Home Truth

Sheila Kihne runs the outstanding blog The Activist Next Door and she has a fantastic piece that amounts to a very unauthorized biographical sketch of Mark Dayton. It's chock full of history about the candidate that a lot of people would prefer you not know. There's just a ton of things I could excerpt, but I do want to call attention to this section:

Here are two facts:

1. During his very first job out-of-college as "a teacher"-Mark Dayton couldn't handle the pressure- he took time off to protest and he quit in the middle of a school year for "personal reasons."

2. During his last job as U.S. Senator- He couldn't handle the pressure in D.C.-- he shut down his office and started drinking to deal with the stress.

The media has covered for him, but worse than that they've actually lied for him. For years every profile has perpetuated the myth that Dayton is hard-working. He may be a hard-campaigner (who isn’t?), that doesn't mean he's a hard-worker. I know people who are great at getting jobs, but once that goal has been met—they get bored, complacent, or overwhelmed. He reminds me of Obama in this regard. He'll work his butt off to accomplish a goal that involves some self-fulfillment, but when reality doesn't match his expectations, he simply can't handle it.

With a $6 Billion budget deficit...we need somebody who can handle it.

Damn straight. We've elected some really odd people in recent history, but for all their faults, neither Jesse Ventura nor Al Franken were mentally ill. Dayton is a perennial candidate with a trust fund, an Ole Savior or Edmond Hou-Seye with nearly limitless resources and no brakes. It would be madness to elect this man Governor.

And don't forget to read the whole thing -- there's more, a whole lot more, that you need to know about Mark Dayton.