Portland cop (who happens to be black) – the leftist protest mob, especially those organizing them, are the actual racists:

You’re be hard-pressed to show that the “protesters” rioting in Minneapolis weren’t the same pack of over-schooled, under-educated, entitled upper-middle-class honkies.

More later today.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Governor Walz extended the Peacetime Emergency for another thirty days by Executive Order 20-78.  This extension ends August 12, 2020, after which it can be renewed again.

The justification for the extension is the increasing number of Covid cases in Minnesota. “On May 12, 2020, Minnesota had over 12,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with over 1,700 hospitalizations and over 600 fatalities. Minnesota has now had over 42,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with over 4,300 hospitalizations and over 1,500 fatalities.”

The Governor notes his authority ends if both houses of the Legislature over-ride it and he’s called a Second Special Session for them to consider it, but if they don’t over-ride him, then he’ll have the power to continue extending indefinitely, 30 days at a time.  

The Order says his acts have been science-based but does not mention that the total number of fatalities (1,500) is a tiny fraction of the projected number under the most strict scenario, the one we’re following (50,000).  There is no explanation why the science failed so badly, or why neighboring states with no restrictions have results equal to or better than Minnesota’s results.

The Order notes the virus is spreading in Minnesota and other states, but does not note the difference between “cases” and “serious cases” or “fatalities. Using the Governor’s figures, 90% of the “cases” are asymptomatic or have symptoms so trivial they didn’t require medical attention, much less ICU beds, ventilators or an $8 million refrigerated warehouse to store the corpses just North of the Capitol (the former Bix Foods building, which cost $7 to purchase but it was available for purchase because the state gave them a grant to move to Little Canada). 

The Order does not state victory conditions or cite scientific authority for any of the current or future restrictions.  Expect a state-wide mask order soon. 

Joe Doakes

It’s not an emergency. It’s an opportunity.

While Marquette University has always leaned as far left as any other American university, one of its graduates – my major advisor, Dr. James Blake – got his PhD in English from Marquette.

And Dr. Blake – who used to describe himself as so conservative he was a “monarchist” – was the first person to tell me that I wasn’t really a Democrat, and Wood in fact probably fit in best as a conservative.

But from the sounds of things, I doubt that Dr. Blake would get admitted these days.

…that Kim Norton, mayor of Rochester, is simultaneously both the most authoritarian person in Minnesota politics and the most groaningly, er, ill-informed, incurious and tone-deaf.

But I will say…

..that if you think I’m inferring that message between the lines, I’m not going to argue with you all that hard.

Matt Yglesias, fighting in his own way for freedom (for him, but probably others as well), has found himself out-intersectioned:

Part of me thinks that if we just step back for a bit, the American left will just destroy itself and leave the rest of us alone.

I”m too optimistic, I know, especially on that last clause.

The state is going after Senator, and Doctor, Scott Jensen, for…

…well, counterrevolutionary activity, apparently:

Minnesota senator and medical physician Dr. Scott Jensen says he is under investigation by the Minnesota State Board of Medical Practice for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19.

Jensen revealed the investigation in a Facebook video on Sunday, saying the medical board is focusing on “reckless advice” he had given by comparing COVID-19 with the flu, as well as comments he made regarding CDC guidelines for the completion of death certificates in an interview with Fargo news broadcaster Chris Berg in April – which went viral.

“When I got this news, I was ticked,” Jensen, who is rumored to be considering a run for Minnesota governor as a Republican, said in the video, which has now been viewed one million times.

“If this could happen to me because of my views, it could happen to b ‘=, anybody,” he added.

Let’s sure we’ve got this straight;  the state’s bureaucracy is actively moving to squelch a prominent dissenter to Governor Walz’s incompetent, logrolling response to the pandemic.  

What’s the most dangerous phrase in the world?

1980: “I’m from the governent and I”m here to help”

2020: “I’m an ‘ally’ and I’m here to help. “

A friend of the blog emails:

Privileged Liberal White People: we’re going to help those poor communities of black people. We’ll build a train so they can get around with a car!

Black people: But, we’d like to get around by car just like you.

PLWP: We’re going to help those poor black people by raising the minimum wage!

BP: But we’d like to have a job to support our families. This will just get rid of our jobs.

PLWP: We’re going to help those poor black people by building high density housing in their neighborhood. Let’s tear down the affordable single family housing stock to help them!

BP: But we’d like to own a house, just like you.

PLWP: We’re going to help those poor black people by taking away on street parking around their apartment buildings to build bike lanes!

BP: But we’d like to park by where we live just like you, especially in the winter. We aren’t biking.

PLWP: We want to help black people by not calling the cops when thugs take over their neighborhood. And we’ll tell the whole world!

BP: Seriously, stop helping us.
________________
Biggest problem in my neighborhood, other than the issues above, most of my neighbors don’t bother voting in local elections.

Semi-related: It’s interesting, to me, to note that John Lesch’s district has the lowest voter turnout numbers in the state.

To the original point: Urban Progessive Privilege means never having had to confront the notion that your ideals are only “ideal” for people in your own class.

In college poli-sci classes, you learn there are two schools of thought about what humans would be like in the absence of government.

Some think humans are Basically Good and government corrupts us, so if we could get rid of government, everything would be wonderful.

Others think humans are Basically Rotten and only government protects us from ourselves. If we got rid of government, our lives would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Recent events don’t answer the question. Did people riot because government pulled back and let them, or because government was so corrupt they had to?
Ask yourself this: if we get rid of the police, and the Basically Rotten people are correct, what will take the place of the police? Individual citizens maintaining Eternal Vigilance, dispensing Street Justice? Are we certain that’s a better solution than a municipal police force? Are we willing to bet our lives on it?

Joe Doakes

The “better solution” our social justice-y betters are splaining to us is Camden – whose new, woke, exquisitely expensive law enforcement organization has improved it from the worst murder rate of any city of any size in the United States to tied with #6 (Kansas City), were it over 200,000 people, which it’s not; it may be the most dangerous small city in the US.

…when betting on the depravity of the modern American Left.

Here we go again.  Liberals deploying statistics as weapons without understanding how to operate them. 
First chart: White household income is twice Blacks’.  Yes, but a “household” is a family unit.  A two-parent family household with both parents working $15 an hour jobs makes $60,000.  If the family splits up or never marries, the same parents working the same jobs are  reported as only $30,000 per household.  Whites are twice as likely to get married and stay married as Blacks so their household numbers reflect combined totals instead of single-parent totals. This is a cultural choice, not systemic racism.
First chart notes that Blacks get paid less than Whites.  Yes, because Blacks work lower skilled jobs than Whites, because of the educational “achievement gap” which has stubbornly persisted for decades despite all efforts to change it. Individual Achievement Plans, Affirmative Action, school funding, court monitors, forced bussing . . . nothing changes the fact that Black kids do less well academically than White or Asian kids.  Which might be because Black kids are simply not as smart, as IQ researchers consistently find, or because Black culture deplores “acting White” but protects disruptive Black students who are passed along to avoid trouble.  This is not systemic racism against Blacks. 
Second chart – Minnesotans in poverty – is the result of broken households and also family size.  Black women tend to have more children than White.  More people in a single-income household = closer to poverty.  This is a consequence of cultural choices (not to marry and stay married, to have more children), not systemic racism against Blacks.
Third chart: Black unemployment is 40%.  Point the finger directly at Governor Walz for that one.  He shut down “non-essential” businesses which tended to employ more Blacks.  But as stupid as the Stay Home order was, it wasn’t intentional racism, it was a panic response to the Covid pandemic. But even before the shut-down, Black unemployment was still twice that of Whites.  
That’s not because of intentional racial discrimination, it’s because Minnesota’s economy is largely white-collar which requires educated workers (see education gap, above) plus we’ve experienced a huge influx of low-skilled Black immigrants.  There are only so many taxi driver jobs available; the rest sit idle.  These are functions of economics and immigration, not systemic racism.
Final chart: Blacks are more likely to die of Covid than Whites.  Nobody knows why that’s so.  It’s an interesting fact but it cannot be the result of systemic racism – the virus hasn’t been around long enough for Whites to develop plans and methods of discriminating against Blacks based on the virus.  Maybe it’s genetic?  
We are endlessly lectured by Liberals that all cultures are equally valid, and therefore Whites have no moral grounds to impose our culture on other people.  Fine, but that also means we have no duty to ensure their cultural choices result in the same achievement outcomes as ours.  Stay in school, get a job, wait to have kids until you’re married: these are the keys to academic and economic success in America, regardless of your race.  But the keys only work if you’re willing to use them.  Otherwise, you remain locked out of prosperity and it’s nobody’s fault but your own.  
Joe Doakes

For some, blame is easier than fixing the problem. And we have an entire political party devoted to harnessing that fact.

The “warlord” of the Seattle Peoples Autonomous Zone hands out AR15s to fellow “revolutionaries”:

Not a background check among ’em.

The gun groups seem to be silent on this particular example of gun proliferation.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”
— “Animal Farm”, George Orwell

So let me get this straight:

Lt. Governor Flanagan, who chairs the Capitol Architecture Committee, who is a “progressive” (koff koff) who has made her displeasure with the Capitol mall’s statue of Christopher Columbus amply known in the past, and whose entire place in the Walz administration is to placate the MN DFL’s ever more extreme left wing (who rejected Walz for endorsement at the 2018 convention, and certainly could do it again in 2022 if he doesn’t kiss up to the Left sincerely and often enough), may well have been involved in interfering with the response by the State Patrol who, despite six hours’ warning (according to Channel 5’s Tom Hauser) got the the Capitol juuuust too late to do anything about the illegal destruction of state property, which amounted to a de facto nudge and wink by the Walz Administration to people (who were, we’re told, “Frustrated” by their inability to get the statue removed, even though there was no record of any petition to remove the statue on record)…

…who were, in the most supreme of ironies, protesting government “overreach and unaccountability” in the Floyd case?

You don’t have to be a genius to see that there really are two Minnesotas, when it comes to the law; those who are in the favor of those in power, and those who aren’t. The state government deploys its full weight and might to go after bars in rural areas with no Covid problem, but allows Lake Street and University Avenue to burn (mostly at the hands of the sort of white leftists whom the administration can’t afford to offend or, really, discomfort in any way); some groups, favored by the DFL establishment, can block freeways with impunity while others, not so favored, get penned into ‘free speech zones’ at best.

This is “progressive” government.

*Totally* unrelated, honest – you need to watch this classic animated version of “Animal Farm” before the cancel culture gets it removed and disappeared:

22 year old Dylan Robinson was arrested earlier this week in Breckenridge, Colorado, on suspicion of torching the Third Precinct.

Well, with a name like “Dylan”, he’s certainly not immigrant or black.

But what about “White Supremacist”? Is he one of the crowd that the Governor and both Mayors blamed for all the violence and destructrion, as well as all that leftist graffiti all over town?

Let’s check and see:

Nope. While you can’t judge a book by its cover, I’ll bet a shiny new quarter he’s either with, or likes to pretend he’s with, “Anti”-Fa.

I bet another shiny new quarter that the Henco Attorney’s case gets quietly gundecked, and Robinson ends up skating, since – another quarter here – he’ll be connected with some Democrat poobah or another.

Any takers?

SCENE: Debate hall at the University of Minnesota. Mitch BERG is getting ready for a debate with Stacey HINTON. HINTON – a white woman from Edina – is president of the group “Keep All Racists Equally Nonplussed”, a social justice group without portfolio. The moderator takes the stage, as a small audience rustles in its seats.

MODERATOR: Mr. Berg, Ms. Hinton, you know the rules (both nod ). Let’s get started. What do you advocate doing about the Covid virus.

BERG: Look, I think the only things that have worked are first, protecting the vulnerable – certainly more effectively than we do here in Minnesota – then isolate the infected, and re-open the economy for everyone else.

MODERATOR: Ms. Hinton?

HINTON: You’re white.

BERG: Well, yeah, I am.

HINTON: So that’s your privilege talking.

BERG: What does “privilege” have to do with observing that the places with the best combination of public health and medical performance all did exactly that?

HINTON: Check your privilege.

MODERATOR: OK. On to the next topic. Whither Minneapolis? We’ll start with you, Ms. Hinton.

HINTON: The rioting was a bunch of white boys running around vandalizing neighborhoods of color.

BERG: Well, there certainly were “white boys” and girls doing the rioting. The implied message is “white supremacist” boys and girls. If so, they were pretty ingenious “white supremacists”, coating entire neighborhoods with graffiti associated with the left.

HINTON: Spoken like a white boy.

BERG: What does that even mean?

MODERATOR: Let’s move along. What do we do about reforming law enforcement? Mr. Berg.

BERG: Get serious about reforming qualified immunity. It is used to excuse a lot of horrific abuses, not just by the police, but by every other variety of public employee. It basically turns public employees into a higher legal caste. This doesn’t bode well for self-government.

HINTON: Something a white guy would say.

BERG: Ma’am? Do you have any thing to add other than my ethnic background?

HINTON: Yes.

BERG: Let’s hear it.

HINTON: It’s true of all white guys.

MODERATOR: Let’s move along. Ms. Hinton – what do we need to do about race relations in this country?

HINTON: White people need to listen to black peoples’ stories, and check their privilege.

BERG: Huh. All due respect, ma’am, but that’s the kind of meaningless word salad that people like you – “progressives” who are, if I may say so, a lot whiter than I am use to try to diffuse their own white liberal guilt.

HINTON: Again, that’s your privilege talking, white boy.

BERG: To the extent I have “privilege”, it’s because I was born in a functional two-parent household, with parents who stayed together until I was an adult, taught me a work ethic, and made sure I stayed in high school. And that kind of privilege is not an exclusive club – in fact, like freedom, the more of this “privilege” society has, the more there is to go around.

But let’s cut the crap. The concept of “white privilege” was, from its origins, a way for wealthy white progressive academics to try to expiate their guilt about the privileges their class gave them. To insulate themselves from gnawing class guilt while preserving that holier-than-thou feeling that white progressivism feeds on, they created and adopted the preposterous concept that being white meant a hot tar roofer from Arkansas has “privileges” that Oprah and Jay-Z don’t, while giving the likes of Mark Dayton and Mark Zuckerberg a moral pass, like indulgences sold by “church” that never forgives and offers no salvation.

MODERATOR: Ms. Hinton?

HINTON: Whitey white white white white white. White white white.

MODERATOR: Thank you all for coming out to today’s debate!

SCENE: Mitch BERG is looking for almond flour at a Cub Foods, when Cat SCAT, designated “fact checker” at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “”MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, and the office manager at a small phrenology practice, glomphs up from behind.

SCAT: Hah hah, Merg! People are removing racist statues from the Capitol grounds! That’s gotta make all you fat angry old white men wet your pants with rage!

BERG: (Beholding the red-faced, utterly Caucusoid and, shall we say “zaftig” SCAT, and silently contemplating and then thinking better of commenting). Yeah, it’s the mob showing the rest of the world that they don’t have to play by the rules.

SCAT: It’s no different than the fall of the Berlin Wall!

BERG: The…Berlin…Wall?

SCAT: Haha! Yes! Take that!

BERG: OK, let’s compare and contrast.

Columbus: Problematic but incidental figure, who wasn’t even the first European to come to North America – that was the Norwegians, five hundred years earlier – and who has had no affect other than symbolism on anyone in centuries, the un-personing of whom from history should be a cause for a critical discussion.

With me so far?

SCAT: Yeah! Evil white man!

BERG: Riiight. OK – the Berlin Wall: Not just a symbol of the contemporary division of Germany and the current subjugation of tens of millions of people to the bloodiest regime in history, but an actual current militarized barrier along which seventeen people had been murdered in the decade, and three in the year, before it was destroyed. The demolition of which was subject discussed thoroughly but quickly in the immediate aftermath of people on both sides of the wall deciding to jettison the Communism that had reigned in the East (the government that many of the statue-yankers are shilling for, interestingly enough), and, other than the massive “vandalism” of the wall after the Bornholmerstraße incident and the collapse of the DDR (which was one of the great images of my lifetime, but remarkably ineffective, leaving as it did a, well, wall through the middle of Berlin), was dealt via due process leading to its orderly and deliberate demolition, with remarkable worldwide unanimity, mourned by nobody that didn’t have hands still dripping with fresh blood.
Other than that? Same/same!

SCAT: So what about the alt-right taking over those six blocks in Seattle, and turning it into a slave plantation?

BERG: It’s “Anti”-Fa, and they turned it into an “Occupy” camp, only mixing in extortion with the rape and filth, and you’re changing the subject as well as lying about the substance of both subjects…

(But SCAT has already wandered away)

And SCENE

This is one for my friends to the left of center.

I don’t care much for Christopher Columbus, one way or the other. He wasn’t even the first European to reach North America – that was Leif Ericsson, 500 years earlier. You can make a case that Columbus was an awful person, and I might even agree.

But are you sure you want to make the case that groups of people should be able to destroy public (or for that matter private) property, as long as they feel it’s really really right? That some causes are just more important than the slow, dirty work of seeking consensus and working via a process?

Especially done with the implied threat of violence against anyone who might have tried to stand in the way?

Before you answer, remember: six weeks ago many of you were up in, for lack of a better term, arms over multiracial groups of protesters, some of them openly carrying firearms, demonstrating peacefully at the Michigan capitol and outside the Minnesota governors’ mansion. The demonstrators broke no laws [1], and there was certainly no violence – and yet many of you acted like that was a threat to democracy.

But actual law-breaking and vandalism, and a very clear implication of potential violence (and in many cases, it goes well beyond implication), is OK – as long as its’ the correct cause?

Because there’s a statue of Floyd Olson on the Capitol grounds. He was a socialist demigogue who governed Minnesota long ago, and there’s no rational way to deny that his policies have caused far more damage than good, especially to disadvantaged communities in this state. Olson represents the worst traits of this state – jamming down equality of outcomes as one-size-fits-all decree, with dire effects on the poor. Did he do as much harm as Columbus? No, but we’re talking principle, here, so let’s not quibble about degrees of evil.

It’s high time someone – me and my friends who feel strongly about the damage Olson and his cronies did to this state – did something about that goddess-forsaken statue. And if the process doesn’t work fast enough (and in a state dominated by the Urban Progressive Privilege that Olson’s policies cemented in place as the dominant class, it won’t), then we’ll have to “expedite” things ourselves.

Because if you’re not part of (our) solution, you’re part of the problem (as we define it).

So – are you SURE you want to set this as a precedent?

[1] Open carry is legal in the Michigan capitol, and let’s not even pretend any of you know the actual statute re “brandishing”, so I’ll not allow the conversation to get side-tracked over that subject.

This was the House Democratic leadership, doing their (nothing but) symbolic photo-op before the George Floyd funeral:

They’re wearing “Kente” cloths – apparently Ghanaian in this case, but there are similar adornments all through Africa. They have cultural significance.

And to Pelosi and her little claque, they are nothing but costumes.

Some actual Africans were not amused at the virtue-accessorizing:

But remember – don’t go eating burritos, honky.

Urban Progressive Privilege: when making the right progressive-y noises is enough, at least within your social circle.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking out of the local Korean joint with a container of Galbi. As he’s committing to going out the door, MyLyssa SILBERMAN, reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats.

SILBERMAN: Mister Berg.

BERG: Er, hi, Ms. Silberman. What’s new?

SILBERMAN: Not much time for small talk. I’m doing a story about cancel culture.

BERG: You mean, about how the titans of the progressive media, the Guardian, have their roots in laissez faire policies regarding slavery and the future of the American union during the civil war?

SILBERMAN: No, no. I’m looking for examples in the world of politics.

BERG: You mean like the town in Alabama whose entire base of wealth was built on the products of slavery, but posits itself as a bastion of “progressive” thought today.

SILBERMAN: Alabama?

BERG: Yuuup.

SILBERMAN: Go ahead. I’m listening.

BERG: This town in Alabama built its entire civic wealth between 1815 and 1865 on textiles – an industry based on slave-produced cotton – and tobacco, which was…

SILBERMAN: …raised by slaves. Yes. Yes. Keep going.

BERG: And they voted for the Democrat, pro-slavery candidates for President, in 1860 and 1864.

SILBERMAN: I already hate them.

BERG: And then, when the Civil War was well underway, they undertook a pogrom against not only blacks – whom they blamed for the war, and for the economic hardships the war brought them – but against whites that supported abolition, destroying their businesses in an epic riot.

SILBERMAN: Perfect. Probably fundamentalist Christianists to boot. These people need canceling.

BERG: I’ll say.

SILBERMAN: What town in Alabama?

BERG: It was…wait, did I say Alabama?

SILBERMAN: You did.

BERG: My bad. It was New York City. Your hometown, if I recall.

SILBERMAN: (Stands, stunned).

BERG: You’ve been canceled.

SILBERMAN: (Jaw flaps, but no sound comes out)

BERG: Try the dok buk uhm. It’s divine. (BERG walks out)

And SCENE

Our “elites” lecture us about climate change, then fly home in private jets.

They “order” us to stay indoors even as the actual evidence starts to show that the “models” they used, if they were put out by the private sector, would be considered frauds.

As parts of the “elite” get wealthier beyond belief, the media gets ever more flooded with puff pieces touting the virtues of insect-based diets, “high-density” living and “new normals” that sound ever more miserable…for the rest of us?

Worried that our new tech superstars are censoring speech on “social media” just as the political and media superstars do in the traditional media – and their kids at the universities are doing the same, literally and physically, in the working world just as they did in college?

Concerned that political “elites” like Lisa Bender to AOC consider whatever you *have* earned in this world to be a “privilege” to be extracted, statutorily by the IRS or by force by whatever group decides, with a nudge and wink from local politicians whose younger relatives they are, to take it at the point of a Molotov Cocktail and a baseball bat?

Think you’re seeing society sorting out, not by race, but by class, with the “elites” forming an ever-more cloistered pseudo-aristocracy, which gets to play by its own rules?

Well, you’re right. You are.

Hayek’s classic of conservative thought was titled The Road to Serfdom. It envisioned a different mechanism for this decline into feudalism – the telephone was the only social medium, back then – but he was, as always, right.

Joel Kotkin now argues the world is becoming more feudal – an “overclass” that becomes wealthy by turning everyone else, including most of you – into dehumanized production machines, no better than the gilded age robber barons did?

The situation can be saved – but victory is by no means assured, nor easy.

I’ gonna urge you toi read the article. Then the book. And my NARN people are calling his people as we speak.

My brother died one month ago today.  No funeral – they were illegal.  Covid. It was SCIENCE!

Then the Covid rules changed: we could have a 10-people funeral.  That wasn’t enough for both our side and the widow’s side of the family to attend.  No funeral.  SCIENCE!

Then the Covid rules changed again: we could have a funeral, 25% capacity, social distancing, masks for all.  SCIENCE!

We’re burying my brother tomorrow.  Afterwards, we’ve rented a picnic shelter in the park to eat box lunch, watch a tribute video and share memories.  Well, some of us are.  The picnic shelter is open on three sides but has roof and one wall so it’s considered a “structure.”  There’s a 10-person limit in the picnic shelter.  The rest of us must stand outside and take turns rotating through, with masks, and social distancing.  Because Covid, you know.  It’s SCIENCE!

I can’t help noticing the crowd at the George Floyd memorial.  Capacity, social distance, masks – whatever happened to all that Science? 

Maybe it’s like rock, paper, scissors: Fire burns Science; Fire wins.  Instead of following the rules like a good little boy, I should have burned down a Black neighborhood. 

I’ll keep that in mind.

Joe Doakes

Well, torching any low-income or immigrant neighborhood will actually do…

A friend of the blog writes:

Now I understand why our councilmember, who represents part of the community that was destroyed in Saint Paul, ran as a woman of color versus running as a person with experience and knowledge- she thinks that is all that matters and that people who look like her would only be liberal. 

As she says in her tweet- “the conservacrowd who has never actually had to fight for their livelihoods from the state or the police or hate-filled organizations all at once.”
This implies a lot. None of it positive or particularly helpful and lacks an understanding of her constituents and small business owners in her community, history, and just about anything to do with what is happening right now. 
Screen shot of the quote, whole thread here: http://www.twitter.com/mitrajunjalali/status/1266780175204790272

Interesting how the councilwoman – who “represents” my ward – dropped the “-Nelson” from her last name.

Also – how a woman who holds a sinecure in a one-party town, pretty much guaranteeing a lifetime of income for her and her family at the expense of the rest of us, is wrapping herself in the “struggle” banner.

I’m going to be seeking an audience with her highness. This should be interesting.

Oh, yeah. “Unity”.

It has become obvious there were two groups reacting to George Floyd’s death.  His family/friends/supporters who wanted wanted answers from government and were exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances; and the Antifa, looking to cause trouble.
Antifa has been very careful – there have been no homes destroyed, nobody killed, no personal danger.  They are destroying businesses to protest capitalism’s exploitation of low income and minority people.
Except . . . most businesses carry insurance and most of those policies cover “civil unrest” which means Antifa is really striking at insurance companies.  Fine, they’re capitalist organizations, they deserve it.  
Except insurance companies spread their risk over multiple lines – home, auto, business – so if the company takes a hit in the business line, they can cover it by raising rates in the home and auto lines.  Which means Antifa is really attacking every home owner and car owner in Minnesota.  Fine, they’re rich capitalist pigs, they deserve it, too.
Except . . . remember all those programs to help low income and minorities into homes?  The escalator to wealth?  The first step on the ladder?  Those homes were all purchased with loans that require the homeowner to maintain insurance.  For wealthy homeowners, no problem, pay the higher rates.  But for marginal homeowners, it’s an issue.  And it’s a bigger issue in the time of Covid, when minority and low income people have been laid off in higher numbers.  Which means Antifa is really attacking low income and minority homeowners.  
I know, it takes effort to understand your actions have effects which are SEEN and also effects which are UNSEEN.  it takes effort to see the ripple effect of Black homelessness downstream from burning some schmuck’s bar.  It takes effort to redirect your actions into productive, positive, beneficial work instead of mindless destruction.
But failure to think the problem all the way through, means you end up harming the people you intended to help.  That includes your supporters, like Governor Walz’ daughter Hope and Attorney General Ellison.  
Joe Doakes

We’ll need to revisit this in ten years, when the DFL power structure wonders where the &^%^% their tax base went.

Since the Governor won’t let me go out to play, I’m spending my time at
home wisely.

I’m taking the on-line class to renew my Permit to Carry a Pistol. I’m
also shopping on-line for guns (to be shipped to my local FFL for
delivery) and stocking up on ammunition (to be shipped directly to my
doorstep).

Thanks, Governor. Just what I needed.

Joe Doakes

Do it while you can.

If the Democrats take the Senate and hold the House this fall, Minnesota will make Virginia look like Wyoming.

Went for a walk, saw this sign, having trouble identifying the symbol for “government bureaucrats.”  

Hey, we’re essential, you know.  Those papers aren’t going to shuffle themselves.  
Joe Doakes

Sardonic as Joe is, he knows as well as anyone that government workers of all kinds are the most essential workers there are. They’re public employees union members – the backbone of the DFL.

They’re essential to his and the DFL’s power.

But we all knew this.

…with a side helping of “Blue Minnesota always tries to emulate New York”.

City-run nursing homes in NYC became wretched hellscapes during the worst of the pandemic:

“It was just heartbreaking,” said one of the RNs, a mom of four from Wisconsin who spent about 17 days at the Coler Rehabilitation and Nursing Care Center.

“Patients were in deplorable conditions — very, very dirty, bed sores, terrible odors,’’ the FEMA-contracted nurse, 38, told The Post.

“During my shift, I was placing my initials on the adult diapers. When I would return the next day, the patients would have an additional adult diaper on over the one with my initials on it, saturated urine through both and through the sheets.’’

She and several other nurses, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they tended to coronavirus patients in the facility’s long-term-care section.

The virus-sickened patients were already living at the site when the nurses arrived and not among the COVID-19 sufferers who were ordered sent to the facility by Mayor Bill de Blasio because of a shortage of hospital beds amid the pandemic. The patients brought in from the outside were put in a separate wing of the site that had been closed.

The conditions were a direct result of Governor “Fredo” Cuomo and Mayor “Ratso” DiBlasio’s bureaucratic d**k-measuring contest back in March – further proof that politics is not just (as Kevin Williamson says) the worst possible way of allocating scarce resources, but in times of crisis, the deadliest as well.