For a while, after winning complete lopsided electoral sweeps in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, the DFL victory parties would break out into chanting the line in the title.

Ownership has its privileges, as they way – but local DFLers sure seem to be squiggling away from any responsibility for that ownership.

A friend of the blog emails:

It was a town hall meeting to talk about the mess that is the Hamline Midway Neighborhood. The question was what is the city doing with Snelling University. The corner is so trashy, there is litter everywhere. 

Our council member for the area, Mitra Jalali, proposes that the priority is trees and bicycle lanes.

She says it’s either that or a place for people to park their cars.

I mean, I suppose if we eventually get rid of all of the residents and businesses in the area, then no people will be there, thereby eliminating litter.

But, I have to believe, looking towards the thriving areas of St Louis Park’s West End or the shopping area in Eagan that Jalali is probably prioritizing the wrong thing.

All of Melo’s reporting of quotes on X from that meeting are pretty entertaining as the elected people try to dodge any responsibility for where we are today in St Paul. 

 

Thats right, Councilwoman Jalali – it’s the design of the streets.

I’m adding emphasis to this next bit:

Worth looking at- Sandy Pappas saying she actually rides Green Line (but was getting a ride home from husband after the meeting). Leigh Finke saying that millions of dollars were given to DNR for trees and “they spent it in outstate which didn’t need it” so this year, gave “even more money” to Met Council “who has to spend it in the metro area.” 

Yup, our problems are not enough trees …

 

 

 

 

Until the city gets serious about crime, drug-dealing, vagrancy and vandalism – all of which are epidemic at Snelling and University – the new trees would just serve as canvasas for taggers.

Sort of like that freaking Loon at the southwest corner of the intersection. 

More on that later this week

Why, yes – this was on mine!

When a hurricane like Helene or Milton ravages coastal communities, already-strained first responders face a novel, and growing, threat: the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, e-bikes, and countless gadgets. When exposed to the salty water of a storm surge, they are at risk of bursting into flames — and taking an entire house with them.

“Anything that’s lithium-ion and exposed to salt water can have an issue,” said Bill Morelli, the fire chief in Seminole, Florida, and the bigger the battery, the greater the threat. That’s what makes EVs especially hazardous. “[The problem] has expanded as they continue to be more and more popular….”

“…“They burn hot, they burn fast, and they’re hard to extinguish,” Morelli said.

 

Can’t wait until someone does a comparative study about how EVs and gas cars compare when stranded in blizzards.

In 2015, I spent some time in Detroit on a business trip.

And even then, before Covid, downtown Detroit felt…vibrant.  Fun.  There was stuff going on in the evening.   There were places to go, things to do, people around and about. 

Companies were paying people good money to buy or rent downtown and walk to work. 

Things felt pretty decent…

…in about a square mile downtown. [1]

Go outside that square mile or two and it became…well, Detroit.

But I come not to praise Detroit, but to bury WUPHs – White Urban Progressive Homers, people who tie their identities so close to their cities that it squeezes out all humor, and all thought itself.

It’s not smack. It’s actual journalism, when referring to the ravages of two generations of non-stop corrupt Democrat governance on a city.

Like Detroit.

Or, if things keep going as they are, Minneapolis.

[1] I have no idea how Covid might have affected that state of affairs, but I’m not optimistic.

Remember Angie Craig?

Every two years she dusts off the ads with her four-wheeling around the back roads of her district, hanging out with the good ol’ boys in LeSeuer County, trying to appear “moderate”. 

Remember Yusuf Haji? 

Probably not.  He’s running for Dakota County Commission. 

Seems pretty innocent, right?

Turns out Haji’s got friends in low – and left-wing – places:

Turns out, not so much.

Haji is affiliated with “Our Revolution Twin Cities” – a group that wants to defund the police, among a dog’s breakfast of other bad ideas. Here’s an X thread with more on ORTC.

MInd you, this is in the same community that just had two cops and a firefighter killed by someone who would have been in jail but for the DFL’s other dilution of the criminal justice system.

Thing is, this area – the DakCo Commission, the various House districts (Gabriela Kroetsch is a strong GOP challenger in HD55A), and of course Angie Craig is vulnerable enough that this district is considered a plausibly contested race. 

So if you live in the south burbs, don’t be fooled.  Haji is a Moriarty – and Angie Craig is sucking up to the radical fringe that is no longer a fringe in this metro.

Video smuggled out of Kamala Harris HQ after the Fox interview last night:

This should help affect the votes of the four undecided voters out there.

These outtakes give you a pretty fair idea how the interview went:

A little more seriously? I didn’t get fooled by the “Red Wave” hype two years ago – I’m never quite that optimistic – but there’s a difference in the air these days:

Trump could still lose this – it’s not that hard to picture. 

But I’m looking forward to the election night broadcast, if only to see how all these horse races turn out.

UPDATE: Judge for yourself:

Say what you will about abortion – but as we get close to the elections, let’s remember the “debate” that the DFL jammed down in the ’23 session.

I actually wrote this post during the last session – one of those “let’s make sure it doesn’t go down the memory hole” things. 

And while the DFL sure seems proud of what they did, they get quiet about it when talking with audiences outside Minnesota, now that the Piglet is running for Veep.

JD Vance’s visit to the Third Precinct brought out, if not the worst of the plagues facing today’s Minnesota, at least the most comical: the WUPH. 

The White Urban Progressive Homer.   Generally a 20-30-something male, employed in the non-profit, public or academic sector, part of the laptop class, single, socially mobile, mostly self-focused. 

And they seem to obsess relentlessly about the zipcode they live in – or at least parts of it:

Because to a WUPH, “business” means “something they pay money to that supports their lifestyle”: restaurants, bars, coffee shops, bookstores…

…which are, let’s be honest, things I also love about living in the city.  

But being a WUPH isn’t so much about the zip code you live in as it is about the zip codes you don’t live in:

Because behind every “All Are Welcome Here” sign is a person who really doesn’t like people who aren’t like them:

I mean, I get it – Minneapolis is a beautiful place…

…and has cool stuff to do if you have money and don’t mind (or mock any observation of) some of the risks of modern Minneapolis. I mean, I fell in love with the place once upon a time, enough to uproot my whole life and move there.

You know how they say the worst, most arrogant condescending New Yorkers are the ones that were born in Albany? 

A get a little of that vibe from the WUPH – people who seem to think a place’s natural beauty and social amenities impart worth on people who live there is…

Which, to my New York example, is about as parochial as the Lutheran church gossips in the basements of the churches in Woodbury and Forest lake that I suspect so many WUPHs originally come from in the first place. 

…a lot of things in the 21st century.  Flying cars, food replicators, houses in the sky.

Most of it crapped out.

But this…

…is certainly getting closer.

Martha Raddatz, on behalf of all media/Democrats (pardon the redundancy) re Venezuelan gangs: “Hey, it’s a big country. Let’s keep things in perspective!

Also Martha Raddatz, on behalf of all media/Democrats (pardon the redundancy) if five self-identified Boogaloo Boys are seen hiking in the woods somewhere in northwest Georgia: “Lets examine this wave of white supremacist terror threatening our social fabric”

Also also Martha Raddatz, on behalf of all media/Democrats (pardon the redundancy) if a group of Venezuelans, criminal or otherwise, moved into her neighborhood: “Hello, Servicemaster? I need an exterminator…”

…that if I voted Republican, then wannabe tyrants would have the President on speed-dial.

And they were right:

Some people are now calling you a “lame duck” president — but then it occurred to me today: You’re not done. You’ve still got 100 days left in office! And the Supreme Court has just granted you super powers — AND immunity! You don’t answer to anyone. For the first time in over 50 years, you don’t have to campaign for anything. You are the opposite of lame, Joe. And you are not a duck. You, sir, are the President of the United States of America, and for the next 100 days, you have tremendous power. The only people you have to answer to is us. The people who put you there. You have an extraordinary opportunity to make a whole bunch of things happen. Great things. Important things. With a simple stroke or two of your presidential pen, you can make life better for millions of people in ways you never would’ve dreamed possible. You will leave the White House a hero.

So I’ve put together a list — a Bucket List for Scranton Joe — of executive actions that you can legally take today or any day until January 20, 2025. 

 

It’s Michael Moore – Flint Michigan’s own wannabe Mussolini.

And in case you didn’t want to read the whole piece (it’s probably the right call, other than sociologically), here’s where he wants POTATUS to wave his magic wand and do, via executive order, before leaving office, Constitution be damned:

1. Declare the ERA the 28th Amendment.   I never knew the President could unilaterally do that…
2. Cancel all student loan debt, now. SCOTUS be damned.
3. Cancel all medical debt.  Hey, why not unilaterally repudiate all national debt?
4. Close Guantanamo Bay.  OK, that’s something he could legally do.  Not that it’s a good idea, but he could .
5. End the embargo on Cuba.  It’s “to free our souls”.   Because the UN General assembly demanded it – and who has a better hotline to “our souls” than the body where Sudan lectures the US on human rights?
6. Force a truce in Israel:  It’s only sporting to give Hamas time to re-arm, after all.
7. End the war in Ukraine.  Hey, there’s an idea.  As Moore says, Biden should “use” his “foreign policy knowledge and prowess“. Where was this advice three years ago?
8. Empty Federal Death Row. . Note:  Suddenly, Moore cares about what Popes say.
9. Free Leonard Peltier.  You’d think the Innocence Project would tackle that case.  And yet they have not. 
10. Pardon Edward Snowden.   Huh.  You mean, expose Obama-era misconduct?  Remember, fat boy – drapes don’t have shoes.
11. Pardon the self-rightous “nuns” who vandalized a Minuteman missile.  See #9, above.
12. Ban Spam texts.  Eureka!
13. Grant clemency to non-violent drug offenders.  Now he’s starting to sound like Trump.

Hey, at least it’s not another documentary.

A guy who started a snitch line, enacted a thoughtcrime database, sicced the Attorney General on businesses that tried to survive his draconian and capricious Covid regulations and turned radical protesters into a fourth branch of government when he wanted social policy done…

…is lying to warn us about authoritarianism.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’d think a governor who’s built his entire career out of rigorously-contolled optics – lots of photos of eating fair food and holding animals and social media strawmen, no uncontrolled press conferences or public debates – would know better than to do…

…that.

Last week, I ruffled some of the usual feathers by posting a link to this video by Ryan McBeth.

McBeth is a former anti-tank grunt who now does open-source intelligence and systems work. His Youtube and Substack channels are interesting; he doesn’t get everything right (he is still claiming Mossad figured out how to remotely blow up lithium batteries, although his reasoning for getting to that conclusion isn’t wrong), and he certainly runs in official-ish circles, but he shows his math.

I pointed this out, not to “run cover” for officialdom (wtf?) but out of awareness that all “sides” of every issue on social media are farming engagements to draw clicks, eyeballs, and of course the mother of all motivations, “monetization”. 

The real lesson?  Waiting for government to help you out after an emergency is a sucker bet.  Government may mean well but be incompetent; it may do its best but be overstretched; it might be actively undercutting you; it might be all three and then some.  But one way or another, example after example in the real world shows us you, the regular schnook, are likely to have to see to your own well-being after a disaster.  

Seeing to that well-being is either a waste of time, or absolutely vital – and you won’t know which until it’s too late.

This note comes from a friend of a friend:

“I’m in Asheville, NC right now and we were devastated by the hurricane. Day 5 of no power, water, internet, or even cell service. We are cut off from the world. Here’s what has mattered so far and what hasn’t in my particular situation:

Life saver #1 = Starlink internet. All our phones say SOS. Can’t text for help. Don’t know what’s going on. I plugged in my satellite internet and have been helping the whole neighborhood call loved ones. Everyone is offering me anything from their supplies because it’s so valuable.

Life saver #2 = Solar panels and 3000w battery pack. I can run satellite internet, electric kettle to purify water, charge headlamps, electronics, instant pot for cooking, ice maker for the cooler, everything I need. I’ll won’t run out of the sun like I would propane or gas if this extends a lot longer.

Life saver #3 = Gas cans and extra gas. These are sold out everywhere and are harder to get than gas itself. When power goes out so do gas station pumps. When you have portable gas you can run a generator, evacuate, drive to where the supplies are, check on family members, etc. People are stranded and sleeping at gas stations for days in their car waiting for power to come back on so they can get home.

Life saver #4 = Knowledge on how to survive without a huge stash. Some preppers spend too much on stocking up and not enough on education. None of us knew the hurricane was going to be this bad. Some people lost their entire house including supplies. Those who know multiple ways to collect water, purify it, start a fire, find food, are the ones still alive that haven’t been rescued yet. I could go for another month if I had to with nothing but my backpack and tools.

Life saver #5 = Hand sanitizer. Sanitation is rough here and the hospitals are out of power, food, and water. People are starting to smell and after you touch something you do not want to get sick and go to the hospital because it’s bad there too. The water you do find may not be safe for hand washing without purification. I wash my hands with soap and water and then do hand sanitizer after to stay healthy.

Other things I’ve relied on:

Cash. No power means no debit cards can be used

Disposable cutlery and plates

A 4×4 truck that can drive where others can’t or help tow people to safety

Solar/battery radio

Dogs for company and to alert if someone is outside

Hasn’t mattered as much as I thought:

#1 = Guns! I haven’t even thought about needing my gun and realized I put too much on this. Strangers have come together in our area and are taking care of each other like you wouldn’t believe. Each person has a surplus of something and is missing something else. We all share while still respecting boundaries and only sharing what we choose. Again, this can depend on the area but here if you are acting paranoid/standoffish of others and open carrying a gun, the nice innocent people are going to avoid you and you will be isolated without community or resources. I’m still glad to have a gun but I wish I spent more time on other skills too instead of putting so much emphasis on shooting. (And to anyone who says, “it only takes one time and you will be glad for your aim”, you’re missing the point I’m trying to make here.)

#2 = Food. This is easy to find for me but it may be due to the part of the country I’m in. I can also fish, forage, and don’t cook much because I don’t want to waste water on dishes. I had shelf stable food prepped and lll probably end up only using 25% of it in a month. As people’s freezers start to thaw we’ve had big cookouts so it doesn’t go to waste and I’ve been full most nights.

Again, this list could be based on location, type of natural disaster, weather, etc But it’s interesting to me because I’m actually living it instead of preparing and wanted to share.”

 

As the correspondent notes in the last graf, it “could” be based on location.  And it most certainly is based on the relative health of the social fabric in the area. 

“Grassroots”:   When a candidate who has never earned a primary vote, and only run one seriously contested election in her life, gets installed by the troika of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama after defenestrating the current President for being unfit to run a campaign (although apparently not to be President of the United States). 

Example:

Hope this resolves any confusion.

How It Started

This, of course, is the campaign Tim Walz is used to running: carefully curated photos of him holding animals, being fed corn dogs by Peggy Flanagan, and occasionally spouting risible strawmen via social media.

An “Instagram” Governor.

The bit above may be the perfect metaphor for Tim Walz, 2004-2023.

How It’s Going

Klink, while pheasant hunting with “influencers” over the weekend:

Now, I’ll give him half a pass on this: automatic shotguns are a pain in the ass. I hate ’em. And they are nothing like handling an M16/M4, the “weapons of war” Walz carried in the Guard and on the war-ravaged (checks notes) airfields of Italy.

But only half a pass.

Because when you’ve curated your entire public image as being a “progressive” who also fixes gutters and eats Fair Food and dresses like Elmer Fudd and shoots things for fun, one might think you’d take a little care – maybe check the piece over before the cameras show up – and maybe get it right when doing…

…y’know…

…your big instagram op.

Paul Donohue is running for MN House in 64B, against Dave Pinto.

Brad Olson is running for the House in 38A.

And here’s today’s music list!

“White Dudes for Harris” – the collection of online man-buns, barristos and Soho cliches from earlier in the summer – didn’t do it.

Picking Tim Walz – a thinly-closeted authoritarian with penchant for dressing up in Elmer Fudd costumes and eating Pronto Pups on camera – didn’t do it.

But this? This ad should solve Kamala Harris’s woes with men:

It’s like someone thinks the modern advertising and entertainment industries’ collective caricatures of “men” that you see in every ad or TV show that doesn’t involve an “A”-lister – either neutered, incompetent, buffoonish clichés or “men” who are “Masculine” in the same way trans men are “really women”.

This should really do it this time!

More on Harris/Walz’s male problems here.

Berg’s Seventh Law has been getting quite a workout over the past nine years:

When a progressive issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.

When leftists warn of waves of “right wing violence”, you can bet that either:

• A wave of left-wing violence has just happened, or
• A wave of it is in the pipeline and expected soon.

John HInderaker has an example ripped from the headlines:

Here is another instance: a death threat against Judge Aileen Cannon, the Florida federal judge who correctly dismissed the classified documents case against President Trump. She has been the object of a campaign of vilification by Democrats:

Democrats and their media allies have been lambasting Cannon, a Trump appointee, since she was assigned to preside over the Biden-Harris Justice Department’s prosecution of Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case, and they have been apoplectic since July, when Cannon dismissed the indictment.

This past Thursday, Eric James Rennert was arrested based on a six-count indictment charging him with threatening to assault, kidnap, and murder a federal judge and that judge’s family in Florida’s St. Lucie County. The indictment does not name the judge. Nevertheless, as the New York Post reports, Cannon is the only judge who sits in the Fort Pierce courthouse in St. Lucie County.

At the link, Andy McCarthy details the Democrats’ shameful smear campaign against Judge Cannon, which has culminated in this assassination threat.

 

If Trump wins – what are you predictions?

Shot: Democrats act like there’s an exception in the First Amendment for “misinformation”, a term so broad literally nobody can define it (emphasis added):

Did someone send out a memo? Or has the shock of encountering the wild variety of views visible on Elon Musk’s X just been too much for grandees used to moving in circles where the acceptable boundaries of disagreement are narrowly drawn? When John Kerry recently spoke of “dislike of and anguish over social media,” he was presumably referring to how he and like-minded others (among them, it turned out, another failed presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton) reacted as they watched the wrong sort of ideas openly discussed on major online platforms.

For his part, Kerry was talking about climate “misinformation,” a word that, in the hands of those who manipulate its meaning, can encompass not only a misstatement of fact but also, all too frequently, nothing more than the expression of a heterodox point of view. Such fine distinctions, we suspect, are of little interest to Kerry. Instead, he bemoaned the way that people no longer turn to “the referees we used to have” to determine what’s true, but — the horror — “self-select where they go for their news, for their information.”

 

Chaser: The “Referees” we once had to tune into for information are, not misinforming, but actively disinforming us:

After Rathergate, and seeing Lesley Stahl humiliated while covering for Hunter Biden in 2020, you’d think CBS might learn, mightn’t you?

Of course not.

Chalk it up to a self-referential information feedback loop, but when Democrats started yapping about “misinformation”, I’d have bet a roll of quarters something like this was in the offing.

From a Trump rally last night

The decline of the American military is a serious problem.

Crude but merciless satire may not be the solution.  But hopefully it helps lead us there.

University of Kansas prof says that men who don’t vote for Harris/Klink should be…

Well, it’s all right here.  Go for it. 

Not that this is news, necessarily.

The University issued one of those “Oaaaaakaaaay, we’ll look into it, because hypothetically that’s not the kind of thing we approve of here, if it happened…” statements that says between the lines “our PR department is working overtime on this one…”

Can Kamala Harris ride “Vibes” and “Rizz” all the way to the White House?

Pessimistic as I am about the collective intelligence of half our population, I’m not always optimistic.

But Jim Geraghty has his doubts:

The Harris campaign’s entire theory of the case is wrong. Reminding people about what they couldn’t stand about Trump and emphasizing “joy” and “vibes” is not sufficient to close the deal with an electorate. It completely misreads the mood of the voters, who have been coping with runaway inflation and a high cost of living for most of the past four years, who have a growing sense that no one is in charge at the border, who worry about a genuine post-Covid rise in crime, and who see an international scene beset by invasions, terrorism, and massacres, all presided over by a doddering old man who was hidden from the public by a staff that took Edith Wilson as a role model.

This past weekend, Peggy Noonan asked the question the Harris brain trust should have asked: Is this the right moment in American life to proclaim a new politics of “joy”? “Do you want to feel joyful?” is the wrong question; almost all of us would prefer to be happier. The question is: Do you look around at the state of the United States and the world today — and the performance of this administration for the past four years — and feel like joy is the appropriate response?

 

My semi-related theory:  Democrats have been using Minnesota as a testbed for their approach in campaigning; running for high office on pure social media happy-vibing and platitudes, abetted by a mostly-in-the-tank media, worked well for Walz and Flanagan (and Dayton before them).

Why wouldn’t it work for Harris?

The answer – the fact that a few reporters, and “reporters”, didn’t get the message:  Harris could screw up scrambled eggs:

(As noted on yesterday’s Three Martini Lunch podcast, let’s just take a moment to savor the irony that Sunny Hostin asked Harris the question that did so much damage.)

Much more in the next couple of weeks.

I mean, Esme Murphy doesn’t tongue-bathe Democrats like Stephen Colbert does.

And yet Kamala Harris botches even that:

If you’re one of the world’s dictators, it’d be negligent of you not to the trying to influence the election in Harris’s favor.

After well over a week, the Administration is putting our money where it’s mouth is as re Hurricane Helene.

Just kidding:

It’s sending money to get Hezb’allah back on its feet. 

During the last couple of legislative sessions, the DFL wrote a whole bunch of moral checks.

Since we’ve got an election coming up, how about we see how many of them bounced?

Abortion

Unrestricted abortion is one promise the DFL trifected promised and delivered on. 

Perhaps very very overdelivered.

The DFL brought a certain brusque brutality to the issue:

And delivered on it with teutonic precision, leaving no potential abortee behind:

And have brought a certain totalitarian panache to trying to erase all dissent

Green Energy

Was your powrer cheaper?

Why, no. It is not.


Social Security Taxes

Remember when the DFL ran on eliminating taxes on Social Security?

They are certainly hoping you don’t:

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – For the second time this month, Minnesota Senate Democrats voted against eliminating the taxation of Social Security benefits – despite a massive projected budget surplus of $17.6 billion. Five of those Democrats have also already broken promises to end the taxation of social security benefits and did so again today; Sens. Hauschild, Gustafson, Kupec, Putnam and Seeberger all voted to maintain the tax again after doing so earlier this month. The Republican Party of Minnesota issued the statement below in response:

“This latest vote shows that Democrats in St. Paul are only interested in one thing – partisan politics. Instead of voting to provide much-needed tax relief to seniors by ending the tax on Social Security benefits, the Democrats voted to kill this bill for the second time this month. Meanwhile, Democrats in the legislature along with Gov. Tim Walz continue to push tax increases and one-time political gimmicks. With a budget surplus of more than $17 billion, Minnesota taxpayers deserve more than petty partisan games. Democrats need to stop the petty politics and work with Republicans to pass real, permanent tax relief for Minnesota families and businesses.” – Republican Party of Minnesota Chairman David Hann

“Fully Funding Education”

The term was intentionally misleading – when you finally got a DFLer to admit what this little word salad starter meant, it boiled down to rolling back a Pawlenty-era accounting shift. 

Forget for a moment the flurry of teacher strikes and headlines about districts running out of money – as the DFL wants you to forget them – because it was never intended as anything but a campaign slogan to gull the gullible.

The results are self-explanatory…:

…provided you can read and do math which, fortunately for the MNDFL, more and more Minesotans can’t.

“Reducing Poverty 30%”

That was a promise they made before the 2023 session – and abruptly stopped once they started legislating.

Because while the stats aren’t in for this last few years yet…:

…the leading indicators just aren’t that good.

Just want to keep that memory hole exhumed for election time.