I just came back from filing.

I wore my Lincoln T Shirt to file. Jeff Johnson the newly nominated Republican Governor candidate came in to file just after I filled out my form. I turned toward the cameras while I stood behind him so that my Lincoln would be there in the background. I had just walked in to the office building as two young men were carefully carting a huge Minnesota cut of plywood and painted red. It read “Make Minnesota Red Again.” I hollered over to them “Make Minnesota Communist Again?” with my question hanging in the air.

I feel good. Almost too satisfied to study French……..I’ll get over it. Bootlicker’s beware! .BTW I got a call from Brady Slater of the Trib and he asked if I wasn’t a little tough on Pete in my last blog post. I’d already thought about that at length yesterday before I included that description in the post. These are the things I recall telling Brady in answer to that question. In no particular order.

A. As a candidate’s he’s already counting on the support of the President’s blindest supporters and has made no secret of his approval of Trump. (If Pete thinks that we are supposed to read his mind about how much he disapproves of Trump’s theatrics he damn well better make that plain to the voting public!)

B. His President has lowered the bar for words like “bootlick” far below the level of that word.

C. I’ve seen moderates in the Party primaried out through the same kind of rhetoric on the other side. Bootlick pales to “Baby Killer” which I have been called. Hell, I was called “a worse mass murderer” than Stalin, Mao and Hitler put together. Such a thoughtful analysis by members of a party that have so neglected new born babies in America that we have the highest infant and new mother mortality in the Industrialized world.

and finally D. while I don’t remember telling Brady this my calling Pete out is the best assurance decent people in the Eighth District have that he won’t become one. If he’s elected everybody will be waiting to see if my fear was justified. Why should I expect Pete to have any more guts than the useless, decent Republican men and women that we currently have representing us in the Congress?

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