Trump's going to have one Hell of a nigger problem if he doesn't win in
November. They're everywhere behind bars and they all want a crack at
him.

Op-ed from Duluth News Tribune

Gov. Tim Walz is taking it on the chin these days for the short tenure of
his pick for the head of the Office of Cannabis Management. It turned out
that Erin DuPree, who would have been in charge of regulatory compliance
for the state�s weed growers, appears to have illegally sold cannabis
products at her hemp shop. She resigned one day after her appointment.

The governor definitely made an embarrassing and dumb mistake, but hiring
mistakes happen in any large bureaucracy, whether in the public or private
sector.

I don�t think Minnesotans really care that much about a public official�s
occasional stumbles. They do care about persistent catastrophic failures,
though, and Walz is delivering those in spades.

Let�s go through the list.

On the economy, Minnesota is falling behind, and Walz is to blame. The
growth rate of our private sector is at the lowest point in decades, and
the governor seems to have no answer for it other than increasing state
spending by 38% in a single legislative session. Despite a $19 billion
surplus � larger than the entire budgets of 17 U.S. states and even dozens
of countries � Walz barely gave any of it back to Minnesotans and even
went on to raise taxes by an additional $9 billion. In a poll of key
Minnesota House districts released by my organization, the Minnesota
Private Business Council, those new taxes are opposed by over 65% of
voters.

Walz crows about our low unemployment rate, but that reality is driven by
a lot of people retiring from the workforce, an exodus of many workers out
of the state, and a lot of COVID-relief dollars still sloshing around the
state. An unbiased look at the data shows that Minnesota�s long-term
economy is at the most precarious moment in its history, substantially
driven by the anti-jobs policies of the far left.

On crime, liberals in St. Paul for years told us COVID-19 was the cause of
the most violent period in Minnesota�s history, but murders statewide in
2022, well after COVID dissipated, were still 75% higher than in 2019,
before the pandemic. In Minneapolis, murders are nearly 50% higher than in
2019. And, also in Minneapolis, 23 cars are being stolen every day. Yet
Walz responded to the continued crime epidemic by letting criminals out
even earlier.

On basic government functions, Minnesota is living through the worst
period of financial mismanagement and fraud in its history. We have a 14-
mile track of light rail, the Southwest Light Rail, that is $1 billion
over budget and a decade late. We had the Feeding Our Future fraud in
which $250 million were given away to fraudsters despite numerous red
flags.

Preceding Walz, there have been the other extraordinary failures of the
Department of Human Services in which hundreds of millions of dollars were
overpaid, uncollected, or otherwise lost to fraud. And Walz has responded
with a few ad-hoc changes that amount to moving around the deck chairs on
the Titanic.

On education, only half of Minnesota kids are proficient in reading and
math, with steep drops beginning before the pandemic and continuing
throughout Walz�s tenure. That statistic, and the consequences for our
kids and our state, should haunt every public official. But no solutions
are forthcoming from our governor who loves to remind everyone of his
background as a teacher.

Why is Walz failing so dramatically? The policies he has adopted are so
kooky (and the response to crises so slow) that one is tempted to
attribute them to the influence of the products regulated by the
aforementioned Office of Cannabis Management.

But no, the cause isn�t any substance. The cause is our governor�s
willingness to turn over the governance of our state to extremists like
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, U.S. Rep.
Ilhan Omar, and Attorney General Keith Ellison. And so Minnesota is led
down the path of tax hikes despite a $19 billion surplus, crushing burdens
on small business, defunding police and kicking them out of our schools,
and inaction in the face of historic challenges.

The problem with Walz isn�t occasional mistakes. The problem is his
destructive, San Francisco-style policies that have had catastrophic
consequences for Minnesota families, workers, and small businesses.
Minnesota is a great state with a proud and worthy history, but it needs a
governor who rejects far-left extremism and instead delivers the common-
sense solutions Minnesotans need.

Walz has an opportunity to change course in the 2024 legislative session.
Minnesotans should demand he does.

https://www.growthmn.com/local-view-mistakes-are-one-thing-catastrophic-
failures-another-for-walz/

On Mon, 23 Sep 2024 18:13:11 -0000 (UTC), "P. Coonan" <nospam@ix.netcom.com>
wrote:

>I don’t think Minnesotans really care that much about a public official’s
>occasional stumbles. They do care about persistent catastrophic failures,
>though, and Walz is delivering those in spades.
>
>
>
>Let’s go through the list.

Let's not and say we did.

"I don't care about you, I just want your vote." -- Donald Trump

--

Today's two reasons to not vote for Trump in 43 days.

07) Trump extreme conservative judicial appointments.
1 in 3 American women now live in a state with an abortion ban.
08) One of Trump's SCOTUS nominees, Bret Kavanaugh, was
accused of sexual assault by multiple women.
The only other SCOTUS justice to be so accused was
Clarence Thomas, also a noted conservative.

A north Minneapolis man is accused of strangling and threatening to stab a 14-year-old girl and punching her in the face several times before sexually assaulting her in April, according to a Hennepin County criminal complaint.

https://alphanews.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Abdifetah-Ali-Kalif-Source_-Hennepin-County-Sheriff-630x420.png
Abdifetah Ali Kalif, Source: Hennepin County Sheriff

WARNING: This report contains graphic details that may be upsetting to some

A north Minneapolis man is accused of strangling and threatening to stab a 14-year-old girl and punching her in the face several times before sexually assaulting her in April, according to a Hennepin County criminal complaint.

The incident reportedly happened after 8 p.m. on April 21, 2019, after the victim said she was picked up at a friend’s house in south Minneapolis by a male she met online and another individual who was driving the vehicle.

The man, later identified as Abdifetah Ali Kalif, 18, climbed into the back seat after the vehicle drove away and began pulling away the clothing of the girl who said that Kalif grabbed her by the throat and pulled out a knife and threatened to stab her. The girl said she became afraid and thought she was going to die so she stopped fighting back. The girl said that when Kalif was not able to achieve sexual penetration he became angry and punched her several times in the face and then forced her to perform oral sex on him. She said that they drove in the area of northeast Minneapolis before the driver brought her back to her friend’s apartment, the complaint said.

The victim’s friend and the friend’s mother both observed the girl’s head and face injuries when she was dropped off back at their home around 10 p.m., and the girl told them she’d been sexually assaulted. The complaint stated that the girl and her parent reported the sexual assault to police two days later, at which time the victim was observed to have bruising and swelling on her face and eyes. DNA swabs were obtained from the victim and a subsequent medical report confirmed that the victim had a bone fracture to her eye socket.

The complaint further stated that the girl gave police her attacker’s Snapchat handle and said that he was a student at South High School. Kalif was subsequently identified by name when police showed a Snapchat profile picture the victim had identified as her attacker to a South High School resource officer who confirmed his identity. Kalif was also positively identified in a photo by the victim’s friend.

Kalif was arrested on June 25 and in a post-Miranda statement to law enforcement admitted that he’d picked up the victim and that he hit her because she “wasted his time and lied to him,” the complaint said. Kalif acknowledged that the victim tried to get out of the car, so he locked the doors and hit her. Police showed Kalif a picture of the girl with the injures she reported from the assault, and he acknowledged that she was the girl he hit but denied causing her injuries. Kalif also stated that he did not initially meet the girl to have sex, but that he did tell her to give him oral sex, and that after he “smacked” her and she complied.

Kalif was formally charged the next day with one count of felony first-degree criminal sexual conduct involving penetration and injury under use of force or coercion and was held on $500,000 bail without conditions or $100,000 with conditions. The maximum penalty listed on the complaint is 30 years in prison and/or a $40,000 fine.

Court records show that Kalif posted a non-cash bond after his initial court appearance and that he has made several requests for a [language] interpreter prior to subsequent court hearings in the case.

Kalif, who’s address is listed in the complaint as a Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) residence on the 1500 block of Girard Avenue North, had a motion hearing last week and was again ordered conditionally released by Judge Nicole A. Engisch. Kalif is not currently listed in custody in Hennepin County and is scheduled to appear at another motion hearing on Oct. 15.

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https://alphanews.org/minneapolis-man-charged-with-sexual-assault-of-14-year-old-he-met-online/