Know a high school girl interested in Speaking Proudly? Holler!

And here’s today’s music:

Fearless prediction:  Minnesota isn’t done with corruption scandals:

We’re nowhere near the bottom of this barrel. 

When someone – the US DOJ, or a hypothetical future Republican governor – finally starts looking at where the bodies are buried in Minnesota’s non-profit/industrial complex, “Feeding Our Future” will just be the appetizer. 

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

John Hinderaker from Powerline looks at the data and comes to the conclusion that Nixon taking us off the gold standard was a mistake.

Welcome to the club.  Never too late to wake up to the truth. Now, about the 2020 election . . .

Joe Doakes

Right. Now – in both cases, what do you do about it?

Not that anyone needed the reminder, but there’s a reason Berg’s Fourth Law is called a law, and not a breezy suggestion.  

It never fails

I heard the media hype last week – “the Wolves are gonna do it”.  The chuckleheads on local sports media were actively saying they thought the Wolves would go all the way. 

And maybe they could have.  But not when the local media were thinking they could do it.  

But Berg’s Fourth Law is as merciless as it is infallible:

A Minnesota sports team may be a contender until the moment the local media (and political class) actually believes they will be contenders. At that moment – be it spring training, late November in the NFL season, or week 72 of the NHL playoffs – the season will fall irredeemably apart.

So how did it go?

Some wags put it this way:

But that’s not accurate. The team had no more control over the tournament than the Earth has over the sunrise.

The media, on the other hand, are dealing with forces they clearly don’t understand.

And it’s all been here in black and white, all along. 

SCENE:   At the state DFL headquarters in Saint Paul.   Richard CARLBOM, new chair of the DFL, is sitting at a conference table with Edmund DUCHEY, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK and Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, all members of Amy KLOBUCHAR’s staff. 

CARLBOM:  So, we’ve got a real problem with white males in rural Minnesota.  That could be a big enough problem that the urban vote machine won’t be able to cover the difference next year.

So – no dumb ideas, people. 

(Thinking ensues).

DUCHEY:  I got it.  What do rural white guys like more than anything?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Racism!

CARROLL:  Misogyny…

DUCHEY:  Hockey!

CARLBOM:  Er…not exactly what we’re looking for…er, maybe we can expand on hockey.  What draws white rural men to hockey?

CARROLL: :  Misogyny!

DUCHEY: VIolence

BIRKENSTOCK:  Being drunk!

CARLBOM:  Bingo!   They lik4 drinking.  

We need to appeal to rural white male Minnesotans love of beer!

CARROLL: Boom! That’s exactly the look we want!

DUCHEY:  Empty glass!  Three sheets to the wind!

CARLBOM:  Er…

And SCENE

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Why fly deportees to Africa?  Is Trump trying to provoke a constitutional crisis?

My understanding is that the animals being deported are so vicious that their own countries won’t take them.  They’re being sent to the only place that will accept them.  Yes, it’s a Third-World shithole. What’s your point?

I’m wondering why the country-of-origin issue isn’t being addressed more forcefully.  If any nation refuses to take their own scum back then the immediate finding by the President should be then NOBODY from that country is allowed to enter or remain here.  Refuse entry to everyone, including diplomatic staff.  Throw all them all out.  Don’t think you can dump your problems on us.  

And maybe take it one step farther:  “The criminals being deported are so vicious that their country of origin won’t take them back.  It’s unfair to American taxpayers to feed and house them forever.  But we recognize the courts have said these criminals must be given due process.  Therefore, we intend to give them a free lawyer and a fair trial after which they will be given a first-class hanging.  If any nation objects to the death penalty and wants to take them, let me know and we’ll pay the freight to ship them to you. Be aware that if you let them go and we catch them again, they will be summarily executed and the cost will be recovered from you in the form of higher tariffs.”

That ought to put the cat among the pigeons.

Joe Doakes

That “summary execution” thing will set a lot of district judges injunction printers abuzz. 

But I suspect it’d get the message across.

…votes down the proposed Inspector General’s office – not so much a “MN DOGE” as a someone empowered to go after things like systemic fraud – this happened:

They may not have been quite ready to file the next round of charges, but were forced into action Sunday when they learned one woman they are targeting had booked a sudden international flight. The FBI arrested Hibo Daar at MSP before she could board that flight to Dubai. 

Court records show Daar claimed to serve 1 million meals to children while operating out of an office in a business center on East Hennepin Avenue. She collected $2.4 million in taxpayer money, but federal investigators believe her meal site, “Northside Wellness,” was fake and that she actually spent less than $2,000 on food.

Katie Porter, former congresswoman from Orange County, is onto something – and, presumably, smoking some of the same ditch weed the DFLers who funded the Southwest Light Rail were into:

San Francisco to Oakland is 12 miles.  Even driving an SUV and paying Californnia’s absurd gas prices, that’s half the price of the train. 

And if you’re commuting for work?  $12.65 a day is $63.25 a week, which is about $3162 a year.   You’d have to be paying some pretty ridiculous parking fees to make that worthwhile.

Which may be true in Oakland (?), and the parking fees in Minneapolis and especially San Francisco will definitely wreck you.  Eden Prairie, less so.

But when you drive, you don’t as much opportunity to get mugged, or step on a syringe.

Or have your kids see hookers plying their trade:

So I guess transit get the “W”!

Amy Alkon’a new book “Going Menopostal“

And today’s music:

Compare and Contrast:

The number of people in “white supremacist” groups dropped by an order of magnitude every generation from 1916 to 2016, from millions down into the single digit thousands. 

News media:  “Meh”.

Today:

News media: “It’s because they think they won“. 

No matter how much you hate the media, it’s not enough.

Cretin who apparently was spawned from the radical campus antisemitism movement murders a couple of Israeli Embassy employees in DC:

The killer shot them both in the back, and then reloaded and finished them off on the ground as disarmed, bovine DC residents milled around like stampeded cattle.

This is not an aberration.  This is part of Big Left’s plan.  Oh, not the one they say out loud.

But…:

Soon enough, progressive politicians would attempt to co-opt this emerging trend to burnish their own political brands. “You don’t kill people. It’s abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly,” Senator Bernie Sanders told a reporter at the aptly named Jacobin magazine. Then came, as it did with every subsequent politician’s quote, the key word: But.

“But,” he continued, “what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies,” presumably for making a profit in a sector that should run on altruism alone. And apparently Mangione wasn’t just representing American emotions about health care: “The campaign finance system is broken, the health care system is broken, the housing system is broken, the education system is broken. It is broken.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren followed the same “but” rule. “Violence is never the answer,” she mused. “But people can only be pushed so far” and will “start to take matters into their own hands” when the political system doesn’t cater to their demands.

“This is not to say that an act of violence is justified,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez intoned. “But they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied claims as an act of violence against them.”

Senator Chris Murphy wouldn’t condone violence, of course—“but we need to listen to what people are feeling.” The feeling Thompson’s murder exposed must be “matched by the anger over the thousands of people who die, often anonymous deaths every single day at this country at the hands of a health-care industry that mostly doesn’t give a s—t about people and only cares about profits.”

They don’t want violence, BUT if they make society so dangerous the people beg for an all-powerful government to save them, what are they supposed to do?

Ilhan Omar reacted with the states-womanly class we’ve come to expect from her:

My ongoing offer to teach any of my Jewish friends who don’t already know, how to shoot, stands.  

He’s gonna run for Governor again:

Of course, the little gnome will spend the next 18 months dodging debates.  But his Veep bid last year, and his newfound rise to national prominence, have given people a whole lot more material. 

As has the governor himself:

The little gnome never gets tired of “Nazi” references, does he?

I bet he does not see (badda boom) the problem with this…

There is no Berg’s Law I want more to repeal than the Fourth. 

To wit:

A Minnesota sports team may be a contender until the moment the local media (and political class) actually believes they will be contenders. At that moment – be it spring training, late November in the NFL season, or week 72 of the NHL playoffs – the season will fall irredeemably apart.

But…well, you know where this is going, right?

For the past week, the Minnesota media has been yammering away, not merely that the Timberwolves had potential to go all the way to the NBA Championship, but that it seemed likely.   

On top of that, sports pundits also predicted the Minnesota Frost women’s pro hockey team was likely to get a repeat championship.  

Is anyone seeing a problem, here, yet? Anyone but me?

Yes, I know.  They were just the first games of five game series.   The Twolves and Frost can still pull it out.

Hypothetically.

And only if the entire Twin Cities media figures out that they’re dealing with forces they can not comprehend.  

I don’t make the rules.  Berg’s Law does. 

Joe Doakes, formally of Como Park, emails:

I recently took a full flight from Fort Myers to Minneapolis with children crying and puppies whimpering. The only thing different from a converted South American school bus is the rooster.

 

 The puppy is not angry, it is frightened. I so wanted to confront the woman: “Why do you have a frightened puppy on this airplane?  Because it’s your comfort animal?  Really? It comforts you to terrify puppies?  What kind of monster are you?”

 

Joe Doakes

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

The voting public in Minnesota is almost equally divided between conservatives and liberals.  To ensure our state government is ideologically reflective of its constituents, I propose all state employees in the Executive and Judicial Branches be required to respond to a short survey:

1. This nation was founded by pilgrims seeking religious freedom. The First Amendment is foremost among the Bill of Rights. Have you exercised that right by attending religious worship services within the last month?

2. This nation was secured by ordinary citizens overthrowing the British colonial government using personally owned firearms.  The right to own firearms is second in the Bill of Rights. Have you exercised that right by firing a pistol, rifle or shotgun within the last month?

3. Should the Constitution be applied as the people who wrote it originally intended, or should the Constitution be reinterpreted by modern judges to suit the circumstances of individual cases and changing times?

4. Should criminal defendants be treated equally in arrest, charging, prosecution, and sentencing; or should some defendants be given special consideration based on race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, or political affiliation?

5. The laws and policies of our government affect everyone living within the United States. Should the right to vote be restricted to United States citizens, or should it extend to anyone living within the United States, whether here legally or not?

6. The state has a budget shortage. Without more tax revenue, some government programs must be reduced or eliminated. How much more are you, personally, willing to pay in state taxes to support a Better Minnesota?

I’m willing to bet a brand-new nickel the results would reveal state government employees are overwhelmingly liberal Democrats. We must replace half of them, to achieve an equitable ideological distribution.  Where do we start?

Joe Doakes

By winning a governor’s race, for starters. 

SCENE:  It’s a Sunday morning on the patio a “Brunchily”, a breakfast place in Northeast Minneapolis.   The usual crowd is settling in for mimosa brunch; 30-something SEO marketing managers in their man-buns, recruiters for ad agencies with their emotional support dogs, directors of local arts non-profits and DEI consultancies in their Lululemons and pajama bottoms all gather to nosh.  Sitting amid, and indistinguishable from, them are Avery LIBRELLE, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, Edmund DUCHEY, Brian FURIOUS and Cat SCAT – local progressive social media luminaries and activists. 

BIRKENSTOCK:  So Ed?  Do you still own a Tesla?

DUCHEY:  God, no!  I sold it to some redneck yahoo from Scandia for $500!

FURIOUS:  Didn’t you pay $40,000 for it?

DUCHEY:  No!  I had a loan for $40,000 for it!   

LIBRELLE:  You sure owned her!

DUCHEY:  IKR?   I figure $3,950 is nothing to donate to tearing down the Elon Musk.

(LIBRELLE, BIRKENSTOCK and FURIOUS hiss theatrically).

(DEVADIP ULYSSES PLOOBRADOR, mystic prophet and self-described wise man who also doubles as a UPS and Doordash driver, is sitting at the next table, nursing an egg white frittata)

PLOOBRADOR:  I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but it’s actually $39,500.

DUCHEY: Are you sure about that?  I was a staffer for the DFL’s budget committee, I know my numbers!

PLOOBRADOR:   Quite.  (He returns to his group).

LIBRELLE:  So the DFL gave in on healthcare for undocumented pre-citizens. 

DUCHEY:  Ugh. Don’t get me started.  Healthcare is a right.

BIRKENSTOCK:  You forgot housing!

FURIOUS:  And a Housing!

SCAT: And a living wage!

BIRKENSTOCK:  And paid leave!

FURIOUS:  And restorative justice for all!

DUCHEY:   And rail transit!

SCAT: Subways!

LIBRELLE:  To leave more room for bikes!

(The four take toasts from their mimosas, and signal for refills)

SCAT:  Oh, can you believe the police chief?

FURIOUS:  Pffft.  He’s mansplaining. 

BIRKENSTOCK:  What a pig.

SCAT (to a passing waitress – Yselda MARINO – a young Latina who commuted in from Fridley to work the morning shift):  HEY!  Whan I ordered a mushroom frittata, you didn’t say these were button mushrooms?

MARINO:  Sorry – I’ll take it back if you’d like.

SCAT:  Damn straight!

MARINO (muttering in Spanish as she takes the 1/3 eaten plate) You never tip.  You’re lucky I didn’t chew on them first. 

FURIOUS:  Wow.  Is that guy out of touch or what?

DUCHEY:  It’s like – has he even seen George Floyd Square?

LIBRELLE:  Totally!

And SCENE

Joe Doakes, formally of Como Park, emails:

If Joe Biden was senile for his last year in office – as everyone now seems to agree – then some are wondering who was actually in charge and whether his presidential acts are valid.

 

The real question is what happened to Kamala Harris? If Biden was incompetent and everybody knew it, why didn’t she move up to president?   She could legitimately have been the first woman president, the first black president, the first Indian President,  but she was denied her opportunity because of what… racism? Sexism?  Jill Biden’s ego?

 

Joe Doakes

I think it’s all going to come down to he said/Hur said.

Tony Snow dies.

Democrat “Influencers”:  “Hah!  Conservative puppet had it coming!

Ronald Reagan dies.

Democrat “Influencers”:  “Hah!  The only good thing he ever did was die!”

No, really:

Jerry Falwell dies.

Democrat “lnfluencers”:  Although we believe in neither God nor Hell, he’s certainly going to one and not the other!

George HW Bush dies.

Democrat “lnfluencers”:  Good riddance!

Steve Scalise almost dies.

Democrat “lnfluencers”:  “OK, that’s one semi-automatic rifle we can make an exception for!”

Rush Limbaugh dies.

Democrat “lnfluencers”: “The world is a better place today!”

Trump survives two assassination attempts.

Democrat “lnfluencers”: “Maybe there’ll be a third try!

Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis revealed:

Conservatives:  “He was a lousy president, but also a human.  I pray for a recovery”.

Democrat “Influencers”: “Don’t you dare politicize this man’s illness!”

Literally, hundreds of them, mostly identical, in the past 24 hours.

But while I have no desire the politicize this, I would like to medicalize it:

If the medical staff actually missed this cancer., in one of the most examined people on earth for the past four years, then it’s pretty epic malpractice.

If they didn’t, then this is yet another coverup. 

So why now?

To draw attention away from the utterly damning Hur recordings?

This was recorded shortly after 10/7 – a geopolitical moment when the western world needed a President, not an auto-pen.  

As the legislature grinds toward a halt during the first session since the end of complete DFL control, there are two ways of looking at what just happened. 

One of those ways, I discussed with Walter Hudson on my show on Saturday:  Two years after DFL (and only the DFL, as they were not only proud to say, but as they made a part of Governor Walz’s vice-presidential bid) jacked up the state’s budget 40% even after spending an $18 billion surplus, thus creating biggest budget in state history by a wide freaking margin, GOP fights like hell to force an 8% cut – the greatest cut in state history, not only in absolute but inflation-weakened dollars, but in percentage terms.  

Put that way, it’s a win.  No a huge win – but certainly the closest to a “W” anyone’s going to get with a tie in one chamber, a minority in the other, and a progressive loony for a governor.   To loosely paraphrase what Winston Churchill said after Dunkirk, states are not saved by successful blocking actions.  But after a decade and a half when being Republican at the statewide level felt completely futile, it was a great start.  

Provided, of course, that you’re inclined to notice or opint out the wins. 

Which brings us to the other point of view on the session, from “Action For Liberty” – as their headline breathlessly put it:

Uniparty Pushes 2nd Largest Budget in MN History

They elaborated a bit (I’ve added emphasis):

RINOs are selling this plan as the largest budget cut in Minnesota history, which only tells half of the story. When Democrats had total trifecta control in 2023 and passed a $71B budget which was about a $19B growth in government. Pre-covid spending levels would mean a return to (at least) a $52B budget. Having the largest cut means nothing if the budget is still the 2nd largest in MN history, only behind the budget passed in 2023. For an analogy, the Dems flooded Minnesota’s basement with 19 feet of water and the GOP is bragging that the basement will now only be flooded with 14 feet of water! See below: 

That’s a little like saying “If I’d demanded a hot third date with Anna Kendrick on Saturday, I’d be in a much better mood today”.   Action For Liberty pushed the notion that the GOP should have demanded rolling spending back to pre-Covid levels – which, when faced with a singularly arrogant DFL majority in the Senate and a progressive ninny for a Governor, may be less plausible than that date.   Demanding a nearly 30% budget cut would have never gotten into, much less out of, committee in the Senate – which means all the strenuous demanding would have been useless and performative. 

Which, as we talked about last week, is pretty much the entire point with groups that are, shall we say, like Minnesota Gun Rights.

Pepperidge Farm does.

But the DFL seems to have forgotten it:

The DFL has staked its electoral future on giving free healthcare and education to illegals, in a state where the middle class is having a hard time affording either.

Which is something one might expect them to do for their, er, voters.

Huh. 

“Two weeks go stop the spread!”

“President Biden is sharp as a tack!”

And now…

Tim Walz’s statements have the half-life of an ice cream cone in a hot car. 

For years – longer than just about anyone – I’ve been writing about “Minnesota Gun Rights”, a group from Iowa whose “business” model is to raise money on ignorance about gun control legislation. 

The usual cycle is a little like this: 

1. They raise a hysterical alarm about some piece of legislation that may or may not be moving in the legislature.  
2. They accuse Republicans of going soft on guns.  Given that no Minnesota Republican has voted “yea” on a final bill supporting any sort of gun control in almost thirty years, these are usually lies – in one case, accusing Republicans they’d endorsed (inevitably in safe districts) who’s been 100% pro-2nd Amendment with ‘betrayal’.  Because “betrayal” is a nice inflammatory take that promotes hysterical fundraising. 
3. For whatever reason, they are silent about Democrats.  
4. They go back to Iowa and spend the money.  

“Action For Liberty” seems to have a pretty similar business model.  The group is a byproduct of the Tea Party, and started out as a fairly run of the mill conservative group.

But somewhere along the way, it started walking, talking and quacking like Minnesota Gun Rights.  

The problem with the MNGOP, according to A4L, isn’t losing elections – it was “RINOs”.   A Republican In Name Only – the definition of which is any Republican, elected, appointed or hired, who’s ever had to try to get anything done with Democrats.  

Remember the old Reagan saying – someone who agrees with you 70% isn’t your 30% enemy?  To A4L, being a 90% friend makes you a 100% enemy. 

Because “betrayal” sells. 

This has been the top story in intraparty politics this past few weeks.  The last MNGOP State Central meeting elected a slate of leadership that are, if not A4L sympathizers, at least very amenable to rapprochement.  (I just used a French word.  Maybe that makes me a RINO?)

Case in point:  over the past few weeks, A4L has been attacking Republicans for voting for the Health and Human Services Omnibus bill, which includes a contribution to Medicaid, which pays for abortions.  Abortion is bad. 

Stipulated in advance – Omnibus bills need to be banned.   If we ever get a GOP trifecta, in fact, we need to demand it.

But that’s life.  Omnibus bills are inevitably s**t sandwiches, full of “poison pills” to be lorded over the other party in the next election. 

But in the case of the HHS omnibus bill, the problem would be the same if it were a clean single-subject bill;  court decisions hamstring the state; the Medicaid money has to pay for abortions.  States have no say in the matters. 

But Action For Liberty knows as well as you do that that’s a pretty abstruse fact, and not hard at all to spin as “BETRAYAL!”. 

And so we’ve been feted (there’s another French word.  Maybe I’m turning into David French?) with the absurdity of A4L calling solid conservatives like Mary Franson, Walter Hudson, Jim Nash and Elliot Engen “RINOs”.  

And I’m gonna guess they’re going to call Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) “PLINOs” after this broadside:

I try to be “Switzerland” when it comes to intra-party politics – but if someone can make a case that Action For Liberty doesn’t run off of monetizing cynicism and ignorance, I’m doing to take some convincing.

Have your people call my people. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Democrats and WLs (Woke Lite Republicans) insist there is no valid justification for separating boys and girls, so long as the boys mouth the magic word “transgender.”  Once the spell has been spoken, the laws of biology no longer apply.  The former “boy” is now a “girl” for all purposes including tampons in the locker room and competition in sports.

So why do we still have Title IX?  Why do we still have a 1972 federal law banning discrimination between the sexes if there is no difference between the sexes? We no longer have “separate but equal” facilities for Black and White (except then Blacks demand separate dorms and graduation ceremonies).  So why not amend Title IX to say that all education, all sports, are co-educational?

Everybody who plays basketball, plays by the same rules on the same teams.  The best players are Varsity, next best are Junior Varsity, then B-Squad, C-squad, and so on.  Teams will be based solely on skill and ability.  Yes, that might mean that Varsity is mostly Black boys, Junior Varsity is mostly White boys, the lesser ranks are mixed boys, girls and transgender students, but that doesn’t matter, right?  No difference between the sexes.

Think how much money we’d save by eliminating girl’s sports which could then be put toward something important, like another train nobody will ride or higher welfare benefits for illegal aliens.

Joe Doakes

Prediction:  high school sports will disappear in Blue areas.

Scene: David Hogg walks into meeting at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, with DNC market researchers:

Hogg: “So whadda we got?”

Researcher: “Focus groups say your angry androgynous hipster thing has low approval among male male voters”

Hogg: “Low? How low?”

Researcher: “0%”

Hogg: “That bad? Huh. So what do I need to do?”

Researcher: “Be more masculine”.

Hogg: “You mean, like Tim Walz?”

Researcher: “Er…sure. Like Tim Walz”. (Rolls eyes).

And SCENE

DIRECTOR’S NOTE:  While most of these “dramatization” pieces are pretty fanciful satire, not all of them are.

(Link not working? OK – here’s another way)

Joe Doakes formerly of Como Park emails:

Hollywood keeps putting out Girl Boss movies with the lead role played by a good- looking female actress, like Angela Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider.

 

When are they going to make a Girl Boss movie with the lead role played by a transgender “female,” maybe Dylan Mulvaney of Bud Light fame?  

 

Why is Hollywood so full of haters? 

 

Joe Doakes