…the answer to your question is “Correlation doesn’t equal causation – so unless you can find a link between street crime and terrorism, the answer is no”.

Question in response : are precious,  snarky yet deeply insecure pseudointellects from somewhere near Willmar the reason so many people who don’t like Trump are willing to make accomodation with him?

Asking for a friend.

Republicans aren’t much for celebrity.  We don’t care much about them, and we tend not to be them.     Even among ourselves.

But if you are a Republican – and, redundant to say, obscure – there still are a few ways to become famous.

The big one?   Express any view that is grossly out of whack with society at large, to say nothing of the GOP (which, outside most metro areas, reflects “society at large” pretty completely).

For example, you could be like this fellow in Illinoiis,who is running for. Congress in the greater Chicago area:

Arthur J. Jones, 70, of Lyons, is the lone candidate on the March 20 Republican primary ticket for the seat that includes Western Springs, La Grange and parts of southwestern Chicago. Jones, a former member of the American National Socialist Workers Party, has run for political office several times in the past but has never made it past the primary stage in the 3rd District.

He may get on the ballot as a “Republican” because there’s no other GOP challenger in the Illinois’ stultifyingly blue 3rd District.  The IL GOP has been fighting against the guy for years; I have no idea what the rules are to run as any given party on a ballot in Illinois, and it’s for damn sure the Chicago Tribune isn’t going to explain them; they got their headline:  Holocaust denier likely to appear on ballot for GOP for Chicago-area congressional seat”.

And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

Of course, the issue strikes a bit close to home for me; last week, the chairman of the Fourth CD GOP – Republicans in Ramsey and parts of Washington county – made a posting on the district’s Facebook page that went (hold on to your hats, here)  viral – at least among people who are watching an obscure GOP official in an utterly blue district.

Or this fella in Coon Rapids who’s become perhaps the most famous caucus attendee  in Minnesota.

A thousand of us could descend on Cedar Riverside and plaster the place an inch deep in “All People Are Created Equal” flyers and it wouldn’t get a second on the news, anywhere.  And I’m tempted to try it, if only to cover an entire neighborhood in paper.

As one who underestimated Donald Trump’s campaign until the moment Wisconsin got called, I’m doing a lot of retroactive learning.

And there are sources to a lot of that in this piece.

Long pullquote:

Some have argued that President Trump’s recent State of the Union speech was designed primarily to troll Democrats. I disagree. The trolling effect (e.g., a steady stream of bad optics televised in prime time—and subsequently easily turned around into an RNC ad—showing Democrats behaving disrespectfully, rolling their eyes, shaking their heads, groaning, looking down at their cell phones, and even walking out in a huff) is real, but was a fully expected side-benefit of the address. No, the President is on something of a John Boyd “Destruction and Creation” mission.

Operating like a general giving the command for his massive political army to advance on the adversary, the State of the Union speech was the best political oration of my lifetime. I’ll try to quickly detail why  by quoting a personal favorite, Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club. In a piece he wrote in December 2016, just prior to Trump’s inauguration as our 45th President and in the context of Trump’s signaling with respect to what should be our posture with China, Fernandez wrote that:

The Democratic Party should stop underestimating Donald Trump. The good news is that he moves at nongovernment speed. The bad news is that, due to his outsider status, nobody knows exactly where he is going.

Fernandez, like McLaughlin the year before, was noting the uptempo speed of Trump. McLaughlin’s discussion of Trump’s use of the OODA Loop, correctly noted that speed lies at the core of Boyd’s theory of conflict, and has been the most influential element of Boyd’s strategic thinking. Further, “Boyd’s core insight was about the interactive and disruptive nature of speed on human decision-making: success in conflict can be rapid and dramatic if one can “operate inside the OODA Loop” of the opponent.”

When you begin to understand this, you’re well on your way to understanding our 45th president.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When the gun grabbers want to push gun control, they decry 30,000 gun violence deaths per year. But wait, 20,000 of them are old white men committing suicide and 10,000 are young black men killing each other in the hood. The causes are completely different and the cures are therefore different.  One needs mental health intervention, the other needs stop and frisk. You can’t lump them altogether with the one-size-fits-all solution “close the gun show loophole.”
Amnesty advocates for illegal aliens claim there are 11 million living in the shadows. But wait, some were children brought here by their parents (dreamers), some are parents of children born here (anchor babies), some are adults who jumped the border alone (beast train), some had student visas but never went home (9/11 hijackers).   The causes are completely different and therefore the cures are different. Going after visa holders and eliminating chain migration does not eliminate the need for a border wall.  It just means we need to work twice as hard to clean up the entire festering mess.
Build the damned wall.
Joe Doakes

Sometimes, when a family works on its finances, the solutions are “Spend less”, “earn more” or “live on a budget”.  And sometimes the answer is all three.  Stat.  

This flyer was apparently slipped under peoples’ doors in Cedar Riverside – a Minneapolis neighborhood with a large Somali population – “an hour before the caucuses” this past Tuesday:

Give it a read.

I don’t know about you, but to me it reads like someone who wants to caricature what they think an ignorant Republican might write like (and who perhaps isn’t nearly as literate as they think they are, themselves).

And I’m trying to wrap my heads around the idea of a bunch of (clearly white) bigots running around Cedar Riverside stuffing things “under peoples’ doors”…

…according to the person who posted the offending flyer…:

…who, as luck would have it, just happens to work for a DFL-affiliated Somali community group.

Slipping under doors?  Not distributed at caucus sites?

I dunno.  Seems fishy to me.

UPDATE:   Suffice to say, I have my questions:

Five’ll get you ten I get blocked forthwith.

UPDATE 2:  And one day later, it’s in an Ilhan Omar fundraising letter?   That was quick, verifying it’s not a hoax and all. .

Nothing fishy at all.

Former state representative Phyllis Kahn, commenting on Minnesota public radio’s upcoming pledge week:

I, myself, have chosen to remember how Garrison Keillor treated…

… Well, everybody. By all accounts, Keillor was obsequious to those he saw as his “superiors” – presidents, governors (provided they were Democrats) and stars – mildly ingratiating to peers who, in his opinion, could help him, and rude, dismissive and arrogant to those he saw as “below” him. And the legends about him as an employer should follow him into the next life, if there is cosmic justice.

It’s not hard to imagine that Phyllis Kahn believes there is one set of rules for everyone else, and one for the likes of her and Garrison Keillor; she’s the one that used her political clout to Jimmy the Minneapolis city code to ptrvent De La Salle high school from putting up lights at it’s football stadium – to avoid harsh and her nighttime mellow.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Dow dropped the most points ever!  Trump should stay away!
Rubbish. The Dow dropped 666 points to close at 25,520.   An article from Obama’s time, 2015, shows the 10 worst drops in history.  His was number 10.
The analysts are using points instead of percentages which makes it sound scary but is it really?  If the Dow was at 10,000 points and dropped 1,000, that’s a 10% drop but if it’s at 20,000 points and drops 1,000, that’s a 5% drop, only half as bad.  Trump’s drop of 666 on 26,000 is 2.5%, not the worst in history, doesn’t even make in the top 10.   It’s a blip.
Why do you suppose an English major can figure that out, but all the sophisticated market analysts in the media cannot?
Joe Doakes

Make no mistake – they can figure it out.

But the Demorat messaging plan is “Say whatever we need to; our audience is either in on the line, or isn’t smart enough to bother”.

For a few years, I listened to the NPR comedy game show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me – a tongue-in-cheek program that features a panel of dubious celebrities answering current-events questions to win prizes for members of the audience.  The host is the razor-sharp Peter Segel.    Sure, the condo prog politics bubbled under the surface; it’s NPR, after all.  But it was generally so good – and so in line with what passes for political comedy these days – that it worked.

But lately – not coincidentally, for the past year and change – Wait Waiot‘s shots at  President Trump have gotten flabby, predictable – really, cringeworthy.  The sound of a staff of writers taking the cheap easy laugh, over and over.

It’s not just obscure radio comedies.  Donald Trump seems to be making comics dumber:

…the Trumpian option in their comedy has rendered [Bill Maher, Steven Colbert, Seth Meyers and others] charmless while strikingly limiting their audiences to those who share their politics. I recently wrote a book on the subject of charm, in preparation for which I asked a great many people to name five persons in public life they thought charming. No one could do it. In a political time as divisive as ours, a public figure loses roughly half his following—and hence his charm—just as soon as he announces his politics. For an entertainer to do so is perhaps even more hazardous.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Chipotle rolls out bennies, bonuses to hourly employees:

The company is rolling out benefits reaching all of its 71,000 employees, including special cash and stock bonuses and enhanced paid and parental leave.

Qualified hourly employees and salaried restaurant employees will receive a special one-time cash bonus of up to $1,000, and some staff employees will receive a one-time stock grant.

Other offerings will include accelerated training programs, and additional paid parental leave for everyone, from hourly managers to salaried employees.

Didn’t they get the word from Pelosi?

A friend of the blog writes

Can #metoo now remove her from the council for sexual misconduct, please?

I think one of the offshoots of the Franken controversy is that the DFL is now giving its own people outside the presidency  a pass on sexual harassment.

But t’s Amy Brendemoen – the City Councilor last known for shutting down a successful restaurant in the city-owned Como Pavilion to give the lease to friends of hers (whose high-gloss concept restaurant closed last fall).

And she’s upset, now, about cheerleaders:

After watching the Super Bowl Sunday night, St. Paul city council member Amy Brendmoen took to Facebook to vent her annoyance at seeing bikini-clad cheerleaders rush the field with players.

“Once again, when are we going to address the cheerleading scene in pro sports?” she asked her friends and followers, intending to stir conversation.

She included an upskirt selfie of a U of M cheerleader as evidence.

Will anything happen?

It’s Chicago.  Saint Paul on the Mississippi.  What do you think?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The IRS has apologized for treating Conservative groups differently from Liberal groups.

It’s not enough.  The IRS under the Obama Administration intentionally engaged in viewpoint discrimination based on political affiliation.  That’s the most fundamental of all First Amendment violations, and it was done by agents of the government while performing their official duties.  That’s a violation of 42 United States Code 1983 and entitles the aggrieved person to damages plus attorney’s fees for bringing the action.

Who’s the aggrieved person?  Mitt Romney in specific and the nation in general.  What are the damages?  Trillions.

Campaign Finance law says an individual can only donate so much to a political campaign but a non-profit corporation set up to “educate” the public can spend more and, if the corporation qualifies under Section 501(c)3 of the tax code, donations are tax-deductible although the corporation’s activities must be limited to retain the deduction.   Set up a dozen such corporations, raise millions of dollars, spend it on advertising to “educate” the public and thereby influence the voters.

When the IRS subjected Conservative groups to more rigorous scrutiny than Liberal groups before awarding 501(c)3 status, the IRS deprived Conservative groups of a meaningful opportunity to raise funds to get out their message, to educate the public on their side of the issues, to inform the voters of the Conservative alternative.  It deprived Conservatives of political speech at the most crucial time – right before the election.  This is banana-republic voter suppression and Obama’s IRS completely got away with it.  Nobody was fired.  Nobody was jailed.  Nobody cares.

Pretend the IRS had done it to groups organized by Blacks, or Muslims, and imagine the outrage.  An apology years later, from a different administration, wouldn’t be good enough for them.  It’s not good enough for me.

Joe Doakes

The only groups the Feds have been more dilatory about apologizing to have been slaves and Indians.

Which should tell you something.

The jelly beans are out.  The delivery and accent are in place.  The “Reagan/Bush ’84” sticker is in its place of honor on my car.

It’s Ronald Reagan’s birthday today.

The greatest president of my adult lifetime would be 107 today.

But in these difficult times, after eight years of a President who promoted  fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, and a year of a President who brings some of the same rah-rah, but little of the calm, confident reassurance that was Reagan’s hallmark, it’s worth remembering Reagan’s example; when times seemed at their most dire, Reagan walked onto the scene with a smile and a vision, and a backbone of steel, and cleaned up the mess lefty by his failed predecessor – something our current, and next, president will need even more of in the fiuture.

And the most important part? He did it by unleashing something that many, then as now, thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit.  Triump shows some signs of doing the same; if he succeeds – and it’s still a big if, given the toxic political climate – then he’ll be a success.

Oh, there are those who say “today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan!” – to which I respond with a contemptuous sign, before telling the critic to listen to “A Time for Choosing”, and tell me who is more resembles; Arne Carlson, or Scott Walker?

Reagan’s gone. But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people. Most of it, anyway.

So Happy Reagan’s Birthday, everyone!

NOTE: While this blog encourages a raucous debate, this post is a hagiography zone. All comments deemed critical of Reagan will be expunged without ceremony. You’ve been warned.

You have the whole rest of the media to play about in; this post is gonna be gloriously one-note.

A citizen with a carry permit interrupts a robber attacking a cop:

“Had he not been in the right place at the right time, who knows what would have happened,” Cpl. Cory Waters told the media. “But he definitely stopped the attack from continuing and becoming much worse. He might have even saved either one of their lives. It could have gone really bad, even for the suspect.”

More, faster.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Some software comes in two versions: with ads, and without.  It costs more to buy the “without” version but you don’t have to look at advertising.

Comcast updated its Privacy Policy.  They list all the information they collect about me – personal, billing, products used, internet traffic – and then tell me how they’ll use that information.  I found this section particularly interesting:
“To Provide Recommendations and Deliver Relevant Advertising and Marketing.”
“We may also use information about you and/or your use of the Services or other services we provide to determine which movies or television shows to recommend to you and to send you promotional communications for the Services and other products and services we think may be of interest to you. We may also use this information to help third-party advertisers and programmers deliver more relevant advertising.”
Instead of selling my information to telemarketers, could I choose Option B and simply pay the extra buck a month?
Joe Doakes

You’re starting to see some of that in, say, the cell phone market.

Of course, cell phones don’t operate as a government-sanctioned cartel…

All that fuss over the Super Bowl?  All that Cold War era security downtown?  It was supposed to make “us” money – right?

Not so much, according to the NYTimes:

Sports economists don’t view the situation quite the same way. They said the economic impact study for the Minneapolis Super Bowl began by saying all the right things about how past estimates had “been criticized as extremely overinflated, inaccurate, even purposely misrepresented.” In the end, though, it did the same thing.

“They always talk really good about that stuff, and then they go off the rails,” said Victor A. Matheson, a sports economist at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.

Matheson has written extensively about the effect of Super Bowls. He has found that they usually generate anywhere from $30 million to $130 million in economic activity for the host city.

“Not nothing, and not what you would sneeze at,” he said, “but somewhere between a quarter and a tenth of what is being claimed.”

Take hotel rooms, for example. To host the Super Bowl, Minneapolis had to show that there were at least 24,000 of them within 60 minutes of the stadium, capable of accommodating visitors during the entire 10-day Super Bowl celebration. Accordingly, the economic impact report estimates the Super Bowl will generate 230,000 nights of hotel stays.

But if the Super Bowl were not in town, many of those hotel rooms would have been filled anyway, by business travelers, conventiongoers and — yes, even in Minnesota in the dead of winter — tourists. It is the net occupancy gain, not gross occupancy, that matters, said Frank Stephenson, an economist at Berry College in Mount Berry, Ga.

And on, and on.

Helga Braid Nation’s precious stadium – money extorted from taxpayers via the most base emotional manipulation this side of emotional domestic abuse, is a net wash, maybe, as of today – the peak of the stadiium’s public profile as of the first and last Super Bowl it will host.

And for its sixteenth birthday vehicle, it chooses a 1968 Lotus 49.

Shot In The Dark started sixteen years ago today.  I was in my isolated basement cube at a doomed startup just about the time the dotcom bubble started popping.  I read an article on Time.com about this new phenomenon, blogging, bringing unprecedented number of people to the marketplace of ideas.

Having been a frustrated pundit in my twenties, it called out to me; I started reading Andrew Sullivan, and that night I went out to Blogger.com and started “Shot in the Dark”.

The neighborhood’s changed since then.  Other blogs have come and gone.  Others – Ed Morrissey, Powerline – made it big, and turned into self-sustaining ventures.

Me?  I just kept on writing.  And here I am today.

Anyway – thanks to all of you for joining me on this ride.  It’s never gotten old.

Kind of like the Lotus 49.

…is that a few hundred thousand mouth-breathing morons ruin the good name of dozens of Philly sports fans.

We are excited to serve everyone biscuits tomorrow morning at our Philadelphia location but in order to do that it needs to be not burned down please

— Hardee’s (@Hardees) February 5, 2018

I mean, I’m glad the Iggles won, if only out of homer pride (I went to high school with Carson Wentz’s father, and high school and college with his uncle. Have I mentioned that North Dakota is a small place?) and because Pats fans aren’t a whole lot better.

But I’m always amazed people don’t remember it’s a game.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed (just before Super Bowl weekend, when I was busy doing things other than blogging…):

Superbowl fans are being charged enormously higher prices than normal.  This is price gouging, no different than after a hurricane.
I demand Gov. Dayton to impose martial law to curb this dastardly practice.
Joe Doakes

$50 for a parking spot?

That affects womynandtheirchildren worst!

Blogging is dead.

It has been for a while.  Andrew Sullivan – my blogfather – wrote about it not all that long ago (in re the death of The Awl, a blog I don’t lament in the least)

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection attempts an autopsy of blogging – at least, of blogging as a cultural phenomenon and business model.  Both were killed by the loathsome Twitter:

Social media really is a sewer, and I attribute much of the evaporation of the blogosphere to Twitter. It’s much easier to find an instant audience on Twitter than to build the relationship with readers to get them to come to your website. Twitter pundits are the worst pundits, counting their worth based on “followers” (many of whom are fake and purchased). The NY Times had an amazing expose on the purchasing of Twitter followers in order to create a fake reality of popularity that then can be monetized as an “influencer.”

The financial pressures also are real, as ever-increasing demand for clicks to drive dwindling advertising payout creates so much noise it’s hard to be heard. And yes, the financial pressures are real in this superheated media environment.

Monday will be my sixteenth anniversary as a blogger.  I’ve never been especially sensitive to the ups and downs of the field; I never became a superstar like John Hinderaker or Ed Morrissey or Rachel Lucas.    I didn’t go down in a wave of shame and humiliation, either, like Duncan Black or Oliver Willis or pretty much a anyone who ever blogged for “Minnesota Progressive Project”.  It’s always pretty much just been me, with the odd contribution from First Ringer (and, back in the day, Johnny Roosh and Bogus Doug).

And it was about the time Twitter and its hordes of droogs took over the job of facile instant political analysis that people stared hitting the gates.

And, like the other highs and lows, I didn’t care.  Twitter bores me stiff.  I use it mosty to promote the show, and to gauge the cowardice of liberal politicians (the ones that routinely block conservatives are, in fact, gutless cravens).

But the “death” of blogging interests me not in the least.   I got into it because I enjoyed writing.  And while I’ve gotten the odd paycheck out of the deal – back in 2007, I think I was gettting $200/months in ad revenue, which has plunged to maybe $100/year lately) and my annual pledge drive always adds a nice bump to the vacation budget, I do it for the pure unadulterated love of writing stuff for people to read.

Dead, schmead.  As far as I”m concerned, it’s just beginning.

A friend of the blog writes:

I laugh every time I go past Common Good book store. I wonder where all of the #metoo protesters are. You know, the ones who are having a fit every time Trump even looks at a woman now. Why are they not picketing the book store owned by Garrison Keillor, especially now that we have more information on his creepiness?

The #MeToo protesters wrenched their backsk performing logical gymnastics avoiding criticizing the Clintons.  Their doctors told them to go easy on Keillor.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When kids grew in the 1960’s, Mom ran the household.  She decided when you had to get up, whether you had to make your bed, what kind of shampoo you used in the shower, what was cooked for meals, what clothes you wore, how much makeup you could wear, how long you could grow your hair . . . and as a kid, you were expected to shut up and do it.

Mom was the adult and you were just a kid, therefore she knew better than you and whatever she decided was for your own good, whether you understood it or not. You never got to make any of your own decisions.  At best, you might get an allowance but even then, your entertainment choices were regulated.

Same thing at school.  Class subjects, length of class, rules of behavior, what to eat, what to wear . . . all determined by your “betters” on your behalf.

Living under Liberalism is like being a permanent 12 year old.  I resented it then, and I resent it now.

Joe Doakes

Years ago – when I was still sorting out the details of my political worldview – a very left-of-center acquaintance described society as “like a big family – with mom and dad watching out for the kids”.

And then I realized – while I had some problems with some conservatives, I could never, ever be a “progressive”.

SCENE:  A group of people are sitting in a cafe in south Minneapolis.  

Harland BERG and a few other people sit around tables, absently drinking coffee and reading the Minneapolis Star when Oscar KJEDELIG walks into the room.  

KJEDELIG:  We need to prevent Germans from caucusing at the Farmer-Labor Party caucuses next week.

BERG:  Er…Germans?

KJEDELIG:  Yes!  Germans follow a crazy dictator who wants to bring world war.

BERG : Well, some certainly do.

KJEDELIG:  “Look at this book!  (He waves a mimeographed copy of a pamphlet entitled “All Germans Want To Start A War”, by…well, it’s hard to tell who wrote it).  Read it and you’ll know everything.

BERG:  Like you do?

KJEDELIG:  Of course.

BERG:  Well, I do speak the language, and did study a whole hell of a lot about Germany and the Germans, and I happen to know that the desire to start a world war is correlated with Germans who live in places where the Nazi Party is in control.  Germans living in Canada, Australia, Chile, and especially places like the Dakotas, Montana, New Ulm Minnesota and so many other places have absolutely no correlation with Germans who want to kjill us.

In fact, we can test it now.  (BERG turns to Will HEINRICH, a first-Generation German immigrant sitting at the next table).  (BERG switches to German) “Hey, da, Willi – wollten Sie eine Weltkrig anizufangen, und “untermench” umzubringen?”

HEINRICH:  Solche quatsch!   Ich habe dreiβig Jahre in Amerika gewohnen!  Ich war im Groβer Krieg im Amerikanischen Heer!

BERG:  So there you have it.  Not that I know anything about Germans.

KJEDELIG:  That’s not what this (waves the pamphlet) says.

BERG:  The pamplhet is wrong.

KJEDELIG:  That’s not what the pamphlet says.

BERG:  It says it’s not wrong.

KJEDELIG:  It says anyone who disagrees is working for the Germans.

BERG:  Of course it does.

KJEDELIG:  Clearly you hate America.

BERG:  Clearlly

And SCENE:

Apropos nothing.

MInnesota’s motor vehicle licenseing and registration system – MNLARS – is years behind schedule, cost nearly 50 million dollars to unsuccessfully build…

…and will need nearly that much to get working.

Maybe:

The system dubbed MNLARS was already years behind schedule and nearly twice its original $48 million budget when it launched this summer. But problems with the mainframe have caused delays in delivering license tabs and titles and frustrated car dealerships with once simple transactions.

Top project managers said Wednesday they need another $43 million to get MNLARS on track. Dana Bailey from Minnesota’s Information Technology Services says that will allow the state to fix bugs and correct major issues by this summer.

It currently takes months to get registrations and licenses processed.  If you’re lucky.

Im sure this time they’ll get it right.

Minnesota’s state IT has always been iffy.  Under Mark Dayton, it’s gotten much, much worse.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

 The US unemployment rate is the lowest in 45 years.  The US Black unemployment rate is the lowest ever.  Trump has invigorated the “animal spirits” to turn around the economy.  America is headed in the right direction.  Therefore . . .
Obama is getting back into politics.

You didn’t think it could last, did you?