Ratface Pawlenty is an evil, loathsome, power-hungry asshat who portrays himself as a moderate, but is anything but. He is a soulless cipher who is cheaper than a crack whore. He’s smart enough to sound competent, but he has totally wrecked the state of MN during his tenure. Fuck him with a very rusty pitchfork eleven billionty ways of Sunday.

P.S. He is the ONLY politician I refer to with a derogatory nickname–I loathe him that much.

Was that he best picture of his parental units he could find? Looks like his mother just caught a whiff of the offal from the Spam factory.

Wish MST3K would do a treatment of that vid. Hope his boi hooker tapes show up soon. The collapsing bridge was a perfect metaphor for how he fucked up Minnesota. He’s the Terminator of St. Paul. yet peeps still voted for him. Incomprehensible.

Right after you show 3 seconds of Michelle Bachman, you talk about common-sense leadership? WTF?

Oh crap! History is on their side? Really? I sorta thought we all got to claim history. Well, that changes everything. I do kinda think we should call dibs on future.

And he wants freedom to be first? Not second or third or something? This guy’s really got it going on. You just can’t get a niftier slogan than “Freedom First” (whatever the hell he thinks that means). He’s real Lawrence Welkian — and not in a good way. Also. Too.

I guess he wants polio back. And kids hiding under desks instead of learning how to read. And women fired for becoming pregnant. And women fired for marrying someone in the same company. And restricted public facilities. And restrictive property covenants.

That’s the America of my childhood. I don’t want it back, Tim. You can tell the R’s to take all the money they’re plowing into buying election, find a piece of worthless land, buy it, and make it blossom without the aid of government.

Go Galt, already. Let the rest of us live in the human community that bravely embraces the opportunity for progress instead of scuttling back to a dank familiarity.

Smilin’ Tim got in because he seems too unassuming to actually be evil. But once he decided to run for president, the Governor Gutshot side of his personality came out.

Doesn’t account for the second election. Wake the fuck up, Minnesota. You’ve done so much better than this.

I think the bridge can be tied to his ankles, after that, can we find another intact bridge to throw him off of?

His efforts to pander to the Confederate wing of the GOP are hilarious. They’ll never back him even though (or maybe because) he’s spent so much time in Alabama fundraising he might as well get a P.O. box there.

Mike Hatch shot himself in the foot. If he could have kept his mouth shut for the month of October he would have won.

Also, Minnesota’s had an influx of white-flight McMansioneers in the past few decades. They’re the ones voting for Bachmann and Pawlenty.

Those are the parts of the “good old days” they wouldn’t mind having back.

The other part, the part where “hard-working people” who worked in meat-packing plants etc could afford homes and college for their kids – that’s the part they don’t want to see return.

It never ceases to amaze me how these tools can get away with lauding their blue-collar family backgrounds, while at the same time insisting that the people who do the same kind of work today are shiftless bums undeserving of even minimum wage. You see it everywhere from Chrissy Matthews to the top echelons of the GOP. Makes you wonder if, for all the talk of how much they respected their parents, they weren’t actually ashamed and embarrassed of what they did for a living, and had to wait until they could claw their way into political power to express it through policy to punish all lazy bums who remind them of dear ol’ dad.

Geez, yeah. Maybe that also helps to explain why so many straight married republiKKKan males prefer to have sex with men?

Where’d they white flight from? Just curious at this point. I’m in Pennsylvania and oddly, the white flight here eroded R majorities in counties abutting Philadelphia but that just got us “Democrats” like Fat Stinky Ed Rendell.

Those are subtle indicators, all right. Did David Broder write that Post story?

The Coen Brothers should do his videos.

AsiangrlMN,

Amen to that. I left the state after 4 years of Pawlenty closing public libraries on weekends and evenings while sending his oddly indecisive former federal judge wife (who relied on the answers to prayers for her judicial decisions) around the state to preach the importance of reading–apparently totally oblivious to the irony. I came back last year and can’t believe how badly these guys have messed things up (Pawlenty doesn’t get all the blame. Norm Coleman, the GOP one-term wonder who was supposed to be in the batter’s box for the next presidential election until the public starting calling him ‘Senator Doofus’ did his level best to destroy Minnesota’s middle and working classes, as well). Terrifying that we can actually produce a Michele Bachmann and a Tom Emmer here. When will the madness stop?…

The GOP is doing what it usually does here; since their big electoral successes of the last thirty years–Reagan and W–were both governors, they cast about for some gubbiner who comes off as a good ol’, down-home, family man type. If they turn out to not do so good in the primaries, well, they can always be drafted to try and bring in their constituencies and/or personal demographic (race, religion, region, etc.) to the general. And they’ll do it, even if they have to risk their current office by swinging hard right, either because the possibility of being president is flattering to someone who’s usually already reached his level of incompetence or because they’re well aware of the Rove Machine’s lack of tolerance for dissidence.

Pawlenty only looks like a centrist next to Michele Bachmann; he has no legs in a nationwide race. But they can use him.

New video name:

“Cliche-O-Rama”

JDM3,

In neither of his elections for governor did Pawlenty achieve more than 50% of the vote. He won because there are still vestiges of Ventura’s party. Minnesota should seriously consider Alternative Vote or some other run-off mechanism.

jaysus, I lasted a whole 34 seconds

I grew up right next to these stockyards !

Where have you gone, Elwyn Tinklenberg?
The Gophers turn their lonely eyes to you…

Refuse to watch the propaganda piece, but the title says “History is on the Repubs side?!?” Too bad for them, History shows the exact opposite to be true:

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

History shows that the more Liberal the policy, the stronger and sustainable the economy is, and every collapse of the American system over the past 100 years was preceded by 5-7 of Repub policy (meaning fewer taxes and less regulation).

Like the Clinton years, crime rates are going down again, and they rise under Repub Admins. History shows this to be true…every time!

“The Great War” was waged and won by two of the more Liberal Presidents America has seen. (will leave out the discussion of if any war is ever necessary).

Issue after issue, History shows Liberal policy is what delivers positive results for society, while Repub policy leads to failure. Just simple fact. Of course, as usual though, a Repub has to completely ignore History’s truths and lie and argue “war is peace” and “up is down.” I refudiate Repub lies.

“The Great War” was waged and won by two of the more Liberal Presidents America has seen.

I’ll grant you FDR, but claiming the same of Woodrow Wilson is kinda pushing the envelope JUST a bit.

I thought he was referring to Truman. It was one or the other.

Of course, as usual though, a Repub has to completely ignore History’s truths

As must our current crop of “Democrats”.

Kinda funny looking.
Oh ya?
Ya.

All over the country, pretty much. Lots of folks who came here because it was whiter than white yet had good schools and social services — which they didn’t want to pay for, so they promptly started trashing them.

A nice quoting of you TBogg in the latest post by James Wolcott. He also adds this about Pawlenty and Rep. Pence – that they have what host Joe Franklin once called “that certain nothing.”

I watched that entire inane video clip. That’s 3:35 of my life that I will never have back.

“that certain nothing.”

Oh yah. That Tim, he’s sure got loads o’ that.

T-Paw says he saw in the face of his mom “the worry about making ends meet” etc. etc. What I see is disgust at being trapped in a loveless, stifling marriage to some bohunk asshole and having to live next to a fucking stockyard.

Also, if he can really relate to people going through hard times, then why he is a fucking Republican?

And all that artsy-farty editing and those weird lighting effects will never, ever dispel the fact that this is just another bland, boring, Republican plutocrat-enabler. He’s not crazy enough for the rabid right-wing base, and he’s too extreme for most moderates. He’s toast.

“jaysus, I lasted a whole 34 seconds”

Better than me.

Oh, and Tim, wanna buy a bridge?

TPaw sounds like the name of one of Sarah Palin’s inbred children.

“South St. Paul was a wonderful place to grow up. It was then the home of the world’s largest stockyards and some of the world’s largest meatpacking plants…”

I can smell the stench of the wonderful from here.

Is he kidding with this?

Never give up, never give in? That’s Jim Valvano at the ESPYs.

That verges on the obscene unless Pawlenty has cancer. Maybe he does.

Moral cancer.

What has Pawlenty’s brand of conservatism done for the working/middle class in this country, exactly? Other than nothing.

Fuck this guy.

Apparently TPaw is taken, although you were close:

TPAW verb or noun; Top-Posting Attention-Whore. Someone who regularly posts a new craigslist forum entry at the top to feed their need for personal attention.

It also had some bitchin’ SERIOUS trucker bars across Concord Avenue from the stockyards.

South St. Paul was not without it’s charms back then, but Pawlenty abandoned all of them for the vapid suburb of Eagan. Eagan is much more what Tim’s about but a video about living in Eagan would show nothing but shopping centers, bland office buildings, chain restaruants and nice white housing developments.

A-yep. Eagan is a white-flight suburb, kinda like Woodbury. South St. Paul, on the other hand, was starting to fill up with Hispanic workers who in many cases were Mexicans fleeing the chaos of the late 1960s and early 1970s south of the border. They took jobs at the stockyards, and quickly became a major presence in town.

I hear you. For some reason, our very liberal state has not had a Dem governor since 1993. As someone mentioned, I think it’s partly because we have such a strong third-party showing here, but still. The fact that Emmers has a strong shot at being governor has me contemplating MY move next year.

JDM3, apparently, we’re not–unfortunately, better than that. No matter what the excuses–he still was a two-term governor. That rankles.