Open Thread for Sisyphus

Sisyphus only, please.

Top 11 Highlights of Governor Dayton's Budget Veto Letter

Yesterday, in a now-familiar display of puerile tantrumatics (it's a word now), Governor Mumbly McDipshit item vetoed the appropriation for the Legislature, effectively defunding an entire branch of government.

When a governor takes action on a high profile bill, s/he will often send a letter to the legislative branch outlining the reasons for the veto (or, less commonly, reluctant approval). Here are what we imagine to be the top 11 highlights in the governor's veto letter which may or may not exist. File under "fake but accurate."


11. No capital gains exemption for sales of Renoirs.

10. Stick figure drawing of the Speaker of the House with stink lines coming off him and a label that read "poopey but" (sic).

9. Governor was bitter that his demand for funding a new stadium to lure an Overwatch League franchise was not included in budget.

8. Tax bill did not contain a Fidget Spinner Tax Credit.

7. The Department of Revenue is more important than the Legislature.

6. Budget bills are boring, and Dayton didn't want to have to read them any more.

5. "Mmmrm ze berjhert frrr therm rish."

4. Wanted to see if item vetoes were still valid if they were done in crayon.

3. Upset that the budget did not contain an appropriation funding a job retraining program for former governors who have no life experience or marketable skills other than the ability to draw from a trust fund.

2. No subsidy for kombucha breweries.

1. "Special Session" sounds like a treat for good boys and girls.

WE WIN!!!

KAR has outlasted Fraters Libertas. Suck it Chad!

Now to take out that farging Nihilist...

Gentrification by Spambot

This will be the last post on KAR. 

Well, maybe, the second-last post.  Let me think about it.

A MOB Party Tipsheet and Etiquette Guide for Losers

Since the semiannual MOB party is tomorrow, now would be a good time to review the guidelines for proper behavior and share a few tips to make it an enjoyable experience for everyone.

* There are only a handful of regulars that can pull off a Hawaiian shirt.  You know who you are.  If you can't, we will all know who you are.

* If King Rep. Baniaiaiaian is present, all attendees must - MUST - approach him and implore him to introduce a bill legalizing craps games in Minnesota casinos.  Then make a crack about his tie and hairspray.

* If you want to meet everybody in the room, hit up Mitch.  He will introduce you to literally everybody in the room.

*  That said, there will be many, many attendees you definitely don't want to meet.

*  Please, if you eat, unless she stabs you in your groin with a fork you should tip your waitress at least 15% for adequate service (20% for good service).  If you are only dealing with the bartender, $1 per drink is perfectly fine. Don't embarrass yourself.  Bad tipping is for leftists and the Nihilist in Golf Pants. 

*  Should you find yourself without a lighter, the glare off Captain Ed's head is usually sufficient to ignite your stogie.

*  As a general rule, the funniest and best conversations are among the Catholics in attendance (Ed, Sisyphus, The Nihilist, Atomizer, Brian Ward,  me etc.).  A notable exception to this rule is Chad the Elder who will bore the holy living crap out of you with a detailed breakdown of his NCAA Hockey brackets.

*  That said, we probably won't want to talk to you because we will be busy exploring new and innovative methods of ripping on the Nihilist in Golf Pants.

*  If you feel compelled to distribute business cards promoting your Twitter handle or your crappy little rantblog, you need to seriously examine where your life went so horribly, horribly wrong.

*  Be forewarned men: the urinals in the Old Mexico men's room are so close together you may have to go to confession after you pee.

*  Paulbots: you're all loony-tunes and I'm not interested in your erroneous ignorant laughable to the point of self-parody "insights" on Constitutional Law.  If I want a good laugh at the expense of someone's legal ignorance, I'll go to something actually interesting, like the Topco decision. 

*  Yeah yeah, I'm an "Enemy of Liberty".  Whatever.  Go away.

*  At the end of the evening it has become customary - nay! a Christmas-level tradition - for every partygoer to give me $5 for brightening their lives and generally making the party a success.  I can provide change if necessary.

Hopefully, if everybody observes these simple guidelines, we can all have a good time and finally get craps legalized in Minnesota.

The King of Memes

Our old pal King Baniaiaiaiaiaiain + Union activist jackwagons = KAR gold baby!

Check it:

When John Pederson, Steve Gottwalt and King Banaian scheduled Friday night's town hall meeting at St. Cloud's Public Library, they had no way of knowing that public employee unions were planning on disrupting it. Things didn't get ugly immediately but it didn't take long before things got out of control.

***

In fact, the most confrontational moment came when Rep. Banaian was answering another right-to-work question. Jerry Albertine interrupted, saying “Don’t sit there with your hairspray and your tie, you’ve never worked labor, and say you know what the unions are about.”

Oh snap!

Ladies and gentlemen: the birth of a meme!

Make your own!

I Agree With Keith Ellison

...But I think he doesn't nearly go far enough:

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., joined by representatives of student, senior and disabled voters, called on Minnesota Democrats to unify in opposition to a photo ID requirement for voting.

He said that while most Minnesotans carry an approved, government-issued photo ID, "that's not true of everybody. And this democracy has got to work for everybody."

Right on! Testify!

Opponents like Ellison say there is no proof that there is a problem now that would be solved by photo IDs. They view it as an attempt by Republicans to suppress the voice of elderly, disabled and poor voters who are most likely not to have a current-address ID.

I totally agree with this, but there are other voting practices already on the books that are just as onerous as requiring ID.  I am speaking, of course, about voter registration.

In order to vote in Minnesota, you must be registered. There are 2 ways to register in Minnesota: before the election or on the day of the election.  The Secretary of State's website "explains" this Byzantine, confusing process:

Registering before Election Day



You may register to vote by completing a Voter Registration Application and submitting it by mail or in-person to your local election official. Find contact information for your county elections official by using the Election Official Directory.


Seriously. You have to 1) fill out an application and 2) mail it.  Since when do I have to "apply" to exercise my God given rights under the Constitution?

And secondly, what about all those poor people who don't have a budget for stamps? Or lack the means to go out and get them?

I'll tell you what about them: DISENFRANCHISEMENT!!!!!2!111

But that's OK, says The Man, since you can register at your polling place on Election Day:

Registering on Election Day



If you are not registered to vote or need to update your registration information, you may do so at your local polling location on Election Day as long as you can provide proof of residence.

To register at your polling place on Election Day, you must bring one of the following with your current name and address to verify your residence in the precinct :


•A valid Minnesota driver’s license, learner’s permit, Minnesota ID card, or receipt for any of these


•A valid student ID card including your photo, if your college has provided a student housing list to election officials


•A Tribal ID card that contains your picture and signature


•A valid registration in the same precinct under a different name or address


•A notice of late registration sent to you by your county auditor or city clerk


•A voter registered in the same precinct as you who can confirm your address with a signed oath


•An employee of the residential facility where you live who can confirm your address with a signed oath


•Both 1) a photo ID from the list below, and 2) a current bill from the list below with your current name and address in the precinct

To recap, the same-day voter registration rules discriminate against:

* People without photo IDs (!!!!)

* People who are not students

* Non-Native Americans

* People who previously registered in the same precinct at a different address under the same name (or a different name / same address and now I have a headache)

* People not residing in group homes

* People who don't get the required permission to register late

* People who don't have both 1) a photo ID and 2) a friend.

And in addition to those mentioned above, it impacts minorities and old people even more because, if certain general rhetoric is to be believed, everything does.
 
I also assert that there is no evidence of any problems that the voter registration process is meant to address.  Why can't people just go to the polls and cast their vote? I'll tell you why: because they want to disenfranchise the lazy, inept, apathetic and stupid, that's why!  And those people have rights too.
 
And since the lazy, inept, apathetic, and stupid comprise a fair chunk of Rep. Ellison's voter base, I think he should join us in eliminating this appalling suppression of our basic rights!
 
END VOTER REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS NOW!

Extremely Narrow and Incredibly Dumb

R0n P@u1 may be a decent candidate and a decent guy.  I have no way of knowing this for sure since his primary campaign messaging system seems to be the evangelizing of his most ardent supporters.  If that is indeed his strategy, he needs to hire a bigtime PR firm right now.  Ideally, it would be a PR company that specializes in running around duct taping the mouths of all your most ardent supporters shut.

You know them: they speak or write in a stilted, sage-like tone imbued with the absolutely certainty that they have All the Answers. Even when they are bloviating about how the Fed is unconstitutional (it's not), or pontificating on their infallible interpretation of the Constitution (almost always wrong), or about how Jews hate Sharia law because Sharia law forbids payment interest and the Jews are all bankers (they, er - ah just stick an icepick in my eye), they come across with a certain smug attitude that can only come from someone who lives in a world completely devoid of shades of grey.

That was all a long way of saying that they are, or should be, extremely annoying to anyone who has had to think critically about anything ever.  If you think, for example, that there should be at least some kind of public safety net, since it's not in the national interest to have corpses of people who've died of starvation rotting in the gutters, why then YOU ARE AN ENEMY OF LIBERTY AND SHOULD GO TO CUBA YOU COMMIE LIBERTY HATING LIBERTY HATER!

Which brings us to the following tweets that somehow got wedged into my timeline the other day:

Their keynote speaker [Allen West, I think -ed.] is right in line with at least one of the dinner's fascist namesakes. Who needs Habeas Corpus?

This tweet was regarding some Minnesota GOP confab called the "Reagan-Lincoln Dinner".  I think.  Inside baseballers can correct me if I'm wrong.  But I'm sure that it's the "Lincoln-Reagan" something.

This tweet from someone else soon followed:

Look at the name of the dinner-- #Lincoln would have loved #NDAA. He was all over baseless, unconstitutional detentions.

Lincoln was a...

Fascist. 

Because he suspended the writ of habeas corpus -

Hang on here a sec.  I need to put my brain back in my head.

...

There. Continuing where I left off.

suspended the writ of habeas corpus (big inhale) DURING A CIVIL-FUCKING-WAR.

BEARDED UNION INFANTRYMAN: Sir what shall we do with those 300 Reb prisoners we just done captured?

BEARDED SARGEANT: Dunno yet.  Corporal Jebediah still a-draftin' the charging papers.

BUI: What we chargin' them with, sarge?

BS: The same things as those thousands of others we done captured before: SHOOTING AT US DURING A CIVIL-FUCKING-WAR! Consarn it.

Maybe they should have just slaughtered the prisoners like King Richard did at Acre during the Third Crusade.  That worked out well for him.

Oh wait.

Anyway, I find it interesting that, in the Paulbot calculus, Lincoln's suspension of habeas wasn't outweighed by his other accomplishments in the advancement of liberty.  Things like, oh, I don't know, ENDING SLAVERY?

When you see the world as only black and white, you can only pick one color.  When you do, it often makes you look stupid. No matter which one you choose.