Not a single national Democrat or local DFLer denounced this erosion of our legal system. Some, including much of the metro and state “progressive” power elite, celebrated and participated in it.
This needs to be held against every last one of them in tomorrow’s elections.
UPDATE: Next Tuesday’s elections. Sometime banking posts for the future is a two-edge sword.
If the cause of rampant inflation was easy credit causing “too much consumin’ goin’ on,” then tightening interest rates would reduce the credit, reduce consumption thereby and reduce inflation. If the cause of rampant inflation is lack of supply, tightening interest rates does nothing to generate more supply so it won’t bring down inflation.
Case in point, trailers in the senior citizens mobile home park last year were selling for $80,000 when we bought ours. There were plenty to choose from. After Hurricane Ian there are two for sale, the cheapest is $120,000. Interest rates have nothing to do with it: this is a supply problem. Raising rates won’t put more trailers online.
Similarly, strangling American oil production limits supply, causing prices to rise for everything that needs oil, including consumer gasoline, but also higher priced diesel for trucks and trains to haul goods and higher priced electricity made from natural gas. Raising interest rates won’t put more oil online.
In fact, raising interest rates makes it harder for business to afford the higher priced oil, giving them a double whammy. Hayward’s asks whether the Fed is raising rates too fast. I question whether they should be raising rates at all.
Either I’m dumb as a box of rocks, completely failing to understand economics, or the Fed is pushing the rate hike button because it’s the only button they have to push. It’s not going to work and they know it so they need some distraction for the voters. Hence Putin, Ukraine, Trump, slavery…
I remember thirty years ago, when all the Democrats who’d backed the wrong side in the Cold War got very, very quiet when the crimes of the Soviets over the previous seven decades became too clear to miss.
They ducked, weaved and deflected – but they ultimately got quiet.
As we speak, Iranian police and “Basij” – the Iranian version of Brownshirts, ZOMO or government-sanctioned “Anti”-Fa – are gassing, beating and shooting people protesting the death of a woman who was beaten to death, not for not wearing a hijab, but for not wearing it right. Up to 400 have died, and the demonstrations – which the Biden Administration hasn’t thrown under the bus quite yet – aren’t slowing down yet.
It is obscene that the Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar have failed to say anything about these brave Iranian women, let alone offer their moral support.
Sarsour and Omar continue to glorify their wearing of hijab as a protest against white racism and alleged “Islamophobia.”
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib posted a statement Sept. 23 expressing solidarity with the protesters “as they fight for a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and against police brutality in the wake of the horrifying murder of #MahsaAmini.”
I’m so looking forward to sitting on the right side of history and heckling Omar.
Seeing the hair pulling response of upper middle class leftist to actually have to pay the freight for their own policies on the border is, to put it frankly, utterly glorious:
Wow! This Martha’s Vineyard Democrat doesn’t seem very welcoming or progressive.
“We don’t have housing for 50 immigrants.”
Uh, don’t the Obamas have a 10 bedroom mansion there? That will fit half of them.
There is an ad running at my station, from some major police organization, urging people to not escalate issues with the police during routine contacts.
“It’s easier to de-escalate if you don’t escalate” , the add urges.Which is good advice, provided you trust both sides of the episode to be above board and trustworthy.
The ad sticks in my craw, knowing the advice is only as trustworthy as the system it speaks about.
Which, when you remember that police are an arm of government, gets to be a little less sustainable.
Which is why I’m hoping some police department, somewhere, is having a word with this particular wannabe stormtrooper.
Police departments have spent the last couple of years trying to rebuild their public image, after a decade of episodes of police overreach, arrogance and brutality. 
It’s people like this that make it really hard to “back to the blue“ without a big, bold asterisk afterwards.
It’s been my theory – almost but not quite a Berg’s Law – that DFL pols know they can say anything they want about anything they want, because they know “their” voters – especially the highly “educated” middle-class white progs that have become the DFL base – are basically herd animals incapable of critical thought, and the media will do nothing to change that.
Submitted as evidence:
.@keithellison has been prosecuting violent crimes across the state, holding powerful corporations accountable for harming people, and putting money back in workers' pockets.
You're an unqualified hedge fund lawyer. In November, you'll still be an unqualified hedge fund lawyer. https://t.co/apIumR8kQc
If Keith Ellison has prosecuted a crime more “violent” than keeping a bar open during the pandemic, it’s only after Ken Martin and a bunch of the little endomorphic wannabe tough guys from Macalester who work for him barged into his office with a stack of internal polls showing electoral doom and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
What about this time 21 years ago, Americans were united in a way they had not been since the VJ day; President Bush’s popularity rating was climbing towards 90% faster than an F//15 scrambling to find a bogey.
And we were pretty sure we knew who the enemy was.
I have a hunch that if 9/11 were to happen today, the leftist dominant culture in our country would ruefully admit we deserve – – unless it happened in red America in which case it would be positively celebrated.
The new head of Planned Parenthood Twin Cities is Ruth Richardson.
Who also happens to be a Minnesota state representative:
Wonder if she plans on recusing herself from votes on Planned Parenthood funding if the media would say anything about it even if she didif the media would say anything about it even if she did or BWAHAHAHAHAHhHhaaaaa sometimes I say the dumbest things.
On Monday, third district Congressman Dean Phillips claimed complete ownership of Labor Day:
Don’t tweet about #LaborDay unless you support the right to organize and collectively bargain. Unless you’re working to lower the cost of healthcare and childcare, and fighting for paid family leave, pre-k, and the child tax credit. America’s heroes need support, not bbq’s.🇺🇸
Seems a little presumptuous – foreclosing all communication that is ambivalent to opposed re unions – unless Phillips is a real champion of labor.
But a quick search doesn’t indicate that the Phillips distillery in Princeton Minnesota is unionized; a look through a court document related to a workmen’s compensation case mentions no union involvement on behalf of an injured warehouse worker, so I don’t think it’s a reasonable stretch to assume the plant is not, or not fully, unionized.
I will be putting in a call to representative Phillips‘s office on this today.
In 2020, a group of activists tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus on the Capitol mall in Saint Paul.
Although the entire episode was carried live in TV, only one person was arrested; that person was “sentenced” to teaching elementary school kids about the evils of Columbus, which is a little like sentencing drunk driver to teaching mixology to high school kids.
This happened, even as the person in charge of the Capitol Architecture Commission, Peggy Flanagan (have you heard she’s Native American?), had the power in her hands to remove the statue via due process – which is slow and boring, compared to having your activist buddies do it for you.
And lefty social media was clogged with addlepated lefties nodding and going “rules, schmules; at least it’s gone”.
One needn’t imagine what’d happen if some non-DFL group decided to tear down a statute of their bete noir; I’ve thought about how fun it’d be to rip down the statue of noted authoritarian socalist Floyd Olson. I don’t suspect I’d get “sentenced” to teaching high school kids about the evils of socialism.
This episode highlights three facets of the sort of authoritarian government that is, in fact, the sort of “fascism” that Big Left is trying to paint the right with:
The Rule of Law is for Other People: Don’t want to go through the Capitol Architecture Committee – or get your Student Loan Redistribution passed by Congress, or have to convince the American people and their state legislatures of the rightness of your cause, or convince Republicans of their wrongness? Just have your buddies tear it down, or declare $10K null and void with no statutory authority, or pack the Supreme Court, or send your “Anti”-Fa crowd in to bust some heads. Rules are for peasants.
Different Versions of Justice For the Political “Haves” and “Have Nots”: Lois Lerner will never go to jail for gang-raping the First Amendment. Not only did the Ramsey County Attorney’s office not actually punish Woody Kane for leading a planned, coordinated assault of Republicans, they may as well have sent him off with a voucher for a hooker and dinner at the Saint Paul Grill.
The Ends Justify The Means: If your idea of government, like the people approving of the tearing down of the statue, is “to get the things I want done, done”, or the shorter but more cynical “move things forward” – whether good, evil or indifferent – then you don’t really get self-government, and likely don’t want to.
“But Trump did all those things!”
Are you sure you want to make “our leadership is doing the same thing the person we call ‘literaly Hitler’ did” your lede?
Just A Note Before We Go
We’ve talked about four attributes of authoritarian government – defining boogeymen, circumventing the rule of law, and making one’s ends justify one’s means.
There’s one more; wrapping ones side in some larger cause, be it “history” or nationalism or, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess, “the soul of the nation” – about which President Brandon will be talking today.
If it seemed to you that the Administration and Dems jammed down the “Inflation Reduction Act” – an agglomeration of “Build Back Battered“ and “Green New Deal“ policies – really really hard?
mericans are less concerned now about how climate change might impact them personally — and about how their personal choices affect the climate — than they were three years ago, a new poll shows, even as a wide majority still believe climate change is happening…Overall, 35% of U.S. adults say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about the impact of climate change on them personally, down from 44% in August 2019. Another third say they are somewhat concerned. Only about half say their actions have an effect on climate change, compared with two-thirds in 2019.
The story is, in fact, more climatemongery, and goes on to try to re-bury the lede – but between the lines, the message is there; other priorities are taking over for people in the real world, outside the upper-middle-class progressive bubble.
And if people ever make the connection between the output of the “green/sustainable/equitable“ mafia policies, and the depression in their standard of living, that’s going to be a big problem for the greens.
NEW – Joan of Arc, a national heroine of France, will be portrayed as non-binary with the pronouns "they" and "them" in a new play at the home of Shakespeare in London.https://t.co/xspEuYPMrO
Forget about cultural conservatives. I’m waiting for the world’s feminists to rise up in anger at the trans mafia that is appropriating and canceling womanhood itself (without which the Joan of Arc story is just another insurgency).
What is it with DFL politicians who don’t live where they say they live?
Hennepin County requires its sheriffs to live in Hennepin County.
Dawanna Witt, the DFL-endorsed, primary-victorious “progressive” DFL candidate for Hennepin County sheriff, apparently doesn’t, according to Rebecca Brannon, apparently the only journalist in Minnesota who’ll cover Democrats:
I’ve wondered for years; what would it be that forced Walmart, finally, to end its quaint, small to midsize southern city tradition of allowing RVs and campers to stay in Walmart parking lots overnight?
I always figured it would be a lawsuit brought in someplace like the Twin Cities.
Essie McKenzie alleges that Walmart’s policy to allow RVs and other vehicles camp in their store parking lots led a California couple to stay overnight in August of 2019, and eventually use a hotplate that started McKenzie’s van on fire with her two children sleeping inside. The lawsuit alleges wrongful death, and says by allowing people to camp with no supervision, permit requirements or sanitation, Walmart has maintained dangerous conditions on store grounds.
I suppose it’s inevitable – everything that is good and innocent must be crushed, or turned into an opportunity to transfer more wealth to the regulatory class.
Yeah, I’m getting a little peevish about it. I don’t even own an RV.
A friend of the blog – and fellow Saint Paul resident – emails:
Our Councilperson, Mitra Jalali, recently tweeted about how wonderful it would be to permanently close Snelling to make it pedestrian/transitway only. Someone sane asked the question about where traffic would be re-routed. Someone who apparently has been blind to what the construction of the light rail on University has done to local businesses responded that “traffic will tend to disappear because non-locals won’t pass through and locals will walk more places.” Well, actually that person is partially correct and partially paying attention- traffic disappears because everyone will find a new place to be. But, where the person is oblivious is locals won’t walk more places because those places will disappear as they did on University Avenue.
Anyway, Little Africa Fest happened this weekend and a portion of Snelling was actually closed off to cars and was pedestrian only. I like the local African restaurants, so I checked it out, hoping to get some good food. It was 6pm in the evening. The event started around 11am, I believe, and was supposed to go on until 10pm. There was quite a lot of activity happening at Hamline Park and it was very crowded there. That is good. Those businesses deserve attention and it was a community festival with the local businesses setting up booths. But, as anticipated, nothing happening on the closed part of Snelling Avenue. No real apparent reason to close off Snelling Avenue. In fact, if we permanently closed off Snelling Avenue, this is how it would look 24 hours a day. No one walking, no real activity happening.
#vibrant!
The close the streets people say that closing some streets to cars, or “building streets for people” would actually make neighborhoods safer. I must say I didn’t hear any sirens going on during the festival- but perhaps that might have been due to the heavy visible police presence in the neighborhood for the festival…
On the one hand, a street that is genuinely closed probably makes a bad getaway route.
On the other hand, if there is no business, and thus no potential victims on the hoof – that’s a little like destroying the village to save it, isn’t it?
Sort of unrelated aside: today is the fifteenth anniversary of the collapse of the 35W River Bridge, in downtown Minneapolis.
An event which prompted the most obscene tidal wave of concentrated disinformation I can recall – mostly, former Strib “Senior Columnist”, the late Nick Coleman, who beclowned his newspaper in print and on national TV by blaming Governor Pawlenty, and tax-accountability groups like David Strom’s “Taxpayers League”, for the collapse before the last of the bodies were cold. It was the most craven display of “journalistic” abuse on the local level, ever.
In the intervening years, the Strib’s fortunes have fared about as well as the late bridge. The Strib managed to do some good reporting on the story – but along with the photos and the survivor interviews, it’s hard to separate that story from Nick Coleman on MSNBC, bellowing bug-eyed at the camera about Tim Pawlenty’s responsibilty…
…for an engineering mistake made in 1967.
The bridge is back. The Strib is still here, technically. And “misinformation” has become an industry that’d boggle Nick Coleman’s mind from the great beyond.
