There are times I miss the old website “Stuff White People Like“.- a satirical, often hilarious look at the foibles of generally upper middle class, educated, urban honkies. It became a best selling book, chronicling the gentle social satire of a much less divisive time – the George W. Bush administration.

Will come back to that.

Last week, after an hours long standoff that allegedly began, and continued, with random gun fire fired blindly through the walls into neighboring apartments, police snipers apparently killed Tekle Sundberg, aman who (let’s be solicitors) was apparently mentally ill, and (let’s be honest) had apparently been terrorizing the other residents of that apartment block for quite some time.

I’m not equipped to comment on the merits of the police action; while we have passed the statutory three day limit imposed by birds 18th law, The Twin Cities media just doesn’t do a good job of covering stories where facts and progressive narrative intersect. Like the Christine Rusczyk shooting, this is is going to be a long, ugly ride.

What I am equipped to comment on, though, is the behavior of perhaps the most loathsome group of people in society today – Woke, Overeducated, Middle-class Progressive White Activists. (Hereafter WOMPWAs).

And one of the things WOMPWAs like is standing around in groups of like-minded people, preaching to the infidels. Sometimes they are called protests, sometimes visuals – and, more accurately, group virtue signaling.

Which is what they were doing on Friday, until of Mr. Sundberg’s victims – Arabelle Foss-Scarabella, a single of mother of two who lived next-door to the late Mr. Sundberg – arrived on the scene:

“It’s not the time”, one of them progsplained a woman…

…who’d been protecting her kids from this:

There is plenty of evidence that Sundberg was deeply mentally ill.

There is even more evidence that WOMPWAS are equally mentally ill, in their own way.

The other day, I joked – sort of – that after the violence in downtown Minneapolis on July 4, the city councilman, Michael Rainville, might look for the sort of help that former city council president Lisa bender once referred to as “privilege”.

Yesterdays joke is today’s policy:

Minneapolis City Council member Michael Rainville says Governor Walz is sending in state troopers, as confirmed by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, to help Minneapolis with policing in the interim. The police department has about 600 officers, down from 800.

The ne’er-do-wells finally found a neighborhood where the sense of entitlement overcame white progressive guilt.

Minneapolis delivery driver with a (apparently) permitted handgun gives carjackers a significant emotional growth experience.

The driver was making a delivery to one of the Abbott buildings at 29th and Chicago, when the ne’er-do-wells made their move:

“My dad was making a delivery at Allina hospital earlier today and almost got carjacked, the suspects got scared and ran when my dad pulled his gun on them. One of them had a pistol and was tapping his gun on the passenger side window while his friend was trying to force open the door. [I’m] glad I convinced my dad to carry especially with how crazy crime is.”

The video leaves a bit to the imagination.

The part I’m having the most fun imagining…

SPOILER ALERT

…is the discussion the two punks had with the getaway driver who peeled out and left them running on foot away from an armed man.

But it’s fun to imagine.

…of Minneapolis’s demise…

… apparently aren’t far off.

Four shot last night, right around downtown Minneapolis‘s casual tourist epicenter, the Stone Arch Bridge.

My favorite part about episodes like this; the wave of progressives from “City Life“ theme parks like Seward and Powderhorn who will sniff down their noses at people from Maple Grove expressing alarm at crime in Minneapolis.

None of the Twin Cities major media covered this story: carjackers attack woman in Northeast Minneapolis.

The surveillance video caught the episode, outside Tony Jaros’s River Garden:

That man then threw her to the ground in the parking lot, cocked the gun, beat Marlo, and pistol-whipped her across the head. Marlo said it appeared the gun jammed. His accomplice then walked over. It’s when Marlo says the bar’s cook just happened to be outside on a smoke break when he heard the commotion and came to her rescue.

They all tussled on the ground before one of the masked men knocked her keys away and attempted to get into the car. Marlo again got up to stop them from driving off. A group of men from the bar also joined the fight and another man pulled up in a pickup truck to help.

The men all dragged the driver out of the car and onto the ground. The two thieves eventually ran off.

I can not be the only one wishing the locals would have kept stomping when they got the punks on the ground.

It’s gonna happen someday, if the Hennepin County Attorney and the Minneapolis City Council don’t start taking this seriously.

Rabidly pro-gun Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf sticks a fork in the idea of Red Flag laws, showing their complete absurdity.

Can you spot the problem, here?

No, it’s not the lack of an adversarial hearing, where “Randy” and his lawyer can argue his case. Although there’s that.

It’s not the fact that the standard of evidence to seize the guns (“clear and convincing evidence”) is vastly lower than the standard “Randy” must meet to get his property back (“preponderance of evidence”). Although it’s that, too.

It’s not even the fact that the police in step 6 drive away with the guns and leave “Randy” in, er, crisis. Although that’s also reason enough to balk.

No – it’s step 2, where “Jane” notices..pictures of guns.

As Wolf – who is to the right of Ted Nugent on guns – rightly points out, this is literally what Seoond Amendment people have been warning about for years; antis using any sign of sympathy for gun rights as grounds for harassment, using sympathetic, often Soros-funded prosecutors.,

And so I thank the radically pro-gun Governor Wolf for his public service.

UPDATE: I’m informed that Governor Wolf is an anti-gun Democrat, and that this cartoon was intended as a defense of Red Flag laws.

I regret the understandable confusion .

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Chief of Police speaks, giving  a completely different take on Uvalde.

So maybe our new School Security Plan – in addition to keeping outside doors locked and having an armed resource officer on the scene – includes changing the locks?  There ought to be one master key to open every door and the cops ought to have access to it (how about storing it in a lock-box on scene, like the fire department does).

I have trouble understanding why it was possible to bust windows in neighboring classrooms to evacuate those children, but not to bust the window in this classroom to shoot the gunman.

I have trouble understanding why firemen couldn’t use the jaws of life to open the classroom door.

I have trouble understanding why everybody stood around outside waiting for an hour as the Chief waited in the classroom corridor until the Border Patrol eventually stormed the shooter.

I have trouble understanding why it took the Chief so many days to tell his side of the story.

Unless . . .

. . . he lawyered up and this is the best story they could concoct. 

Yes, I am that cynical.

Joe Doakes

By this point, if you’re not cynical, you’re not paying attention.

Oh, yeah – what if the door wasn’t locked at all?

SAN FRANCISCO: Whew. Stop prosecuting criminals, and bad things happen – who knew, right?That was crazy, wasn’t it?

I tell ya, maybe those Republicans are right; San Francisco is it’s own worst enemy. Is there a city anywhere in the country as crazy as us?

MINNEAPOLIS: Hold my latte.

Saint Paul notched its 19th homicide over the weekend:

The city of St. Paul recorded its 19th homicide Friday night after officers conducting a welfare check in the city’s Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood found a man dead from a gunshot wound.

A statement released by SPPD said officers were dispatched to a senior living apartment building on the 700 block of East Seventh Street just before 7 p.m.

They arrived, made entry into the apartment and found the man, who is believed to be in his late 50s. Initially, it was unclear to the officers if the injury was self-inflicted or caused by someone else, but after members of the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office and our forensic services unit responded and gathered more information and evidence, it became clear that someone had shot the man.

Just for reference, Saint Paul had 38 homicides – the worst butcher’s bill in 25 years, and an alarming death toll in its own terms.

If we continue at our current pace, the city will have 43 in 2022.

Great job, Melvin.

If the story presented in this Wall Street Journal article is true, what happened at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, could have been prevented or greatly mitigated:

Local residents voiced anger Thursday about the time it took to end the mass shooting at an elementary school here, as police laid out a fresh timeline that showed the gunman entered the building unobstructed after lingering outside for 12 minutes firing shots.

12 minutes can be a lifetime. But it gets worse.

Victor Escalon, a regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, gave a new timeline of how the now-deceased gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, walked into Robb Elementary School, barricaded himself in a classroom and killed 19 children and two teachers.

Mr. Escalon said he couldn’t say why no one stopped Ramos from entering the school during that time Tuesday. Most of the shots Ramos fired came during the first several minutes after he entered the school, Mr. Escalon said.

And worse still:

Ramos shot his grandmother Tuesday morning and drove her truck to Robb Elementary School, crashing the vehicle into a nearby ditch at 11:28 a.m., according to the timeline laid out by Mr. Escalon. He then began shooting at people at a funeral home across the street, prompting a 911 call reporting a gunman at the school at 11:30. Ramos climbed a chain-link fence about 8 feet high onto school grounds and began firing before walking inside, unimpeded, at 11:40. The first police arrived on the scene at 11:44 and exchanged gunfire with Ramos, who locked himself in a fourth-grade classroom. There, he killed the students and teachers.

A Border Patrol tactical team went into the school an hour later, around 12:40 p.m., and was able to get into the classroom and kill Ramos, Mr. Escalon said.

Consider the implication of this timeline — Ramos essentially announced himself and his intentions from the moment he arrived, but no one stopped him for over an hour. And it gets worse:

Ms. Gomez, a farm supervisor, was also waiting outside for her children. She said she was one of numerous parents who began encouraging—first politely, and then with more urgency—police and other law enforcement to enter the school sooner. After a few minutes, she said, U.S. Marshals put her in handcuffs, telling her she was being arrested for intervening in an active investigation.

The Marshals deny this happened, but there’s more.

Videos circulated on social media Wednesday and Thursday of frantic family members trying to get access to Robb Elementary as the attack was unfolding, some of them yelling at police who blocked them from entering.

“Shoot him or something!” a woman’s voice can be heard yelling on a video, before a man is heard saying about the officers, “They’re all just [expletive] parked outside, dude. They need to go in there.”

We worry, quite rightly, about the fog of war in these instances. Much of the initial reporting is wrong. I am hoping the story told here is wrong; if it is accurate, there will be hell to pay. And quite rightly so.

A friend of the blog emails:

I’ve noticed more articles on the feds prosecuting gun crimes.

Are they actually upping there game? Or being reported more?

Is this because of an upcoming election?

To tell you the truth, I haven’t heard.

Thoughts?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Constitution sets an age limit for Congress – must be 25 years old – and for President – must be 35 years old. Why? Because we want national leaders to have acquired the wisdom which comes from maturity, so they make responsible decisions. It’s hard to test for wisdom so we use age as a proxy. We do it for lots of important activities – sex, voting, alcohol, enlistment, marriage, contract – restricting people from engaging in those activities until they are wise enough to do them responsibly.

Lots of angry tweets about the Texas school shooter being able to buy AR-15 rifles within days after his 18th birthday. Why? Do they think 18-year-olds lack the wisdom and maturity to use rifles responsibly? Millions of responsible hunters and military service members cast doubt on that conclusion. What additional life lessons would the Texas shooter have learned between 18 and 21 which would have taught him it was wrong to kill his grandmother and then shoot up the grade school?

It’s not an age issue. It’s not a wisdom or maturity issue. He knew damned well what he did was wrong. He even told people on social media that he was going to do it. He did it anyway. What law can we pass, what age can we set, which will stop wicked people from committing evil? None.

So what can we do?

First, stop making soft targets. Gun Free zones sound good but a sign at the door doesn’t keep criminals out, it simply notifies criminals where the soft targets are.

Second, harden soft targets. Liquor stores hire off-duty cops. Pawn shops use two-room man-traps at the front door (they operate like airlocks on a space ship – second door doesn’t open until the first one is closed and somebody inside confirms it’s safe to open the second door). Why don’t schools have better security? Is gin more valuable than Jimmy? Is jewelry more valuable than Julie? Fire a Diversity Counselor and use the savings for structural improvements.

Third, harden staff. The qualities which make a great teacher – compassionate, empathetic, caring – are not the qualities which make a great protector. The guy guarding the door must be armed, trained, and mentally capable of opening fire on an armed intruder. S/He must instinctively run Toward the sound of trouble. There must be a few retired cops or Fallujah vets who could fill that role (or train others to do it).

Fourth, stop making soft-target-seekers by hardening police spokes-persons. After a mass shooting, the official response should be, “We have no comment because we won’t glorify the killer and inspire others to copycat. We implore the media not to do it, either.”

These are short-term responses. The long-term solution involves a change in societal attitudes. When I was a kid, every pickup in the school parking lot had a shotgun, for pheasant hunting before and after school. School was cancelled for Opening Deer Season because nobody would be there anyway, we were all out in the fields with guns. And there were never any school shootings, despite young people having guns, because we were raised differently, society was different then. I know what you’re thinking – okay, Boomer – but look at those tiny bodies in Texas and tell my why society today is so much better than in my day. I genuinely want to know.

Joe Doakes

Much more to come on this…

…but you knew this.

The Minneapolis Police have problems.

It’s been the most open secret in the world for as long as I’ve lived in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis cops leaning on black and minority drivers, being more willing to take off the gloves when operating in black neighborhoods – this was news in the mid-80s. It’s like most police departments – a few bad apples among a lot of good cops – only seemingly moreso.

Minneapolis has problems.

If you didn’t see it three years ago, you should have noticed it in the past two years. They had a city council president who said in as many words that expecting law and order came from a place of “privilege” (a privilege she was happy to enjoy with $1K a day in taxpayer-funded private security, of course), and a council that backed that up with policy, to the point whereJacob Freaking Frey looks like a law and order conservative (whenever there’s not a crisis, anyway).

It’s a city that seriously believes the answer to crime is to transfer more taxpayer money to “community” “non-profits” – the same people who’ve been profiting from the status quo, and code for “the DFL’s political farm team”. (It’s the same answer they have for education, economic development, and pretty much everything else).

The Minnesota DFL has a problem.

Polling for mid-terms is abysmal – potentially catastrophic. Early signs are they could lose the House of Representatives and fall further behind in the Senate; it’s even hypothetically possible the hapless MNGOP could finally get a governor.

The economy shows every sign of starting to slow down (at best) – something the media will try to spin until after a new, GOP-controlled Congress and Legislature take over, but for now, things seem to be getting away from ’em.

But…

The DFL controls the state bureaucracy.

The report that was issued by the MN Department of Human Rights – which is like one of those non-profits we mentioned above, only part of the executive branch – earlier this week could have been issued at any time in the past 35 years. It should have been issued at any time in the past 35 years; you don’t have to be a black community activist to notice the MPD has issues. If the DFLers who created the Human Rights department, and who have always staffed it, had needed to issue it at any point in the past 35 years, they would have.

But they didn’t need to issue it then. It might be excessively cynical to say a city full of people angry about their police suited them, per se – but it wasn’t against their interest.

But now? As Democrats nationwide are being weighed down (justifiably!) by their performance on law and order issues – now the MNDoHR comes out with a report on the MPD?

Right around the time the DFL statewide needs to deflect the “conversation” about crime away to…anything but six decades of failed DFL rule?

• DFL-caused problem (problems, really – crime in Minneapolis is the DFL’s baby, and the DFL has controlled the MPD for three generations).
• DFL-controlled bureaucracy.
• Report that tries to shift blame for crime away from the DFL, which has controlled literally all the factors leading to the problem since Eisenhower was President.

Seeing a pattern, here?

But this runnin’ with the Bidens, boy, just ain’t where it’s at:

Hunter Biden’s closest business partner made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015, including a sitdown with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing.

Visitor logs from the White House of former President Barack Obama reviewed by The Post cast further doubt over Joe Biden’s claims that he knew nothing of his son’s dealings.

If Biden claims he knows nothing about such things now, I tend to believe him. He doesn’t appear to know much of anything. That ol’ historical record is an issue, though:

Eric Schwerin met with Vice President Biden on November 17, 2010 in the West Wing, when he was the president of the since-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners.

The logs also reveal that Schwerin met with various close aides of both Joe and Jill Biden at key moments in Hunter’s life when he was striking multi-million dollar deals in foreign countries, including China. Yet President Biden has long insisted he had no involvement in his son’s foreign affairs. “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in 2019.

Does Biden’s denial beggar belief? Of course. If Hunter Biden’s surname had been, I dunno, Doakes, a guy like Schwerin would have been as welcome roaming the halls of power as the guy with the facepaint and the Buffalo headgear was on Jan. 6. But as an associate of Biden the younger, he had the golden ticket. 

”Not everyone gets to meet the Vice President of the United States in the White House. The press should be asking why Hunter Biden’s business associates — like Eric Schwerin — had that privilege and were given access to the Obama White House,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin). “This is additional evidence that Joe Biden lied when he said he never discussed Hunter’s foreign business dealings. It’s well past time for the corporate media to demand the truth from Joe Biden. The corruption of Biden Inc. must be exposed.”

Strictly speaking, the logs don’t prove Biden lied, but it’s certainly the way to bet. And while Senator Johnson is correct in asserting the press ought to be asking questions, I would not count on any investigative reporting happening any time soon. There’s a lot more at the link, including this reminder of how incestuous the power structure is in Washington:

In October 2009, just months after Hunter co-founded Rosemont Seneca, Schwerin met with Evan Ryan, Vice President Biden’s assistant for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building where the vice president’s office is based, according to the visitor logs.

While working in the halls of power Ryan acted as a conduit for Hunter Biden and his cronies, hard drive emails show.

Ms. Ryan is now the Cabinet Secretary for Biden. And speaking of Biden’s cabinet. . .

Ryan went on to marry Antony Blinken, who now serves as President Biden’s Secretary of State, while she herself was appointed to a plum gig as White House Cabinet Secretary in January 2021.

It’s all in the family.

During his 2018 campaign, Governor Klink used the slogan “One Minnesota”.

To those of us who study history, that caused a mirthless chuckile; German historians finished the slogan out: “One People, One Minnesota, One Leader”.

And those of us who remember history were right; when politicians yap about “unity” and “One” anything, it’s about making everyone equally miserable and straitened, not happy and prosperous.

Case in point: Minnetonka is being OneMInnesota’ed.

Given the glacial pace of John Durham’s investigation, it’s easy to assume that nothing is really going to come of his efforts; it’s a drill we’ve all seen before. Before Lucy pulls the football away yet again, let’s note that Durham did establish something long suspected:

John Durham released a potential smoking gun in the case against Michael Sussmann on Monday night, as he published documents showing the Democratic cybersecurity lawyer messaged the FBI general counsel that he was not working on behalf of any client, when in fact he was working for the Clinton campaign.

So what did Sussman say?

On Monday evening, however, Durham revealed Sussmann conveyed that lie in a text message to [FBI general counsel James] Baker on Sept. 18, 2016 — the night before their meeting at the bureau.

“Jim – it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss,” Sussmann wrote to the FBI top lawyer. “Do you have availibilty [sic] for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own – not on behalf of a client or company – want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”

Except he wasn’t. He was indeed representing the Clinton campaign. As the linked article from the Washington Examiner explains:

Sussmann’s lawyers have said Sussmann met with the FBI in September 2016 “to pass along information that raised national security concerns” and characterized this as simply “to provide a tip.” The lawyers contended that Sussmann was “charged with making a false statement about an entirely ancillary matter — about who his client may have been when he met with the FBI — which is a fact that even the Special Counsel’s own indictment fails to allege had any effect on the FBI’s decision to open an investigation.”

Durham countered that “the defendant made his false statement directly to the FBI General Counsel on a matter that was anything but ancillary: namely, the existence … of attorney-client relationships that would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.”

“The defendant’s false statement to the FBI General Counsel was plainly material because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign,” Durham wrote.

Do I have any reasonable expectation that Sussmann will ultimately be brought to justice, let alone his clients? Forget it D, it’s Chinatown. And as Sussmann’s client famously said in yet another context:

What difference does it make? We know. And while stories are soft pedaled or buried entirely, they are out there to know. And in the case of the Clintons, it means they won’t be coming back.

Ukrainians have a quick remedy for looters:

I’m liking it.

Idaho bill would require prosectors to reimburse people with successful self-defense claims, whom they opt to prosecute anyway:

If enacted, the legislation would require the county or prosecuting state agency where the person was charged with a crime to reimburse the defendant for “all reasonable costs” if they are found not guilty by reason of self defense. Reasonable costs would include lost wages, the costs of any lost business opportunities and legal costs including bail, expert witness fees, attorney’s bills and other expenses. The bill also includes a “safety net” to protect defendants if they are sued by victim in a self-defense case, she said.

It’s intended to provide consequences for the sort of malicious, specious prosecution of people like Kyle Rittenhouse – cases with lots of political sturm und drang but little to no actual evidence of unjustifiable homicide.

A”. This badly.

Gov. Tim Walz and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan are officially launching a statewide public safety tour.

So – Governor “We’ll Send the Guard To Your Riot When You Fax Out the TPS Report” Walz is feeling the string.

And to show how serious he is about crime, he’s taking his “Lieutenant” Governor – who was against law and order before she was for it, and whose commitment to law and order is so firm she just has mobs of supporters skirt the rules she finds inconvenient – out on the road.

This should be interesting.

I’m posting this piece – from Alphanews’s Liz Collin, formerly of WCCO TV – partly to show that someone is doing actual journalism about what’s going on in Minneapolis….

…and partly to note that the most interesting part of the story is the reaction of Minneapolis “progressives” to the fact that Collin has left The Four and is now working for a conservative outlet.

Because, to Big Left and Big Media, ideological purity is now more important than telling the story.

A friend of the blog emails:

No. This person does not deserve our sympathy at this time. He attempted to murder someone. I don’t care if he’s a friend of yours, if he was “on your side at one time.” He attempted to murder someone.

I wonder how sympathetic Hannah Drake would be if the shooter were a white man with a MAGA hat. They both could have the same mental health issues, be going through the same thing.

Doesn’t matter. Attempted murder is attempted murder and it is illegal.

For a depressingly large part of our population, morality means “everything I want to, believe and accept is right“.

Close to three years ago, Sheriff Fletcher in Saint Paul said that the drastic uptick in homicides – even then, before the pandemic Dash was largely the result of gang beefs going back into the early 2000s.

It seems plausible then – although Big Left/Minnesota pointedly ignored the suggestion.

And yet here it is again:

The allegation that our skyrocketing homicide rates are related to yoot gangs was catcalled out of the public space three years ago.

Now, Channel 4 is covering it.

What could be the difference?

Oh.

When government doesn’t provide the public order that people pay their taxes and exchange a bit of their liberty for, people will seek their own public order.

This is the polite, Midwestern version of that.

It won’t stay that way forever.

The DFL is waking up to the fact that people don’t like crime, and they don’t see law and order as a “privilege”.

I was going to write out the last couple years of history, but the Twitter embed seems to have added that for me.

DFL policies pretty much negate the DFL’s proposals:

You can boil these “proposals” down to “trying to fix the damage they’ve wrought into a couple of categories:

Transferring more taxpayer money to the state’s political class and the non-profit/industrial complex.

“Innovation” and “Local Community Policing” grants might be well described as “greasing the right palms”.

Paying to undo the DFL’s damage

Body cameras? Training investigators?

We had investigators. They quit when the county attorneys stopped prosecuting repeat criminals.

Trying to blame Republicans

Which, as long as the DFL runs both cities, is really what it’s all about.

I shudder to imagine who’s convinced by this.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The law of self-defense does not cover property. So what law does? If the cops won’t do anything, if the prosecutors won’t do anything, if the courts won’t do anything, then the social compact has been breached by the government, and the right to defend property reverts to the citizenry.
They shoot looters, don’t they? These people were looters. They deserve to be shot. Pour encourager Les autres.
Joe Doakes

On the one hand, test cases are for other people.

On the other hand? If the system doesn’t start delivering the justice we pay our taxes for, people start going out and getting it for themselves, without bothering with the niceties of criminal procedure.