The MInneapolis City Council – with crime, inflation and housing issues all solved, youbetcha – sees a shiny new progressive toy:

Two Minneapolis City Council members have joined forces with pro-choice organizations in an effort to push the city to pay for abortions

I mean, they’re not paying a lot of police salaries these days, so…

Brad Finstad is running for the US Houise in CD1.

Allen Shen is running for the Minnesota House in HD40B

And here’s today’s song.

Yesterday, we noted that Governor Flanagan and Mr. Walz were going noticeably loooooooooonbg on abortion in their socialist media presence. \

It’s enough to make you think that their internal polls are bad enough that they are shoring up their base to try to forestall a complete meltdown.

Don’t get cocky, of course.

But does this…

…look like someone whose big concern is reaching outside her base?

My theory – their internal polling, especially in CD2, is is “engine room on the Titanic is flooding” bad.

10 years ago, when economic times were fairly good (compared to 2008, anyway) and Barack Obama was on the ticket, the DFL went long on same-sex marriage, counting on it (and the big uptick it advantage) to blunt whatever remaining impact the tea party insurgency had had two years earlier.

That year, social issues (and a presidential race) led the DFL to a sweep, taken control of both chambers of the legislature for two years.

The DFL seems to be counting on the same thing happening again:

The Governor, as well as Mr. Walz, have been leading in exceptionally hard on abortion (as well as a certain amount of whistling past the graveyard on the economy).

And they are already pouring money into TV ads.

Those internal polls must be really, really bad.

To: Scott Jensen/Matt Birk

Please, please, please: if you happen to win the Governors race, promise to release the full, unredacted records from the state’s “Covid snitch line”

Because I want to find every single one of these backstabbing weasels.

People often would send in lists of “non-essential” businesses that remained open or weren’t strictly following masking requirements, according to files from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).

Another complaint reported on people for purchasing non-essential items at a convenience store in White Bear Lake. “Customers are coming and saying, ‘I’m bored and needed to get out of the house.’ They buy lottery tickets, a candy bar, a soda … those items are not ‘essential.’”

I was about to write“This might not be my better self speaking“.

But I think everybody’s better self wants a chunk out of these people, too.

There was a “civil disobedience” action in DC yesterday.

For those who need a refresher: “civil disobedience” means breaking the law, and accepting the consequences of that action, to illustrate what one considers a wrong.

Rep Omar was among “several female members of Congress” “arrested” yesterday.

And when I say “arrested”, I mean…

Well, watch the video below. Representative Omar walks across the area in front of the cameras, hands seemingly cuffed behind her, until second :17 – the last second of the footage:

And then, when she’s out of frame…

She raises her right arm.

The “Handcuffs” weren’t even theatrical. They were nonexistant. She pretended to be cuffed when she walked across the PR equivalent of a red f****ng carpet.

Not much in the way of consequences, was it?

The social media uproar was such that even Omar’s semi-official PR flak, Esme Murphy, had to point it out:

Now – if we had some sort of institution in this country, perhaps with transmitters and printing presses, staffed by some self-styled monastic searchers for institutional fact and truth, someone might ask Omar how it is she managed to get “arrested” without ever getting handcuffed.

If only.

Berg‘s 18th law is still in effect – but initial reports indicate that an armed “Good Samaritan“ in Indiana killed a spree killer early in his attack:

The Greenwood Police Department confirmed Sunday that a lone shooter, believed to be an adult male, entered the food court of the mall around 6 p.m. with a rifle and several magazines of ammo. The suspect then shot into the mall, killing three people and injuring two more.

GPD also confirmed Sunday that the shooter was shot and killed by a Good Samaritan who was armed with a handgun. The man who shot the suspect, identified as a 22-year-old from Bartholomew County, had a legal gun permit and is fully cooperating with police.

I’m pretty sure Indiana is a constitutional carry state with no “legal gun permit” needed – but why quibble?

This is how mass spree shootings get stopped.

UPDATE: Aaaah, social media. Where people who can’t tell the difference between a firing pin and a bipod are suddenly experts on close quarter battle tactics and self-defense law.

BLM harpy crashes a block party in the neighborhood that’s actually been complaining loudly enough to get the Governor’s attention.

Gets told – in the middle of “woke”, “progressive” downtown Minneapolis’s condo-land – to take it elsewhere.

The push back against the stormtroopers of the extreme left is starting slowlyi – and from some unlkely (and let’s be honest, safe to them) places rooted in left-wing privilege.

But it’s starting.

A few weeks back, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I knew the same thing everyone in the country who passed ninth grade civics, even if taught by a moonlighting football coach, knew; The decision didn’t “ban abortion“; it merely forces abortion proponents to do what gun rights supporters have had to do for the past 55 years; convince voters.

They, like us Second Amendment people, would have to go through the long, arduous, and provided ones cause is right, ultimately rewarding process of convincing people one voter, one legislator, one bill or issue at a time.

In some cases, I told people; “You keep throwing around polls saying 90% of the American people support abortion on demand. It should be a cakewalk“.

Of course, it might also mean having to make occasional compromises to convince those people.

Maybe this is the problem:

If this poll is accurate, the choice mob is going to have to make some concessions to get to that massive support they claim.

And as we saw in 1993/1994 and in 2009/2010, if there’s one thing abortion supporters hate, it’s any compromise at all, and even the flimsiest margin of the issue.

There are really two sides to the coin I’m looking at, hair: on the one hand, there’s nothing quite as pathetic as a group of people realizing that the information they’ve been given is deeply faulty.

On the other side of the coin, there’s nothing quite as dangerous as a bunch of people who have spent 50 years believing they’ve been entitled to get their way on every particular of an issue, not getting their way on any particular of the issue.

The Internet has been won.

Come back tomorrow.

“If I don’t get to go to the all ages show with my friends tonight, I’m going to die. Dieeeeee, I tell you!”

Versus:

One is a remark by a spoiled, entitled little person who knows no rhetorical trick other than going full on dramatic.

The other is a teenager.

So have you noticed how many “journalists “in the Twin Cities are doing the DFL‘s job for it?

For example, here’s WCCO TV is Esme Murphy:

What is the difference between actively propagandizing for the DFL, and referring to a cash giveaway as “Walz Checks“?

Call them a propaganda wing of the DFL. Call them the DFL‘s branding or public relations service.

Just don’t call it reporting.

Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan:

Of course, the average price of an electric car is well over $50,000 – which happens to be right about the average income in Michigan.

I beg of you, Democrats: run on this.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Went to a graduation ceremony Friday evening. All the talk was about grad parties lacking balloons. There’s a helium shortage. Why?

Helium is made at a plant in Texas. It’s regulated by the federal government, the Bureau of Land Management. They shut it down in January. Still not open.

No word on whether they will be air – lifting helium from Germany. Maybe they could use a zeppelin?

Joe Doakes

Apparently, helium is white supremacist.

Or something.

I try to take the high road.

I feel better when I can look back on all I’ve done, after a few weeks or years, and think “I may not have many standards, but I upheld them, doggone it“.

It’s not something I especially seek to change about myself.

But I’m only human.

So when I see statements like this from the likes of Keith Oberman – a person who “achieved “way more influence than anyone who came up talking about grown men chasing balls around fields deserves…:

I can’t help but ask “why such an oddly, intensely specific response? “

May Lor Xiong is running for the US Congress in CD4 against Betty McCollum. Here’s her website – and her intro video:

Polling shows most Americans, including a plurality of Democrats, support arming teachers – which has got to make the narrative police veeeeery nervous. And gun rights are doing a lot better than the media might have you think if you get your news from, well, the news – which is no excuse to not focus on winning the war once and for all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I read a rant about government being inefficient and more of a hindrance than a help. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Most government exists to regulate activities: set standards for operation; inspect to ensure compliance; license to permit operation while in compliance; revoke license for non-compliance; arrest, prosecute and sentence for operating without a license; data entry to record inspections, licenses, payments and revocations; none of which ‘makes’ anything or reduces any burdens on commerce, but all of which is Necessary For The Public Good.

I’d write more but it’s time for my break. Take a number. I’ll get to you in a minute.

Joe Doakes

And it’s biggest job of course – perpetuated self.

WRITING A BAD ARGUMENT IN ALL CAPS DOESN’T MAKE IT A GOOD ARGUMENT.

REPEATING THAT BAD ALL-CAP ARGUMENT DOESN’T MAKE IT BETTER.

SAME WITH REPEATING IT OVER AND OVER. NO MATTER HOW MANY REPETITIONS.

UNLESS YOU END BY SPELLING OUT “PERIOD”. THEN YOU’RE GOLDEN.

PERIOD.

The Star Tribune continues to earn its keep as the DFL‘s “unpaid “ PR machine:

For those of you who weren’t paying attention to the GOP convention last weekend – it hardly needs to be said, but nothing of the sort of happened.

A move to disaffiliate with the “Log Cabin Republicans” (to be fair, led by someone who has never been a fan of the notion of LGBTQ Republicans) wrapped up in a procedural motion to vote on the affiliation of each and every affiliate with the party (there are quite a few) led to the clock literally running out on the State Central Committee meeting on Thursday. For the evening, it left the affiliates unattached, and their delegates not credentialed to be seated in the convention.

The body of the convention itself reversed that action on Friday.

This squabble – largely led by a representative from the first congressional district – mirrors in large part a similar fracas a few years ago, when a group of Central committee representatives and convention delegates tried to introduce rules that would bar Muslims from holding Republican Party positions.representatives and convention delegates tried to introduce rules that would bar Muslims from holding Republican Party positions.

It’s the position of this blog that, whatever your personal beliefs about homosexuality and/or Islam, that there is very little that is more aggressively American than “coming out“ as a Republican. Not even buying a house in Burnsville, with a literal freaking picket fence surrounding your front yard.

Indeed, in many of the communities served by these affiliates – Somali, Latino‘s, African-Americans, mong and LGBTQ Dash “coming out“ as a Republican carries an affirmative social risk these are not people to be pushed away; they are frequently the toughest, most resilient Republicans there are.

People may disagree. Let’s disagree.

But let’s also focus on the things we do agree on; for example, the Star Tribune are a bunch of partisan hacks..

I’ve had some Republican friends express dismay about the timing of the Dobbs decision at the Supreme Court. They fear is going to turn out a biblical wave of “progressive“ voters.

Not without justification, they recall the debacle of the gay marriage amendment in Minnesota in 2012, which splattered with enough force to take out the voter ID proposal.

Of course, that vote coincided with Barack Obama‘s reelection bid; progressives turned out for that, as well.

As for today?

The media will do their darndest to convince voters that everything is hunky-dory by this fall.

How gullible will they be? We’ll see what a difference five months can make.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Pollsters predict this Fall will be devastating for the Democrat Party, maybe an extinction event. Republicans will win handily.

I don’t want Republicans to win. “Republicans” include Liz Cheney, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney – Republicans in name only.

I want Conservatives to win. I’ve seen nothing in the polling to indicate a conservative landslide.

Replacing Democrats with RINOs is not victory.

Joe Doakes

Joe hints toward a point I’ve been pondering writing about for a while, now; the republican party today is painfully similar to the one we had 50 years ago; different from the Democrats in just enough ways to fight over every couple years, but not in terms of policy substance, really, anymore.

In the 1960s through the mid-1970s, a conservative insurgency rooted in the principles William F Buckley enshrined in the Sharon Declaration

They gradually took over the GOP – over the cold, dead, figurative bodies of the Rockefellers and Nixons and other moderates, basically Democrats with better suits, that had held sway since the 1930s. It started with Barry Goldwater, peaked with Ronald Reagan, and spread out into national policy via the 1994 Gingrich landslide.

We need another one of those. Stat.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Number of illegal aliens apprehended at the Mexico border during February: 221,000.

Number of people living in St. Paul: 285,068. Don’t panic – we’re nowhere near replacing every man, woman and child in the city with illegal aliens, every month.

Number of people living in St. Cloud, Moorhead, Austin, Marshall, Faribault, Thief River Falls and Winona combined: 219,000.

We’re replacing out-state Minnesota, instead.

But Title 42 expires soon and then . . . .

Joe Doakes

Find out more about the plan to house homeless veterans here.

Dennis Smith is running for Attorney General.

Glenn Greenwald – the good liberal columnist – on Big Left’s response to Musk trying to buy Twitter:

“Liberals” promoting censorship? The heck you say?

The GOP may win the mid-terms. Maybe even the presidency in 2024.

But I’m increasinly wondering how this society keeps living together, and decreasingly hopeful that the answer is anything but “we can’t”.

Here’s one huge reason:

And beyond that, speaking for myself (and I suspect an awful lot of us)? Because they can say things like the WaPo’s Applebaum says in the video above out one side of their greasy maw, and ignore the fact that they said this out the other side, in public, with their own mouths.

They truly think you’re all idiots.