I wasn’t surprised to see Ken Martin get elected as chair of the DNC.

And since David “Boss” Hogg threw his lot in with the Piglet last summer, I figured if Martin won, Hogg was on his way to, er, “bigger better” things at the DNC.

I was…er, right, sort of.

So the Democrats have decided to cling to the worst of their coalition, and to forefront it. Friedrich Hayek once pointed out that the problem with all large, powerful, nondemocratic institutions — particularly those with left-wing underpinnings — is that empirically, the worst inevitably tend to get on top. It is the nature of the machine, a product of its operation and existing incentive structures. Which is why I re-emphasize how unsurprising David Hogg’s political ascent to internally elected power has been: Given the party’s sclerotically hidebound decision-making apparatus, of course the DNC would find itself turning to someone like Hogg in a desperate attempt to connect with the “youth vote.” David Hogg is an old person’s idea of a young person.

He wrote it so I don’t have to.

Melissa Hortman folded her hand yesterday, and said the House DFL would come back to work.   Lisa Demuth is the Speaker, and the GOP controls the committees, at least until after the 40B Special on March 11. 

There are a few Republicans – largely from the crowd that thinks “Minnesota Gun Rights” is an actual gun rights group in Minnesota – who think it was a defeat for the GOP. 

Let’s let a DFLer address that:

For someone who’s gotten a little fatalistic about Minnesota Republicans screwing every pooch that can be screwed, it was a very good day.   This is not your fathers House GOP Caucus. 

More please.

This is an update of a post I ran in 2014

Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday.

I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii, my college English advisor and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence.  His eight years were not perfect, and I don’t beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for almost forty years.  His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.

Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century.

But in these difficult times, after (in effect) three terms of a President who promoted  fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, it’s worth remembering Reagan’s example; when times seemed at their most dire, Reagan walked onto the scene with a smile and a vision, and a backbone of steel, and cleaned up the mess lefty by his failed predecessors – something Donald Trump needs even more, today.

And the most important part? He did it by unleashing something that many thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit.

Ten years ago, I wrote “the best we can hope for from President Trump is that he approaches the job with the same tenacity to match his vision that Reagan had.” The first term was a mixed bag. This past two and a half weeks – well, so far so good. 206 weeks go go.

Oh, there are those who say “today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan!” – to which I respond with a contemptuous sigh, before telling the critic to listen to “A Time for Choosing”, and tell me who Reagan more resembles; Arne Carlson, or Scott Walker?

There are also conservatives who pick out their favorite issue – debt, abortion – and ask “what did Reagan ever do for us?”  

Remember – Reagan never controlled Congress.  Republicans controlled the Senate for his first six years, but they were by no means a rubber stamp.   The Democrats controlled the House all eight years, and seized the Senate in 1987.   Trump controlled both houses in 2017, and he does again today; it’s narrow, but it’s more than Reagan had to work with.  Reagan knew he had only so much political capital, and focused it all on his two major issues – defeating the USSR, and reviving the economy.

He succeeded wildly at both.

I’m imagining what Reagan might have done if he’d had Trump’s circumstances – control of Congress and the SCOTUS and that combination of first-term energy and second-term “I don’t have to worry about getting re-elected, so I’m gonna mix stuff up”.

Reagan’s gone. But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people. Most of it, anyway.

So Happy Reagan’s Birthday, everyone!

Not sure what reminded me, but today is this blog’s 23rd birthday. 

It’s kind of amazing how life evolves – too slowly to perceive, yet startling, even overwhelming over time. 

On February 5, 2002, I was a fairly newly-single parent, working at a company that was visibly circling the drain faster and faster every day.  My kids were 10 and 9 years old.  I wasn’t adrift,  per se – “overwhelmed” is probably a better word. 

I was reading Time magazine at my desk over lunch hour, and I tripped into an article about the new generation of conservative intellectuals, focusing on Andrew Sullivan, who was probably the first big-name “conservative” “celebrity” blogger.  A sidebar explained what a “blog” was, and gave a URL to “Blogger.com”. 

Which I followed, that night, after the kids went to bed.  I started writing that night, and 23 years later, I haven’t stopped. 

The first two years of Shot in the Dark are long lost.  The next two are a little tenuous. But I’ve been writing on this platform, WordPress, since 2006.   I need a big of a technical facelift – I’m praying for a two day blizzard that’d justify me spending that kind of non-work time at my desk. 

My kids are now a tad older than I was when they were born.   My career – which seemed fragile and tenuous 23 years ago – has worked out pretty well.  Better than that company did, anyway.  The blog morphed into the Northern Alliance of Blogs, where I met King, Ed, Chad, Brian, Atomizer, JB, John HInderaker and Scott Johnson and, eventually, the first real-life social circle I’d had in a long, long time. 

Life moves slow – usually. Starting this blog 23 years ago today kicked off one of the bigger, better evolutions in mine.  And for that – and all of you – I’m thankful. 

So why is the DFL fighting everything so hard this year?

As we’ve noted in the past, the DFL has been in the minority before.  And they never reacted like they are today. 

So while acknowledging all the usual caveats – anonymous sources, citing even more anonymous connections, etc – read this entire thread anyway:

Presuming it’s true – it smacks of plausibility – then USAID is just a huge money-transfer machine, slapping altruistic facades onto over-the-top grifts to launder taxpayer money to the non-profit/industrial complex.

Looking at the freneticism and bile of the attacks on DOGE, Musk and the effort to tame USAID, it looks like it’s struck a nerve.

So – imagine what’ll happen if a Republican gets into the executive branch in Minnesota ever again?   Or gets enough power in the legislature to do some serious digging and publicizing?

If a Minnesota version of DOGE – perhaps the “Office of Minnesota Internal Graft, Abuse and Waste Detection” – were to get free reign to find where Governors Dayton and Walz and their non-profit/industrial complex handlers hid the bodies?

I suspect this list would get a lot bigger -and that that is why the DFL is squawking so hard this time

It must be a tough time to be Erin Maye Quade – Senator from Apple Valley, and Big Left’s attack poodle in the Senate.

In the past couple of years, she’s voted for a thoughtcrime data base, and openly fantasized about using government power to keep parents from teaching their kids about abstinence…

…and about “Eminent Domaining” and bulldozing the crisis pregnancy centers try to keep people out of the Planned Parenthood clinics that spend so much on her campaigns and will presumably be her post-politics career.

Because suddenly, she’d discovered that big powerful government can be scary, when you’re not at the controls.

Even if you have to conjure those threats out of thin air:

Further evidence of Berg’s Seventh Law; QAnon was a fantasy, but BlueAnon is very, very real. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

End foreign aid handouts.  Begin foreign aid employment.  New slogan:  “Do the crime, do the time . . . in Hell.”  

Still not tired of all the winning.

Joe Doakes

 

The ACLU might have an Eighth Amendment suit, and they might be right.

But it’s a fun thought. 

Yesterday, I was trying to remember – how long has it been since the inauguration?   Was it three weeks, or four?

Nope.  Two weeks. 

Seemed so much longer than that. 

MN Rep. Leigh Finké (DFL-66A) apparently thinks that if hospitals can’t chemically neuter and surgically maim children, they shouldn’t offer care at all:

Nationwide, the Democrats failure to not look crazy harmed them immeasurably last November. 

I’m mildly gratified to see they’re not backing off one iota. 

After almost five years, the City of Minneapolis “plans” to “do” “something” with the former Speedway in “George Floyd Square”.

I’m adding emphaiss to the quote below for a reason:

The City of Minneapolis has received four applications to redevelop The People’s Way, which was formerly a Speedway gas station at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.

The gas station turned into a gathering place in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. For the past four years, the community has used the site for twice-daily meetings, annual events honoring George Floyd, gardening and other activities, according to the city’s Request for Qualifications presentation.

So who are these four groups?

City Councilmember Andrea Jenkins represents the area and she told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS not much is known about what the private groups would do with the property, but said it is a positive step toward progress and growth at George Floyd Square.

I’m gonna guess we know one thing about them: They’re dues-paying members of Minneapolis’s DFL/DSA non-profit/industrial complex.

And if you look at Rise & Remember, Minnesota Agape Movement, P3 Foundation and Urban League Twin Cities, you’ll realize not only that nobody ever went broke betting against the City of Minnepolis transferring money to its political class, but that whatever “happens” at George Floyd Square is going to be both exquisitely expensive and a magnet for blight.

Rise and Remember – run, among other people, by George Floyd’s aunt.

Minnesota Agape Movement – headquartered in George Floyd Square. Their “team” page is blank.

P3 Foundation – if I’ve got the right one, they appear to be national nonprofit that is into all sorts of things.

The Urban League needs no introduction.

Anyway – it’s going to wind up being a “community space” that turns into a graffity-coated monument to blight.  But the non-profits will get their payoff.  So tomayto/tomahto, I guess.

And congratulations to Ken Martin on his election as head of the Democrat National Committee. 

Democrats – you’ve made a great choice. 

Provided, of course, that the national media is as compliant, even sycophantic, as the MInnesota media (although I fully expect to start seeing “Another Look at Tim Walz” pieces in the WaPo any day now). 

And provided, of course, you have an efficient-enough machine for laundering billionaire and public employee money into your campaigns (although Martin excels at that).

Good news for Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi, though – he’s the kind of leader they need, if you catch my drift:

Martin has endorsed RIchard Carlbom to replace him. Carlbom was one of the architects of the Same Sex Marriage amendment – successful mainly by turning the debate from a moral and ethical one to an emotional one. But he’s not always been successful.

Among the vice chairs is David Hogg. Who is going to get right on the business of tackling the cultural and moral malaise that has brought so many young people to Trump:

And I’m gonna guess…

….that all that “Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute!” yapping is gonna stop.

It’s not like they’ve never been in the. minority before.   As recently as (checks notes( 2021-2022 (somehow it seems longer), they had a one-vote minority in the Senate, and the DFL’s world didn’t end. 

And yet being (when all the special elections and likely special election results are in) one vote up in the Senate and tied in the House has them out larping Norma Rae. 

Why, oh why?

For those who don’t want to open “X” and scroll down:

Democrats would show up to work, the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee could hold official House committee hearings and dig in deeper. We are waiting.

And now it makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

SCENE:  MInnesota DFL headquarters.  Inga “Lucky” CARROLL (acting assistant chair of the DFL while on temporary leave from her day job as Head Meme-Buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Liberal Causes”), Secretary of State SIMON, House Minority Leader Melissa HORTMAN, progressive influencers Edmund DUCHEY, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, Gutterball GARY and Avery LIBRELLE, and Senate DFL Communications manager Evan Micah BRYAN are gathered in a conference room as undocumented domestics fetch beverages and change garbage bags.

CARROLL:   So – not much went right in this last Presidential cycle.  Orange HItler even got within four points in Minnesota (group looks angrily at a sheepish SIMON).   So – before we get to what we did wrong, let’s talk about what we did right.

HORTMAN:  Well, we called them “white supremacists” a lot.

CARROLL:  Good.

LIBRELLE:  Racists, every one of them!

BRYAN: Anti-LGBT!

DUCHEY:  Misogynist!

BIRKENSTOCK: And Fascists! (Murmurs of assent)

GARY:   Nazis! (Thrum of excitement)

CARROLL: So – Republicans are all racist sexist misogynist Nazi fascists.  So – did it work? 

BRYAN:  And, most importantly, do we continue using this as our primary, if not only, messaging going forward?

(Mixture of skepticism and assent from the group)

LIBRELLE:  Wait – this just came in from the national party.

(Video comes up on the screem)

BRYAN:  Hey, its Ken! (points at Ken MARTIN, chair of the MNDFL, currently running for chair of the Democrat National Committee)

CARROLL:  OK, so that’s a solid “Yes” on the “message going forward” thing.  Next order of business…

(Papers rustle)

And SCENE

How it started: Mayor Frey bleating “Minneapolis is back, baybee!”

How it’s going: Ameriprise Tower in Minneapolis sells for pennies on the dollar:

That tower used to generate $2.5M a year in property taxes. 

I don’t think the city’s spending has dropped 97%.  That burden is all going to residential property owners. 

A years and a half ago, in a series of pieces I wrote about people who had huge impacts on my life, I devoted a story to Bob Richardson. Bob owned KEYJ, my first radio station. He hired me when I was in high school. He started me on my first career and my most enduring avocation and side hustle – and in a lot of ways, played an exceptionally disproportional role in me becoming who I am today.

Bob – he was always “Mister RIchardson” to me, well into adulthood – died on Monday, apparently after complications to heart surgery in Fargo. He was 93.

And among “pillars of the community”, Bob was a titan:

    He married Norma Rolle September 2, 1952, in Glen Ullin, ND.  They lived in Jamestown, ND, while they were in college.  They moved to Moorhead, MN, for one year before returning to Jamestown.

     Richardson was sports and staff announcer at KSJB radio in Jamestown while a student at Jamestown College.  He was then assistant manager of the classified ad department at the Fargo Forum.  Returning to Jamestown, he was one of the organizers of KEYJ (now KQDJ) radio in 1954 and became sole owner of the station in 1968.  He sold the station in 1980, after which he became Director of Development, Alumni and Public Relations at Jamestown College, then Vice President of the Jamestown College Foundation, retiring in 1999.  He was part-time Development Director of the Jamestown Area Foundation and an Associate of the Borr*Strawhecker Group Resource Development Counsel from 1999 to 2004.   He was instructor of Jamestown College radio courses from 1956-1960.

     Richardson was active in many organizations, serving as President of the Jamestown Chamber of Commerce; the North Dakota Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives; the North Dakota Broadcasters Association; the Jamestown Twilight Baseball League; North Dakota Amateur Baseball Association; the Jamestown Volunteer Firemen’s Association (he was a volunteer fireman for21 years); the Jamestown College Alumni Association; the Jamestown Airport Authority; Jamestown Quarterback Club; North Dakota Independent College Fund; and chairman of Republican Party Districts 48/29.

Did I say I was done?

     He also served as Assistant Chief of the Jamestown Fire Department, a Trustee of Jamestown College, and was a member of the Jamestown Industrial Development Commission board, North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations board and a member of the Jamestown Eagles Lodge.

And he taught a couple generations of high school kids, myself included, not just how to do radio – that’s easy – but how to expect better of ourselves, how to live up to responsibilities from getting the news right to being a solid member of the community, and how to think.  

So much of what I am, I owe to Bob. (And this guy. And this one. And my father, of course, who is at least still with us).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Everybody knows that All Star Wrestling was rigged.  The wrestlers themselves were big and strong and skilled, no doubt.  But the outcome was never in doubt.  The “Good Guy” always won because they were in the entertainment business.  It made for better television and that’s where the owners made their money – tv advertising revenue.  Which, incidentally, is why Hollywood is going broke now – too much emphasis on the Misunderstood Bad Guy.  He’s not misunderstood. He’s Bad.   That’s his job, to play opposite the Good Guy and eventually fail, like the Harlem Globetrotters beating the Washington Generals.  Nobody wants the Bad Guy to win and nobody will pay to watch it, time after time.  

People are talking openly about the NFL being similarly rigged.  The league is an entertainment business, too.  Sure, the individual franchises have separate owners but they play by league rules under league refs and the league has a vested interest in making sure the Good Guys win to maximize tv ad revenue.  Which explains why the officiating is such a big deal – it looks as if the league puts its thumb on the scale to affect the outcome. 

Make every play instantly reviewable, put a chip inside the ball for accurate spotting, transparency is possible with technology.  Unless that would force the thumb off the scale.  That might let the wrong people win.  That would be BAD.

Now let’s talk about elections. 

Joe Doakes

 

I suspect after this past two years that the DFL has a lot to cover up, and the rigging is going to be over the top.  WIth a little luck, perhaps too over the top

Let’s talk about moral myopia for a moment. 

It’s been interesting watching DFLers who two years ago were chanting “when you’ve got political capital, you use it” with a one-vote Senate majority, suddenly…

…whinging like stuck cats now that President Trump is, y’know, using political capital.

Did I say “interesting”?  I meant funny.

Almost as funny as watching people who set up badthink databases and Covid snitch lines, who cheered Twitter and Meta censoring opposition and demanded that the unvaccinated people lose their jobs and get hauled off to camps and be shunned from society at large…

…pretend that they wouldn’t have turned in Ann Frank for a Starbucks gift card. 

If you’d told me 20 years ago that this would happen…

…I might’ve also said you were nuts.

If you live in Senate District 60 – the U of M, Dinkytown, Marcy Holmes – get out and vote for Abigail Wolters for the MN Senate.

If you know someone who lives in the district and is sick and tired of DFL lawnessness, or especially of U of M student who’s looking at the life the DFL has mapped out for them – being a purposeless unit of consumption – then get them to get out and vote for Abby. 

This’d be a great week to shock the world.

So the GOP apparently had a pretty full agenda for hearings on corruption in Minnesota, before the Supreme Court unexpectedly re-edited the quorum provisions in the Minnesota Constitution. 

In the meantime, the DFL had protesters outside the committees press conference…

…apparently protesting for fraud.

Here’s the Scandal Tracker, produced by Bill Glahn, that Rep. Robbins referred to.

 Rep. Robbins reports over two dozen whistleblower reports, and already some tampering and intimidation of whistleblowers,

And, amazingly enough, House hearings on a whisteblower protection bill were canceled as well. 

Who’da thunk it?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Check out this thread at Thread Reader App,

Since Threadreader may or may not launch from the link depending on your browser, I’ve provided the entry point on Twitter. It’s a long thread. Read it.

“Draining” is too good for some parts of the swamp.  They need to be hit with napalm.

So – why are the DFL playing hooky from office?

Because fraud is a way of life under DFL governance.

No, literally – they said it out loud:

They literally admitted it.

And the GOP caught that.

And like “Feeding Our Future”, its’ just the tip of the iceberg:

The GOP was scheduled to hold hearings on the subject yesterday – inonveniently  canceled by the utterly unrelated Supreme Court decision that the quorum was really 68.

No, really.

More tomorrow.

It’s become fairly clear over the past two weeks that the MN DFL isn’t playing hooky from the House because they care about Brad Tabke or the voters of 40B. 

They are hiding – my opinion, here, but I’ll stand by it – that they are doing it because GOP majorities on committees mean investigaions and public hearings:

GOP rule at sny level will mean looking at harsh truths about Minnesota government.

The idea that 15 years of DFL rule have left it a cold Chicago is hard to assimilate.  And our media and establishment (ptr) will work overtime to make sure that soothing notion doesn’t get disturbed. 

I think most Minnesotans deep down still think MN is still the state of Humphrey and Anderson, or even Tim Pawlenty and Mike Hatch – that it’s a “Good Government” state no matter which party wins.

And until that happens – until this state “bottoms out” – there will be no fixing Minnesota.

For the first time, I’ve got one degree of separation from two members of the Trump cabinet.

Well, one and a half.

Defense Secretary-designate Pete Hegseth was the first guest ever interviewed on the NARN, back in March of 2004.  I think I’ve interviewed Hegseth 2-3 times over the years.

And closer yet, the wife of Doug Burgum – software mogul, two-term governor of North Dakota and now the Secretary of the Interior – is my high school classmate and homecoming queen Kathryn. 

And she’s got quite the story to tell, herself:

Not that it landed me an invite to the inauguration or anything, but still. 

On January 6 a bunch of idiot rioters tried to hijack the Constitutional process for transferring power. And they failed; the process in the Constitution prevailed and, hysterics and partisan hyperbole side, succeeded fairly easily.

On January 24, at the behest of 66 petulant ninnies, seven partisans in goofy robes ruled that the legislature reports to the court on matters of its own organization; that despite the plain text of the Minnesota Constitution, a quorum is a majority of *chairs*, not the people sitting in them.

It’s almost makes comical sense for the party that thinks guns magically shoot people, and that sex is ephemeral,, and that “you can keep your doctor” means you lose your doctor,  to rule that inanimate chairs, not the peole in them, are the part of a legislature that really matters.

But the laughing stops – if you care about the Constitutional order, which apparently not a single DFLer does – when you realize this decision means the Legislature reports to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Orwell and Solzhenitzyn showed us what happens when the only objective reality is getting and holding power. Y’see, that’s the problem with democracy – everyone has to agree to the basic terms. The DFL in all three branches showed they don’t, in as many words.

(There are no doubt some in the audience who’ll say “I bet you wouldn’t be saying this if the roles were reversed!”. I most certainly would. But it’s academic, because no Republican-run institutions have ever gutted the Constitutional separation of powers quite this brazenly. ).