How certain is the DFL that at least a plurality of Minnesota voters just aren’t very good at logic, civics or critical thinking?

Sure enough that they’re treating the $17 Billion “Surplus” a big win for progressive governance, and proof of some divine mandate:

What it actually is, of course, is a combination of:

• BIllions of dollars in federal Covid stimulus dollars
• The normal Minnesota DFL overtaxation…
• …with receipts driven up by inflation in the cost of the goods being taxed
• All that taxation and inflation going on over an epipandemic surge in stimulus-swollen consumer spending

Mark my words – and I have marked them myself, with “to dos” on my calendar on the first Mondays ijn December of 2024 and 2026: the following will happen:

• The DFL will turn that “$217.6 Billion in Surplus” into permanent spending
• The economy will slow into recession (as even the DFL’s cheerleaders in their bespoke press are starting to observe).
• Without the Covid stimuli, and with the economy contracting, tax receipts will crash again.
• The state will have a multibillion dollar deficit by 2026, probably 2024.

We’ll check back on this.  Oh, yes we will. 

Close on the news that two of downtown Minneapolis is nicer office towers are going up for auction, to avoid foreclosure?

The Hilton, one of downtown‘s premier hotels, and site of the NARN‘s first big surprise triumph (the 2004 debate party between George Bush and John Kerry, where we expected and planned for 100 attendees, and got more like 700)

Yeah, things are looking up downtown, aren’t they?

20 years ago, this blog observed the Pearl Harbor anniversary by noting the annual gathering of hundreds of survivors – and the time, men in their late 70s on up – and noted the jarring statistic that at that time, the generation of World War 2 veterans was passing on at a rate of about 300 per day. This blog observed the demise of the last known World War 1 veteran – a man who’d enlisted as an ambulance driver after lying about being 14 years old – probably 3-4 years after it started, half a generation ago. .

Today, perhaps a dozen doughty, well-nigh indestructible centenarians will have made the trip to Hawaii. Today, the death rate has slowed, if only because, according to VA statistics, about 98.5% of those who served have died.

And, unconscionably, much of the knowledge that the Greatest Generation had seems to be passing with them.

War is hell.

Some things are worth fighting for.

Mankind is not inherently good, but is in fact capable of horrors beyond human comprehension that are simultaneously utterly banal and commonplace.

Some things are worse than fighting – but not many.

Sometimes, you need to get past the things that divide us to survive and prevail.

I fear our nation – really, the whole of Western Civilization – has Santayana’d itself; forgotten its history, and thus condemned itself to repeat it.

UPDATE: I’m not going to say the Millennial and Z Generations don’t have people like this.

I’m saying the zeitgeist is not favorable for creating a lot of them.

The MN Department of Natural Resources is apologizing for…

…well, I’ll let the story explain it:

“Yesterday we sent out the latest issue of the Trailblazer newsletter with a theme of gratitude. Today I’m sharing with you our deep regret for unintentionally omitting wópida, which is the Dakota word for ‘thank you,’ from what we had intended to be an inclusive message of thanks,” Ann Pierce, director of the DNR’s Parks and Trails Division, wrote in an email Friday.

In addition to Dakota, the newsletter does thank everyone in Ojibwe, Spanish, German, Italian, Somali, Hmong, Greek, and English…

…but not Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Russian, or any of the languages spoken much more predominantly in Minnesota than Dakota is.

But in the spirit of the season? Takk, kitti, dziękuje, spasibo and thankewverymuch for the bounty of material.

To: Minnesota Peasants. Er, Citize…Subjects. Let’s go with Subjects.
From: Minnesota State Government
Re: Take Comfort

Your paycheck is worth 8% less than it was last year.

The price of food and gas is waaaay up.

Your rent is going up. Lots.

The cost of borrowing has more than doubled.

The schools are failing – and your government blames you for it, and for everything else.

But don’t trouble your hearts, simple peasants. Because while you may suffer, your government is doing just fine.

Because while peasants like you come and go, State Government is forever.

And in that, you should take comfort.

Signed
Minnesota State Government

…when the center-right Christian satire site [1] Babylon Bee got banned from Twitter for “misinformation” – for writing satire – and not a single media outlet lamented the erosion of freedom.

To say nothing of gundecking, at government request, stories from Mark Dayton’s health up through Hunter Biden’s kickbacks to “Big Guy”.

I’m old enough to remember when big leftymedia was incredibly blasé about public-private partnerships leading to de facto censorship.

But you’d have to be very young indeed to remember the day Big Leftymedia started squawking about being victimized. It’s a brand new thing. Emphasis added by me:

According to a report in The Intercept, Musk has suspended several notable left-wing accounts over the past week or so. A number of them were anti-fascist researchers and organizers who focused on documenting far-right activity.

Notably, the disabled accounts documented in the report were singled out for criticism by the far-right writer Andy Ngo, who Musk often publicly interacts with on Twitter. “Musk invited Ngo to report ‘Antifa accounts’ that should be suspended directly to him,” the Intercept reported. In at least once case, Ngo seems to have succeeded at directing Musk to suspend an account that Ngo failed to get suspended by Twitter before Musk took over the company.

Just you watch. “Censorship” – of the left, natch – will become a topic, starting right about…now.

Democracy desperately needs a free, inquisitive press that holds all government’s feet in the fire.

And we objectively do not have that today. And people know it.

[1] Also perhaps the most legitimate news source in the US

Part 243,320: By 2028, feminists who want to meet with women – as in, people born with two “X” chromosomes – will have to meet underground.

A bar and restaurant explicitly aimed at revitalizing Downtown, and at “bringing Minneapolis together”,as a “place of healing for people” as one of its owners said, and overturning the image of downtown Minneapolis as a crime-ridden area enmeshed in a death spiral, has…

…oh, do I even need to finish the sentence?

I mean, let a thousand lights shine and all. It takes more gumption to try to open a restaurant downtown than I, for one, have.

But some of this stuff just seems to be the cosmic equivalent of taping a “kick me” sign on your back. The “Baghdad Bob” vibe alone was just tempting Murphy’s Law…

In March, a bartender at Ties Lounge & Rooftop told Alpha News that downtown Minneapolis is “very, very safe,” even though the city had released data at the time showing increased thefts, gunshot victims, and assaults in the area compared to the previous year.

…even if crime, and downtown’s eroding status as a destination, didn’t do it first.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking around Uptown Minneapolis trying to decide which pop-up brunch joint to go to. Absorbed in thought, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has approached

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh,Go…olldarnit, Avery, how have you…

LIBRELLE: Shut up. Why aren’t Republicans condemning Donald Trump’s latest attack on Demoracy?

BERG: Republicans and conservatives are, in droves.

LIBRELLE: But when are they going to condemn it?

BERG: Uh…they re?

LIBRELLE: But when are they going to condemn it?

BERG: While you ponder that, here’s another question: when are Democrats going to condemn their party’s constant erosions of the Constitution and the rule of law? Their efforts to erode Federalism, abolish the electoral college, add states to tack on Democrat Senators, weaponizing the IRS, FBI and DOJ, squat on the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 10th and 14th Amendments, circumvent the FIrst Amendment via “public/private partnership” between Big Tech and the Democrat Party, weaponize “Emergency Orders”, pack the SCOTUS?

LIBRELLE. But when are you going to condemn it?

BERG: (Backs slowly away)

LIBRELLE. But when are you going to condemn it?

BERG: (Leaves building)

LIBRELLE. But when are you going to condemn it?

LIBRELLE. But when are you going to condemn it?

LIBRELLE. But when are you going to condemn it?

(And SCENE)

“But our money is for a good purpose, so…”

Minneapolis father chases car thieves who stole his car, with his four kids inside:

Derek Gotchie, the father of children, was close by and jumped into the stolen vehicle the suspect arrived in and chased his stolen car until he rear-ended the car near Plymouth Ave. N and Penn Ave N., according to the Minneapolis Police Department. 

The suspect then exited the vehicle and fled on foot. 

Let me be the first to day – hooray for toxic masculinity!

Today’s music playlist:

Remember Compact Fluorescent Bulbs?

Government and the expert class all but brought them to your house and forced you to change out incandescent bulbs at gunpoint. Government tried to jam them down with by force of law, notwithstanding their cost (to purchase, and to dispose of), and their many other drawbacks.

And then, just about the time the jamdown was complete, the free market came up with the LED bulb: cheaper, better light, easier to dispose of (and they last longer, so there’s less need to dispose of them) and they use even less energy.

Point, free market!

That same expert class is saying we need to switch to electric vehicles to “save the planet”.

Steven Hayward at Breitbart spells out how there’s no rational way to look at this as anything but returning the world to feudalism.

We’re already getting there, under “unusual” (for the moment) circumstances.

Of course, yet again, the free market may well have a better answer – more sustainable (especially if society kicks its unscientific superstition about nuclear power), more affordable, and capable of keeping the world, not just the top 10% of it, mobile. More on this in the future.

Watch to see how the would-be ruling class tries to gundeck hydrogen power.

If proclamations made with muted, Minnesotan gusto were correlated with economic results, Jacob Frey’s exhortations would have downtown Minneapolis humming along like Dallas.

Alas, they do not. Some of downtown’s signature office towers are ailing financially:

 The 30-story LaSalle Plaza in downtown Minneapolis is scheduled to go to auction next week after the previous owner, the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois, avoided foreclosure by transferring the building to its lender, Northwest Mutual.

Nearby Fifth Street Towers is facing the same fate and may also go back to its lender this month, according to Axios’ sources who were not authorized to discuss the matter.

And it’s not just your garden-variety class-AAAAA office space. It’s the big daddy of all the downtown office buildings (emphasis added):

Real estate analytics firm Trepp is keeping tabs on IDS Center — the city’s most iconic office tower — due to a 77% occupancy rate and the loss of Nordstrom Rack from Crystal Court, said senior managing director Manus Clancy

Rumors of downtown’s non-demise appear to be premature.

I know a few people with contacts in the Chinese diasporic and dissident communities. They’ve been telling me for the past few years – even before the pandemic – to watch out for what’s going on in China.

To Americans inured to rioting in Minneapolis and Portland, the news of riots in Shanghai, not long after rioting in formerly-free Hong King, might elicit an ignorant shrug.

So it may not be immediately apparent how striking it is to see scenes like this in China: a man, yelling “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” (at 3:08), is dragged away by police and militia…

…and then dragged back by the passersby.

Chinese subjects, forcefully re-capturing someone arrested by the cops.

That’s a little like the famous Tienanmen Square guy putting down his groceries, pulling a Molotov Cocktail out of the bag, and setting the tank on fire.

Lest you feel too happy, it gets much worse.

Around 7:15, the story follows a fire call at a large apartment in Xinjiang. Firemen have a hard time reaching the building at all, due to Covid lockdown restrictions. Since the building is locked down, the fire escapes are locked shut – and the death toll was horrific (as the cell phone conversation captured around 7:30 shows).

Around 8:35: residents unblock a neighborhood that had been sealed off for over three months, and send the police running.

I know – don’t give Tim Walz any ideas, right?

But the people were not amused.

Various whispers from the dissident community – which you can credit or not, as the attribution is pretty much all underground – is that a whooole lot of Chinese students and emigres are the children of party members who are trying to get their families ensconced somewhere safe before things blow up. Whether that’s wishful thinking or prescience, time will tell.

On the one hand, totalitarian dictators are generally very good at seeing to their own survival (until they’re not).

On the other? In 1980, the record shows Ronald Reagan was just about the only person who could see the USSR collapsing. In historical scale, it all happened so quickly after that – almost too quickly for the left to claim they’d predicted it all along.

Is China the same?

More on this in the future.

As the late Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards said, there are two Americas.

Both of them might look at this video, of Chinese cops searching peoples cell phones for signs of anti-regime badthink.

One America thinks “get a warrant, bitch”.

The other America gets a tingle down its leg and thinks “imagine what we could do for vaccine, mask and distancing compliance!”

That second America is the one that’s nattering at the first America about “democracy”.

Fifteen years ago, when Republican Senator Larry Craig was alleged to have sought sexual favors from an undercover cop in a rest room on the baggage claim level at Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Airport, there was no delay in getting the story out to the public.

Today – a few weeks after Sam Brinton, a much-noted Biden Administration official and gender-fluid person was arrested mere feet away for allegedly stealing a woman’s suitcase off the luggage carousel (after not checking a bag of, er, their own for the flight at all), we get…:

Look – if you want to shave your head, put on neon lipstick and a dress and excessively high heels, you go and live your best life. Go with God. Stay tf out of my business, I’ll stay out of yours.

The beef here is, as usual, the Strib had to be shamed into covering news unflattering to Democrats by a newspaper outside the Twin Cities. The New York Post took a shift (the London Daily Mail has spent so much time scooping the Strib on Ilhan Omar, it’s affecting the trade balance).

The Strib covered the story three days after conservative Alpha News.

The court filings themselves would be the sort of thing late night comics might have had a field day with…

…back in the day when late night comics weren’t bigger Democrat PR flaks than the Strib.

The DFL ran the table in the last election.

If they want something passed, they will likely pass it (exceptions exist, and we’ll be talking about them).

Marijuana legalization should be a slam dunk. There’s no need for the party to mobilize its base to get out and pimp for bread and circuses…uh, I mean weed.

And yet they’re doing this:

Seems odd, doesn’t it? Coming up with weed merch for a measure that was a campaign “promise”?

Fearless prediction: the DFL will draw up a weed bill – or amend it onto an omnibus that won’t pass with certain amendments, including weed, included. The DFL will blame the GOP, and use it in two years to get the strung-along weed-voter dupes to trudge to the polls again in 2024.

I can’t be the only one to have read/seen this NPR piece on controlling the cost of the Thanksgiving meal and thought it read like early-seventies Pravda, can I?

The article concocts “replacements” for the main components of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner:

Turkey is by far the most expensive thing on the table. Turkey prices have risen about 50% in the last two years, largely because of production slowdowns and an outbreak of avian flu [and, of course, trillions of dollars poured into the economy – a fact NPR goes to great lengths to avoid talking about. Ed]. On average, a 16-pound bird will run you $28.96 and stuffing (prices are up about 70%) will run you $3.88.

NPR Global Economics Correspondent Stacey Vanek Smith decided she would stick with meat for the main dish (many vegetarian options are cheaper), even though that’s not easy. Meat prices have risen significantly across the board: Beef, chicken, fish and even Spam are all pricey. So Stacey opted for pork. Specifically: bacon.

Stacey’s local grocery store was selling family packs of bacon for just $4 apiece. And, of course, a little bacon goes a long way.

Instead of stuffing, Stacey sliced some tomatoes — a relative bargain that she hoped could be put to use with leftovers to create a new holiday tradition: The Thanksgiving BLT.

The worse news: it’s not the their worst idea.

They took a photo – and I swear, this is not a Babylon Bee spoof:

This article alone could be a Casus Belli for a second civil war.

The city of Minneapolis wants to try again with installing speeder cameras on city streets.

These cameras will snap pictures of speeding cars, with the license plates, and mail the vehicles owner a citation.

A friend of the blog emails

If they actually go through with this, and it passes the legal challenge, it sounds like there will be some overlook or discretion on who gets a ticket. 

No chance for abuse here. 

It’s good to be king.

Well, kings, queens, qyngs and kweengs and whatever else they get called in woke culture…

Badthink is the new…badthink.

Or to put this in terms any Second Amendment activist can relate to, “Don’t be paranoid. Nobody’s coming for the language itself”.

Pathologizing freedom of conscience by speciously linking it to objective evil?

Demonizing dissent?

Oh, yeah – and just flat out lying…

…to gull the gullible – a population the Democrats count on growing to supermajority levels.

Yesterday, I…:

• Changed the oil in my snowblower.
• Put in the first fresh gas of the season.
• Got my boots, choppers, coat and wool cap out and ready to go.
• Got a pot of Korean beef stew ready to go in the pressure cooker.

If we wind up getting half an inch of snow, you have me to thank.

…satire is impossible.

But some still try:

One of the key goals of any authoritarian or totalitarian system is to dehumanize its opponents. Because without an opponent to mobilize against, people start looking seriously at the shortcomings the system’s autocrats bring to their lives.

And a good enemy isn’t really very human at all.

Whether it’s a drill sergeant during bayonet practice, or a Stormtrooper yakking about üntermensch, or a kommissar denoucing a kulak or a “wrecker”, the key in getting regular people in any authoritarian or totalitarian system to feel that rage with “the enemy” is to reinforce how really subhuman they actually are.

“President” Biden took the moral arc of American civilization a little further toward tyranny and barbarism over the summer, when he referred to half of Americans as fascists.

Former President Obama got curiously specific in referring to Republicans as “The Revolutionary Guard”.

But it was far from just national figures. Locally, reverse-McCarthyites were finding “fascists” behind hedges as well:

And of course, shut down all dissent:

I’m less surprised than most that it came to this, this quickly, in the run-up to the mid-terms:

And, suspecting as I do that the “red wave” we didn’t get this month may still be lurking out there somewhere, Big Left isn’t letting off the gas.

Democrats: “crazy paranoid wing nuts! Nobody’s coming for your guns! It’s all just propaganda to enrich the NRA and the gun industry!“

Also Democrats:

“OK, we’re coming for 70 to 80% of your guns. But you’re still paranoid!“