A Dream With A Mission

Jeff Johnson For Governor

And You Want To Be My Governor?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and it’s interesting to consider what pictures say about Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton. I first noticed Dayton’s unique photogenic qualities way back when he was a United States Senator and was captured calling bingo by a local community newspaper.

The distorted mouth and eyes wide open have sort of become a Dayton hallmark over the years. As has the thousand yard stare.

Is Mark Dayton happy? Surprised? It's often difficult to determine what (if any) emotions he is experiencing in these pictures. Or if he's feeling anything at all.

The man either has ice water in his veins or has lost all sensory perception.

Politics is about connecting with and reaching out to voters.

Not sure how I would react if I was on the receiving end of one of these looks. Hardly confidence inspiring.

When you Google up images of Mark Dayton (proceed at your own risk) you find a lot of connections with the Minnesota Vikings. Usually an incumbent candidate's prospects for reelection are tied to the health of the economy. With Dayton it should be the success of local NFL franchise (currently 2-5).

It's hard to decide which of the Dayton/Vikings pictures is my favorite.

The first is a classic which has been widely hailed.

While it is no doubt a brilliant shot, Dayton is sharing the glory here with an especially zealous Zygi Wilf.

This one is all Dayton: the goofy smile, the big eyes, and the stare at some object on the far horizon.

Now you might say that this is not a fair way to judge Mark Dayton. People who are in the public eye are photographed constantly and even the most photogenic among them will inevitably end up looking bad in a certain number of those shots. And I'm sure if you scoured the archives you could find pictures of Tim Pawlenty, Jesse Ventura (duh), Arne Carlson, and even Hjalmar Peterson looking goofy that would cause you to question their fitness for office.

That's a fair point and we should consider more than simply the eye test when trying to determine who best should lead our state in these unsteady times. So don't just look at the candidates for governor, listen to what they say and how they say it. And then decide who you really want to be your governor.

HWX: In the Hot Zone

It was a special midweek broadcast of the Hinderaker-Ward Experience, with John Hinderaker ofPower Line and Brian Ward of Fraters Libertas discussing the critical issues of our time.

Topics include ebola, what is, how you die from it, and how you do NOT prevent it from spreading in the United States (say, by instituting leisure travel restrictions from countries where it is most prevalent).

York

We were also joined by the great Byron York of the Washington Examiner and Fox News, with a state by state breakdown of key US Senate races.

Also Loon of the Week and a special round up of highly controversial This Week in Gate Keeping items.

HWX is brought to this week by Harry’s Shave. For the finest shave at the best price, go to Harrys.com. For an even better price, enter the coupon code HWX at checkout for $5 off your first purchase.

There are many ways to hear the podcast, including over on the mother ship at Ricochet.  You can be sure to never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes.  Or you can just use the player embedded in the upper right hand corner of this website.  If all of these fail, send me an email and I'll come to your house and read from a written transcript.  Hope you enjoy.

Separated at Birth

The coach who wants to ring Notre Dame's bell, despite having no backbone to discipline his criminal players: Jimbo Fisher

 and

the guy who rang the bells of Notre Dame despite having a deformed backbone: Quasimodo

Let's hope the game Saturday ends like the book and not the Disney movie. (Hat tip to LuckyMcD).

Note: I have a Taiwanese game preview up at Nihilist In Golf Pants blog. It is excellent analysis, and very funny.

False Advertising

By now, just about everyone in Minnesota has seen the vicious attack ad against Steward Mills. The ads suggest that Mills is a pretty boy heir to his family's fortune. They charge that Mills favors tax breaks for his rich buddies while supporting tax increases for lower income families.

The ad features Mills sailing on his yacht and grilling lobster tails and playing with his hair. This is defamatory. First of all Mills is on a boat far too small for someone of his wealth. The most falsified part of the ad, though, is the way Mills grills his lobsters. They are just sitting there on the grill.

As a fellow rich guy who loves fine dining that the common people can't afford, I know a little something about grilling lobsters. The key to great grilled lobster is the marinade. Butter or olive oil provides a fatty liquid base, and lemon juice and spices really bring out the flavor of the succulent lobster meat. In order to for the marinade to work, the lobster needs to be freed from inside the shell. This is accomplished by splitting the shell down the middle lengthwise, then pulling the lobster out, until only the end closest to the tail remains inside the shell. The meat is then set "piggyback" on top of the shell. Here is a youtube video showing how it is done.

The advantage of this approach is twofold. As mentioned above, it makes the lobster meat accessible so that one can add the marinade. The other advantage of this approach is that it moves the meat further from the heat source, allowing it to cook more slowly, preventing scalding and producing succulent meat that melts in your mouth.

One wonders where the people running this ad got their recipe for cooking lobster. I'd say if there is a millionaire department store heir too dumb to know how to correctly grill a lobster it is much more likely to be Governor Mark Dayton. And he doesn't even have nice hair.

Beer of the Week (Vol. CXCV)

Another irregular, edition of Beer of the Week, sponsored as always by excitable folks at Glen Lake Wine & Spirits who can eagerly help you harvest the beer, wine, or whiskey you need for a truly satisfying drinking experience.

What’s even better than a unique beer from a craft brewery? How about a unique beer that’s a collaboration between two craft breweries?

This week’s featured brew comes to us courtesy of Local Option in Chicago and Central Waters in Amherst, Wisconsin. The results of their joining forces is Bourbon Barrel Aged La Petite Mort:

Bourbon Barrel Aged La Petite Mort is a Belgian inspired Weissenbock brewed as a collaboration between The Local Option and Central Waters Brewery in Amherst, Wisconsin. Originally released in summer 2012, BBA La Petite Mort will be available in spring 2013 on draft and in large format bottles.

When Central Waters decided to open its brew house for its first collaboration beer, Chicago’s Local Option was the obvious partner in crime. The resulting brainchild, Bourbon Barrel Aged La Petite Mort – a Belgian inspired Weissenbock – maintains the traditional characteristics of its Bavarian forbearer, with the added complexity of Belgian ale yeast. BBA La Petite Mort is dark amber in color; maintains a rich, full-bodied mouth-feel augmented by caramel; mild and dark fruit; and vanilla and bourbon aromas as a result of six months of aging on Heaven Hill Barrels.. Rounded out by an unostentatious bourbon driven aroma from brief bourbon barrel aging, BBA La Petite Mort is a complex ale, a marriage of distinctive styles, and an orgasmic experience for the taste buds that revel in its glory.

An orgasmic experience? That’s an interesting description for a beer.

La Petite Mort:

The little death is translation from the French "la petite mort", a popular reference for a sexual orgasm. The term has been broadly expanded to include specific instances of blacking out after orgasm and other supposed spiritual releases that come with orgasm.

Hmmm…gives mouth-feel a whole new meaning. On to the beer.

22oz brown bomber sells for $7.99. Label has a stark look for creepy font and black and white colors.

STYLE: Weizenbock

ALCOHOL BY VOLUME: 9.05%

HEAD (0-2): Light tan color with minimal volume. 2

COLOR (0-2): Dark black. 2

AROMA (0-2): Bourbon scents of plum and nuts. 2

TASTE (0-5): Like the aroma the taste has strong bourbon flavors of plum, nuts, and a little vanilla along with roasted malt. Very warming and quite delicious. Smooth and creamy mouth-feel with a heavy body. Definitely one to sip and savor. 4

AFTERTASTE (0-2): Lasting and luxurious. 2

OVERALL (0-6): A big beer with bold and complex flavors that pop out at you. Great choice for a cool fall night and the bottle would fit right in at Halloween. 5

TOTAL SCORE (0-19): 17

Cause and Effect?

On October 1, US Senate candidate Mike McFadden appears on widely listened to podcast The Hinderaker-Ward Experience.

Breaking news from one week later:

A new SurveyUSA/KSTP poll finds that Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken had an 18 percentage point advantage over Republican Mike McFadden, a larger lead than any previous poll.

According to the poll, 55 percent of people said they would vote for Franken and 37 said they would vote for McFadden. The poll, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 2, surveyed 577 likely voters and had a 4.1 percentage point plus or minus margin of error.

It found that Franken's lead doubled from nine percent in the pollster's September survey.

Well, for the record, I thought his appearance went well!

If, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is also the most likely explanation, maybe it's not our fault.

Minnesota is a notoriously difficult state to poll.  That's a charitable way of saying that media polls have routinely inflated the predicted vote for Democrats.  We'll have to mark this media poll down for special scrutiny come the morning of November 5.  It's either a prescient harbinger of a wholly unexpected Democrat party rout in the middle of what could be a Republican landslide elsewhere, or it's just the same old embarasingly irresponsible media polling.

Time will tell. and the fate of future candidate appearances on the Hinderaker Ward Experience hangs in the balance.

Quiet Little Declarations of Independence

Kevin Williamson on why the Left hates homeschooling:

The Left’s organizing principle is control, and the possibility that children might commonly be raised outside of its control matrix is an existential threat from the progressive point of view. Institutions such as free markets and free speech terrify progressives, because they are the result of arrangements in which nobody is in control. Harry Reid and Senate Democrats just tried to repeal the First Amendment because they are horrified that anybody so inclined can broadcast a political message without asking the government’s permission or being subject to official oversight. The states of Ohio and Minnesota went so far as to create “truth” police, secular inquisitions that determined who is allowed to speak and under what circumstances. (Blessedly, these have been thrown out by the courts.) The idea that people could be teaching their children practically anything, without the input of credentialed education experts, is a nightmare. (Never mind that those credentialed experts are intellectual under-achievers, education majors typically having the lowest standardized test scores of any college cohort.) If people discover that they can live without overseers in the matter of education, who knows in which other of life’s endeavors they might be inclined to go their own way?

Professor West of Georgetown is scandalized that parents “have virtually unfettered authority to decide what subjects to teach, what curriculum materials to use,” etc., and, naturally, worries that this will result in parents who teach “from nothing but the Bible.” (Question: What is the opposite of “unfettered”?) She is particularly offended that in some states, home-schooling families are not even required to notify the authorities of their intent to home-school — as if they could manage their own families any way they saw fit, as if they didn’t need permission. The Left’s war on school choice is mostly about money, but its jihad against home-schooling is about power.

Contrary to the crude cartoon of them, home-schooling families are a motley bunch, including everybody from heartland Evangelicals to Brooklyn’s quinoa-and-yoga set. Many of them are amused and surprised when I describe them as “radicals,” but that is what they are — people who have told the state that they’ll pay their taxes but are not handing over their children, that they will render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s but not a mite more. Home-schooling isn’t for everybody, but every home-school student, like every firearm in private hands, is a quiet little declaration of independence. It’s no accident that the people who want to seize your guns are also the ones who want to seize your children. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s desire to imprison people who hold the wrong views on climate change and Harry Reid’s plot to gut the Bill of Rights are not aberrations in an otherwise genuinely liberal agenda; the Left desires to put every aspect of every human life under political discipline, from which history books your children read to what kind of cheese you eat.

HWX Election Special: The Man Who Would Beat Franken

It was special Wednesday night election edition of the Hinderaker-Ward Experience, featuring the GOP endorsed candidate for US Senate in Minnesota, Mike McFadden.   The control of the Senate is up for grabs this year and Minnesota could be a pivotal state in who ultimately wins control.  Will Saturday Night Live funnyman Al Franken be returned to the world’s greatest deliberative body?  Or does Mike McFadden have the right stuff to upset the incumbent Democrat and shock the world?  Click here and find out from Mike himself.

Check out the embed below to see full debate between Franken and Mike McFadden this morning.

Those interested in helping to return Al Franken to the private sector can volunteer or donate at MikeMcfadden.com

HWX: Friday Never Hesitates

From last week, it was an extra special Friday night edition of the Hinderaker Ward Experience (HWX), with John Hinderaker of Power Line and Brian Ward of Fraters Libertas reconvening to discuss the critical issues of our time. Topics include:

* Why John Hinderaker was never called “Johnny”

* The ISIL threat and how we’ve tried everything in the Mideast and nothing has worked

* The sociological implications of the Ray Rice/Adrian Peterson NFL scandals

* The Bill Mahr Show’s strange overtures to John Hinderaker

* The 2014 elections and the lack of any signs of a Republican wave

* Loons of the Week (Rosie O’Donnell and Climate Parade Leaders)

*This Week in Gate Keeping (Forgetting the Presidents)

This podcast was not brought to you by The Veteran Beer Company or Bulleit Rye. But they could have been. For the good times, make it The Veteran and Bulleit Rye. Mmmm, mmmm sure am good!

There are many ways to hear the podcast, including over on the mother ship at Ricochet.  You can be sure to never miss an episode by subscribing via iTunes.  Or you can just use the player embedded in the upper right hand corner of this website.  If all of these fail, send me an email and I'll come to your house and read from a written transcript.  Hope you enjoy.