I’m going to be off today, and probably Monday. But I’ll be back raring to go on Tuesday!

Merry Christmas, everyone.

…when dissenting from forced civil rituals was considered the height of Patriotism.

Why, it was only Kaepernick years ago.

How things have changed:

Look – as someone who supported Ukrainian independence back when Democrats universally said the USSR was here to stay, I have one request: Show the share of the money that actually goes to weapons, logistics and training.

Because I’ve seen estimates that 2/3 of the money we “send to Ukraine” ends up in the pockets of consultants and special interests in the US that don’t include building weapons (or replacing them in US units and inventories), shipping them, or training Ukrainians to use them.

And what better way to avoid that accounting than to hold yet another ongoing witchhunt against “badthink?”

What’s officially a Christmas movie?

Ask no more. It’s settled:

This meme has been making the rounds:

This is false. Both are problems.

There is literally *zero* excuse for following closer than two seconds behind someone, no matter how slow they are going.

Seriously – when did MN stop teaching drivers “leave two seconds between you and the car in front of you (and double that in rain and on ice)”? I don’t know – but clearly, once the state passed its “left lane” law, a whole new caste of drivers started thinking they were entitled to drive in the left lane, no matter what.

And here’s a little note for some of you Minnesota drivers: if someone’s in the “passing” lane and going too slow – pass on the right, morons.

Last week, I kid you not, while driving I drove past a line of 6-8 drivers in the left lane, all less than half a second behind each other. I’d bet a shiny new quarter every last one of them was drooling “Muh Left Lane!” and cursing the “slowpoke” at the front of the parade.

Someday, if I’m ever king, shooting tailgaters will not only be legal, but I’ll pay a bounty.

Why, yes. I hate tailgaters.

While people focus on Minneapolis’s ongoing decay, Saint Paul just broke its homicide record:

And there’s plenty of time to run up the score before New Years.

Remember – in 2016, there were 81 homicides in the entire state – 30 in Minneapolis, and (IIRC) 18 in Saint Paul.

Hard to believe Saint Paul is the sane city…

Over the past few weeks, Stanford issued its “List of Allowable Words”.

They don’t call it that, of course. The official title is the output of the “Elimination of Harmful Language” initiative.

And if you expect something that the Babylon Bee might have passed on as too implausible, you’re half right. The Bee makes better satire. But if you work in modern corporate culture, it’s all too plausible.

The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) is a multi-phase, multi-year project to address harmful language in IT at Stanford. EHLI is one of the actions prioritized in the Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Action, which was published by the Stanford CIO Council (CIOC) and People of Color in Technology (POC-IT) affinity group in December 2020.

The list has gotten a raft of derisive coverage – all of it justified.

Pick a favorite.

Mine (so far):

• Seminal: Replace with “Leading, Groundbreaking”. Term reinforces male-dominated langauge.

Well, no – Seminal (and “Semen”) are derived from the Latin term for “Seed”. A “seminal” thing is something from which something bigger grows. It’s not “male-dominated”, it’s Latin-dominated.

But :

• Transgendered: replace with “Transgender”. This term avoids connections that being transgender is something that is done to a person and/or that some kind of transition is required.

Grammatically? That’s just bizarre. Adding “ed” is a common way to turn a noun into an adjective.

Biologically? That’s even more bizarre. The word “Trans” itself means some sort of, uh, transition is required.

Oh, go ahead. Pick out your favorite and leave it in the comment section. I can’t fight the language war by myself.

I listen – as rarely as I can – to NPR’s “On the Media”. The show is basically an unthinking cheerleader for America’s “elite” media.

And their latest theme is participating in the war on “Nostalgia” – particularly, against the notion of looking to the past for lessons that might help with the present and the future.

The first segment was keynoted by a fellow – some sort of historian – who declaimed in an adenoidal ,mid-Atlantic voice no different than a thousand others on NPR “What does nostalgia for the fifties get you? It gets you dead, sooner! The life expectancy was 66 years! Now it’s 78!”

That’s right – if you think society could gain by returning to some of the social and moral stanards of the past, you also have to roll back science! And bring the Klan back too!

Not really exaggerating that last bit – because nostalgia isn’t just wanting to derive some wisdom from another time. Nosirreebob, it’s bringing Hitler back to life!

You’re not learning from the past. You’re begging to repeat it, all of it, especially the worst of it.

We can not defund NPR fast enough.

Anti-gun groups peddled influence in the Centers for Disease Control to gundeck research that showed defensive gun uses by civilians are common. It’s just bad for business, if you’re a gun grabber.

The decision to remove a CDC-commissioned report from the agency’s website on gun statistics at the apparent behest of gun-control advocates may further strain its relationship with Congressional overseers, especially pro-gun Republicans who are set to take control of the House next year. The relationship between the two, already frayed over the Coronavirus pandemic, could reach new lows not seen in decades. During the 1990s, Congress put restrictions on CDC funding in response to officials openly working with gun-control groups to try and ban handguns.

“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes,” Mark Rosenberg, director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention, told The Washington Post in 1994. “It used to be that smoking was a glamour symbol–cool, sexy, macho. Now it is dirty, deadly–and banned.”

Kleck, Professor Emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, stood by his research. He said the CDC did not reach out to him for his perspective before making the change. He argued the removal of the reference to his estimate was “blatant censorship” and said it was evidence of the politicization of the agency.

Kleck – a Democrat – has been a Thomas Becket to the gun grabbers’ Henry II for three decades now. Seems the grabbers have decided to cut out the middleman.

First Covid, now putting a finger on the scale re guns.

I’m building a list of alphabet agencies some future GOP administration is going to need to gut, using the Marines if necessary.

UPDATE: Becket. Not More. Blah

I used to think DFLers merely counted on voters being ignorant.

I was young and naive.

They actively promote ignorance:

Senator Morrison is an M.D, so she certainly isn’t stupid. She must know that the imponderably vast majority of those “children”. are boys aged 14+ who are involved in crime, mostly murdered by other young men like themselves, likewise started on the wrong path bright and early in life.

She must know that the only things that actually work to prevent that sort of carnage are:

• Using the sentencing enhancements for gun crimes that so helped in cleaning up New York City thirty years ago – the type that Mike Freeman and John Choi never use on criminals of any age, and that Mary Moriarty hahahahahahaha I can’t even finish the sentence with a straight face.
• Intervening with youth at risk of going into The Life.

Certainly she’s had this shown to her. There’s no way that hasn’t happened.

So she’s counting on promoting ignorance.

Look for a lot of that this session.

II had to double-check to see I hadn’t clicked onto the Babylon Bee by accident.

Alas, no.

Minneapolis, reacting to the latest round of retail closures, is starting a – I swear, I’m not making this up – “Vibrant Downtown Storefronts Workgroup” to try to make downtown, for lack of a better term, suck less:

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey convened a “Vibrant Downtown Storefronts Workgroup” this week following a string of recent high-profile closures.

“Cities that see the most success post-pandemic won’t cling to the old ways that are now changed forever,” Frey said in a press release. “Here in Minneapolis, we will step boldly into the future, guided by the top experts in our region, prepared to innovate and adapt. Minneapolis has always been a hub of commerce and innovation, and I am confident that this workgroup will help ensure we continue carrying that legacy forward.”

The workgroup will be co-chaired by Steve Cramer, president and CEO of the mpls downtown council, and Gabrielle Grier, managing director of Juxtaposition Arts.

So – downtown is starting a vibrant storefronts working group but downtown is back and it never really left and if you say otherwise you probably drive a minivan and live in Maple Grove.

Today’s setlist!

This bit, from Thomas Sowell, seems appropriate…:

…in light of Big Media’s meltdown over a number of Twitter suspending the accounts of a number of “journalists” who were, by any rational definition, doxxing Elon Musk.

And after two years of social media canceling those who said there are two genders, that masks are pointless, and even writing satire (the Babylon Bee just got reinstated recently)…

…suddenly we’re looking at a crisis!

But don’t you dare claim that the media only cares about its own civil rights.

The funniest part? Journos who didn’t get suspended, trying to grab their own little slice of victimhood:

There’s a reason people trust used car salesmen more than journos these days.

Last week, this blog received something of a challenge: A debate on “who the fascists actually are in modern American society”. \

But one of the key tenets of a meaningful debate is to make sure you agree on your terms.

What is…

…well, let’s start with the state that each side in American politics accuses one another of – “Fascism”, “Communism”, “Naziism”, “Socialism” – all of which have much in common, all of which are subtly different in some contexts and utterly indistinct in others.

The left’s self-indulgent rhetoric has denuded terms like “Fascist”, “Nazi”, “Racist” and “White Supremacy” of much of their meanings, and usefulness as debate yardsticks. The right did the same with “Socialist” (although the left has played its part in sapping that term of its zing as well).

So I’m going to try to settle on one of two terms to use as yardsticks; “Authoritarian” and “Totalitarian”. They are more pedestrian and academic than the list above – no mortal enemy of our nation has rallied behind either of them, so (let’s be charitable) neither side has seen fit to devalue them yet.

And yet, America – or parts of America – seems to be turning into an authoritarian society.

To wit:

• Authoritarian: one who seeks to have their government control society
• Totalitarian: One who seems to have one’s rule become indistinct from society

So – how do we define either of ’em?

John Miltimore has a decent start in this blog post; he defines “totalitarianism” with fourteen criteria. It works as a matter of . I borrow and adapt them below:

Once we have the definitions nailed down, we’ll debate each point. Then, victors, losers and maybe even draws will be declared.

So I started with Miltimore’s list, added and rewrote a few things, and reorganized them:

Co-option of Institutions

Society’s formal institution are convinced to support the goals of the regime, or gotten out of the way, willingly or not.

• Media is controlled, directly or indirectly, by the state
• State police (and the laws and processes that guide its actions) protect the regime, not the people
• Power is concentrated in inner ring of elite institutions and people

Co-option of Society

An authoritarian society co-ops the institutions, not only of government, but of society itself. Government deploys carrots and sticks to create a society that complies – willingly or not. .

• Dissent is actively demonized (e.g., equated to violence)
• Mass conformity of beliefs and behaviors is demanded
• The ruling caste leverages divisions in society to multiply their power

Eroding Rule of Law, Uplifting Rule of Men

Free peoples laws observe a process over a goal. Authoritarians laws have goals – not always stated clearly in the text.

• The legal system is co-opted by the state
• State exerts power to quash dissent
• Rights—financial, legal, and civil—are contingent on compliance

Perverting Society’s Norms

While the institutions squash dissent, the co-option of society gradually makes dissent not only too costly, but unthinkable.

• Private and public levers of power are used to enforce adherence to state dogmas

Creating Official Boogeymen And Enemies

A state of war hysteria keeps peoples minds from what they’ve lost to the regime – it even makes them happy to sacrifice wealth, freedom and autonomy. Authoritarians need enemies.

• Entire classes singled out for persecution
• Harsh legal enforcement against unfavored classes
• Extra-legal actions are condoned against internal regime opponents
• Semi-organized violence is permitted (in some cases

So what needs to be added or removed?

The headlines tell a heart-rending story: new Florida congressman, heralded as the first “Gen-Z” member of Congress, can’t afford an apartment in DC.

If an intellectual titan like Reich is yakking about it, it must be worth a look. And, sure enough…:

When he’s sworn into office next month, Florida Democrat Maxwell Frost will become the first member of Generation Z to become a member of Congress in U.S. history; an auspicious milestone for the 25-year-old and the House of Representatives at large. For now, though, the onetime progressive activist-turned-legislator has more immediate concerns on his mind — one shared by millions of his generational peers, as well: finding an affordable place to live amidst skyrocketing house and rental prices.

And I couldn’t help but think – the story seems familiar.

Sure enough – four years ago, Tide Pod Evita had the same exact sob story:

One year ago, you could find Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez working behind the bar at Flats Fix, a small taqueria near Union Square. Come January, you will find her in Washington D.C., representing New York’s 14th District as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

But just because she is making history, doesn’t mean she is making money. Ocasio-Cortez recently revealed that she is currently unable to rent a D.C. apartment.

Of course, being in Congress has its perks – an upper middle class salary, connections, power. AOC’s not exactly “the one percent” just yet, the movement is, uh, emphatically “up”:

Year	AOC Net Worth (estimated)
2019	Not Available
2020	$100,000
2021	$200,000
2022	$350,000

She – and Frost, for that matter – appear to be on the track to cash out juuuust fine.

But I’m wondering – is this going to be a biennial tradition? The media bemoaning some young, “progressive” pols brief brush with DC rental reality, on their (unstated) way to a sinecure, a federal pension, a “commentator” job at MSNBC, and connections that lead to millions of lifetime wealth?

I think Mr. Frost’ll pull through somehow.

The hits keep coming for Minneapolis, as more restaurants  are calling it quits:

In Minneapolis alone, a number of long-standing institutions have called it quits. Rock Bottom Brewery, Seven Steakhouse and Sushi, Williams Pub and Peanut Bar, Amore Uptown and Stella’s Fish Cafe to name a few.

Some of them date back to long before I moved to the Cities – in this case, Asia Chow Mein in Columbia Heights:

“It was very hard to decide that,” Ng said. “At first, I was going to have my son take over, but now with so many obstacles and so many unknowns in this industry, I just hate for him to take over and he will be struggling like we have the last three years.”

Winnie said what served as a mold for success the prior generation, is one that no longer fits.

“The American dream maybe is for our parents,” Winnie said. “Because they think, immigrate here, they will make a better living, a better education for the kids. But I really don’t know what the outcome would be if we were to stay. I still have cousins and people back home and they’re doing really good too, you know?”

Ng said she is grateful for the sacrifice that her and Tim’s parents made. She recognizes the difficulty of moving to America, without speaking English, with the hopes of providing a better future for their children. She admired that they took the time to learn English, to navigate American cities, to learn how to walk in the snow, to learn to love eating American food.

In completely unrelated news, Downtown merchants and other leaders are trying to figure out what to do to revive downtown…

…which is back,and also never went away and has no crime or vacancy problem, and if you think it does you’re a rube from Waconia or Maple Grove.

I flipped on NPR last night to catch a (large) part of a Terry Gross interview with historian Adam Hochschild, on his new book about the grave threats to democracy during World War 1.

And it was a dismal time indeed. “Sedition”, defined broadly, threw thousands in jail. The Department of Justice deputized people to enforce government speech codes and arrest people for suspicion of, basically, thought-crime; it was the first time in history that federal institutions had enough power and budget to get weaponized, and that is exactly what happened. Jim Crow was, by the way, federalized.

But here’s the thing; while Hochschild calls the repression “Trump-y” at one point, and Gross makes a raft of her usual Kaelian innuendos, you can listen to the piece all the way through…

…in vain for a reference to the fact that Woodrow Wilson, the father of modern “progressivism”, and an enthusiastic actual white supremacist to boot, drove all of this from the ground up.

“He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past”.

Two people murdered at downtown Saint Paul’s Central Avenue transit station on Monday night:

Officers responded about 8:30 p.m. to the corner of Fifth and Cedar streets, where they found two people suffering from apparent gunshot wounds in the stairway/elevator structure that connects the skyway to the Green Line Central Station light rail stop, according to Metro Transit Police spokesman Drew Kerr.

Both of the wounded people were taken to a nearby hospital, but they both later died, Kerr said.

Another man was murdered on the same station’s platform last spring.

The “Transit Memorial Day” post next June is going to be a doozy.

DeSantis tops Trump in a new poll – and not by a little bit.

Emphasis added by me:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) leads former President Trump by 23 points among Republicans in a hypothetical GOP presidential primary, according to a poll released Tuesday. 

The USA Today-Suffolk University poll found that 56 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters prefer DeSantis, while only 33 percent would support Trump. More than 60 percent said they want a nominee who will continue Trump’s policies but is not Trump, while 31 percent want the former president to run. 

I don’t care about mean tweets. I do care very much about slashing regulation (and, since Trump didn’t do it, spending as well) and acting in the nation’s best interest.

I’m not interested in relitigating the 2020 election; rooting out the corruption that does exist, sure; barbering on about remedies that aren’t anywhere in the Consitution, not so much.

Most of all? I want to force the Democrats to defend themselves, their record, their squatting on American democracy, in 2024. Without Trump to deflect to, they fail.

Well, the latest testing statistics show that Minnesota teachers are doing a less than average quick job of teaching students how to do math clearly someone at the admin knows how numbers that up.They spent $4 million on contributing to the DFL‘s sweep of the 2022 elections.

And now, they’re after their payoff:

Union president Denise Specht, whose political action committee donates huge sums to DFL candidates each cycle, told WCCO Radio she will be asking the Legislature for more than $5 billion to address “chronic underfunding,” increase teacher compensation, and pay for mental health staff.

“The voters rejected the Republican Party’s strategy of obstruction and forced austerity. Now it’s time for Gov. Tim Walz and the leadership in the House and Senate to spend the state’s resources to improve the lives of working Minnesotans,” Specht said in a statement.

She said the state needs to “make up for funding lost to inflation” and “then go farther.”

My fearless prediction: driven by jackals like Specht, the DFL will turn the “surplus” – overtaxation – into permanent spending and grift for their stakeholders, just in time for a recession to crater the tax revenue, and leave us with a multibillion dollar deficit in 2026, and likely 2024.

It’s on my calendar.

Big Left’s latest atrocity against the language – a perversion that looms large in the “Twitter Files” story – is the debasement of the terms “Attack” and “Safety”.

One example:

The “attack” was more commonly or germanely known as “showing evidence of wrongdoing on Fauci and Roth’s parts”, of course. And the fact that Roth was Twitter’s “Safety” czar, with “safety” in this case meaning “insulation from conservative dissent”, closes the circle on my lede.

But the larger point is, Big Left is actively debasing terms that used to have fairly vivid meanings.

“Attack”: Leaving out actual physical assaults, it meant a malicious verbal or written aggression – not “building a case for someone’s malfeasance”.

“Safety”: The state of being protected from or preventing harm – once upon a time. Now: the existence of an informational echo chamber.

The list goes on: Fascist, Holocaust, Nazi, Hitler, Man, Woman, Family, and on and on.

It’s not accidental, of course – controlling language is a key part of controlling society, and removing the redolence in language that harkens to the lessons of the past ensures that any future tyrant can dispense with any foreknowledge of what they are up to.

It’s pretty brilliant, really. Also evil.

Anyone remember Mika McFeely? He’s sort of the Filene’s Basement version of Ed Schultz, another guy who got his start talking about grown men chasing balls around fields, and decided to go into being a political, talking head. He’s the Heitkamp family’s token liberal on KFGO in Fargo, and proof that the talent bench for progressive talk hosts in Fargo is even shallower than in the Twin Cities.

I wrote about him (checks notes), a little over 12 years ago, when he wrote easily the stupidest hatchet piece I’ve ever seen, about Mary Franson, during the 2012 elections.

Anyway – he came to Minneapolis over the weekend. Ironically, it was to see Les Mis, a play featuring an out of touch patrician class that attacks a plebaian class whose travails they neither share nor understand.

Oh, yeah – he had a great time!

In other words, he went to a show, with hundreds of other people, and then went to a tony restaurant on the south end of the gentrified North Loop. Back to the hotel – or on the road back to Fargo? – by 11!

And look – no crime!

Guess all those people talking about crime in Minneapolis are wrong!

Speaking of crime – tourist McFeely has an interesting perspective on recent Twin Cities history:

Not sure it’s “Anti”-Fa that’s shooting up crowds after bar closing on First Avenue.

But he’s getting a little warmer: “Anti”-Fa are the children of the Twin Cities bon vivant class. But they didn’t burn the Ordway, or Kenwood or Linden Hills. They burned East Lake and University – the places where immigrants and lots of entrepreneurs and workers try to earn a living.

But he didn’t go to a show on Lake, or Uni, or up at Plymouth and Sheridan, now, did he?

Well, I guess that settles it!

I was listening to MPR last week (so you don’t have to), and almost had to pull the car over when I heard this interview – with Beverly Gage, historian and author of “G-Man – J Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century”.

And I almost pulled off the road because the generic female NPR host got sooooo close to realizing “giving big governent unlimited, unaccountable power can have bad unintended consequences”…

,,,but just couldn’t quite say it.

Today’s song list:

Today’s song list:

Outgoing speaker Pelosi poses with her cheerleaders…

…hahaha. Just kidding. She’s posing with (most of) the female members of the White Houe press corps…

…oops. Distinction without much difference.

Anyway, here’s the photo:

Now, the cynics among you – like the Tweeter I’m linking – might scoff “Whoah, check out all that diversity!”.

Pish-tush. Some of them are from Ivy League schools, and some are from Oberlin!