Not your usual Republican
By Harry Robb Welty
Not your usual RepublicanJun 01, 2022
Talking Politics in French
After my expected defeat in the August 9th Republican primary for Congress with just short of ten percent of the vote I am reconsidering the larger campaign to save America by saving the spirit if Abe Lincoln in the Republican Party. This is a reading of a post to that effect I put in my blog today August, 22, 2022.
Travels with George, a teaser for a travelogue
I'm not recording podcasts at the moment but I fancied a short passage from the Nathanial Philbrick history of George Washington that I'm reading now. The historian began writing it as the growing divisions in America became increasingly hard to ignore. Having just written about Washington he knew our first president faced similar division and wondered how to write about them when he conceived the idea of following the same path Washington did before and just after he took office. Washington traveled the thirteen states north to South and Philbrick the author took the same route, not through pristine forests but through concrete ribbons of highways. This is a short passage early on that I fancied.
3 minute KOZY candidate self introduction for the Grand Rapids, MN listening area
How Harry Welty a "RINO" would represent Republicans who don't engage in cowardly treason.
A Day of treason revisited a year later
Thursday last the House of Representatives laid out what they new in the first of several hearings on the January sixth attempted overthrow of our government. I wrote about watching January sixth unfold a year later on its first anniversary. I have no illusions about what happened
Too late to stop me
The subtitle is: My 20th campaign has begun.
Bedru
Following my twenty-year-old fable turning the Emperor's new clothes on its crown I tell a true story of a dictatorship that follows the my take on the fable to the letter.
Power Trip Dementia......originally The King is Naked
A Fable I turned on its head in 2002. The original is called the Emperor's New Cloths. The comeuppance in my version goes elsewhere.
Like Father Like Son
What might it be like for your children if you are ever elected to public office.
Waltzing Matilda
A column about the horrors of climate change visited on Australia in 2020
Subbing in a time of National Reckoning
I began substitute teaching in our Covid wracked schools in the epidemic's last year. These are some reflections.
Our Better Angels
Today over a dozen school children were shot and killed in a Texas school. I read my thoughts on Sandyhook and other gun violence in a column titled Our Better Angels
Hate the Sin not the Trumper
Coincidentally this column about my outspokenness, in contrast to anonymity, came with an anonymous letter in the mail.
Welcome to College Andrew
Life in a College neighborhood for an old fart.
Hearts behind Bars
About the year I took my children to our Federal Prison every month to visit Dave and about how I made my Dad's thoughts about crime my own.
You Wanna Fight ?
This is a rerecording of my first podcast in this series which was recorded with my grandson. I somehow mislabeled it and deleated it. I've put it back. Its about my first days in Minnesota as a Kansas transplant in a new junior high.
My Valentines Day Heart Attack
The Stroke that sent Pennsylvania's Democratic candidate for the Senate to the hospital brought back memories for me. It seems he's none the worse for the wear. I congratulate him and I share the story of my very special Valentine's Day this year.
Caucus Night 2020
Asked by a friend if I understood that local Republicans think I keep flipping them the bird I acknowledged that this was probably true......The whys and wherefores follow.
God made us that way
Today Harry is beginning a petition drive to add his name to the Aug. 9th Republican primary ballot. It seems like a good day to explain that unlike other Republicans he likes democrats and, in the wake of the now daily slaughter of black Americans by deranged people, a good time to read his column about Senator Strom Thurmond who helped push America in this direction.
No Business like Snow Business
For 35 years Harry has employed snow as a personal space for public comment. This election is no exception.
Fem Crow
This is the column I submitted this morning to the Duluth Reader for publication at the end of the week. It describes the coming Era not unlike that of Jim Crow. It should be called Fem Crow. Thank you Pete Stauber and Republican Party.
"One Nation Under Allah, Indivisible"
As more Republicans make clear their desire to elevate Christianity over other religions in America in defiance of our First Amendment this seems like a good time to resurrect this column from the start of our war in Iraq.
What is Michelle Obama doing in my Basement?
This is sort of about the uncomfortable place black candidates have in American politics and about a friend of mine.
The Monsters we need
I need a little cash to keep challenging Pete so I plan to sell my Grandfather's Sharps Rifle. Its more than a match for Stauber's millions since he has to brush off my pointed critiques like this one.
100 Pints of Blood
Sidelined from making his regular blood donations because of a recent heart attack and the blood thinners he's now taking, Harry encourages listeners to take his place.
Getting to Know Margaret
This episode caps six previous episodes about the subject of Abortion. Although not about that subject it is about the subject that leads up to Abortion. Sex. Its a remembrance of a time before Roe vs. Wade which the Taliban-like Republican party is happy to bring back in order to divide America.
The Texas Christian Abortion Rangers
How close will the Godly Trumplican Republicans get to the totalitarian fascism of China's Chairman Mao? In Texas, pretty damn close!
Killing Dr. Tiller
My thoughts on the piety that excuses Christians who murder Doctors which is becoming the piety of the Republican God.
A mass murderer responds to Reverend Young
In 2006 I wrote back to a minister who had written in a local tabloid that my kind of people were mass murderers. He wasn't happy about what I said but he never really answered my questions for some reason.
The Aborted Girl
This is my third podcast in reaction to the news that Roe V Wade is about to be repealed. I wrote this in 2006 eighteen years after I met the aborted girl. I will note that the image I used for this recording is my picture at the time that accompanied my "Not Eudora" columns in the Duluth Reader. This is how I looked as I started my second attempt to run for Congress. I thought this column put the issue of abortion in a context that might help people think beyond the soundbites that filled their head. People are still thinking in soundbites and that's a damn shame.
Sympathy for a Mass Murderer
My second podcast in a series tied to the news that the Supreme Court is poised to overthrow Roe vs. Wade. The first dealt with the abandonment of Fetus's by the Pro-life cause in favor of bouncing babies on their billboards. Podcast 15 is about their culling of pro-choice people from the party and their belief that 60% of Americans are "baby killers." or in my case. Mass Murderers. For a little more info check out my blog post -
Where have all the Fetuses Gone?
First in a series of Harry's previous columns concerning abortion in reaction to the Supreme Court's likely imminent overturn of Roe vs. Wade
Monkeyworms
In addition to my interest in sane and sound and brave politics I fancy myself a writer. I've never made a dime at writing but I enjoy it. Monkeyworms was my first published piece twenty-one years ago
Paid for by Harry Welty at his own expense
These are Harry's experiences in the 1972 election where he proved to be as independent as he remains to this day. It was the election of Watergate a crime almost unreported at the time but which led the Minnesota Republican Party to rename itself the "Independent Republican" Party.......Thank you Dick Nixon.
Spitting on Bill
This is a follow up to the story of the "Vietnam war protester" from yesterday. Note the quote marks. The story is self explanatory and relates to wars shortly after 9-11 a good quarter century after the end of the Vietnam War but it hearkens back to that very troubling episode of American history. Note the image by the link. Its a picture I took near Normandy where proper reverence to lost servicemen is paid by the still grateful nation of France.
About a Cob of Corn
This is the first of two podcasts about incidents related to the Vietnam war which loomed large as I graduated from High School and which informed me for the rest of my life as America skipped from one military adventure to the next.
Shall We Dance
Another episode about Harry's harrowing experiences in Junior High School.
Book Report
The Book Report that caused the panic attack that led 9th grade Harry to ask his Dad how never to never let such an embarrassing thing happen to him again.
Never vote for a Democrat and other Simple Lessons
This is the advice my Grandfather gave me almost sixty years ago when I was twelve years old. It fits in nicely with my greeting while door knocking that I like Democrats.
Booed off The Stage
I was recently unable to speak to a Republican Convention to give them my take on binding America together as a preferable goal than overturning honest elections. Had I been able to give that speech it would have been the fiftieth anniversary of the luckiest but most disastrous speech of my life in front of College Republicans. It would have been the thirtieth anniversary of a speech to Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District convention where I got booed off the stage.
I haven't been very lucky giving speeches in front of Republicans.
Pete's Way
In this episode I make clear that the behavior of the most evil leaders of the last century are tied to the good people who, for whatever reason, let them get out of hand. Pete is our sitting 8th District Congressman.
They Died with their Boots On
This is a follow up of Podcast 3's alarming charge that Republicans are rewriting fake history with an anecdote showing Republicans used to honor history warts and all.
A Dishonest story about a Cherry Tree
What distinguishes the United States from Putin's Russia and how that distinction is under threat in the "land of the brave and home of the free."
The MP who pulled black men off white prostitutes - the rest of the story
A personal story about Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education. There are happy endings