DFL-endrosed gubernatorial candidate Erin Murphy commented on the Thurman Blevins shooting on Facebook.

Other-peoples-money quote:

He ran, yes. He was armed, yes. He reportedly was drunk and had fired shots, yes. All of those things might have led to his death, but none of them had to. I don’t understand why calmly starting a conversation wasn’t an option or wouldn’t have been a better course.

There is something about the whole “Shots Fired” thing that tends to make cops a little edgy.  Also everyone else – provided they’re in the real world, and not on Facebook, opining for a tame, partisan crowd.

(And am I the only one thinking “so why isn’t ‘starting a calm conversation with gun owners, rather than advocating confiscations and wholesale crushing of civil liberties, not an option for you, Miss

Just a few days ago in South St. Paul a mentally ill man was reported to be threatening people at a group home. Officers arrived and engaged with the man. He too had a gun, he actually fired it at and shot the officers, injuring two of them. They subdued him not with a hail of bullets but with other tools, their words, their determination to find a better solution. Those officers— Todd Waters, Derek Kruse, Dennis Brom and Julie Bishop, are heroes who found humanity in what must have been the worst and scariest situation in their lives.

The message?   Cops should be willing to get shot first, then ask questions.

Is there a conversation to be had about use of police force?   About the limits or shape of qualified immunity?  Absolutely.

Is Erin Murphy the one to be lecturing the cops about it?

I don’t know much about Thurman Blevins. Had the officers approached the situation differently he might be in jail right now for firing his weapon into the sky and ground, or could be sitting on that curb with his family enjoying a morning off. I don’t know.

I’m no cop fanboy – but this may be the dumbest bunch of monday-morning quarterbacking I’ve ever seen.

The FBI is using the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source of investigative information:

In a letter obtained by Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., says the FBI has “admitted to working with the SPLC,” in a development he describes as “surprising and worrisome.”

“This is surprising and worrisome, as the SPLC is known to use its platform in order to denigrate and disparage certain groups by labeling them ‘hate groups,’” he said.

He said that groups such as the Christian Family Research Council (FRC) have been labeled a hate group, while members of “Antifa” — a broad collaboration of left-leaning, anti-fascist activists — have not been given such a label. He added that Floyd Corkins, who shot an FRC employee, later said he targeted the group as the SPLC had labeled it an antigay group.

But don’t you dare say the FBI has been politicized. That would be treason…

… Among the idiot – American community.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is what happens when amateurs try to play real estate speculator.  The City’s job is to provide police and fire protection, safe water, sanitary sewer, serviceable streets.

Normally, I’d say “Stick to what you’re good at” but with the St. Paul City Council . . . .

The Saint Paul City Council are sort of like the 1980 Tampa Bay Buccaneers of politics.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is shopping for guitar strings at a local music store.  Engrossed in thought, he doesn’t notice as Mylussa SILBERMAN, National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau correspondent – walks up behind him

SILBERMAN:  Mr. Berg.

BERG:  (startled, a little disappointed) Oh, hi, mijzz…

SILBERMAN:  Criminals are going to start printing 3D guns.  And the NRA seems to think it’s a wonderful thing.

BERG:  Let me get this straight.  You believe a criminal – a moron who thinks it’s better to rob someone than to earn the money – is going to run over to a pal’s house who has a very high-end 3D printer – costing several thousand dollars, by the way – and leave you with a gun that fires one, count it, one single shot, with an effective accurate range of about the inside of a phone booth, that is about the size of a cordless drill:

…that might have a service life of 10 rounds, and is loaded by removing the entire barrel to reload a single bullet   It’s actually slower to shoot that an flintlock musket; I’d think that’d make you happy.

SILBERMAN:   But the plans can be downloaded!  For free!

BERG:   Sure.  And for an overall cost greater than going to the store and buying 2-6 high-quality pistols or even rifles loaded from magazines,  with service lives of tens of thousands of rounds.  Or several such guns purchased from the illegal black market.   Not to mention infinitely higher than stealing a functional, quality gun.

SILBERMAN:  The NRA supports anyone being able to print a gun!

BERG:  Wait – I thought they were lobbyists for the big bad gun industry?  Wouldn’t this undercut them?

SILBERMAN:   Moving right along – this means people  can print AR15s!

BERG:   You can print the lower receiver – which is sort of the like the frame of a car, the part that all the other parts get attached to.  And they’re already available for well under $100, in a form that’ll actually function for years without meltinig and wearing out.

SILBERMAN:   Well, we can’t use that.

BERG:  Of that I have no doubt.    I didn’t know you played guitar.

SILBERMAN:  I don’t.  I’m here doing an article on cultural appropriation in music.

BERG:  Naturally.

And SCENE

I just found out who’s going to be the opening act on the Dixie Chicks 2020 tour of Holiday Inn lounges and fourth tier casinos:

While I have personally been ambivalent about some of the NRA is activities in recent years (at the leadership level), the recent boogieman rhetoric against the group prompted me to pull the trigger and become a a life member, over the past month or so – something I resisted for years.

My only regret about the timing is that I couldn’t do the same again.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Something new for SITD – a movie review.

I almost skipped “The Greatest Showman” because the reviews were bad.  Critics hated it.  P.T. Barnum wasn’t cool.  The film focused on the wrong things.  They wanted it to be about racism, not circuses.  But I’m tired of being scolded for sins I didn’t commit and I’ve always enjoyed the circus so when I happened to be on an airplane where the film was available to watch on the seat-back screen, I dove right in.  I’m glad I watched it.  I recommend you watch it, too.

I don’t know much about Barnum’s personal beliefs and I really don’t care.  Every genius, every general, every giant had warts but that’s not why we remember them.  And sure, the film shows historical social disapproval of inter-racial dating, but that’s nothing new.  The plot device is “star-crossed lovers” and it’s as old as Pyramus and Thisbe, as classic as Romeo and Juliet, as popular as Showboat or West Side Story.  Get over yourselves, people, it’s just a movie and more importantly, it’s a lot of fun.  I particularly liked the “Come Alive” scene and the finale.  They show the circus that I remember when I was a kid and the magic came to town.

We could use a lot more of that in America, today.

Joe Doakes

I keep wondering if, much less when, the social pendulum is going to swing back the other way.

It just keeps swinging out toward “absurd”.

Actually, that’d be a fun blog project someday; trace the rise and fall of ideological intolerance over time.  Toxic Metastatic PC isn’t the first bout of it our culture has had, although it’s a doozy.

I started this blog 16.5 years ago – and one of the things I learned early on was that the key to making it work, day in, day out, through writers block and manic creative bursts, was to write to a schedule; whether it was a couple times a day or twice a week, just write, even – maybe especailly – if it was krep.

This past few months my cycle has been more “block” than “maniacially creative”.  It’s been a busy, exhausting couple of months for a variety of personal reasons – most of them very good, but pretty taxing.

I’ve been though the cycle often enough to know it’ll pass; I doubt I’ll ever feel the creative doldrums like i did in 2011, after throwing myself neck-deep into writing about the 2010 gubernatorial race and coming out completely exhausted.

But you know what they say – the first step is admitting you’re overstretched and exhausted!

Much more to come.

At least one donor has had enough of the U of M’s pathological suppression of conservative dissent:

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The people demanding a ban on plastic drinking straws are all young and hip.  They think it’d be easy to switch to paper straws and way cool.
Those of us who are old and unhip remember paper straws.  They collapsed when sucking a malt.  They got soggy and mashed in your mouth when drinking a Coke so you had to keep ripping the end off, making the straw shorter and shorter.  They were skinny and tasted bad.
But hey, bring back the past, by all means – trains and paper straws and bicycle-only-streets.  I can’t wait for buggy whips.
Joe Doakes

We’re getting a lot of the big innovations from the LBJ and McGovern era.  Why not paper straws.  And Cnevy Citations.

My band “Elephant In The Room” will playing Friday and Saturday at the Eagles in Stillwater

It’s the former Famous Dave’s.

We’ll be on from 8 to Midnight both nights.

Stop on out!

A friend of the blog writes:

So, when everyone starts bringing their lunch to work, will they ban private homes from having kitchens?

Of course it’s a California thing:

New city tech workers dreaming of dining in workplace cafeterias may soon face a harsh reality — going outside.

Two city legislators on Tuesday are expected to announce legislation banning on-site workplace cafeterias in an effort to promote and support local restaurants.

The measure, proposed by Supervisor Ahsha Safai and co-sponsored by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, would adjust zoning laws to ban workplace cafeterias moving forward, but would not be retroactive.

Government is the things we do to other people who can’t fight back, together.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Mueller may not be getting any closer to proving collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, but he’s definitely making progress on weaponizing American legal institutions.  That’s bad for the nation.

Mueller’s team seized client records belonging to Mark Cohen, Trump’s attorney.  Now Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, has given client records to CNN.  In the olden days, a lawyer who voluntarily revealed a client confidence would have been disbarred and shunned by the entire legal community, right and left.  Nowadays, Cohen and Davis are celebrated as heroes for making Trump look bad in the press.

That change would be bad enough, if I believed attorney-client confidences were gone.  But I suspect it’s a one-way change, same as Hillary skating away from consequences for mishandling classified material.  I suspect that in the new attorney-client confidentiality rules, the roles of the participants won’t matter, only their politics will matter.

If a Liberal makes a Conservative look bad, it’ll be grounds for a reward; if a Conservative makes a Liberal look bad, it’ll be a hanging offense.

That’s the long-term damage Mueller is doing to America.  He’s undermining confidence in our basic institutions that hold society together.  That’s dangerous because when ordinary people come to believe they have no recourse to justice through the legal system, they’ll start seeking justice outside the law.  And when the people who believe that are also the people bitterly clinging to their guns . . . .

Joe Doakes

But that plays into the protagonists’ hands, too

City of Santa Barbara votes to give jail time for straw buyers.

Hahaha. Just kidding

They voted to give jail time to restaurant workers who give straws to customers, passing an ordinance…

…that will allow restaurant employees to be punished with up to six months of jail time or a $1,000 fine for giving plastic straws to their customers.

The bill was passed unanimously last Tuesday, and covers bars, restaurants, and other food-service businesses. Establishments will still be allowed to hand out plastic stirrers, but only if customers request them.

Santa Barbara’s ordinance “is likely the most severe straw ban in the country,” according to Reason, but it’s far from the only straw ban. Seattle banned plastic straws earlier this month, mandating a a $250 fine for violators. Santa Barbara, however, has gone much further than Seattle — even aside from the harsher punishments its law imposes. Santa Barbara has banned not only plastic straws, but also compostable straws. Oh, and each individual straw counts as a separate infraction, meaning that if someone got busted handing out straws to a table of four people, he or she could end up facing years behind bars.

Presumably if the waitstaff are illegal immigrants or DREAMers there’ll be some sort of exemption.

A three judge panel of a Federal Circuit court – not just any federal circuit, but the Ninth – has ruled that the 2nd Amendment applies to law-abiding citizens carrying firearms for self-defense in public, and has reversed a Hawaii federal district court ruling clamping pre-Heller-style restrictions on citizens in Hawaii:

The ruling issued by a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, came a year after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule either way on the carrying of guns in public.

Two of the three 9th Circuit judges voted to reverse a decision by the U.S. District Court in Hawaii that state officials did not infringe on the rights of George Young, the plaintiff, in twice denying him a permit to carry a gun outside.

“We do not take lightly the problem of gun violence,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote in Tuesday’s ruling. “But, for better or for worse, the Second Amendment does protect a right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.”

Kavanaugh can’t get on the bench soon enough.

If you read a report of a hate crime, and it doesn’t involve unrelated witnesses, much less actual physical presence (to say nothing of physical contact), assume its a hoax first, then verify.

And, on verifying, almost invariably congratulate yourself on not being fooled!

I did that with this story. And most every one like it in the past 18 months.

It’s served me well.

…then I have to wonder who can?

…you see a “News” story on social media, and find yourself looking for a byline from “the Onion”or “Babylon Bee”, and you don’t see it, and you realize the real world is starting to become more like Facebook rather than the other way around.

Johnny Rotten – lead singer of the Sex Pistols – joins the Velvet Underground’s Mo Tucker among punk icons supporting Trump:

“What I dislike is the left-wing media in America are trying to smear the bloke as a racist, and that’s completely not true,” the 61-year-old said. “There’s many, many problems with him as a human being, but he’s not that, and there just might be a chance something good will come out of that situation, because he terrifies politicians.”

Mr. Lydon said Mr. Trump is like a “political Sex Pistol” whose purpose is to rattle the status quo. After co-host Piers Morgan described Mr. Trump as “the archetypal anti-establishment character,” Mr. Lydon added: “Dare I say, a possible friend.”

Back in the glory days of blogging, one of our sayings was “conservative is the new punk”.  In our society, the way it is today, standing for a fairly timeless establishment against an utterly temporal one certainly qualifies

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Story 1:

Some guy riding a bicycle in downtown Minneapolis at 11:30 at night.  Blows a red light, collided with a motorcycle and was struck by a car.

Plainly, the drivers of the motorcycle and car, being wanton spewers of carbon dioxide poisoning our Mother the Earth, were at fault for failing to recognize the moral superiority of the bicycle rider and to acknowledge his right to disregard the traffic laws governing lesser mortals

Story 2:

Some gal riding a bicycle in Stillwater weaves around the barrier and falls into the river when the lift bridge began to rise.

Plainly, the bridge operator and the pilot of the boat for whom the bridge was opening, being wanton spewers of carbon dioxide poisoning our Mother the Earth, were at fault for failing to recognize the moral superiority of the bicycle rider and to acknowledge her right to disregard traffic laws governing lesser mortals.

Plainly, there is a crisis in Minnesota.  When will Governor Dayton act??  When??

As biking has become more popular (especially in places like the Twin Cities, were perverse incentives drive a lot of people to bikes), it’s axiomatic that a lot of those new people will not know what they’re doing.

Drug companies are freezing prices.

Novartis’s chief executive, Vas Narasimhan, said during an earnings call with investors that the company had made the decision in June, amid escalating outrage over high drug prices. “We thought that was prudent, given the dynamic environment we’re currently in,” he said.

A spokesman for Novartis said the company notified the state of California, which has a new drug-price transparency law, of its decision in June, but the news was not widely known.

Who’d have thunk it?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Court of Appeals released its opinion (unreported, but available on the court website) in Hockenson v. State.  I find it troubling.

I grant there’s a difference between having a fundamental right in the first instance, and petitioning to have that right restored after commission of a crime.  But the explanation given by the Court of Appeals reveals an anti-gun mindset which explains why Second Amendment jurisprudence lags so far behind First Amendment cases.

The guy was 19 when he committed an assault and got 5 years of probation.  It’s been 15 years since the offense during which he completed his probation, served in the military, married, has a child and holds down a full-time job.  If anybody could be said to have ‘turned his life around,’ it’s this guy.  But since there are no set standards to determine “good cause” to restore your rights, the court is free to act on whim.

In this particular case, the trial court denied the request because the ‘violent facts surrounding the conviction do not demonstrate the maturity of judgment necessary for the court to find a significant level of comfort with restoring his rights.’  Well, duh.  He was a dumb kid.  He did a dumb thing. If you’re only going to look at what happened at the time of the crime, ignoring everything that has happened since, then nobody can ever have his rights restored.  The trial court’s rationale is idiotic but since there are no standards (and the judiciary is composed entirely of Liberals appointed by Democrats who carefully avoid setting standards that would ensure equal justice for all), the Court of Appeals lets the ruling stand.

It’s particularly galling to compare this case with Democrats’ insistence on freeing killers and restoring their rights, not because of anything the felon has done to turn his life around, but solely because they want to pump up the number of likely Democrat voters.

Joe Doakes

But Hockenson served in the military, is a shooter, and is raising his kids, so he’s probably Republican.  Not a priority.

As Kevin Williamson points out in The End Is Near – it’s really absurd that we give judges as much untrammeled authority as we do, since so many of them are idiots.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

 

The United States is heading for massive, mountainous, record-breaking deficits under the Trump Administration.  The nation’s reckless spending spree must be curtailed.

I have the solution.  For every illegal alien who enters the country, one student’s college loan is eliminated.  The cost to the taxpayers is about the same and they all vote the same way.

Or we could BUILD THE WALL.

Maybe we could pay unemployed Womens Studies majors to build the wall?

Maryland “progressives” – but I repeat myself – are shocked, shocked I tell you, that their proposed single payer healthcare system is going to be ruinously expensive…

…well, no.  That’s too charitable.  If they (or any “progressive” with integrity) would admit to shock, or even concern, I’d be subtly impressed.

No.  Maryland progs just want taxpayers to not think about it too hard:

This morning, the largest newspaper in the state, the Baltimore Sun, reports that Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services calculated that the state would have to levy a 10 percent payroll tax against every business and charge a $2,800 fee for every man, woman, and child in the state to raise the needed $24 billion a year.Kevin Harris, a spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous says that it’s “premature” to talk about what kind of taxes or fees would be raised to pay for the plan. (When would be a good time, then?)

Don’t read the bill ’til you’ve passed it!

Of course, progressivism is, as always, the triumph of ideology (and vestigial idealism) over experience:

This is pretty much what happened in Vermont. Democrats made the bold promises to voters that they would never have to worry about paying for health care ever again, promised to provide details later, won office, formed their commissions and study groups . . . and then when they actually had to translate their idea into a detailed plan, found themselves stunned by the costs and the tax increases that would be necessary to pay for it all. Maryland’s state government currently spends about $44 billion per year, so they would have to increase the state’s spending by 54 percent to enact Jealous’s plan. Of course, some experts, such as those at the Maryland State Medical Society, think enacting the plan could cost even more.

Of course, single-payer is a key part of the endorsed DFL gubernatorial candidates plans in this election cycle.  Vermont and Maryland’s experiences will be carefully excised in any discussions here in Minnesota.

New York’s new $15 minimum wage and mandatory leave benefits – dutifully parroted by Minneapolis and Saint Paul – are already having…

…well, exactly the effect conservatives predicted:

In explaining his decision to close following 28 years of high-volume business, owner Charles Milite told the New York Post, “The times have changed in our industry. The rents are very high and now the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees.”

Milite employs about 150 people at his breakfast, lunch, and dinner operation, which also puts him over the Affordable Care Act’s costly mandate that establishments with 50 or more employees provide health insurance.

The Coffee Shop is part of The Gotham City Restaurant Group, which also owns Flats Fix, the former employer of socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The 28-year-old Democratic congressional candidate recently told The New York Times that many of her fellow restaurant workers were uninsured, inspiring her to run for office.

And the inevitable end result?

Eventually, minimum wage laws and other prohibitive regulations will cause the world-renowned restaurant life in cities like New York, DC, and San Francisco to cease to exist. The staff skill levels will drop, the number of servers and bartenders will never be enough, and the only survivors will be fast-casual chains with low overhead and deep pockets.

New York’s new look will be vacant storefronts between an occasional Pret-a-Manger or the public restroom formerly known as Starbucks. But don’t worry. That charming, downtown studio apartment will still run about $5,000 per month for the privilege of proximity to all that culture.

Minneapolis and Saint Paul’s efforts to be little New Yorks will no doubt pay off – in all the wrong ways.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The government controls the lives of everyone living under its jurisdiction, so everyone in the community should have a voice in electing the government, right?

Even non-citizens.

Hey, what’s the problem?  Everyone residing in the community is affected by local government, we all have “skin in the game.”  Why should the accident of birthplace give citizens special privileges not afforded to resident aliens, border jumpers, students who overstayed their visas and even tourists?

However you got here, you ARE here, so you should have a say in the rules you’re living under.  Anything less would be un-American.

Joe Doakes

Take the Democrat approac to borders and the rights and privileges of citizenship to its logidal extreme and they really shouldn’t be barbering about Riussian “interference” in our elections, since the Russians have exactly the same rights as illegal Salvadorans have to steer our democracy.