Category Archives: The Racket

Choose Your Story

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Santa Clause: “Thanks for coming, Larry.  I understand you’re not happy being an ordinary elf, making toys and wiggling your ears and saying “hee hee” and “ho ho” and stuff like that.  Is it true?”
Larry the Elf: “Oh, no, Santa. I love making toys and singing in the elf choir.”
Santa: “Larry, this is me.  Santa.  I know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.  Straight up, Larry, are you happy in your work?”
Larry: “Okay, yeah, it’s true.  I’m tired of manual labor and I hate singing.” 
Santa: “So what would you like to do, instead?”
Larry: “Well, Hermie got transferred to the dental clinic.”
Santa: “You want to be a dentist?”
Larry: “No, I want to be an accountant.”
Santa: “It’s worse than I thought.  Okay, tell you what.  I’m creating a new position for “Regulatory Compliance Officer.”  It’s a big responsibility but I’m sure you can handle it.  Want to give it a try?”
Larry: “Would I?  Oh, thank you, Santa, it’s Christmas come early for me.  I won’t let you down.” 


Three weeks later . . . 
Larry: “Thanks for seeing me, Santa.  I have a few things that need your decision.”
Santa: “Sure thing, Larry, fire away.”
Larry: “First off, I have letters from Norway, Greenland, Russia, and United States, all claiming jurisdiction over the North Pole and asserting we owe delinquent taxes.  How should I respond?”
Santa: “Tell them to pound snow.”
Larry: “Our no-fault insurer wants to know if you use your sleigh in business and how many miles per year.
Santa: “Refer them to Clement Moore, he documents all my travel arrangements.”
Larry: “The INS denied your application for a one-night visit.  Without a visa, we’ll have to cancel Christmas in America.  What are you going to do?”
Santa: “I aim to misbehave.” 
Larry: “Santa, I’ve got another hour’s worth of issues from liability waivers for walking on slippery roofs, to appeals from naughty children who didn’t get toys, to those animal-rights activists with the “Free Rudolph” signs. But I’m getting the impression that you don’t care about complying with regulations.  So what’s the point of my job?”
Santa: “You see, Larry . . . .”
***
Choose your own story.  What’s Santa’s reply?
Joe Doakes

The Minnesota Medical Association Jumps The…

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…I was going to say “shark”, but it’s really just a 50-something ninny with ELCA Hair and a shark fin taped to their collar who identifies as a shark.

Minnesotans’ main concerns about healthcare – about which the MMA is putatively supposed to be concerned, itself – are affordability and access.

Naturally, they’ve made gun confiscation among their top priorities for the 2020 Legislature:

In the recent report outlining priorities for 2020, Gun Control is listed as number 2, above any policy that would drive down the cost of healthcare or increase access to patients.
The priorities outlined by MMA include:

2.    Prevent firearm injury and death 
a.    Expand criminal background checks to all firearm transfers and sales
b.    Enact a “red flag” law to allow law enforcement to protect those who may be a danger to themselves or others
c.    Authorize the use of firearm ownership data for public health research or epidemiologic investigation

Naturally, none of their proposals have anything to do with health.  

It’s a further step down the path toward “progressivizing” all institutions.  

The Bureaucrat’s Burden

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Without government, who would “inspect” the retro-pinup girls before they visit vets at the VA?

Pin Ups for Vets received an email from the San Diego Veterans Hospital on Monday banning the calendar and telling them the outfits of their volunteers must be scrutinized in advance. Additionally, the costumed volunteers will not be allowed to hand out their signature calendar.
“It’s insulting that our outfits have to be preapproved,” Gina Elise told the Washington Examiner. “It feels like it’s discriminatory behavior. Is that happening with every single visitor that comes in the hospital?”

Feeling proud, yet?

Eurasia Has Never Been At War With Eastasia, Winston

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2015: “There is no deep state, paranoid conservative”.

2019: “Of course, there’s a deep state. And it’s a wonderful thing”.

Of course, it’s only Michelle Cottle, who is a one-woman argument in favor of a gender pay gap.

Dirty Tricks

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hillary’s campaign denied it started the birther rumors to undermine Obama when she was running for the nomination.  Skeptics wondered who benefited more than she?
Arne Carlson denied he leaked the Jon Grunseth pool party story, after Carlson lost the Republican primary nomination to Grunseth. Skeptics wondered who benefited more than he?
Joe Biden is slipping in the polls , in part because the media can’t stop talking about Trump and Ukraine and Biden’s son. What are the odds the Deep State informant whistleblower who leaked the story is actually an Elizabeth Warren plant? Who benefits more than she?
Joe doakes

I have more than a hunch that all roads in the Deep State lead to some Democrat twerp or another.

Documents Ex Machina

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Not to cast aspersions, since the only “evidence” I have is an uncanny coincidence.

But it seems almost uncanny, the way mouth-breathing “threats” “against” Rep. Ilhan Omar tend to pop up into the news when disorderly elements of the media start poking where they aren’t supposed to poke, into news of Rep. Omar’s marriage, philandering, campaign finance issues and tax problems.

Last week, as bits and pieces of the local DFL PR firm we call our “media” started to get shamed into, y’know, covering the news, and the depravity of DFL rank and file started edging into i headlines, , that this “death threat” suddenly ate up a news cycle or two:

Now, we don’t know who wrote this, and it’s for certain we’ll never find out due to local media’s efforts (although I’d like to know where William Davis was last week).

But of course, this takes us back to February, 2018 – on the hard-fought caucus night where Omar and the West Bank “progressive” machine needed to gin up turnout to beat out some strong “moderate” DFLers, this was “slipped under the doors” of some Cedar Riverside apartments by “Trump Supporters” who, notwithstanding the cameras and scads of Somali witnesses all over the place, seemed to disappear, zephyr-like, without a trace all night long:

The local party “community organizer” promised an investigation, which went as far and as fast as all ward heelers’ “investigations” always do.

So have at it, hive mind. Similarities? “Tells?”

Let’s DanRather ’em.

Spree

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

John Stossel has a column up called “Free Stuff,” where he adds up the cost of Democrat presidential candidates’promises. They run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and he points out that the nation could ever afford to tax everybody enough to pay for it.
Except that’s not the plan. Democrats like AOC honestly believe money is obsolete. The government doesn’t have to print paper bills, ship them to warehouses, stuff them into ATMs and distribute them to the poor. Instead, government simply makes an electronic entry in the computer, which is electronically loaded to your EBT card, or electronically credited to your bank account, and suddenly, everyone has money.
There’s no need to balance a budget, it’s all electrons and electrons are free.
It’s like having a credit card with no limit and they never send you the bill.Why wouldn’t you spend as much as you could, buying everything you can imagine? What’s the downside?
Joe Doakes

When Margaret Thatcher said that the problem with progressivism is that you always run out of other peoples’ money, the unspoken corollary was that they never believe they’ll run out of other peoples money…

The Divine Right Of Ward Heelers

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I’m picturing DFL Representative John Lesch – he of the Capone suits and the junior-high demeanor – apparently believes that “legislative privilege” immunizes one from being a ghastly little entitled jagoff.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals, to my boundless amazement, disagrees:

State Rep. John Lesch is not protected by “legislative immunity” in a defamation case brought against him by St. Paul city attorney Lyndsey Olson, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday.
The decision allows Olson’s case to proceed.
Olson sued Lesch last year after he sent a letter to incoming St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter criticizing her work history and judgment, saying she has a “track record of integrity questions and management problems.”

If you’re a commoner and you make statement of fact about someone that are false, that can damage their reputation and living, and are done with malicious disregard for fact, it’s actionable.

Lesch apparnetly believes that being an elected DFLer in a one-party city confers divine right.

To be fair, there’s not much about any urban DFLers experience that would teach ’em otherwise, under normal circumstances.

So maybe, just maybe, Lesch’s arrogance and stupidity went outside the norm?

Lesch, a Democrat who represents part of St. Paul, has sought to dismiss the suit, arguing in part that he has legislative immunity. He will file a petition in the next month with the Minnesota Supreme Court, his attorney Marshall Tanick said.
“The Appellate Court construed the legislative immunity of legislators extremely narrowly, and we think that it’s more proper to take a broader view of what legislators do,” Tanick said.
He said he hopes the Supreme Court decides to take up the case to provide “clarification and guidance” on legislative immunity.


If the SCOM rules that “legislative immunity” protects any (DFL) pol’s statement, anywhere, for any reason, no matter what the context, then it is time for someone to take a can of Raid to the whole enterprise.

The Strib Is Ilhan Omar’s PR Flack

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This hit twitter yesterday; Ilhan Omar’s spin doctor, Ben Goldfarb, caught in the emailed act of trying to fix media and pundit coverage of the perennially-scabrous Ilhan Omar:

“Someone should probably reach out to talk off the record and shut it down with him as we do with the Strib“.

Not that this is a mystery to anyone, but it’s still a little jarring to see it in black and white from one of the co-conspirators.

The downside, of course – if the DFL does in fact primary Omar, and manages to replace her (doubtful), they’ll only come up with someone worse.

“Intelligence”

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

American intelligence agencies confidently assured us that Saddam Hussein was acquiring weapons of mass destruction to attack the United States. That was false.  A Republican Presidency was hobbled by claims that “Bush lied, people died.”
American intelligence agencies confidently assured us that Candidate Trump was working with Russia to steal the election from Hillary.  That was false.  A Republican Presidency has been hobbled by an investigation into collusion.
These are not trivial errors.  Either American intelligence agencies are so incompetent we shouldn’t believe a word they say; or they’re so thoroughly politicized we shouldn’t believe a word they say.  Both possibilities should be deeply troubling to every American.  We need a deep, searching, thorough investigation to determine which one it is.
Joe Doakes

It’s not just intelligence, either. How can you have a self-governing society when you don’t trust the institutions that enforce the laws, adjudicate disputes, or – in the case of the media – ostensibly hold government accountable?

You really can’t.

And I think that’s intentional.

The Fix – State Of Minnesota Edition

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The twitter account of the “non-partisan” State Board of Public Defense retweeted Senator Latz’s twitter-heckling of the Senate’s Public Safety omnibus bill yesterday:

By the way – did you know Sen. Latz went to Harvard? Just ask him. He’ll tell you.

Makes me wonder what caliber of defense a PD would give a defendant with a “Reagan/Bush 1984” t-shirt in their booking photo…

Only In A Red State

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Frothy lefty bureaucrat suspended for trying to “shame” a gun owner/activist.

If this were in a Blue state, you’d expect that to be, perhaps, the beginning of a piece of quixotic litigation by wronged conservatives.

But it’s a Red state. Justice actually happened:

The executive director of the Alaska human rights [what else? – Ed] commission has been suspended for 15 working days without pay for complaining on social media about a “Black Rifles Matter” sticker she believed to be racist on a vehicle in the commission’s Anchorage parking lot.
Commission members voted 5-2 Friday to suspend Marti Buscaglia, effective Monday.

It’s worth noting that one of the dissenters thought the punishment was too lenient.

One thing you have to get down to paragraph five to find out – Buscaglia used her departments’ Facebook page for her “shaming”.

Buscaglia, a former newspaper publisher in Alaska and Minnesota, declined comment in an email to The Associated Press.
Last month, Buscaglia saw the sticker on Linegar’s vehicle and posted a photo of it on the commission’s Facebook page asking, “In what world is this OK?”
Linegar, who has a plumbing and heating business, has said the truck was his and that his company was doing repairs at the building that day. He has said that he understood the stickers to be about gun safety and “Second Amendment awareness.”
In his statement to the AP, Linegar said Buscaglia should never have made those comments on social media. “If she wanted to simply have a conversation with me, then a note to that effect could have been left on my windshield. Instead, she saw fit to write a different type of note, put my truck on Facebook on the State page …,” he said.

Of course, this is in a hard red state.

In Connecticut, California, or some parts of Minnesota, Linegar would have a SWAT team – figurative or literal – breaking down his door, figuratively or literally.

The Nice Thing About Being A Democrat…

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…is that you can be a corrosive, giggly bigot, and nobody will ever, ever call you on it.

I add the emphasis:

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle implied without evidence Tuesday that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) has something to hide and the president is blackmailing him over it.
Graham has become one of the President Donald Trump’s staunchest allies in the Senate, although he has criticized him for some key decisions, such as the military pullout from Syria. Ruhle seemed to imply there’s more to their relationship than politics, however, during a discussion about Graham with former Rep. David Jolly and professor Eddie Glaude.
“Before Don got elected, Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a racist, xenophobic bigot. Those are Lindsey Graham’s words,” Jolly said. “I doubt Lindsey Graham could tell you Donald Trump has had a change of heart in the last 24 months, I bet the change of heart has been with Lindsey Graham, not the president.”
“Or it could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham,” Ruhle replied. “We’re gonna have to leave it there.”
The smirk Ruhle produced when she spoke suggests she was referring to rumors about Graham’s sexuality, which some Democrats have been trumpeting anew recently. Jon Cooper, chairman of the Democratic Coalition super PAC, explicitly accused Graham on Saturday of letting himself be blackmailed for “some pretty serious kink.”

Did I say “Nice thing?”

I meant “horrible, Orwellian, evil” thing.

An Inconvenient Truth

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The welfare state – in the US, the state that was put in place by Lyndon B Johnson’s “Great Society” – isn’t so much about “solving poverty” as it is about “making poverty a permanently sustainable state that can be exploited for political gain”.

We can argue the specifics, and maybe even the conclusion.

But let’s say that was not the case; if the Democrats weren’t trying to build a permanent underclass beholden to them with the welfare state, how would you better design such a thing as one would with the Great Society?

Because that’s how it worked.   Poverty in the US was in free fall until the nation “declared war” on it.:

 

Bombs

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Over the past two years, there’s been an epidemic of violence perpetrated by people on the left against Republicans, conservatives, Trump supporters, and anyone else the left considers untermensch.  

Some liberals, to be fair, decry the violence – but not only do you have many high-profile liberals calling for it, and calling for more, but many more quibble that it actually happens, or that it’s really as bad as the victims say it is.

But now we come to hear that both prog plutocrat financier George Soros, Barack Obama and the Clintons have received some form of explosive device or another.

Right before the election.

Simply amazing, isn’t it?

If someone on the right is behind this, then they need to be arrested and prosecuted until their ears bleed.

But it does seem waaaaaaaaaaaaay too convenient, doesn’t it?

The Racket Strikes Back

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A friend of the blog writes:

It used to be people would go out for a night of fun and one person would have to be the designated driver. A majority didn’t even think to use cabs and public transit would often not run regularly enough at bar close.

Now that we have Uber and Lyft, I have heard many, many stories of people using those services when going out. I know some people who no longer drive under the influence because of the affordability of Uber.

So, of course, when people get real options that are reliable and affordable, those in the government who think their jobs are as social engineers have a problem.

Of interest locally, I found this link through a Tweet that declared Minneapolis/St Paul should consider this next. Why?

They can try to limit all they want, but there will still be people in cars and ride sharing will still happen. For example, the other day, I was approached by a man on the street who was trying to start his own ride share business, offering lower rates than Uber by about $2. I also have the number of a taxi driver who moonlights as a personal driver for those of us with his business card. He pretty much places himself on call for us.

So, yes, there will be options, which makes it even more aggravating that city governments get involved in private business that actually works for the people.

In a system built on rent-seeking, people will seek rent.

And for the government permission racket to survive, it’s gotta deliver the rent.

Orwell Was A Pollyanna

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Ben Shapiro challenged prog flavor of the month Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez to a debate – something she’s never had in her “political career”.

Now, there’s no requirement that a pol debate anyone, ever – even their opponents for office, much less pundits.   Of course, it can be used against you – not that it matters in a one-party town like Ocasio-Cortez’ district.

And there are so many ways to decline a debate request like this:

  • “Sorry – I’m getting ready for a general election (coronation?), and I’m too busy”.
  • “Debating you will be of no consequence to serving (koff koff) my constituents and my district.  Why would either of us waste our time?”
  • “I’ve got drapes to measure that evening”
  • “I gotta wash my hair”.
  • Or the old reliable “<silence>”.

That’s not what Ocasio-Cortez did, though:

Asking for a debate is “like catcalling” – sexist, intrusive, unwanted, arrogant.

A response that is, itself, sexist and arrogant, and a sign of a mind that can think on no other plane than the politics of identity and outrage.

Congratuations, New York.  You got another winner here.  (Not that Minnesota has anything to brag about, since the equally risible Alondra Cano  Alondra Cano, Ray Dehn and Keith Ellison remain in office).

SIDE NOTE:   Remember when the same people who are raving about Ocasio-Cortez today were calling Sarah Palin  an ignorant dumbass?

This is the sound of “the bar” in freefall.

Do You Remember

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Remember when the media was crawling over every square foot of wind-ravaged Puerto Rican soil looking for examples of Trump administration incompetence and corruption, making a hero out of San Juan’s idiot Democrat mayor in the process, if only briefly?

Where is the media now?

A mayor and two former government officials in Puerto Rico face public corruption charges in separate cases that involve a total of $8 million in federal and local funds, authorities said Thursday. The suspects are the mayor of the southwest town of Sabana Grande and the former directors of finance for the northern town of Toa Baja, which has struggled to pay its employees amid an 11-year recession.

U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez told reporters that the former officials from Toa Baja are accused of using nearly $5 million worth of federal funds to pay the town’s public employees and municipal contractors.

“Not only is that illegal, it’s immoral,” she said.

Puerto Rico – aka “A Warm Minneapolis” – would be considered a “Failed State” if it weren’t a US territory.

But unless the “news” can “denormalize” Trump, they really don’t care.

This Is Today’s DFL

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Ilhan Omar – DFL endorsed candidate for Congress in the 5th CD – is a raving anti-semite.

State representative Ilhan Omar has yet to complete her first term in the Minnesota legislature, where she has accomplished approximately nothing of substance, though she has now secured the DFL endorsement to succeed Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison in Congress. In the brief Weekly Standard article “The anti-Israel seat,” I conclude with observations related to Omar’s frank hatred of Israel. She doesn’t sugarcoat it. She calls Israel an “apartheid regime.”

That is a defamatory falsehood with a shabby provenance. In Omar’s case, it is something more than an impulsive comment in a recent tweet. It represents her considered judgment. One can see it at work in her remarks on the floor of the Minnesota House in opposition to a bill (HF 400) opposing the boycott of Israel promoted by so-called BDS groups harking back to the “Zionism is racism” lie of the 1970’s.

And it’s fascinating how local media treats Omar’s anti-semitiem; exactly the same way as they treated her dubious family history.

It makes sense; their editors and producers know they’ll never get another invite to the Oceannarie if they do.