First Ever Hockey-themed Gubernatorial Race Ad?

A hockey-themed gubernatorial-race ad caught the eye of this Hockeymama - how could it not?  Made by the campaign for Jeff Johnson for Governor, it features some good stick-handling and nice shots on goal, and the message it conveys isn't so bad, either.

Jeff Johnson's website: JohnsonforGovernor.org, describes the candidate as focusing on three issues: "Jobs, Education and Making Government Work."  These are nice goals, but what specifically is Jeff Johnson promising to do for Minnesota if elected?

According to his website:

JOBS

My goal will be to make Minnesota the best place to start or expand a business – small or large – in the Upper Midwest. We will not roll over for South Dakota or Wisconsin any more.

Whether that means reducing the burden of government regulations on job creators, setting competitive tax levels, discouraging lawsuit abuse or avoiding corporate welfare that picks winners and losers, Minnesota needs to be a place where small businessmen and women and entrepreneurs actually choose to do business because it makes economic sense for them to be here.

EDUCATION

We have a proud history in Minnesota of providing a great education to most of our kids. It’s time we provided that great education to all of our kids.

There’s been enough handwringing over the years about the shameful achievement gap in Minnesota between white students and students of color; we must have the guts to take whatever actions are necessary to give every parent the chance to send their kids to a great school.

MAKING GOVERNMENT WORK

Minnesotans are very generous people and most of us are absolutely willing to pay taxes to help the less fortunate among us get on their feet. The problem is, many of the programs we fund don’t produce that result.

On my first day as Governor I will start the process of a top to bottom audit of every program funded by Minnesota taxpayers – starting with our human service programs. The ones that can show they change people’s lives for the better, we will celebrate and bolster. The ones that cannot, we will end.

Let’s make government work in Minnesota.

Looks like a pretty good plan, especially the idea to audit every taxpayer-funded program.  Hopefully that also includes all the school districts that accept millions of taxpayer dollars every year.

There are others running for governor as well, including Scott Honour, Kurt Zellers and Dave Thompson. More research on each of the candidates will be necessary before MNHockeyMama decides which one seems like the best choice for Minnesota.

A great place to check out all the candidates will be at tonight's MN Republican Gubernatorial Candidates' Forum held at The Mermaid Event Center from 7-9pm.

Former Senate candidate Kurt Bills has just endorsed businessman Scott Honour as his pick for Minnesota Governor; it seems a bit premature to be endorsing any of the candidates, but apparently Kurt Bills likes what he sees in Scott Honour's potential as a candidate against Governor Dayton.  The rest of us would be advised to attend tonight's Candidates' Forum and do a little more research before settling on one candidate as Bills already has; though so far for this HockeyMama, Jeff Johnson is leading the pack.

Take America Back

It's been a while since I went political here, but Hillary Clinton finally testifying in front of the Senate combined with his majesty's coronation this week has prompted a need to say a few things.

First, we have only ourselves to blame for the re-election of PBHO.  The choice of Romney was a poor one, dictated by the GOP's little understood need to follow union rules of seniority when picking Presidential Candidates.  Only the fact that Romney picked Paul Ryan as his VP Candidate saved him from getting beaten worse than he did in November.  I know that I personally wasn't supportive of Romney until he picked Ryan.  (I was more excited about the idea that Ryan would be VP than anything else, actually.)  Also, whoever told both Ryan and Romney to back off Biden and Obama during the debates was foolish. They should have gone in there with their debate guns blazing and verbally taken them down.  What did they have to lose other than the election? Which is what happened anyway.  Perhaps if they had gone balls out and attacked the net, the American people would have seen the two people in power for what they are: liars and frauds and taken another look at the GOP pair? Instead, Romney went on the offense in only one debate, which lifted his polling numbers, but then backed down in the subsequent debates.  Why?  Did the powers that be go after him for his brilliant performance during the first debate?  Or did he get threats along the lines of the ones that Glenn Beck deals with on a daily basis?  No matter what happened, the fiery Romney of the first debate all but disappeared in the rest.

Part of the issue also was the fact that aside from Romney, there were no other truly viable candidates in the Republican Primaries.  We were offered Ron Paul: Libertarian, firebrand, crazy uncle who is entertaining during Thanksgiving dinner but a little scary too; Newt - been there done that cheated on my wife - Gingrich (although I would have paid good money to watch him debate Obama just for the sheer entertainment value it would have provided); Gary Johnson: "I'm a Libertarian but not like Ron Paul bring on the Occupy Wall Street dirtbags because I'm all in support of them"; Rick "I have 11 kids and counting don't I look good, ever see my wife? no because she's too tired out from raising all those kids and boy, I have soft feminine hands and like to attack Michele Bachmann whenever I'm allowed to speak"; Michele Bachmann: has more backbone than 90% of the Republicans in Congress but is known for shooting off her mouth a little too vehemently on the social issues and therefore giving the MSM extra ammo in getting the lazy libs who know more about the doings of Snooki than our government more reason to hate her; Tim Pawlenty, former MN Governor who decided that raising taxes on cigs were actually "fees" and believed in climate change until he decided to run for President and then changed his mind on climate change and who is now a lobbyist - there's integrity for you. Herman Cain was in there for about a minute until he faced a dual attack by Republicans and the Left for supposed sexual harassment (which once they got him out of the primaries mysteriously disappeared) of his employees.  (I would have voted for Herman Cain given the chance.)

Seriously, looking at the people we were offered as choices, it's no wonder that Romney stood out as the best of the bunch, even with his Romneycare background, his TV evangelist hair and ability to morph into a used-cars-salesman swarmy demeanor.  Where in the heck was Allen West or Rand Paul or Darrell Issa? Why couldn't anyone get Scott Walker or Jindal to run?  Why were the only people running has-beens or lacked so much integrity and/or charisma that there was no way they'd be able to beat Obama at thumb wrestling let alone a national election?  Does no one actually care where the country goes anymore?

Now we're stuck with four more years of serious attacks on our Constitution and liberties.  What are we going to do about it? Why hasn't anyone in Congress found the balls to stand up to Obama and write up Articles of Impeachment for his use of Executive Orders, Benghazi or Fast and Furious?  Why are all but Rand Paul and Ron Johnson letting Hillary Clinton off the hook for Benghazi? Why?

Here's the answer: Most of the people in America today don't even know what happened in Benghazi because the MSM has let it drift away like Hillary's concussion.  And if they do know, they have no idea what to do about it.  Those of us who do know what is happening also have families and jobs to do and we're busy and feeling defeated after two years of the psychological warfare of the national election.  Those of us who joined the Tea Party to help usher in a GOP controlled House of Representatives found out that we were held in contempt by those in power in our party.  We fought against Obamacare and it barely passed because we were standing there, holding our representatives and senators accountable.  But two years later, they were so full of their own power that they stopped listening to us and only cared about their re-elections. And for the most part, we as good little Republicans voted them back in for fear that if we didn't some crazy spending Democrat would take that spot and then we'd be really screwed.

We're already really screwed. Until we stand up and take back control of our American system, things will continue to slide toward Obama's vision of America, which is a little too close to the America envisioned by Ayn Rand in "Atlas Shrugged" for my taste.  We have no Galt's Gulch where we can steal away and begin anew, waiting for America to be brought to her knees before reappearing and taking her back.  We have to begin to take her back now.  We must get the Conservative message out to the people in a way that they can understand it - so that it makes sense to them.  Unfortunately, we may already be too late.