Most of Secretary of State Simon’s, and his defenders’, responses to questions about election irregularities come off as some variant of:’

• Because I said so
• It’s the law, no take-backsies
• Don’t make me turn this car around.

I’m not convinced. 

Either is Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park:s

For those who don’t think it could happen

Am I the only one who thinks thar either:

1. All the posturing about ICE is to deflect attention from the fraud, or
2. if the focus turns to the fraud, all those protesters will switch from casing ICE agents to hassling auditors and FBI agents?

Remember when militant militias who rejected government authority were the bad guys?

The left, either.  

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

President Trump is working on acquiring Greenland. He announced the framework for a deal.  Some people can’t figure out why he wants it.  They look at the standard map and say “We don’t need Greenland to defend ourselves from a mass attack by Russian tanks, we have NATO troops in Germany.  Why Greenland?”

Not everybody does original thinking, I get that, but it can’t be too hard to reason out from basic principles.

The first duty of the American government is to defend the territory of United States.  Defending the territory of other nation-states comes second. 

A Russian tank attack through the Fulda Gap does not threaten the territory of the United States.  US troops in NATO countries are there to deter Russia from attacking Europe, not from attacking the US.  

Preventing an attack on Europe is lower priority than preventing an attack on the US.

Stationing US defense forces in locations to protect the US is more important than stationing defense forces in locations to protect Europe. 

The art of war has changed since World War II.  The standard map is deceiving, the polar map is revealing.  Modern war can take the polar route to strike us.  Greenland is a better location for US defense forces than Germany. 

We don’t need Europe.  We need Greenland.  

We should pull out of NATO and redeploy our defense forces to put America First. 

How hard is that to understand?

Joe Doakes

 

Now that Europe has more people and GDP than the US, it makes sense.  

their militaries are abiut 1/6 the size they were during the. Cold War, which does not.  

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails

The polar map of the world shows why Greenland is of strategic importance to defend the United States from Russia, about on a par with Alaska.

Pull the military out of Europe and put them in Greenland.  Not tanks amd troops but bombers and missiles. Radar. Submarines. Long range drones controlled from AWACs airplanes. Snowmobile mounted lasers. Whatever.

Germany can have the tanks, the tanks weren’t defending us anyway.  Europe is on its own. America First. 

This is genius. I wonder who thought of it.  No better still,  I wonder who sold the idea to Trump? 

 

Makes sense. 

Might also be cool – as it were – if we can sell Hollywood on Greenland being the latest “in” thing, like the Pacific Diet.  

Not out of any strategic imperative. Just because I want to see most of Hollywood stuck out on a glacier, like those “influencers” from the “Fyre Festival”.  

Country Highway has the single historical synopsis of Minnesota’s journey from “good government” Mecca to a state that New Jersey and Illinois call to tell to dial back the corruption.  And they took it outside the paywall.

It’s big, but you should read the whole thing.  

So – who do we blame?  A naïve social welfare system designed by the homogenous, high trust Minnesota that garrison Keillor has been yakking about for the last 50 years?

An influx of people from a society that is quite the opposite – extremely low trust outside of ones family and clan, with no history of political, social cohesion, and a “get it while you can“ attitude that comes from coping with a couple of decades of civil war?

A political ruling class that exploits both of the above , doesn’t waste crises, and has a bottomless spigot of state and federal money available?

If some of the story seems familiar – it is.  Local conservative media have been covering this stuff for years:

How did so much get so terrible so rapidly? One simultaneous cause and consequence of the Minnesota swoon is outright fraud, the rotten fruit of a partnership between some of the state’s leading politicians and sectarian interests that understand government not as a society’s shared instrument to address its problems, but as a storehouse to pillage. 

Attorney general Keith Ellison, a Democrat, is Minnesota’s highest law enforcement officer. In December of 2021, business leaders in the Twin Cities Somali community met with Ellison in his office in Saint Paul. Bill Glahn, a fellow at the conservative Twin Cities-based Center of the American Experiment and the former deputy commissioner of commerce for Republican governor Tim Pawlenty, obtained and published a recording of the meeting earlier this year. Its contents reveal how different the actual workings of Minnesota’s government are from what the citizens of any fair and generous and functioning society would probably like to believe.

 

In this case, sunlight may not be any kind of disinfectant.  

By the way – while Minnesota’s health and human services, education, childcare and healthcare systems are packed to bursting with fraud, don’t you dare say the election system might be the same.  That’s gonna be different.  Because shut up. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

When I played beer league softball, the coach would announce the batting line-up for every inning. “Smith at bat. Johnson on deck. Doakes in the hole.”

Right now Trump is at bat, but he’s not eligible to run for re-election. Who’s on deck? Who’s in the hole? MAGA Conservatives need to get their candidate lineup in order lest we get stuck running another milquetoast Romney or mad McCain against media darling Gavin Newsom. 

Joe Doakes

 

That’s gonna be the problem. Whatever his faults and virtues, Trump is more a personality than a political movement.  The likes of 

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

Maybe the best 20 minutes you can watch today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Omar Fateh, socialist candidate for Mayor of Minneapolis. 

He supports gun control. Like, eventually, all of ’em. 

He supports abolishing the police, and replacing them with “violence interruptors”. 

But for him?

BTW, Berg’s 20th Law is in effect.   I’ll let you be the judge as to whether this vandalism is legitimate.  

Thoughts?

Joe Doakes, late of Como Park, emails:

The American judicial system is obsolete.  It was never intended to handle the kind of mass cheating we see today.  We need a new system.

 

For example, the law is set up to adjudicate the validity of individual ballots.  If the challenger cannot prove a specific ballot was invalidly cast, then the presumption is the ballot is valid and must be counted.

 

What about a suitcase full of ballots, or a box of ballots in the trunk of a car, or let’s think big: suppose someone backs up a dump truck to the counting office and dumps 50,000 ballots on the floor.  Can we prove that any individual ballot is invalid?  No. Then they all must be counted?  Hell no, they’re obviously fraudulent and everyone knows it, but the law is simply not equipped to handle fraud on such a massive scale.

 

We need a better system.

 

Joe Doakes

Here’s Jennifer Emick’s piece, “Debunking Alex Nowrasteh“

And today’s song list:

A reliable source tells me they’ve heard from another reliable source that we’re nowhere near done finding fraud in Minnesota – and that upcoming revelations about Personal Care Assistant fraud and autism services may very well drive the total into the “multiple billions”. 

More to come.  

Much, much more. 

Yep, the technical problems with this new iteration of the blog are if anything worse than the old ones.  I get kicked out, for crying out loud. 

I have thought about moving it to Substack or Medium.  The problem with both is that while I’d own all my own material, I wouldn’t have the same control that I currenly do.  Which may not be the worst thing in the world, but I’ve got 23 years worth of stuff – some of which I know I want to maintain control over, much of which is irrelevant anymore, and some of which I just…don’t…know.  

It’s not entirely that I’m a digital packrat, but I can see it from here.  

Working on it. 

Tim Walz is running for Governor again.  

The governor who, at best, ignored well over $1B in fraud, set up a snitch line and a badthink database, squandered a $19B surplus, ran one of the most club-footed Covid responses in the country, and supports censoring people like me, wants another go-around.

Even some DFLers have had enough…

…although if Walz doesn’t get the nomination it’ll be because someone to his left beats him.

It’s the law.

Some of the basic functionality behind the scenes of this blog is starting to break down. 

Part of it, I think, is that I haven’t updated the WordPress template since…uh, 2011.  

Hey, it’s not like I don’t have enough to do, is it? 

Anyway – expect some disruption, probably this weekend.  

Well, that post-assassination round of Kumbaya didn’t last long, did it?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

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

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/05/stephen-miller-goes-biden-judge-who-ordered-plane/

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

Seems like too much fuss.   

Don’t want your citizen back?   Seems to be that’s what parachutes and C130s are for.  

“Oh, gosh.  You got ’em back anyway”.  

And yes, not taking your own criminals back is a solid case for raising tariffs. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Trump is trumpeting a trade deal with the EU.  I put no stock in trade deals, they don’t last and everybody cheats. I put more stock in the mindset that “you’ve been riding our coattails long enough, we’re cutting you loose.”  End of the free ride, end of the Marshall Plan, end of NATO riding piggyback on the US.

That’s what I was hoping Trump was going to say when Europe ignored his 2% defense spending demand during his first term, and is ignoring his 5% demand during this second term: “We’re done.” Same with Ukraine – don’t threaten more sanctions on Russia, threaten to pull every CIA officer out and cut off all funding, all intelligence sharing, all weapons transfers, until every nation in NATO either (a) steps up to declare war on Russia or (b) steps up to convince Ukraine to surrender.   Because that’s where it’s going to end up.  Ukraine is losing everything East of the river including Odessa.  Everybody knows it.  Nobody is willing to die for Ukraine, not even their own people.  So cut to the chase and surrender that territory now.  Ask for safe passage for Ukrainians who want to evacuate to the West.  Guarantee safe passage for those who wish to flee to the East.

If Trump wants to be the hero who ended the war, sanctions and bluster won’t work.  Walk away from the negotiating table.   Wait for them to come to their senses.  Then declare a victory, Mission Accomplished.

Joe Doakes

I’ve been supporting a free and independent Ukraine since most Democrats were saying the USSR was here to stay. 

But it’s time for Europe to show how much their own security really matters to them 

The Strib notes that the new Minnesota state flag is not getting traction outside DFL neighborhoods:

Don’t get me wrong – I like Brehm’s idea.

But I also think we should leave things as they are. Having two state flags – one foisted on the state by a pack of arrogant wannabe tyrants set on destroying institutions, the other flown in defiance – is a perfect metaphor for Minnesota today.

Divisiveness was the intent of the new flag.  

In a state with a functioning GOP, that divisiveness could be driven home to roost – a powerful metaphor for a campaign built around rolling back the tyrannical excesses of the gaggle of middle school mean girls of all genders who ran this state into the ground.  

If the MNGOP won’t do it, someone needs to. 

Just in case you’d forgotten that Rep. Morrison is a doctor, even after her starting 1,000,000 tweets, website postings, Facebook posts, soundbites, TikToks, Reels, Instagrams, Snapchats and MySpace posts:

A lab coat. 

In the well of the House. 

Does she keep a lab coat in her office, in case there’s some emegency where someone in a lab coat needs to respond? 

Or just because saying “I’m a doctor” for the 1,000,001st time still hasn’t convinced anyone?

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

That’s the new Democrat line about tariffs – Trump Always Chickens Out.  He proposes high tariffs then reduces them when the other side offers concessions. He chickens out

I get that Democrats have no experience in high-stakes real estate negotiations so they have no idea how The Art of The Deal is done.  But have they never been to Mexico?  Never bargained over a souvenir?  Hell, never bought a used car or anything at a garage sale?  The seller always starts high and comes down in order to make the deal, exactly as Trump has been doing with tariffs. 

And Democrats think that means he’s chickening out?  How stupid are they?  No, how stupid do they think WE are, that we don’t understand how the game is played? 

Unbelievable.

Joe Doakes

 

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.

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.