With Betsy Hodges’ administration rolling downhill faster than Creed’s career bell curve, Minneapolis looks likely to swerve hard left.

As hard left as Ray Dehn?  Maybe not – maybe Jacob Frey appears like a sensible moderate in comparison with the other frontrunner in the mayoral race.  Maybe.  This is Minneapolis.

But Dehn’s remarks in the wake of the Noor shooting, the resignation of chief Harteau, and the pandemonium at Hodges’ press conference gives Dehn a yuge platform, at least for now.  And he’s using it – for better or worse:

Crime is not a product of individual morality but the consequence of scarcity in our society. We must divest resources, disarm officers, and dismantle the inherent violence of our criminal justice system which continues to uphold white supremacy. Our approach to public safety must reflect a belief that our communities are safer when they have housing, clean air and water, access to education and employment, and quality healthcare.

“Like if you took away Thurgood Marshall’s bank account, you  think you’d see him selling crack at the Union Station bus terminal?”

– P. J. O’Rourke

Is Minneapolis anywhere close to hitting “Peak Left?”  A moment like the 1977 New York Blackout, prompting New Yorkers to stop the insanity?

I don’t think so.  Minneapolis’s DFL establishment is controlled by people who aren’t affected by the city’s collapse; people in Kenwood, Nicollet Island, Minnehaha Parkway and the like, who can and do remain above it all – or, like Alondra Cano, dabble in “it all” for effect.

Remember all the Democrats who rode Detroit, Camden, Oakland, Newark and New Orleans straight into the ground, bleating about peoples’ “best interests” all the way.

It’s gonna get worse before it gets better, Minneapolis. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

Tragic shooting in South Minneapolis;  woman from Australia killed by cop originally from Somalia.

Steve Cwodzinski – the teachers union foot soldier who “replaced” Dave Hann in the MN Senate seat representing Eden Prairie, follows Rahm Emanuel’s dictum to a fault:

“Two immigrants came to the United States searching for the American dream. One came to heal; the other, to protect. Now due to the fear and violence surrounding firearms, both have realized the American nightmare.”

The mission of today’s DFL:  Deflect the glare from:

• the problem with police powers, especially qualified immunity
• an apparent problem with officer training (Minneapolis cops, I’m told, are trained to keep their fingers on the trigger at all times, in and among any number of other issues in the incident)
• suspicion about affirmative action hiring in police departments
• the extent to which the mayor and council’s embrace of Black Lives Matter has caused the police to “stand down” – taking action only when they see a felony in progress
• the social collapse of much of Minneapolis

…by jabbering about “fear and violence surrounding firearms” that were present only in the hands of the cop, whom the DFL would have us believe are the ones who can be “trusted” with that constitutional right.

People of Eden Prairie;  you sent him to Saint Paul.  Take him back.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is pumping gas at the corner Superamerica when Polly LITTELL – proprietor of the Facebook page “Makeng Minnessota GRAET AGEN” page, pulls up to the next pump. 

LITTELL:  Merg!

BERG:  Oh, hey, Pollly.  (Eyes the meter on the pump, shakes the handle in a futile effort to get it to pump faster).

LITTELL:  So a MUSLIN cop, Mohammed NOOR, murdered a white woman in South MInneapolis!   It’s terrorism!

BERG:  Er, OK – why do you say that?

LITTELL:  Because it’s in the Koran that THEY are supposed TO attack us when THEY CAN.

BERG:  OK, Polly.  So it was terrorism.

LITTELL:  Yes.  Just like they are told to do IN THE Koran.

BERG:  So this “act of terrorism” involved shooting one woman.  Not his partner.  Not every other bystander, and every cop that responded.  And then, surrendering and apparently following the standard post-shooting process that a non-Muslim, non-terrorist cop would follow.

LITTELL:   Why do you hate America?

BERG:  Naturally

(And SCENE)

After a 14 hour convention that descended at one point into fisticuffs, the Minneapolis City DFL Convention reached no endorsement – but  Ray “The Kommissar” Dehn had a lead in the delegate count for mayor.

Further proof that the Minneapolis DFL is pushing too far left even for Betsy Hodges?  Sure.

But it’s the ephemera that tell us how far to the left.  This was one of Dehn’s congrats on Twitter:

“Comrade”.

This is Minneapolis today.

Former ineffective DFL legislator Katie Knuth has been hired as the City of Minneapolis’ “Chief Resilience Officer“.

When I think “resilience”, I think “bouncing back from crises”, “being able to sustain a major human or natural disaster and keep functioning”, or “take a licking and keep on ticking”.

Well, no.  It’s described as:

…a new position that coordinates the city’s work on urban challenges from housing affordability to climate change.

Kate Knuth will join a network that includes dozens of chief resilience officers around the world, in cities that have joined the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities project.

Knuth, 36, previously served three terms in the state House as a DFLer representing New Brighton before leading the Institute on the Environment’s Boreas Leadership Program at the University of Minnesota. The City Council approved her hiring on Friday.

Put another way, it’s “providing a paycheck to people who are part of the political class”.

They take care of their own.

A friend of mine wrote this on social media earlier this week, in re the City of Minneapolis’ proposed plasstic bag ban.

I know this is asking a lot, but I would like environmental activists to think more than one step in front of their faces. Case in point: The City of Minneapolis wants to ban the use of plastic bags in grocery stores (fortunately, the state legislature ended that, but please keep reading). Consumers would have to pay to take their groceries home in a plastic bag. At the same time, a Minneapolis sanitation ordinance says pet waste must be double bagged — in plastic!

So, we’ve taken in 2 cats who needed a loving home. And when we scoop their poop, we’re supposed to put it in a plastic bag that goes into another plastic bag before it goes into the garbage for collection by the city. But instead of re-using the plastic bags we get for free (just by virtue of buying groceries), we’re supposed to pay for the manufacture of “designated” plastic bags for pet waste? The sheer number of people who walk their dogs in the neighborhoods and city parks who are “required by city Ordinance” to pick up and dispose of their pet waste in plastic bags” is staggering.

Are you freaking kidding me??? Are you pet/environmentally friendly or not? And if you think pets are good for low-income and elderly residents who benefit from the companionship, you are penalizing them for the benefit you champion. Look past your nose!!!

We’re lucky enough that the City Limit is less than 5 minutes by car from our house. We can drive outside of Minneapolis to a suburb to shop where we are not penalized for using plastic bags.

The people further inside the city, without vehicles, are the ones being harmed by this environmental activist masturbation.

What’s that old definition of totalitarian?  Everything that isn’t mandatory is banned?

PS: She also notes that while walking around one of Minneapolis’ lakes, they noticed a lot of garbage lying about.   I know – Minneapolis has Socialist trash collection, how can that be, right?   And so they took time out from their walking to bring gloves and (presumably) plastic, legal bags for picking it up.

Might need a lawyer to do that in Minneapolis, these days.

From the email:

Mitch

I see that the Minneapolis park board has changed the name of Lake Calhoun to “Lake Bde Maka Ska”.

How in the flaming hootie-hoo is that pronounced?

Sincerely,

Woe-Begone

Ms. Begone:

“Bde Maka Ska” is pronounced “Betsy Hodges Slop”.

Glad to help.

That is all.

The city of Minneapolis is going to vote on whether to change the name of Lake Calhoun – currently named after John Calhoun, an ardent supporter of slavery.Among their top choices of new names:

10.  Lake Quetzl-Jambo-Wang-Tse (a perfectly-engineered word incorporatiing all indigenous traditions except English).

9.  Lake Julia

8.  Lake Grievance

7.  Collective Lake

6.  Lake Debs

5. Lake Marx

4. Lake Wobegone

3. Lake Castro

2. Gus Hall Lake

1. Lake Guevara

Votes in the comment section.

A:  Because Mayor Betsy Hodges gave her a case of Athlete’s Scalp, going over her head.  That’s why.

Remember when questioning the provenance of immigrant voters was a baaaad thing?

Either does Alondra “The Brain” Cano, the “third world feminist” and Minneapolis City Council ward heeler:

Minneapolis City Council candidate Mohamed Farah is accusing Council Member Alondra Cano of “Jim Crow tactics” after she questioned the credentials of many of the Somali-American delegates chosen in the Ninth Ward caucus earlier this month.

Cano’s campaign filed challenges with the Minneapolis DFL saying 101 delegates elected in the near south Minneapolis caucus did not sign in to participate in the April 4 event at South High School. At least 27 delegates and alternates did not write down their addresses when they registered, Cano’s campaign said, and “we have identified at least three delegates who do not live in the precinct they were elected in.”

I love watching tyrants eating each other.

The City of Minneapolis has decided not to completely put Surdyk’s out of business for the “crime” of selling liquor on Sundays because Sunday liquor sales would be a catastrophic moral blow to the state even though the law hasn’t quite expired yet.    The city negotiated the fine down from a multimillion dollar one-month suspension of the liquor license to $6,000 in fines and eight Sundays of suspension…

…only to have a City Council committee reject the deal.

Why?

Reading between Lisa Goodman’s lines, it’s because the greatest crime is defying Mother Government, or even not paying instant obeisance:

“We went down and asked him not to open, the state called him and asked him not to be open, and he basically said, ‘Too bad, I’m not going to do it,’” Council Member Lisa Goodman said. “If he had shut down right after they came in and asked him to do so, I might have felt different.”

“Justice” in Minneapolis is a matter of connections, after all:

A new deal must be negotiated over the next month, the council committee said, and there may be a public hearing. Goodman said she has heard from “a lot of members of the public” about the matter, and they are not happy that Surdyk might have gotten off with a $6,000 fine and 10-day suspension.

Yeah, Goodman.  I just bet you did, and I just bet they’re not.

The worst part?  The best defense seems to be self-abasement:

His lawyer, Dennis Johnson, told council members that a $6,000 fine would wipe out any profit Surdyk made on March 12, the day he opened illegally. Johnson attempted to make no justification for his client’s actions, however.

“It’s simply that it was a boneheaded move,” Johnson said. “We need to deal with it, and accept any consequences that come from the city.”

Johnson said Surdyk just wants the problem to be resolved, and he is hoping that time and the fact that his business has been a model of regulatory compliance for 40 years, will help the city show some leniency.

“In the heat of the moment he made a horrible decision,” Johnson said, as Surdyk looked on. “He can’t justify what he did. He screwed up.”

It’s American in 2017, and striking a blow for freedom against a stupid regulation in an autocratic bureaucracy needs to be defended by pleading “I just can’t make decisions without the beneficent hand of the all-wise Council guiding me”.

This nation is doomed.

Betsy Hodges is the second-worst mayor in America, according to Observer:

She has taken a weak stance on crime that appears to be based as much on wishful thinking as it is on strategy and tactics. While violent crime in the city continues to climb, Hodges has actually braggedabout making fewer arrests. Her mishandling of the Jamar Clark protests, which led to an 18-day stand-off between police and protestors in North Minneapolis, led the US Department of Justice to conclude that “…the apparent strained relationship between Mayor Hodges and [Police] Chief Harteau, and the mayor’s unfamiliarity with the implications of the terminology she used when in charge, likely contributed to the inconsistent direction given to MPD personnel and the resulting frustration among officers over poor communication and inconsistent, uncoordinated leadership.”

Hodges missteps aren’t limited to issues of public safety and community relations. She has been the point-person on several expensive, never-ending, and unimaginative urban reconstruction projects that have disrupted small businesses and local transportation. Gross mismanagement of public works (a simple downtown pedestrian mall “makeover” under Hodge’s stewardship has taken longer to complete than the new state-of-the-art home of the Minnesota Vikings) has been a hallmark of her mayoralty. And when a group of Minnesota businessman got the green light for a Major League Soccer expansion team, Hodges wouldn’t even meet with the new owners to discuss a stadium; they went next door to St. Paul where Mayor Chris Coleman welcomed them and their revenue base with open arms.

As awful as she is, I’m not sure she’s worse than Rahm Emanuel.

Doesn’t matter; she’s got velocity.  She’ll be angling to hold the title free and clear next year.

Mayor Betsy Hodges is having a meeting tonight:

PLEASE JOIN

MAYOR BETSY HODGES

FOR A SPECIAL

MAYORAL ADDRESS

“ONE MINNEAPOLIS IN THE TIME OF TRUMP”

MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2017

7:30 P.M.

SHIR TIKVAH CONGREGATION

1360 West Minnehaha Parkway

MINNEAPOLIS, MN

EVENT IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Parking Available at Burroughs School

(Enter on 50th Street)

And on Adjacent Streets

When politicians start referring to polities as “one” of anything, you know you’ve got a problem on your hands; in this case, a one-party city that feels perfectly find using city government as an extension of Democrat party politics.

Two restaurants in Minneapolis abolish tipping, raise their staff wages to $15 an hour:

Common Roots Cafe (2558 Lyndale Ave. S.) and Butter Bakery Cafe (3700 Nicollet Ave. S.) informed their customers of the change by posting signs in their establishments and on their social media accounts.

In a lengthy explainer, Common Roots Cafe says it will be raising the pay of its staff from at least $11.40 per hour to a minimum of $15 per hour, plus benefits. As a result it won’t be accepting tips, something the cafe said “never felt right for our business.” To cover the extra cost, prices are rising 15 percent.

“We believe all people, regardless of where they work, should make a fair wage and should not have to depend on tips as a major part of their compensation,” the cafe’s Facebook post said, adding: “We think of this [as] a small step we can take toward making the restaurant industry more equitable and to make our workplace stronger and more supportive of all staff.”

The Butter Bakery Cafe posted a shorter message to customers on Tuesday, saying that it has “built fair wages into our menu prices” and is now a “tip free” eatery.

First things first:  their business, their choice.  Better this than the city forcing it on the businesses.

Although that’s coming.

Other restaurants in the cities have experimented with no tipping policies before but they’ve not always been successful. WCCO reports Upton 43 and Victory 44 ended their no-tipping policy last March after a trial run.

Chef and owner of both establishments, Erick Harcey, said it actually went over well with customers and staff members, but caused the restaurants to be priced out with competitors who didn’t have the same policy.

Let’s check back in six months, shall we? 

What’s the only thing worse than politics?

No politics.  Or, rather, no need for politics, since someone is making all the decisions without any need for all that pesky “compromise” and “discussion”.

History is full of the big examples – the USSR, East Germany, Germany itself, Communist China, India under Indira Gandhi, and on and on – places where politics was essentially a one-party exercise in internal spoils division.

The examples come closer to home, of course; places like Baltimore, DC, Newark, Camden, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Oakland, Stockton and Sacramento – all one-party cities where “politics” is a matter of internal Democrat party power utilization.

And of course, there’s California, where even some liberals are figuring it out:

We’re a case study in what a political community looks like when Republicans wield little or no power — and an ongoing refutation of the conceit that but for the GOP, the United States would be free of dysfunction.

Sure, the Golden State gets a lot right. It’s the sixth-largest economy in the world.

But California ranks in the lowest fifth of states in education. Housing costs are out of control. Our major cities face a crisis of homelessness. Our police officers kill citizens at rates comparable to the rest of the country. Our infrastructure is severely overstressed due to underinvestment. The bullet train project meant to connect L.A. to the Bay Area is a national joke. Our counties, cities and schools are being crushed by an unsustainable pension burden. Our taxes are already among the nation’s highest.

And it is no longer plausible to blame any of this on Republicans. For the foreseeable future, Democrats own every Golden State success and failure.

That particular article, written by the LaTimes’ token moderate-lefty (moderate = he hasn’t called for any violent overthrows laterly) Conor Friedersdorf, is mere acknowledgement that California Democrats had best be alert, since they’ve got no other parties to pass the buck to.  Victor Davis Hanson is more forthright.

Closer to home?  Horowitz’s Frontpage says what nobody in Minnesota dares say; Minneapolis is burning, whether you admit it or not.  After “only” forty years of one-party DFL rule (challenged, briefly, from the left by the Green Party in the nineties and early 2000s), Minneapolis’ decay has accelerated with DFL hegemony:

The result has been disastrous. As of 2015, the poverty rate in Minneapolis was 25.3%, nearly twice the 14% statewide rate for Minnesota and the 14.3% rate for the United States as a whole. In 2010, a study of 142 metro areas in Minnesota found that only 15 bore a heavier property-tax burden than Minneapolis, and that was before the city raised its property taxes by 4.7% in 2011.

More recently, Minneapolis property taxes increased by 3.4% in 2016, and by a crippling 5.5% in 2017.

 Notwithstanding the growth in revenues generated by these taxes, the government of Minneapolis has been incapable of balancing its budget. In 2015, for example, the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority’s budget included $84 million in federal subsidies and grants. In 2017, the Metropolitan Council—which describes itself as “the regional policy-making body, planning agency, and provider of essential services for the Twin Cities metropolitan region”—received $91 million in federal funding. That same year, the Minneapolis Public Schools operated with a budget deficit of nearly $17 million.

But massive deficits, coupled with ever-increasing dependency on federal assistance, have done nothing to persuade the political leaders of Minneapolis to question their zealous devotion to leftist political solutions, including an unwavering commitment to the “sanctuary” policies that prevent city employees from assisting federal immigration authorities. When President Donald Trump in 2017 announced that he planned to cut off all federal funding for sanctuary cities, for instance, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges stated defiantly: “As long as I stand as Mayor, he’s going to have to get through me.”

He probably won’t, though.  Because as Minneapolis’s decay inevitably accelerates, and Betsy Hodges cashes in her sinecure points and moves on to a non-profit that contributes to the problem, the decay and collapse of the city will do what Donald Trump can not.

Hide illegal aliens in Minneapolis?    No problem.

Parade down the freeway without a demonstration permit?  Here – have a police escort!

Sell a legal product on a day that isn’t “legal” today, but will be in four months?   Incur the wrath of the All Powerful City!

Recently, a series of phony social media accounts, and a phony job posting, have appeared for a “Draft Jacob Frey for Congress” committee.   Frey is, of course, the extreme-extreme-liberal city councilman who is challenging extreme liberal mayor Betsy Hodges in the upcoming Minneapolis mayoral race.

Turns out it all came from someone in her campaign; Hodges’ campaign manager blames “an intern”.

She delivered an “apology” yesterday:

“It happened. I did not know about it until it was brought to my attention, and when it was I immediately took action to remedy the situation,” Hodges wrote on Facebook. “That is not the kind of campaign I choose to run nor the kind of person I choose to be. I extend my apologies to [Council Member] Frey and his team for the incident and will work to make sure nothing like that happens from my team again.”

Hodges said she learned of the fake posting Monday night from Contreras, and told campaign staff that if something like this happens again, someone will lose their job.

“I communicated to my team, with vehemence, what my values are, what my expectations are about how we operate, that this falls outside my values, and that if it happens again the result will be termination,” she said.

Translation:  it was no intern.  It was someone on her team.

As Sarah Janecek notes – show us the intern.

(And as Janecek points out, that intern had better be making $15 an hour.  If they exist.  Which they do not).

Not that you’d know if have a life, but Minnesota’s little coterie of gun-grabber groups had a “March” yesterday.

Of course, they didn’t march where the actual violence was.  They “marched” about the tony, safe fields of Boom Island, nestled into the upscale neighborhood across the river from Downtown Minneapolis; close to the killing fields of North Minneapolis as the crow flies, but still a million miles away.

The ELCA Hair was safely covered with hand-knit artisanal wool caps.   The orange Dreamsicle t-shirts were covered by more North Face on the “Marchers” than on the actual north face of any mountain in the area.

There was much misplaced bravado, at least on social media (“SEE YOU AT THE CAPITOL” indeed – but not for long, since not a single one of your bills will make it to the floor of the GOP controlled legislature, absent some hue and cry to do so – and the last election pretty well refudiated the notion  that there is any such hue and cry).

But there was one other “Marcher” that drew this blog’s interest:

It’s a Minneapolis police lieutenant (I won’t name him), wearing a Dreamsicle cap.

Leftenant:  you’re wearing a cap from a group that wants to deny a God-given liberty to law-abiding American citizens, along with your uniform and badge.

Does this give us some idea of the treatment law-abiding gun owners can expect in your area of responsibility?

I can’t imagine that this is legal, even under Janae Harteau’s special-interest-friendly set of policies.

If you’re a law-abiding citizen in Minneapolis who exercises your Second Amendment rights, be careful.

But you knew that.

City of Minneapolis offers to deal with the gang problem…

…by creating a protection racket, and inviting the mobsters to it.

Although, to be fair, it’s a program that tries to deal with criminals, rather than going after the law-abiding citizens.  That, at least, is a step forward for Minneapolis.

24/7 Wall Street calls Minneapolis the 25th most dangerous city in the US, based on FBI stats:

Minneapolis landed on the 25th spot on the list, with a violent crime rate of 1,063 incidents per 100,000 residents. The website noted that robbery is especially common in Minneapolis, with 459 reported incidents per 100,000 residents – the 10th highest robbery rate in the nation.

The story – from WCCO – notes that despite the city’s nominally low unemployment, that…:

…the city has struggled with stark racial disparities, with people of color, particularly blacks, making less money, having lower home ownership rates and higher unemployment rates.

Right – fully a third of Minnesota’s murders, for the whole state, in the past year occurred on the North Side, which has a neighborhood murder rate of 100/100,000.  Which is, quite frankly, catastrophic.

But chalking up the murder rate to income, home ownership rates and unemployment is an evasion of responsibility; as PJ O’Rourke once said, “if you took away his bank account, it’s not like you’d find Thurgood Marshall selling crack at Union Station the next day”.

Is the crime rate in Minneapolis (the article painstakingly avoids mentioning the North Side) a result of poverty, or is the poverty a result of the crime and cultural breakdown?

On her Twitter page, Minneapolis city Council woman Alandra Cano refers to herself as a “Third World feminist” – or did, before she blocked me for questioning her thuggish ways last winter, when she published personal addresses, emails and phone numbers of her critics who had written her on the city of Minneapolis website.

I couldn’t speak to the “feminist” part, but Cano certainly has the basics of banana republic tactics down; her response to the ethics charges that came out of the episode last winter (on which My coverage led the entire Twin Cities media) is a big game of “I know you are, but what am I, and if you say anything I’m going to her you twice as hard and quote.
No my coverage led the entire Twin Cities media) is a big game of “I know you are, but what am I, and if you say anything I’m going to her you twice as hard and quote.

No, really:

“I disagree with the findings and have kept screenshots of the ways other Council Members, including CM Frey (Ward 3), Bender (Ward 10), Glidden (Ward 8), Abdi (Warsame, Ward 6) and others have used city property for ‘political purposes.’” She goes on, threatening to “speak out against the vote and circulate a press release to the media about the issue with the screenshots I’ve gathered since January of 2016” if the Council moves forward with approving the Ethics findings.

John Edwards of Wedge Live responds:

Cano responded to the stories about her email on Facebook, saying: “When a person of color speaks up, it should not be misconstrued as a “threat” to society, it should be respected as their truth.” Whatever Cano’s intent, the reason people interpreted her email as a threat, is because she constructed it that way: if you vote against me, I’ll put out a press release with incriminating screenshots. This is not to say Cano can’t make an argument that she’s being singled out unfairly, or that she can’t produce evidence to support her defense. But if she was trying to make that argument, she obscured it by writing an email that looked like blackmail.
Alondra Cano really has been the target of vicious racist attacks because of her support for BLM. Separate from those vile attacks, Council President Barb Johnson and some of Cano’s other colleagues really have gone out of their way, to a sometimes comical degree, to trash her in the local media. But it’s also true that Cano picks too many unnecessary battles, irritating her colleagues in a way that transcends race and ideology.

That an elected member of a party with sole control of a major city thinks she can complain about others’ “privilege” is a laugh riot.

And while she may or may not be a “third world feminist”, she’s certainly got the Chicago tinhorn ward-heeler thing down.

Frank Drake is running and extremely aggressive, and fairly tart, campaign against Keith Ellison in the fifth Congressional District.

Will it work? I saw the 1980 Olympic hockey team; I do believe in miracles. I’m a Republican in the inner city, so I have to.

Anyway – Drake provides a list of Keith Ellison’s “accomplishments” in office:

Top Keith Ellison accomplishments:

1) I promise to end these wars, and not start any new wars.

2) Minneapolis is now a UN sanctuary city funded by Minnesotans.

3) I can show up anywhere, and I’m the story.

4) The DNC was impartial. That’s why “Keith’s for Hillary” now.

5) Who’s this Frank Drake dude anyway?

6) Community Action of Minneapolis was a great front and money laundering operation until it was seized by the Government for fraud. Bill Davis remains a trusted advisor. President Obama will pardon him before leaving office.

7) Marijuana remains a Class 1 Narcotic, just like Heroin.

8) Keith Ellison was never involved, in any way, with the overthrow of Syria or the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

9) Unemployment is low, especially in our urban centers. That 4.5% Unemployment Rate is true, despite 1/3 of all Americans not working. Over 94,000,000 Americans don’t work.

10) Our Government is in the business of War. Private prisons are a growth industry.

11) My ideas are proven in Venezuela and many controlled economies.

Keith Ellison’s ideas resonate like a frying pan dropped from a five-story building hitting the pavement.

Drake has a way with words that we could use a lot more of an inner-city Republican politics.

Reading over the story about Saturda’s “gun buyback”, I have a question.

By Joe’s count, there were a total of six cops at the South Mpls location, most of them on overtime.  Let’s assume the same number at the North Side “buyback”.

If I recall correctly, cops get about $40 an hour for overtime (someone correct me if I’m wrong.

If there were six cops at each location, and they were all on overtime, that’s $480 an hour; since the event was schedule for eight hours, that means someone, somewhere budgeted just shy of $4,000 for 12 cops’ overtime…

…for what is, let’s be honest, a frivolous political exercise – turning over Pillsbury donors’ money, essentially, to “artists” and owners of unserviceable firearms.

So was it just Pillsbury donors, or was it also Minneapolis taxpayers paying for crappy agenda art?

Nope.

No trend here.

The exodus of restaurants from Minneapolis – with its onerous regulations, psychotic city offices, minimum wage laws and constant flirting with more mandatory benefits for part-time workers – is claiming high-end restaurants and, now,  long-time staples of the Minneapolis food scene:

After a 36-year run, Ichiban Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Bar is calling it quits.

“Thirty-six years is a long time to do anything,” said Keith Levit in a statement. Levit is son of founder Jack Levit. “We’ve been a staple in the community for much of that time and that’s something we’re very grateful for. It’s sad that it’s coming to an end here but we’re very proud of what we’ve accomplished.”

As the article notes, Nicollet Mall has seen three staple joints close in the past year or so.

No – no pattern here.

To: Betsy Hodges, mayor, Minneapolis.

From: Mitch Berg, ornery peasant

Re: Rumors

Mayor Hodges,

Over the weekend, the rumor mill announced that you had told a gathering somewhere in Minneapolis you were planning on holding a “gun buyback”.

Please, please please please please please, oh please, please please please please please, I beg of you; go ahead with it.

You simply have to. I beg of you, with all my heart.

That is all.

UPDATE:  Rumor mill says it’ll be held August 27 at thePillsbury United Communities, or somewhere in that vicinity.