Re my interview with Angus Fox – here’s the introductory essay to the series, Part 2, and Part 3.
The series, as noted in the interview, is open-ended.
And, back by popular demand, today’s music setlist!
It’s the position of this blog that you can tell everything you need to know about what people and companies really think by observing where their money goes – especially money that is intended to get people to give them more money back.
Especially advertising.
As we’ve noted in the past:
So – what does that tell us about “the System” and what it really believes?
This was Keith Ellison, the other night in Brooklyn Center:
So we have:
I’m going to need to find all these examples of Ellison’s perfidy and collect ’em all in one place for 2022. This stuff needs to get dragged out of the memory hole…
…for whatever good it’ll do.
Watching what’s going on now, I’ve had just about enough of two responses:
“It’s just property”
Let’s say you’ve worked hard, and spent $40,000 on a car. Since the average median income is about $40,000, that’s a year out of your life (your math may vary; If you make $100,000 a year, imagine you bought a Range Rover). You can spread that out over 4 to 7 years with a loan – but it’s still got to get paid, which means you are still going to spend a year of your life to pay for that car.
Somebody steals or destroys it. That means they have taken the work from a whole year of your life.
Without paying you.
And saying “it’s covered by insurance“ is a copout; instead of appropriating the life and labor of one person, you’re spreading it out across everyone. Insurance against accidents and the vicissitudes of life is one thing; assuming insurance is there to pay for someone’s looting or crime spree is the same as saying “this group of people is entitled to that group of people’s labor, without compensation.”
Stealing and destroying things, and saying “someone else will pay for it“, whether it’s one person or hundreds of thousands, is no different than making them work for you for free.
If someone openly talked about forcing a group of people to work for them for free, what would you do?
If someone were coming at you with the explicit purpose of forcing you to work for them for free, what would you call it?
Hint: we fought a Civil War over it at one point.
The other saying: “Complaining about destruction of property is privilege”
Your G___damn right it is. It’s a “Privilege“ you, and I, and every chump Of every race, religion, gender and orientation who pays taxes to any level of government, earn, in full expectation that government will carry out its absolute minimum legitimate role.
Which is not “building bike paths” or “running resiliency departments” or even “making life happy and equitable”.
It is “ upholding the rule of law“.
Which all sounds very square, like the John Lithgow character in “Footloose”…
…until you remember that without some minimum standard of order – for example, knowing that the home you work to pay for and the business you work to build, and the community that you work to create, aren’t going to be stolen and destroyed arbitrarily – prosperity [1] is impossible.
And without prosperity, “freedom“ is irrelevant. What difference does it make if you can vote, if you are working from sunup to sundown to stave off famine and don’t have time to keep up on the news?
It is the same level of “privilege“, by the way, that leads one to legitimately expect the justice system to which we lend some of our freedoms to work, fairly and impartially, no matter who the defendants are.
I’m done with taking either of these arguments as anything but the abominations they are. Our entire society needs to be done with them both.
Excusing looting, whatever its motivations, is an attack on everybody’s freedom. It’s time to treat it as such.
[1] and by “prosperity“, I don’t mean “Jay-Z driving around in a Bentley“. I mean “most of us aren’t out working in a field from the sunrise until sunset, to earn a famine prone subsistence living, so we have time to read books and raise our kids and think about things other than trying not to starve“. Which, throughout millions of years if human history, has been the rule, not the exception. That is mankind‘s natural state, not this relative utopia we are living in today.
To: High School and College Kids in the audiene (or parents of same)
From: Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant
Re: A Tip From Future You
Dear Kids,
Study up, get into a Tier 1 law school, and get into medical malpractice law:
Your future self, sitting on the deck of your yacht, will thank your present self. And, by extension, me.
That is all.
Background point 1: the Woke Mob in Hollywood has, for the past few years, been twisting itself into a self-righteous tizzy about “Tropic Thunder”, the 2008 satirical action comedy best described as “The Three Amigos go to Vietnam“; three prima donna actors to to Southeast Asia to shoot a Vietnam movie, and end up in the middle of a guerrilla war.
The movie was…not bad for anything involving Ben Stiller after Something About Mary. It also included Jack Black at the peak of his overexposure…
…and Robert Downey Junior, literally in (supposedly, satirically) blackface.
The PC mob, in full “eat its own” mode, has been on the…I can’t say “warpath” anymore, can I? The PC mob has been after the movie for Downey’s “blackface” appearance…
…notwithstanding that the whole point of the role is spoofing the arrogance of Hollywood’s “method actor” crowd, whose real-life methods weren’t a whole lot less absurd at the height of the fad. The “white method actor in blackface” schtick was, in fact, the same point the woke mob would like to make – actors sure can be disconnected, pretentious and arrogant – if they had senses of either humor or proportion.
It’s a point that is in fact, the only memorable part of that movie – which I remember being funny enough and not half bad, but then I only remember that because it’s the movie with Robert Downey in the perfectly absurd makup.
Background point 2: A key tenet of feminism is that women can do literally everything men can – and, more proximate to this post, females can do anything males can. (We’ll leave out the whole “even if they’re trans men and they’re in a weightlifting competition” bit – for purposes of this post, anyway).
OK. On to the post.
I don’t watch a lot of TV. I literally went six years without watching a network TV show – from the finale of The Office til sometime in 2020, I didn’t watch a single network television show (and other than local weather, nothing on their local affiliates).
For that matter, I went from the finale of Breaking Bad until probably a few months into the pandemic without watching much of anything on cable.
And truth be told, my habits haven’t changed much.
Even a show with a brilliant promotional campaign will rarely reel me in – and I say “rarely” out of pure intellectual honesty; it could happen, it might have happened, but I honestly can’t recall if it has happened.
If there was a show whose promos were not, no way, no how, ever going to reel me in, it’s…
(more…)I’ve got a few friends who could qualify as “transgender”. I’ve always done my best to treat them with compassion and respect, the way we’re supposed to treat human beings.
That part is not open for debate.
But there are a few points open for legitimate debate – and the reason we know this is that the trans “movement” – I’ll just call it Big Trans from now on – works so very hard to suppress that debate. In my forays into looking into how Big Trans behaves on social media, I’ve found no group able to mobilize so much frothing ire so fast – not union goons, not Big Karen, nobody. Their “allies” certainly pull their weight in trying to shut down the conversation as well.
Now, there’s a backlash – some parents of putatively trans children are pushing back against the logrolling disguised as “support” that their children, often deeply vulnerable, receive
This piece – first of a four-part investigation – is very long, and so far utterly worth a read.
Like a decent but shrinking share of National Public Radio (NPR) programming, “The Hidden Brain” has some redeeming value – in this case, some fascinating looks into the frontiers of cognitive psychology, at least among the episodes I’ve heard. A repurposed podcast, like an awful lot of NPR programming, it is one of the shows that’s filling the spot “Prairie Home Companion” and “Live from Here” used to fill – and is actually pretty interesting, even with the occasional challenge it provides.
But it’s NPR – National “Progressive” Radio. The network exists largely to affirm the left’s prejudices about itself and society. An NPR bumper sticker or tote bag was an Urban Progressive Privilege virtue-signal long before those became a cultural obsession.
And so when fact peters out, narrative sets in. And there is just no way that narrative gets challenged by anyone on the program. It might be off-topic – you’d be surprised how easy it is to fill an hour of radio – but it seems more and more obvious that NPR isn’t in the “challeninging Big Left’s tropes” business.
And so with last weekend’s episode, on “Honor Societies” – which, the hypothesis goes, include much of the American South and West.
You can argue the premise. You can argue the findings. And by all means, do.
But around forty minutes in, the host and guest swerved into a deeply counterfactual “discussion of ‘Stand your Ground’ laws”. I put it in scare quotes because it was no such thing; it was an unchallenged recitation of Big Left’s narrative about self-defense reform.
I wrote then an email, attached below.
I’m Mitch Berg, from Saint Paul, MN. My day job involves a lot of applied cognitive psychology, so I’ve become a bit of a fan of HIdden Brain [1]. I listen most Saturdays on KNOW in Saint Paul.
And I very much enjoyed your 3/29 episode, about “Honor Societies” – until about 40 minutes into it, where it swerved, hard, into misinformation.
Your host and guest spent a few moments discussing so-called “Stand your Ground” laws. Whether through ignorance or intent, that part of the show was highly legally erroneous at best, and misinformation at worst.
I’ll explain briefly [2]:
Your guest repeated the “misconception” – in many cases, it’s a propagandistic chanting point, but I’ll presume good motive, here – that “Stand your Ground” means, closely paraphrasing your guest, that “thinking you’re in danger gives you the right to kill someone, and call it self-defense”. In fact, even in situations where “Castle” or “Stand your Ground” laws apply, one must meet the other three criteria, subject to the details of state statute, to the satisfaction of the investigators, the prosecutors, and if worse comes to worst a jury.”Stand your ground” is not a legal grounds to claim the dog ate one’s moral homework to get away with murder.Beyond that? Your guest noted that “Stand your Ground” laws are most common in “Honor States” – implying “Honor”-based attitudes drive “Stand your Ground” laws.
But facts show that the correlation is far from accurate. 29 states, as diverse as Florida, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, have “stand your ground” statutes, and eight more – including Washington State, Oregon and Illinois – have it in case law. (And New York, Maine, Massachusetts and Minnesota are all “Castle” states, via statute or case law). So, rather than “Honor Society”, the valid correlation appears to be states with meaningfully strong and effective libertarian/conservative legislative majorities or minorities have such laws.
Fascinating as much of the episode was (I wound up driving around the city for an extra 40 minutes to hear the whole thing), this part of the episode veered sharply from fact into legal misinformation. And given this is a public radio production, even one I generally enjoy a lot, I’m given to suspect at least a tinge of classist narrative. The show was much the worse off for it.
While I realize the odds of this email being acknowledged, much less broadcast, are about as likely as my getting a hot third date with Anna Kendrick, I grant permission to use this response on the air, and will edit and put it in audio form if you prefer.
I’ll also point out that as part of my “side hustle” (see [1], below), I’ll be discussing this episode, and my attempt to contact your program about it, on my show, podcast and blog, in the coming week or two, including reaching out (likely pro forms and in the interest of fairness and clarity) to your show’s guest.
Mitch Berg
651 xxx xxxx
[1] I mentioned my “day job” – now I should tell you about my side hustle. I’m a talk show host and podcaster at a Twin Cities radio station, as well as a modestly prominent regional blogger. That follows a career in radio and journalism, including at least some time doing news at a publicly-supported station.
[2] My bona fides: For over two decades, I’ve been an activist and volunteer for the groups that wrote much of MInnesota’s current body of firearms law, which have passed with strong bipartisan majorities and been signed by governors of both parties. I produce the podcast for this group. As a MInnesota carry permit holder, I have had to repeatedly demonstrate knowledge of the law as part of statutory permit training. I’m not a lawyer, but I get most of my information from lawyers who specialize in this area, both in criminal defense and legislative terms. You want cites, I got cites. If there is a person anywhere in American alternative media who’s paid more dues on this issue, I say with all due humility I have yet to be introduced to them.
Public radio – NPR, as always, and increasingly MPR – rarely deigns to acknowledge the proles. Suffice to say, this post (and my next NARN show) will likely be this topic’s only sojourn outside the memory hole.
…don’t you dare claim that major media have become stenographers for Big Left.
Perish the thought.
Ads don’t appear by accident.
Least of all television ads, with their high production costs and long lead-times. If you see something in a television ad, especially an “agency” spot (produced by an ad agency, as opposed to something shot at a store or TV station for a local merchant, you may be assured someone thought about the message it was portraying.
A lot.
As we’ve discussed recently, the high numbers of African-Americans in TV commercials challenge the idea that Americans are innately racist. If an add offends someone on some visceral level, it’s just not going to work.
With that in mind, I direct your attention to the latest round of commercials for “Hy Vee”, the national grocery chain, and what HyVee thinks it says about their customers. Both spots are done to the tune of the ’80s song Our House, by the British ska group “Madness”.
Here’s the first one, which came out over the winter:
Note the imagery (amid all the HyVee products):
Now, there’s nothing wrong with dads taking care of kids. I spent 20 years doing it, 11 of ’em mostly by myself, several more covering the day shift and working nights to save daycare. Fathers pulling their weight is nothing new.
But it’s not an unreasonable assumption that, in the typical family – whether two-parent or not – a woman is still making a lot of the shopping decisions. And HyVee, one of the major retailers, believes that not only is the image of the woman being the high-speed executive bread-winner one that appeals to those consumers, but showing hubby as a hapless buffoon who’d be lost without her appeals as well.
It’s hardly a novel observation.
HyVee has a new “Our House” spot out – it’s not out on Youtube just yet, so I can’t post it here just yet. And when I first saw it – with its improbably pretty mom cleaning the house to a fine sheen with her array of HyVee products, and a pronounced “Father Knows Best” vibe, I briefly thought “Ooofda – how did this get greenlit? The feministasi are going to have a cow.”.
Then I mentally caught myself. “There’s going to be a whammy”.
And sure enough – Dad finally came home. And he reminded me of Rip Taylor, if Rip Taylor were playing a Gestapo agent (sans long black trench coat – this agent was dressed like, well, Rip Taylor in a HyVee commercial) – simultaneously petulant and way below Mom’s league.
So apparently HyVee’s marketing department believes that an ad Dad who is a mass of caricatures, coming across as a spoiled, petulant martinet to his improbably gorgeous, clearly put-upon spouse, is not only not going to turn their audience off, but will in fact bring them out to the stores?
What does this say about…
…well, not “society”, per se, but the advertising industry’s view of society?
I first observed that Big Left was devaluing the term “Holocaust” – redefining it as “any social change Big Left doesn’t approve of” – over 30 years ago. To be fair that one never really took off – at the time, when people still took “Never Forget” seriously. I’m less sanguine about Big Left’s next attempt to sandbag that word.
Next came “Fascist”. “Anti”-Fa was only the latest among decades of hijacking, during which “Fascism” became equated with “any idea I, a member of Big Left, disagree with on any level” (as opposed to “Socialism combined with nationalism”).
“Hitler” and “Nazi” started taking it in the shorts during the George W. Bush administration, but their devaluation in the not-very-informed minds of a generation is proceeding apace.
Likewise “Racist”, “Misogynist” and pretty much any socially-loaded “-phobia”.
On Big Left, words no longer have meanings. Or, rather, they’re working overtime to detach words for the meanings they’ve always had.
Monday, I linked to an article by Glenn Reynolds about how to deal with the attack-wokies.
To wit – never apologize, bring your friends, and punch back twice as hard.
I’ll come back to that.
One of conservatism’s great mistakes was forsaking the small, independent blogs that dominated (along with, naturally, conservative talk radio) the alternative media scene in the 2000s.
During the heyday of the independent blog, there was a natural, organic network of supporters that would rally – almost always online – when one of the left’s droogs started dishing what was, at the time, almost always some pretty pathetic smack.
Since then, two things have happened:
So – how do the good guys ‘n gals start to organize, to fight the dirty part of the culture war again?
Ten years ago, when it was still good, clean fun, we had it down. Today, the jackals are running rings around the good guys.
It’s two-minute warning time at the state cuture war finals, and we’re down by two touchdowns.
How do the good guys get back in the game with the game that matters – organization, organic institutions that fight these battles, and the will to fight and win?
(While I run an open discussion at all times, lefties are urged to sit this one out).
I mean, when even Bill Maher gets uncomfortable…
Former North Dakota Senator and current useless mouth Heidi Heitkamp calls Gina Carano a “Nazi”. Plain and simple, full stop.
I’ll chalk this up to the (utterly true) idea that any Democrat can parrot any narrative twaddle, no matter how moronic, without fear, knowing that their audience hasn’t the critical thinking skills to call them on it. Or anything.
But I won’t get mad. I’ll just get on the air. I sent this to her Facebook page.
Senator,
I’m Mitch Berg. I grew up in Jamestown. My mother, Jan Berg/Brooks, was a volunteer for any number of your campaigns at the state and federal level.
I fell a bit farther from the tree, politically, of course.
I’d like to make a media request – I’d love to interview y ou on my show (WWTC AM1280) in the Twin Cities regarding your assertion that Gina Carano is a “Nazi”.
I can either do it live on Saturday at 2PM, or record an interview at any time convenient to you.
Hope we can discuss this.
Thanks.
Why, sure – I expect a response! Why wouldn’t I?
…that DFL politicians have is that they can say anything, no matter how illogical, preposterous and risible, anything at all , knowing that not only will the media never call them out on it, but that “their” voters, of all races, classes and education levels, having as they do zero critical thinking skills, will gobble it up.
Councilman Philippe Cunningham, in a “Neighborhood Safety Manual”, repeats the assertion from last year that “Klansmen”, complete with robes and pointy hoods, were roaming North Minneapolis during the riots.
Note to non-MSP residents: Klansmen in robes will occur in the Twin Cities about the same time I go on a hot third date with Anna Kendrick.
Big Left has had to reckon with the idea that, among major states, Florida and its science-driven approach to Covid has been more successful than the states that Big Media cast its lot with last year.
And by “reckon”, I mean “try to undercut, among the ‘try-not-to-think-too-hard’ crowd” that is the “progressive” base.
The Atlantic tries to cover both sides of Florida’s approach. And the story makes a decent shot at fairness of a sort:
If you want to say something declarative that will be proved wrong in a few months, I strongly encourage you to comment on Florida. Liberals projected that the state would suffer disproportionately for its casual approach to the pandemic, but its deaths are in line with the national average. Conservatives hailed the state for its open-air and open-business approach to 2020, but the available evidence doesn’t seem to prove that Florida’s economy is doing exceptionally well compared with those of its southern neighbors.
And, in fact, the story notes that Florida’s record, on Covid fatalities and economics, is relatively middle of the road:
As far as I can tell, though, it didn’t. At 4.8 percent, its unemployment rate is 18th in the country, and not meaningfully different from that of the median states, South Carolina and Virginia, at 5.3 percent. Real-time data tracking state spending and employment show that Florida is doing, again, no better than average. Compared with January 2020, its consumer spending is down 1 percent, which is right in line with the national average. Its small-business revenue is down about 30 percent—again, almost exactly the national average. These statistics may be missing something. But the national narrative of an exceptionally white-hot Florida economy doesn’t match the statistical record of its performance.
I mean, true – as far as it goes.
But that wasn’t the standard that was set for Florida, then or now .
Nearly a year ago, the media looked up from polishing Andrew Cuomo’s toenails only to confidently predict Florida’s policies would lead to a Walking Dead-level die-off that never came.
The Atlantic piece compares Florida with the average, and finds it right there.
But the valid comparison is with New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts – states with the opposite, media-blessed approach.
Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds has a recipe for fighting back against the woke cancel mob: “Never apologize, rally your friends, punch back harder“.
And it’s a good one:
This is what’s going on with the University of San Diego Law School, whose dean shamefully capitulated to an absurd student campaign against a professor who did nothing wrong. In a post on his personal blog, Professor Thomas Smith said that those who dismiss the possibility that the Wuhan coronavirus escaped from a lab there were “swallowing whole a set of Chinese” — and here he used an scatological phrase meaning, in effect, “balderdash.”
He was, of course, referring to the Chinese regime’s denials, which are facing growing scientific skepticism.
Asian students complained — preposterously — that this was somehow a racist slur against Chinese people, rather than a criticism of the brutal Communist regime. Rather than telling them that, as law students, they needed to work on their reading skills, Dean Robert Schapiro issued a craven response, suggesting that there was some basis to the complaints. In an e-mail to the law-school community, he charged Smith with “bias” and with using “offensive” language and announced an investigation.
But here’s where the story changes. Some of the most eminent faculty members at the law school — including such big names as Larry Alexander, Maimon Schwarzschild, Steve Smith, Chris Wonnell and Gail Heriot — fired back at Schapiro. They wrote: “We are concerned that treating these complaints the way you are doing validates student reactions and strained interpretations that are misguided, that reflect a lack of critical thinking and that will chill faculty members’ teaching and scholarship.”
The one problem – it depends on having friends to rally.
Oddly enough, in academia – which has become a “woke” gulag in the past few decades – conservatives may be better placed to fight back. As lopsided as things are in academia, there is at least a tradition of academic freedom to uphold, and groups like FIRE, with money and lawyers, to help do it.
But if you’re at a company that’s become infested with Wokies? Getting pressure to just shut up? Seeing dissenting thought shouted down around the water cooler? Seeing management starting to buckle?
Normals need to start organizing in the real world.
More on this tomorrow.
The Top Ten Things you Never, Ever Hear in Real Life.
10. “Hey, hand me that piano”.
9. “Gosh, the Star Tribune does a great job of balanced coverage on divisive issues”
8. “You know what I could use right now? A plate of “Scrod” from Embers”
7. “The fact that the Vikings, T-Wolves, Wild and usually the Twins disappoint me terribly is a sign that my priorities in life are terribliy out of whack”.
6. “See how much clearer and more fluid writing is when you arbitrarily and mindlessly adhere to the ‘Oxford Comma?'”
5. “The ‘zipper merge’ has made my life better”
4. “I got a call back from Alice Hausman’s office!”s
3. “That Mike McNeil on AM950 is appointment listening for me!”
2. “I always feel healthy and safe riding the Green Line after 6PM!”
And the #1 thing you never, ever hear in real life:
Number 1: “Oh, good. Al Sharpton is in town. Our racial divide and social crisis is going to get better”.
Liquor Lyles, my old band’s former headquarters and the “Dive Bar” that made “dive bars” safe for a generation of Gen-X and Millennial hipsters, is yet another casualty of Covid.
I haven’t been down Hennepin Avenue – north or south of the freeway – in over a year. I can’t imagine there’s much left.
I’ve been thinking about impunity. It’s why:
-Black Lives Matter and Antifa can burn down cities;
-Keith Ellison can orchestrate a lynching;
-Tim Walz can imprison the whole state for an entire year;
-someone in the Biden Administration can send troops to kick down doors
in Syria;-China can humiliate our diplomats in Alaska;
-sex fiends and pedophiles can prey on victims for years;
-illegal immigrants can swarm our border.
When people know they can get away with bad behavior, they engage in
more of it. Swift punishment deters bad behavior. How can we restore
the deterrent necessary to end bad behavior?Joe Doakes
A city without any political opposition, and a political system without any major media scrutiny, all lead to people acting with impunity.
A friend of the blog emails:
Essentially this article blames the pandemic as the reason for higher Minneapolis property taxes next year. The reason is because commercial real estate in the city has been jumping so much over the last 10 years before 2020, home owners have not seen as much increase in property taxes. It’s all relative. The city spend money like a drunken sailor and has been able to pass that on to the growing apartment buildings, restaurants, other commercial ventures that have popped up in the last 10 years. That growth has halted and I predict commercial properties and values will decrease which will shift the burden to homeowners. Get ready homeowners.
2020 has changed all that. Part of the change is the pandemic as businesses realize they can keep workers working at home and reduce the amount of office space needed. But it is also true that businesses will not move into a city that has no police force and allows blocks of businesses to be looted and burned. Target is downsizing. There wasn’t even a thought of the Canadian Pacific merger of having the headquarters in downtown Mpls where it is now. Who thinks Minneapolis will see a Final Four or a Superbowl in the next 10 years? The airheads running the city have created a bigger mess than just the pandemic. I am glad to see my favorite establishment, Brit’s Pub, has re-opened but I am not tempted to go there even in daylight due to the dangerous downtown.
Right now I am watching the discussion on the local Nextdoor. People are noticing a big jump in their assessed home values yet their property taxes are stable and some even falling a bit. The respite in tax increase this year is a big head fake. The 2022 property taxes will increase mightily as these higher home values will shift a big piece of the real estate base from business to homeowners. Maybe not if the city’s spending can be cut. Unfortunately those cuts will likely come from the police force which is already being decimated by resignations and retirements. The city can just recognize reality that they cannot retain and recruit enough badges. My heart is sad for my beloved Minneapolis. The local voters have been mislead by the local media and the chickens have come home to roost. They will appeal to the state of MN for help. God give backbones to the state legislature to say “NO.” Just say “no” as Mpls voters caused this problem, they need to fix it.
Let this be a cautionary tale for other cities. You don’t want this.
The same story can be said for all of Hennepin County. This will affect them as well.
Two observations.
First: when the MInnPost is too far to the middle for a Democrat machine…
Second: This is what a death spiral looks like.
See also: Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Newark…
…well, you get the idea.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails re Kristi Noem’s much-attacked decision on trans athletes in SoDak high school sports:
Conservatives are throwing her under the bus for failing to sign virtue-signaling legislation that would have subjected her state to crippling litigation. The Keyboard Warriors excoriating her in the comments are not footing the bill, and none of their sons or daughters will lose the opportunity to play college sports if she stands up to NCAA.
Her decision is correct: do something smart, or don’t do it at all. If only we could get other governors to think that way.
Joe Doakes
If you’re a conservative, be careful over what you let wedge you. Or, us.
Pick your battles.
…and writing Bonfire of the Vanities, the classic satire on late-eighties class and race relations, I’m fairly sure he’d move on and pick another topic. Our class war (the race war is really a class war) is beyond satire.
Case in point: even though we know the Atlanta shootings last week were not motivated by anti-asian hate, the media is still playing it as an anti-Asian grievance, at best – and at worst, the media’s grievance pimps seem to be actively wishing yet another racial fault line into being.
As such, I have no idea if the City of Minneapolis is trying to find ways to throw the Chauvin trial, or to create grounds for endless appeals, each of them a potential spark for more riots and, of course, more springboards for more political grandstanding.
But if it were…:
Cahill’s decision followed a defense request to delay or move the trial in the wake of last week’s $27 million wrongful death settlement announced between Minneapolis and the family of George Floyd.
Chauvin’s attorneys argued that the massive settlement and the notoriety around it might taint the jury pool.
Cahill, who’s expressed his unhappiness over Minneapolis publicizing the settlement during jury selection for Chauvin’s criminal trial, acknowledged Friday that the high-profile nature of this case would be inescapable no matter if it were postponed or moved.
“I don’t think there’s any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case,“ Cahill told the court, explaining his decision to keep the trial in Minneapolis.
…I’d be at a loss for what they’d be doing differently.
North Dakota appears poised to legalize recreational marijuana – largely to keep the process under legislative control. North Dakota has a pretty liberal initiative and referendum statute – it’s relatively easy to bring legislative issues to a popular vote in NoDak.
I honestly don’t care if North Dakota, or for that Minnesota, legalize ganja. I’ve never used it, and never actually will.
But it would be great if it were possible to pass companion laws making it legal to taze people who sound like stoners. Because they really, really annoy me.
…of constant violence that he encouraged not only with as many words but with as many actions, Portland, Oregon mayor Ted Wheeler says people are “sick of” the constant sturm und drang that has made parts of the city unlivable:
Portland became a hotbed of civil unrest last summer during demonstrations protesting the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. Similar demonstrations in cities across the country were largely peaceful. But in Portland, some of the demonstrations have deteriorated into widespread arson, looting and assaults. ADVERTISEMENT
Rioters in the city, who have called for the defunding of the local police department along with other measures, have on several occasions targeted a federal courthouse, spraying it with graffiti, setting fires and destroying nearby storefronts and other property.
“The people who work here support the voices of racial and social justice and will not be intimidated from doing our jobs by the ugly graffiti or broken windows,” Scott Erik Asphaug, a U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon, said during the press conference, the AP reported. “We do not confuse the voices of the many with the shouts of the few who hope to hold our city hostage by petty crime and violence.”
The first two things that jumped to my mind?
You are currently browsing the archives for the Culture War category.
