NEMINNDEMS

2011-09-28T16:21:00.000-05:00

We no longer have the DFL...we have overpaid elected idiots

2011-07-04T10:09:00.001-05:00

For decades, voting for the lesser evil has been normal. Northeastern Minnesota’s DFL, however, was and has always appeared the last bastion for ordinary people’s needs. In many ways, that remains true, but in others, it is now so utterly destructive that to vote for them is to destroy the very place we live.

The peculiar history of Northeastern Minnesota and the Range in particular has, after five generations, made destroying the communities and the natural world the norm. While southern Minnesota was first to be destroyed, settlement was dominated by agriculture and by its very essence, was very different than the ecocide of the north. The north was not settled at first; after the conquest, native lands were legally stolen and turned over to land speculators and railroad men. The first exploitative assault was to denude the forests of its most ecologically and financially valuable timber; the forests were not “cleared”, but instead demolished. Hapless American and European peasants were shipped in, railroads built, the finest timber removed, and the land covered with the remaining debris. Genocide and the catastrophic Hinckley and Cloquet fires were the first children of the rape; the second were the mineral prospectors. In the brute exploitation of both human and nature that was 19^th century capitalism, gold wasn’t found, but iron ore was. I will not glorify the destructive history of earlier times, for the history sits all around us in a demolished landscape, tainted water and desperate communities.

This history, however, is constantly refrained and built into monuments honoring destruction; these show how the extreme becomes the normal and the thinking of the exploiter becomes the thinking of the exploited. And this is where I need to break with those I used to support.

Recently, Range Dfler’s joined the state’s Republicans in rewriting the state’s environmental review rules. The complaints justifying the need all spoke of timeliness and jobs, but none dealt with the actual results. They added their own special privilege: Any Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB) project is exempt from the environmental review process. This, of course, means the taxpayers are now forced to give the Polymet project money despite its potential destructive effects. In short, the public is now forced to hand over land, cash and profits to private investors, many of them foreign, in hopes that several hundred desperate people might hopefully be employed for 20 years. The refrain is always “jobs” and “community” while two concepts are never mentioned; the mysterious word “profits” and the always ignored fact that any community built completely for exploiting a finite resource is doomed from the very beginning. That the Range DFLer’s don’t recognize this shows they are now as much of the problem as the former land barons and “iron men” now honored in ridiculous murals and statues. Now, as part of the local elite, they assist the destroyers with endless subsidies; the DNR’s mineral research, infrastructure funding, education, and finally, handing over our land, water and the very resources we sit on. The communities and employees, trapped in the hapless modern equivalent of the company town, their incomes bound to the corporations, hand over their very lives and landscapes. That they are comparatively well paid only leads to more co-option; the endless supply of over-size trucks, ATV’s and bound mortgages colors the thinking of everyone. The desperation that is the modern United States surrounds us; we work for corporate investors so we can pay debts to corporate investors so we can buy plastic toys from corporate investors who use slave labor to build them overseas. Mysteriously, this is called the zenith of civilization.

The Range’s problems are complex yet simply defined; the communities, despite any booster’s glorification’s, are graveyards next to wastelands. The people are beholden to their corporate master's, a truth fully evident yet never spoken; it as if saying “the sky is sometimes blue”. No one mentions it so they do not have to acknowledge the drudgery that is modern life for most. We have toys, yes, but we do not have what matters most, and that is community. And now we watch helplessly as the one group who used to define something different be the group willing to hand over the most; our land, our water and more of our community.

In a rational world, albeit imaginary, we might ask of ourselves 'We have this resource, perhaps of wealth, perhaps of trouble, but what do we do with it and how will it benefit us? What do we charge the corporation for exploiting our land? What do we get in return? What will be left? How do we assure our grandchildren will still want to or be able to live here?

This is, of course, not the case.

The mining laws of Minnesota, like most dealing with “Natural Resources”, sets the state's role as promoter of exploitation, or truly, the mother of destruction. We pay for research, we pay for infrastructure, we pay for what little of reclamation occurs and then we finally pay for destroyed communities and dysfunctional lives left over when the profit takers “downsize” or walk away. No matter what, it's a temporary fix and a devil's bargain.

The two communities most affected by the Polymet project have problems deriving from their very origins; they were both built specifically for mining only, standing at road’s end, miles from anything, surrounded by a scavenged landscape or forest. The project’s proponents want to resolve this by destroying more public forest for private profit, supported by countless subsidies, in exchange that a few will get paid for 20 years. Their aim, of course, is to start more projects on the same ore bodies, to destroy more land, to destroy more water, it all at public expense for private profit.

When I think of where I'm from, I think of the earliest labor organizers, some of whom I met and knew. Despite their so called ignorance, they knew one fundamental fact: the owners were exploiters, and nothing more. They were not our friends, and not to be trusted. They would sacrifice anything , including their worker's lives for a few dollars more profit. Fortunately, and unfortunately, the labor fights and unions brought us better conditions and a share of the profits., but they also co-opted us. Now, many are slaves bought and paid for, their lives a collection of mortgages, four wheel drive trucks and other toys. Like Orwell's well trained dog, they roll over without the masters watching. Anyone who questions the constant cycle of destruction and subsidy is labeled treehugger. No one sees the fundamental truth behind what is done; we borrow from the future to keep it all going, ignoring the mess we make in exchange for a big screen tv, burgers at the bar and a boat at the inherited lake property.

To end, there is one question that needs to be answered by those arguing for any extraction project: What will be left when it's done? Until the Range DFL answers that question, they are nothing more than puppets who want to sweep the crumbs off the table to the public's mouths.

Considering the results we see now, with emptying communities, rampant social problems and addiction, aging infrastructure we can't afford and environmental destruction all around us, the experiment's results are obvious; we simple need a better way.

2009-07-04T18:25:00.003-05:00

Some Pictures from yesterdays Gilbert Parade and Franken visit...

2008-12-14T08:12:00.004-06:00

OINK!

Here is a brief list of some big local subsidies:

http://www.hoytlakestobabbitt.com/

Excelsior Energy "The Gas Plant":http://www.irrrb.org/_site_components/lists/newboard-meetings/October%2027%20Board%20Minutes.doc

http://www.sehinc.com/online/tower/index.htm (The Harbor at Tower)

And our old favorite Giants Ridge: http://www.cagw.org/site/DocServer/2006_Minnesota_Piglet_Book.pdf?docID=1701

The first is a planned road from Hoyt Lakes to Babbitt, essentially a road between two nursing homes. This is, of course, to serve the burgeoning growth of these two outposts. St. Louis County is taking the lead on this while cutting budgets in other areas. It's symbol should actually be a pig on its back...

The second, if you have not been buried under a rock, is a loan to someone with no capital, no collateral, no engineering expertise, and whose only qualification is that he was hockey player at Hibbing and the University who was then funneled into gravy executive jobs via his connections from boosters. 9.5 million. To Lobby. To lobby to force others to give money to you for a non-existent technology known for pollution, coal gasification.

The third is the "Tower at Harbor", in which current public money is being used to pay an Engineering consultant for preliminary studies on re-routing HWY 135 in Tower, then dredging out wetlands and a river, placing jetties into Lake Vermillion, constructing what is essentially a multi-story strip mall with condos at the top surrounding a Harbor with 80 slips. No private money...developer "must be found" ....this will supposedly turn Tower into a virtual economic powerhouse, as teenagers sell espressos, bagels and trinkets to wheezing boomers piloting their pontoons up the taxpayer dug channel. There is, of course, no mention of locally connected business people benefitting at taxpayer expense. SEH's lobbyist is the thankfully retired State Senator Douglas "Porkbarrel" Johnson.

The last is 2006's subsidy to Giant's Ridge, which should tell us just how well such plans work. 20 years of subsidies later, and all they have managed to do is sell off a bunch of public land and make some contractors some cash.

We do not have heath care. Many of our current roads rival old Karelian cart paths. These are their only ideas?

Oink

2008-11-21T23:05:00.002-06:00

As the crash goes further, and Obama worship becomes a religious cult, critical thought processes are something forgotten...the Bush administration was crazy, but will there actually be a cure..watch Kevin Phillips here:

2008-11-02T20:56:00.001-06:00

More of Norm. I am not even going to try to explain what has been going on, but it comes down to Norm trying to deflect attention away from potential trouble. So go see it here

2008-10-21T06:37:00.002-05:00

The Scary Part is how many of these people exist...The frightening nutballs of America; or the loads of ignorant cracker trash we are surrounded by:

2008-10-19T22:25:00.002-05:00

Both the Intrade prediction market and 538 have Obama steadily ahead. In State races, the Senate Race and the 6th CD are tight, but the important subject of the night is the consistent movement of Democratic candidates in all races and places where they have not been strong in years.

2008-10-19T15:06:00.000-05:00

And finally, another endorsement for Obama...from Colin Powell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efv3Vr8T9MA

2008-10-18T22:09:00.002-05:00

A long story of Norm's ties to the dirty ads and calls he complains about, and Michelle Bachman steps further over the crazy line...and geez, other than Hillary coming to the range, it has been seemingly boring up here

2008-09-29T16:58:00.003-05:00

Douglas " Pork Barrel" Johnson...former State Senator and an official political whore. He endorsed Coleman yesterday while still claiming democrat status, ( which was always in question, this cat thought of nothing but himself for years)..he does not tell you he is a registered lobbyist for excelsior Energy, the great future polluter. This is another piece of evidence telling us the Dfl'ers in the north need a great cleansing, as whatever values they once had have become the property of greedy self serving swine like this useless bucket of offal...

Here is his registered client sheet:

2008-09-22T21:16:00.002-05:00

From Minnesota Campaign Report, Norm Coleman's voting record...It is ugly

2008-09-06T07:35:00.003-05:00

The 8th District repubs candidate.

For the 8th District, of course, James Oberstar is the candidate. Two years ago, Rod Grams rose from his political grave to yet again create noise pollution. Hopefully he is buried for good now. This time, no such known name came forth. Instead we have this guy . So one needs to ask, what is he for actually for and what is he against? My first impression, and this not partisan, is he thinks in a standard talk radio repub way. The way out of the oil crisis ( really a crisis of transportation and production) is to drill more in the Arctic, North Dakota and offshore. Like most who believe this, he has no clue about the amount the U.S uses everyday or how it is used. His other solutions include tax breaks for higher mpg vehicles ( oh my) and nuclear power. In short, more of the same bull which assumes we can continue on with what we do.

On social issues, we have the same small religious based thinking on abortion and marriage. Marriage is somehow sacred, rather than the legally defined contract which it is. As usual, he claims to be for individuals, but wants the state to define who a person can marry. He says nothing about divorce, of course.

There is a beep about property rights, and a link to a nutball property rights group. These people believe that you should be able to do what you want regardless of the consequences to the environment and everyone downstream or downwind.

As in the last go round, we have the criticism of Oberstar's address. Do these people even study just how much time congress is in session? Or what being head of a major congressional committee entails? The time it requires, or the complexity of the issues involved? Obviously not. You might need to have a house or apartment rather than charging up hotel bills.

I won't even comment on the criticism for refusing to save a fire hazard riverboat

This is precisely what I mean by a "talk radio view of the world". Like many who do not know the extent of their own ignorance, he assumes the world is simple place, and that all problems are quickly solved. I am sorry, but problems involving complex systems such as energy, transportation and social policy aren't resolved by decree and appeals to the local pastor.

It reminds me of this:

2008-09-06T06:52:00.000-05:00

NEXT FRIDAY THE OBAMA BUS COMES TO THE RANGE! The national RV Campaign for Change tour will be here next Friday the 12^thof September. If you’d like to attend any of the following roundtables:

ELY Sportmen and Environmentalists’ Roundable at the Grand Ely Lodge, 9:30-10:30am

VIRGINIA Veteran’s Roundtable with Sen. Dave Tomassoni at the Virginia MN for Change Office, 327 Chestnut St, 12-1pm

HIBBING Sportsmen’s Roundtable at Grandma’s In the Park, Howard St. at Hway 169, 2-3pm

2008-07-26T06:47:00.003-05:00

Norm Coleman, friend of Bowlers:

I don't know if this is playing up here yet, ( it might not because most up here would probably see through and they know it), but I was forced to sit through the latest Coleman commercial yesterday. It is three actors playing bowling guys bad mouthing Franken. Minnesota Independent has it all. I like the names of the corporate front organizations: "Minnesotans for Employee Freedom" and " Coalition for a Democratic Workplace". Those names alone tell us wealthy owners are behind them.

2008-06-15T09:54:00.003-05:00

This will appear as as strange post, but it is very relevant. It is not about political gamesmanship or the campaigns, but it directly relates. It is about fuel prices and how they have structured our society , and how they affect us now. I do not agree with everything said here or claim to read the future, but the predictions have been coming true, and the data is real. The cheap easy to get liquid hydrocarbons we have based our life on are going or getting more expensive to process and extract, and people within the U.S. in general and locally need to deal with the reality that 40 mile commutes will not be affordable for many people anymore ( Listen planners and local boosters). We have to find a way out for transport and how we live. The first section is a Russian author who compares the Soviet collapse and the similarities he sees in the U.S. now; especially the flat out denial of reality. I will add another link to a speech by Matthew Simmons, an oil investment banker. It is a long speech, but he exposes the reality of the world's oil fields and lack of discoveries since the 1960's. This relates to the complaints of high gas prices and the new proposed solutions. All of them are about keeping the cars and trucks going as they are now, or smaller vehicles. It is ethanol, North Dakota, or Oil Sands. It is never our transport system, or 5000 people commuting 30 miles in a four ton vehicle. Or our food system, producing packaged junk in a box to be shipped 1500 miles. As prices go up, the poor will suffer first, especially as ethanol is used to give the wealthier the fuel to drive around. So here are the links: here and here

2008-06-01T07:27:00.004-05:00

Let us not eat our young...

This is just the latest internal fight within the DFL at large; worries over Al Franken's writing and broadcasting past. The internal fights are spilling outside with the primary long off in September as candidates and others worry about this. The Repubs are united behind Bush's pet Norm, and are already letting the dogs loose and will throw every cent, the bathwater, and kerosene on a baby seal just to keep the seat. Here is a piece of advice to fellow Dfl'ers: Keep your mouth shut and work for whatever candidate we throw up there for they will be better than weasel Norm. (My cat is a better candidate than Norm, for at least she thinks for herself and craps where she is supposed to). This is about our policies winning, not whether you are fully in love. Ms. McCollum; it was a playboy comedy piece...again..a playboy comedy piece. You are playing their game by defending against a whisper campaign that doesn't exist to distract you from hammering at what they have done and what they are doing; bringing the country over a cliff with their hand in our pocket at the same time. Remind everyone Norm has been along for the ride...

2008-05-26T09:08:00.002-05:00

More of Normie's votes:

Giving foreclosure protection to ordinary people: voted no

Allowing medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies ( why not?) voted no

Pell grants to low income students: voted no

Healthy mothers, healthy babies act: voted no

He really doesn't like ordinary people.

He did like bitching about the UN for a couple years, however.

2008-05-25T08:00:00.003-05:00

Coleman, Franken, and the Republican Hate Machine...

Republicans know they are in trouble. Their policies and their president have run the country into the mud like the drunk cousin you hope doesn't come to the wedding, so any positive campaign is out of the question.They have nothing. Franken, in reality, is the front runner for the DFL. So the Repub noise machine is focused on one thing; run a blistering negative campaign against Franken. This will include the usual tactics; press releases, circulated fake stories etc etc. My favorite is posing callers and blog commentators. These people will call or write in, posing as normal citizens, then immediately spin out a statement right out of a campaign message plan...see these comments here, and it is obvious. This is a problem, because for some reason, I have never seen reporters confront this. So, for reality's sake, here is part of Coleman's campaign donor list. The CEO of Amway..interesting; A truer nutjob if ever walked the planet. Hey..Bill Mcguire, big time thief. This what they do not want you to see. Norm's ties to the extremely wealthy,the crazed right wing and his lapdog service to them. Geez, he doesn't like funding education for the disabled or to extend unemployment funding for people laid off. Here is his voting record...

2008-05-24T10:23:00.001-05:00

over here

2008-05-18T21:55:00.004-05:00

Sometimes you have to look at a road accident...

And sometimes you shouldn't. And this was one of those nights when I should not have, as someone was breathing down my neck saying don't look, you know what you will see. But I LOOKED. And it was bad. The local district Repub party website. Especially the part stating what we believe. As you read it, you begin to wonder where these people live. Just where? Religious belief is now persecuted? Where are the hordes of agnostics burning bibles? Conducting modern day pogroms on church attendees on Sunday mornings? Mildly sipping coffee and reading the paper over pancakes? Then they say they believe in absolute morality. What is that? Does it include Halliburton? Ted Haggard? The lunatic John Hagee? Does local control include No Child Left Behind? I know now why I had not looked before, because I know what happens with deluded people when they get together...they make up more delusions, and you get a roomful of nuts. I hope no one gives them a Ouija board...

2008-05-18T21:06:00.002-05:00

This is a picture from the Weimar Republic; a woman heating with cash money as inflation made it useless. For money is actually worth nothing, only what you can get for it at a current exchange rate from someone who has the things you need. And now we need more to buy the things we ordinarily use, like food and fuel. The question is why? Is oil more scarce, at least scarce enough to say, jump in value so much over this time? Not that scarce, though the good, easy to get stuff is going and will be gone...we and others are using more, but not that much more than three or four years ago...so what gives? It is about our money, and what its value is. Back when Nixon dumped the old Bretton Woods system, he made a deal with the Arabs; all oil deals would be done in dollars. And largely, except in a few cases, that is how it is done to this day. You want to buy or pay for oil, you do it in dollars. It makes our currency the baseline that every other currency is compared against. This works well, except when everyone starts seeing the fundamental basis for your economy and the attached value to the currency is a lie, and they know your currency is toilet paper waiting to happen. Such as when you fund war debts by cutting taxes and printing money, as the Bush administration has been doing for a few years now. Or when they realize the three card molly game you played with U.S. housing debt, and overall debt, for a half a decade to prop up an economy going down the drain quickly because of your messed up policies. Other oil producers want to deal in Euros, partly for political reasons, but also because they know we are just printing money and not actually paying for what is happening. Oil is not going up; the value of our cash is going down, probably by 30% in the last two years as judged by the rest of the world. So, when you hit the gas pump next time, thank your republican friend or relative for their blind support of someone with their hand in your pocket...and buy a smaller car and a woodstove. You might need it sooner than you think.

2008-05-07T05:59:00.002-05:00

A good examination of Pawlenty's playing with health care at Minnesota Monitor; the typical repub attitude towards ordinary people. Letting them die.

2008-05-04T11:03:00.004-05:00

James Oberstar is running again...Thankfully. We in this district have been lucky for decades to have someone this thoughtful serving us. Some may not agree with everything he says or does, but that is true for most of humanity. We do have someone here, however, who is not a deluded ideologue, engages real problems, offers thought out solutions and has stood up,voted his conscience and later proven to be correct on his prediction more than once. And he's done this for ordinary people, and been up front with that...definitely not a servant of lobbyists. Yes, I am thankful. I could be stuck with a Michelle B., a lunatic of the first order ( if anyone wants to see an agnostic genuflect, I just did..and I'll do it again if you mention her or Norm's name..or buy me some ravioli at my fav range restaurant)

2008-04-29T17:41:00.001-05:00

There are myths, and then there are myths, and this article has some of my arguments...

2008-04-26T08:30:00.000-05:00

I will hit on Franken and Coleman later..but for now here is this...

2008-04-15T06:07:00.003-05:00

How to lie ( Or run against your record)

Watching this yokel is more annoying than usual lately, for his campaign theme is now " I am Mr. Future". What this really means, of course, is "Please do not look at what I have actually done for the last six years while I sat on Bush's lap wearing a dress whispering in his ear like Marilyn Monroe". What he has done, for six years is screw ordinary people over for access to power and money, and now, when the train he rode is ready to crash, he is trying to jump off. Except he cannot ...

2008-04-12T07:42:00.003-05:00

Governor Tim Pawlenty has always portrayed himself as a sort of disciplinary father holding the unruly children of the legislature from overspending their candy money. He has been successful at this for years, and despite the record of what he has actually done, he has gotten away with it, often due to a press that treats politics as a fight between crazy neighbors. Mostly he has screwed over ordinary people to make sure his clients, mostly the wealthy of Minnesota and the crazed ideologues (see this)that populate the Republican party, happy. And now this budget "crisis", shows more of where his and his parties values and empty ideas leave us. In a time where insane numbers of people lack health care, we will instead of attempting to provide the thousands of workers who do not have it access to it, we will raid the fund(here) to solve a budget problem we helped make, and avoid making decisions that might affect my friends in Woodbury(see here). Like most republicans, the Governor does not believe in reality, instead we get faith-based initiatives like the Jobz program, and other such useless give aways, which have never been shown to actually work, but instead turn communities and citizens into a Santa Claus for businesses. Or,gov, your crew allow this theft to go on...That is where a lot our health care dollars go now, but that is not an administrative cost, of course. Unlike the right wing, I believe sickness requires a doctor...and not faith healing.

2008-01-12T07:50:00.001-06:00

A wonderful bit of entertainment and truth at the same time:

http://www.mnblue.com/norm_coleman_weasel_meter

or where Norm's money comes from:

2006-12-30T08:59:00.000-06:00

So I am finally back. Other than the Gov's race here in Minnesota, it was a victory all around for progressive people. The Con's are at each other like dog's on rotten meat trying to figure out what happened, blaming each other. Somehow they are trying to spin this into a "victory for conservatism". They ignore a few things. Their conservatism has been a pathetic failure, which combined with criminal behavior and the numerous closeted gays in their party destroyed the self- created perception of them as middle of the road people. Your policies have failed. You have not solved problems for ordinary people. And you have done this while robbing the taxpayer's treasury blind. Now shut up. The people caught on.

2006-09-09T06:47:00.000-05:00

Since this week Rod Grams complained that Rep. Oberstar has spent too much time in Washington lately, I decided to look at where Rod the dairy farmer has been the last few years. Now I have a question....How does one do barn chores from K Street in Washington D.C. ? : http://sopr.senate.gov/cgi-win/m_opr_viewer.exe?DoFn=3&LOB=GRAMS,%20RODNEY%20R.&LOBQUAL==Rod....Dairy farmer and lobbyist? I personally like the fact he was lobbyist for Brown and Williamson tobacco. Maybe next week he'll show up at an American Lung Association picnic and talk about health care reform. He lobbied for Patton Boggs, famous for its push for oil drilling on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge( Anwr for short). So Rodney....apparently you need to be reminded of where you have been the last few years. The best part is one of his hacks went on a local radio show to complain about this...Brad Bennett's show to be specific. Brad portrays himself as protector of the taxpayers, but his record...hmmm :http://www.snowbizz.com/ExcessLevy/carwreck.htm. After this I am going to start a new fund for republican memory research. I'll make sure it doesn't use embryonic stem cells so they can feel reassured.

2006-09-09T06:30:00.000-05:00

Tony Lourey is running for senate down in Minnesota's 8th district. A good guy....here's his website: http://www.tonyloureyforsenate.org/.

2006-09-08T21:12:00.000-05:00

Foolish "Sportsmen for Bush". I still see those fading bumperstickers occasionally, though it seems more and more of them are scraped off. I wonder if they realize now what they were voting for. It seems two years ago I was surrounded by these things, almost always on a pick up. Whenever I'd talk to someone who had these things, often a buddy, it would get murky. Why do you have it?, I would ask. Because the democrats always want gun control....So have you looked at their platform?...no....So how do you know this?..the deer in the headlights look would come over them ( I know it well, having taken out five deer with vehicles). Next would come some drivel they had almost always picked up in a magazine or from a radio show. They actually never had an idea on what a candidates actual record and policies were. Bush likes to hunt they would say....Then I would point out it was canned hunts, on his private lands in Texas, where they have no public lands...mostly him getting out of a truck and shooting at birds chased up by someone else paid to do the job. I would bet them fifty dollars he had never cleaned an animal in his life. They always shagged off the bet. Still they would go on....it was more or less a continuation of ignorance, stuff I have heard all my life. (Being a hunter and fisherman, and working in the natural resources field have taught me much about our school system's failures when it comes to basic biology. Let me say this to everyone: There is no such animal called a black panther, especially in the midwest, and don't call the office to report it anymore) Ranting and raving about liberal volvo drivers drinking lattes and saving wolves, anecdotes about vegetarians, the evils of government and the inherent goodness of any pickup driver with a gun.

I was once more critical of my fellows, but now I realize they are often just stupid or gullible, most often the latter.

The first complaint you will often hear is about the lack of game. whether its a proponent of quality deer management ( called the "we want bigger horns" party) with their cult like obsessions, or a call in guy complaining about the Indians taking all the big walleyes out of Mille Lacs, what you almost always hear is sincere delusion or the zenith of neanderthal reasoning. There is only so much habitat. There are only so many duck producing wetlands. When there are ten thousand boats on a lake during opening morning, it is going to take a slice out of the population. When a lake is entirely surrounded by cabins, and the weed beds and shorelines are disrupted, not as many northerns will be spawning. And when 20 percent of those are removed in a year by overfishing.....well, there are are only so many; next year, there will be less northerns and more stunted bluegills. That is the law. You can't avoid it. Biological laws are as stern as the laws of physics. Jump off a 600 foot cliff, I guarantee you will impact at close to 160 miles an hour. Degrade and overfish a 300 acre lake, and you will go from northerns and walleyes to stunted sunfish and bullheads. It will happen. Somehow, strangely, it seems most people, including sportsmen, don't see that. Somehow someone else is always to blame. Wolves. The DNR. Indians. It is never me and my buddies, using atv's in habitat already degraded by logging roads ( roads do influence and degrade habitat...don't even try to deny it) taking an extra deer, my buddy down the road poaching, the new housing development abutting the formerly duck producing wetland, the pollution we make....I can go on and on.

I do most of my fishing by canoe....all my hunting is done on foot, without an atv ( as do most of my friends and cousins), and more often than not without a stand. Two years ago I shot three deer in sixteen hours, on foot, all with black powder. I am still fairly young, but often I feel like an anachronism. There are no special gimmicks...it is all hard work and knowledge of things like wind, animal habits and observing the landscape. It is knowing the water and the fish. And it is expectations, which I consider the most important. And this is what I see that lies behind the Sportsmen for Bush" stickers.

Today I drove by two places selling ready-made camouflaged stands on sale for over a thousand dollars. This fall, I will watch as highway 53 loads up with hunting parties carrying and using enough fuel and equipment for a company of troops. There will be scent trapping ghillie suits, rifles sighted in repeatedly for 300 yard shots, four atvs and enough liquor to overwhelm the crew of a destroyer. Grunt calls. Apple licks. Areas arrayed with cameras and special clover food plots. Stands built to seal out the weather.

This is what hunting and fishing have become for most people. A reflection of their lives as collectors of things, not of experiences. Of technological obsession, and not of learning new skills and acquired knowledge. Of McDonald's type instant gratification rather than the patience and skill that hunting and fishing require. It is in this disconnect that the republicans have learned to exploit. Rather than deal with shrinking and degraded habitat, we will manipulate their macho by talking about guns. Rather than acknowledging that we are destroying habitat everyday by sprawl, we will blame the Indians. And we will tell you we won't take your guns away. Just be prepared to be rich enough to pay to hunt on a private preserve, because that is all that will be left.

So my fellow sportsmen, think deeply. What kind of a world do you want? A world of canned hunts? Of streams without trout because developers were allowed to build next to them and atv'ers are allowed to pass through any way they wish?. These are choices we must make. Ducks cannot breed on a shopping mall parking lot. They need cattails and sedge grasses and populations of small predators limited by wolves. Their nesting habitat can't be disturbed by tractors and atv's. It is just like physics.

The republican record on conservation issues is a horror story. Whether pollution, wetlands, public lands ( they wish to sell everything off to the rich), water quality, oil leases or development, their policies are a disaster. They won't take your guns away, but you won't have a place to use them unless you are a member at a private club.

So think...Please think.

And take off that stupid bumpersticker.

2006-09-03T07:10:00.000-05:00

Here's a good one :http://www.gramsforcongress.com/News/08.30.06%20Spying.htm. Someone videotaping a public campaign event is now an act of aggression. They accuse Oberstar of sending campaign staffers to "intimidate and bully the public" according to their public feedback. This is good stuff. I hear things like this everyday from people wearing aluminum foil hats. I like the public feedback part....I will assume that by the public they mean camera shy republicans. I'd be camera-shy too with whack job stuff like this coming out of a campaign. (I'll just mention the results of the last six years while they've been running things, the one big reason they should crawl into a hole somewhere). I like the part about Rod not being intimidated about being in front of a camera. Now there's bravery. I'm impressed. I'll tell the local teenagers how brave they are for filming themselves tomorrow ( Maybe then they'll stop trying to get me to watch their goofball bike crashes).

This is also part of the rightwing's pattern the last two decades. Indignancy. A good fancy word. Say it with an english accent. Really what they do is whine over things that aren't happening because in their world, they are always oppressed. They are oppressed in college because someone tells them they might be wrong. They are oppressed by senior citizens who actually dare question them on social security and call them liars. Any questioning of them is seen as oppression. I'll remind them that reality exists. Now they are oppressed because someone actually films them at a public campaign event.

I'm going to make a suggestion to the Grams campaign. Stop trying to create false controversy. This is a great old republican tactic: We know we are losing on actual issues like wages and health care so we'll create something the press will latch onto, like this. It'd be good if it wasn't so incompetent and pathetic. They are truly getting desperate.

2006-08-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

Poor Rodney. Still owing money from 2000. Take a look at this: http://herndon1.sdrdc.com/cgi-bin/cancomsrs/?_06+S4MN00213. Mr. fiscallyresponsible overspends on a campaign and takes six years to pay it off. Some will, of course, write this off as no big deal. It does, however, beg the question: What exactly is he about? Looking at his personal history, he is all about whats good for Rodney, public or private. Looking back at his campaigns and voting record, there is a pattern. It isn't about public service and good governing, it is about a self serving need for power and personal gain. In 94, the only thing his campaign didn't accuse Wynia of was being a bad mother. In 2000, he pulled out his mom in the bitter end, after his usual negative garbage failed. Now we have him running around the eighth district, claiming how we wishes to help us, passing off the same republican garbage he has been spouting for years now. Rodney: Your parties policies have been a failure. You have brought us a war with no end in sight, enormous debt, no health care and more problems being thrown onto the back of ordinary people to save you and your rich buddies some taxes on write offs. You are and have been 100% in line with the Bush administration and the republican insanity for years now. Leave us alone.

2006-08-19T07:10:00.000-05:00

This letter caught my eye a couple weeks ago. A better hack campaign letter I haven't seen in a while: http://www.timberjay.com/current.php?article=2482.

Going over this is pretty fun, but it is like analyzing the tome of a ten year old.

The writer obviously knows nothing about the BWCA. I'll let them in on a little secret...there aren't any roads. Having had some personal experience, creating roads to handle heavy equipment is not a quick process.I envision skycranes hauling in feller- bunchers. That might affect the profit margin a little. Then there was that little matter of the quality of the timber. Fallen logs, twisted snags, thousands of acres of blowdown at up to 60 tons per acre. Most of it damaged in some way. The companies buying timber have certain standards, and it doesn't include bark beetle infested pulpwood. That's a problem. Loggers need to get paid.

Next we see their endearing concern for the ecology of the place. First, the area contains some of the most fire prone vegetation in North America: conifers on rock. I can bore you with references, but suffice it to say this is one of the most naturally fire prone areas of the continent. It is a fire ecology. There is nothing out of the ordinary going on here. It was made worse by not letting fires burn there for a century. The place was meant to burn. The comment on the dying animals is hilarious, for they have been living with fire forever, and the area will now be a giant berry plantation with new, succulent growth for several decades. There will be a gain in populations for most species, and some newbies will show up.

The rest of the letter is typical party hack messaging. This is the theme the Grams campaign is trying to push up here, in vain hope that noone remembers his past, like his wifey-poo pleading guilty to violating election law: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44567,00.html or his sitting in the lap of the great Jesse Helms for six years.

Looking at the letter, I see a template handed out at the district repub meeting: "here's your talking points".

Don't forget who this guy really is. He'll do anything and say anything to get elected, but he is really an extremist right-winger wanting to sell everyone's soul ( and their social security)to the highest bidder.

2006-08-12T20:27:00.000-05:00

Soory for the text in the last post...whatever happened there, the html was taking too much of my time so I left it.

We have a new terror plot. Now we have the same chanting we have had for the last five years: Be frightened, trust us, we will save you from the crazed lunatics. For five years we have had this rammed down our gullets. And they have done nothing except rob the treasury blind and lie. People: Get it through your heads that this group are pathologically sick. They are all criminals, only educated and given power. Most likely, this crew is the same as the group in Florida we hear nothing about now, who seem to have mysteriously dropped from the planet. They didn't really drop from the planet , of course, it just turned out that after investigation, things were not as they seemed. (Check out this story from the Australian press:http://www.news.com.au/sundayheraldsun/story/0,,19575461-663,00.html ). Frankly, these people cannot be trusted.

Remember, your local republicans, as we speak, support these thieves and liars. They are one and the same. Remind them of that everydaym especially at election time.

2006-08-07T22:01:00.000-05:00

Poison Pawlenty

Why are 3M's profits more important than my child's health?
Why does the Governor wish to poison us?....For cold hard cash?

These are simple questions the Governor needs to answer. By appointing a pollution control commissioner from a regulated industry, He is saying " your and your children's health doesn't matter".

Like most Republicans, he is always concerned that somehow environmental regulation hurts the economy. I'll remind him it is only cheaper for a company if it can move somewhere else and pollute...in other words, poison for profit. When he appointed Cheryl Corrigan as PCA commissioner, he plucked her from one of the largest chemical producers in the state, 3M. He didn't choose an environmental scientist, or someone who had experience with regulation of pollution....no; he chose someone from the very industry they were supposed to regulate. When she announced her resignation back in June, the Gov showered her with the usual honors, and then pontificated about how she had shown that pollution and job growth could be balanced.

My question is this: When did poisoning us and the natural world become part of the equation? When did it suddenly become legitimate to give people cancer, disease and death?

If I poison my neighbor and/or his family or animals, I will be subject to criminal prosecution and civil suits. If I am a regulated industry, however, somehow my needs have to be balanced against a few cases of cancer. Or rather, the owner's profits are given equal value to lives lost, which is what it really means. There is always the handwringing about lost wages of workers, which means the company will simply move somewhere it is legal to poison and kill, namely China or some other place of great desperation. In short, let us poison you, or you and many others won't have jobs.

This what the Governor and repubs in general have handed us with all their talk of the free market and trade agreements. Poison.

Back to the state issues.

The case of Pawlenty's commissioner covering up for her former employer, 3M, is well known. His general viewpoint is already stated: Government should just get out of the way of business. In short, let foxes do what they want, the chickens will be alright.

But there are other issues as well.

At the ground level, within the Department of Natural Resources, Pawlenty has done nothing except cut the budget and further the aim of one of his contributors, the Atv lobby, mainly Arctic Cat and Polaris. In February of 2005, two long time managers in the northwest were canned by commissioner Gene " the icebox" Merriam. (Merriam's sole qualifications for Dnr commissioner were being a Republican and an accounting background.) No reason was given, but within the Dnr it was common knowledge they were booted for one reason: Their refusal to let the ATV whackjobs in the northwest run hither and yon wrecking the countryside. This is a place where Arctic Cat and Polaris rule. In short, let's sacrifice the landscape for the sake of some idiots who want to churn up dirt all day. We'll can people with years of good public service protecting the land and water so that our contributors can make money and some of our lunatic supporters are happy.

There are numerous other wasy he has bs'd his way around the environment. Trying to create the wastewater fee, where every citizen paid the same no matter what income or water use was a true classic...whether an apartment renter, or an Oakdale mansion owner, we would all pay the same. Nice idea. The free market for everyone except the rich. The dance around the mercury issue, where the political pressure finally made him do something. There are more, but I don't have the patience to write them.Look it up yourself.

He has sacrificed our and our children's health for money. He has sacraficed the natural world for contributors and supporters.
He has, and will, continue to wreck the environment in exchange for money and power. So Governor, thank you for your concern ....and the poison.

2006-07-30T12:07:00.000-05:00

More from the republican platform.

Yeah, I know. You're begging me, icepick to your eyes, " Please...no more of that drivel...I will blind myself if you do". Sorry...Just some more...maybe.

While the republicans run from Dubya faster than a nude man from a hornet's nest, I'll remind them and everyone else what they actually say in their platform:

B. President George W. Bush, whose principled leadership in time of war
ensures that America at home is free and prosperous, and abroad
remains the beacon of hope and freedom for the rest of the world;

Hmmm...principled....Let's see..Lying to get us there....Messing up on the plan....letting no bid contracts out to friends...ill-equipping our troops, then cutting the VA budget....Halliburton...Katrina...This is what republicans are about, and this is what they have done for 25 years. Fed at the trough of working people, made our lives more difficult, and sold their soul to a bunch of religious fanatics. Remember: They love George, except that he is really unpopular now. They are all still one and the same.

2006-07-30T11:13:00.000-05:00

Republicans aren't repubicans...they're just "candidates"....

I have spent several painful hours going thru the bs called the Minnesota republican party platform, and it is quite interesting. Somehow their candidates never mention this thing,most likely because they hope noone ever reads it. God forbid someone finds out what they acually do.

Here is good one from section 2:

Y. That the lawful definition of a ‘Human Being’ shall be: ‘When the DNA
(Deoxyribonucleic Acid) of Mankind is joined.’

meaning when the sperm hits the egg. What we have here is a religious definition, plain and simple. Having gone thru the enlightenment ( meaning satanic knowledge called biology class) calling an egg inside a hen a chicken. About a million things could happen on the way to the rodeo called birth, most of them natural. The aim of this is to ban ban birth control and abortion. Throughout this section, there are multiple references to this idea, including that sexual partners should have a right to force a women to bear the child. Again: it says fathers should have the right to force a woman ( or girl) to bear a child if there has been "conception". Here is what this means:. My daughter has sex with her boyfriend. She comes and tells me. She decides, a month into a pregnancy, to have an abortion, when the fetus is nothing more than a collection of cells. I support her. The father, an 18 yr old low life, will have the right to force my daughter to bear his child. I, of course, have no right to sue to force him out of the gene pool for doing my under 18 daughter.

This is called forced pregnancy. The Nazi's did it. So did Stalin. So do the fanatical muslims. In short, the republicans want to force our daughters and sisters to have children....they don't want us to have birth control or family planning, they don't want us to have access to abortion, they merely want to make us slaves to their religious beliefs.

2006-07-25T06:20:00.000-05:00

Why is it that republicans hate ordinary people? I am reading through the voting records of Rod Grams and Mark Kennedy this morning, and these guys hate anyone with an income under 100,000$. Minimum wage....we don't need it. Overtime: We don't need it. Assistance to build schools , headstart, health care funding and aid for small farmers are all part of some vast conspiracy. The other day I was at my father's assisted living ( i am sure another crazy liberal idea...housing the old and infirm with dignity and care, rather than that wonderful republican concept of homelessness or the old poor farm), and a man was walking around....he had prosthetic arms and came over to ask me how I was...he had obviously been burned and lost his arms in that...turned out he was a veteran, wounded in Korea. This year, the repubs voted to cut vet's funding....frigging vet's funding. Now that's patriotic. Wave a flag repubs, and yell "we screwed vets". Remember: these people have voted against anything that has improved people's lives for the last 70 year. The eight hour day, overtime pay, social security, health care, the minimum wage..they have fought against it all and are trying to get rid of it now. They want to bring back the good ol' days of slavery. But if you are a large corporation, and contribute oodles of cash to their forever growing pockets, suddenly you are in need of desperate assistance. The poor, poor rich suffering the burden of the estate tax...forced to get only millions and billions.....never actually having to work....I am crying for them. I have concluded this: These people are just self-serving fanatics who cannot and will not deal with reality. Blind to the real world, they do not see what is real, but only what they wish to see. Then they fatten themselves and their friends at the public trough.

2006-07-23T07:40:00.000-05:00

More rightwing drivel.

I chose to suffer through Twin Cities' Public Television Almanac the other night, exposed to two republican hacks, Sarah Janacek and Andy Brehm. These people stay on message so well that a tornado could rip though the studio and they would somehow blame a dem. They do not deal with reality at all, namely that their party's policies have turned the country into a mudhole of dying troops and debt. The only reason I mention this is Janacek's whining about the treatment of Karl Rove, how evil protesters harassed this decent man to his car. Sarah....The man is scum ( simply google Max Cleland's and Rove's name together). Take off your blinders and admit what your party has become: highly paid criminals running the country into the dirt while legally poisoning us and our children for personal profit. These are not the republicans of 30 or 40 years ago.

That makes a good transition to my favorite mama's boy lately, Rod Grams. He claims nice Minnesota roots. Grew up on a dairy farm in Anoka county...blah blah blah blah. He definitely didn't learn anything there. His votes against ordinary people, ( whom he always claims to represent) is so long I won't even try to post it. He voted against Head Start, voted against money for 1997 flood victims ( remember the Red River Valley?), and even voted gainst money for Veterans and their families health for god's sake. He never met a rich contributor he didn't like or vote for ( in the old days this was called bribery). He would call himself an ideological purist, which really means he is a fanatic, like most rightwingers nowadays.These people are downright scary...the only thing which appears normal from the outside is when they get caught with their hand in the cookie jar, lately a daily occurrence. Reporters and others need to start calling people like Grams on their BS, once and for all actually look at what they are doing, rather than what they are saying. Simple questions like " Why did Rod Grams vote against the Family and Medical Leave Act?" might be a start.....Think about what a world this might be....

2006-07-15T13:14:00.000-05:00

Like herpes,too bad there isn't a pill for this.

Grams, admittedly, has little chance. Oberstar is a long time incumbent,mainstream in outlook, and adept at finding solutions to problems and helping the district. It is also a strongly DFL place. Grams record as congressman and senator was on the extreme right and his main claim to fame was being lapdog to Jesse Helms.His last campaign was painful to watch, and his insipid whining afterwards wuld have been comical if not for his history. Grams,a man who never met a dollar and a dirty campaign he didn't like, snivelling as he got buried. Pulling out the mom commercial at the bitter end was wonderful to watch....a desperate high schooler begging for approval.One would have thought that was the end.

He tried re-incarnating once before, but the republicans dumped him like a live skunk that time.

So why is he running?

Ego and a need for power, of course.

His first campiagn speech in the north was spent ranting about the blowdown to republican loggers, a pretty small straw to grasp at.

But why are the repubs backing him?

For them, it is a set up. Grams was a loyal pet, so he is trustworthy, and Oberstar won't be here forever. So with this campaign, they can test their slogans and methods, create some myths and plan for two years from now. They will survey and measure responses. They will study demographics. They will hand out talking points to local media. They will do this to the finest detail, a percentage here, a percentage there, hopefully to pull this off.

That is wha this is about.

They could care less about Rod Grams. They will do whatever it takes for this district, however.