rare wins. He couldn't win his home state of Florida but the chuckleheads here found him to be as unthreatening, insubstantial and tapioca as they are. Rubio now seems dated, stale, bought & sold, yesterday's man, a strap hanger in a subway car going in a very different direction then when he boarded. He's only along for the ride, just like them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If these people determine our nominee for 2022, he or she will lose. If mindless and talentless cheerleaders like Carnahan do, the same result will obtain but for a different reason.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Apple-like, those who determine our nominee will have to "think different." </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thinking would be a good start. There's still enough time to get to the different part.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div><br /> <p></p></div>John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comSt Paul, MN, USA44.9537029 -93.089957816.643469063821158 -128.24620779999998 73.263936736178849 -57.933707799999993tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-38344122882822340122020-05-03T09:40:00.001-05:002020-05-03T10:39:41.999-05:00The Muslim Pets Of Minnesota Democrats <br />
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All religions are purportedly equal in America but in Minnesota there's only one that's exalted, praised and promoted by those in the DFL, in and out of office, to say nothing of their handmaidens in the media. They aren't subtle about it and that's the point: some barely literate, welfare dependent & criminally active dude from Somalia is far better than you, and your family, who have lived here in Minnesota for generations.<br />
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They're not white and you are. This is their literal calculus; they're importing any Third World underclass in order to stay in power, the Great Replacement. That Islam is the most violent, regressive, divisive and per se hateful religion in human history is simply value added to the Cultural Marxists now regnant in this state.<br />
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I've written about the dangers of Islam in the West for as long as I've been writing here, or at Alpha News and elsewhere, for more than a decade. I used to be younger. But the message doesn't age and so I couldn't help but be struck by the next-level audacity, the sheer contempt and in-your-faceness of Governor Walz, parroted by his lower echelon minions in state government, who last month wished the forcibly-imported-into-Minnesota Muslims a Happy Ramadan. </div>
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To use their phrase: this isn't who we are. Nor, certainly, wish to become. </div>
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There is, theoretically, nothing wrong with a public official wishing the adherents of one religion or another well on their particular holiday. Personally I'm not fond of it, rather French in fact, when it comes to L'etat and religion. But America was founded and created by Christians, mostly Dutch & British Protestants. So the public square has always contained the uncontainable, God. It should continue to do so.</div>
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The trick is to get it right and here Governor Walz and his troops didn't at all and by design. Governor Assistant Football Coach (h/t Sheila Kihne PBUH) was noticeably absent from a daily briefing about the Wuhan virus in Minnesota recently. A credulous Minnesota media repeated his lie that he was observing Good Friday, no questions asked.<br />
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The real reason for his absence was that he was caught out in a lie the day before, Holy Thursday, denying he'd predicted there would be 20,000 dead in Minnesota. To which Tom Hauser said: "We have it on tape."</div>
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There were no Easter greetings to the Christians of Minnesota by the Governor. They're the enemy and I don't exaggerate. If you think I do, may I suggest you haven't been paying attention? </div>
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Later on Good Friday he tweeted a picture of himself and his daughter, both moronically wearing face masks outdoors. Some observance of the Ultimate Sacrifice, God become Man and slaughtered for our sake. That I'm no longer a Christian (but not an atheist) makes no difference in being able to recognize the calculated slight. Perhaps it heightens it.<br />
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I'm able to see clearly how the Regressive Left weaponizes one religion, while denigrating others, in particular the one which is responsible for the creation of America, modernity itself and which no amount of Third World immigrants can sustain. </div>
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Which is the point. </div>
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Their goal is to attack and discredit the very notions upon which America was created. In Minnesota, they're succeeding, in no small part because of a weak, insipid and cowardly entity known as the Republican Party of Minnesota, its elected officials, adherents, donor and lobbyist class. </div>
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If you ever find yourself in a foxhole with one of them, put a bullet in the back of their head. Don't aim for the brain, you'll likely miss that small target; focus on the brain stem.<br />
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They're reptiles, after all. </div>
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As everyone knows by now, the City of Minneapolis, in cooperation with the terrorist affiliated CAIR, has commanded that the call to prayer be blared out in the squalid ghetto known as Cedar-Riverside during Ramadan. Everyone in that area who isn't a Mohammedan is oppressed in public. They don't matter. </div>
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What's happening in our midst in Minnesota has been played out repeatedly in Europe. There's one playbook and it's being run here with frightful little opposition, thoughtful or otherwise. You can read all about it in Douglas Murray's book <span style="color: red;"><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Europe-Immigration-Identity/dp/1472958055/ref=sr_1_1?crid=467TNQVR593B&dchild=1&keywords=the+strange+death+of+europe+by+douglas+murray&qid=1587880387&s=books&sprefix=the+strange+death%2Caps%2C178&sr=1-1" target="_blank">"The Strange Death of Europe."</a> </span><br />
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There's little public or organized opposition to the exaltation of Mohammedism over Christianity or indeed any other religion. There should be and I've done my bit, will continue to. The insistence by Muslim immigrants wherever they land in Western countries that they're special and needs must have unique accommodations is a demand made by no other group. It deserves to be rejected out of hand. </div>
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Islam isn't special except in its depravity.</div>
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Allah was a desert moon god before Mohammad coopted the concept and incorporated it into his derivative religion, a mish mash of Christianity & Judaism, brought forth in the 7th Century and then spread by violence, slaughter and conquest. As you read this, the Muslim slave trade thrives in North Africa. Don't expect Gov. Walz or the local media to mention that, however. </div>
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There are a number of brave citizen groups throughout the state who fight back against being replaced, being ethnically cleansed in their homeland and the homeland of their ancestors, being told that cretins like Ilhan Omar are more American than they and their families are. They are right to resist, to object and to reassert that this country belongs to them and to those who, as President Trump is frequently wont to say, love our people and our values.<br />
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They adjust to America; we don't adjust to them. Within reason of course: it's mostly Protestants who get publicly drunk now on Saint Patrick's Day.<br />
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Somalis aren't the only Muslim subgroup in Minnesota but they're certainly the largest and most visible. Why, then, do they commit so much crime? Why is welfare dependency so great? Why, still, do 80% of them not speak English at home? All of this goes unreported, of course, because it conflicts with the corrosive narrative pushed by the Cathedral.<br />
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These are legitimate questions a free people can and should ask. You'll be punished, on or off line, for doing so but you simply have to persist. After the name calling, the Cultural Marxists have nothing.<br />
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Not being afraid is their greatest fear.<br />
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-60867388415343514722020-04-21T09:43:00.003-05:002020-04-21T09:43:33.515-05:00Vandana of Varanasi<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I encountered her by accident: the reason one travels.<br />
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I was staying in a flat outside of the noise and din of Varanasi, the holiest city of Hinduism, far removed from my first visit to Mother India in the deep south of the country, the state of Tamil Nadu, locus of the glory of the Hindu religion and her temples, away from the slaughter and destruction of the Muslims further north, that fake religion of peace which threatens the civilized world wherever it spreads, like a virus.<br />
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Here I had gone north. The difference was substantial but similar. The ear piercing cacophony of Indian traffic is an assault when first encountered. Then, like everything in life I suppose, one gets used to it and the noise fades to mere background. I've become adept at the notorious Indian "head wobble" signifying something (yet I somehow manage always to know when to deploy it), as well as making way for cows on the road. Don't pet them, by the way.<br />
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The city is also known as Benares, Banaras or Kashi. Puts me in mind of Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul. Some of our world cities have long histories behind their current label.<br />
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Except Rome, eternal Rome.<br />
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As Mark Twain said: “Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together!”<br />
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India is Hindu. I've only ever been there to observe. And learn. I'm not a convert. Isn't learning enough?<br />
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Like some story board from a movie, I met Vandana on one of my last days in Varanasi. I was staying in a VRBO above where she lived, tight against the ghats on the Ganges, the owner a literal descendant of Indian royalty. The dismantling of them by Nehru is second only to his agreement of the partition of the subcontinent. Some crimes cannot be forgiven.<br />
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I had two keys. The first let me out of the yard of my flat, into the back, toward the river, the Ganges, universally called "Ganga" in India. That name was foreign to this foreigner. What do they know? I preferred my own pronunciation but never spoke it. When in Rome. </div>
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The second key was to a gate that allowed me to climb down the steep steps to the Ganges, steep as in if you fell forward you'd be dead by the time your carcass flopped onto the landing. A shabby death, as a dear friend of mine might call it.<br />
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When I looked right, instead of left, that's when I saw Vandana. The steepness of the steps never changed in either direction but there were fewer of them to the right than to the left.<br />
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I'm not entirely sure why I climbed those steps to the right but I did. She spoke limited English but I spoke no Hindi. She was a bright young girl, self possessed and charming and with a modicum of English. "Hey mister!"<br />
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She took me left, around the corner where the steps ended and then showed me a litter of puppies. Other Indians immediately crowded round as she showed them off to me. Here's a white guy, an obvious visiter (no matter where I travel abroad I don't think of myself as a tourist. Some may find that a conceit; I think of it as a mindset). Four, or six, I can't remember. Cute as only dog or cat babies can be.<br />
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After making nice for awhile, I told Vandana that I had to be off to the Ganges. We'd rounded back around the corner and she invited me in for chai into, apparently, her family's home. I declined with all the graciousness that pigeon English and hand gestures could muster. She understood but asked if I was on WhatsApp. I confessed I was and so phone numbers were exchanged.<br />
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I dropped off several kilos of puppy chow to her before I left Varanasi. One can only do so much, but wherever one is, one should do that much, at home or abroad. I also gave her a 500 rupee note (with my right hand, by the way, never the left). She knew at a glance what it meant and thanked me, profusely if she had had her way but I made my exit quickly. Many people live for thanks while I've always found it a personal indictment.<br />
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Vandana texted me via WhatsApp for awhile after I returned to America, always calling me "uncle," a term of respect for older men who are not literal family relations. I responded as best I could, given the language and age barriers. After some time, she went silent. I don't know if her family could continue to afford an internet plan or not. Food first.</div>
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I don't know why Vandana returned to me, why I'm only writing about her now for the first time, more than a year later. Possibly because I know I can't travel this spring (Berlin/Vienna), although I always go to India in the Fall, which is still likely to happen, so I'm not sure that's it. </div>
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Likely it's because when people ask why I "vacation" so much, as opposed to what I do, which is travel, she's the reason. </div>
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-67624908657991005782020-02-27T13:43:00.001-06:002020-02-27T13:43:32.537-06:00CPAC: The Potemkin Village Of Conservative, Inc.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Viruses are lately much in the news and as if taking its cue from that, CPAC opened this week in Washington, D.C. An annual event for some years now, it has become a bloated farce of Conservative, Inc.'s attempt to survive the Trump years by fooling its too often gullible base by appearing to represent genuine conservative change. It does nothing of the sort, of course, but one has to give it credit for the sheer size of the gaslighting effort.<br />
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Previously CPAC was mostly a DC gathering for the 30 and under conservative crowd to get drunk and laid. Who could begrudge them that except MNGOPe types who'd do well to do either or both more. Then CPAC got monetized by Conservative, Inc.<br />
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Last year, Google was a major sponsor of CPAC. What more, really, is there to say? A major tech company, the most powerful tech company in the world, which consistently deplatforms conservatives and dissidents, ponies up to put on this farcical show.<br />
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This is akin to a Code Pink conference being underwritten by Lockheed Martin or Raytheon. Nothing is too stupid or contradictory for the odious lobbyist Matt Schlapp, head of the American Conservative Union, the headwaters of CPAC.<br />
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The fundamental problem with CPAC, apart from the obvious grift, is its determined insistence to avoid topics of real interest to Americans, the most important of which is immigration--both legal and illegal--and how demographic replacement could shortly make it impossible to elect a Republican president again. The corporate money behind CPAC doesn't care if America becomes a Third World hellhole.<br />
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Ann Coulter will never be more right than when she says immigration is "the" issue because immigration decides all other issues. It's irrefutable & Ilhan Omar is Exhibit A to this proposition.<br />
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CPAC today is utterly uncontroversial: socialism bad! free markets rules! Visit our vendors in the hallways to buy your tsotchkes that reinforce your Boomer mindset. "It's all so tiresome."<br />
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Nikki Haley, real name Nimrata Nikki Randhawa (see how that works?) hosted the official "Welcome Reception" according to CPAC's official agenda posted online. Did she charge $100,000, her usual speaking fee? She's a neocon as well so that's great.<br />
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This isn't to say CPAC is a complete wash. Sometimes interesting people who speak about relevant topics are not screened out. President Trump is scheduled to speak and it would be bad form not to.<br />
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Nigel Farage, Lee Smith, Andy Ngo, Saagar Enjeti, Sen. Josh Hawley, Gordon Chang, are among the quality speakers allowed by CPAC to make it appear authentic.<br />
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Pete Hegseth will speak as well (in the "FOX Nation" booth, subscribe now!) about his book, <i>"In The Arena: Good Citizens, a Great Republic, and How One Speech Can Reinvigorate America,"</i> the paperback edition of which came out three years ago, in February, 2017. Okay. Everybody into the pool.<br />
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But the bad outweighs the good. Just days ago CPAC credentialed well known Leftist Jared Holt who engages on hit jobs on people on the Right, as well as another man who's a certified Antifa activist. Molly-Jong Fast is speaking as I write. If you don't know who these people are, that's by design. When you know, you realize that CPAC enables the enemy which, necessarily, makes them the enemy as well.<br />
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You won't see Michelle Malkin, the bravest conservative in the nation, Ann Coulter, always redeemable by her writing on immigration or even Laura Loomer (don't care what you think of her) who was thrown out of CPAC last year. What gatekeepers on the Right?<br />
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As @NickJFuentes said recently: "Free speech is essential in so far that we use it to challenge the status quo. CPAC wants to control the narrative so that regular people aren’t exposed to true right wing and nationalist positions."<br />
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Closer to home we have our own iteration of gatekeepers and faux conservatism, The Center of the American Experiment, which I call, more accurately, the Center of the American Boomer.™ I endeared myself to it by writing honestly when Sen. Tom Cotton addressed their annual dinner, three years ago this June, by writing<span style="color: red;"> <u>"Tom Cotton Red Pills The Center of the American Experiment."</u></span></div>
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I haven't said this before but I wrote that article because neither John Hinderaker, president of the "activist think tank," nor Scott Johnson wrote about the substance of Sen. Cotton's remarks. Both praised his credentials (by their insecurities ye shall know them) and how pleasant & funny he was: a good time was had by all. Pablum, perfectly in keeping with Center's mission to be impotent but liked. Don't get me started on the cowardice of Hinderaker when it comes to Kim Crockett. </div>
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Now, by invitation only, which still costs you $75 (what grifting?) we have this upcoming:</div>
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And who isn't for fweedom? Certainly not gullible Boomers!</div>
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Charlie Kirk is a joke who makes Mark Zuckerberg look human. He's head of Turning Point, USA, the cringe astroturf group that exists to make Boomers think they're not, in real time, losing their country to the Third World. Unlike Michelle Malkin & Nick Fuentes, he's not America First. </div>
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Candace Owens is an accomplished chameleon grifter: look up "Social Autopsy," her stillborn website designed to dox people who anonymously engage in wrong think. Before realizing where the money was, she trashed tea party patriots specifically and Republicans generally. This is her third, five figure, appearance at the Center of the American Boomer.™ She's peddled the "Blexit" farce, where large number of blacks will vote for Trump. This wasn't proven by the results from 2018 but no matter. She also married a white dude, something sure to go down well in the hood. Only Minnesota Boomers would fail to recognize a fraud of this stature. </div>
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David Prager, son on Dennis, is also speaking to the blue rinse haired crowd that makes up this "VIP event by invitation only $75" event. He's the son of Dennis. Last year the Los Angeles Times reported that "Tax filings show $237,500 went to his [Dennis] consulting firm. An additional $155,700 went to Prager’s son for help with fundraising." Cool, cool. </div>
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The outlier in this group is David Horowitz who is a stronger conservative than any of his co-attendees. "Fight fire with fire" is his mantra, something necessary, needed and true to our times. </div>
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He's a wartime conservative; the rest peacetime. </div>
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Buy their books, pay the entrance fee. Pretend you're saving America. </div>
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Attend CPAC or believe they speak for you.</div>
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-46802754385076168932019-12-01T10:28:00.000-06:002019-12-01T10:28:21.913-06:00Criminals Of Color & Minnesota Media Silence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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White people aren't responsible for the recent crime wave washing over the Twin Cities. If you have a short attention span you can stop reading now, that's the take away.<br />
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But you wouldn't know it from local reporting. While race is injected into every story, especially when it's not relevant, local media falls oddly silent about it when it comes to murder, rape, robbery and assault. Why is that?<br />
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Because it doesn't fit in with their narrative that most of what is wrong with Minnesota and the country is the fault of white people. In fact, local media (I follow too many of these people on Twitter) have an agenda to promote minorities, especially illegal immigrants or failed forced migrants like Somalis, all of which commit shocking levels of crimes far exceeding whites.<br />
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This isn't to say that whites don't commit crime, manifestly they do, they just don't commit them in anything close to the same numbers (per capita) as blacks, hispanics and other minorities. You won't see this reported in the media because they have a relentless anti-white narrative to promote. They're allergic to the truth.<br />
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Herewith, some rarely reported truths:<br />
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1. Race is a better predictor of crime than poverty. </div>
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2. The percentage of Blacks and Hispanics in an area, not poverty, is the best predictor of crime.<br />
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3. Half of hate crimes are Blacks and Hispanics attacking each other.<br />
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4. 90% of gang members are non-White.<br />
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5. Black men are over a hundred times more likely to rape a White woman than vice versa.<br />
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6. 90% of interracial violence between blacks and Whites is committed by Blacks.<br />
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7. Blacks are just 13% of the American population but have committed half of all murders for the last 30 years.<br />
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8. In just two years, more blacks were killed by other blacks than died from 80 years of lynching.<br />
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9. Areas with more Black people have higher rates of crime.<br />
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10. Young Black men kill 14 times more often than young White men.<br />
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11. 93% of Black men who are murdered are killed by other Black men.<br />
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12. Police hesitate longer to shoot Black suspects than White suspects.<br />
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And so on and so on. The reality of life is far different from what you will see represented or, more often, hidden from you by the media, by the Cathedral. For more eye opening data about crime, race, Islam, diversity and gender, please peruse <a href="https://archive.is/LRe05" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">The Library of Hate.</span></a><span style="color: blue;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"> </span> </span>It's facetiously called that because we live in a time where speaking the truth about any of these topics is said by the Cathedral to constitute hate.<br />
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One tiresome tactic of local media is to report group violence without any racial identification. You can take it to the bank that when they do this, white people aren't implicated because if they were, they would be. This reporting by omission is now standard and the public isn't stupid: they know what's going on.<br />
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Recently two area hospitals had to be placed on lock down because of out of control groups that had assembled after a shooting victim had been transported there. The usually hyper race conscious media couldn't bring themselves to describe what everyone knew: those groups were blacks, not the white nationalists that exist in the fevered minds of liberal media.<br />
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Not long ago a 75 year old Muslim man was killed in public by a black man. Local media were in a bind: how to blame white people for this horrific act? In the end they couldn't and they focused on the grieving family members in their coverage.<br />
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No stories were run about how this kind of hatred needed to be exterminated from the black community, no exhortations from Minneapolis Mayor Frey that hate has no home here, that the black community was somehow complicit in this violent crime.<br />
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Had the murder suspect been white all of these stories and narratives would have flooded the zone. The interesting thing is: we all know it. I've recently taken to comparing our current civil society to a kitchen in the age of the USSR. We all whisper and share the truth over our tables, knowing that our media are complicit in generating oceans of lies daily. Pravda had nothing over American media.<br />
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To publicly speak the truth is to invite personal & professional destruction.<br />
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The crime rate of Somalis in Minnesota is perhaps the most forbidden topic in local media, second only to the amount of welfare they consume.<br />
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Pictured above is the booking photo of Demetrius Wynne who recently turned 19 and was arrested for the murder of Susan Spiller five years ago when he was a mere 14 years old. Her murder was so horrific that the only description given by authorities at the time was "complex homicidal violence." None of us had heard that term before. </div>
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Turns out that it meant Spiller "had been beaten, strangled and stabbed five times." Feel free, should you have a strong stomach, to read the seven page criminal complaint<span style="color: blue;"> <a href="https://www.hennepinattorney.org/-/media/Attorney/NEWS/2019/Wynne-Demetrius-Criminal-Complaint-2019.pdf" target="_blank">here. </a></span></div>
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It was reported that prior to her death Spiller spoke at a community gathering and feared retaliation for complaining about noise. Objecting to those "participating in their own lives" proved a death sentence for Susan or so it would seem. Literally, her killer lived next door. No motive per se has yet been given by authorities for her slaughter.</div>
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Can white people ever be the victim of hate crimes? Apparently not in the Twin Cities.<br />
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Will there ever be a Netflix original content show "Dear Black People" like there is two seasons of "Dear White People?" Why is that? Who is in control of such narratives?<br />
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Here's the thing though: am I not supposed to care about minorities killing each other like clockwork? Ignore the weekend body count of dead and wounded from Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore and St. Louis because their skin color is different than mine? These people are far more my fellow Americans than Islamofascists like Ilhan Omar. And yet the Cathedral demands silence.<br />
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There's a cold civil war criminal here and it's not me.</div>
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Crime knows no race, color or creed. It is the fact, however, that certain races, colors and creeds are more intimately familiar with it than others. Keith Ellison and local media like to pretend that white nationalists are a clear and present danger when in fact they are nothing of the kind. Ellison's most recent jihad is to generate more "hate crime" reports and is said to want to propose legislation to deal with that manufactured increase.<br />
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Students commit the most fake hate crimes, hate hoaxes, followed by Muslims. There's some overlap there. Media cover the initial (fake) reports but not often enough the fakeness of them when such is revealed.<br />
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In reality Ellison's ultimate goal is to criminalize speech he and the Regressive Left doesn't like. "Islam is right about women." The threats to our freedoms uniformly come from them.</div>
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Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder once claimed that Americans were cowards when it came to race. They're not, of course, just brow beaten into not speaking the truth about race and, for example, crime. But as Leonard Cohen once sang "Everybody Knows."</div>
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Even if they can't afford to admit it in public. But until we do, nothing will get better. </div>
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Which, upon reflection, may be the goal of the cultural Marxists.<br />
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"The worse, the better." — Lenin</div>
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1. Source: http://www.colorofcrime.com/2005/10/the-color-of-crime-2005/<br />
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2. Source: http://www.colorofcrime.com/2005/10/the-color-of-crime-2005/<br />
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3. Source: https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=7337<br />
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4. Source: http://www.colorofcrime.com/2005/10/the-color-of-crime-2005/<br />
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5. Source: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/082613-668778-epidemic-of-white-on-black-violence-is-a-fraud.htm?p=full<br />
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6. Source: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/082613-668778-epidemic-of-white-on-black-violence-is-a-fraud.htm?p=full<br />
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7. Source: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/28/5-devastating-facts-black-black-crime/<br />
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8. Source: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/28/5-devastating-facts-black-black-crime/<br />
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9. Source: http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Crime-Correlates-Lee-Ellis/dp/0123736129<br />
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10. Source: http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/22/viewpoint-dont-ignore-race-in-christopher-lanes-murder/#ixzz2ciWBxj00<br />
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11. Source: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bvvc.pdf#page=3<br />
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12. Source: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11292-014-9204-9<br />
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<i>The portion of this column only that pertains to Susan Spiller is for Nancy LaRoche, my sole companion in not forgetting her. </i><br />
<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-73371300500020537712019-11-17T14:38:00.001-06:002019-11-17T22:05:49.749-06:00The "Groyper Wars" Against Turning Point, USA: A Primer For Minnesotans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Apparently I'm destined to explain for the moment a number of interesting cultural and political developments on the Right that largely passes by the insular political and cultural world of Minnesota. It's not just that Minnesota media are hard left and not too bright, although that does go a long way. Mostly, I think, it's the anesthetizing incuriosity of Minnesotans, especially among Republicans. As long as they can get to work without too much congestion, have satisfactory bowel movements and move on to burgers and craft beers, all is right. Oh, don't forget sports ball of any kind, including the retarded and ghey "sport" of soccer. "Scarves up!" is their mantra. How effete, how soy.<br />
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If buglife had a state, it would be Minnesota.<br />
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Turning Point, USA is an AstroTurf organization that pretends to be a grassroots group representing conservative college students. In actuality, it's a top down, donor driven Potemkin village, with a board of directors that looks more like a retirement village in Naples, Florida than any college campus.<br />
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Charlie Kirk, its head, was fiercely Never Trump even after the Emperor got the nomination and went on to become the President. He's scrubbed all of those sentiments as best he could from social media but the internet is forever. Like Mark Levin, hate to break it to you.<br />
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In this he resembles the fraud Candace Owens who's twice spoken, for a five figure fee, at the Center of the American Experiment. Alpha News routinely churns out poorly written Boomer bait (socialism is bad!) by a perky woman who is a Turning Point USA "brand ambassador," which is snapped up by Boomers who refuse to understand the meme "If you only knew how bad things really are."<br />
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One such young person who does know is Nick Fuentes and he took the fight to the latest incarnation of Conservative, Inc., which exists to keep people from obtaining that very same awareness. Ashley St. Clair, another cheesy "brand ambassador," was fired and depersoned by Turning Point simply for appearing in a photo with him. But TPUSA stands for free speech. Right.<br />
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You should follow him at @NickJFuentes and subscribe to his YouTube channel America First <u><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsJ86N5n7fcEC_Ds8dYJKzA" target="_blank">here.</a></u></div>
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Kirk recently went on a nationwide "Culture War" on various campuses that dealt in anything but culture. Turning Point is a tool of the ruling class, the Uniparty, the entrenched interests that have done nothing for the American people but make their lives worse. It was sabotaged spectacularly & hilariously by Fuentes and his army of groypers. Wat mean?<br />
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Groypers are an iteration of the the Pepe meme, which the Left tried mightily to characterize as some sort of white supremacist neo-Nazi image but failed spectacularly. No less than the Hong Kong freedom fighters adopted Pepe because they understood the true power of the meme, not the gloss attempted to be put upon it by the Cathedral.<br />
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Groypers are fat frogs, some say toads, whose signature feature is their fingers interlaced under their chin. That's it Boomers; it's a pose. They became associated with Fuentes because many of the Twitter accounts who supported him had Groyper-type avatars in their handles. See? It isn't that hard to understand The Current Year. I routinely follow men and women a third my age on Twitter. If you want to know the future of the Right, they are it.<br />
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Young men who asked the hard questions, the tough questions, of Charlie Kirk and his fake conservative minstrel show of "Culture War" won the war and most of the battles. Kirk peddles a fake conservative narrative of accommodation to the Left where we win by losing. He represents the kind of "conservative" activism that lets drag queens talk about sodomy to our young children in public libraries. </div>
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Kirk pretends to hate identity politics when a white person thinks his culture has merit all the while holding gatherings celebrating blacks, hispanics and females. Fuentes has no problem with that but wonders why white people aren't accorded the same treatment. After all, majority white countries are being flooded by those from countries whose people could never have founded and built the United States. They're only here to cash in on our success and we're punished if we notice.</div>
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Other targets besides the eunuch Kirk are Ben Shapiro (who called for the ethnic cleansing of Israel but you're the anti-semite if you bring that up!) and Dan Crenshaw. This is by no means an exhaustive list. </div>
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One young man, a rosary wrapped around one of his hands, became something of a Groyper superstar when he asked Kirk, who beside him was Rob Smith, a black gay dude who served in the military, how promoting anal intercourse helped conservatives win the culture war. The point wasn't to bash gays; nobody cares who does what with whom as long as you leave children and animals out of it. Even then we seem to be losing that battle.<br />
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Smith himself was a Never Trumper and has transformed himself into a mouthpiece for the Right. The grifters always go to where the money is to be had.<br />
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The groyper kids are having none of it. God bless them, praise Kek.<br />
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Fuentes was fiercely attacked, maliciously maligned, by the moneyed interests on the Right. Called an anti-semite, a white supremacist and generally slandered, he is none of those things. As he himself noted, he got fairer treatment from the Left press than the Right. This is, by now, to be expected.</div>
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To the contrary, he understands that America is, apparently, set on an irreversible path of multiculturalism and is asking the hard & honest questions that Boomers and their marionettes like Turning Point refuse to continence. He's also Christian, having the temerity to ask how a country founded by Christians can survive such a demographic suicide. </div>
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That's the key: demographic replacement is real but still denied by these types of groups even while they celebrate others' ethnic identity, just not white peoples'. Legal immigration, not illegal, is the dagger to the heart of traditional America. At the rate of one million per year, these people vote democrat over republican by something like 80/20. You'll be punished if you notice. </div>
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I'd put it this way: how did the greatest nation on earth, founded, created and built by white British and Dutch protestants, put itself in a position to be overrun by people from the Third World who demonstrably can't build for themselves anything similar? Why is our immigration system rigged to let in relatives of Ilhan Omar, she who hates us, hates white people in particular (jealousy) instead of people who won't commit crimes, won't go on welfare and will assimilate to share our Western Christian values? </div>
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Enter the heroine.</div>
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Michelle Malkin stood up for Fuentes, putting paid to the whores of Turning Point, USA and so many other grifting organizations that exist to fleece the none too bright Boomer base. Socialism is bad! This very weekend Charlie Kirk is being paid to appear at David Horowitz's "Restoration Weekend." Somewhere, along with me, Diana West is laughing. </div>
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Malkin said at UCLA last week:</div>
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"Tonight, my remarks are directed at the young men and women of this country who identify as America First conservatives. How many proud Americans standing up for American freedom and sovereignty do we have in the room?<br />
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I know what it’s like to be in your shoes, feeling marginalized on a crazy college campus for standing up for your pro-life, pro-gun, pro-free speech, pro-Western values and fighting for your country. I also have two teenagers who have been through experiences like you have, sitting in classrooms where abject stupidity and emotionalism have replaced logic, reason, and the pursuit of truth.<br />
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That is why I will not be using my platform and my position to insult you, marginalize you, and shout you down. Just a couple of days ago here on this very campus, former Fox News hostess Kimberly Guilfoyle sneered that young conservative men in MAGA hats asking inconvenient questions were rude losers who could only get dates online and who were embarrassing their parents.<br />
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Another YAF speaker, Ben Shapiro, repeatedly denigrated an entire movement of young men who watch a YouTuber named Nick Fuentes and are seeking answers to tough questions about where America is headed as masturbating losers in their basements who share memes. As a mom with brilliant right-thinking kids who, yes, live in my basement, and, yes, share memes, I found these obsessive references to young people’s dating lives and habits by prominent conservative media personalities much older than their targets to be tellingly defensive and touchy. Also: creepy.<br />
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Here’s my message to the new generation of America Firsters exposing the big lies of the anti-American open borders establishment and its controlled opposition operatives: If I was your mom, I’d be proud as hell.<br />
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I want you to know that you are not alone. It’s important for you to know that not everyone who belongs to generations older than you has sat idly by while America rotted from the inside. Not all Gen Xers and Boomers are mindlessly stupefied by the bread and circuses entertainment dished out by so-called conservative media. Not all of us have occupied ourselves solely with “owning libs” and reciting clunky MAGA rap anthems while America crumbles."<br />
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And there you have it, Minnesota, another primer. My last was about Bronze Age Pervert and his seminal book "Bronze Age Mindset." I can only do so much and I'm happy to do so. </div>
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The rest is up to you. </div>
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-32283468449774787962019-11-03T14:03:00.000-06:002019-11-03T14:55:22.406-06:00Bronze Age Pervert: A Primer For Minnesotans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Interesting cultural and intellectual developments usually pass Minnesota by. You could even say the more interesting the less likely they are to penetrate what passes for the political and cultural elites here. I used to think it was just xenophobia but this obdurateness is something more, something willful. I've long since stopped being curious about the antecedents of this mediocrity on steroids: it just is, like winter.<br />
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It was only because I brought Bronze Age Pervert (BAP), who tweets as @BronzeAgeMantis (this is your cue to follow him) to the attention of my friend, the Right Honourable Roger Chamberlain, that local media first learned of BAP and were, naturally for them, flummoxed. I haven't lived in all 50 states but something tells me our local media are among the laziest of them. Certainly their work product wouldn't disabuse you of that notion.<br />
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In the cringe but aptly named political newsletter "Hot Dish," J Patrick Cooligan deigned to take notice of a retweet by Chamberlain (found by him on my TL) and wondered "Wat mean?" Only Cooligan wouldn't know the nomenclature of BAP to appreciate the "Wat mean?" But that's what he did, even if he didn't know it. And he didn't.<br />
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So what does a lazy member of the lazy Minnesota media do? Turn to the discredited house organ of neoliberalism, Politico, to understand this strange new phenomenon, that somehow pierced the thick membrane of Minnesota isolationism, for an explanation. The result was enough to make a cat laugh.<br />
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It was then that I knew I had to perform yet another uncompensated public service task (this sets me apart from all the MNGOPe grifters, of which there are legion) and explain to people too often entranced by burgers and craft beers, sports ball, the weather, the opening of yet another buglife apartment complex and the generally quotidian that makes modern life all but slow motion suicide, who is Bronze Age Pervert. Let's begin.<br />
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<b>BAM or Bronze Age Mindset</b></div>
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By now, Bronze Age Pervert is inseparable from his signature book, Bronze Age Mindset. <u><a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Bronze-Age-Mindset-Pervert/dp/1983090441/ref=sr_1_1?crid=23AK27BF2XFLN&keywords=bronze+age+mindset&qid=1572800592&sprefix=bronz%2Caps%2C199&sr=8-1" target="_blank">You should buy it</a>.</u> BAP is anonymous. You may have noticed that the Cathedral is currently waging war on people who remain anonymous online, all in the interests of "transparency" and "accountability." Accountable to whom? Transparent to whom? This is but a thinly veiled attempt to squash dissenting narratives, those that challenge the usual neoliberal orthodoxes.</div>
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BAP's Twitter account is littered with pictures of gorgeous landscapes and equally gorgeous young, buff men, resulting in the deadly, albeit hilarious, hashtag #ShowPhysiq or similar iterations, deployed most effectively against fat aging Boomers. These are the kind of tweets that would make Democrat Senate member Scott Dibble want to masturbate or put in a butt plug with an anonymous stranger on WhatsApp and then claim victim status when his degeneracy was made public. The usual suspects rallied to his defense. They always do. Weimerica. </div>
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Bronze Age Pervert is the acid rain that washes away this defilement of straight male friendship and camaraderie, that celebrates the masculine without the homoeroticism. Look for the dominant culture to get him wrong because of its own deformities and celebrated pathologies.</div>
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Same sex marriage is a joke, like Caitlyn Jenner and "transgender" claimants: neither are what they insist to be. And we all know it. Most of us are bludgeoned into a silent acquiesce. Not me.<br />
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"Still, it moves."</div>
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<b>BAM Breaks Through</b></div>
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There can be no doubt that we're talking about BAM because Michael Anton, he of the "Flight 93 Election" article, <u><a href="https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/are-the-kids-altright/" target="_blank">decided to review the book in The Claremont Review of Books</a></u>. This was seminal. One could hardly believe it and, if they'd been following BAP previously, were rightly astonished. This article is the first of two you have to read if you want to be up to speed. </div>
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What caught the observant eye was that Anton had been given the book by Curtis Yarvin, who pens under the name Moldbug and from which the concept of the Cathedral originated, at a dinner party. It probably won't mean much to the republican lobbyists here, by definition not a bright lot, but Anton having dinner with Moldbug? That alone was something in itself. </div>
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Anton, having first tried to read BAM and stopped, was encouraged to try again by his former White House colleague Darren Beattie and did. His resulting review has set everything in motion, including this column and the ignorance and deliberate misrepresentation by our lazy media. </div>
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<b>Neti, Neti: Not This, Not That</b></div>
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Neti, neti is the classical Hindu definition of God: not this, not that. So too it can be said of "Bronze Age Mindset."</div>
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I don't think the book is a Rorschach test but I suppose in some ways it could be taken as such, especially by Boomers who don't understand the justified resentment of them, bordering on hatred, of the under 30 set. I do understand because I follow closely those under thirty on social media, primarily Twitter; it isn't difficult if your mind isn't ossified. I saw the term "apostate Boomer" applied on Twitter to Steve Sailer and thought "This will do."<br />
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BAP responded to Anton in due course at The American Mind with a succinct, deadly and accurately titled piece <a href="https://americanmind.org/essays/americas-delusional-elite-is-done/" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank">"America's Delusional Elite Is Done."</a> This is the second article you have to read if you want a basic grasp on what is currently roiling the intellectual Right.<br />
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I think BAP has the better argument here but I'm at pains to praise Anton for having the courage to review BAM and try to come to terms with what it represents, which, fundamentally, is almost everything Boomers and their corrupt, grifting "Conservative, Inc." has peddled to the credulous and the weak as authentic right wing politics.<br />
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If the Biblical admonishment that "by their fruits ye shall know them," means anything, then a quick peak in our public libraries showcasing drag queens reading state sponsored sodomy tales to our youngest children tells us everything we need to know.<br />
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If you want a cheat sheet to the action, I don't think I'm doing violence to either side's argument when I put it this way: Anton acknowledges the critique (how could he not?) but falls back to a defensive counter-argument of "what will you build in its place?" In the final analysis this simply won't do because the conservative status quo has preserved nothing, allowed much to be destroyed [press esc to go back] and offers no plausible way forward to triumph.<br />
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Managing the decline and simpering acquiescence to cultural decay and collapse is really, once the high minded Boomer language is stripped away, all that is offered.<br />
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BAP essentially laughs at this posturing born out of intellectual & cultural poverty, out of a desperate necessity and throws the present back in the face of those who fail to see how much has already been lost. "If you only knew how bad things really are." That's a meme, Boomers.<br />
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Here is a crucial passage from BAP's response to Anton that I think wins the argument:<br />
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"The left completely abandoned Americanism in the 1960's; at this point they've also abandoned biological reality. Vitalism is all that is left against their demented biological Leninism. Encouraging health, normality, and physical nobility against their celebration of deformity, obesity, and sexual catamitism must be one of the basic functions of conservatism in our time. It is one of the reasons my message is powerful among many with the left's gospel of wretchedness: what is <i>your </i>plan to take that on?"</div>
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Anton, of course, has no plan, in fact you might say he didn't actually realize the problem before BAP and he's no slouch.</div>
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If you're a Minnesota republican Boomer who thinks the fraudulent Turning Point USA, and like minded grifter groups, are the berries, if you still don't get the point of the passage quoted above, search for images of Aisha Gomez and Jay Xiong. </div>
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Then, if you're still clueless, I'm afraid the best that you can hope for is not being smothered to death in your nursing home staffed by people who look like them. </div>
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<b>Extra Credit</b></div>
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Anton responded to BAP's response, called a sur reply (also spelled surreply and sur-reply. Aren't you here to learn?) Unfortunately, his title gives the cringe game away: <a href="https://americanmind.org/post/which-way-jester-man/" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank">"Which way, Jester Man?"</a> When name calling is in the title, you know they're out of arguments. </div>
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The editors of The American Mind had the good sense and courage to run <a href="https://americanmind.org/features/conservatism-in-the-bronze-age/" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank">"Conservatism In The Bronze Age.</a>" I recommend you take a look at it and click on the link of the various essays there that might interest you. </div>
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I thought Second City Bureaucrat, @CityBureaucrat on Twitter, had the best reply and you get the sense of this from his title: <a href="https://americanmind.org/features/conservatism-in-the-bronze-age/why-not-actually-engage-with-bronze-age-mindset/" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank">"Why Not Actually Engage With Bronze Age Mindset?"</a> The subtitle leaves no doubt: "Ideologues seem incapable of doing so without resorting to name-calling."</div>
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Bronze Age Mindset has said he's replying to Anton in due course, as of this writing yet published. </div>
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There you are, Minnesota, roughly up to speed. </div>
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<b>Wat Mean?</b></div>
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This column is only a primer, not a complete or thorough exegesis of the Bronze Age Pervert phenomenon. That it exists shows, I think, how uninteresting politics have become in Minnesota, a feature not a bug. More than three years ago I wrote <u><a href="https://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/04/do-minnesota-republicans-believe-in.html" target="_blank">"Do Minnesota Republicans Believe In Anything?</a></u>" Then, as now, I think the answer remains the same: not much really, paychecks mostly, chair rearrangement on the decks of the Titanic, arrested high school egos vying for prominence on social media. "It's all so tiresome." Another meme, Boomers. Wake up.</div>
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The indictment that Bronze Age Pervert brings to the desiccated Conservative, Inc. applies with even more force to the small potatoes of Minnesota republican politics. </div>
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Does anyone realistically think they'll win another statewide election in the foreseeable future? Not if they're honest or, for many of the grifters, sober. </div>
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So what the great Joe Sobran said of Conservative, Inc., now manifested by the pathetic, lobbyist run CPAC, or Boomer donors making younger types dance to the tune of nationalist self-destruction, Turning Point, USA or a local "activist think tank" that throws a courageous (read honest) member overboard, can well be said here:</div>
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"It was all a game, or a way of making a living."</div>
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And I haven't even talked about no nut November. </div>
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-86628886605932444412019-09-13T08:13:00.001-05:002019-09-13T08:13:53.656-05:00Desperate Measures: City Pages Repackages Minnesota CAIR's Jihad Against Its Critics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I had an odd sense of déjà vu last week when, apropos of nothing, City Pages ran a story with the breathless headline "How Minnesota Republican Operatives Are Sowing Distrust of Minnesota Muslims." I'd seen this all before, specifically last year when CAIR Minnesota issued its list of "haters." I made the grade, thank you, although I was weirdly called in the conclusion "an interchangeable propagandist." I don't think so: my writing style and analysis is hardly interchangeable.<br />
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I'm still holding out for certified hater status from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) but that fraudulent group has been having some karma induced troubles of late.<br />
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Mostly, I was outraged at being labeled a "republican operative." Sorry Logan Carrol, the author of the piece (a name so WASP I'm blinded just by typing it), the last thing that I am is a republican operative: I'm a conservative, having long ago run from the cuck label of republican.<br />
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Republican operatives can be seen on "Almanac" or "At Issue." Or heard on podcasts along with members in good standing of the Regressive Left because they want to be liked. Or making nice with our shockingly mediocre media on Twitter. Or maneuvering for paid positions on campaigns that undoubtedly will lose, paycheck in the interim being all. "Same as it ever was."<br />
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As I've written before, once you understand high school, you understand Minnesota republican politics.<br />
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Before examining certain particular hilarities in the article, I have to give Carrol some credit: it wasn't completely awful writing. Then again, I'm not a regular reader of City Pages, the free tabloid of the uneducated, perpetually outraged Left in the Twin Cities. I'm old enough to remember when I praised one of its former writers, Aaron Rupar, who's since gone on to a sort of fame at national outlets (sorry about the demise of Think Progress, Aaron, although it would take a heart of stone not to laugh). I thought he had good instincts despite his politics being the opposite of mine. Carrol's article was, of course, lazy, reductive and came with a two by four agenda. Then again, the same can be said of all Minnesota media, no matter the topic.<br />
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First, I write about Islam, only rarely an individual Mohammedan. I find the distinction crucial, others do not. But I'm not others and don't wish to become them. The forced mass migration of Islam into Europe holds lessons for those of us in Minnesota and America who correctly refuse to sit passively by while some wish for the same fate. Search for "Rotherham" (use Duck Duck Go). The City Pages article, like the CAIR Minnesota "haters" list, is designed to silence criticism of Islam, seeks to cow a populace under threat of being called names into acquiescence for Rotherhams here. No.</div>
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Next, Carrol writes: “You can’t object when your children are bullied by feral Somali youth,” declared Alpha News in a story last September titled, “The St. Cloud Times Shills for Refugee Resettlement.” No it wasn't "Alpha News," Logan, it was me! Come on, you're not even trying. </div>
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I wrote for Alpha News for approximately 18 months, quitting by email last December (my editor in chief followed two weeks later) when I was in Varanasi, India, after which I walked along the Ganges in the early morning light, smoking and looking for my favorite chai walla, down from the burning ghats where corpses are cremated in the open. I'm in negotiations with Netflix for the rights to the story at this very moment. </div>
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The point I'm making is that I had the sole opinion column at Alpha News during my tenure and don't appreciate this misattribution of my writing. How can I make the SPLC's hater list that way?</div>
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The repackaged hit piece moved on to the Center of the American Experiment, or, as I call it, far more accurately I think, the Center of the American Boomer. Carrol refers to it as "Minnesota's premier conservative think tank," which is akin to saying some burger & craft beer joint is Minnesota's premiere restaurant. Both are true, in that peculiar Minnesota sense. </div>
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In the story there's a large picture of John Hinderaker, the current president of the Center, who constantly refers to it as "my" conservative think tank. The last time any media drew attention to the Center he threw a distinguished member of the staff overboard. The Cathedral is never more powerful when its object are types like him. </div>
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We're in a cold civil war but somehow the Center has either failed to notice it or is too cowardly to fight it. Either way spells uselessness, David French conservatives (French Davidians per @PollySpin) when we need Sohrab Amari conservatives. You'll have to look up that last reference on your own.</div>
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Not to be entirely unfair to readers, Amari says Conservative, Inc. has conserved nothing, drag queens reading to our children in public libraries being the proof. French says, muh principles are worth hanging onto, even as America as founded is "fundamentally transformed" by Third World immigrants who have nothing to offer us but votes for Democrats as well as crime, welfare dependency if not fraud and low IQ's. </div>
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If you're looking for courage and leadership on the most pressing issues of our times, the Center isn't for you. If, rather, you prefer to be a blue rinse hair audience member looking for the next thumb to suck, the Center of the American Experiment is home, Boomer. Please give generously, they have payroll to make, even without Kim.</div>
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"It was all a game, or a way of making a living." Joe Sobran on Conservative, Inc. </div>
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The story plods on with the usual tired tropes generated by the Cathedral. I could have written it, so predictable is its narrative arc. But because it mentions me again, I'm forced, post modern-like, to deal with the text. </div>
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Carrol drags me for speculating that the attack on the terrorist mosque Dar Al Farooq in Bloomington was a hoax. Given that Muslims are the second greatest generator of hoax "hate" crimes (only behind students) it was entirely reasonable given that a substantial amount of time had elapsed since the attack with no arrests. It proved not to be true but that comes with speculation. Hello Russia hoax?</div>
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He also says I claimed victim status. To anyone who knows me or who reads me or who has heard me speak, that's enough to make a cat laugh. I stole that from Christopher Hitchens: I miss him still.</div>
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Not surprisingly, Carrol doesn't mention my reporting (I was an opinion columnist but more than once made hard news in the course of it) on one of the imams of the terrorist mosque. "Waleed Idris al-Maneesey (also spelled Meneese) is the radical lmam who heads up Dar Al-Farooq" I wrote in September of 2017. </div>
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I went on to note: "Al-Maneesey has said that no Muslim in a non-sharia ruled country should be a judge as only Allah can make law. Just last November he preached Muslims had an obligation to kill and destroy the Jews. Both of those sentiments strike me as decidedly un-Minnesotan but what do I know?"</div>
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The reaction from local media, including City Pages, to the news I broke? Nothing, as if to prove the title of my column "The Silencing Jihad." </div>
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Two years later, it continues. Cue the "it's all so tiresome" memes.</div>
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I wrote <u><a href="https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2018/12/13/the-islamization-of-minnesota-media/" target="_blank">"The Islamization of Minnesota Media"</a></u> for the Center for Security Policy not quite a year ago. The Islamist propaganda Minnesotans face daily is discussed and explained there. Logan, take a look.</div>
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Local media have been captured by CAIR and show ample signs of the Stockholm Syndrome. Most astute observers of both media and local Islamists have known this for some time. That City Pages had to gin up a warmed over version of what Minnesota CAIR put out last year suggests to me that local Islamists are not happy with the results thus far. White pill, fam.</div>
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I both apologize for and tire of quoting myself but why reinvent the wheel? How I ended my "The Silencing Jihad" column two years ago applies with equal, if not more, force today:</div>
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"Dar Al-Farooq is a radical Islamist mosque but will never be covered as such. Brave Muslim reformers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, Maajid Nawaz, Tarek Fatah and Raheel Raza will never be given coverage by them. To do so, as I’ve previously written, is to explode the construct that CAIR and MAS speak for all Muslims. They don’t.<br />
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The attacks by [Sally Jo] Sorensen, [Wilhelm] Davis and MPR are designed to silence us, to exact a cost for the simple act of paying attention. Someone once said that political correctness is a war on noticing.<br />
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That’s why it’s up to us not to remain silent. Silence is their goal, their current jihad. “Silence is death,” as was said in another context. But we won’t stay silent. And if the forces of the Regressive Left don’t like it, they can find another state."<br />
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Image credit: Center for Security Policy<br />
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-72979526299211078772019-07-08T08:05:00.002-05:002019-07-18T18:23:16.635-05:00Keith Ellison Gaslights Rural Minnesota<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Recently, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison ventured into the rural parts of Minnesota in order to set people there straight about how the forced importation of uneducated, low skilled, unassimilable, refugees make their lives better and how dissent from this diktat is "hateful."<br />
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Bad message, bad messenger, but that's part & parcel of any gaslighting effort.<br />
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This attack, for that is what it is, on rural Minnesota comes close on the heels of the New York Times hit job, about which I wrote immediately below.<br />
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Stephen Montemayor, the Star Tribune's go to reporter for dhimmi coverage, wrote a story that couldn't be distinguished from a press release from the Ismaofascist AG. Or Islamofascist Ilhan Omar. Or Islmofascist CAIR.<br />
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He's at their service and it shows. Media today are propaganda organs for the Left and should not be taken seriously with respect to that upon which they claim to report.<br />
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Still, it's worth following Montemayor's "reporting," if no other reason than to call it out for his relentless service on behalf of The Cathedral. He starts with an unverified report of a "hate crime" and quickly hits his stride bolstering Minnesota's Attorney General's jihad on Wrong Think. Montemayor makes the wholly unsupported allegation that there is "a rising number of episodes of intolerance against immigrants and minorities" in rural Minnesota.<br />
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It's always good to remember that when our dishonest media say "hate crimes" are increasing, they almost always refer to "reports" of such being made to the FBI. What they don't tell their readers is that those reports are simply collected; they are not, in fact, verified or found to have actually happened. Feel free to report your own "hate crime" today: there's no downside because no one will bother checking up on you. Some groups know this very well. CAIR, for example.<br />
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As anticipated, the Star Tribune reporter cites the New York Times hit piece that I wrote about. Once you figure out The Cathedral, many things are predictable. These stories are coordinated, never spontaneous and exist to advance a false narrative.<br />
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It's cute the media don't realize we see them.<br />
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Ellison is quoted toward the end of this tedious piece of agitprop as saying "What's clear is these people are organizing. They're here in Minnesota and they are violent and they're willing to stab and hurt people while hiding behind the First Amendment."<br />
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Was he talking about Somalis at St. Cloud's Crossroads Mall? Those stabbings? Or was he referring to the straight up violent Antifa for which he has shown much fondness?<br />
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And "hiding behind the First Amendment?" Here he gives his game away, which is suppression of speech, censorship. The First Amendment never protects violence and never has. So what does he mean? He means he wants to silence speech with which he doesn't agree: yours.<br />
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Montemayor has Ellison justifying his repression tour of rural Minnesota by referencing the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shooting that killed 51 people. Please.<br />
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Would he justify policing the Muslim community for the slaughter, less than a month later, of more than 100 Nigerian Christians at the hands of Muslims? No, of course not; you see very well how this gaslighting works.<br />
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In fact, if we in Minnesota were to pay equal minded attention to what's going on in the world, we'd be protecting Christians and Jews who are murdered daily by adherents of the religion of peace. “Christians living in a Muslim country are ‘143 times more likely’ to be killed by a Muslim than vice versa,” reported the Voice of Europe on March 18th of this year.<br />
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When you have mass Muslim migration, like that which has happened in France, Robert Spencer informs us "with 66 dead a year on average, Frenchmen are exactly ten times more likely to be murdered by a Muslim than a Muslim being killed by a non-Muslim terrorist anywhere in the Western world." Not just in France mind you, <i>anywhere</i> in the Western world.<br />
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Who's really at risk of harm and from whom? The answer to that question is the last thing Minnesota media will answer.<br />
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Ellison deleted the tweet you see pictured at the top of this column. So far, I've not seen Stephen Montemayor report this fact, let alone ask the Attorney General about it. The same goes for the rest of Minnesota media. </div>
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Here's a man who endorses the violence of Antifa, or at a bare minimum, has never once condemned it, dispatching himself to rural Minnesota to lecture others about their purportedly violent tendencies. That which they themselves are guilty of will be projected onto others. </div>
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The sanctimonious editorial board of the Star Tribune gives them cover. That board consists of a handful of unremarkable, mediocre people on the Regressive Left. They have no moral authority. </div>
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In addition to the support of Antifa, our gaslighting Attorney General apparently didn't spend much time in the rural areas of the state because shortly after this PR stunt he was seen warmly embracing the rancid, anti semitic, anti white, terrorist loving Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of the United Kingdom. In a way, I was impressed with the sheer brazenness of Ellison, which brazenness comes from knowing he'll never be held to account by Minnesota media. Where he stops and the other starts is difficult to discern. </div>
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Muslims are more likely to report fake hate crimes than any other group in America except college students and even then, there can be some overlap, according to investigative reporter Andy Ngo. Yes, that Andy Ngo who was recently beaten up by Portland Antifa and sent to the hospital with a brain bleed. </div>
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Any condemnation from local media about a reporter being violently attacked and injured? Anything from Keith Ellison? Anything from those preening moralists at the Star Tribune editorial board? To ask the questions is to have your answers. </div>
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Andrew Yang, and eventually Joe Biden, to their credit, did condemn the attack on Ngo. I no longer ask the limp dick question "But what if conservative affiliated groups had done the same thing? What would the media be saying?" </div>
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If I wanted to engage in an exercise of cringe uselessness I'd read "The Federalist" or attend yet another of that grifter Candace Owens' appearance at the Center of the American Experiment. This is one Boomer who doesn't respond to Boomer bait, who recognizes it for the problem that it is: keeping them asleep, pacified, optimistic when there is no cause. </div>
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Joe Sobran once said of the conservative movement “It was all a game, or a way of making a living.” Even in the Age of Trump, this remains true. </div>
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It is worth noting, however, that Peter Beinert, on July 4th no less, wrote that there was almost no support on the Left for Antifa so why do conservatives insist there is? Yet Jeffrey Goldberg, his editor at "The Atlantic" tweeted a comparison of Antifa to the American troops landing on the beaches of Normandy. Yes, it's a mystery how Antifa has been given a pass. </div>
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Did local media republish the photo of Keith Ellison at the 2018 Minnesota State Fair with Portland Antifa leader Luis Enrique Marquez? Of course not but thanks to <u><a href="https://bigleaguepolitics.com/busted-keith-ellison-photographed-with-portland-antifa-leader-deletes-pro-antifa-tweet/" target="_blank">Big League Politics you can see it for yourself.</a></u></div>
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These things happen, are allowed to happen if not promoted outright, because of The Cathedral. I may be banging on about this concept for awhile but only because I think it affords Minnesotans an exceptional understanding as to much of what is happening around them. To know how to best respond, one has to best understand what is going on. The Cathedral gets us most of the way there. </div>
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And what is really happening?</div>
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Pat Buchanan recently put it succinctly: “In half a lifetime, many Americans have seen their God dethroned, their heroes defiled, their culture polluted, their values assaulted, their country invaded, and themselves demonized as extremists and bigots for holding on to beliefs Americans have held for generations.”</div>
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Instead of robust support for those Americans, we get moral cretins like Ilhan Omar who hates the country that gave her refuge, whose own native country in a hundred years couldn't achieve a quarter of what America has, even as we're expected to celebrate Somali straw huts on Lake Street or in some pathetic Somali "museum." We get Islamofascists like Keith Ellison, who the dumbest republicans in the nation couldn't defeat when he ran for Attorney General, but who pretends to moral virtue while supporting Antifa and meeting with Jeremy Corbyn. </div>
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Rural Minnesotans in particular understand the stakes and refuse to be cowed by a far left Attorney General and his handmaidens in the press. <u><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerscruton/2014/08/30/why-did-british-police-ignore-pakistani-gangs-raping-rotherham-children-political-correctness/#a5b6c40754ab" target="_blank">They refuse to let another Rotherham happen in their midsts because Rotherham happened by degrees.</a></u> They insist on stopping those degrees every step of the way. And there is no other way, despite the condescension or the all out attacks on them. </div>
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Far more than the ersatz sophisticated "conservatives" I know in the Twin Cities, most of whom are good only for lining up for (yet another) paycheck on a (yet another) sure to fail campaign, or who cashed out to become lobbyists while pretending to make a difference, or who suck up to the Left and local media for fear they'll be called names, rural Minnesotans have the courage that comes from knowing they are right. </div>
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-69676099360334979492019-06-23T10:58:00.000-05:002019-07-18T18:22:31.050-05:00Somalis, Minnesota & The Cathedral <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last Thursday the New York Times, an essential element of the Cathedral (defined and explained in my post immediately below), published a story designed to silence Minnesotans from voicing legitimate concerns about the forced importation of Somalis into this state. The only officially approved narrative on this topic is one of unalloyed joy and gratitude despite, on balance and by every objective measure, being an ongoing, quite expensive, socially corrosive, failure.<br />
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Somalis in Minnesota do very little to adjust and assimilate into America. They are encouraged by the Regressive Left, here and nationally, aided by the Cathedral, not to do so. Instead, quite perversely, Minnesotans are demanded to do all the adjusting. This is exactly backwards but is precisely our current circumstances.<br />
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The New York Times story--one could predict its content and narrative arc without reading it--is designed to assist local efforts in Minnesota to silence objections and dissent. The mere act of noticing is not allowed. "Political correctness is a war on noticing," Steve Sailer once wrote.<br />
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Reduced to its essentials, the storyline posits that backwards, racist, xenophobic (a word used in the title) Minnesotans are the scum of the earth, while portraying Somalis as helpless victims, here only to benefit us, instead of to take from us, which is the more accurate reality. That nonsense about diversity making us stronger again. It doesn't, of course, but saying so will soon be a capital offense.<br />
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Before examining the hit job of a story, I want to recall what I wrote almost two years ago to the day when Sen. Tom Cotton was the featured speaker at the annual dinner of the Center of the American Experiment. Quite literally, I was the only one present who actually conveyed in writing what the Senator said. The Cathedral works by intimidation, among other methods, and the reaction to the New York Times story is revealing proof of it.</div>
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Here's <span style="color: red;"><u><a href="https://alphanewsmn.com/tom-cotton-red-pills-center-american-experiment/" target="_blank">what I wrote for Alpha News</a></u> </span>about the substance of Sen. Cotton's remarks concerning Somalis & Minnesota:</div>
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"Cotton proceeded to talk in honest, real terms about Somalia and Somali immigration. I swear I could hear jaws clench. This crowd either supported open borders or was (mostly) too cowardly to speak about its downsides. Not Tom.</div>
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He detailed the enormous financial generosity of America toward the failed state of Somalia, including both humanitarian aid as well as military efforts, the latter at the cost of lives. “Blackhawk Down” and all that.</div>
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Turning to the realities of Somali immigration, he informed the audience that Minnesota spends more than 120 million dollars annually on that community. He noted that more than 80% of them do not speak English at home. He pointed out the obvious and ongoing problem of Somalis joining terrorist groups both here and abroad. He truthfully said that there is little cultural integration of them nor any particularly noteworthy contributions to wider society from them.</div>
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He mocked Gov. Mark Dayton for saying to those who had “real and legitimate” concerns about such a troubling situation that they “should find a different state.” He made plain that the Governor had it backwards, had it manifestly wrong and that American citizens have every right to question the consequences of immigration decisions from which they are largely excluded but are forced to live with.</div>
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Simple, candid common sense was the order of Cotton’s day and saying these things out loud made the Center’s audience deeply uncomfortable. Citizens have every right to question the settlement of those who don’t share our values or seek to change our culture into the backward one from which they came. Female genital mutilation comes to mind. That questioning can, and should, be done without rancor or unkindness but this crowd was largely made up of those who faint dead away at the thought of being called bigoted or racist."</div>
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All this is truer today than it was two years ago. The discussion along these lines amongst Minnesotans is precisely what the Times' story is designed to shut down. Local media was failing at the task. Ask yourself: why else would the New York Times take an interest in Saint Cloud, Minnesota? Why now? These stories don't appear for no reason. </div>
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The story itself was badly written, notable for the falsehoods it contained as well as for salient facts it left out. This is how most "journalism" operates in the service of the Cathedral's agenda.<br />
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To begin, the reading material of one subject is categorically labeled xenophobic and conspiratorial, with no evidence provided for the claim, naturally. Robert Spencer's "JihadWatch.org" was included in those characterizations. Spencer is a scrupulously factual, leading authority on Islam, Islamism, the terrorism that naturally accompanies mass Muslim migration to the West and the author of "The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS." <u><a href="http://tinyurl.com/yycjc8lg" target="_blank">Buy this book.</a></u><br />
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The story went on to deride white demographic replacement, something minorities and the Democrats boast about, as a "racist conspiracy theory." Except that white replacement is an obvious, demonstrable fact, here in America and across Western Europe.<br />
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Whites are a minority in London. The very day this hit piece appeared, the Texas Tribune ran the story "Texas gained almost nine Hispanic residents for every additional white resident last year." No Texas, no republican president ever again. But "a racist conspiracy" according to the author of the New York Times story.<br />
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All of this is in the service to intimidate you into not noticing in the first place, and in the second, to remain silent if you do. Whites can object once they're minorities and lose electoral power.<br />
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The Minnesota chapter of CAIR is kowtowed to without mentioning its terrorist links, something the New York Times has in common with local media. The pretense it speaks for all Muslims is laughable but that's the only narrative you'll find in the press.<br />
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What did the story leave out about Somalis in Minnesota? Welfare dependency to the tune of 120 million dollars annually, lack of assimilation by Somalis into American culture, daycare fraud, home health services fraud, members of the Bloomington terrorist mosque Dar Al Farooq leaving to join the terrorist group Al- Shabab, an imam at that same mosque whose homilies instruct Muslims that it is their religious duty to kill Jews, and another terrorist attack at the Mall of America on top of that of Crossroads Mall.<br />
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Gee, why would people who had no say in the imposition of all this cultural enrichment have the least hesitation about such developments?<br />
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A friend more astute than I am noticed the Times' story flipped the demographic numbers: Saint Cloud went from 2% non-white to 33%. But, she observed, another way of saying this is that in 30 years it went from 98% white to 67% white. You're supposed to neither notice nor object. Diversity, weirdly, only affects white people. Why is that?<br />
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As one person on Twitter said: "Note the preposterous inversion of who the offending party is here, as if it's entirely natural for people from thousands of miles away to be settled en masse in a small city in the interior of this continent. But somehow it's the locals who must explain themselves!"<br />
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Another: "Amusing to see the obvious alliance between the East Coast media & refugee NGO's to facilitate ramrodding 3rd world migrants into white towns & the few remaining majority white cities. 'Accept this next wave of migrants or we'll stamp you as media-certified bigots or Hate Agents.'"<br />
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Yet another put it in succinct deadly terms: "Their desire to not be replaced is proof they deserve replacement."<br />
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Astead W. Herndon is the reporter commissioned by the Times for this hit job. "In his free time, he enjoys basketball, musical theater, “Atlanta” (his favorite TV show), Kanye West and is a die-hard supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, a soccer team in North London," reads his bio in part. </div>
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A black, gay, affirmative action hire, previously at the D.C. bureau of The Boston Globe, Herndon's Saint Cloud piece is actually the second installment of his cultural jihad against what he terms "white identity politics."</div>
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Wait a minute: isn't identity politics all the rage? Why, yes it is. Does every other ethnic group in America now engage in it constantly? Regrettably, yes. Why, then, should anyone object when whites do it?</div>
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Because it's racist. I'm not being facetious, that's the literal, and continuous, answer you will get to that obvious question. Such is the alarm in the Cathedral that whites will attain a racial, ethnic identity before the demographic transformation of America is complete that this non sequitur is deployed viciously and incessantly against them. Alas, it's effective: you don't want to be called a waycist bigot, do you white boy? It helps, of course, when there are a lot of white Leftists shouting this. </div>
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His first article in what can only be presumed to be a tedious narrative tasked Herndon by his white overlords at the Times is titled "How Trump’s Brand of Grievance Politics Roiled a Pennsylvania Campaign." Herndon references an alleged push-pull among republicans "who have wrestled with how to deal with such overt appeals to white identity."</div>
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When all others are explicitly appealed to daily on the basis of those identities, why can't whites be? Because they're still in the voting majority, which gives the game away. </div>
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Do you think Herndon will write on how blacks in America, who constitute 13% of the population, are responsible for more than 50% of violent crime? Never. Wrong narrative. </div>
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This accounts for why you never see stories about the state of race relations among minorities. How are blacks and hispanics getting along? Asians and blacks? Blacks and Somalis? Africans new to America and blacks? Once you take out the white element, the narrative is grim. </div>
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The cohesion of the coalition of the fringes depends upon the white boogeyman. Left to themselves they resemble "The Lord of the Flies." </div>
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Based upon my review of Herndon's articles and social media postings, I've concluded he's a black national supremacist. Two can play that game and far more of us on the Right should. Turns out it's quite easy. </div>
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Why don't we? Oh right, the name calling. The Cathedral's power is as strong as it is because currently it only has to start the job of non-personing and too many on the Right will do the rest of the work for it in order not to be next. Belatedly, they learn they are always next; it's only a matter of time, a matter of sequencing. </div>
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With the Saint Cloud calumny, Herndon got a twofer: racist white people and Muslim haters. The reaction, however, in Minnesota has been less than spectacular to his libel-by-the-numbers job, something of a thud, as a friend of mine might say. Sure the local newspaper wrung its hands and the usual white haters in the Twin Cities media and political circles clucked but, beyond that, not much of an impact. </div>
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No one lost their job, for example, always a goal with these stories to provide sufficient warning to others engaged in Wrong Think. Herndon's own tweeting of the story went decidedly non-viral and many of the replies, satisfyingly, were evidence that this narrative is losing strength.<br />
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The objects of the hit job hit back.</div>
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Objecting to your own demographic replacement without any say, as well as to the forced importation of Islam on a significant scale, which importation has already destroyed the United Kingdom and ruined much of Western Europe, is both appropriate and necessary. Cultural Janissaries, hired by corporate media, will be deployed to bolster attempts by local media to stop efforts of the citizenry from being effective in, well, resisting.</div>
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“Islam is not a race … Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy,” Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the world's most famous and accomplished Somali, has rightly said. Why don't you see her celebrated in Minnesota media instead of the national embarrassment Ilhan Omar? Indeed, why is there a media blackout on Hirsi Ali in this state? </div>
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The Cathedral is the short answer.</div>
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Why no extensive coverage as to the cost of Somali migration here, the fraud, the criminal gang violence, the extent of female genital mutilation, the lack of genuine assimilation as opposed to the gaming of the system and exploitation of their status as pets of the Regressive Left, or of the pathologies of that ghetto known as Cedar Riverside?</div>
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Again, the Cathedral. </div>
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This framework explains a great deal, if not in fact most, of our politics and culture, tightly intertwined as they have become. Once understood, you'll never see anything the same way again.</div>
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There are, of course, better and worse ways of approaching these topics. Without exception, every person interviewed in Herndon's story who was concerned about these forced developments failed to realize what was really going on, failed to realize the hit job in the process of being written, failed to understand the Cathedral and, above all, failed to take my oft repeated advice: never talk to the media. No good, and much ill, will only come from it.<br />
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Stop cooperating with people who hate you.</div>
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Islam's rank, self-professed, incompatibility with America as founded should always be the locus of concern, not an individual Mohammedan. That person deserves to be treated with respect and the protection of the full panoply of legal rights afforded any American, even as Islam exploits what Hirsi Ali says is democracies soft underbellies, our religious freedoms. Tricky business. </div>
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Propagandists and Islamofascist supremacists like Ilhan Omar are fair game for strong, consistent criticism. But should I meet her in real life, I'd treat her with all the usual courtesies which South Dakotans were raised to treat others. Macro, stopping the Islamization of America, not micro, an individual adherent, should be the object of our warranted attention.</div>
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When we do so, when those brave individuals in Saint Cloud and elsewhere in Minnesota who have awakened to the threat, who don't want their state & country to go the way of the U.K., who say no and seek to educate others, we will find, to our satisfaction, that the Cathedral strikes back.</div>
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This is why, despite all appearances to the contrary, the New York Times story is a sign of the Cathedral's panic. </div>
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-28734630780014363522019-06-16T10:13:00.001-05:002019-06-16T14:08:23.894-05:00Untouchable Ilhan Omar<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As long as you remember that if you get involved in politics, you have to be very careful that your leader is for Allah. You don’t get involved in politics because it’s the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam. —Siraj Wahhaj</td></tr>
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Ilhan Omar, "a symbol of America’s failed immigration system if there ever was one, someone who hates this country coming here at public expense," as the indispensable Tucker Carlson recently described her, continues to make the worst possible sort of news. Jew hater? Check. America hater? Check. Hater of white people who built not only this country but Western Civilization and without whom she'd still be in a refugee camp in Kenya? Double check.<br />
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Islamofascist supremacist? Uber check, because that identity is her raison d'état.<br />
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To miss this last bit is to miss the real Ilhan Omar entirely.<br />
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I'm the guy who unearthed her "Israel has hypnotized the world" tweet. She didn't appreciate her true views being made known, literally worldwide. (I'm bad at this game or else I would have monetized it, something Turning Point, USA would not have failed to do if they had come across the tweet. I can see Alyssa Ahlgren modeling tee shirts with it even now to be sold to Boomers)<br />
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In response to bringing her tweet to light, Omar called me a "hateful, sad man." Or a "sad, hateful man." Who can recall, it's Twitter. You get the drift and I put one of those iterations in my Twitter bio with relish.<br />
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My name was caught up in the firestorm of attention to this tweet so it was probably inevitable that I would get an inquiry from corporate media and indeed I did, although the source was surprising. Last November, I received an DM on Twitter (my DMs are open because fear is paralysis) from a reporter with Deutsche Welle, one of the world's premiere corporate news reporting organizations. German, in case Deutsche didn't register with you.<br />
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Said one Tessa Walther, in the Washington, D.C. bureau, to me: "I am working on a story about Ilhan Omar. I would like to talk to you about what she called you. Would you have time for a short statement?" Her contact information followed but would never be republished here.<br />
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Do you see what's going on? Ilhan Omar reveals her true colors but I'm somehow going to be the story because of what she called <i>me? </i>My reaction to her name calling is either the story or somehow fits into it? I don't think so. I'm already on a list of Wrong Thinkers as generated by the Minnesota chapter of that terrorist linked, Hamas front group known as CAIR.<br />
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I didn't respond and Tessa Walther's "story" never ran. Believe me, I've searched for any story by this reporter on the Islamist Barbie Doll.™ Nothing comes up in any search.<br />
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The obvious point is to never, as in ever, talk to the media.<br />
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I'm not interested here in reciting the litany of transgressions by Omar because they accrue weekly. It's who she is, who her male handlers are. If you think Ilhan Omar has any moral agency than you don't understand Islam, especially as it tries to infect America as it has, to a distressingly successful degree, in Europe.<span style="color: blue;"><u> <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Europe-Immigration-Identity/dp/1472958055/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+strange+death+of+europe&qid=1560655623&s=gateway&sr=8-1" target="_blank">See Douglas Murray's "The Strange Death of Europe."</a> </u></span></div>
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The world's most famous and accomplished Somali woman is Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Minnesota media have a blackout on the woman. Why is that?</div>
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Omar is tight friends with the rancid Linda Sarsour, who publicly urges Muslims not to assimilate and to obey only "Allah's" law, in other words, sharia. These Islamofascist haters of America are neither shy nor subtle. Again, you won't read a single story about Sarsour in Minnesota media. If you object, you'll be called a bigot. I should know.<br />
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But the secret to being called names is, once you let them bounce off you, the name callers have no power. None. It's terrifying to them and it's only because too many of us are cowed by name calling that they have the cultural power they do.<br />
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Stop caring about what your political and cultural enemies think of you. Get off the sidelines because the civil war you didn't ask for is upon us. </div>
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I haven't blogged since December 3, 2018, after I quit Alpha News, where I had been solicited to write based upon the blog you're reading now. Thank you, Cole Mathisen. I enjoyed my eighteen months there because I made people uncomfortable by writing about uncomfortable topics. Minnesotans are deeply dishonest, something I'll never understand even while they preen about how great a state this is. Me? I once wrote<span style="color: red;"> </span><a href="https://alphanewsmn.com/does-minnesota-suck/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">"Does Minnesota Suck?"</span></a><br />
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I had kept my then editor in chief Christine Bauman informed about my impending departure because the direction the platform was taking concerned me: a People's magazine of politics? (honk), or more articles on Joe Mauer (what?), or stories no longer than 300 words (was the target audience retarded or suffering from ADD?), per owner Bob Cummins and his side kick. Alpha News, unfortunately, is now mostly a platform for useless Boomer Bait, written by perky female millennials devoid of intellectual gravitas or seriousness. "Bartender, a round of pocket Constitutions for all my friends!"</div>
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I was in Mother India at the time I quit, Varanasi specifically, Hinduism's holiest city (you know, where the dead bodies are cremated in the open). Ich bin Hindu nationalist. </div>
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After texting, I sent Christine my resignation email and went for a walk in the early morning light along the Ganges, smoking a Marlboro red and looking for my favorite chai walla. </div>
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I'm not sure my anti-smoking friend Dario Anselmo will ever understand the evanescence.</div>
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So we're left with Ilhan Omar and a system that imports low IQ people who hate us into our own country. Did you know that Somalis in Minnesota get (at least) 120 million dollars in welfare every year? Probably not because I only learned of this figure from Sen. Tom Cotton two years ago when he was the speaker at the annual dinner for the Center of the American Boomer™. <u><a href="https://alphanewsmn.com/tom-cotton-red-pills-center-american-experiment/" target="_blank">Except for me,</a></u><span style="color: red;"><u> <a href="https://alphanewsmn.com/tom-cotton-red-pills-center-american-experiment/" target="_blank">no one reported on this.</a></u> </span>Not John Hinderaker. Not Scott Johnson. And they were both there. Draw your own conclusions. </div>
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Have you heard of the term "controlled opposition?" You should because you live in it. And you fall for it: the Freedom Club, Rough Riders, the Center of the American Experiment. All useless because they won't confront demographic replacement. More or less, they're in it for the money, yours. Occam's razor and all that. </div>
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I cringe at the demands for Omar to be thrown off the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Sign this petition to stop her (insert various offenses here). The usual nonsense from people who, bless them, think we live in normal political times. We don't. None of this will happen.</div>
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The poison that is Ilahn Omar is here to stay. Look for the usual suspects to promote her cause, especially secular Jews, weirdly enough. They hope to be eaten last but it hasn't worked out so well for them in Europe. Think Malmo, Sweden, think Birmingham, England. Hell, think Western Europe generally. They're undaunted but you should be as well. Especially if you're white.</div>
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Ilhan Omar is untouchable, despite any crimes she has committed or how much she hates America or the white people who created it and modernity itself. She's jealous, really. What has Somali culture given the world? Not much and nothing good, which is why they fail wherever they have been forcefully injected into any modern country. The national average IQ in Somalia is 68. Google it.<br />
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You know it, I know it, we all know it. But why is that? How to account for such things, how we have gotten here? How has the greatest country on earth been flooded with those who are not worthy to be here and seek to destroy us from within?<br />
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The "Cathedral" is the short answer. I tried to explain that concept when I guest hosted for my friend Sue Jeffers last weekend. Mencius Moldbug, a pen name for Curtis Yarvin, came up with the idea. He says:<br />
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"The great power center . . . . is the Cathedral. The Cathedral has two parts: the accredited universities and the established press. The universities formulate public policy. The press guides public opinion. In other words, the universities make decisions, for which the press manufactures consent. It’s as simple as a punch in the mouth."<br />
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You'll notice that democracy and the quaint notion of self governance nowhere appear in this definition and for good reason. The Cathedral is above us, all around us, we exist within it. Moldbug goes on:<br />
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"Today’s Cathedral is not a personality cult. It is not a political party. It is something far more elegant and evolved. It is not even an organization in the conventional, hierarchical sense of the word—it has no Leader, no Central Committee, no nothing. It is a true peer-to-peer network, which makes it extraordinarily resilient. To even understand why it is so unanimous, why Harvard always agrees with Yale which is always on the same page as Berkeley which never picks any sort of a fight with the New York Times, except of course to argue that it is not progressive enough, takes quite a bit of thinking."<br />
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You can listen to the first hour of my show<span style="color: red;"><u> <a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-sue-jeffers-28270544/episode/guest-host-john-gilmore-45827764/" target="_blank">here</a></u> </span>and the second hour<u> <a href="https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-sue-jeffers-28270544/episode/john-gilmore-is-fed-up-45842556/" target="_blank">here.</a></u> And you should.<br />
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Tumors on the body politic like Ilhan Omar are part of a design to "fundamentally transform" America as founded into a more or less Third World basket case. Think Brazil North. Islam has no place in Western Civilization and none in America. Don't let anyone bully you out of that realization. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has repeatedly said that Islam attacks us through the soft underbelly of democracies, its religious freedoms.<br />
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Consequently, you simply aren't up to speed if you think the normal checks on conduct will apply to the Cathedral's favorite pets. Just the opposite: they are cosseted, flattered, held out as manifestly better than you and are the subject of puff pieces that are intended to force you to look away from the damaging consequences of importing a totalitarian ideology wrapped in the guise of religion.<br />
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This is why, in part, Minnesotans get stories like "Little Abdi, not your white child, may get the USA to Mars." Or fawning coverage over a woman dressed to repress on Sports Illustrated. It's called Clown World and by their honks ye shall know it.<br />
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It's also why criminal activity by Somali youth in Minnesota is rarely covered or, if forced to, given the once over lightly treatment. Somali gangs in the Twin Cities? They're thriving but you wouldn't know it from local media coverage. Only Crime Watch Minneapolis, on Facebook and on Twitter, covers crime like it should be, regardless of who is committing it.<br />
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Ilhan Omar being untouchable is proof positive that you're losing your country. We haven't lost it entirely yet but it surely hangs in the balance. Stop pretending the usual blandishments will work because they won't. The Cathedral has seen to this. </div>
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-10045979167347978872018-12-03T10:05:00.000-06:002018-12-03T22:16:23.618-06:00On The Ballot In 2020: Identity Politics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Now that the Democrats have taken back the House, and Minnesota Republicans have been destroyed, likely reduced to a permanent minority party as the state slides toward becoming a cold California (which weirdly didn’t stop them from congratulating themselves), the upcoming presidential election in 2020 looms over everything. Certain issues will be addressed on their own merits, surely, but the overall political prism will refract much of what happens through the reelection campaign of Donald Trump.<br />
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For some time the Democrats have willingly abandoned not just the white working class vote but much of the white vote altogether. They anticipate the demographic changes that come from flooding America with low skilled, uneducated Third World laborers to form rote voting blocks for those who promise them government handouts, will tip the balance of power to them, possibly forever given the unasked for rate of change and deformation of America.<br />
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Identity politics is the phrase given to the behavior where only one’s immutable characteristics are relevant to elected office or even, really, the ability to address public policy issues. This started off glibly enough years ago: only women were said to be entitled to a view on abortion. The premise was madness but madness is upon us in full force, in ways we could never have anticipated back when that shibboleth was first unleashed. <br />
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This isn’t about shape shifting either. The Left used to call themselves liberals until that label proved politically fatal given their political and economic incompetence. Now they’re progressives although they seem to offer programs that only take us backward: the slaughterhouses of Chicago and Detroit, the poverty stricken, Third World state of California with its open sewer of San Francisco, government taxation and overreach without end.<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/19/democrats-2020-race-identity-politics-strategy-1000249">The hacks at Politico recently generated a story setting out the Democrats desire to double down on identity politics.</a> </span>What I thought was interesting about the reporting was not that the author thought identity politics was a bad idea per se--it is--but whether now was the time to adhere to it so strongly given that the Regressive Left hasn’t sufficiently reduced whites to strangers in their own land. <br />
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The story quoted Pocahontas: “Let’s just start with the hard truth about our criminal justice system: It’s racist.” Well of course: look at the OJ Simpson verdict. Only that isn’t what she was referring to. No, in a sweeping condemnation without substantiation, Warren slanders not just those working at all levels of criminal justice, but America itself. This is the new normal and conservatives had best wake up to it stat. <br />
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<a href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/27/shocking-poll-young-americans-believe-u-s-is-most-racist-nation/">Breitbart revealed the progress of this systematic slander recently when it reported</a> on a poll that showed more than half of young Americans believe this country is the most racist on earth. In their defense, young people are this stupid because Conservatism, Inc. neglected the Regressive Left’s long march through our educational institutions. No less than Charles Murray declared they have conserved nothing since 1988. Beliefs like this are the logical outcome of an organized conservatism that navel gazed, applauded itself and urged subscribers to their various rags to join them on cruises while America slipped away. It was all about making a living, as someone observed.<br />
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Lady MacBeth has gotten in the on the act as well (everything the Clintons do is an act). Hillary recently announced a contest to win attending a Broadway show with her (is “No Exit” playing? Or “Waiting For Godot” perhaps?). Hillary added that it would include chardonnay because of course. She’s doing this in support of Onward Together, a far Left progressive group run by women, primarily POC (people of color). You see how the game is played. Like many Democrats, the Clintons will use identity politics to their advantage. If they get power, no doubt people without qualifications necessary to the position will be promoted because they are of the right skin color. If you object to this style of governance, guess what you are?<br />
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As practiced, only white people get in trouble in engaging in identity politics. Only then is a group “racist,” despite the fact that blacks in America vote 20 to 1 for a black candidate. When was the last time you saw an Hispanic person get in trouble for voting for a member of their tribe? In fact, minorities who vote for conservatives or Republicans are excoriated for doing so. The tribe mind is strong and the abuse routinely doled out to whites for engaging similarly is relentless. <br />
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The problem with the poison known as identity politics is that if one group gets to play it, everyone does, even though only whites will be singled out for shame, name calling and general derision. The hope of the Regressive Left is that with enough shaming they can fundamentally transform America into something other than as founded before white Americans can object sufficiently to prevent it. This requires reducing the number of white people here while praising all sorts of marginal newcomers with nothing to add except for the fact of their not being white or holding barbaric religious beliefs from the seventh century. Ilhan Omar comes to mind.<br />
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When Tucker Carlson questioned the banality that “diversity is our strength,” he was furiously attacked by the Left. When President Trump rationally suggested ending birthright citizenship, the hysteria by the same people was enormous. They tell us what the stakes are and how they plan to effect a demographic coup but when you merely point that out, you become the bigot. Weird.<br />
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Emphasizing race, exploiting it thoroughly and viciously, will be the clear approach to whatever untalented politician the Democrats decide to run against President Trump in 2020. This is terrible for the country but the Regressive Left doesn’t care for the country, only power and it has shown that it will do anything for it. Anything. Brett Kavanaugh ring a bell?<br />
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Similarly, governor elect Tim Walz ran on a campaign motto of “One Minnesota.” This is top shelf gaslighting as the DFL is identity politics incarnate. Just look at the freak show that passes for the Minneapolis City Council, with, alas, Saint Paul’s trying hard to catch up. The Left doesn’t like America as founded nor most especially as currently constituted. This means subordinating white people and their interests to a polyglot melange of various hues and backwards religions without concern for what should be done and who should be doing it. Identity is all, their alpha and their omega.<br />
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Conservatives need to fully appreciate the dangers of identity politics and fight against it. I’m not optimistic because a college level sense of “more civics will do the trick” pervades their stale thinking. Different circumstances require different actions.<br />
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Let’s put it this way: the poll reported on by Breitbart revealed that six out of ten people under 37 (!) could not name any president on Mount Rushmore. When the country is this far gone, clucking about how people should carry pocket Constitutions with them will hardly do the trick of stemming the tide of transforming America into a Third World hellhole. <br />
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If it requires, and it does without question, whites practicing identity politics as strongly and as effectively as any other group, well, count me in.John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-58655817826344449002018-04-15T09:00:00.001-05:002018-04-15T13:45:16.896-05:00Minnesota Business Partnership: The Unbearable Lightness Of Charlie Weaver<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfjwfla_hw9gcoVVzcrCn9h8dI1qUtsGdc5Pv7K5-VGloViwS730bOIKXju5_MyNaJz6HAZ_XdclhFFh0Gi51sbnrbrelVpfcfyUTtRkzmtmMH2_P4vITPgtoraFkQ8Y098P-Laam2a10/s1600/Charilie-Weaver-500.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="760" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfjwfla_hw9gcoVVzcrCn9h8dI1qUtsGdc5Pv7K5-VGloViwS730bOIKXju5_MyNaJz6HAZ_XdclhFFh0Gi51sbnrbrelVpfcfyUTtRkzmtmMH2_P4vITPgtoraFkQ8Y098P-Laam2a10/s400/Charilie-Weaver-500.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"It was all a game, or a way of making a living."<br />
Joseph Sobran on the Conservative Movement</td></tr>
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<i>Below is the column I submitted to Alpha News, where I have a regular Sunday column. It was rejected on the title alone. I'm publishing it here because I write for myself and always will. </i></div>
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The Minnesota Business Partnership is perhaps the premier business lobbyist outfit in Minnesota. Yes, the Chamber of Commerce is another group but the MBP is unique in that its membership is comprised solely of CEO’s and senior executives of Minnesota’s largest companies. The great unwashed have the Chamber, the business elites have the Partnership.<br />
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Charlie Weaver is the executive director of the Partnership and is paid handsomely, reportedly $700,000 or more, to shill for their interests which they pretend are yours. They are not. Weaver was Gov. Pawlenty’s chief of staff when he took the job he’s held for the last fifteen years. One feature of the Uniparty--or ruling class, take your pick--is its seamlessness.<br />
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<a href="http://tcbmag.com/news/articles/2018/april/charlie-weaver-leverages-political-savvy-to-advanc" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">A friend sent me a recent interview of Weaver by Liz Fedor of Twin Cities Business magazine.</span></a> My friend knows me well because the interview is both appalling in its myopic corporate agenda and nakedly honest in its disregard for the concerns of the working class and middle class in Minnesota. Weaver’s ideology, for that’s what it is, has contributed to the hollowing out of America, the decimation of our manufacturing base and the continued stagnation of wages across many occupations.<br />
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This ideology is dressed in the rags of Conservatism, Inc., possessing the dulled patina of “free trade” and other nostrums that have benefitted corporations at the expense of average Americans. Until recently, you were expected to go along with the decline in your and your children’s life without noticing and, if you did, then without complaining.<br />
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In Fedor’s interview of Weaver, she touched on a number of subjects: business challenges, immigration and the fake labor shortage in Minnesota, President Trump & trade, education, transportation, taxes, preemption and the laughable “worker retraining.” What stood out among them all was Weaver’s single minded focus on cheap labor.<br />
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Big business' favorite fake mantra is that there is a worker shortage. The reality is they don’t want to pay higher wages. Their solution? Open borders and a flood of low skilled, low educated immigrants.<br />
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Weaver is explicit: “We also need immigrants in this state to successfully compete and provide talent for our companies to continue to prosper here.” What is meant by this is that wages can continue to stagnate or decline in order to keep corporate profits healthy.<br />
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He goes on: “We do need open borders. We need immigrants in this state. It’s all across the spectrum. It’s the doctors who come in and work at the Mayo Clinic to the person who is working in a slaughterhouse for Hormel to the construction workers for Mortenson and Ryan. An immigration policy that promotes legal immigration and getting to a place where those who are here illegally can get to legal status is really important.”<br />
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Weaver never deals with the quality of current immigrants, which on balance is low because chain migration is the mechanism by which they get here. Why should future Americans be imported simply because they have a relative already here? No serious discussion of the issue will be found in this interview of Weaver.<br />
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He does get points, though, for sheer brass. Open borders means the extinguishment of nations. As long as people exist who can be moved like so many pieces on the corporate playing board, all is well.<br />
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A nation’s culture? Its traditions and unique history? None of this matters to Weaver and those whose interests he shills for. One homogenized mass of people working for substandard wages is what the globalist, corporatist task masters demand and he’s in Minnesota doing his bit to bring it about.<br />
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On trade, Weaver is laughably unserious. He says “open and free economies across borders to trade goods is vitally important” and goes on to claim that Trump refusing to join TPP as well as renegotiating NAFTA is “troubling,” adding “[u]ltimately it hurts Minnesotans and it results in fewer jobs.”<br />
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Plainly put, this is a lie. Poor trade deals are not free trade and have hollowed out America. Weaver thinks this is just fine because cheap labor above all other social good is his core principle.<br />
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President Trump’s forays into trade have already met with remarkable results, despite clucking and bleating from the usual swamp creatures. South Korea is opening its markets more to of our cars, China blinked and is reducing tariffs on our goods, as well as promising to reduce its enormous theft of our intellectual property and NAFTA seems to be on the verge of being renegotiated to the betterment of America. This is what winning looks like.<br />
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Weaver returns to unfettered immigration because bad trade deals go hand in hand with it. “Given the challenge of increasing our workforce from within Minnesota, we need immigrants. We need their talent, skill, brainpower and hard work. So anything that would limit that, whether it is building a wall or just arbitrarily kicking them out of the country, would be devastating to Minnesota’s economy.”<br />
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Again, this is false and the data do not support this rosy approach. It’s bad for the average American to have low skilled immigrants compete for jobs on the lower rung of the economic ladder. But they aren’t Weaver’s concerns and never will be. "The presence of foreign-born workers in the local labor force is correlated with a higher likelihood of native-born less-educated workers dropping out of the labor force or moving across state lines." <a href="https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-commentary/2017-economic-commentaries/ec-201719-effect-of-foreign-born-workers-on-native-born.aspx" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">This, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.</span></a><br />
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Weaver knows all this, he simply is advancing a narrative in the service of his paymasters. The veneer of non or bipartisanship should fool no one. Of course there is unanimity among the ruling class.<br />
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Every year we’re treated to an annual dinner of the Minnesota Business Partnership. As kabuki, it’s surely of a higher grade than the embarrassing parade of paid D-list celebrities trotted out to praise L. Bill Austin at Starkey Hearing’s annual “gala.” But it remains just as manufactured and inauthentic. Local republicans tend to preen & clap, their forte really, over both the speaker and the execution of the dinner. As to the substance and whether the MBP’s agenda helps average Minnesotans, there is silence.<br />
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Minnesota big business has every right to band together and advocate for their agenda. The problem comes with Minnesotans believing, mistakenly, that they do so on behalf of their economic and cultural interests.<br />
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Reduced to his essentials, Charlie Weaver is Minnesota’s George Soros.<br />
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Photo credit: Twin Cities Business magazine<br />
<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-44991053338150099102017-11-29T07:37:00.001-06:002017-11-30T07:25:43.267-06:00Trump & The Transfiguration Of American Politics<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4gh42tUT_Me9c4prqyL2rpw8UKpQqXDmxMllK7JAfUw-T9hRiHH3ktym-8uu4nG_DH_M3Iu-2NoQ8njQVVf2caP3G5YRlttTOnF8ljy9n3H4w6_O41F11xcTwKbsINylrbWAKrLifG-M/s1600/aptopix_trump_inauguration_63940-jpg-2c06f_5415351b75383626b411dc29d6c73329.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1418" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4gh42tUT_Me9c4prqyL2rpw8UKpQqXDmxMllK7JAfUw-T9hRiHH3ktym-8uu4nG_DH_M3Iu-2NoQ8njQVVf2caP3G5YRlttTOnF8ljy9n3H4w6_O41F11xcTwKbsINylrbWAKrLifG-M/s400/aptopix_trump_inauguration_63940-jpg-2c06f_5415351b75383626b411dc29d6c73329.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg" title="" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Emperor & the Empress at his Inaugural Ball. </td></tr>
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<i>I've been asked to contribute to </i>Common Sense,<i> a quarterly publication <a href="http://action4liberty.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">of the non-profit organization Action for Liberty run by Jake Duisenberg.</span></a> The magazine is currently not online. Consequently, I have posted my debut article here, submitted September 26, so some references are dated as to then.</i><br />
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Donald Trump is president. That short, four-word sentence belies the enormity of what it represents for American politics. Last year’s primary and then general election was unlike anything we’d seen before and for good reason. The political rot of both parties had set in so deeply that a singular candidate like Trump could sweep them both away. Remember, the man hadn’t run for anything before, fatally putting the lie to the need for parasitic consultants and career politicians of stunning mediocrity.<br />
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Republicans were aghast to learn that the “base” didn’t care to eat the dog food it arrayed before them last year. “The deepest bench” of candidates turned out to be simply a large number of political apparatchiks, eager to continue to do the bidding of their donors, only this time from the Oval Office.<br />
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Democrats were horrified to see--even in the primary--Trump steal what used to be considered their issues and were then flattened when they realized he had stolen their voters in order to beat the deeply corrupt Hillary Clinton. Like Republicans, Democrats had long abandoned their traditional base while paying only the most disingenuous lip service to them. People aren’t stupid.<br />
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President Trump represents what Marine Le Pen said the day after his victory: “the free people of the United States.” We didn’t vote as commanded. Media worked nonstop to disparage him and felt free to denigrate his supporters in ways not seen in modern politics. No one, someone said, deserved to lose the election more than the media.<br />
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Trump is a political force of nature; he creates his own weather. Yet he both is and isn’t the story. As a supporter, people mistakenly think I blindly support him at every turn. I don’t: no one should blindly support any politician. But given the epochal changes he is bringing, I’m more than happy to push back against the laughable narratives that a Rubio, or a Jeb, or even a Cruz would do as well or better. Sorry, those men are the product of the system against which the American people just rebelled and it shows, painfully so at times.<br />
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Roger Simon recently wrote that Trump is reinventing what it means to be a politician and I think that’s exactly right. Mark Steyn said just last month that Trump revealed the “sheer artificiality” of modern politicians. Go back and watch the Republican presidential primary debates. Almost all other contenders look like something from a political antique store; canned, programmed and fake is what used to pass for good political skills. Those days are gone, never to return.<br />
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Simon notes “these days Donald’s getting better and more precise at his core strategy--saying things that many, often most of us think but don’t have the courage to utter.” His comments about kneeling at football games are just the latest example of this instinct to say what he believes is right. The Regressive Left and its media allies are wholly dependent on name-calling and general abuse toward others with whom they disagree in order to stay in power.<br />
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Trump’s election, I’d suggest, shows the limits of that power. How many names, over how many months, were his supporters called? Media power depends upon enforcing political correctness. Trump mortally wounded that in the course of his campaign and now we see the death throes.<br />
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Simon correctly observes, “Trump has completely reinvented the template of what it means to be a politician and it’s no surprise that so many other politicians (not just John McCain) are publicly or privately appalled. He has unmasked them.”<br />
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This unmasking is likely to continue throughout the eight years of Trump’s presidency. Yes, eight years because no one who is paying attention honestly thinks the Democrats have a candidate that can provide a credible alternative to Trump. Put it another way: what Democrat can win Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania after Trump’s historic win of them? The economy is already set to have a GDP of 3%, something the experts said wasn’t possible. The Trump administration is only eight months old.<br />
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As important as Trump is, it’s essential to look past him in order to obtain a fuller understanding of the current political environment. That’s because, I believe, he represents conditions that have existed for some time but which no one before had the ability to see or, if they did, the courage to act upon. He saw and acted and is now President.<br />
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The culture wars used to be important to Conservative, Inc. until Trump joined them and routed the opposition, as he is doing currently with the national anthem and football games. Kurt Schlichter has called out the frauds on the right: “It was all a scam, a lie, a pose for us rubes. The Tru Cons didn’t actually mean it.”<br />
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The breathtaking incompetence--if not outright dishonesty--of Congressional Republicans has been on daily display for all to see since January 21, 2017. Who really knew though, before Trump, that it was this bad? Probably only those members in good standing of The Swamp who likely were pleased with themselves for keeping the deception going for as long as they had. With Trump, that corrupt jig is up.<br />
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Again, though, the point is larger than Trump. “Conservatism has become a racket,” Schlicter correctly says, “and everything happening now is a result of its members hoping to wait out Trump and the demand for change he represents. Maybe if they do nothing, but say all the right things, we normals will get tired and go back to our jobs and keep providing those votes and renting those cruise cabins. But that’s not happening. We aren’t going away; business as usual is over. We aren’t just giving up, tossing away our country, and submitting to the ruling caste. We were nice with the Tea Party. Trump’s not as nice. What’s coming after is going to be much, much less nice.”<br />
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Nice or not, everything has changed and there’s no going back. Democrats have marooned themselves on the Island of Identity Politics from which no rescue apart from themselves changing is possible. There’s no evidence that they are capable of such change and their doubling down on divisiveness that suggests the condition of electoral powerlessness will last for some time.<br />
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Similarly, Republicans have been unmasked as so many servants to their donors. The spectacular, ongoing failure to repeal Obamacare isn’t the only indication of this but surely it is the best, the most obvious and the most disgusting, given they ran for eight years on that promise. As Johnny Rotten, of all people, famously said long ago “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”<br />
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The political class of America has failed the American people for decades while pretending they were serving its interests. This masquerade was finally undone by a person who didn’t need the job and hadn’t spent his life pursuing it according to the dictates of endless focus groups. Given the chance to vote for someone who would put them truly first for a change, and despite obvious flaws and imperfections, the American people took courage in both hands and elected Trump.<br />
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In turn, Trump has governed thus far as our first independent President. Willing to give the Republican establishment first dibs on making good his campaign promises, Trump recently made a deal with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to raise the debt ceiling and put an end to the stale kabuki of a threatened government shutdown. That’s the old order and it is passing away.<br />
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He gave notice of the new order immediately after being sworn in as our 45th President. Among other things in his inaugural address, he said:<br />
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“Today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.<br />
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For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.<br />
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Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth.<br />
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Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.<br />
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The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s Capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.<br />
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That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.”<br />
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A government that genuinely belongs, once again, to the people represents the transfiguration of politics as we have known it. Having given themselves this necessary gift, the American people will not readily give it up again.<br />
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That’s because they know, as Trump said, “What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.”<br />
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-22782595100971514952017-05-14T10:02:00.000-05:002017-05-14T10:09:25.021-05:00The Minnesota Republican Senate Disgraces Itself<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Female genital mutilation (FGM) has come to Minnesota and the silence from the Regressive Left could not be louder. Blowhards like Rep. Melisa Franzen (DFL), local media darling, are silent, as are the usual raft of Minnesota "feminists," including that special brand of cucks, Minnesota men on Twitter who have feminist in their pathetic bios. Local media have reported in their trademark fashion of "once and done" with not a single Minnesota newspaper running an editorial against this horrific, backward, misogyny-incarnate practice.<br />
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Remember, when President Trump called out fake media as the enemy of the American people (not media per se) local media responded by tweeting that they were all brave Daniel Pearls. No, seriously.<br />
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In the Minnesota House, Rep. Mary Franson (R) has introduced legislation that rightly characterizes this as child abuse and allows victim children to be permanently removed from the monsters who call themselves parents that allow it. Senator Karin Housley (R) has introduced parallel legislation in the Senate. Franson's bill has passed all committees and is scheduled for a floor vote on Monday, May 15th. Housley's bill hasn't received so much as a single committee hearing.<br />
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What on earth is wrong with the Minnesota Republican Senate? Speaker Kurt Daudt and others in the House have shown true & genuine leadership and are to be commended for fast tracking the Franson bill so that a floor vote may be had by the end of session.<br />
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FGM is not the same as male circumcision, in which the foreskin is cut from a perfectly intact penis shortly after birth. CAIR, the terrorist affiliated group that presumes to speak for all Muslims (see my prior piece here: <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-islamization-of-minnesota-media.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #cc0000;">"The Islamization of Minnesota Media"</span></a>) attempts to conflate the two by calling FGM "female circumcision."</div>
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In order for FGM to be the equivalent of circumcision, the head of the penis would have to be chopped off. Has that got your attention? Can someone clue in the dude from Nisswa?<br />
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a heroine for the world in our time and herself a victim, has delineated several types of FGM: 1. The Nick 2. "Female Circumcision" 3. Intermediate Infibulation 4. Total Infibulation 5. Vaginal Fusion<br />
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Ayaan is the world's most famous Somali but Minnesota media ignore her entirely. They are Servants Of CAIR™. You can read her full article <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/04/28/ayaan-hirsi-ali-female-genital-mutilation-and-what-were-really-talking-about-beneath-weasel-words-genital-cutting.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a><br />
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All this in the happy clappy, relentlessly insecure, mindlessly progressive state of Minnesota. Take a bow, cultural enrichment, corrosive diversity types. Most of all, stay silent.<br />
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Enter the cowards of the Minnesota Republican Senate.<br />
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It's possible that the Senate prefers the Franson bill to pass on the House floor and have it included in an omnibus bill that Governor Dayton won't veto. So far legislative republicans have made a hash of this session, negotiating amongst themselves while moving ever closer to Dayton's budget marks while he stands pat. What's galling is that they think they're doing a fine job.<br />
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Even so, that's no excuse for the lack of any hearing on the Housely bill nor for Senate leadership being silent on the matter of female genital mutilation. And to be fair, there may be senators who want this matter addressed and about which I don't know. In fact, that's likely and here's to them, even if we won't know those names publicly.<br />
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The end result of Senate inaction is to lessen the chances of protecting vulnerable girls in this state who come from backward, misogynist cultures. That's not who we are but you wouldn't know it from the failure of the Minnesota Republican Senate.<br />
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-45661929873780262212017-04-27T07:07:00.001-05:002017-04-27T07:07:17.458-05:00Paint It Black: Ellison At The Humphrey School<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQSx8AWUDZ540qNwfq2d-FfPO-rBeXxlfbFABi1vC36KrDXmmK_A2iW385xXDxtMb0wx7ScIhr9moRLgVOe7eEGWfuPSpP5X6lgc04WTr8g4uroH-rOTF5cfVUIrv-RMyPDTfo6CkR9Zk/s1600/Keith-Ellison-575x340.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQSx8AWUDZ540qNwfq2d-FfPO-rBeXxlfbFABi1vC36KrDXmmK_A2iW385xXDxtMb0wx7ScIhr9moRLgVOe7eEGWfuPSpP5X6lgc04WTr8g4uroH-rOTF5cfVUIrv-RMyPDTfo6CkR9Zk/s400/Keith-Ellison-575x340.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
I attended Keith Ellison's appearance at the Humphrey School last week, where he was cosseted under the guise of being moderated by Larry Jacobs, who runs the school, along with Rachel Stassen-Berger of the Pioneer Press. The Cowles auditorium was full and, even though I obtained a ticket the day the event was announced, was forced to take a second row seat, on the right naturally. To borrow from V.S. Naipaul, I was among the believers.<br />
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I'd never seen Ellison in person before and was unprepared for my shock at what an astonishingly mediocre fellow he was. Unimpressive by almost any measure, his being in Congress perfectly represents the degradation of politics on the far left. And on the far left he is: banal, badly educated, badly spoken, not in the slightest bright, indeed quasi-thuggish, a pencil tucked behind his left ear as he took the stage to much applause.<br />
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Democrats are a long way away from the intellect and grace of my home state's senator, George McGovern, no matter how out of sync his politics were in 1972. The man was not an embarrassment but Keith Ellison is, perfect for a state that doesn't know how to stop embarrassing itself nationally.<br />
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The putative topic of the event was "What is the future of the Democratic Party?" It's a question that Jacobs & Stassen-Berger never got around to asking, which shows the degree to which this was a liberal gathering and not an actual event of substance. Everyone on the stage being steadfast democrats, of course, might have had something to do with that.</div>
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Still, at times, Jacobs surprised me with his questions. So too, Stassen-Berger but only once, when she said Ellison's congressional district, CD 5, had come in 7th out of 8 with respect to voter turnout. Ellison instinctively (and instincts, as befits a thug, are all he has) pushed back immediately. Oddly, the reporter had nothing on hand to back her up, bleating in response that she'd checked the website of the Minnesota Secretary of State for her blasphemy. </div>
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They agreed to disagree, with the reporter saying that she'd tweet if she was wrong, obsequiously including Ellison's handle in her tweet. From that point onward, she nodded, Hillary-like, at any and everything he said, including when he was turned toward Jacobs, leaving only the back of his head at which to nod. I became grateful for my second row seat.</div>
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The particulars of Ellison's appearance were excruciating and, of course, never reported upon by local media in attendance. The headlines were: Ellison thought Tim Walz would be the next governor and Betsy Hodges would win reelection as the mayor of Minneapolis. For a lazy press, that was more than enough. I happen to agree with the first prediction but not the latter. </div>
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Yet only by attending were the particulars of this event available and therein lies the substance. Imagine, the substance of a story not being conveyed to you by our media, local or national.</div>
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Ellison never answered what the future of the Democratic Party was, not only because he wasn't asked by the ersatz moderators, but more surely because he had no sound answer. What did he say? </div>
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He talked about Planned Parenthood, more than once, saying "it gets clear to you." Right. At one point he said PP was threatened "with repeal." This is an ignorant man. The clear cut case of PP selling fetal body parts was "doctored videos." </div>
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What does his party stand for? Ellison quoted the Pledge of Allegiance, saying it stood for "liberty and fairness for all." Those words don't appear in the Pledge and neither moderator corrected him. Liberty and justice for all, of course, are the words in the Pledge. </div>
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Ellison said the Democratic Party stood for: 1. Economic fairness "there's enough money" and 2. Fairness: "Government helps things get better" or words to that effect. He wanted people to be able to retire and wanted better schools, so that "parents can aspire for their children." That's an exact quote. </div>
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The closest he got to answering the question of the event was that democrats focused on presidential races too much and not on local ones, focused too much on likely voters instead of other voters. Who those other voters were he didn't say and there was no follow up question. Indeed, a lack of follow up questions defined this event.</div>
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Painfully to me, but honestly, Ellison said Minnesota democrats held every statewide office and two US Senator seats. Mercifully, he wasn't astute enough to drive the point home and say that the DFL has held the state Attorney General's office for fifty years. He claimed, not implausibly, his turnout in CD 5 kept the republicans from winning those races. That might be true but I'd add the sustained political incompetence on the part of MNGOPe is no small part.</div>
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There was a great deal of chaff I had to separate in order to find the occasional grain of wheat in Ellison's remarks. Nevertheless, I persisted. To fairly summarize the balance of Ellison's remarks, he doesn't mind demonizing people when they're wrong; repealing the ACA would hurt people; Trump will lose in 2020 because he will damage the economy and increase unemployment unless he doesn't and is seen as a reformer (all said in one breath, and, again, unchallenged by the moderators); progressive politics can win; Minnesota democrats are indebted to WIN Minnesota, the Kaplans, Vance Opperman, Take Action, NOC, Indivisible, the DFL's coordinating committee, and Hubert Humphrey, saying "we're beneficiaries from history." From. </div>
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Explaining the rural/urban divide in Minnesota that favored President Trump, Ellison reassured the assembled hive mind that it was worse in Michigan. "But Trump won Michigan," didn't say the moderators. This was what I had to process in real time. It was all I could do to take twelve pages of notes, from which much of this post is taken.<br />
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Some national media picked up on a key point that Ellison made but the moderators certainly didn't when he said it and local media ignored it altogether. Quelle surprise. That key point was that Obama, in his view, didn't do nearly enough "for the party." He went on to say "his legacy is in danger," apparently not realizing that Obama himself said he was on the ballot and America comprehensively rejected it last November. Again, the moderators weren't there for an injection of reality and let most of his comments pass unremarked upon. To be fair, perhaps I misunderstood their role from the outset.<br />
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Remarkably, Jacobs brought up Ellison's abysmal voting record in Congress, suggesting to me he's been taking testosterone supplements. Ellison was clearly shocked, if not offended, when facing actual facts and squirmed away from his record by saying he'd had a torn something tendon and once had a child graduating, ending with the fake statement "I have an excellent voting record."<br />
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There was, of course, a good deal of Trump trashing by Keith E. Hakim that received rote applause from the assembled seals. Laughably, he said that Trump was "openly hostile to core American values." Ellison claimed Trump stoked "economic and racial resentments," which belied the naked anti-white messaging from the left as well as mockery of anything rural. Ellison's solution? "We need more healing."<br />
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My translation: America rejected our force fed agitprop of cultural Marxism and democrats are SOL.<br />
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In a moment of what he thought passed for lucidity, Ellison said that Trump voters shouldn't be called suckers but instead be told he isn't delivering. Somewhere Justice Gorsuch, ICE and Trump voters are laughing.<br />
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The low point of the gathering was Ellison not being asked about the appearance in Minnesota of the horrific Muslim practice of female genital mutilation. I've been told that I shouldn't have had any expectation he would be, leaving me at a loss to know which was worse: the failure of moderators who think highly of themselves or a citizenry used to the Regressive Left's dominance of politics and culture in Minnesota.<br />
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Over this past weekend we gained more information, if such were needed, about the abysmal future of the Democratic Party.<br />
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In a newly released Washington Post–ABC News poll, Democrats have plummeted on the question of relatability with the middle class.<br />
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“The Democratic Party is viewed as more out of touch than either Trump or the party’s political opponents. Two-thirds of Americans think the Democrats are out of touch—including nearly half of Democrats themselves.”<br />
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The "democracy dies in darkness" Washington Post waited until the penultimate paragraph of its very long story to reveal the worst of it: Trump would win the election if it were held now, including the popular vote.<br />
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Providing a finishing salt of insanity to this already unappetizing dish, DNC Chair Tom Perez recently stated flatly that pro-lifers were not welcome in the party. Approximately 30% of democrats consider themselves pro-life.<br />
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Democrats haven't wielded this little political power at the state level in 75 years. The Senate is very likely to be more republican after the 2018 elections. Both Camille Paglia and Michael Moore have recently predicted Trump will win reelection in 2020.</div>
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Ellison at the Humphrey School was an exercise in group delusion and the future of his party is dire in the extreme; paint it black. Minnesota republicans would do well to wake up to this new reality, because although it wasn't reported this way, it seemed like what I witnessed was a political Heaven's Gate.</div>
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-87486695095972031332017-04-17T07:00:00.002-05:002017-04-17T09:17:32.769-05:00The Davids: Hann For Chair, Pascoe For Deputy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Does the Republican Party of Minnesota matter? I hear this question all the time and understand why it is asked. But turn it around: would you ever hear a democrat, in or out of media, ask whether the DFL matters? You wouldn't but here we are and it's a sign of the state of republican politics in Minnesota that it is asked on one side of the aisle and not the other.<br />
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The answer to the question, of course, is that the Republican Party of Minnesota does matter because it should matter. Ken Martin, chair of the DFL, has his detractors but I don't count myself among them. We've met approximately once, at lunch, but my esteem is hardly earned over vegetarian Japanese food. No, Martin understands in Minnesota the essential role--still--of the party in our politics. This is not nothing.<br />
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The Minnesota Republican Party to date is a limp thing, ad hoc at best, usually adrift with appallingly bad messaging when, if it comes at all, is late to the news cycle. Going on offense is a concept wholly foreign to it. Some blame exiting Chair Keith Downey, who, to be sure, deserves a healthy portion of it, yet making Downey the scapegoat for what ails the party elides what truly ails it. And what ails Minnesota republicans I've written about ad nauseum. This is not the time for recapitulation.<br />
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A number of diagnoses have been made about the party and any number of treatment options offered by those running for Chair & Deputy Chair. I'm not currently a member of the State Central Committee that will vote to fill these positions on the last Saturday of this month. I held a roundtable podcast on Gilmore & Guests for the Chair candidates that can be heard <a href="http://twincitiesnewstalk.iheart.com/media/play/27661462/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a> I held a similar roundtable podcast for the Deputy Chairs that can be heard <a href="http://twincitiesnewstalk.iheart.com/media/play/27694182/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a> I did both shows in order to help delegates decide for whom to vote. In both shows I was scrupulously neutral. Now, I want to endorse.</div>
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<b>DAVID HANN</b></div>
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David Hann represents the best choice for putting the Republican Party of Minnesota back onto the path of political relevance. Hann single handedly brought Minnesota a republican majority in the state senate, despite overt undermining from other republicans, especially those in House "leadership." He lost his own seat, true, but there's something to be said sacrificing for the larger good that should appeal to State Central delegates.</div>
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Hann is strongly pro Trump, despite a whisper campaign to the opposite. I know who doesn't support Trump in this state, believe me. When a political phenomenon like Trump wins both the city of Hibbing as well as 78 out of our 87 counties, Hann pays attention. In short, he gets it. </div>
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Ken Martin & the democrats are already out of the gate trying to win those voters back. David Hann knows what to do in order to keep them, something our House and Senate majorities seemingly do not. </div>
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Hann, it seems to me, will also message on behalf of the party instead of on behalf of whichever faction in our endlessly factionalized party is ascendant in either legislative chamber. This is to the good. Someone in the republican firmament in Minnesota had best speak for the average voter. </div>
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David Hann is that man & I encourage delegates to make him our party chair.</div>
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<b>DAVID PASCOE</b></div>
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I'd heard of David Pascoe but not much and met him for the first time when he came to the studio to record the Gilmore & Guests podcast for the Deputy Chair race. </div>
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Pascoe impressed me greatly with not only his previous record of service, but his keen understanding of the role the Deputy Chair should play within the party. Cogent, forward looking, realizing the political landscape has changed, even in Minnesota, Pascoe would be the best candidate to serve any chair the State Central delegates elect.<br />
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I hope they elect David Pascoe.<br />
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-7426507803013595142017-04-02T10:05:00.000-05:002017-04-02T10:05:56.614-05:00Is 2018 Already Slipping Away From Republicans?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last month, Lt. Governor Tina Flint Smith announced on Facebook that she would not run for governor in 2018, but not before leaking it to Ricardo Lopez of the Star Tribune. (I'm a bit concerned Hispanics are overrepresented at the Strib relative to their (legal) numbers in the population. Am I doing identity politics right?)<br />
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Everyone was shocked or so they pretended. I wasn't, particularly, having written previously that Trump's strong showing in Minnesota hurt her the most among potential DFL gubernatorial candidates. A hot house flower of urban, ultra-liberal elites, tied to a mediocre record of her Governor boss wasn't going to win statewide where Trump had carried 78 out of Minnesota's 87 counties.<br />
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This week Congressman Tim Walz of Minnesota's First Congressional District entered the gubernatorial race, showing up replete in a red flannel jacket when filing his papers in Saint Paul. Optics: something Minnesota republicans rarely demonstrate they understand. He had signaled his intention for a few weeks and followed through. DFLers were ecstatic. For good reason.<br />
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Minnesota republicans currently are stuck with either House Speaker Kurt Daudt or Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek as their leading contenders for the republican endorsement for governor. Others will surely enter the race and they should, if for no other reason than to give the faithful the pretense of a competitive race. Kabuki is what passes for real political struggles on that side of the aisle, cycle after cycle. </div>
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The problem is that the entry of Walz demonstrates in real time my thesis since November 8th: Minnesota democrats understand Trump's strong showing here far better than the petri dish, donor based and fed Minnesota republicans, especially the fetid House caucus. Of course it's not a sure thing that Walz will be the DFL nominee but that hardly contradicts my point.</div>
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Indeed, the legislative session thus far not only gives no sign of contradicting it but instead confirms it. Budgets released by each republican controlled chamber show no meaningful difference between republican control and DFL control: the differences are of degree, not of kind. How much money should republicans shell out and to whom is the order of the day. Please clap. </div>
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Governor Dayton wants a 46 billion dollar budget, republicans hold the line at 45. The number 500 million comes to mind. Both sides will declare victory and republicans are sure to cue the usual suspects pretending to depth & substance on "Almanac" or any other local political television show I don't watch because they insult my intelligence. Republican lobbyists, a jilted lover seeking media redemption, political hacks: no thanks. </div>
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I recently had a high ranking MNGOP party official tell me flat out that "candidates don't matter." I'm not sure I've recovered. </div>
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But that's the mindset of too many in the Minnesota republican establishment: mouth the right words (which are?) and run against the democrats (how, precisely, given "our" proposed budgets?) and we'll win. The political love that dare not speak its name is Trump but here we are: not Oscar Wilde but the dumbest republicans in the nation. </div>
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Settle in. </div>
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All of this is the consequence of a party that doesn't know what it believes. After the House budget came out, I tweeted: "What is the case for a republican governor in 2018?"</div>
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The question remains unanswered. </div>
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-30321653253663464252017-03-12T11:59:00.000-05:002017-03-12T18:29:28.386-05:00Minnesota Republicans Adrift <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAf5FiKovbEOKJpL5aO6bIFjh-mukzgYI8O7mpzTAC8CHZtKhcsOSDZLrH6WIRrf8Ll043t2DvknTtV3SsKKy7A_n8s_UYG7Jf-3JWnLy1HaQSagDn_JVNbpI9vO5R0A77o0n0LSSda5w/s1600/CBS+Map+the+morning+after.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAf5FiKovbEOKJpL5aO6bIFjh-mukzgYI8O7mpzTAC8CHZtKhcsOSDZLrH6WIRrf8Ll043t2DvknTtV3SsKKy7A_n8s_UYG7Jf-3JWnLy1HaQSagDn_JVNbpI9vO5R0A77o0n0LSSda5w/s400/CBS+Map+the+morning+after.png" width="400" /></a></div>
The image above was shown on CBS News the morning after November 8th. I know of no other map in recent American political history that shows Minnesota still out, still waiting to be called, the morning after a presidential election. It doesn't get any more emphatic than this but to follow Minnesota republican politics after the consequential election of Donald Trump as our 45th president, you wouldn't know it.<br />
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Why is this?<br />
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I've thought for a long time, as anyone who's read me knows, that Minnesota republicans are timid, shy, unsure of what they stand for and are afraid of a mediocre, particularly liberal & tedious, media in a third tier market. Additionally, too many of those who direct elected republicans have succumbed to the Stockholm Syndrome of their donors. What they want, they get. Sound familiar?<br />
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Trump understood first and foremost that the Republican Party had failed its so-called constituents. He then coupled his message with, and directed it toward, those democrats who felt the same way about the Democratic Party. There is simply no other way of explaining why he won 78 out of 87 counties in Minnesota and came very close to carrying the state outright. Of course, had our schlerotic party aparat gotten behind him, he might very well have.<br />
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Ticket splitting is what passed for sophisticated political analysis in the media here after the election in explaining Trump's Minnesota results. Only regulars on "Almanac" or "At Issue" would think that either insightful or persuasive.<br />
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Now, though, in the cold March light of mixed weather, we can assess what republicans in Minnesota have done, not quite two months into a transformative Trump administration.<br />
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The answer is not much. I understand that the House republicans have an agreement with the Senate republicans not to pass anything that can't be approved by the latter body. Advantage: the Chamber. But as for anything else, well, good luck to you school choice.<br />
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Sunday liquor sales passed into law. Please clap. I was for it but thought it a distraction from the obvious task of republicans taking advantage of Trump's strong showing here. The reality is that most of the MNGOPe were strongly against Trump. In the face of his transformative win, the best they can come up with is to ignore it.<br />
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The DFL doesn't, however. Far more alert to realpolitik, and keen to win back those DFL voters who had previously voted Obama but this cycle voted Trump, they seek to repair and rebuild those political relations that can keep them winning statewide elections, now a decade old.<br />
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That's right: it bears repeating that Minnesota republicans have not won a statewide race in a decade.<br />
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The focus now, of course, is on winning the governorship. I want a republican to win that office. The question everyone puts to me, which I tire of and turn back upon themselves is: do we have a republican contender who can do that?<br />
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The mileage varies.<br />
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<b>The Speaker</b></div>
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Accidental Speaker Kurt Daudt doesn't really think he's qualified to be governor, it's just the next step he's been told to take. There is no substantive case to be made for Daudt, on his own, to become governor.<br />
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<b>The Sheriff</b></div>
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Rich Stanek needed to stop reading his press clippings a long time ago. He's fine, not great. There are no indications that Stanek will realize his ego gets in the way of his goal.<br />
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* * * * * </div>
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There you have it, the top two contenders for the republican nomination for governor in 2018. I've heard all the other names. So have you. They don't matter.<br />
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-10215448373089946402016-12-31T13:45:00.000-06:002017-04-02T01:29:06.589-05:00Minnesota Conservatives' Year In Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I cast about for something to say in summary fashion, as is the custom, for year end think pieces. Then I realized that I had said everything about the year just expiring in this space. Consequently, I review highlights of what I've written and decide whether those posts remain accurate or wide of the mark, along with some current observations.<br />
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<b>January</b></div>
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At the start of the year I wrote "The Coming of Governor Tina Flint Smith." At the end of the year, she's still coming, carefully shielded from any MN Sure disaster fallout by Gov. Dayton and the media. Sen. Tom Bakk could pose a challenge to her if he's able to marshall to his side the issues that gave Trump a win in 78 out of 89 counties. Others have and will announce for the DFL endorsement but I don't see them as first tier candidates, with the possible exception of Attorney General Lori Swanson.<br />
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That post can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-coming-of-governor-tina-flint-smith.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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<b>February</b></div>
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There was no more important story this month than the loss of Justice Antonin Scalia. His death put in stark relief the stakes at issue in this election. Loathsome Never Trumpers would never mention the Supreme Court was in the balance. To be fair, this was February, lots of time for the national version of Minnesota republicans to shove into the meat grinder of Hillary Clinton someone unexceptional.<br />
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I wrote about the loss of Scalia <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/02/death-debate-justice-antonin-scalia.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a><br />
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<b>March</b></div>
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The republican presidential debate that month should have been all the warning the cosseted, insular GOPe set should have needed to know that things were very different this election cycle. But they were cosseted and insular and remained so. Just like the MNGOPe only less so.<br />
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"The End of the Republican Party As We Know It" was my take.</div>
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That post can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-end-of-republican-party-as-we-know.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a> </div>
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<b>April</b></div>
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One of the most important things I wrote in 2016 was: "Do Minnesota Republicans Believe In Anything?"<br />
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I concluded: not much or all the wrong things. Take your pick. Nothing has changed since then, believe me.</div>
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I wrote about it <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/04/do-minnesota-republicans-believe-in.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a> </div>
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<b>May</b><br />
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That month I looked at Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek's appearance before the Minnesota Republican Party State Convention in my piece "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Stanek." Stanek, I ventured to say, could run for governor and win. </div>
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Since that time, I've concluded he might be the only republican who can. </div>
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My post can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/05/tinker-tailor-soldier-stanek.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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<b>June</b></div>
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Brexit was the only story worldwide in June and with good reason. I tried to apply its lessons to republican politics locally when I wrote "How Much Zeitgeist Can Minnesota Republicans Ignore?"</div>
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Turns out in the time since then, a great deal, which continues to this moment. </div>
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My post can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/06/how-much-zeitgeist-can-mn-republicans.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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<b>July</b></div>
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Donald Trump accepted the republican nomination in Cleveland, Ohio that month. Virtually all conventional wisdom had said, time and again, such would never happened. Only it did. </div>
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I wrote "Minnesota Republicans in the Age of Trump" as my sole blog post that month and for good reason: I had nothing else to say. </div>
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My post can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/07/minnesota-republicans-in-age-of-trump.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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<b>August</b></div>
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Donald Trump held a private fundraiser that month in downtown Minneapolis. Upon leaving, his peaceful supporters were viciously attacked by fascist thugs on the left. I didn't attend the event but helped man the Twitter ramparts to get the news out. The story went nationwide in less than a day yet the then chair of the RPM didn't see fit to speak about it until three days later. Local media were more disgraceful than usual in covering it up or papering it over, with one newspaper headline claiming Trump supporters were "taunted." No one deserved to lose the presidential election more than media.</div>
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"Minneapolis Disgraces Itself: State Sanctioned Violence Against Peaceful Trump Supporters" would turn out to be my most read article. </div>
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It can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/08/minneapolis-disgraces-itself-state.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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<b>September</b></div>
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I wrote nothing that month because I had nothing to say. More should follow the practice but I don't tell people how to blog or tweet. Perhaps I was getting ready for my trip to Athens, Greece the next month, when seemingly the bottom fell out of the Trump campaign.</div>
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<b>October</b></div>
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Upon my return, I wrote about the release of the infamous, eleven year old "Access Hollywood" video and republican reaction to it in "The Stupid Party Outdoes Itself." It really did. Only Trump's furious counter-attack and excellent performance in the subsequent debate staunched the bleeding. </div>
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It can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-stupid-party-outdoes-itself.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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<b>November</b></div>
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Donald Trump became president-elect that month, the 45th President of the United States. It was astonishing, thrilling and glorious all at the same time. What was said could never happen, happened, with worldwide consequences. </div>
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I wrote "<span style="text-align: center;">President Trump & The End of the MNGOPe" and followed it up with "</span><span style="text-align: center;">Trump: The Transformation of Minnesota Politics." If I do say so myself, both are worth a reread at year's end.</span></div>
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The first can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/11/president-trump-end-of-mngope.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a> </div>
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The second by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/11/trump-transformation-of-minnesota.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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<b>December</b></div>
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I ended this fantastic year by writing "What I Saw At Pete Hegeth's Christmas Party" and it seems an unusually apt note upon which to end. My concern was that the Minnesota republicans in attendance had no idea how to capitalize on Trump winning 78 out of Minnesota's 87 counties. In the few weeks that have elapsed since, I'm convinced at this point they manifestly do not. New thinking doesn't come easily, usually at all, to these types. </div>
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My post can be read by clicking <a href="http://conservativeminnesotans.blogspot.com/2016/12/what-i-saw-at-pete-hegseths-christmas.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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<b>2017</b></div>
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I'd like to thank my readers for slogging through this extraordinary year with me. </div>
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My best wishes to you for a happy & healthy New Year. It's going to be huge.</div>
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John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-60485801845621923562016-12-11T15:01:00.000-06:002016-12-11T15:01:37.290-06:00What I Saw At Pete Hegseth's Christmas Party<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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"They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within. I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them." Leonard Cohen</h4>
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Last Wednesday I attended the only political holiday party that was of interest to me and to which I really didn't need an invitation, as I don't get many of those these days. Sad! I went with no expectations and left feeling like I'd taken an acid bath.<br />
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It was Facebook come to life. At one point I half wanted Dolores from "Westworld" to appear and start shooting us all in the back of the head. Or anywhere, really. Just get it done.<br />
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I say this not because it was an entirely dour affair, it wasn't. I was genuinely glad to see a wide range of elected officials, activists, staffers, donors and miscellaneous hangers-on that I hadn't in some time. One wag later tweeted that it was a rare "shabbosgoy sighting," @shabbosgoy being my handle on Twitter. Not quite as valuable as a rare Pepe meme (the diamond Pepe appears only when does the savior of Western Civilization, which happened) but still appreciated because it involved humor, something sorely lacking amongst republicans of all stripes.<br />
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Hegseth is to be commended for hosting the event and casting his invitation with a wide net in a party fractured by ideological incoherence and petty personal political rivalries. I managed a few words with his wife, Samantha, before being cornered not three feet into the donor room. I met several interesting people I wouldn't otherwise have but this initial experience was but a taste of what was to come. When Pete sought me out we had a few moments, it was fun, but he was dragged away by the event organizer in order to speak on time. The organizer, a friend, was Barbara Malzacher, who ran a flawless event.<br />
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I was pleased to speak with Sen. David Hann, who single handedly brought republicans their majority in the senate while losing his own race. Sometimes you know when you're in the presence of a genuine human being and so it was when we talked. I apologized to him for getting that scandal a few years ago quite, quite wrong. The opportunity to make that apology was the motivating reason for my attendance and I should have left once I was ahead.<br />
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I was surprised at the number of Never Trump people who showed their face without qualm, as if they had been aboard for some time. "Shameless," apparently, is more than an unwatchable television show. Jack & Annette Meeks in the donor room embodied this best. There were others, of course.<br />
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I pointedly said hello to a few of them. I'm only human and it was irresistible. Mostly, though, we ignored each other, as though one of us hadn't been right for months, and paid the price, and the others were not and did not. So it goes and the clueless interest me only to the extent they'll fumble the opportunities afforded republicans in Minnesota by Trump winning 78 out of 87 counties. Neither Norm Coleman or Vin Weber were in attendance but plenty of people dependent upon their largesse were. You start to see the problem; think of fossils in amber.<br />
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* * * * </div>
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Hegseth gave a fine speech, emphasizing the positive of a Trump presidency to a room largely filled with those who not only didn't support him but hope he lost. Everyone played along while I took notes. </div>
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Congressman-elect Jason Lewis, perhaps sensing this and providing counter-point, gave a short but optimistic speech about the present and the immediate future. He rightly emphasized that name calling didn't cut it in this last election, something he shared first hand with Trump. He told the crowd to get ready for the first 100 days of President Trump. They weren't sure what to make of that, them being swamp creatures writ small. </div>
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Sen. David Hann spoke and got a good round of applause, suggesting to me that even the guilty can still have a conscience. After the fact, of course.</div>
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Republican Party Chair Keith Downey said that Pete Hegseth brought the Minnesota republican party together, a remarkable and demonstrably false proposition. The crowd didn't gasp--that would be too overt for this group--but it fell flat with an audible thud. His, ours, is a political party torn asunder by one dimensional chess moves by those whose only principles are self interest and self enrichment, electoral, to say nothing of ideological, success coming in a distant second, unless they mesh of course.</div>
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Downey suggested more than once that Hillary's "basket of deplorables" comment united republicans, hence Trump's victory. Someone wasn't paying attention to the fallout from the Access Hollywood video or thought anything could be said, red meat-like, and the audience would applaud. It couldn't and they didn't. </div>
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When we later engaged by accident, he congratulated me on becoming a regular contributor to The Hill, the news of which had broken earlier that week. I haven't written about it here because I don't write about myself here; I am myself here.<br />
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Downey was exceedingly gracious and I appreciated his comments. This was something I regularly encountered: The Hill imprimatur. Many others that night gave congratulations and I unexpectedly found myself behind the curve, only concerning me. That was different, mostly weird. </div>
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I'll take it and am grateful for the new platform and audience but I was struck by how important ersatz credentials are to these people. It's not like I'm going to say anything new or different there than here. </div>
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The Hegseth Christmas gathering showed me a political party unsure of itself, vaguely happy that the orange guy won but quick to add qualifications and caveats designed to make certain members deep enough thinkers to release flatulence into the Almanac couch as well as onto the airwaves. </div>
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The people who attended this event did so because, however begrudgingly, they recognized there was no better show in town and so there they were. Or their surrogates, furtively texting their bosses about the large crowd.</div>
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But mere attendance can't paper over the divisions in this party, starting but not ending with the outright, and deep, animosity between senate republicans and house republicans. That's a story worth reporting but in keeping with their legendary laziness, I saw not a single reporter from our DFL-centric local media. </div>
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The 2016 election was the last one and we were on to the new one, by which, of course, I mean the 2018 gubernatorial race. Everyone, or so it seemed, had an agenda to push and I was frequently on the receiving end of it, willingly or not.<br />
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This, I thought in real time, was odd, given what I know about what most of those people think of me.<br />
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But they were undeterred and I was mostly a captive audience until I could manage to squirm away. Plus I was now a contributor to The Hill, something, like Trump, that they didn't see coming and so now must be dealt with.<br />
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It was an evening of exigencies, including for me, to be honest. </div>
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The usual candidates were discussed: Minnesota Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt, Hennepin County Commissioner and 2014 republican gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson, Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek--the metaphorical elephant in a room full of political ones--as well as Scott Honour, Sen. Michelle Benson, and many others. </div>
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One was Mike McFadden, who I saw slip into the event halfway through the speakers portion of the night. He looked through me even more thoroughly than had the Meeks earlier in the donor room, which took some doing. I returned the favor with my by now practiced wan smile. It's a Minnesota republican form of madness that he thinks himself viable in 2018. </div>
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I learned it was much worse than I already thought when a former staffer on McFadden's misbegotten run for Senate against Al Franken called me aside and jokingly berated me for not noticing him. I was dancing as fast as I could and told him so, nothing personal. He shared with me that he encountered heated discussions, recriminations actually, about the Marty Seifert/Tom Emmer split from the 2010 endorsement battle. I really should have left earlier. That was topped by another political hand saying he'd run into disputes about the Brian Sullivan/Tim Pawlenty endorsement contest. The word irredeemable came to mind. </div>
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A party and its activist base that still can't get beyond those old battles is not one well positioned for the future, especially given how Donald Trump has scrambled old assumptions, political techniques and electoral strategies. This would be true even if a conventional, establishment candidate had somehow won against Hillary Clinton. It's all the worse given the political transformation the president-elect has wrought.</div>
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I was routinely teased, often mocked outright, on Twitter for suggesting a political realignment was coming but come it has, even including Minnesota. I asked everyone who talked to me as though I mattered, what we were going to do to capitalize on Trump's showing here? I got blank looks, or faux thoughtful pauses, before the individual plunged back into a narrative that showed no sign of noticing what we all just experienced. By this time I was reaching my limit of how many out of body experiences I could endure in a single evening. </div>
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I run the risk of appearing naïve by recounting honestly my attendance at this Christmas party. It's a risk I'll take because the stakes are so high. The evening should have been a genuine celebration but the event celebrated came about largely despite, and not because of, so many who were there. Consequently the night was like a bad family reunion: no one really liking the others and attendance forced by circumstances that were inescapable.</div>
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That was the impermeable barrier I kept encountering despite being something of a standout because I attend so few of these events. My merely showing up was noticed and that discomforted me. I was more interested in knowing what we Minnesota republicans were going to do next. </div>
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The answers to that query left me adrift. It was as though nothing extraordinary had happened. But it has and how we "lean forward" into it spells the difference between success--and keeping Minnesota from becoming a one party state--and failure, which ensures its advance. </div>
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I have no dog in the gubernatorial fight. I want the candidate that can defeat who I think will be the DFL nominee: Tina Flint Smith or Sen. Tom Bakk. I don't think St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman can overcome the metro establishment support of the former but I've never worried overly much about being wrong. That way lies paralysis. </div>
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Minnesota republicans have to heal themselves. If those old political wounds that were on display last Wednesday night still rankle, I don't know how they do so. Maybe, as I always have, talking about them in the open will help.<br />
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We owe that much to our voters, who happen to be real, live people. They voted for a flawed and a brilliant man for president, one whose personal shortcomings, much like their own, they saw past to a different and better future. </div>
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How republicans make that future come about for the average Minnesotan is the abiding question of the next two years.</div>
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-39959619741135457072016-12-04T13:48:00.000-06:002016-12-04T13:48:30.109-06:00The Islamization of Minnesota Media<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a terrorist linked group that has turned into the go to source for much of American media. In this, Minnesota media are not different, only worse. Much worse. I've watched as media outlets in the state, primarily the Twin Cities, increasingly refracted each and every story about muslims generally, and Minnesota ones specifically, through the prism of a CAIR press release or it's invidious agenda. No outlet has been more mindless, or undeservedly morally superior, in this regard than Minnesota Public Radio.<br />
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The usual caveats to MPR always apply: taxpayer funded promulgator of liberal narratives, comfort zone of the intellectually incurious and cheerfully dishonest disseminator of falsehoods whenever circumstances warrant, which this election cycle was essentially 24/7.<br />
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Still, I was appalled when I learned that one of it's better known reporters, Tom Weber, agreed to serve as Master of Ceremonies for CAIR's 9th Annual Banquet. I realize people in media function in a variety of roles outside their platform but in doing so Weber, and explicitly MPR, gave its imprimatur to a group long considered beyond the pale. He did so on top of his employer having given its listeners and readers no real understanding of what the group is or how reasonable people and organizations have a very different understanding of it.<br />
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A good summary of CAIR's terrorist links, and it's retribution against critics, "CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment," can be found by clicking <a href="http://www.meforum.org/916/cair-islamists-fooling-the-establishment" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a><br />
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Members of the Minnesota media would do well to read that piece if they care at all for informed reporting.<br />
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MPR made a big deal when it recently hired Mukhtar Ibrahim. When he tweeted something that specifically mentioned CAIR, I responded that the group was terrorist linked. He blocked me faster than Keith Ellison. No agenda here with this reporter.<br />
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Nothing objectionable to the CAIR perspective can be found in MPR's coverage of Islam and muslims in America. I've concluded reporters on this beat themselves don't know much. Which non-muslim Twin Cities reporters could tell you, off the top of their heads, the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam? None, I venture to say.<br />
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I'm hardly an Islamic scholar or historian but you don't need to be in order to be decently informed; you just won't become so relying on Minnesota media. Instead you'll get a warped version of what's actually happening in Minnesota and in that big scary world outside this xenophobic state's borders.<br />
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The CAIR contagion has spread to the Star Tribune, apparently in an effort to keep up with politically correct virtue signaling. Again, the same intellectual impoverishment exists there and the most anodyne stories devoid of anything approaching substance are routinely churned out. The embarrassing saturation coverage over a young muslim woman competing in a beauty pageant, burkini-clad, is but the latest example.<br />
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By contrast, anything that reflects badly on the favored group is reported once, if at all, and never again. Somali, how shall we say, overrepresentation in day care fraud is the best example. Why new immigrants incredibly fortunate to be in this country would seek to take criminal advantage of it is something not to be explored further because CAIR narrative.<br />
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One local television reporter had a bit about Somali elders which featured all men. Really? Where's the backstory on this episode of misogyny? All people deserve respect and equality; all cultures manifestly do not. It's possible, indeed a moral imperative, to separate the two but this is a synapse that hasn't yet fired in the brains of Minnesota media.<br />
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The default local media position seems to be that coverage of these important issues is best served by using the stale civil rights struggle in which it's always Selma 1965. As a matter of their legendary laziness, I understand this approach but then they ought to congratulate themselves less on Twitter in so being. Real reporting can be done here but they collectively not only lack the will but seem to be positively terrified at the prospect. As a result, their audience is impoverished or, worse, reinforced in their ignorance. Remember, media think themselves truth tellers. </div>
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Scott Johnson, of Powerline, and Preya Samsundar, of Alpha News, have done real and serious reporting that local media refuse to touch, or do so only if forced by events. Liberals and the usual republican Twitter suck-ups-to-reporters routinely disparage both but never, of course, on the merits of their reporting. That's an honesty bridge too far. </div>
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The case of Rep. Keith Ellison is both instructive and typical.</div>
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The Morning Hot Dish newsletter, the Star Tribune's attempt to encroach on the far superior Morning Take, provides a recent example. Full disclosure: I'm friends with the purveyor of the latter but that wouldn't stop me from critiquing it should I find it appropriate. As a friend of mine once said, the only real downside in being my friend is to find yourself called out by name from time to time in this space. So it goes: Minnesota nice is poison.</div>
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Hot Dish, in keeping with local media's attempt to first ignore, then downplay, the odious Keith Ellison and his anti-semitism, his Islamist links and his Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam membership, recently asked about the accumulated evidence: "The point is, what else is out there?" The point is that isn't the point.</div>
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Imagine if the links to such groups, and such conduct and words, were on the far right. The "take" would be rather different. But as Johnson long ago pointed out, Minnesota media willingly carried Ellison's water and one supposes there's no reason to think they'd change now. It's all in keeping with a media both ignorant, and afraid to report on, what's actually going on within the muslim community in America. Keith Ellison's tight connection to CAIR can be read about by clicking <a href="http://www.meforum.org/6385/ellison-extremism-wrong-for-dnc" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;">here.</span></a></div>
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Ask yourself if you've ever read any local coverage of Irshad Manji, Tarek Fatah, Maajid Nawaz or even the world famous Ayaan Hirsi Ali (herself a Somali, talk about a local angle)? You haven't but the real question is why?</div>
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It's because these muslim reformers have no place in the CAIR narrative. To cover them is to explode the construct that CAIR speaks for all muslims and is somehow a leading voice. It is not the former but if it has become somehow the latter, it is because of a supine, not particularly knowledgeable and intimidated, virtue signaling media. Truth to power and all that J-school rubbish.</div>
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Manji recently married her girlfriend, something you'd think the local professional homosexual lobby (in and out of media) would applaud. But no. So great is the Islamist myopia in this town advanced by the Servants of CAIR™ that not even this is sufficient to garner her attention, let alone praise. Fatah is a tour de force in discussing honestly the problems of religion-based terrorist Pakistan and Nawaz himself left militant Islam for a better path. All of them are on Twitter. All of them can be learned about by using the magical powers of Google.</div>
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Keith Ellison's Minneapolis based imam recently said things that would bring the press here down on him in an instant had they been said by a white, straight, male, evangelical Christian. But he isn't and so they don't. </div>
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This is the real tragedy of the Islamization of Minnesota media: through it's CAIR centered coverage it advances the most extreme advocates of a certain idea of Islam, while abandoning altogether those brave muslim men and women who seek to reconcile the seventh century with modernity while retaining the best of their faith. </div>
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You might call it true Islamophobia.<br />
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Image credit: CAIR Minnesota, click to enlarge.<br />
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-423868999082505525.post-9237462445450869582016-11-20T12:24:00.001-06:002016-11-20T18:01:29.803-06:00Trump: The Transformation of Minnesota Politics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've watched, fascinated, as the magnitude and depth of Donald Trump's victory in Minnesota has been absorbed by establishment republicans and democrats alike, with Minnesota media playing its traditional role of trying to catch up with the present, to say nothing of the future. Be sure to catch them on the next TPT Almanac media panel because I surely won't. Not that you'll learn anything: they saw none of this coming but will pretend to know what it portends. Fake news, local version.<br />
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I had planned on writing about Speaker Daudt's disastrous step too far in calling, just last month, for now President elect Trump to withdraw entirely from the race. Not even Rep. Erik Paulsen did that. Yah Allah, as my muslim friends would say. No, alone among a wide array of elected and influential Minnesota republicans only Speaker Daudt demanded to-be-President 45 quit. Please clap.<br />
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Why this extravagant display of panic, of bad political instincts? Worse, why pretend no one noticed? An article last week in MinnPost, and a master class in throne sniffing, attempted the painful, intellectually insulting task of making the Speaker look good on this score. He doesn't and he shouldn't. But this, apparently, is what the inner circle of the Speaker thinks will still work.<br />
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The planted article was more alarming to me than the original mistake. The Speaker should admit in whatever fashion he can that his call for Trump to leave the race was a mistake and move on. Even privately will do; no one expects him to call a press conference about it. But continuing to insult those who were paying attention (he wasn't: Trump almost won the state and is now president elect) by suggesting this display of vacillation is indicative of leadership skills, won't help him, either in the upcoming legislative session or in any future plans he may have, by which I mean his run for governor. Everything coming from the house next year must necessarily be seen through this prism. No one expects bold leadership.<br />
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Daudt made a hash of things with his senate colleagues by colluding with DFL Sen. Tom Bakk in taking out Senate Minority Leader David Hann, the man who gave Minnesota republicans its senate majority for the next four years. They didn't expect republicans to flip the senate. Only Minnesota republicans are disappointed in their own success.<br />
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It's above my paygrade to suggest how the Speaker is now seen as loyal and a man of integrity by the superior chamber's republicans. As an aside, I hear rumors of a place for Hann (if he wants it) in Trump's Washington but beyond that I couldn't possibly comment.<br />
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Republicans in the Minnesota house gained seats this election and the Speaker more or less took sole credit. As a friend remarked, that's just doing his job. But good for him in any event. This is one conservative who'll never tire of republicans in Minnesota winning. The caveat is that they should actually make a substantive difference with those wins, something I've yet to see materialize. A real opposition party instead of a speed bump en route to a one party state, to quote myself.<br />
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Trump fired Paul Manafort when he realized his advice and counsel served him badly. Whether Kurt Daudt can draw the necessary inference, and possesses the requisite self-assurance and political skills, from this heavy handed reference of mine isn't really, well, in doubt. Still, the analogy was too good not to suggest it. Are you not entertained?<br />
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Weirdly and not weirdly, Minnesota democrats seem better positioned this early on to take advantage of how well Trump did here than republicans. To be sure, democrats are none too happy with the great unwashed who voted not to become a Third World country accustomed to corruption as usual given the Clinton Crime Family's sordid history. After all, those voters used to be theirs and Trump is likely to continue to steal democrat issues and then (more) of their voters.<br />
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From my initial observations, they seem to understand the transformation of Minnesota politics that the Trump results herald. By contrast, Minnesota republicans, resentful at being shown up as comprehensively clueless by those results, appear poised to double down in their fantasy that the next two years will be politics as usual, hence the MinnPost article that essentially argues we should go back to sleep once woke. No can do.<br />
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With swamp creatures Norm Coleman & Vin Weber still controlling Minnesota republican politics (go to GuideStar and input American Action Network or Minnesota Action Network for the former--the 990's is where monetary truth is revealed--or Google Mercury Partners for the latter, I can't do all your work for you), the election of Donald Trump as president means slim pickings for the politically dependent class here at home. Sorry those Ignatius of Loyola banners or Darelene Miller campaign things didn't work out for you. No DC job for you. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. Oscar Wilde was Irish. </div>
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Minnesota republicans have a once in a lifetime chance to fashion themselves into a permanent majority in Minnesota. That chance is wholly dependent upon them realizing and capitalizing upon Trump's amazing performance here. Perhaps the most noxious idea from the MinnPost puff piece about the Speaker was that Trump supporters constitute the purity faction when the facts of this election prove precisely the opposite. </div>
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Very few establishment republicans supported our next president and I mentioned them by name in my last column. The overwhelming majority did not and it is they who are in control of Minnesota republican politics. Talk about flying blind.<br />
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Get ready, as Sue Jeffers said yesterday upon her return to radio, for a litany of excuses from MNGOPe as to why republicans shouldn't expect much to get accomplished with them controlling the legislature: we don't have the executive branch. Sound familiar?<br />
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It was the mirror opposite, of course, when Pawlenty was governor with a DFL controlled legislature. He had to "work with them," something democrats never say.<br />
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Preemptive surrender by Minnesota republicans isn't so much an article of faith as a way of living. Old habits die hard (especially when monetized) and the opportunities presented by Trump winning 79 out of 87 counties seem destined to be ignored, lest republicans become politically sentient.<br />
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Wisconsin republicans are far superior in every regard to Minnesota republicans. I've often wondered why that is the case and why we can't learn from them.<br />
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Then again, I realize they don't have the suffocating, self-interested presence of Vin Weber or Norm Coleman to sacrifice themselves on the altar of their clients. Everything here is subordinate to them. Follow the money; the political incompetence follows in short order.<br />
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Only the money didn't work this time, nor did our corrupt media, national or local. Donald Trump heralds the end of political business as usual except amongst the captives of Minnesota republican apparatchiks.<br />
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Tom Bakk, it seems to me, understands perfectly well Trump's showing in Minnesota and is most likely already moving to use it against Tina Flint Smith, urban out of touch liberal, handmaiden to our zombie governor and Our Lady of the Curette, to quote myself once more.<br />
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The political reality at the present moment is that one of these two will likely be our next governor.<br />
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Unless and until Minnesota republicans understand and avail themselves of the president elect's transformative opportunities, from whom they have foolishly distanced themselves, the election of 2018 will mark an even dozen years in which they were unable to win a statewide race.<br />
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Unlike our country, through the election of President Trump, this will mark a point of no return for Minnesota.<br />
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Image credit: MinnPost. Click to enlarge and you really should.<br />
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<br />John Hugh Gilmorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17095758200969949080noreply@blogger.com