The folk from Minnesota Democrats Exposed posted a press release from former three-term MN state representative from the 80’s, Allen Quist, announcing his candidacy to challenge Tim Walz in the 1st district.  This 65-year old who should be retiring is now an ambitious McCain clone with views that actually hurt our senior’s healthcare (as a nurse, I’ll never understand that conservative viewpoint).  What is most interesting is Allen Quist’s lack of mentioning GOP efforts to support him, the Mayo Clinic (given the issue of healthcare and of course, the failure of Brian Davis to win in 2008), but instead mentions the Tea Party!  This is awesome (or blatantly stupid on his part) considering recent posts on Bluestem and here on IDHA about the tea baggers ridiculous anti-immigrant views.  Seriously, just watch the video from the two posted links above to see how proud they are of being “European Americans.”  Hell, if I was there they’d be hating me simply because I am of mixed blood of two of our enemies from WWII, Germany and Japan.  I’m guessing their ancestors at least have one of those two in them as well, yet they are clearly much better… sure.  I’m hoping for them to announce their public support for Allen Quist very soon, especially after Quist mentions them in his press release:

 “Southern Minnesota voters have been holding Tea Party rallies and contacting Congressman Walz’s office asking him not to support these wasteful government spending bills that force more government control of our lives,” said Quist.

DJ recently discussed Allen Quist’s horrible political ads when him and I were just youngin’s, but DJ’s incredible memory is relived through this post.  He also mentions Quist’s tendency to be a “super-mega-ultra right winger.”  If Brian Davis got a little over 30% of the vote in 2008, I’m guessing someone even more right-winged would likely get less of a turnout.  Again, let’s hope for a public endorsement from the Tea Party.

Here’s MDE’s posting of Allen Quist’s press release announcing his candidacy (credit must go where credit is due):

(St. Peter, MN) – Former State Representative Allen Quist has announced that he will run against U.S. Representative Tim Walz for the First District Congressional Seat.  Quist served three terms in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 1982 to 1988, runs a family farm of 1200 acres with his son Andrew in rural St. Peter, and recently retired as a teacher at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato

Quist, a Republican, said his message will be simple and straightforward:  ”If people like what Congress is doing, they should vote for the incumbent,” Quist said.  ”But if they believe, as I do, that Congress is headed in the wrong direction, then I will be the alternative.”

According to Quist there have been three unusually important bills under consideration during this session of Congress: the $787 billion Stimulus bill, Cap and Trade, and the Health Care bill.  ”Representative Walz has been on the wrong side of all three,” said Quist.

Quist emphasizes that government spending is totally out of control.  ”Just the Stimulus bill by itself added over $10,000 of new government debt for every family of four in our nation,” he explained.  Quist also said that present Congressional spending trends will almost double our national debt-from 40% of GDP today to 87% of D+GDP by 2020.  Quist says this means, “continued high unemployment and burdening the next generation with a level of debt that will substantially reduce their quality of life.”

“The Cap and Trade bill will add $6,800 per year of higher energy costs for every family of four and the Health Care bill, which is supposed to reduce medical costs, will actually increase total costs by over $100 billion each year,” said Quist.

Quist added that the Health Care bill contains a huge hidden tax on the middle class and will substatnitally reduce the access senior citizens have to needed health care.  ”In terms of costs,” Quist said, “big business is the big winner and the middle class is the big loser.  American citizens of the middle class will be forced to pay the bills.”

“Southern Minnesota voters have been holding Tea Party rallies and contacting Congressman Walz’s office asking him not to support these wasteful government spending bills that force more government control of our lives,” said Quist.  ”Congressman Walz continually shows by his votes that he is out of step with the voters of the First District.

Not a real bad press release, despite the ugly spelling error of “substantially” (spell check anyone on a major release?) to try and emphasize his agenda.  In other news, I just finished my Master’s degree so I should have more time to post!  Woohoo!

[Update 11/19/09, 8:00 P.M.]

In a press release sent out by the Tim Walz camp, they responded to Allen Quist’s announcement of his candidacy by mentioning the Tea Party connection as well.  Check out this excerpt:

Today, the right-wing tea party Republicans announced their plans to run long-time politician and former State Representative Allen Quist from St. Peter. 

I really hope the tea baggers and Quist work closely together in this race as a simple google search (”tea party rally”) of the group portrays their not so patriotic movement.  A substantial amount of the news and blog links focus on the groups attacks on protesters at Tea Party rallies across the country while they appear impervious to expressing racism.

Here are some excerpts from the Christian Science Monitor about Tea Party violence around the country.  Visit the aforementioned link for the entire article.

“At one anti-Obama protest in Arizona this summer, a protester carried a rifle slung over his shoulder. “[Tea-partiers] bringing weapons does suggest a stronger degree of alienation and threat,” he says.

Conservatives place the blame at Mr. Obama’s feet, saying his liberal leadership has made “union thugs” comfortable enough to confront conservatives in the streets.”

“The first spark of violence connected to the Tea Party movement came in St. Louis Aug. 6 when a Tea Party protester named Ken Gladney was injured after a confrontation with Service Employees International Union protesters.”

“A second scuffle also broke out last Saturday when Tea Party protesters in Phoenix attempted to evict a group of neo-Nazis trying to join their protest.”

Since these guys continue to be buzzworthy, IDHA will continue exposing connections between this radical conservative group and their support of candidates seeking positions in a government representing the great freedoms in our country.  More to come later!

Fresh off having her anti-immigration tea party get punk’d, MinnSIR’s Ruthie Hendrycks shares some deep thoughts about the history of her crusades, what she would like to do to combat illegal immigration right in St. Paul, and about the status of “the battle.”

Of course, she does this all the while struggling mightily to retain her composure.

Oh, and you will also see a tea-bagger get physical with counterprotesters, seemingly with the intent to provoke violence.

All this, plus a special appearance from KTLK’s Sue Jeffers!

Click here to check out Deep Thinking: with Ruthie Hendrycks!

Yes, we have even more video from yesterday’s ultra-fun anti-immigration tea party at the State Capitol.

In this clip we see Bill Ronan, a clinical social worker, state licensed psychotherapist, hypnotist, and practitioner of medical hypnoanalysis, claim that while well intentioned, the Violence Against Women Act is just a tool which enables illegal immigrants to obtain green cards.

According to Ronan, women routinely use VAWA to falsely claim domestic abuse in order to obtain a pathway to citizenship.

A member of the National Coalition for Men, Ronan’s clearly objective story about his background is given on its site:

Mr. Ronan married a foreign woman who then falsely accused him of domestic violence so she could invoke provisions of the Violence Against Women Act to gain citizenship. The courts refused to hear testimony or accept evidence from over 20 character witnesses on his behalf, including medical doctors, psychologists, social workers, clergy, and even his previous wife. Some of his character witnesses were harassed and terrorized. Mr. Ronan says that, “I am a member of NCFM because the organization is committed to the eradication of such gender biased injustice”. Mr. Ronan has an excellent reputation, is a leader in his areas of interest, and very concerned that our system of (in) justice favors political correctness over truth.

While I waited for my mooovie to process on YouTube and watched NASCAR, it didn’t take long for Sally Jo to pop around the internet and find some evidence contrary to the anecdotal claims Ronan made in his speech.  In fact, undocumented women still overwhelmingly face hurdles when legitimately attempting to obtain justice from VAWA.  A story from ILW:

For example, Blanca submitted a “self petition” under the Violence Against Women Act, after she separated from her U.S. citizen husband, who beat her for objecting to his bagging cocaine on the kitchen table while her children were in the house. The Vermont Service Center officer who decided her petition toyed with it and then denied it because he wanted her to tell him her “feelings.” The Administrative Appeals Officer agreed that the VSC officer was entitled to demand intimate details of the relationship to prove she married the abusive husband for legitimate reasons.

There was no question that the marriage was legitimate. If the couple had married only for the green card, then they would not have lived together and fallen out over cocaine and brutality. Most significantly, the evidence of legitimacy was not in any way questioned or contradicted. An ample preponderance of the evidence proved the fact. Implicitly, however, the two officers, both of whom are male, imposed a virtually conclusive presumption, with no basis in the law, that women who have been beaten by their husbands always lie when they say they married for legitimate reasons. The two officers illegally imposed an evidentiary burden on Blanca to overcome their invented presumption by far more evidence than would have been required to prove the fact in any court in the Free World.

Moreover, ILW disputes Ronan’s statistics:

Through 2007, three-fourths of the petitions filed by abused spouses were approved. Fewer than half of the 9,272 petitions filed in 2008 were approved. Records of the National Network to End Violence Against Women show that Blanca was not alone in being the victim of arbitrary bureaucratic action. Saying, “The VAWA unit must return to embracing the law, Gail Pendleton, Co-Director, ASISTA Immigration Assistance, explains that ’since the restructuring the C[itizenship and] I[mmigration] S[ervices], VAWA unit at V[ermont] S[ervice] C[enter] has denied VAWA self-petitions and U visas because of obvious ignorance about domestic violence and legal standards that violate the law. Because the CIS personnel who make policy can no longer communicate with the unit’s supervisors who are trained in domestic violence, there is no accountability for these wrongful denials.’

Check out the video of Ronan at IDHA’s YouTube channel here.

After all, not only is Ronan a hypnotist and all those other professional titles, he is a member of the Mensa High IQ Club and an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church!

Check out this clip from my video of today’s anti-immigration tea party at the Minnesota State Capitol.

The event was sponsored by MinnSir, lead by Ruthie Hendrycks, and featured KTLK’s Sue Jeffers as master of ceremonies. Unfortunately for Ruthie and Sue, one speaker on the agenda, Robert Erickson, had plans for his speech which didn’t include attacking Latinos.

Let’s just say, as we say in the rasslin’ business, these marks got swerved.

For more on this epic FAIL! by these tea baggers, check out Bluestem Prairie.

In his reporting of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s deer hunting opener, Bob Von Sternberg unintentionally, perhaps, describes the situation as a perfect analogy of T-Paw’s last seven years in office:

Pawlenty, who has more often than not failed to shoot a deer during the opener, shot a small buck while hunting north of Thief River Falls Saturday morning.

But the deer ran off into the brush, apparently badly wounded.

Hunters who were with Pawlenty started hunting the blood trail the animal had left behind, but Pawlenty had to leave for Iowa, where he was headlining a Republican Party fundraiser.

Yes, this is just like what Gov. Pawlenty did to the state of Minnesota by refusing to negotiate with the legislature in order to craft a balanced solution to the state’s budget woes.  Instead, he eventually took his axe to important programs like General Assistance Medical Care, recklessly.

It’s just like how he  shot this deer, let it slowly bleed, and left it behind as he departed to Iowa for the same reason as he kicked thousands off of health care: to further his own political ambitions.

And just like the deer, Pawlenty won’t be around to have the responsibility of cleaning up the mess he created.

In the “in case you missed it file,” a post that should frankly scare the piss out of anyone who’s eyes gaze upon it:

http://www.bluestemprairie.com/bluestemprairie/2009/10/nsmsamjohnson.html

I’m not sure I have whole lot of new analysis to add, but I hope this helps all of us reevaluate the manner in which we think about racism in our society.

I’m pleased and proud to be listed amongst such great company. Former Congressman Martin Sabo. Former Secretary of State Joan Growe.  Former House Speakers Bob Vanasek and Dee Long. Many current and former local government officials and state legislators. Countless rank and file Minnesota DFLers.  I’d say this is quite the impressive list.

Sheesh, and to think, just over a month ago I was merely flipping burgers.

This week, the Georgia gubernatorial race brings us an internet advertisement which is going viral and potentially will end up as the worst political ad of all time.  Currently, the “Willie Horton” ad from the 1988 Presidential election is widely believed to hold that title.  Floyd Brown, the man responsible for this ad which aided in bringing down Michael Dukakis, has been hanging out with our own absentee Gov. Tim Pawlenty, but that is neither here nor there.

This brings me to the ad which I consider to be the worst I have ever seen. Let’s rewind to 1994, when super-mega-ultra right winger Allen Quist was endorsed by the Independent Republican party for governor over incumbent Arne Carlson.   The primary would prove to be a no-holds-barred affair, which featured Quist in his attempt to use his brand of conservativsm to “retake” the party (which would in the not-too-distant future after that shed the word “independent” from its name) by taking down Gov. Carlson, generally judged to be a centrist.

Quist lost to the popular Carlson in a landslide.

I was only the age of 10, however one advertisment from that bloody primary struck me as particularly farcical despite my young age. In fact, I still remember it to this day in all of its inflammatory glory.

Here’s how Dane Smith explained it in a September 3, 1994 story in the Star Tribune:

Video and audio (Ad  1): Throughout this 30-second ad, a man wearing a suit and a President Clinton  mask dances with another suited man, who has his back to the camera and is supposed to be Gov. Arne Carlson.  Their dance opens with children’s voices singing to the tune of “Love and Marriage.”  The lyrics are: Clinton  and Carlson, Carlson and Clinton, go together on a lot of issues.”  As the men dance on, a narrator says: “They’ve raised your taxes.  They support government-run health care that will lead to rationing.  They support gun control as an answer to crime.  They favor legalized abortion into the ninth month.  And neither Clinton nor Carlson has ever been endorsed for governor by the Independent-Republican Party.  On Sept. 13, elect the real Republican.  Vote for Allen Quist.”

Bill Clinton: never endorsed by the IR party for Governor.  That might have been the most obviously absurd assertion in the ad, but Smith’s analysis shows it wasn’t the only one:

But the ad ’s claims on gun control and ninth-month abortions have been criticized as distortions by IR Party chairman Chris Georgacas. Carlson and Clinton did raise taxes, but Carlson also cut spending programs and balanced the state budget. And although Hillary Rodham Clinton lavishly praised the MinnesotaCare program, which Carlson helped initiate, Carlson has been critical of Clinton ’s health care proposal. The ad is supposed to be humorous and light, but the Clinton mask, the shadowy background and the disembodied dancing shoes give this ad a strange and ominous quality. Quist’s campaign manager, Leon Oistad, offered the unsolicited disclaimer that the dancing has nothing to do with the gay rights issue, which has become a symbolic dividing point between Carlson and Quist.

Yes, in perhaps an unprecedented move, the state chair of the IR party publicly criticized his own endorsed candidate in a separate Strib story saying the ad “stretches the truth to the edge of credibility” and could cause the losing side in the primary to “sit on its hands, won’t vote, or worst of all, support Democrats.”

Now it’s developing that, having already registered a domain name, Allen Quist is a likely candidate for congress against Rep. Tim Walz.

If Quist ultimately decides to run, my only hope is that he will run ridiculous, off-the-wall TV ads again.  We can never have enough whacky spots like Quist’s from 1994, especially in this age of YouTube and viral video.

Oh, and seeing Walz win with 70 percent of the vote would be cool too, I suppose.

By the way, does anyone have video of the “Dancing Carlson and Clinton” ad? If so, please upload it to YouTube immediately; the “new generation” must see it!

Rep. Tim Walz sent out a mailing today applauding the expansion of the list of diseases that the harmful chemical Agent Orange has had on many of our Vietnam Veterans.  With a family member awaiting a heart due to this serious threat, I am glad to see this step forward by VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.  As a cardiac nurse, I feel adding ischemic heart disease is a major win for Vets given the time frame this specific illness affects the population and the current age of the Vietnam Veteran cohort.

From the VA:

“VA presumes that all military personnel who served in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange, and federal law presumes that certain illnesses are a result of that exposure.”

Their current list of diseases include:

acute and subacute peripheral neuropathy, porphyria cutanea tarda, chloracne, prostate cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, respiratory cancers (lung, bronchus, larynx and trachea), Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, soft-tissue sarcoma, acute; non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Type II diabetes mellitus

From the Walz mailing:

I am writing to inform you that Veterans’ Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki has made the important decision to add Parkinson’s disease, ischemic heart disease and hairy cell leukemia to the list of presumptive illnesses related to Agent Orange exposure for Vietnam veterans. I applaud Secretary Shinseki for making this decision, which will have a positive impact on thousands of America’s veterans.

VA presumes that all military personnel who served in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange, and federal law presumes that certain illnesses are a result of that exposure. This “presumptive policy” simplifies the process of receiving compensation for these diseases since VA foregoes the normal requirements of proving that an illness began or was worsened during military service.

The decision announced this week expanded the list of presumed illnesses to include ischemic heart disease, hairy cell leukemia and Parkinson’s disease. This policy change means that all service members who served in Vietnam and are suffering from these illnesses will no longer have the additional burden of proving their illness is connected to their service to our country.

I am happy the VA made this decision today, and I want to thank Secretary Shinseki for moving us in the right direction. When our warriors return home, they should always be given the benefit of the doubt, and we have an obligation to ensure that they receive the care and benefits they earned. This decision helps us fulfill the moral responsibility we owe to the men and women who have served this country.

I would also like to thank the U.S. Military Veterans with Parkinson’s (USMVP) for their untiring efforts. Their advocacy and research helped VA make this important decision and their efforts will have lasting impacts on the lives of Vietnam veterans. I appreciate the close partnership and assistance they continue to give us as they advocate for our nation’s veterans.

For more information about Agent Orange and VA compensation eligibility, please see http://www.vba.va.gov/bln/21/benefits/herbicide/aono1.htm. To file a compensation claim for a current disability related to Agent Orange, veterans can call 1-800-827-1000 for an application form or visit VA’s Web site at: http://vabenefits.vba.va.gov.

For more information about my activities representing southern Minnesota in Congress, please visit http://walz.house.gov and sign up for my e-newsletter.

Sincerely,

Tim Walz
Member of Congress

According to a Rasmussen phone survey, Gov. Tim Pawlenty trails the field of GOP presidential hopefuls with less support than “some other candidate” and “undecided.”

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of Republican voters nationwide say former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is their pick to represent the GOP in the 2012 Presidential campaign. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 24% prefer former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney while 18% would cast their vote for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich gets 14% of the vote while Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty gets 4%. Six percent (6%) of GOP voters prefer some other candidate while 7% remain undecided.

My first thought was “Ah, well. It’s still early and ole’ T-Paw prolly still’s got plenty o time to build name recognition and gain support within the GOP base.”

He did lead the field in one category, though, and it unfortunately doesn’t appear Pawlenty’s problem is name recognition. While obviously not as well known as the rest of the candidates, 28 percent of respondents said T-Paw is the candidate they would least like to see on the the ballot.

The numbers for Huckabee and Romney look even stronger when GOP voters were asked which candidate they would least like to see get the nomination. Pawlenty came on top in that category with 28%. Palin was second at 21% while 20% named Gingrich. Romney and Huckabee were in the single digits with 9% and 8% respectively.

Tim Pawlenty: less popular than, ahem, Sarah Palin? I suppose it is early, but at this stage our lame duck, absentee governor might need to start managing expectations for his presidential ambitions.

Indeed, from his perch utop the Governor’s Mansion on Summit Avenue, perhaps T-Paw should, rather than aspiring to move to Washington, D.C., or even Iowa for the caucuses, look toward moving closer: his home in Eagan.