Never thought I”d see the day.

In one of the highlights of last week, all nine justices of the SCOTUS united across ideological lines to beat Hennepin County like a pimp beating one of his girls.

Geraldine Tyler owed a $15,000 tax debt on a one-bedroom Minneapolis condo; to pay the debt, Hennepin County sold her home for $40,000 — and kept the extra $25,000 beyond what was owed. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the opinion of the Court that the taxpayer must “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more,” effectively ending the practice of home equity theft.

How clear-cut was Henco’s abuse? This clear-cut (emphasis added):

Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a concurring opinion, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined, adding that the county’s action also violates the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause.

“Economic penalties imposed to deter willful noncompliance with the law are fines by any other name,” he wrote. “And the Constitution has something to say about them: They cannot be excessive.”

Any day that Henco gets clobbered is a wonderful one.

…as the George Floyd riots gathered steam, this blog (thanks to a source with deep connections among Henco first responders) scooped the entire rest of the Twin Cities media on the Third Precinct story.

Info on “Speaking Proudly”:

Today’s music:

Zawahiri: “Austere Religious Scholar”

Lenin: “Controversial worker’s rights activist”

Nashville school shooter: “Tragic Victim”

Days of rioting, burning, looting: “Mostly Peaceful””.

Dolt in a MAGA hat carrying out perhaps the lowest level of vandalism possible:

“Terrorism”.

By the way – during the early days of the Civil Rights movement, activists were painstakingly trained not to lash out or do stupid things, since they’d be held against the entire movement.

The Tea Party got that pretty instinctively (which is why Big Left and the GOP Consultant Class had to invent their entire case against the Tea Party).

Someone’s gotta tell MAGA.

UPDATE: As you can see from the tweet, people figured it out.

It’s not a good week to be a Target shareholder.

Target’s stock price has taken a hit amid the backlash over its LGBT-themed products.

The New York Post noted on May 17 the retailer’s stock closed at $160.96 per share, giving it a market value of $74.3 billion.

But as of Thursday morning, its stock price was hovering around $140 a share. And its market value was down roughly $10 billion and around $64 billion.

Target is…

…I was about to say “pushing back”.

But it’s more “trying to deflect”: This piece is called “Target is being held hostage by annti-LGBTQ campaign”.

No word if any “pouncing” was also involved.

But here’s the part were I have a question. Target accepts a certain amount of “breakage”; shoplifting, vandalism, even people opening containers to see what’s i before they buy unopened ones. They accept it as part of the cost of doing business – even more so today, when their urban stores are plagued with rampant theft and vandalism.

So about this bit here:

The campaign became hostile, with threats levied against Target employees and instances of damaged products and displays in stores…In the end, Target opted to protect employee safety by removing certain items that it said caused the most “volatile” reaction from opponents.

DIsplays get damaged all the time. And Target employees are no strangers to angry, hostile customers. None of which is OK.

But Target is claiming there’ve been attacks, even violence, against Target workers.

So where are the reports of the actual acts of violence?

No video? Nothing in writing anywhere?

Call me a cynic, but it almost appears that Target is trying to deflect blame for its market bleeding away from tuck-under swimsuits for teenage boys and Satanic designers, and over to the Phantom MAGA Menace.

Someone show me if I’m wrong, here.

UPDATE 7:03 AM

Oh.

Given that the demand for “right wing violence” exceeds the supply by an order of magnitude or two, it was always a safe bet. But hate assuming

PJ O’Rourke said it best: progressives in power are like crack whores with a stolen Platinum Card.

They certainly had their party this session – and ended things with a budget-signing yesterday that had Leni Riefenstahl sending a chef’s kiss from the great beyond:

The social media blitz of endzone-happy dancing, featuring gigabytes of the DFL’s one real product, the smug selfie, was worth of Kim Jong Un’s minions.

But the hangover is coming.

The first lawsuit to try to tamp down the Trifecta’s power-sodden overrreach is on the books:

The DFL admitted publicly they were targeting Northwestern and Crown due to their religion – and they didn’t care.

And it ain’t the last lawsuit you can expect to see.

Rep. Andy Smith, wannabe kommissar and ultraprogressive rep from Kim Norton’s side of Rochester, seems to see himself as a left-of-center Steven Crowder. Or at least, that’s how he comes across.

Here’s his ode to enabling Munchhausen Mommies:

He truly is one of Minnesota Progressivism’s intellectual thought leaders.

Anyhoo, yesterday was his birthday:

I celebrated by tripling my monthly donation to the MN Gun Owners Caucus.

I invite you to do the same.

And anyone who wants to challenge him? I will give you whatever airtime it takes.

Tina Turner is passed away yesterday, in her home 83.

It was about this time forty years ago that radio programmers were asking “Tina who?“

I mean, she popped on on “oldies” radio.

She had some staples there, in fact:

But Turner was…

…well, in her forties. No woman in the Billboard Chart era had ever had a #1 hit at anywhere near her age.

And so everyone – me included – was kind of gobsmacked when perhaps the greatest comeback in the history of popular music happened about this time forty years ago; 43 year old Tina Turner climbed back from R&B obscurity to the top of the charts – the oldest woman to ever top the Billboard charts at the time, with a series of songs from “Private Dancer”, an album cut with a who’s who of the best sidemen in the business:

The story of the intervening years was a catalog of horrors…

…literally the stuff of movies. If you’re not aware of the, uh, turbulence in Turner’s life from 1960 to 1976…

…the movie is one of the better music biopics ever.

Anyway – I loved a lot of things about Tina Turner – but perhaps most of all, the fact that Turner danced with the one that brung her, as it were – she never forgot the sheer power of a hot, fast, sweaty rave-up.

Rest in peace, Tina Turner.

Good thing Rep. Phillips grew up with a silver foot in his mouth. If he’d had to succeed on his merits, he’d be living in a homeless camp by the Quarry.

Example:

Uh,, no. You got 1 out of 4. Roosevelt – the president who set the stage for Wilson’s “progressive” orgy – probably qualifies.

Lincoln didn’t promote slavery, so morally-consistent modern Democrats would not know what to do with him.

Jefferson would be a Libertarian; he’d hang out with Justin Amash and Rand Paul.

Washington? Someone who was given the chance at unfettered power, even declaring himself king, and demurred in favor of a constitutional Republic? Not a chance. He’d be a proto-Reagan conservative.

And JFK would get kicked out of today’s DFL. HHH was all but kicked out of the DFL of the 1970s, for crying out loud.

CD3 – please do better.

“Representative” Andy Smith, DFL-Rochester, is so annoyed by having to deal with dissent:

I’m not saying DFLers are all totalitarians at heart.

I’m just saying when they elect hamsters like this, their “hearts” are irrelevant.

UPDATE: Smith’s legislative priorities seem to be, in order: Taking selfies, getting his hair just perfect, jumping off things the Teachers Union tells him to jump off of, and eating donuts.

Throughout the media, it’s a universal truism: Smart people with personalities go into radio; people who get by on looks go into TV.

It’s conventionally-accepted wisdom throughout the world of mass communications.

I have exactly as much factual oomph saying that as former Channel 5 weatherperson and DFL senator Nicole Mitchell (DFL, what else, Woodbury) talking about the civil liberty law:

She’s referring to Schenck vs. United States – in which an anti-draft protester during World War One sued over having his civil rights trampled on by the Woodrow Wilson administration, often regarded as a toxically stupid decision, one which the SCOTUS reversed in defense of a Klansman’s right to free speech.

But you know what’s more toxic than that?

Let’s say, for purposes of argument, that society has the communal wisdom to abrogate rights “for the public good” without doing vastly more harm than good – again, just for purposes of argument.

Who defines “the common good?”

Traditionally, it was families, churches, and traditional social institutions that had stood the test of hundreds, sometimes thousands of years .

The DFL and Big Left have been tearing those institutions down, and replacing them with…

…themselves.

It’s as plain a statement as there is that the DFL wants your civil rights – all of them – to be political swag to be doled out as rewards, if at all.

I’m not especially big on boycotts.

Problem is, most of the stuff that conservatives are supposed to boycott these days or products, I’ve never used, or companies I’ve never really patronized.

I hadn’t used Gillette razors for years before they beclowned themselves with their anti-masculine ad campaign a few years back. not because they were work, but because they just weren’t very good razors.

I haven’t had beer in something like five years – and even then, I didn’t drink American mass-market beer. So Bud Light was irrelevant (and is only beer in the loose possible sense of the term)

Likewise, given a choice between Starbucks, Caribou, and driving home and making French press, Starbucks always comes in last. Not because of politics, but because it’s the worst value for the dollar.

But after Target’s recent bout of self immolation, I figured that’s a company I can do without.

Yeah, self-immolation:

So, starting last Friday, that’s exactly what I did; I swore off Target until they come around – however, long that takes.

It’s been three days. I’m still alive. Go figure.

You and your significant other each earn $60,000 a year. That’s a total household income of $120,000.

Your bills – housing, transportation, loan payments, food, everything you do – come to $10,000 a month. Your family budget is balanced.

You go out to the casino one night, and get the luckiest break ever; you walk out $80,000 ahead. 

You buy a bigger house, a newer car (and a bridge loan to finish paying off your old one), do some remodeling, put a couple of vacations and cruises and a whole lot of happy hours, on your capital one card. 

With the new mortgage, car loan, revolving credit and loans to pay for all the other goodies, your monthly expenses go up to $16,000 a month – requiring a $200,000 a year income between you and your significant other – who, remember, are still earning $120,000 a year between you. So when you’ve burned through that $80 windfall, you’ll be coming up $80,000 a year in the red.

Your options to avoid insolvency, foreclosure, and repossession are:

a. Downsize, quick – go back to a smaller house, cheaper car, etc.

b. Keep going back to the casino and hope for another big score, and hope your significant other isn’t too stupid to know what a longshot that is.

c. Browbeat your significant other into earning more money so you don’t go bankrupt, and hope he or she doesn’t leave you. As the significant other why they hate children if they don’t ratchet their income up, but fast.

That’s exactly what the state legislature and Governor Klink have done; the pandemic left the state with a one time windfall that they have spent, and much more. 

And you and I, the taxpayers of Minnesota, are the significant other. 

So what are they going to do about it?

Well, they’re going to hope that you’re a dumb spouse that thinks you can bank on casino winnings. But they are just going to hold out for option C, and demand you pony up more.

That’s exactly what just happened.

If this were a marriage, you would call the big spender an abusive spouse. 

So when you are the victim, what do you call the perpetrator? 

Representative Alicia Kozlowski – one of the DFL‘s leading public intellectuals and thought leaders – had this to say over the weekend about illegal immigration

So, apparently, Rep. Kozlowski‘s (and the DFL‘s) new taxes and gun control laws can be ignored, then?

For that matter, given that by her logic, the legislature itself is illegitimate, she shouldn’t actually have a position of any authority at all?

Urban Progressive Privilege means never having to really rationalize your only rationality.

Find out more about the Wall that Heals, at Saint Thomas Academy, Friday through Monday (5/26-29).

Oh, yeah – Jen McEwen’s coming for your guns.

Walter Hudson schoolling DFL apologists on their legalizing of pedophilia:

And here’s the music list for today’s show:

Is there nothing in the worlds of negotiation, of convincing people to think and do things they aren’t entitled to, with the elegance, the power, the pure majesty of simply capping off one’s argument with a jaunty “full stop”?

If Abraham Lincoln had told Jefferson Davis “abolish slavery and rejoin the union, full stop!” there would’ve been no Civil War.

Had RIchard Nixon said “I am not a crook – full stop“, there’d have been no Watergate, no impeachment, no resignation.

If WInston Churchill had punctuated the Dunkirk speech – “…we shall fight on the beaches and the landing grounds, we shall never surrender, full stop!”, Hitler would have pulled back from France, abdicated, and fled to Mongolia.

Had the Pope responded to Martin Luther with a decisive “Iustificamur ex operibus, plenus finis” (“We are justified by works. Full stop“), there’d have been no Reformation, no 100 years war. \

If the guys in Milli Vanilli had simply said, “We are the real singers! Full stop!”, they would be bigger than Madonna, Elvis, the Beatles, Taylor Swift and Slim Whitman today.

So pity the poor Minnesota GOP. Who can stand in the face of such remorseless logic and deft rhetoric?

For example – I, personally, started out believing that “Rights” are inalienable, non-material things with which one is born, and from which one can not be legitimately separated except by very solemn due process.

But then I read this:

And voila! I’m convinced! A “right” is a bit of material swag bestowed on the deserving by the political process!

Even “Lieutenant” Governor Flanagan, who punctuated one of her (very, very few non-risible) arguments with this…

Is there nothing that phrase can’t do?

…

If there are two bright spots in this current legislative session, it is the emergence of Harry Niska and Walter Hudson, as two of the best state legislators in the United States.

Here, Walter finishes the job Harry started, giving the single best explanation of why the DFL, and the StarTribune, are lying about the removal of language, regarding pedophilia from state statute.

Pass this around, like it’s hot.

The SPPD has arrested a suspect in the arson of a mosque on Dale Street in Saint Paul:

Police said Thursday officers arrested 42-year-old Said Ntamugabumwe around 8 p.m. Wednesday. He was booked into the Ramsey County Jail on suspicion of first-degree arson. 

Read More: Arrest Made in Minnesota Mosque Arson Case | https://krocnews.com/arrest-made-in-minnesota-mosque-arson-case/?trackback=twitter_mobile&utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

No word if Mr. Ntamugabumwe was carrying an umbrella.

Hot on the heels of the pummeling of Bud Light over choosing a transgender spokesminstrel, this ad campaign claiming the history of beer for feminism, has surfaced:

Corporate virtue-signaling? Sure.

But that’s not the part that annoys me the most.

The worst part is what this says about women in America today.

Money Where Their Mouth Is: Advertisers are, in normal times, perhaps the ultimate practitioners of the free market. They, their campaigns, and their agencies and departments rise and fall on how successfully they gauge the sentiments of their audiences.

For example, the ad agency that conceived of a “Clydesdale” campaign for a certain brand of beer managed to do a superlative job of gauging the effect that ad would have on the ad-viewing audience – not only selling lots of beer, but creating perhaps America’s foremost celebrity draft horse team.

Likewise, the ad agency that thought a group of cute frogs croaking the name of the beer into the dark would sell beer – and they were right.

Good ad agencies, execs and campaigns “read” society correctly.

So – what are they reading?

Impressions: It’s not a big stretch – ads are aimed at the people who buy products.

And within families, households and communities, that varies by what’s being sold.

So think about products where the primary buy/don’t buy decision is men. Classic example – firearms. Ads for firearms portray men as sober, decisive, serious people. That’s how gun owners see themselves and their paths. An ad agency that portrayed their male customers as doughy comic relief would probably have a hard time getting their contract renewed, since the brand’s sales would probably tank. By the way – the women portrayed are also solid, serious people, as well.

Home improvement brands, like hardware stores, tend to take men fairly seriously as well

Beer? Well, the portrayal of men in beer ads is often tongue-in-cheek…:

…and the women portrayed with them tend to be – as the shrieking harpy in the Miller ad notes – somewhat idealized:

In a bikini? Sometimes. The purple middy top is close, in its own way.

But women are portrayed as idealized as a rule. Young, pretty, not stupid – it’s affectionate.

So – when the target audience is women, what then?

Complete contempt, that’s what. The males – especially fathers and boyfriends – in commercials these days wish they were portrayed with the sensitivity of a hot chick in a bikini (although the guy narrating this video gets the message all wrong):

The point being, our ads tell us something about how advertisers (who get paid to get attitudes right) see how we see each other. And from the ads – and the crushing preponderance of them by volume – we learn:

• Men, at least in the last 30-40 years, have affectionate respect for women, while celebrating attraction
• Women think men are hopeless incompetents.

And this has been going on for well over a decade.

So is it any wonder the young fellas of GenZ are forsaking the mating game for video games and pr0n?

January 6 was, at worst, a bunch of goons and wannabes playing “Three Percenter” games. Maybe they were provoked by a Fed, maybe not.

Watergate? That was a President and his committee doing something that they knew was wrong enough that they felt the explicit need to cover it up. amind

The Durham report describes something much worse: the active co-option of the institutions of American law enforcement to political ends.

David Strom on the choice this nation, as individuals and as a collective (or collectives) faces:

But right here, right now anybody who had faith in those liars has a choice: declare your alliance to the truth, or to the lies. Do you care more about America or hate Donald Trump so much that you are willing to give up America? Because defending the abuses of power is a rejection of America itself.

The choice is stark, but the stakes really are that high. Not because Donald Trump is the only man who can “save America,” because if that were true America would already be lost. Donald Trump is not immortal, nor has he proven capable of fighting the “deep state.” This is not about Trump, but about who rules America–the people or the Elite.

No, the choice is between upholding the rule of law, limits on power, ensuring accountability in government, and preservation of our constitutional order, or just handing raw power to the Left, the Administrative State, and an MSM dedicated to lying to you all the time.

A smaller but equally corrosive scandal is out there in plain sight; as I’ve been tirelessly pointing out for six and a half years, we don’t have to infer that the media is not just biased, but actively working for the same people the FBI has been busted working for; representatives of our media “elites” said it, proudly, in front of a friendly crowd, just after the ’16 election.

Trump’s greatest failure was his inability to drain the swamp. He made a start – but in the context of this week’s news, “getting a start” is a little like “getting halfway across Omaha Beach before calling it a ‘L'”.

This is going to have to be the next great national crusade.

More on this to come.

It may have felt like I was picking on “Emery” last week, asking him to define exactly when “his” life developed enough moral value that it his. mother would have ceased being able to abort “him”.

Of course, someone who can’t define when their own life acquired moral weight also can’t, logically, tell you why it’s OK for their mother not to abort them now. “I’m alive”. OK – since when? And why? What is this magical threshold? Whistling and hoping the question goes away isn’t much more intellectually honest than telling your teenagers that the stork brings babies.

But I have yet to meet a Democrat, anywhere, at any level, who can, will or, I suspect, is allowed to try to answer that question.

So, that’s one such question.

What are the rest?

Let’s build a list: the questions no Democrat can, will, or is allowed to answer:

When Did It Become Not Acceptable For Your Mother To Abort You.

Not some generic woman. Not some abstract fetus. Your mom, and you. When did your life gain moral standing? When did your body (and, uh, associated consciousness, mind, spirit or soul) become someone with its own bodily autonomy?

How Can You Tell “Universal” Background Checks Are Working Without A Registry?

The police find a gun. They suspect that the person who got the gun to the perp didn’t take a background check. If the record doesn’t exist tying a transfer to the perp, how do you prove it if all of them aren’t kept on record?

And how is this record – of data points, almost like, I dunno, a base of data (is there a word for that) kept, without a registry?

So, What City Got (Sustainably) More Affordable After Rent Control?

Beyond New York and San Francisco, the list of places with rent control and the list of cities with literally zero habitable affordable housing are pretty much the same list.

Why do high school kids earning Minimum Wage – who, according to the BLS, overwhelmingly live in homes with middle class incomes – need a “living wage”?

Don’t say “because many of them support their families” – most of them don’t, and as we saw last week, the “living wage” has slashed low-income jobs in the Twin Cities.

So…why?

I’d like to continue the list. Any others?

To: Senator Smith
From: Mitch Berg, Unaborted Human
Re: From the Deep Thoughts of Tina Smith Files

Senator,

I have long since learned that your ignorance is a barrel with no bottom. Nothing surprises me.

This? Not even close:

No.

My God. No.

The SCOTUS is not “beholden to the people”. That’s the House. The Senate was intended to be beholden to the States (one of our nation’s greatest mistakes was changing that).

The SCOTUS responds only to the Constitution. When it doesn’t, awful things happen.

The thought that you are in the “deliberative” chamber is frankly an abomination.

That is all.

University of Saint Thomas, as a matter of policy, apparently doesn’t tell young women if their assigned dorm roommate is is a bio-male who identifies as female:

This, according to [UST Housing Director Zoe] Chang, is done as discreetly as possible in order to avoid upsetting parents. The video, OMG said in an email, documents the “mountain of rule changes and preferential treatment provided to trans students when it comes to their housing accommodations.”

The video:

1st OMG Citizen Journalist-Led Story:

A Citizen Journalist was rewarded $1000 for this recording obtained about a Catholic University allowing "trans girl" to room in the girl’s dorm without their knowledge. pic.twitter.com/eFmsTZnm1W

— O’Keefe Media Group (@OKeefeMedia) May 10, 2023

If progressive policies are so unambiguously good, why do they have to lie about all of them?

A friend of the blog emails regarding an email he got from Minnesota Public Radio regarding their recently-finished pledge drive:

Wait a minute. I thought that government subsidies was only a small portion of their funding.

So which it is?

Here was the email:

MPR’s Spring Member Drive ended last week, and we made great progress. But there is still a long way to go to meet our budget goals by June 30. I know the budget isn’t the most exciting thing to talk about, but the fact is that it powers everything we do – the programming you love, and the hosts, journalists and staff who create and share it. 

To give you a status update, here what’s happening:

👉 Economic uncertainty continues to negatively impact our revenues

👉 Vocal attacks on public media continue, even resulting in calls to defund public media on the national stage

These headwinds materially affect MPR. We’re working hard to keep on track. It’s important that we do so that we can move forward in a position of stability and strength. 
 

Look, MPR – public radio apologists keep saying NPR gets a tiny share of its funding from government. But if NPR says they’ll collapse without government funding, how are they not state media?

I’m always amazed at the artists who had the foresight, while creating timeless musical classics, to have a camera rolling in the studio.

This is one such example:

It’s like gospel music in the church of fast-casual food.