Had to run into Minneapolis on labor day weekend to mow the lawn at my “cabin in the ‘hood”, so figured I might as well take in Congressman Keith Ellison’s labor day picnic. Yup, THAT congressman… The avowed moslem and former criminal defense attorney who’s very existence has kept a few teabagger “journalists” employed for years. Now you’d expect his followers who show up for his events to be like minded, filling the parking lot with Priui and the bike racks too.

So I ride in on the R65LS and stow it in a 2/3rds width space left thanks to the Mad Dads widebody ex-ambulance being in the next slot. BTW, the Mad Dads are just that, a group of predominately African American fathers tired of losing their kids to violence. They’re a fixture at most North Minneapolis and adjoining suburban events and at the aftermath of gang shootouts, cooling down the hotheads and directing them to more productive lifestyles. They also do BBQ, which was their contribution to the event. I check back after a bit and not ethat someone has managed to fit a skinny 1700 mm. “asian market” car between me and the MadDads’ widebody van, but skillfully left enough room for my airhead to exit with an inch or three to spare. Check back again and an FT500 thumper has parked behind me on the curve, again leaving me barely but ample space to exit. Bit later a scooter rider shows up with a farkled big Ruckus, takes off the helmet and I see that it’s a Park Board member…. Guess we riders won’t have to worry about tickets from the Park Police!

Now to hear the teabaggers tell it, the Democrats are out to permanently put out the fire of anything even resembling an internal combustion engine. Welll as a democrat, I have to admit we’ve failed miserably at that goal, mostly because we ain’t even tryin”! Heck, if anything, we’re buying and restoring even more cycles and cars and tractors and even engines that ain’t even hooked up to anything, just because they sound and vibrate the ground so cool. Heck, most of our democratic candidates out here have old tractors they play with, old pickups too, our last state senate candidate north of me rides a Gold Wing, the one to the south of me runs a body shop, rides, and has built a whole collection of classic cars. And to add a bit of balance, our house candidate brought a short line railroad back to life and more recently ran our local railroad museum. Our county chair collects Honda stepthroughs and old Dodge trucks, and our treasurer still has a Wellstone bumper sticker on the back of his farm truck… Heck, we look like a car and bike show when we do a parade!

That said, from the gearhead point of view,  there is a dark side to the democrats…. A cadre of environmental extremists that wants to take away your internal combustion engined car or bike even though it gets 40+ MPG on clean renewable fuels. They insist you ride transit or buy an electric car, in fact they’ll even take your tax dollars and give them to someone else who can afford an electric car you can’t. They’re purists… They really don’t care if you have to walk home 20 miles on a cold wet night when your electric cars’s battery died after the transit shut down for the night.  These are the dim bulb environmentalists that believe Miami will go underwater tomorrow if you don’t shut down your internal combustion engines today, Yet they don’t understand why you can’t recharge an electric car overnight with solar cells.  They’ve glommed themselves onto the democratic party and left wing in general, and really don’t care if they lose state houses and even congress for the democrats with their extreme brand of environmentalism. I’ve seen them in action when I point out on forums like http://www.dailykos.com that their pet electric cars won’t work for everyone, and they respond demanding that I be banned there much as I’ve been banned on the teabagger’s gearhead websites.

But the admin over at Kos is a card carrying democrat who drives  Suburu WRX, and at least the environmental extermists aren’t hording firearms… Yet.