Truth Surfer

Dave Mindeman at mnpACT! has posted up on GOP MN House candidate in 38B, Doug Wardlow. He cites Wardlow's anonymous blogging at  The Rostra  that was maintained while Doug clerked (or do I mean 'while clerking'?). But  his anonymous posting of partisan viewpoints wasn't as damming as his over excessive characterization and need to vilify anyone with different views than his own.  Like many of the  'talkingheads from the right , Doug Wardlow like to tell us what the 'the liberals', 'the left', 'the media' thinks thereby defining them. He sustains his point of view by distortion and demonizing, vilifying, marginalizing, and trivializing those with different views. It's the classic 'us' and 'them' mentality that leads to unresolved problems while our elected politicians argue on, block and obstruct. From his post entitled " Extreme Liberals: Motivated by Hate " "They hate Republicans, and hate being out o...

Pioneer Press Still Unprofessional In Endorsement Practices CD2 DFL Candidate of Minnesota Representative, Colin Lee, posted up at MN Progressive Project on his experience of being vetted by the Pioneer Press this week....not a really pretty picture but given the PP's prior history of endorsement ...not a surprise that they should still run such an unprofessional endorsement process. Colin Lee is running in Lakeville Senate District 36A,  advocating for for among other things, campaign reform by not taking special interest monies: My opponents just released their voluntary campaign finance disclosures. The incumbent in my race accepted no less than $4,100 from lobbyists, PACs, and special interests. I am the only candidate in my race who has sworn to "Take the High Road" by refusing all donations from lobbyists, corporations, and political action committees. Minnesota has the most lobbyists per capital of any state in the country. My opponent received well over fifty...

Check your mailboxes! The Catholic Bishops are sending you a GOSPEL OF HATE..... The Minnesota Catholic Bishops have launched an aggressive and expensive six week campaign telling Catholics to hate gays, urging them to contact their legislators calling for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and vote in the November 2 elections for legislators that will support their homophobic hate agenda. Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt, who leads the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, is calling for this a religious right constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage. Part of his reasoning (if you call hate reasoning) says a lot about the state of marriage in our culture and has nothing to do with gays: "...we all know the state of marriage in our society today -- the fact that ... four to five out of every ten marriages ends in divorce, the rate of cohabitation has gone from half a million in 1965 to over 5 million couples today. One ou...

Self Serving Emmer in Deed Say what? Minnesota Gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer is again (sigh) caught stretching the truth regarding his former campaign manager Rep. Mark Buesgens...well it shows a lack of character and inability to be real. First we have the mis-statement (better know as the self-serving lie) that Minnesota waitresses can pull in 100K a year, then we have the bad math (better know as a self-serving lie) that "only about half the cities in this state get any local government aid" when in fact it's 85%, then we see that Emmer doesn't plan to pay back the $1.4 billion in deferred funding to the school districts (better know as self serving budget), and now the  retro-active, back dating replacement of his manager done conveniently after his DWI...hmm...(very self serving!) Opportunity Knocks for Jannaya LaFrance! While I'm sorry for Mark Buesgens troubles and his current inability to cope, many voters probably feel it won't help to ...

Why yes Mr.  PZ Myers , UofM Prof, I have soul and  tentacles so I would be uniquely qualified to answer this question.... ...  the Pope's astronomer says: Any entity — no matter how many tentacles it has — has a soul. Guy Consolmagno- No entity — no matter how many tentacles it has — has a soul PZ Myers- I can count tentacles. I can't count souls, and neither can anyone else. TruthSurfer- EasyPeazy, I got your tentacles right here.  And I've always had soul....  Next up: the Chicken or the Egg , myth (El Papa) verses reality (Truthsurfer).

Found through GAWKERS , 'How White is your neighborhood'...and was not surprised at how white Minneapolis and St. Paul are especially compared to the other major US cities. Like most of  the top 40 cities in the United States  however, the concentrated pockets of colors tell the story. Photographer Eric Fischer's color-coded maps of racial segregation are captivating, particularly once you find your own neighborhood. Fisher used a straight forward method borrowed from Rankin: Using U.S. Census data from 2000, he created a map where one dot equals 25 people. The dots are then color-coded based on race: White is pink; Black is blue; Hispanic is orange, and Asian is green. [Mpls, St. Paul  is pictured below.]  When I first saw this I noticed how red Minneapolis/St. Paul were compared to the other major cities posted up...then I found out one red dot represented 25 whites. Most all the cities showed specific pocket groupings for the races....

It's now official, during the recent spat of hard times, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and the middle class is shrinking while joining the ranks of poor and (big inhale) the rich apparently get's what the middle class had ...Meanwhile locally.... In Minnesota's Second Congressional District, Rep. John Kline (R-MN) is busy putting his personal agenda of obstruction and word smiting  into play while his district suffers from his lack ethical behavior.  Ah don't forget to visit his good friend John Boehner's new website crated by the DNC...notice a pattern  here? It wasn't a surprise when I learned that Rep. Kline's  “no earmark” slogan means that the second district is losing quality infrastructure and jobs. The second district is the poorest district in the state in terms of federal funding , getting less than half the state average back from the money its taxpayers send to Washington through Federal income and gasoline taxes. It also resu...

Minnesota's Economy The Gubernatorial candidates have squared off several times and the state budget always seems to be the number one issue. Each candidate has their own take but here's what I think is significant: Mark Dayton is willing to work with the Legislature to find new revenue and develop a state budget as mandated by the State constitution. The other two candidates (Tom Emmer-R and Tom Horner-I) don't see working with elected officials as being part of the budget plan. In toady's fluid economic times, that one trait, 'being willing to work with MN legislaturers', is probably the most important. Whatever all three candidates balance today, could be off by tomorrow because of inflation, recession, disasters, and the stock market. But the willingness to adjust by working as a team member with the legislation is pivotal. Our example has been Pawlenty's use of vetoes and unallotment to budget because of his inability to sit down at the table with the ...

So Americans have put 9-11 behind them? I don't thinks this is the way to do so...I'm just saying that 19 of the 20 terrorist that attacked the United States on 9-11 held Saudi passports ...so why in the fricken heck would we be selling them this crap ? Most of the schools camps the terrorist attended were funded by Saudi Arabia, and their religious fervor for killing was stroked by Saudi religious leaders. This is still the same . Big of us to get over it and arm them for another day. It's moments like this that brings to mind my daddy...he was old school southern gentleman that often offered up advise in parables and adages. I can hear him now saying something about not crawling into a bed filled with rattlesnakes and making deals with the devil. Look me up for the "I told you so" rant, shortly.  As again daddy would say America is 'sowing the oats of their own destruction' with Nobel Peace prize winner Obama leading the way!  We're number ...

Shut up or the bunny dies! Ever notice how life can be explained by South Park episodes...Seems like every other week I see the connection...this week it's the dust up over  burning the Koran... Just switch South Park School bus driver Ms. Veronica "Muffin" Lee Crabtree out for Florida nutcase cult leader Pastor Terry Jones and instead of the bunny, use the Koran. It all makes sense to me but then I did fully partake in the '60s.  At lease comes the closes to explaining what's going on. ...BTW this headline: Pastor Terry Jones' 9/11 Koran burn fuels copycats in U.S., violent protests abroad is wrong. The media, giving his racist cult a national press platform has spurred the violence abroad. Instead of reporting that Mr. Jones is the exception and totally bat winged, they put him in the national spotlight without showing that he statistically represents no one in the United States. Hell my conservative neighbor Bob threatens to burn my blog every ...

Wait, I'm so confused, which Jim should I be supporting? What office are they running for? Oh yeah, gone are the days of actually running on your record or the issues. In their place voters now get to decide on which Ad guys they want to believe and support... The fake Hollywood Jim aka " Jim the election guy," who promises to"sort things out for this upcoming political campaign."  or, the 'real Jims', which started with three, now five, soon to be an army of Jims actually from the sixth district of Minnesota ... The Fake Jim Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN-06) hired  a fake Jim, actor Beau Peregino who studied theater at Towson University in Maryland and lives now in California, for her commercials. The Real Jims MN State Senator Tarryl Clark (D) uses real Jims who live right in the sixth district. These Jims aren't as slickly polished as Mr. fake Jim but better represent our State because..gasp, they ...

Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) and my crazy Uncle Johnny have a lot in common. For starters Uncle Johnny is uniquely singlely dysfunctional. It started with the Pearl Harbor attack. He was there, and by all accounts seemed to have conducted himself through the event without getting wounded. But years later it became apparent Uncle Johnny had been deeply wounded. What do you ask does that have to do with Minnesota's Governor Pawlenty? Good question.... Uncle Johnny's wound was in his mind. He couldn't bring himself to forgive the Japanese. Never! So for the rest of his life, Uncle Johnny wouldn't allow anything from Japan in his house. Imagine how difficult life was for his family during the 1960s and 70s with massive Japanese exports coming into the United States. Johnny's family was in a constant state of vigilance keeping anything 'made in Japan' out of the house. There was no reasoning with him on this issue. Unfortunately, it seemed ...

Is it just me or is the Dove World Outreach Center misnamed. They don't actually give out Dove bars and they fail with world outreach ! I'm going to start calling them as I see 'em 'The Haters' seems to apply. The world has always had haters, but thanks to the Republican party and their sister organization the Tea Party et al, Haters have risen to all new conspiracy theories heights and of course the outcome is a big headed, self entitlement victimlogy that includes bashes like the one Beck threw last weekend and making a small Hater Church like DWOC world news. But the reason the GOP reach out and support such Haters is  they as a party lack substance and now have to work on straight hate... Don't have an issue or stand for anything? Then just throw out hate, not good with balancing the budget, issue stances, determining policy? No problem! Sow fear, create discord and inflamed hate. Yep, that's the new strategy along with: Oh loo...