I am curious if you agree with hrw, Kizzie. I am not sure if I have ever read a disagreement you have had with him. I often disagree with him, but don’t comment necessarily.
Kathaleena – I agree with HRW on some things, but not on others.
As for last night’s comment from him, I don’t think I understood it in the same as you did. I am hoping he will come back and perhaps explain what he meant.
The fraud is rampant, and we’ll known to Dems and the media, who turn a blind eye. In this case, like with Walz, they aid and abet the fraud at every opportunity. Minnesota isn’t an outlier, it’s a typical Dem run state.
It’s simple, it’s called accountability. Either you provide the numbers, or you lose the funding.
Oh, and so you know, many of those receiving benefits in multiple states are not one individual. It’s numerous illegals using the same person’s stolen ID in numerous states.
“It is contemptible that legacy media outlets like @NPR, @nytimes, @ABC and @washingtonpost are willing to invest this much energy to cultivate sympathy for the terrorist who shot two members of the National Guard last week, while simultaneously demeaning the death of Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, and the serious injury of Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, by pushing preposterous partisan talking points trying to blame Trump, rather than the shooter, for the tragedy.”
“A new watchdog investigation found large-scale systemic failures that allow fake identities, dead people, and massive improper use of Social Security numbers to receive Obamacare subsidies.
GAO conducted covert operations which included creating fictitious identities. In fact, 100% of fake applicants were approved by Obamacare’s marketplace as recently as late 2024. 90% of fake applicants continue to receive coverage in 2025.
The result: Wasteful federal spending on subsidies for enrollees who are not eligible. Harm and unexpected costs for consumers. Loss of access to medical providers and medications, higher copays and deductibles, or forced repayment.”
A troll is someone who posts in such a manner as to draw comments and start excessive arguing. One could also call certain social media accounts as trolls as they are designed to increase engagement in any manner. A lot of the fake X accounts that were found to be from Nigeria, Serbia, Russia, India etc but pretended to be American MAGA fit the bill as troll accounts.
I normally come to this site when I have time and if I find something worth commenting on will offer my opinion or a different side to the story than the one offered by the right side of the internet. If someone responds, and I have time I will respond. If there’s no response, not a problem I’m not going to post in a manner to annoy or draw comments.
Yesterday, AJ posted that Hegseth etc were finding less boats off the coast the Venezuela. Some may say bombing a few boats served as a deterrence. There’s several other views one could have of the situation; for example, the US had bombed fishing boats and now the fishermen were staying home so all the bombing did was deter fishing. That could be true as there’s no proof that Venezeula is a major drug exporter — that’s Columbia, Mexico, maybe Bolivia.
The other view to be expressed is one that I’ve seen on the left side of the internet — there is dissension in the military and defense dept. as to these strikes especially as it appears Hesgeth is throwing the Admiral under the bus over the “double tap”. Killing survivors has been against maritime law for several centuries and was designated a war crime about 100 years ago. Although I don’t think there is any danger of US servicemen being dragged to the Hague, I do think there has been some push back by the Navy and is probably the reason Hegseth is not as active as he was before.
In terms of the SNAP fraud, i was responding to one of AJ’s last posts which was about general SNAP fraud across several states, not to the posts which were about Minnesota. SNAP is a 100 billion dollar program per year — if fraud is about a billion dollars a year, its only 1% a relatively small number. Fraud and waste in the private sector is usually estimated at 5% so 1% is fairly good. Now a billion is a lot of money but on a percentage basis this isn’t much. And for the most part we’re talking about people trying to get more food. In contrast medicare and medicaid fraud is usually done by corporations and insurance companies for higher profit.
I ignored the Minnesota posts because it was a pile on. Every now and then right wing posts will hyper focus and try to create a “scandal” and for the most part it will fizzle. Thus I usually ignore these types of posts until they have legs.
I was a little curious why the focus on Minnesota lately. Was it because Tim Waltz had the nerve to run against Trump and it was personal? Was it because Minnesota is a Democratic state? Perhaps because it rates highly for almost any metric rating quality of life and Republicans want to cut it down? It really is one of the best places in the US to live.
And then I watched the news while visiting a friend in a nursing home…. Trump is sending ICE to Minneapolis to crack down on Somali migrants or as he calls them garbage. And thus now I know why the focus — an ICE crackdown in the Somali community. Its rather cynical of both the Trump admin and of me. They bash the poor to get at the Somali community and justify the presence of ICE.
After all does the Trump admin really care about corruption — look at who he has pardoned since becoming president this term. It includes people convicted of fraud in both the private and public sector. So there’s concern about SNAP fraud but not wire fraud, campaign funds fraud, bribery, tax fraud, insurance fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, payroll tax evasion, etc…..
I scanned a list of pardons to get the above list, there’s also a few drug trafficking charges that have been pardoned including the former president of Honduras, which brings me back to Venezuela — does the Trump admin really care about drug trafficking or is it about the world’s largest oil reserve.
HRW, I strongly disagree that Minneapolis or Minnesota in general is one of the best places in the USA to live. For one thing it is simply too cold and snowy; when I grew up, living in Arizona, we got more Minnesota license plates in winter than almost anywhere else (probably more California ones, but they came from just next door and weren’t specifically fleeing winter). Also, both the mayor of Minneapolis and governor of the state are about the worst politicians imaginable–weak and corrupt. The travesty of the George Floyd event in 2020 (cops being framed and tried for murder because a criminal died in the hospital shortly after being arrested, and then the city being beset by riots and murder for a long while) and the mayor’s pathetic response was enough to keep me from ever even wanting to visit the city, let alone live there. Of course Minnesota and Alaska have really been on my short list all my life; in college those were the primary two states whose residents I didn’t even consider dating, as they were the two states whose weather made them most obviously not a possible place for me to live.
Cheryl – I disagree about the George Floyd death. That officer knelt on him for eight or nine minutes, well after he had been subdued and had tried to cry out for help. Others were begging the officer to let up the pressure on him. The officer remained with his knee on him, much longer than procedure dictated and well after he had moved. The officer had his hands in his pockets and was smiling, which to me indicated that he knew that Floyd was no threat at that point.
I love MN. What I hate is what has been done to MN under poor leadership and the DFL which had both legislators and the governorship. It is positively disgusting. If there is ‘hyper’ reporting on it now, it is because the mainstream media was finally forced to report on part of it.
Of course, the crime is also reaching out to the suburbs, where I know a family whose car was stolen right from their own driveway. Then there was our pastor who had to flee from the drug cartel a few years ago.
I have lived here all my life. I don’t need someone else to tell me how wonderful it is or that what is happening here is a figment of my imagination.
Cheryl is exactly right about the riots and the allowing of a police station to be burnt down. The whole area was devastated. There have been a whole lot of actions that are wrong.
Cheryl — I have to agree with the weather .I spend two winters in north west Iowa, the wind chill would kill you and Minnesota is worse. Southern Ontario is warmer and as I age, even winters here are beginning to annoy me.
However, Minnesota consistently tops any metric for standard of living. In the human development index, it’s the third highest state. If it was an independent country, it would rank 4th in the world between Denmark and Germany. These are insane numbers ….. subtract the climate, and it would probably be the best place to live in North America.
The HDI is an index that combines life expectancy, infant mortality, income, education, etc into one number or grade. It has its problems —- it relies too much on GDP per capita and doesn’t penalise for inequality — but it’s the gold standard for indices.
Kizzie, I had perhaps the advantage of having chosen not to watch the viral George Floyd video; mistakenly I thought he died during the video (that was a rather wide misconception) and I didn’t want to watch a video in which someone “got killed.” When the bodycam videos came out many weeks later, I ended up watching those, and by the time you have watched the entire interaction and get to the portion that went viral, the whole impression is very different.
Several things are important to the question about whether George Floyd was “killed by racist cops”:
(1) The autopsy found no evidence of strangulation or asphyxiation. It did find heart disease and lethal levels of drugs in his system.
(2) Floyd started saying “I can’t breathe” well before he was put on the ground.
(3) The officers called EMS really early on, but EMS took too long to show up.
(4) Floyd didn’t die till later, in the hospital.
(5) Only two of the four officers were white. The arresting officer was not white.
(6) There was a very similar arrest of Floyd a year previously (including Floyd swallowing drugs to avoid having them found on him).
(7) The restraint used was exactly following procedure, and the officer was not actually on Floyd’s neck. (Those who testified otherwise in the trial perjured themselves.)
(8) The jurors were more or less threatened that a guilty verdict was a required outcome.
It can be argued that some of the “proper procedures” might not have been ideal, but that wasn’t a question for the arresting officers but for those who trained them. Clearly the arrest contributed to his death (both because it was the arrest that made him choose to swallow pills and because the arrest itself could have aggravated his underlying heart conditions), but the police officers didn’t murder George Floyd, and it was a huge injustice to charge them with murder after the autopsy and the bodycams proved it wasn’t.
One fascinating fact from the video that I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else: Floyd was “hooked up to oxygen” in the ambulance, but the oxygen tube was not actually connected.
We have had several incidents of police just doing their jobs undermined or put through trials in the name of ‘equity.’ I have no desire for anyone being discriminated against, whether white or some other distinction. We have swung the pendulum way too far the other way. This is just as harmful for those who now can do no wrong because of their skin color. We see it in the schools, too, and are graduating students who cannot read, write or do math. It is heartbreaking to watch and just plain evil.
Wandering Views 
Thankful for this win:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/republican-matt-van-epps-wins-tennessees-7th-congressional-district/
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https://wng.org/opinions/a-breach-of-trust-in-minnesota-1764711567?mkt_tok=NzEwLVFSUi0yMDkAAAGegqJE5ChuprEYwACv4Mr56thAG6sYUsSZ_RGHqQzHDJTNeT0m6zda8ymG9jTlTKPks6z2Ss5PHd9nzHps0d6TNVbFeSjDB5EeaOE8PD776vz3vA
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I am curious if you agree with hrw, Kizzie. I am not sure if I have ever read a disagreement you have had with him. I often disagree with him, but don’t comment necessarily.
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I noticed that the writer of that piece from World mag is in the same university system in which our son is employed.
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Kathaleena – I agree with HRW on some things, but not on others.
As for last night’s comment from him, I don’t think I understood it in the same as you did. I am hoping he will come back and perhaps explain what he meant.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The fraud is rampant, and we’ll known to Dems and the media, who turn a blind eye. In this case, like with Walz, they aid and abet the fraud at every opportunity. Minnesota isn’t an outlier, it’s a typical Dem run state.
It’s simple, it’s called accountability. Either you provide the numbers, or you lose the funding.
https://x.com/arianajasmine__/status/1995972826025857048?t=bGjjWje_zhNASDp1IL4pzw&s=19
“The Trump administration has announced that they will withhold foodstamp funding from Democrat states UNLESS they give them recipient records.
This is forced food poverty.”
https://x.com/ResisttheMS/status/1995980168054333676?t=jM7sB-XiDtm_B6itzLnOCg&s=19
“USDA Sec. Brooke Rollins has revealed that 800,000 people have now been taken off SNAP.”So much rampant fraud…
We found 186K d*ad people’s SSNs being used. 500K receiving benefits more than twice! We had… people receiving benefits in 6 states.””
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Oh, and so you know, many of those receiving benefits in multiple states are not one individual. It’s numerous illegals using the same person’s stolen ID in numerous states.
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It’s fine…..
After all, who needs American law in New Mogadishu….?
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1995951321535709532?t=X1pAZ0ZxRQuyEYjve6M1HA&s=19
“Minneapolis Mayor Frey says he will not cooperate with ICE, starts speaking Somali mid-speech”
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Minnesota man” Abdimahat Bille Mohamed r*ped a 15-year-old girl at gunpoint and r*ped another woman he met on snapchat.
He struck a plea deal and DID NOT SERVE JAIL TIME.
He just r*ped another woman.
Who could’ve possibly seen this coming?!”
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1995921829316149445?t=XNqsgU78V2NfBqyMLuJ3gw&s=19
LikeLiked by 2 people
Indeed it is….
https://x.com/DrewHolden360/status/1996276273577144607?t=1Q-UBJDEARUnpullt3bfEw&s=19
“It is contemptible that legacy media outlets like @NPR, @nytimes, @ABC and @washingtonpost are willing to invest this much energy to cultivate sympathy for the terrorist who shot two members of the National Guard last week, while simultaneously demeaning the death of Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, and the serious injury of Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, by pushing preposterous partisan talking points trying to blame Trump, rather than the shooter, for the tragedy.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fraud, everywhere govt is.
https://x.com/RepJasonSmith/status/1996287637385060581?t=_uoOZBUTZZAeXeUchJ84xA&s=19
“A new watchdog investigation found large-scale systemic failures that allow fake identities, dead people, and massive improper use of Social Security numbers to receive Obamacare subsidies.
GAO conducted covert operations which included creating fictitious identities. In fact, 100% of fake applicants were approved by Obamacare’s marketplace as recently as late 2024. 90% of fake applicants continue to receive coverage in 2025.
The result: Wasteful federal spending on subsidies for enrollees who are not eligible. Harm and unexpected costs for consumers. Loss of access to medical providers and medications, higher copays and deductibles, or forced repayment.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s fine…..
——
“Democrats as so evil they’ll release murderers onto your streets instead of letting republicans deport them.”
https://x.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1996243940849107192?t=I2uErJ3_pDAJvNwFL06bKQ&s=19
https://x.com/nypost/status/1996173229652640091?t=5_8bPCpwWGMaV7N0wUB7Pg&s=19
“Chilling new details emerge about ‘killer’ illegal migrants sprung from NY jails instead of being handed off to ICE “
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well that’s weird. 🙄
It’s almost like their outrage might be selective and partisan in nature.
https://x.com/WesternLensman/status/1996309867041059054?t=5kQ4rMRYL0OsyJcBF4Tufg&s=19
“Here is Joe Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage.”
Must’ve missed all the selfie video sermons from the media when that happened.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
A troll is someone who posts in such a manner as to draw comments and start excessive arguing. One could also call certain social media accounts as trolls as they are designed to increase engagement in any manner. A lot of the fake X accounts that were found to be from Nigeria, Serbia, Russia, India etc but pretended to be American MAGA fit the bill as troll accounts.
I normally come to this site when I have time and if I find something worth commenting on will offer my opinion or a different side to the story than the one offered by the right side of the internet. If someone responds, and I have time I will respond. If there’s no response, not a problem I’m not going to post in a manner to annoy or draw comments.
Yesterday, AJ posted that Hegseth etc were finding less boats off the coast the Venezuela. Some may say bombing a few boats served as a deterrence. There’s several other views one could have of the situation; for example, the US had bombed fishing boats and now the fishermen were staying home so all the bombing did was deter fishing. That could be true as there’s no proof that Venezeula is a major drug exporter — that’s Columbia, Mexico, maybe Bolivia.
The other view to be expressed is one that I’ve seen on the left side of the internet — there is dissension in the military and defense dept. as to these strikes especially as it appears Hesgeth is throwing the Admiral under the bus over the “double tap”. Killing survivors has been against maritime law for several centuries and was designated a war crime about 100 years ago. Although I don’t think there is any danger of US servicemen being dragged to the Hague, I do think there has been some push back by the Navy and is probably the reason Hegseth is not as active as he was before.
hrw
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In terms of the SNAP fraud, i was responding to one of AJ’s last posts which was about general SNAP fraud across several states, not to the posts which were about Minnesota. SNAP is a 100 billion dollar program per year — if fraud is about a billion dollars a year, its only 1% a relatively small number. Fraud and waste in the private sector is usually estimated at 5% so 1% is fairly good. Now a billion is a lot of money but on a percentage basis this isn’t much. And for the most part we’re talking about people trying to get more food. In contrast medicare and medicaid fraud is usually done by corporations and insurance companies for higher profit.
I ignored the Minnesota posts because it was a pile on. Every now and then right wing posts will hyper focus and try to create a “scandal” and for the most part it will fizzle. Thus I usually ignore these types of posts until they have legs.
I was a little curious why the focus on Minnesota lately. Was it because Tim Waltz had the nerve to run against Trump and it was personal? Was it because Minnesota is a Democratic state? Perhaps because it rates highly for almost any metric rating quality of life and Republicans want to cut it down? It really is one of the best places in the US to live.
And then I watched the news while visiting a friend in a nursing home…. Trump is sending ICE to Minneapolis to crack down on Somali migrants or as he calls them garbage. And thus now I know why the focus — an ICE crackdown in the Somali community. Its rather cynical of both the Trump admin and of me. They bash the poor to get at the Somali community and justify the presence of ICE.
After all does the Trump admin really care about corruption — look at who he has pardoned since becoming president this term. It includes people convicted of fraud in both the private and public sector. So there’s concern about SNAP fraud but not wire fraud, campaign funds fraud, bribery, tax fraud, insurance fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, payroll tax evasion, etc…..
I scanned a list of pardons to get the above list, there’s also a few drug trafficking charges that have been pardoned including the former president of Honduras, which brings me back to Venezuela — does the Trump admin really care about drug trafficking or is it about the world’s largest oil reserve.
hrw
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HRW, I strongly disagree that Minneapolis or Minnesota in general is one of the best places in the USA to live. For one thing it is simply too cold and snowy; when I grew up, living in Arizona, we got more Minnesota license plates in winter than almost anywhere else (probably more California ones, but they came from just next door and weren’t specifically fleeing winter). Also, both the mayor of Minneapolis and governor of the state are about the worst politicians imaginable–weak and corrupt. The travesty of the George Floyd event in 2020 (cops being framed and tried for murder because a criminal died in the hospital shortly after being arrested, and then the city being beset by riots and murder for a long while) and the mayor’s pathetic response was enough to keep me from ever even wanting to visit the city, let alone live there. Of course Minnesota and Alaska have really been on my short list all my life; in college those were the primary two states whose residents I didn’t even consider dating, as they were the two states whose weather made them most obviously not a possible place for me to live.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Cheryl – I disagree about the George Floyd death. That officer knelt on him for eight or nine minutes, well after he had been subdued and had tried to cry out for help. Others were begging the officer to let up the pressure on him. The officer remained with his knee on him, much longer than procedure dictated and well after he had moved. The officer had his hands in his pockets and was smiling, which to me indicated that he knew that Floyd was no threat at that point.
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I love MN. What I hate is what has been done to MN under poor leadership and the DFL which had both legislators and the governorship. It is positively disgusting. If there is ‘hyper’ reporting on it now, it is because the mainstream media was finally forced to report on part of it.
Of course, the crime is also reaching out to the suburbs, where I know a family whose car was stolen right from their own driveway. Then there was our pastor who had to flee from the drug cartel a few years ago.
I have lived here all my life. I don’t need someone else to tell me how wonderful it is or that what is happening here is a figment of my imagination.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Cheryl is exactly right about the riots and the allowing of a police station to be burnt down. The whole area was devastated. There have been a whole lot of actions that are wrong.
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Yes, that part was definitely wrong. My disagreement with the manner of Floyd’s death.
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Cheryl — I have to agree with the weather .I spend two winters in north west Iowa, the wind chill would kill you and Minnesota is worse. Southern Ontario is warmer and as I age, even winters here are beginning to annoy me.
However, Minnesota consistently tops any metric for standard of living. In the human development index, it’s the third highest state. If it was an independent country, it would rank 4th in the world between Denmark and Germany. These are insane numbers ….. subtract the climate, and it would probably be the best place to live in North America.
The HDI is an index that combines life expectancy, infant mortality, income, education, etc into one number or grade. It has its problems —- it relies too much on GDP per capita and doesn’t penalise for inequality — but it’s the gold standard for indices.
hrw
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Kizzie, I had perhaps the advantage of having chosen not to watch the viral George Floyd video; mistakenly I thought he died during the video (that was a rather wide misconception) and I didn’t want to watch a video in which someone “got killed.” When the bodycam videos came out many weeks later, I ended up watching those, and by the time you have watched the entire interaction and get to the portion that went viral, the whole impression is very different.
Several things are important to the question about whether George Floyd was “killed by racist cops”:
(1) The autopsy found no evidence of strangulation or asphyxiation. It did find heart disease and lethal levels of drugs in his system.
(2) Floyd started saying “I can’t breathe” well before he was put on the ground.
(3) The officers called EMS really early on, but EMS took too long to show up.
(4) Floyd didn’t die till later, in the hospital.
(5) Only two of the four officers were white. The arresting officer was not white.
(6) There was a very similar arrest of Floyd a year previously (including Floyd swallowing drugs to avoid having them found on him).
(7) The restraint used was exactly following procedure, and the officer was not actually on Floyd’s neck. (Those who testified otherwise in the trial perjured themselves.)
(8) The jurors were more or less threatened that a guilty verdict was a required outcome.
It can be argued that some of the “proper procedures” might not have been ideal, but that wasn’t a question for the arresting officers but for those who trained them. Clearly the arrest contributed to his death (both because it was the arrest that made him choose to swallow pills and because the arrest itself could have aggravated his underlying heart conditions), but the police officers didn’t murder George Floyd, and it was a huge injustice to charge them with murder after the autopsy and the bodycams proved it wasn’t.
This 100-minute documentary made by a woman who was a reporter in Minneapolis when it all went down is quite helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFPi3EigjFA&list=PL17pRf4P8k9bu1euCoiM0feMEqqHpOC9H&index=5
One fascinating fact from the video that I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere else: Floyd was “hooked up to oxygen” in the ambulance, but the oxygen tube was not actually connected.
LikeLiked by 4 people
We have had several incidents of police just doing their jobs undermined or put through trials in the name of ‘equity.’ I have no desire for anyone being discriminated against, whether white or some other distinction. We have swung the pendulum way too far the other way. This is just as harmful for those who now can do no wrong because of their skin color. We see it in the schools, too, and are graduating students who cannot read, write or do math. It is heartbreaking to watch and just plain evil.
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We have these people who lecture us, of course, and many in the media help them.
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