Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

There are 3.8 million immigration cases pending.  There are 685 immigration judges nationwide meaning each judge has 5547 pending cases to hear. Not counting new cases.  The case backlog is years. 

President Trump wanted to hire more immigration judges to deal with the backlog.  I was thinking of applying.  I have no immigration law experience but I have lots of courtroom expertise including presiding over hearings. 

If complex subjects like admiralty and bankruptcy can be taught, immigration can.  Not every case demands a learned treatise. 

Okay so I’m not the best qualified but if you are hiring a boatload of people I might still qualify. Hour many are they hiring?

115. Nationwide. Brings the total up to 800. 

So we have reduced each judges caseload to 4,750?  Shaving 800 cases off each judges backlog is supposed to fix the problem?

That won’t reduce the backlog. That will only perpetuate it.  The system IS the problem. What a farce.

Joe Doakes

 

It’s only a farce if it was intended to work in the first place.

Rep. Walter Hudson lays the state’s fraud problem out end-to-end.  

Maybe the best 20 minutes you can watch today:

And remember – the DFL’s greatest achievement has been convincing MN voters that they are inevitable.  

Among Reagan’s greatest strengths was a pretty maniacal sense of focus on what mattered.  Peabrains like Matt Walsh mutter “what did Reagan ever do for the pro-life movement”, ignorant that Reagan was dealing with a Democrat House for his first six years in office; he only had so much political capital, and he spent what he had (beyond the bully pulpit) on his two big priorities; rebuilding the economy and destroying Communism.   

With that in mind Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Trump has too many irons in the fire, he needs to focus.

 Ukraine is a lost cause, stop trying to be peacemaker, let Russia win.

Hamas is a lost cause, stop trying to be peacemaker, let Israel win.

 Everything Trump did by executive order, his successor can undo by executive order.  He needs to start kicking Congress to pass legislation to codify his changes.  He’s got maybe one year before they start running for re-election and then nothing will get done. 

Focus. 

Joe Doakes

I don’t disagree (on most of it, anyway).   

But let’s be honest – Trump does most of. his own unfocusing.  

I’ve been generally more impressed with him this term – fewer pointless squabbles with staff, more focus on getting things done – but he provides plenty of his own distractions. 

Unpopular but correct opinion: Somalis are no different than any other 1st/2nd gen immigrants; some are criminals; most aren’t.

What does ALL the fraud have in common?

The DFL. The non-profit system. And Walz’s “inability” (heh heh) to control it.

You can say the circumstances under which Somalis were brought here – a Clinton-era State Dept. program that gave money to non-profits to settle them here, to benefit the DFL – were a little suspicious. You might have a point.

So – what does that lead us to?

The non-profit/government complex – the system that transfers taxpayer money to non-profits to do pseudo-government-y things, only without any accountability.

“Without any accountability? What do you mean?”

We’re at a billion dollars in fraud * so far*, and sources tell me there’s an even bigger wave on the way; we’re STILL just scratching the surface.

Seeing a pattern?

By the way, while there are a lot of immigrants – the illegal ones – that we need to deal with, people with TPS[1] aren’t them; they are already closely monitored. Somali with TPS – there are 200 of them in Minnesota – aren’t the problem.

I interviewed a counterterrorism expert once; he said 15% of Somali have *some* sympathy with terrorists, almost all of it passive. And that we learn about them from the *other* 85% who want nothing to do with that.

So if you want to knock out this state’s fraud problem, let’s go after the real villain; the non-profit/government complex, and the people who have *at best* mismanaged it, and at worst created it.

[1] Not to me confused with Somali creating TPS reports…

How open is the state’s ruinous new “family leave” law to Minnesota businesses?

The Legislature has barely begun to count the ways.  

Representative Marion Rarick is counting:

There is literally nothing preventing an entire extended family from chucking daily life on the company dime for six months – on the honor system.   

I know businesses that have already left Minnesota due to this provision.  

Why, it’s almost as if putting a bunch of Sandy Feists and Andy Smiths into a room with unlimited authority was a terrible idea.  

I saw this graph over the weekend – and it’s gotten me thinking.

It shows how children in Finland during the Finnish Civil War who became communists and socialists tended to see themselves as, or be, less successful than their fathers, both in occupational and educational terms. In this data set, the pattern became clearer the higher up the educational and occupational scales one went.

Having observed a lot of socialists and other dyspeptic leftists in my time, I don’t think the pattern has changed much in the past 100 years (see:  Woody Kane). 

Here’s the problem. 

“Gen Z” sees itself, statistically, as uniquely burdened by economics, frequently seeing that as the “legacy” of previous generations leaving them nothing.   

And this particular failure has many fathers; yes, the educational system that taught them to embrace victimhood; their Millennial siblings and aunts and uncles who set the example of building identities around one’s maladies.  And, to be honest, yes – an economy that is currently top-loaded with workers from a couple of very large generations, and a list of other confounding factors – tax rates, zoning laws, the advances in technology that are disrupting traditional job markets – that give the Zoomers some difficulties of their own.  

So – does the “socialist loser son” metaphor apply to an entire generation?

That’s going to take some un-doing.  

Something most Democrat have a hard time comprehending:  healthcare tracked the regular consumer price index until about fifty years ago…

…when government stepped in to “make healthcare more affordable”.  Which worked about as well as it did with education, retirement, housing and every other thing government subsidizes.  

The invincible ignorance is a little vexing:

Of course, smart people know that high risk plans aren’t “uninsured” – they’re plans for people at high risk, which may optionally be subsidized. They made a lot of sense, especially when young, healthy people could balance out the system by buying the “catastrophic” care (aka “low risk”) plans, which were super cheap and covered accidents and devastating illnesses and not much else, and most of us of a certain age had when we were in our 20s, if we had insurance.

Say this to a DFLer, and all they hear is a buzzing noise in the background. 

How to explain economics to a DFLer? 

I asked myself – what is the only kind of business a DFLer understands?

Coffee shops.  

The vast majority of DFLers who list themselves as “small business owners”, own coffee shops. When DFL politicians go into the community to meet “small business”, those businesses are coffee shops 99% of the time.  

So – how to explain risk pools to someone whose only economic frame of reference is the coffee shop?

Maybe something like this:

DFLer:   Healthcare its broken.  

Normie:  So let’s say you know someone whose caffeine addiction is so intense that Starbucks or Caribou don’t cut it anymore?

DFLer:  Send them to Dunn Brothers!

Normie:  Why?

DFLer:  Because they might need a higher-caffeine content blend to get the jolt they need.  

Normie:  Even if it costs more?

DFLer:  Sure, but there’s ways to make up the difference.  And if they need coffee, it’s worth it.  

Normie:  So…why would you not just require everyone to pay Dunn Brothers prices so everyone gets the same caffeine?

DFLer:  That’s just crazy.  You’re caffeine-ily illiterate.  

Hmm. 

It’s just crazy enough to try.  

Joe Doakes, ex-Como Parker, emails:

Had the in-laws over for dinner. Things were going fine until my brother-in-law had to tell me all about Trump remodeling the Lincoln bathroom, how excessive it is. Not the East Wing ballroom, a different project that I had never heard of. 

Trump really does live rent-free in Liberals’ heads. Wonder if it’s lonesome in there, wandering around in all that empty space?

Joe Doakes 

 

Oh, empty is one thing it’s not.   Lots and lots of ’em wandering around in that space.  

My question:  what will they replace it with in 2029?

I suspect we all know the answer to that.  

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

New York City Mayor Mamdani: Free Day Care for All!

Minneapolis Somalis: One-Way Ticket to New York, Please.

Joe Doakes

 

I suspect a few unindicted fraudsters are dusting off their resumes.  

So I’ll admit it – I gave Mayor Frey about a 51% chance of beating Omar Fateh last week.   

But I figured that if Frey did win, the results would look a lot like the 2021 “Defund the Police” initiative vote; 

• Progressives, especially feckless young white ones, voting for the radical change
• People who had something to lose from that radical change – people in North Minneapolis who already live with crime, and people in Linden Hills and west of the Lakes with something to lose – would vote against. 

And lo and behold:

The blue precincts went Fateh; the tan (?) ones, Frey.

And who’d thunk it – Fateh took the urban-life theme parks like Marcy Holmes and Northeast below Broadway, and the toffs in Kenwood, and the wannabe starving artists in Whittier.  

The North?  Linden Hills and Nokomis?  West of the Lakes?  All Frey.  Even Longfellow thought Fateh was a radical too far.  

Color me amazed.   

Perhaps mores – the defeat of Katie Cashman leaves the DSA unable to override the mayor’s veto for the first time in years.    That’s gotta smart.  

After their debacle in 2021, the DSA said they’d be back in force for 2025.  They weren’t gonna let that happen again.  

And yet here we are.  

I’m sure they’ll be back again.  The next election is always the crucial one.  

But if this was indeed the perigee for leftism in Minneapolis (and I remain to be convinced), and the city is going to have to deal with slow decay rather than flaming implosion – well, that’s a slightly better grade of crisis, isn’t it? 

Democrats: “Hahaha!   Mamdani is mayor and New York hasn’t collapsed yet!”

Normies:  “Well, he doesn’t actually get inaugurated for another 7-8 weeks…”

I’m going to start a pool for when Mamdan and his underbosses…er, staffers start complaining that Trump is behind the Mayor’s increasingly obvious failures.   Give him a three month honeymoon and some time for reality to sink in.

I say June 15.  

Other bets?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

The media will try to spin the elections as a devastating loss for Republicans and repudiation of Trump.

Virginia has reliably voted for Democrats for years. New York City, the same.  That’s not a change, it’s business as usual. The real surprise would be if traditionally Republican districts flipped Democrat. 

Which could happen next time if Republicans keep kicking people out of the big tent because they are not ideologically pure enough.   That tactic might be morally satisfying but it doesn’t win elections … just ask the Libertarians.

Joe Doakes

 

 

 

Yep.  Virginia was “dog bites man”.  NYC was more like “dog licks dog” – the inevitable collapse of a far left society moving into overdrive.  

The fact that Jack Ciatarelli made it a fight in New Jersey, again, is a sign that there’s hope.  

And I never thought I’d say it, but did not expect Jacob Frey to beat out Fateh.  I suspect it means that the same crowd that turned out to reject the “Defund” initiative four years ago is still not amused by the DSA’s antics.   I’m going to need to look at the city’s results, but I’m going to go out on a short sturdy limb and guess that the same areas that bludgeoned the “defund”ers – the North Side, Phillips and the like – came out for Frey, while the white prog areas like Powderhorn and Whitter were all Fateh.  

How about Linden Hills and Kenwood?

I’ll follow up on this.  

Democrats, 2023: “Wow, Marjorie Taylor Greene is a stupid bimbo!”. 

2025: MTG joins the crowd trying to seize control of “MAGA”. 

Democrats, today: “It’s time to take a second look at the wise, stateswomanly MTG”. 

(Aside: Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes are all also vying for control fhte right). 

Democrats, 2026, probably: “It’s time for us to take a second look at Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate and Nick Fuentes. They are “the good right wingers””.

This is, by the way, the Boehner Inversion to the Reagan Corollary to Bert’s 11th Law in action. 

SCENE:  Avery LIBRELLE is riding a recumbent bike through the Minneapolis skyway when Mitch BERG happens across the path. 

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG:  Er, hey, Avery.  What are doing riding a bike through the skyway…

LIBRELLE: Shut up.   Do you remember these?

BERG:  They were a little before my time, but I know what they are…

LIBRELLE:  You have never seen one because VACCINES!  But your party wants to abolish vaccines!

BERG:  First, no we don’t.  Second, I’m not an anti-vaxxer.  But the vaccines we take for granted today – Measles, Rubella, Mumps and all of those – had years of testing before the public got anywhere near them. 

I didn’t trust the first round of Covid vaccines, because there’s no way the pharmaceutical industry can produce something that complicated, that fast, without some teething problems.  

LIBRELLE:  Hah.  You might as well be a faith-healer! Trust the experts!

BERG:  I mean, I mentioned testing, right?

In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned. Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine, manufactured by the California-based family firm of Cutter Laboratories, had caused 40 000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.

Paul Offit, paediatrician and prominent advocate of vaccination, sets the `Cutter incident’ in the context of the struggle of medical science against polio and other infectious diseases over the course of the 20th century. He reminds us that, within a decade of Karl Landsteiner’s identification of the polio virus in 1908, an epidemic in New York killed 2400 people (mostly children) and left thousands more with a life-long disability. In the 1950s, summer outbreaks in the USA caused tens of thousands of cases, leaving hundreds paralysed or dead. `Second only to the atomic bomb’, polio was `the thing that Americans feared the most’.

 

(But LIBRELLE has already cycled away, looking for underutilized recycling bins).

And SCENE. 

Life has its seasons.   Ups and downs, goods and bads, times when you can’t stop creating and time when you’re creatively blocked up so bad you’re borrowing energy from six months out.  

And in 23 years of writing this blog, I’ve been through a lot of them.   

But none quite like this year.   

Job layoff in February, and five months on the beach.   Then a turn around, and being pretty overcommitted, job-wise (a day job, a part-time thing, the show, Hot Air, and a couple of bands on the side).  And of course the acceleration of my father’s decline and passing, which followed my mom’s three years ago.   

Gotta admit, my brain feels a little numb.  I’m covering ten pounds of demands with five pounds of energy.   And for the first time since 2002, the blog finds itself getting squeezed out. Doesn’t help that the blog’s technical issues (it stopped letting me schedule posts in advance) have really harshed my mellow.  

Which is actually unsettling.  Getting up at 5AM and writing something every morning has been sort of an emotional home base for me for a very, very long time. 

And like most seasons, there’ll be a change at some point.  Into what, I don’t know.   

I know that every time I look at moving the show show over to Substack, I…just…can’t.   It feels like “moving to Facebook” was for blogging 15 years ago – giving the keys to the house to some stranger who promises he’s gonna take good care of things, yessirreebob.   I didn’t buy it then and I don’t now.  

Anyway, stay tuned.   

Joe Doakes formerly of Como Park emails:

 Scott Johnson has another post on Powerline demanding Republicans purge themselves of everyone insufficiently enthusiastic about Jews in general and Israel in specific.

 This is one more instance of playing the guilt card. America didn’t do enough to save the Jews from Nazis and therefore we are forever obligated to give them special consideration. 

 That was 80 years ago. I wasn’t even born yet, and neither were my kids or my grandkids.   None of us bear personal responsibility for the evils of Hitler any more than we owe reparations for those of Simon Legree.  Guilt card won’t work with people who don’t feel guilty about wrongs they didn’t commit.

 Why am I complaining about it to Mitch instead of posting on Powerline? Because I’m under a lifetime ban for pointing out the hypocrisy of demanding commenters post under their real names when Hindrocket, Deacon and The Big Trunk used pseudonyms until they retired and no longer had to fear being canceled.

Joe Doakes

 

First – “insufficiently enthusiastic”?  Or actively antisemitic, and ambivalent about the existence of the Jewish State?   You gotta admit there’s a wide range, even on this blog.  

As to the “real names” bit – that always confused me.  Literally everyone knew John, Scott and Paul’s real names by mid-2003.  They used their real names on the air in 2004 (not to mention on countless media appearances back into the ’90s.  

And of course, people certainly tried to cancel them.  I know if I could go back and pick a pen name, I would have.   

David French was once a conservative, in the same sense that David Brooks was – someone with a solid sense of the principles, but a serious problem with application. 

But somewhere along the line, French’s capacity for critical thought eroded away to nil. 

For example:

Perhaps.  

Now – let’s talk about the destructive and nonsensical application of public health procedures during Covid, which destroyed and rendered nonsensical the respect for what had been until 2020 the most indestructible and sensible of the nation’s instititutions, the CDC?  

That might’ve had something to do with it.

The Strib has run three pieces on the past few weeks pondering who paid for Rick Kupchella’s “A Precarious State” – which lays out the state of Minnesota’s decay, and lays much of it at the feet of the Minneapolis and legislative “Democrat Socialists of America”.  

Who’s paying for Kupchella to put the facts out?

My question is:  who’s paying the Strib to cover them up?

OK, I have another question that I’ve been asking of Kupchella’s many left-wing critics:  which fact presented are in error?

Other than “who funded it?” (who cares, if the facts are correct?), the closest I’ve gotten to an answer is “it’s one-sided”.  To which I respond “so is the flat-earth debate.  That doesn’t mean one side is wrong”.  

You be the judge:

I drove by one of the “No Kings” “protests” on Saturday – a little one, on Yankee Doodle Road near Pilot Knob, in what probably passes for “downtown” in Eagan.   

It almost fooled me.  There were a whole bunch of flags – all of them American, none of them Palestinian or BLM.   They didn’t completely fool me – the average age was probably 65, and they all had ELCA hair, so I had them made before I actually read any of their signs.  

But it got me thinking – perhaps Big Left spent some time getting the “No Kings” people to try act a little less crazy?   Maybe they figured out that Palestinian flags and guys in assless chaps aren’t polling well in the provinces? 

I wasn’t wrong:

What came next was the real kicker. When Austin asked about the protest’s peaceful vibe, the woman didn’t hesitate. “We’ve all been told to be peaceful,” she explained matter-of-factly. “We’ve had training on how to be peaceful and to deescalate.”

Training.

As in organized, structured instruction on how to behave at a protest.

Austin didn’t get the chance to follow up on who exactly provided this training or which organization bankrolled it, but the admission alone punctures the myth that these movements are leaderless and organic. When the protester was asked to show her Antifa-marked sign more clearly, she refused. Funny how that works.

If true?  No, it’s not something to welcome:  Big Left is trying to cater to the less-insane Democrat constituency, whatever and wherever it is.  They’ll be sliding into the same hungry maw as all the insane ones. They will be assimilated, or disposed of when able. 

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Media reports Trump told Zelinsky, “Accept Putins terms or be destroyed.” 

Trump denies he said it.  That’s too bad.  It’s the correct answer and should have been given nine months ago.  End the killing.  Surrender.  Live to fight another day. 

 

Gonna disagree with Joe there.  

It won’t end the killing.  It’ll just defer it ’til Putin, encouraged rather than sated by the western cave-in, decides to go after Estonia, counting on a NATO that’s too weak to do anything about it and too cowed to risk getting nuked.   NATO doesn’t have the conventional force to resist, and the US doesn’t have the ability to move enough troops to Europe in a hurry to be any kind of deterrent in the near term.  

And when, not if, NATO caves on Estonia, then come Latvia, Lithuania, and the other nearly-disarmed NATO countries.   Finland and Poland would be tougher nuts to crack, but neither can really do much to the Russians either.  

Now you might say “not our circus, not our monkeys”.   Maybe you’re right (although I disagree).  But I think it’s wishful thinking that giving up in Ukraine will do more than validate Putin to do more.  

It’s fair to say I was a “No Kings” protester back in 2020-2021.

We protested against unconstitutional government overreach and abuse of the bureaucracy – 16 months of “emergency powers” for a three month emergency, snitch lines, shutting down businesses and churches, declaring rioting “good for public health”. 

Oh, you might have missed it. Partly because the government colluded with Facebook, Twitter and big media to censor us. To shut us up. 

Y’know. Stuff that kings do. Actually, more “dictators” than “Kings” these days. 

Well, stuff they did in 2020-2021. But, oddly enough, not Saturday, where not a single protest was culled from social media or blocked by public health authorities.  

I drove past one of the “protests” in Eagan on Saturday.  Lots of American flags.  It’d seem someone at “No Kings”‘s non-profit HQ got the word that Palestinian flags were not polling well.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I had a bad experience about 50 years ago and it scarred me for life. A debate coach explained logical fallacies and ever since I’ve been cursed to see them everywhere.

 Most recently a liberal acquaintance was explaining to me that the problem with Hamas is not Islam. Islam does not preach violence against Jews, Islam is a religion of peace.

I pointed out Hamas expressly claims to follow Islam, specifically the command to exterminate the Jews. “Ah,” he says, “but that is not True Islam.” And suddenly I’m back in 10th grade, hearing bagpipes.

 I wonder if President Trump could spare a half-dozen employees in the Department of Education whose sole job would be to force the states to teach logical thinking in the schools? That would go further toward preserving our Republic than anything he’s proposed to date.

Joe Doakes 

 

No snarky addition here.  Logic is the biggest casualty of the past 30 years. 

To: Governor Walz
From: Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant
Re:  Good People

Governor, 

You wrote this earlier:

That would be a great message, if you hadn’t spent the past year calling Republicans “Nazis” and “Fascists” on four occasions, and repeatedly referring to the Feds as “The Gestapo”. 

But I’m worried that if I criticize you for being a hypocrite for going all “let’s bget along” now that you’re embroiled in scandal, I’ll wind up in your thoughtcrime database. 

You see the conundrum, here?

That is all.  

Berg’s 17th Law doesn’t get much of a workout…

…until it does:

When reporting “news”:

1. Nothing any Democrat says, or does, up to and including violating federal law and national security, will ever be held against them
2. On the other hand, anything untoward (or that can be interpreted as being untoward, regardless of intent or context) that is or is reputed to be done, said, hinted at or speculated to have been done, said or hinted at by any Republican officeholder (no matter how obscure or inconsequential), candidate (whether mainstream or far fringe), party official, contributor, voter, supporter, rally attendee, or by any putative supporter, contributor or rally attendee, or anyone claiming or reputed to have at any time been a Republican party member, supporter or sympathizer, will not only be treated like it’s evidence in a federal trial, but imputed to every conservative, anywhere, regardless of its context, accuracy or even truthfulness.

A Republican – no matter how obscure – who says something repugnant in a forum no matter how marginal, can count on becoming very, very famous. 

To wit:

Bad “young Republicans. No cookie.

If we presume this conversation isn’t a hoax (I don’t), then let’s tote up the score:   a few maladapted “young republicans” had a pretty ugly conversation. 

Versus:  A solid plurality of young Democrats justify murder over politics.  

Which is probably why this story is getting pushed in the first place.  

Democrats, Today:  “‘Anti’-Fa doesn’t exist”

Democrats, Tomorrow:  “‘Anti’-Fa exists, but it’s tiny and super marginal. 

Democrats, the Next Day: “‘Anti’-Fa exists, and it’s Republicans fault”

Democrats, The Day After: “‘Anti’-Fa exists, and it’s an absolute good.