by Tony Petrangelo

Jun 24, 2012, 10:00 AM

The Weekly Wrap 6-24

♣ ICYMI, yesterday we announced “Thanks, General Mills!” It’s a  food drive to thank General Mills for coming out in opposition to the anti-family amendment.

Thanks, General Mills was inspired by none other than Minnesotans for Marriage’s Andy Parrish, who thought that a good idea for a boycott would be to have people go buy a bunch of General Mills products and give them away. From his email:

Starting Tuesday June 26th through Friday June 29th we will be holding ‘Dump General Mills rallies’ across from their headquarters from noon to 2:00 pm each day. Join us. Bring your friends. We’re asking you to bring your General Mills products from home and dump it in our trailer – we will be donating the food to local food shelves. Let’s send a message to all companies in Minnesota – we won’t tolerate this. We will fight back.

While they may think they’re being super smart and creative and all, Steve points out the obvious:

Andy’s little action here is going to do two things: 1) increase the sales of General Mills products, and 2) make contributions to local food shelves.

What’s not to like?

Since it’s such a good idea, and we’re never above stealing peoples good ideas, we’ve decided to run with it and do the same thing! So this Thursday, bring some General Mills products to Drinking Liberally and we’ll gather them all up and donate them to a local food shelf which has yet to be determined.

Drinking Liberally is every Thursday from 6-9pm at the 331 Club, which is located at the corner of 13th and University Avenues N.E. in Minneapolis.

If you don’t want to stay for the fun at Drinking Liberally, there will be curb-side drop off for your donations. You may have to actually stop your car though, I don’t know if throwing your donation out the window as you drive by is a good idea.

♣ Also, tune into the LeftMN Radio Hour today on AM950 at 2pm to hear our discussion with Jeff Wilfahrt about his journey from father to political candidate. It’s certainly worth the listen.

If you can’t tune in, you can listen to the station via their app on iDevices and Robot types of phones.

We will also be posting a podcasted version of said show on the website here at some point today because we are a full service internetting operation!

♣ On Tuesday Joe Kimball put up a nice article about the behind the scenes machinations of political parties working until the last minute to fill all possible legislative races with candidates, focusing on one specific example of such a thing, the candidacy of Greg Pariseau in house district 38B.

FWIW, in Senate races this year there are three with no candidate of one party, all of those no shows belonging to the GOP. In House races there are also three with no candidates of one party, but two of those no shows belong to the DFL.

♣ Joe Bodell at the Minnesota Progressive Project has been doggedly following the ongoing McLeod county GOP meltdown/fiasco/situation.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story; it begins here and continues here.

♣ Fundraising reports for independent expenditure groups were due on Tuesday. I covered the money being raised and spent on the amendments, and while we haven’t yet seen the reports of the individual candidates, we have got a chance to see how much money outside groups have raised for legislative races this year.

The short version, DFL #winning, GOP #fail.

♣ Writing at Minnpost David Schultz explains why even if the Photo Voter ID amendment ends up on the ballot and even if it passes, it’s almost certain that the issue will end up in court almost immediately after the election.

Once there, he see’s many more ways for it to eventually get thrown out. Let’s hope his Lawyering knowledge is as good as his Political Sciencing.

♣ The Minnesota Senate decided (not that they had a choice) to fork over $85k to pay for legal bills related to the Michael Brodkorb employment termination slash Amy Koch inappropriate behavior with a subordinate ongoing fiasco.

This story is the gift that just keeps giving and the fact that it hasn’t gotten settled yet and instead is likely to be hanging around till well after the election… well it’s something that just warms the cockles of your heart.

This is also a great opportunity to break out an oldie but goodie: