The Progressive/Socialist wing of the Democratic Party is in a funk.  They are feeling blue.  Their shiny new president isn’t proving to being adept at much of anything.   In Minnesota the face of their party is a refugee from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’  Their dominance in state politics is over.  Their message of ‘eat the rich’ and then the kind of rich and then the rest of us isn’t selling as well as it looked on paper.  What most disturbs the far Left is the Republicans aren’t the spineless saps they used to be.  So, Lori Sturdevant voices the frustration felt by her tribal leaders over at the DFL headquarters. 

Sturdevant compares what happened during the Dayton Shutdown here in Minnesota with the national debt limit fight.  In the Star Tribune piece entitled, ‘This showdown is familiar,’ she laments:

“There’s a president [Dayton, in the Minnesota rendition] willing to compromise, to the consternation of his most liberal supporters. A House speaker who seemingly would like to make an historic deal, but is prevented from doing so by his newest right-wing members. The Republicans characterizing a tax increase on only the wealthiest citizens as a tax increase on everyone. And the nation heading toward a cliffhanger moment.”

While the scenario itself is analogous, her characterization is at war with the truth.  Dayton refused to budge on tax increases and an enormous increase in spending.  He was the one that refused to deal.  He simply sat back, took his meds, ate his state-funded cook’s breakfast and like an angry Gordon Ramsay on Hell’s Kitchen shouted, “Shut it down.  Shut it down!”  Republicans worked and compromised with themselves over and over.  A large portion of the population that is sick and tired of governmental overspending rallied and fought against too much government.  We drew a line in the sand and said emphatically, “No New Taxes” because once that Rubicon is crossed we are all doomed.

Like the national debate, there is no real cliffhanger, except removing beer from shelves.  Should the federal government not raise the debt ceiling, we can still pay our bills, send out Social Security, and pay the military.  What we can’t afford to pay for without borrowing are important programs and studies like the one involving gay men’s penis size and sexual health.

The following is an explanation of what we are spending our borrowed money on.  The first vital finding was that gay men with smaller penises are more likely to be bottoms.  Here’s another riveting finding.  From the Daily Caller, July 19, 2011:

“Another discovery from the research: men with smaller penises were more likely to be psychologically troubled than those with larger genitalia. The goal of the study was to understand the “real individual-level consequences of living in a penis-centered society.”

Not only does the absurd spending of money on this nonsense infuriate me.  The very idea of using gay men as lab rats to figure out spurious correlations between body image issues and psychological makeup is akin to phrenology, the kooky idea that you can ‘read’ a personality by measuring the bumps on a person’s head.  This isn’t science, it’s Mad magazine or The Onion. 

That’s what we are missing by not raising the debt ceiling.  We are missing out on progressive social experiments that have little impact for the good and can only lead to funding more stupid experiments to ‘verify’ the results.  But, Sturdevant is weepy over the loss of the Democratic Party’s ability to do whatever silly notion pops into their skulls.

“New Republican majorities in St. Paul brought with them legislative agendas that seemed to spring directly from the American Legislative Exchange Council, a national network of conservative legislators.”  Where the hell were they supposed to get legislative ideas, the American Communist Party?  The Humphrey Institute?  Oh wait.  Are they actually different entities now?  Sturdevant isn’t so incensed that Republicans have conservative ideas.  What makes her spitting mad is they aren’t just rolling over and playing dead as often.

Sturdevant longs for those hazy, lazy days when a good progressive/socialist experiment would just pass the state legislature.  The usually Republican governor would veto.   The Democrats would say ‘pretty please’ and then the governor would cave.  Or, she misses when RINO’s would stand on principles, her principles, and just water down whatever dumb idea happened to run in the Strib that day. 

Sturdevant wails, with a corncob pipe hanging from her quivering lips:

“The turnaround from the situation 35 years ago is amazing. Then Minnesota’s GOP was so keen on distancing itself from the Watergate-era Washington GOP that it changed its name to Independent-Republican.

The “Independent” name was dropped in 1995. The independent spirit? I’m hoping for its revival.”

No.  What Sturdevant wants are more RINO’s like Check Bouncer Durenberger or Quisling Carlson.  She doesn’t want anything ‘independent’ at all.  She wants everyone in government working toward one purpose, making people’s lives more dependent on THEM.  That’s her firm and steady belief.  If we just had some wise philosopher king telling us all what to eat, where to live, what to do, and when to bow, we’d all be much happier.  We’d have her perfect little Utopian society.

Of course, she could always just move to Cuba or Venezuela.  Then she’d be in her dream home.

In the meantime, we are done with RINO’s and done with Fabian socialist experiments and we’re washing our hands of people with ideas like hers.  You’re going to have to get used to more of us watching, listening, and acting to have an honest, efficient government.

Crossposted at Looktruenorth.com