Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Quick Hits: Volume CXCVII

- For the first time in nearly 20 years, Mrs. Carlson and I did not attend the Minnesota State Fair. Given one of our favorite resting spots is the patio behind the Republican Party of MN booth, there was a decent shot we would have been met with some hostility from anti-GOP elements given they like to troll the area.

Sadly, this year's Fair was pretty rancorous on both sides of the political aisle.

The heads of Minnesota’s two major political parties say they’ve been targeted over the 12 days of the Minnesota State Fair, leading both parties to install security cameras inside their booths for the first time as the political discourse frequently turned ugly.

Amid the hyper-charged national political atmosphere, Republican and Democratic party leaders said the incidents happened almost daily. Party officials said fairgoers have hurled items at volunteers, while the head of the state GOP said someone dumped trash on her at the Republican booth last week.

“This fair is supposed to represent the best of Minnesota, not the worst,” Ken Martin, chairman of the Minnesota DFL, said in an interview outside his booth. “We just have to find a way to de-escalate this. It’s sad that this is where our politics have gotten to.”

Beyond the Aug. 23 sexual assault, neither party has filed any additional police reports, said Brooke Blakely, a spokeswoman for the State Fair Police.

Martin said Democrats decided to install surveillance cameras inside their booth for 2019 because of incidents in previous years. GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan said her party also put cameras inside its booth for the first time, after installing them on the outside of the booth years ago.

“Every day at our booth, (things happen),” Carnahan said. “People will spit on our volunteers in their faces, people will take beer and dump it over our merchandise. I had a woman take garbage and throw it in my face last Wednesday and tell me I was trash.”

Naturally many will blame Donald Trump's rhetoric and personality for the increase in toxic politics. However, that would be extremely disingenuous given that Trump is merely a byproduct of the rhetorical garbage the political left has been spewing for years. Don't believe me? Just go back and look at what leftists were saying about President George W. Bush from about 2003 until 2008. It pales in comparison to what MAGA-land is offering up.


- Lefty journo Aaron Rupar wrote for Twin Cities rag City Pages for quite some time. He had the reputation of being merely a transcript service for the DFL metrocrats.

Now that Rupar is employed by lefty site Vox.com, folks on a national level get to see what we in the Twin Cities witnessed firsthand for years: that he is a vacuous, insufferable and dishonest hack.


- In the aftermath of the mass shooting in Odessa, TX over the weekend, the war on guns ramped up on Twitter once more.

Here's a tweet which got a lotta play:




A quick aside: typing the same statement multiple times within a tweet doesn't make it any more factual.

Anyhow, in this context, "need" is irrelevant. We American are guaranteed civil liberties in accordance to the U.S. Constitution. For example, kook leftists don't "need" to wear crocheted lady parts atop their heads when an engaging in protest. However, the First Amendment guarantees one's ability to express oneself, even it means looking like a complete loon.

As someone who is a Second Amendment advocate, I may not ever be inclined to purchase an AR-15. But if a government official or a supporter of expanded government tells me I *don't* need one? That's only going to incentivize me to look into it.

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