End of the Charade

It was the Republican's bill.  The bill, whose purpose was described as keeping people safe by increasing the penalties for people who block highways while protesting, was actually a bill designed to punish Black Lives Matter protesters, and African Americans specifically, who had gotten a lot of visibility with their successful Interstate protests in the Twin Cities metro area over the last few years.  If the protesters were whites, protesting on a highway in rural Minnesota against Hillary Clinton, not only would this bill not be proposed in the Minnesota House, most of the same people trying to sell the "it's only about safety" lie would be sprinting to the outstate protest, hoping for a spot in the front, declaring it a fine example of American Democracy at work.

The Democrats couldn't stop the bill in the Minnesota House, but they could voice their dissent as part of the floor debate.  As the floor speeches turned to the DFL, particularly the DFL women, House Minority Leader Melissa Hortman noticed a lot of empty Republican seats.  This was their bill, a bill they were screaming wasn't racist, but as the handful of minority women in the House stood up with rousing speeches, impassioned pleas to not strike down a Constitutional right via financial penalties, many House Republicans were off the floor.  When Hortman got wind of the House GOP playing cards and watching a baseball game in the House anti-chamber, she decided she'd had enough.

Hortman made a "Call of the House," a motion which forces all the House members to the floor.  Her comment was, "I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room, but I think this is an important cause."  It was, and all she was doing was confronting the undeniable disrespect the Minnesota House Republicans were showing for women, minorities, the opposition party and Minnesotans.  THEY weren't taking THEIR own bill's debate seriously.

Republicans jumped at the "white male" element of Hortman's comment. They called her 'racists' (HA), and demanded an apology.  Hortman refused.  Talking down to her, they told her they "forgave her," even though she wasn't asking for their forgiveness.  A few of the Republicans even called for her immediate resignation!  The party which accuses the left off being over sensitive snowflakes were whipping up their own blizzard of self induced, laughable, persecution and hysteria.

There WAS a card game going on in the anti-chamber of the House when Hortman made her "Call of the House." Her comments weren't controversial; they were factual.

The House GOP never once called out Representative Jim Newberger's CLEARLY racist comments from 2015, where he implied the only use for an expanded Northstar commuter line was to take people from North Minneapolis, a predominantly African American part of Minneapolis, to and from the prison in St. Cloud.  Newberger knew his comment was racist.  The MNGOP knew it was racist.  Newberger was booed immediately for saying it. The Minnesota Republicans denied it was racist, never demanded an apology on the House floor, never demanded his resignation.  But a factual description of white men blowing off their responsibility for cards and a baseball game, both being used as justification to purposely be disrespectful to the minority women representing the minority party as they were discussing the GOP's own bill?  The Minnesota Republicans insisted "that was racist against white people!"

And the Minnesota House GOP has ZERO right to call anyone racist, with their litany of racially charged bills they're pushing in 2017.  The aforementioned anti-protester bill, written for the purpose of punishing African Americans as it's primary goal; a 'Stand Your Ground' Bill, designed to make sure the guilty verdict handed down to a white racist who shot 6 African Americans in North Minneapolis, after he went to a protest to try to cause trouble, never happens again; the Gruenhagen bathroom Bill, an anti-transgender bill written from the deepest cauldrons of hatred, designed to persecute and discriminate, written by a twisted, demented man with strange fixations about male and female sexual organs; and the Transportation Bill, designed to punish the Twin Cities metro core, and their minority and poor population, with an undoing of light rail lines already approved, a 40% cut for most of the metro's bus lines, and no major construction upgrades on the roads, just a handful of pet projects for Republican districts only.  Everything the MNGOP does is a rotting banana dipped in racist hatred.

Then there's the last 10,000 years of historically documented white male control, something that isn't instantly reversed with one comment pointing out the truth; undeniable Republican disrespect.

This anti-woman, racially tinged discourtesy is the Republican's new norm. The House GOP lets people leave when women begin talking about the GOP's discriminating legislation, and the few Republicans who stay behind engage in a drone of chatter, designed to ignore the female Representative who has the floor.  It's worse when it's DFL women talking on the house floor, and it's as loud as a high school pep rally when it's the few minority women from the DFL speaking.

Representative Melissa Hortman doesn't need to apologize.  Quite the opposite, but since the misogynist and bigoted Minnesota GOP is only looking for ways they can scream "we're the REAL victims," don't count on it getting better anytime soon.

This is who they are...