Box Score of the Week

Toronto Blue Jays at St. Louis Cardinals - June 5, 2003.

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The NARN Closer's playlist - 4/13/2025

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He has trampled down the enemy and has given us the victory.........

It's a guest-a-palooza on today's edition of my radio show The Closer. The 2-hour bonanza gets started at 1:00 PM Central Time.

Today's guest lineup:

• 1:30 - Phil Magness, economist and Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, will be on to discuss the latest on President Donald Trump's trade policies.. 
• 2:00 - Jim Schultz, President of Minnesota Private Business Council and the 2022 GOP candidate for Minnesota Atty General, will join the broadcast to discuss AG Keith Ellison's questionable handling of the Feeding Our Future scandal. 
• 2:30 - Minnesota Family Council CEO Jeff Evans and Public Policy Director Becca Delahunt will be in studio to promote MFC's annual dinner, discuss their work at the Minnesota Legislature, etc. 

So please call (651) 289-4488 if you'd like to weigh in on any of the topics we plan on addressing.

 

You can listen live in the Twin Cities at AM 1280 or, if you're near downtown Minneapolis/West Metro area, 107.5 FM on your radio dial. In and out of the Minneapolis-St Paul area you can listen to the program on the Internet by clicking this link, or check us out via iheart radio as well as Amazon Alexa (just say "Alexa, play The Patriot Minneapolis"). If you're unable to tune in live, please check out my podcast page for the latest show post.

And if you're so inclined, follow along on Twitter at #NARNShow or "Like" our Facebook page, where we also conduct a "Live Stream" of the broadcast.

Until then.....

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Quick Hits: Volume CCCLXX

- Bill Glahn of American Experiment has, for about a decade now, been doing yeoman's work with his investigative journalism of Minnesota politics. His latest reporting has to do with a certain high ranking elected official. 

Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s Attorney General, can clearly be heard pledging his support to individuals who would soon become his family’s campaign donors and later Feeding Our Future criminal defendants.

His recorded statements flatly contradict his contemporaneous public statements and raise uncomfortable questions about the intersection between political fundraising and constituent services.

American Experiment has exclusively obtained the complete 54-minute, 44-second audio file of a private December 2021 meeting between state Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison and key figures in the Feeding Our Future scandal.

As I wrote last week, the audio file was named as Exhibit 710 on the evidence list presented to the court by Aimee Bock’s defense attorney, Kenneth Udoibok. The recording was not offered into evidence during the six-week trial that concluded last month, with Bock’s conviction on all seven counts she faced.

Definitely check out Glahn's entire piece, which includes audio conversations featuring Ellison himself.  

We'll see where this goes. Blois Olson on his Thursday edition of Morning Take at least gave it a mention. Will it ultimately get so hot that the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press ultimately have to give it coverage? If so, that's when you'll know Ellison is in a sticky wicket. 

- Meanwhile, Ellison's replacement in Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District had an announcement regarding her own political future. 

Rep. Ilhan Omar will run for re-election to her House seat next fall, closing the door on a possible run for retiring Sen. Tina Smith’s U.S. Senate seat.

“At a time when our rights are under attack, it is more important than ever to fight back against the chaos, corruption, and callousness of the Trump Administration,” Omar, a Democrat, said in a statement.

“I am excited to announce I am running for reelection for Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District to keep standing up for our rights in the face of authoritarianism.”

In essence, she's embracing the role that her predecessor decried 8+ years - “All there is to do is to vote ‘no'.”

- Major League Baseball needs to be fixed. And if losing an entire season to a work stoppage results in a leveling of the playing field, then I will live with a year sans baseball. 

MLB owners as well as Commissioner Rob Manfred’s office have begun privately contemplating what a new league economic structure could look like as the league heads toward a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with players, according to people familiar with the matter. The league’s current CBA expires on Dec. 1, 2026.

MLB officials have discussed adding both a salary cap and a salary floor, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The Major League Baseball Players Association, however, has long been against a salary cap, and the group says its position hasn’t changed.

The result is a potential lockout in December of next year when the current CBA expires — one that appears increasingly likely given the opposing positions of both sides.

As I've said many times previously, the highest payroll doesn't necessarily mean championships (the L.A. Dodgers' World Series title last year was only their second in 35 years; the Yankees have one championship over the past 24). But teams like the Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays. Oakland Athletics and Pittsburgh Pirates may literally have to cease operations if the current system remains in place. 

And if you're a a fan of the Minnesota Twins (like I am), I'm afraid they're going to be in the desert these next two seasons. Since the current ownership group comprised of the Pohlad family is exploring a sale of the club, they're likely to shed payroll before the July 31 trade deadline in an effort to keep operational costs down. With the organization already saddled with nearly a half billion dollars of debt, it's going to be that much more challenging to find a willing buyer, especially with the uncertainty of there even being a baseball season in two years. 

This is a definite tipping point for the sport. 

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Maniacal Martin

When Ken Martin was chair of the MN Democrat party (aka the Minnesota DFL), he had the luxury of going all in on far left progressivism. The party never lost a statewide election on his watch and rarely went without controlling at least one chamber of the Minnesota Legislature. 

Within the past couple of months, Martin was elected to head up the Democratic National Committee in hopes he could bring that same electoral magic to the national level. But given that far left policies were soundly rejected across the country this past November, I often wondered whether or not Kenny could dial back the fringe rhetoric in his new role.

Well........

Robert Kennedy Jr. has murdered another child in Texas. https://t.co/N1ZhZmPoKG

— Ken Martin (@kenmartin73) April 7, 2025

Wait'll Kenny finds out that one of his party's largest donors takes out literally 1,000 times more than that on a daily basis. 

It's also pretty ballsy of Martin to make such a wildly outlandish statement while utterly ignoring the fact his own side is essentially creating an assassination caucus. 

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Box Score of the Week

Baltimore Orioles at Toronto Blue Jays - September 30, 1988.

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This was the second consecutive start in which Jays pitcher Dave Stieb lost a no-hitter in the ninth inning. 

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The NARN Closer's playlist - 4/6/2023

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There is this old man who spent so much of his life sleeping......

Welcome to April!

It's Sunday, so that means another edition of my radio show The Closer. Today's 2-hour broadcast gets started at 1:00 PM Central Time. 

In the first hour I'll discuss national politics, particularly President Donald Trump's decision to slap tariffs on pretty much every import coming into America. The early returns indicate this is a calamitous decision. We'll look back over the past half century where leading economic voices sounded the alarm on such tariffs. 

The in the 2:00 hour I'll weigh in on the strange and hypocritical takes from Minnesota progs on Wisconsin's Supreme Court election from this past week. And finally, what was the purpose of this weekend's #HandsOff protests???

So please call (651) 289-4488 if you'd like to weigh in on any of the topics we plan on addressing.

 

You can listen live in the Twin Cities at AM 1280 or, if you're near downtown Minneapolis/West Metro area, 107.5 FM on your radio dial. In and out of the Minneapolis-St Paul area you can listen to the program on the Internet by clicking this link, or check us out via iheart radio as well as Amazon Alexa (just say "Alexa, play The Patriot Minneapolis"). If you're unable to tune in live, please check out my podcast page for the latest show post.

And if you're so inclined, follow along on Twitter at #NARNShow or "Like" our Facebook page, where we also conduct a "Live Stream" of the broadcast.

Until then.....

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Just gonna leave this here.......

President Ronald Reagan called it nearly 40 years ago. 

My only hope at this point is this is some sort of effort by President Trump to engage other countries in revising trade agreements. 

Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side that you are crazy.

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) April 3, 2025

Now that would legitimately be Trump playing 3D Chess. 

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Goodness, these people are gullible

Despite the fact President Donald Trump likely believes a good number of the untrue things he says, I'm convinced there's another facet to his ramblings. Specifically, he'll say something that is so outlandish that not even he believes it but he knows it'll get a rise out of his top adversaries in the prog media. 

Hence the headline from an NBC News story this past Sunday: 

Trump won’t rule out seeking a third term in the White House, tells NBC News ‘there are methods’ for doing so.

All the media would have to do in this case is roll their collective eyes and cite the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

Instead, several "think pieces" and prog podcasts have wasted countless words on how Trump is some authoritarian mad man hellbent on upending our Constitutional order. And it wouldn't shock me in the least if Trump himself were sitting back and laughing his orange arse off at all the leftist flailing that has ensued, as if that were his endgame all along. 

As Erick Erickson notes, this collective freak out just underscores the left's lack of faith in our institutional controls. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Erick Erickson (@ewerickson)

In reality, you'd think progs would desire to see Trump attempt to run for a third term. If he flatly refused to leave the White House on January 20, 2029, he would literally be frogged marched outta the joint, thus fulfilling a prog fantasy they've been fetishizing over since the days of George W. Bush.

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