Here in Minnesota, we’ve got a race for the Senate: Peggy Flanagan vs. Michele Tafoya. I don’t think Tafoya is doing herself any favors by often announcing that she plans to get out of the state. She’d like to live in Florida? Please do.
She’s also anti-trans. Minnesota has a reputation for tolerance, and people here are very proud of their state, so I think these statements by Tafoya ought to follow her everywhere.
I’m voting for Flanagan in November.
I’ve been on TPUSA’s Professor Watchlist since 2016, and I was quite proud to be mentioned on Charlie Kirk’s hate list. All the best people are on it, you know.
Kirk created the Professor Watchlist 10 years ago on Turning Point USA’s website. Users were able to search college professors based on themes including “racial ideology,” “LGBTQ” and “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
According to a video on the website describing the watchlist, “The Professor Watchlist uncovers the most radical left wing professors from universities that are known to suppress the conservative voices and advance the progressive agenda.”
Sadly, it has been taken down.
But this month, the News4 I-Team found the Professor Watchlist had been taken down. Why is unclear, as no one from Turning Point USA is saying.
Also unfortunately, I never bothered to make a copy of my entry, so I don’t remember exactly what it said. It never really had any impact on me, but some people described the annoyance of the harassment they received.
For 10 years, the watchlist remained online, and the News4 I-Team spoke with local professors who said they were greatly impacted once their names were added to it.
Earlier this year, the I-Team spoke to Professor Bethany Letiecq with George Mason University, who said she received harassing and threatening messages on social media after she appearing on the list.
Letiecq recalled when it began: “It was shortly after I published a piece in March, February, March of 2024, and it got picked up by the alt-right media, and it was distorted in sort of a rage bait-y kind of way.”
Letiecq said the harassment she faced moved offline into her everyday life.
“That started just this bombardment of, you know, social media hits that were incredibly vitriolic and quite gross. I started getting emails to my work, voicemails to my work phone, calls for my firing […] and then I received several death threats,” she said.
I got a few nasty emails, which I still get anyway, but that was about it. A few student TPUSA members at UMM accused me of stealing their terrible student paper, which didn’t happen and for which there wasn’t and couldn’t be any evidence, and that prompted a bored campus police officer to ask me questions. There was no concern expressed by my colleagues or administrators.
The whole list was stupid, petty, and ineffective. Maybe TPUSA took it down because it was a reminder that Charlie Kirk was also stupid, petty, and ineffective.
The president asked people to pledge allegiance to him, personally, begged them to cheat in the elections, and told them to go to hell if they don’t vote.
I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves us so much he can’t even breathe. That I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it any way—I don’t care if I’m registered or not—I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do.
This is what happens when the cult leader fears that his followers are beginning to peel away.
November is not going to be a fun month.
Blecch.
The latest architectural horrors dictated at us by a man with no taste is the Trump Arch, which is being built real soon now with no authorization from any of the officials in charge or preserving the city and its history.
The proposed arch is one of several projects the Republican president is pursuing to leave his lasting imprint on Washington, including renaming and renovating the Kennedy Center, building a huge new White House ballroom, refurbishing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and rebuilding a golf course in East Potomac Park that could significantly reduce the public’s access to running and biking paths.
“This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote on X, “befitting the most powerful Capital in the World.”
Along with the announcement on X, Burgum posted artistic mockups of the planned 250-foot-tall (76-meter) memorial arch, which will stand between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
Those capitalization choices were Burgum’s, which should put you on alert. Morons think that capitalizing Crap makes it majestic.
The administration really is just rushing ahead with Trump’s nightmare vision.
Historic preservation experts have long criticized the Trump administration for seeming to rush the arch approval process, including by moving to weaken protections for historic sites altogether. This latest development raises concerns that the White House seeks to sidestep the process, which it denies.
“Work will begin that does not require approval, but rather helps in the process,” the White House told NPR in a statement on Friday. “We will of course continue on our path of seeking final approval from all applicable entities.”
Surprise: they won’t. You know it and they know it.
Our capitol is going to be wrecked and left with cheap glittering gilt garbage, demolished historical sites, and hideous monuments to an asshole’s ego. He is going to die, eventually, and we’re all going to be left with the clean up. What shall we do?
Simple solution: BLOW IT ALL UP.
The author has been touring Germany, and seeing what the German solution to the ugly history of the Third Reich has been. Hitler’s bunker has been paved over and is a parking lot. The site of the Nuremberg rallies has been allowed to crumble and “looked like garbage.” They dynamited the Berghof and “flattened Göring’s house, Bormann’s house and the rest of the Nazi colony, hauled away the rubble and planted trees over the site.” And, of course:
Unfortunately, the latest German elections suggest that there’s more yet to be done.
Blundell has specific recommendations for what the next administration must do. Unfortunately it’s a long list.
Believe in the Directive. Not a review. Not a blue-ribbon commission on the future of the ballroom. A firm belief, stated in the campaign and executed on day one, that a monument built by a President to himself is not a public work and does not get grandfathered in as one. Germany was handed this belief at gunpoint. America has to choose it.
The arch comes down, or never goes up. If it’s excavation, fill the hole. If it’s steel, cut it. If it’s finished, do what the Seventh Army did at Nuremberg and let the cameras roll. It sits between Lincoln and the war dead. It was built for “me.” There is no version of American reconciliation that leaves it standing.
The name comes off everything. The Trump Kennedy Center reverts to the Kennedy Center before lunch on inauguration day. Any ballroom, any coin, any banner, any federal building, any portrait hung by executive fiat. Street signs came down across Germany in 1946. This is the American version, and it takes a pen.
The ballroom is the Eagle’s Nest. Ninety thousand square feet of gold leaf where the East Wing used to be, with a bunker underneath. You can raze it and rebuild the East Wing. Or you can do what Bavaria did and turn it into something so ordinary it can’t be worshipped. A visitor centre. A public cafeteria. A daycare for federal workers. Serve the pretzels in it. Either way, no one is ever allowed to say his name in that room with reverence.
Restore the referees. Reinstate an independent Commission of Fine Arts and a National Capital Planning Commission that doesn’t answer to a staff secretary. Repeal the beauty order. Write into law that no sitting President may initiate a monument to himself, ever, which is a sentence nobody thought America would need.
Preserve the evidence of the victims. The detention records ICE stopped publishing. The names of the people who died in custody. The facilities. The Germans preserved Dachau’s ovens because the alternative was letting grass grow over them. Keep the camps as museums and tear down the arch. That’s the whole formula.
Trump’s people will scream that it’s petty. That it’s revenge. That it’s erasing history. It isn’t. Germany erased Hitler’s monuments and became the country with the best memory in Europe. You erase the shrine so there’s room for the museum. Nobody in Bavaria is confused about what happened on the Obersalzberg because the Berghof is gone. They know precisely because it’s gone, and there’s a documentation centre where a tour bus used to park.
I approve. Let’s elect people who will have the stamina to implement this plan.
It’s been one of those days — long boring meeting that ate up most of my morning, and then off to the dentist. I have a cavity. I’m getting it fixed in November. My patience is a little thin today.
So this news has me shaking mad.
On September 3, Bhattacharya’s NIH signed an “interagency agreement” with Hegseth’s Department of War, transferring Congressionally-mandated NIH patient research funding into Trump’s failing war machine.
That guy doesn’t get enough attention, or hatred: he’s a rotten anti-vax grifter who coasted into a cushy position as head of the NIH on RFK jr’s coattails. He’s despicable in every way possible, and is recognized as an incompetent stooge for the Trump administration. And now, after cheerfully starving American scientists of research funds, this guy is stealing more from the budget to fund the pointless, failed war on Iran.
The U.S. Department of Defense already has a pretty healthy budget compared to the National Institutes of Health. For fiscal year 2027, the Trump administration has requested a $1.5 trillion budget for the DoD—about 36 times the budget that it’s requested for the NIH. Yet, in the first week of August, the Pentagon and the NIH quietly established an agreement that would allow even more funds—potentially billions of dollars worth—to go from the NIH to the Pentagon.
Why would the director of the NIH voluntarily cut his own budget to feed a doomed war in Iran? Because he’s a hack, a tool who only holds his position as long as he is obedient.
I have a long list of people I want to see queued up for the guillotine once Trump is out of power. Trump is first, obviously. RFK jr is second. But Jay Bhattacharya is third in line, and I will be cheering as I dip an handkerchief in his blood for a souvenir. Those three bear the most responsibility for the destruction of American science, although they also have many helpers.
No mercy.
I woke up this morning to the joy of raging schadenfreude. I live in a scarlet part of the state, where despite having a vivid blue island in the middle of it (the university), the whole region happily turned out to vote for Trump. They didn’t care that he was a grifter, or that he’d bankrupted all of his businesses, or that he was a rapist, all they cared about was that he’d be sticking it to the libs and all those non-heterosexual and non-white people. They didn’t care until they discovered that he was also going to stick it to them.
I opened my internet feed this morning to discover all the MAGAs whining that that their cattle farms are going broke and that they have to sell their beef wholesale on TikTok, and all my fellow blues chortling and confronting them with the brutal question, “who did you vote for?”
Farming is important, and we should support agriculture, but we’re at this point in history where if you were a rancher, you were almost definitely a Republican and most often a hardcore far right freak. It’s an occupation that typically required only capital, and often inherited capital at that, and minimal education. And now they’ve helped elect a president who doesn’t understand basic economics and will take the farmers’ support for granted.
Dairy farmers aren’t much better. My county is about to get a massive influx of cows, to produce an excess of milk, and no one is asking who benefits. It won’t be us. We get to deal with the stench and the flies and the depleted aquifers, while someone reaps the profits.
At least I still get to chortle a little bit, since I’m a vegetarian and am not in the market for dead animal parts. We don’t drink milk at my house, only a little almond milk. I feel like my dietary habits have become an assault on Nazis.
I’m about to go to the store this morning to buy vegetables and beans…FOR GREAT JUSTICE!
A local dairy proposed building the largest herd of cows in the entire state of Minnesota right here in my county — a massive enterprise that would suck our aquifer dry and turn the water into giant stinking fecal pools that will breed more flies. Much of the local population is opposed, and Riverview Dairy has never made a case for why we need so much milk. I was motivated to attend a packed meeting of Stevens County officials where they were considering giving the dairy a permit.
The outcome of the meeting was that the county officials did not issue a permit, but adjourned to think about it. At the time, I made a prophecy.
In the end, a small group of old white men, the planning commission, will retreat into a meeting room and make the decision, and I predict that they will decide that Riverview doesn’t need any more studies of their environmental impact. The county has a total population of 10,000, and this one dairy operation will be pumping out waste equivalent to the output of a city of 750,00 people, but we’ll just let them do their thing and then find out the consequences. Short-sightedness will win again.
Am I a true prophet? The Land Stewardship Project shares the latest news.
On Tuesday, Sept. 1, Stevens County officials approved Riverview’s conditional use permit for the proposed West River Dairy expansion near Morris. This decision largely clears the way for what will become the largest concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Minnesota history. Once completed, this 18,855-cow facility will be more than 60 times the size of the average Minnesota dairy.
The county’s approval comes after farmers and other rural residents expressed deep concerns over the past several months about the potential environmental and economic impacts of this facility. More than 1,400 people submitted official public comments about West River Dairy to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), and 1,140 people signed LSP’s petition calling for a full environmental impact statement (EIS).
Despite deep community concerns regarding incomplete local water data, massive water usage (319 million gallons per year), and 250 million gallons of liquid manure storage near impaired waterways, local officials declined to impose protective groundwater conditions. We are deeply disappointed in the county commissioners’ decision.
I have a gift.
scummy Wisconsin billionaires
Fortunately, I’ve completely tuned out of television in this election season, or I’d be even more anxious right now. Minnesota is being flooded with conservative billionaire money. You know who benefits: Republicans.
The Republican nominee for governor, Lisa Demuth, has a super PAC funded mostly by a Wisconsin billionaire — Richard Uihlein, who has spent years bankrolling right-wing candidates and campaigns in other states and nationwide. In 2024, Uihlein and his wife were top Trump donors, spending $59 million to help deliver the White House back to Trump and to support other conservative candidates.
ANow they have turned their eyes to Minnesota. The Uihleins’ dark money super PAC heavily funded the Restore Sanity super PAC, which spent nearly $3 million to ensure Lisa Demuth won her primary — more than five times the amount Demuth herself raised, and about three times more than all of her Republican opponents raised combined.
In the counties where the ads paid for mostly by this single donor didn’t air (mostly outside the Twin Cities), Demuth often lost or underperformed. In the weeks leading up to the Republican primary, Demuth bragged about the work the super PAC was doing for her. She owes her campaign’s survival in large part to one man, and Minnesotans deserve to know what kind of return on investment he’s expecting.
Uihlein is not investing in Minnesota’s elections on a whim. In other states, he and his wife have used their personal wealth to fund extreme causes that they know would be rejected without their enormous outside spending. They have bankrolled efforts to restrict abortion. They have financed organizations committed to repealing the Affordable Care Act and to privatizing Social Security. They have funded efforts to undermine workers’ rights and labor unions and have fought reforms to lower prescription drug prices.
Why are billionaires intrinsically evil? How can anyone look at their agenda and fail to realize that they are not friends of humanity?
We can blame a good part of this villainy on the Supreme Court.
Going forward, the only long-term solution is to get big money out of our politics by overturning Citizens United and passing strong, nationwide campaign finance reform. Until then, Minnesotans can do their part by holding politicians accountable when they allow people like Uihlein to try and rig the system for themselves.
Whoever the next presidential candidate is, they better put a priority on purging the corruption from the Supreme Court.
If you thought Vikings were voracious plunderers, you haven’t compared them to 21st century billionaires. Apparently the thing to do when you’ve acquired a few billion dollars is to wall off historic sites for your own personal pleasure.
I know nothing about James Dyson other than that he’s a vacuum cleaner salesman, but I guess that’s a lucrative business, and he’s raked in a whole lot of money, so off he goes to buy an estate that includes an old castle and the ruins of an abbey, which is now his, never mind that it is a site that has been populated since at least the 6th century. It’s his, damn it, and you can stay off of it.
Templemichael Church and Castle
From the state of it, he’s not living there or holding parties in it — he has a grand manor nearby for that. I once made a trip all around Ireland, Dublin to Cork to Galway to Belfast and back again, and I loved stopping off at old ruins and soaking in the history. I don’t specifically remember stopping in Waterford, but I know my route passed through it. I may have left quickly, repelled by all the stinky billionaires moving in (Mark Zuckerberg bought a place near there, which would have made the stench quite thick). By what right does a man, and an English man at that, have the privilege to lock up a chunk of Irish history?
Well, money, I guess. The locals are not happy about this, but it won’t bother Master James, he wasn’t going to invite them to his house for a ball, anyway. He can just dance with Master Mark.
Fuck Google. Google Maps has caved to Trump.
I wonder how residents of Toronto, Canada’s largest city, feel about having their lakefront on Lake America
?
Our president is a stupid child.
