Wednesday there are two public hearings scheduled for the MERC Rochester Natural Gas Pipeline, PUC Docket number G-011/GP-15-858.  You can look up the filings on this PUC docket — GO HERE — and search for 15-858 (15 is the year, 858 is the docket number).

Show up!  Very few people commented on the environmental review, and this is the routing case, where comments are needed — the environmental review scoping and CEA comments will not necessarily be taken into account.  Everyone needs to bring them to the judge’s attention!

This project is a high pressure natural gas connector line around the south, southwest and western edge of Rochester, with the purpose of providing natural gas to a new natural gas generating plant at the Westside Energy Station.  This would involve routing a pipeline near existing homes and planned developments.  This is an existing problem in Kasson and Byron, where that huge line paralleling Hwy. 14 runs right through people’s yards — communities platted over it, homes were built, and for new homes, there’s no disclosure requirement!  That is obscene, and should be crminal.  Rochester and Olmsted Counties should not put themselves in a similar situation.

Those supporting Trump, do consider the words and advice of Republican Ohio Gov. Kasich and the Pope, links below.

The Republicans could have had a viable candidate in Ohio Gov. Kasich, but noooooooo.  The good news is that Drumpf doesn’t have the votes to win tomorrow. Yesterday, he showed his hateful rejection of refugees, his plan to stop immigration, and it elicited cheers from the crowd — what would those supporters’ grandparents think of his vitrolic statements. I listened to the entire speech, if you could call it that — he used such disjointed, repetitive hook-laden inflammatory words, started with a bashing of the organizers of the event, outright lies saying Clinton wants to cut Social Security and Medicare — where does he get these ideas? It was also painful to listen to because he cannot speak, it was stream of (un)consciousness where he’d jump on one topic and just throw words out, and suddenly jump to another. I wish there were transcripts of his “speeches” to analyze, because I’d think, I’d hope, that supporters would try to make sense of what he says, because it can’t be done. There’s no substance. Only incendiary jumbled rhetoric of code words repeated over and over.

The Pope had a few things to say about this candidate recently:

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not the gospel,” the Pope told journalists who asked his opinion on Trump’s proposals to halt illegal immigration.

“I say only that this man is not a Christian if he thinks like that.”

Trump’s responded, of course, he is unable to restrain himself, and he responded lashing out, not an ounce of reflection.

From Time on yesterday’s Trump visit:

Kasich has for a while been alerting voters about Trump’s failings, his shortcomings, and how unqualified and dangerous Trump is — that he is not fit or qualified to be President. A former POW says it well in this new Kasich ad about Drumpf:

As this election approaches, I’m thinking of my mother, a forever Democrat who supported Shirley Chisholm’s presidential run, Harry Davis for Mayor, and who would have loved to be able to vote for a woman for president, although “voting for a woman” wouldn’t be the determining factor.  She was independent long before that was accepted in polite society, struggled against societal constraints, joined the army and worked her way through college, a B.S. in nursing, licensed R.N., and was working towards her Masters in Nursing Administration (until my father said “No wife of mine is going to work,” which stopped her for a while, to long.).  She organized the hospital for a mining company out east after the war ended, and then moved back to the Midwest and back to the U of M.  She would joyfully vote for Clinton.

My father, on the other hand, was an old school Republican, who supported Nixon, who loved Reagan, but maybe our 70s dinner-table “discussions” had some impact, because during Bush II, he took up giving the finger to the TV every time Bush was on.  He so disliked Bush’s war, both of the Bush’s wars, and thought Bush II was an idiot.  The 2016 election?  There is no way my Republican father would have supported Trump, just too crass, hateful, and hypocritical.  I’m sure dear ol’ dad would hold his nose and vote for Clinton, because “NO TRUMP” is not an option on the ballot. And I’m sure that many dyed-in-the-wool Republicans will do the same.

David Overland, what do you think?

#bluevotesmatter