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Showing posts from October, 2018

Trump to cancel postal treaty

One of the hallmarks of Trumpism is to take from the middle class and poor and give to the one percent. Thus we see that recently Senator Mitchell McConnell said that the budget has to be balanced by cutting Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. Just last week Trump backed the Senator up by agreeing with him about the cuts in our income and medical insurance. Of course, we all know that the deficit is brought to us by Trump and McConnell’s increased military spending, along with tax cuts for the extra-wealthy. Another hallmark of Trumpism is slash and burn diplomacy. The idea is to destroy international agreements that help make the world a more orderly and safe place. Then, the Trumpists hope, their amateur negotiators can renegotiate a new agreement which they hope will favor Americans. The threat to quit the Universal Postal Union combines both slash and burn diplomacy and the taking something from ordinary people.  The Universal Postal Union was formed by countr

Let's vote for Keith Ellison

It’s time for all of us to get behind Keith Ellison and vote for him for Attorney General in the November 6th election. This is particularly important following this weeks developments with Ellison’s opponent, Doug Wardlow. Wardlow sent out a fund raising mailer accusing Ellison of being a supporter of Muslim terrorists. "As a Muslim, Ellison has hung around radical Islamic groups and defends known terrorists,” Wardlow wrote.  Wardlow accused Ellison of being “one of the most dangerous men” in America. “Keith Eliison doesn't share the American values you and I do. He's in bed with in bed with radicals and terrorists, hangs out with racists and anti-Semites, hates President Trump, and wants to use the Attorney General's office to force far-left policies on us.” Doug Wardlow is willing to go to any length, including anti-Muslim baiting, to get into the Attorney General’s office. We can’t allow that. There was a time when I considered not voti

False rape accusations are very rare

Only  0.0003 percent of rapes are false accusations that result in jail time, according to research done by Mona Chalabi, a journalist who writes for The Guardian newspaper. Read her narrative below and check out her graphic. Tim Central Minnesota Political Have you been thinking about false accusations lately? If so, here are some important facts: 1. Since 1989 (when US records on this topic began) there are only 319 cases where men convicted of sexual assault were exonerated because it turned out they were falsely accused. 2. False rape accusations are rare. There are three decent studies on this topic (see below) - estimates range from 2.1% to 7.1% of the accusations that are reported being false (don’t forget, most rapes are never reported). For this graphic, I took the midpoint then followed the statistics through to make an estimate about whether individuals faced criminal consequences as a result of these allegations. By Mona Chalabi Sources: Depar

Housley, Wardlow, Trump are dishonest

Dishonesty and outright lying have been a feature of Republican Party politics in the last week. It started at the top. Take this statement from the Washington Post: "President Trump wrote an opinion article for USA Today on Oct. 10 regarding proposals to expand Medicare to all Americans, known as Medicare-for-All, in which almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood, including some that had been debunked in the past.” Then take the Republican candidate for Attorney General, Doug Wardlow. “The polls are looking good and we’re on a very good path. I think it’s because of the message. Everywhere we go, Minnesotans understand that the attorney general shouldn’t be political.” So Wardlow says he’s going to be apolitical and just abide by the Constitution and he accuses DFL candidate for Attorney General Keith Ellison of wanting to make the Attorney General’s office too political. But Wardlow said this at a Republican Party fund raiser this we

Kresha's Law ruled unconstitutional

Representative Ronald Kresha is the author of an unconstitutional 2017 law that made it illegal for Minnesota businesses and individuals that have contracts with the State of Minnesota while boycotting Israel or companies that do business with Israel. Not only is the law anti-business but it’s a violation of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Add that to the fact that it added another government regulation for businesses to deal with and Kresha’s law was just dumb. But Rep. Kresha was just following orders from his party’s national leadership. The same law that he wrote and helped pass in Minnesota was passed in states like Kansas and Arizona. It seems that so-called conservatives in those states were just as willing to be anti-business and anti-1st Amendment as Rep. Kresha. Rep. Kresha, and legislators in those states, were warned their legislation was unconstitutional but they barged ahead any way. Now, in September, a federal judge in Phoenix Arizona ruled that the Ari