I now expect that Peggy, Eric, Kari, Talitha, Amy, Steve, Zack, Keith, Naomi, and all members of Minnesota school districts to be my good friends and invite me to their house for the celebration. It’s the least they can do for my vote.

You know what to do, my fellow Americans: kick the clowns out.

(This cartoon would be more accurate if all the clowns were evil.)

I must express my gratitude to Hayley Stevens. She lost a primary election for the Michigan senate to Abdul El-Sayed, but promised to endorse him anyway, and then over the weekend, just before the midterm elections, changed her mind and endorsed the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers. It was a breathtaking betrayal. A stunning stab in the back moment for Democrats. She has killed her political career.

And I love her for it.

She has single-handedly destroyed the slogan “vote blue no matter who”, tearing it into tatters, spitting on it, and wiping her ass with it. Establishment Democrats are dismayed — they rely on that knee-jerk party loyalty and hatred of Republicans to coast into re-election without having to actually do anything, and Hayley Stevens just made a vivid demonstration of the fact that you can’t simply trust someone because there’s a “D” after their name. The electorate needs to actually think and assess the merits of their candidate? That’s anathema to the Chuck Schumers and Joe Bidens of the Democratic party!

Thank you for your service, never-to-be-senator Stevens.

Of course, she never intended to blow herself up to advance enlightened democracy. As Jamelle Bouie explains, she was just a self-centered marginal democrat who lost her damn mind.

The midterm elections are tomorrow, and now you must take these candidates seriously (although you should have done that in the primaries) and vote for the best one who will improve your life in the years to come. It’s all weighty serious stuff, and no more of this reflexive “vote blue” nonsense.

There’s a sleepy little town, Appleton, just a few miles south of Morris. I’ve visited it a few times to check out the spiders there — there’s no other reason to go there, it’s not much of a tourist attraction. Population 1400, no particular businesses there, they had a defunct prison that was shut down 16 years ago, and many residents were concerned about the loss of employment opportunities. I’d like to see more good jobs there, too, but reopening a prison, or setting up concentration camps for immigrants isn’t high on my list of “good” jobs.

But right now if I look at broadcast tv or TUBI, they’re saturated with ads for GOOD JOBS in Appleton. They want nurses and educators and guards that they’ll hire with good pay, and the ads run annoyingly non-stop. The Appleton prison is open for business! Yay?

CoreCivic, the private prison company that owned the place, had previously offered to sell the prison to the state of Minnesota for the price of $75 million. The state turned it down. It was too pricey, required too much renovation, and would require far too much investment in building housing for workers. It was impractical.

The state ultimately decided against the deal at the time on the basis that it might be difficult to staff Prairie Correctional given its remote location – a nearly three-hour drive from Minneapolis-St. Paul – and costly to build new homes to accommodate the approximately 500 employees required to run it, concerns seemingly not shared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Hey! I live 3 hours from Minneapolis-St Paul! Looking at it from my perspective, that’s rather insulting, that this side of the state isn’t worth the investment, but OK — I should see this as a declaration that prisons aren’t worth spending money on.

So who bought it now? It was sold by CoreCivic to ICE. For $495 million.

Cool business strategy bro. It turns out that CoreCivic had donated half a million dollars to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee, and then ICE turned around and gave CoreCivic a half billion dollars for an old neglected building in a remote part of the country. So in that sense it was good return on investment, just corrupt and criminal.

It’s ironic that Minnesota has been the focus of a corruption scandal — $250 million was skimmed off pandemic recovery funds. That corruption benefited Somali people, though, so clearly bad. Benefitting wealthy white Republicans is not a crime. Minnesota investigated our local scandal and found that the chief perpetrator, Aimee Bock, was guilty and sentenced her to 40 years in prison. One can only hope that the instigators of the Appleton grift get an equivalent sentence.

I was browsing pubmed for some interesting articles when I noticed that every article is tainted with this stupid announcement.

Yuck. Our president thinks he can meddle in things he does not understand and lacks the ability to comprehend by simply renaming things, and the NIH is going along with it. So disappointed.

It’s not intelligence, let alone “super” intelligence.

As usual, Republicans love to make absurd racist accusations, and the latest is from Trump, who hates our citizens of Somali descent.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Tuesday, the president lamented that Minnesota had hundreds of lakes—until the Somalis arrived.

They’ve ruined a great state, Trump said, referring to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. You know I remember Minnesota in the old days, what a beautiful, beautiful, with lakes all over the place, they had more lakes than any place I’ve ever seen. It was so beautiful.

They’re destroying it, probably, maybe they’ve destroyed it, Trump continued, referring to the Somali immigrant community. And I only hope a Republican woman who happens to be very respected by everybody gets in because you will see a difference.

What does he think the Somalis have done with our lakes? Is this like accusing Haitians of eating pets, now Somalis are drinking our lakes?

Texans are well aware of the fact that their Republican politicians are remarkably vile. Somehow Ken Paxton has a chance of winning election, in spite of being quite possibly the most corrupt politician in America. Also in the running, though,is Greg Abbott, who has been actively undermining public education.

Schools in Texas are wildly underfunded, with hundreds having to reduce students to four days a week. This is very much by Abbott’s design. As Jessica Grose of the New York Times explained on Oct. 7, the governor signed into law a voucher program whose entire purpose is paying parents to take kids out of school and put them into unregulated “alternatives” — such as private schools or homeschooling — that have no real requirements to offer children an actual education. Since local school funding is tied to student head count, this has created a backdoor way to funnel money out of already-struggling public schools.

So don’t vote for Abbott. That’ll fix the problem, right? Get him out of office and everything will get all better.

Nope. The real problem is Texas billionaires.

Money is the likeliest answer. As Grose notes, Abbott’s war on education is backed by three powerful Texas billionaires — and major conservative donors — Tim Dunn and a pair of brothers, Farris and Dan Wilks. The trio made their fortunes in oil. But their single-minded hatred of public schools is rooted in evangelical Christianity.

“If you ever wonder why state laws and policies are more radical than most Texans would prefer, the answer has a lot to do with Dunn and his checkbook,” Russell Gold wrote in Texas Monthly in 2024. The same is true of the Filks brothers, who share Dunn’s dream of turning Texas into a far-right Christian theocracy.

As is familiar, billionaires are the problem, and especially Christian billionaires. Fundamentalist Muslim billionaires would be just as damaging, but the Christian billionaires would fight back.

You notice, the citizens of Texas don’t count. This would have to be a kaiju battle.