Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Lots of flights cancelled. Mayor Pete says airlines need to get their act together. It’s the airlines fault.

Airlines say there’s a pilot shortage, goes back to the Colgan Air disaster when FAA raised pilot minimum hours to 1,500, which makes it harder for new pilots to get hired. Airlines want FAA to raise the mandatory retirement age again, to 67, so they can fly with the pilots they have while waiting for new pilots to be trained.

Pilots say it’s inflation eroding pay, crappy scheduling and the vaccine mandate. Lost a bunch of pilots because of it, can’t hire new ones because they won’t take the vaxx.

Bernie Saunders says Congress gave airlines a bailout during the Covid crisis the Democrats created, which makes the airlines beholden to Democrats for their existence, so now he wants to fine airlines $55,000 per passenger for cancelled flights to punish airlines for failing to find enough pilots who possess the required number of hours and also have the mandated vaccine.

Pile up enough restrictions and you can kill any industry.

I was planning to someday retire to Florida. Guess we’ll be driving there on the racist roads, assuming the Lesko Brandon administration doesn’t ban interstate travel. That and quartering soldiers in private homes are about the only Constitutional rights they haven’t violated yet.

Joe Doakes

America had it so good, through the Reagan/Gingrich boom of the 1990s.

Someone just had to screw it up.

Don’t you dare say Democrats are unpatriotic:

Mind you, that’s not a BLM or “Anti”-Fa Group. This is a Democratic party unit.

UPDATE: But wait! Some of them do have some standards!

A “Democratic Socialists of America” group apologized for a planned flag burning.

They apologized to the environmentalists, anyway:

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Found this stuffed in the screen door on Sunday morning. Couple of late-middle aged White women with ELCA hair going around the neighborhood (no doubt doing Good Works before heading off to hear the Gospel).

Struck me that Tina doesn’t mention which political party she intends to caucus with, if elected. She doesn’t have any endorsements.

I’ve been around long enough to recognize political euphemisms. “Who you love” means homosexual. “Where you’re from” means illegal alien.

This flyer was delivered days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, so “reproductive rights” means abortion. “Equal Pay” means “affirmative action for women.”

I’m going out on a limb and suggesting Tina is a Democrat who is terrified to admit it, because the public is less than enthused about Democrats right now.

Hiding your party affiliation to deceive voters is kind of shady, don’t you think? Wouldn’t honesty help voters make an informed choice? Or is that the problem?

Yep, definitely Democrat.

Joe Doakes

If Democrats are going to have to run stealth campaigns in places like 41B, the internal polling must be devastating.

To: Democrats
From: Mitch Berg, whose common “irascible peasant” self-appelation has never seemed more on-target.
Re: You

Dear all Democrats,

Every once in a while, in front of a friendly audience, you slip and let the truth out.

In front of the NPR simps in 2016, for example, you said in as many words it was time for the media to put its finger – or arm, or butt – on the scale to tip the public against Donald Trump.

And now, from the (if you’ll pardon the expression) Colbert sixty minutes hate:

You can put most of what this woman says into the mouth of a spousal abuser – which really is a great metaphor for the modern Democrat party.

That is all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Not sure how I got on this mailing list but here’s the latest news: Angie Craig hates my vehicle warranty. She wants me to burn E15 which the service advisor told me not to do, absolutely not, voids my warranty.

She also hates my family grocery budget. She’s proud to have taken bold, decisive action to address skyrocketing food costs by . . . appointing a task force to submit a report to Congress in nine months. I’m sure that’ll be a big help when I’m standing in the checkout line this weekend.

I would click “unsubscribe” except I’m pretty sure it would automatically put me on the No Fly List, the IRS Audit list, and the January 6 co-conspirator list so the FBI can bust down my door while CNN films. I guess I’ll just click “delete” instead.

Joe Doakes

It’s probably the best idea.

Berg’s 8th Law of Diversity states “American progressivism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder.

Like when, for example, the first Mexican-born Congresswoman is a conservative Christian? Never bet against the response being just a little psychotic.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi elbows the daughter of Mayra Flores out of the way during a photo op:

The contempt Big Left feels for “their” people who take off the Ketchup Bottle dresses and leave the cult positively throbs.

I think Flores – or whoever is running her Twitter account – is up to the challenge.

I may have to pony up for Flores’s actual election bid this fall.

HIllary Clinton openly wonders if the Democrat Party benefits from hitching its political fortunes to transgender ideology.

In another sign to transgender activists that their increasingly unpopular cultural crusade has become a liability for their Democrat enablers, Hillary Clinton has suggested that the feelings of a minuscule but noisy percentage of the population shouldn’t take priority over the party’s political concerns.

The embittered sore loser of the 2016 presidential election sat down with the UK’s Financial Times for an interview that was published on Friday to discuss a wide range of issues. And while her insistence that she was not going to run in 2024, deferring to President Joe Biden initially got the most attention, her remarks throwing transgenders under the bus have set off a firestorm on Twitter.

She’s not running for anything, she’s not nothing to lose, and she’s fleeced more money from Clinton Foundation saps than she can possibly spend in her lifetime.

On the other hand – I had to think the “moderates” would have to start to get worried about this sort of thing eventually.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:Joe Dokes from Como Park emails:

It’s incidents like these which make people look at Uvalde and say, “Hmmmmm.”

An attempted mass shooting at a school was thwarted when the shooter found doors were locked, the school had an armed officer on scene, and responding police officers took prompt, effective action to end the threat. In other words, the system worked exactly as it should, exactly the way Conservatives have spent the last two weeks saying it would, because the people responsible for school safety did their jobs. Give them all a medal, they deserve it.

Which makes us wonder – why didn’t it work in Uvalde? An incredibly long string of coincidental but accidental failures, or a glow-in-the-dark operation intended to stir up public support for gun control just when the ‘President’ needs a wag-the-dog distraction from the unfolding disaster that is the Lesko Brandon administration?

Hmmmmm.

Joe Doakes

Given the craven depravity with which the Lesko Brandon administration is running things, it seems simultaneously like a conspiracy theory and documentary evidence.

Goivernor Klink on Twitter over the weekend, commemorating Juneteenth:

“…work to dismantle unjust systems of oppression”

Like open-ended emergency powers that can be extended endlessly at the whim of a political party in power?

Like arbitrary authority that allows a governor to crush businesses at a whim, but spare the ones that donate to his campaign?

Those sorts of systems of oppression?

On it.

Democrats: “The President has little to no control over supply chains. He is but packing peanut before the winds of war, greed, the market and Americans selfishness”.

Also Democrats:

Makes perfect sense to me.

The Left, 364 Days a Year: “What, you think you’re going to take on the US Government and Military with your AR15?

The Left, the other day: “ZOMG, THEY HAD GUNS AND WERE GOING TO OVERTHROE TEH GOVERMENT!

The Pioneer Press, apparently knowing (what little is left of) its audience, says:

Now, I don’t pry into other peoples personal healthcare decisions, and I’m pretty merciless to any idiot who tries to yap about mine.

But it’s worth noting that Dr. Jensen, though not vaccinated, appears to have missed zero days of work or campaigning due to Covid.

In the meantime, the people who run this state – Lt. Governor Flanagan and her figurehead, the…uh, somewhat comorbid Tim Walz – have both had Covid and been off the job in the past couple years.

Correlation – especially with three data points – isn’t causation.

But it’s a better correlation than the one data point the PiPress ran with.

To: Governor Walz

You – or one of your social media smurfs – tweeted this over the weekend:

I caught the subtle gaslighting; in Democrat communications lately, upporting your current flavor is “courage“. I’m sure that will log roll at least a couple of gullible people who don’t think that hard.

But since The laws we already have, against straw purchases and trafficking guns to known felons, and using guns to commit crimes, and for that matter shooting up a car with your family in it, aren’t being enforced in cities run by your party, how about you have the “bravery“ to do the executive branches enumerated job, and enforce the laws we already have?

It’s a little harder than gaslighting the Republican majority in the Senate and a state full of gun owners, but it is your job.

Or lieutenant governor Flanagan‘s job, anyway.

That is all.

Chesa Boudin – the Soros-backed district attorney in San Francisco – didn’t just lose his recall yesterday.

He got brutalized.

Scott Johnson at Powerline, inimitable as usual:

Recall is a particularly good word in this case. He was a defective prosecutor. Among his innovations was the elimination of cash bail, the nonprosecution of a large swath of property crimes, the toleration of open-air drug dealing, and the facilitation of San Francisco’s continued descent into third-world hellhole status.

I was going to ask “will this cause other Soros/Bloomberg spawn like Keith Ellison to change anything?” Adjust messages, yes; even Ellison has to be seeing that devastating internal polling. Actual substantial long-term policy changes? Of course not; “progressivism” is eternal.

Still – it shows there’s a point beyond which even the most addled progressives, sometimes, might not let things get pushed.

It’s such a good think our nation returned to seasoned, professional leadership in 2021:

Given the Orwellianism of modern Democrat politics, I’ll wait for the declaration that “Senility is intelligence!”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I can’t wait to learn who GOP, Inc. will select as the Republican candidate for President in 2024. It won’t be Trump, that’s for certain. But I’d like to know now, so I can start working on my “literally Hitler” memes.

Well, yes, of course s/he will be “literally Hitler.” Every Republican candidate is “literally Hitler” until defeated. Reagan was “literally Hitler” for walking away from Reykjavik. Bush the Elder was ‘literally Hitler” for secretly flying an SR-71 Blackbird to Iran to negotiate the release of Jimmy Carter’s hostages. Romney was “literally Hitler” for having binders full of women. McCain was “literally Hitler” because he agreed to have Sarah Palin as running mate and she was “literally Hitler” too. Chimpy McBushHitler was “literally Hitler” because he lied and people died. Trump was “literally Hitler” because he bragged about grabbing women by the . . . and now, the next Republican candidate for President will be “literally Hitler” simply for . . . being the Republican candidate for President.

About the only person who wasn’t “literally Hitler” was Hitler himself, because he declared war on the Russians who weren’t led by Putin at the time, but someday would be. And Putin is “literally Hitler.”

Joe Doakes

They have been building the “literally Hitler“ file on Ron DeSantis for a while now.

Although Jennifer Carnahan underperformed her expectations in the CD1 primary on Tuesday, coming in well under ten percent of the vote in her late husband’s district, she did get one huge break yesterday.

Beto O’Rourke interrupted a law enforcement briefing on the Uvalde massacre in one of the most cynical, narcissistic bits of self-promotion I’ve ever seen…

…including the anything perpetual victim Carnahan has ever foisted on the public.

So becoming not the most narcisstic, performative character in politics? Probably a good thing.

Speaking of O’Rourke’s “Look at Meeeeeeeeeee!” moment – CD3 rep Dean Phillips posted this…

…ever so briefly. It disappeared in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

That’s right, Lord Rotgut: a silver-spoon pseudo-Latino who makes John Edwards look sincere and grounded trying to seize the spotlight from the law enforcement guys doing their f****ng jobs is the same as an anonymous guy standing up to a 40 ton tank.

This tweet needs to not get memory-holed for this fall. If there is justice in this world, it should completely scupper O’Rourke’s inevitable bid for Governor (and the presidential bid that will follow),. It should definitely get held against Phillips this fall as well.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Lesko Brandon purportedly ‘paused’ his new Disinformation Governance Board. Nina Jankowicz, the person tapped to head it, announced she would resign. Internet speculation is Lesko Brandon caved to public opposition.

Brandon wasn’t the first. George Bush the Younger established the Office of Strategic Information in 2002, which was supposedly disbanded by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld due to public opposition, same as now.

Come ON, people. It’s an office of DIS-information. Its whole purpose is lying – to the enemy, to Congress, to the public, to whomever needs lying to so The Agenda is advanced.

Do you REALLY believe it’s out of business? Or has it been quietly renamed, moved to the basement, and told to issue no more public announcements but instead work only through leaks to its trusted media partners?

Joe Doakes

I firmly believe Joe is absolutely right; it’s still out there; it’s just not singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious“ on TikTok anymore.

In addition to a number of primaries that may or may not be referenda on Donald Trump, depending on who you ask (more tomorrow, hopefully), today is the first of four drama-clogged elections in Minnesota’s First Congressional District.

As the Strib notes, there are twenty candidates in the running. The DFL (8 candidates) and GOP (10) ones are vying for a significant shot on the ballot in a special election coming up on August 9.

You can fairly feel the media, practically begging for a strong performance by Jennifer Carnahan, widow of the late Rep. Hagedorn and controversial former state GOP chair. It’d guarantee a couple months of soap-opera drama before a DFL victory – a win-win for the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy). Matt Benda has the money; State reps Jeremy Munson and (to a lesser extent) Nils Pierson have the political name recognition.

Tomorrow’s going to be a fun one.

… I had completely given up on the Catholic Church ever actually enforcing it’s doctrine with regard to most progressive causes, including abortion.

So my jaw may have dropped just a little when I saw that archbishop of San Francisco, Salvatore Cordileone, has apparently barred the speaker of the house from communion, more for wrapping her support of abortion in Catholicism as far as being “pro choice”:

“A Catholic legislator who supports procured abortion, after knowing the teaching of the Church, commits a manifestly grave sin which is a cause of most serious scandal to others. Therefore, universal Church law provides that such persons ‘are not to be admitted to Holy Communion,'” he says in the letter…Cordileone says in his letter that he wrote to her on April 7, informing her that “should you not publicly repudiate your advocacy for abortion ‘rights’ or else refrain from referring to your Catholic faith in public and receiving Holy Communion, I would have no choice but to make a declaration, in keeping with canon 915, that you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” He says that since that time, she has not done so.

I have little doubt that there will be a procession of “progressive” Catholic churches lining up to break the archbishop’s injunction.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is picking up an Amazon parcel at the drop box at a Whole Foods on Selby Avenue. As he fiddles with getting the scanner to scan the bar code on his phone, Avery LIBRELLE walks up behind him.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, shhhhhhhure enough, it’s Avery. How’s thi…

LIBRELLE: Republicans are racists!

BERG: Oh, yeah, you bet. You heard about the Republican gubernatorial candidate who chased down an unarmed black jogger – very similarly to the Ahmaud Arberry story? Chased him down and pointed a shotgun at his chest?

LIBRELLE: I had not. But sounds like a typical Rethuglicon!

BERG: Oh, you beg:

The jogger said [the candidate] pointed the shotgun at his chest; [the candidate] denies this but allows that his intent was to detain the jogger. At the time, [the candidate] was mayor of a small town in Pennsylvania. 

LIBRELLE: This is truly the America that Donald Trump created.

BERG: Uh huh. (BERG takes on a snarky grin)

LIBRELLE: What?

BERG: Nothing. (He can barely cvontain his glee).

LIBRELLE: Wait. That’s the look you get when you drop what you think is the big zinger in one of these stories of yours.

BERG: Zinger? Who, me?

LIBRELLE: (Yelling at a store employee). Pouncer! He’s a pouncer!

EMPLOYEE: Er, sure, maa… (Stops, confused) Sir…uh (Looks at BERG, who merely shrugs)

BERG: I’ll be leaving now.

And SCENE

The fact that the news media is, today, writing stories lauding the administration for its panicky handling of the baby formula crisis that it created, tells us a little about the sick state of both our executive branch, our bureaucracy and our news media.

President Joe Biden authorized the use of Air Force planes for the effort, dubbed “Operation Fly Formula,” because no commercial flights were available

Well, that’s mighty big of him, given that it was an executive branch bureaucracy – the Food and Drug Administration – whose inexplicable, and as yet unexplained, closing of a formula plant in Michigan, not to mention Byzantine importation restrictions on formula from Third World hellholes like Switzerland in Germany, caused the crisis in the first place.

I’ve never been the worlds biggest Donald Trump fan – but if this had happened on his watch, a series of peevish and borderline inscrutable tweets would have been followed by executive orders expediting the reopening of the plant and trashing the import restrictions that prevented the free market from doing what it does best Dash getting resources where they are needed, when they are needed.

The fact that our news media is allowing government to treat itself like heroes for “solving” a problem it created (at absolutely sinful and bizarre expense – have you seen how much military aircraft flights cost these days?) is a little bit like giving a medal of valor to an arsonist for putting out a fire they set.

I was at the Minnesota GOP Convention last Saturday in Rochester. It was actually the best organized convention I’ve ever been to. Electronic balloting allowed five rounds of balloting, including speeches and arm-twisting time, between rounds.

Of course, the State Central meeting was a Bulgarian cluster-cuddle – more on that, maybe, next week.

And the initial sign-up period, where about 2,000 people showed up on Friday morning in the space of about an hour, involved some long lines and a little waiting. Now, by all rational accounts, the lines cleared up fast – the convention organizers had done their homework…

…but that didn’t stop the DFL from releasing some snarky press releases claiming that a party that can’t run its own convention shouldn’t try to run the state.

Suffice to say, we’ll be watching their performance tomorrow, also in Rochester.

Because I’ve heard from people who grew up in East Berlin in the 1970s who’ve said “Good God, getting into the DFL convo looks like a freaking nightmare:

Please take a moment to carefully read the list of precautions shown below:

Every delegate, alternate, vendor, news media member, volunteer, staff, elected official, or campaign member will only gain entrance to any space on the first floor of Mayo Civic Center during the Convention with a valid photo ID, proof of COVID-19 vaccination, and a negative COVID-19 test result. If you do not have your vaccination card, the Minnesota Department of Health cannot provide a replacement CDC COVID-19 vaccine card. If you lost your COVID-19 vaccine card, you can request a copy of your immunization record, which includes similar information to the vaccine card, by using the Docket app or submitting a request to the Minnesota Immunization Information Connection (MIIC).

The precautions listed here are subject to change based upon public health advisories from the state of Minnesota, Olmsted County, and the City of Rochester.

• All persons must show proof of COVID-19 vaccination and must test negative for COVID-19 on-site at Mayo Civic Center to receive a silicone wristband which must be shown at the security checkpoint. This wristband will be required for entrance each day of the Convention.

Go ahead, DFL. Make my weekend.

Erin Preese is gonna show the gun rights movement what for:

All right. Let’s get taken on!

I’m just going to head out to her Twitter account…:

Like an amazing number of leftist candidates, she seems to have availed herself of some mass blocking service/list. I’ve never even interacted with her…

…and I’m already cast forth from her echo chamber.

So we’ve established this: “taking on the gun lobby“ means “parenting chanting points into the echo chamber“.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In the olden days, when gold and silver were currency, there was only so much metal so there could only be so much money. The government couldn’t create more money out of thin air, it had to tax citizens to obtain the money to run the government.

Lesko Brandon reminds us Milton Friedman no longer rules the world. The government can create as much money as it wants, simply by adding ones and zeros to bank accounts.

Fine. But then why am I paying taxes?

Joe Doakes

To show everyone who’s boss?