Remember when the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Governor “Nanny” Evers’ lockdown?

And cheeseheads swarmed into bars, sans masks and social distancing, et avec about two months worth of socializing to catch up on?

Remember the carnage the Twin Cities’ media and Karen class predicted?

EIther will they, if they have anything to say about it:

There were 203 positives out of the total 7,589 test results, or 2.67%. That’s the fourth day in a row the rate was below 3%.

Testing had been above 10,000 daily since last Tuesday.

The state’s death toll is now 646. That’s down from Sunday’s report of 647; the state Department of Health Services (DHS) says a patient in Milwaukee County was counted twice.

The last time the state had no COVID-19 death reports was May 17.

I’ll bet a shiny new quarter that locked down (except for protesters) Minnesota gets and stays sicker than Wisconsin. 

And Iowa. 

And the Dakotas.  Both of ’em. 

And Florida. 

Any action on that bet, Progs?

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.

…I have gotten more furtive, almost samizdat, questions from liberal/progressive friends of mine about buying and carrying firearms than ever before. Other “out” shooters (or in my case, gun rights activists, since all my guns fell into Mille Lacs in 2018 and I’m terrified of them anyway) have reported the same. And on Saturday, the line out the door at Bill’s Gun Shop in Robbinsdale, while admittedly exacerbated by “social distancing” requirements, was still an hour long. To get in the door. Not to mention finding a firearm, and going through the paperwork, if applicable.

The opportunity is there for law-abiding gun owners to win a whooole lot of the support we’re going to need to weather what may well be a challenging decade in Minnesota.

Stay tuned for more.

Republicans have the temerity to point out where DFLers are completely screwing the pooch.

Damn those Republicans:

I, myself, prefer “curb-stomp”.

North Carolina speedway declares its stock car race a “peaceful protest”:

A North Carolina speedway drew a crowd of more than 2,000 spectators in defiance of the state’s coronavirus restrictions after declaring the race a “protest.”

The governor’s office had warned Ace Speedway in Elon earlier this week that a crowd of more than 25 would violate the state’s Phase 2 coronavirus restrictions.

But news outletsreport that more than 2,000 attended a race Saturday night. A sign from management outside the speedway said, “This Event is held in Peaceful Protest of Injustice and Inequality Everywhere.”

That might be what I need to do to have that NARN Tenth Anniversary party.

Minneapolis CIty Council president Lisa Bender thinks having something worth protecting is…

…well, you know how this goes by now:

Minneapolis is Maoist.

There’s really nothing else to be said.

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…

NPR’s Mara Liasson, over the weekend, observing the anniversary of D-Day. Or, more accurately, “observing” the anniversary of “D-Day”, really.

When talking with progs about “Anti”-Fa – a group whose origins were as the Communist version of the Nazi “Brownshirts”, and nothing else – I’ve found “progs” (and “elite” media types like Liasson fall out into two camps:

• They judge the book by its cover and nothing more; “Antifa is anti-fascist! That’s a good thing!”. Comprehending this level of see/hear/speak-no-evil ignorance is like looking at a tornado for the first time; you’ve heard about ’em, you’re read about ’em, but they’re incomprehensible when you see ’em in person.
• They think the idea of Big Left having an army of thugs is a necessary evil – or a necessary good, depending on the relative level of depravity.

I’m going to guess Liasson, cocooned in the DC area, is the former.

The DFL bobbleheads who run the Twin Cities? Much more mixed.

To: Governor Walz and the Minnesota DFL
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant who passed College Biology
Re: Help me underdstand this

Governor Walz

So let me get this straight. According to you;

Covid19 is a lethal epidemic.

Attending protests to seek the re-opening of the state during the middle of the pandemic threatens grandma and, since “essential workers” will bear the brunt of any outbreak, likely racist as well.

But when one is attending mass demonstrations, even ones involving violence and property damage, against a politically-acceptable cause, or attending a funeral in a packed church full of un-masked people, it’s utterly acceptable from an epidemiological standpoint.

Unless there’s tear gas involved. Because then, Covid is a deadly pandemic.

Remembering, as always, that y’all are the “party of science”, not febrile superstition, yessireebob.

That is all.

Business gurus are excited that working from home will become The New Normal, everyone will embrace it, and it’ll be great.
I wonder about weird things like the Americans with Disabilities Act.
If I were in the office, I would have a sit-stand desk and ergonomically correct chair, with my keyboard positioned at the proper height to avoid a repetitive motion injury that results in a workers comp claim.
If I’m working from home, doing the employer’s work on the employers time, shouldn’t I be sitting at the employers desk? Aren’t they supposed to supply me with the correct equipment and if they don’t, can I make a workers comp, disability or discrimination claim?
We’ve all been good sports til now, working on a laptop at the kitchen table.  As we realize it’s just a scam,  that we are in no danger,  the goodwill will fade.  The transition will not be as easy as they think.
Joe Doakes 

Perhaps. The ADA wrangling that Joe is talking about is going to put a lot of lawyers’ kids through school.

That being said, my home office is a home-made stand/sit desk (hacked Ikea parts, with a bar stool for when I don’t feel like standing), five monitors on two computers, and everything else I need. It’s like a private corner office. The only thing I miss is – and I mean this sincerely – my co-workers.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking along University Avenue, looking unsuccessfully for “white supremacist” graffiti. Distracted, he misses Avery LIBRELLE, who is roaming the streets with a cell phone, reporting people who aren’t socially-distanced enough to the governor’s snitch line. They nearly run into each other.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Uh, hey, Avery…

LIBRELLE: It’s time for cities to de-fund the police!

BERG: Huh. Seems…illl-advised.

LIBRELLE: It’s high time we did it! It’s the only way to cure systemic racism.

BERG: Right. And deaths from house fires will stop when cities abolish fire departments.

LIBRELLE: We’ll come back to that.

BERG: Huh. Hey, what could go wrong?

LIBRELLE: Camden, New Jersey did it! In 2012! And guess what, Merg? Crime fell!

BERG: Yep. It “fell” because in 2012, it was literally the most dangerous city in the US, of any size. A city of about 77,000 people in 2010 – about the size of Fargo or Duluth – it had 69 homicides. You do the math…

LIBRELLE: Hey…

BERG: Sorry, my bad. I’ll do the math. That’s a homicide rate well over 100 per 100,000 – triple that of Detroit.

LIBRELLE: And guess what, Merg? Crime has fallen!

BERG: Along with the entire rest of the US. And it’s “fallen” to 31 per 100,000. Which is, if it were a city over 200,000, would make it the fifth most dangerous city in the US, after Saint Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It’d be tied with Kansas City.

And they do all that magic with a “re-organized” police force double the size of the old one .

LIBRELLE: (Has become distracted) Hey – is that a white supremacist I see over there? With an assault rifle?

BERG: It’s a city road crew worker with a jackhammer.

LIBRELLE: I”d better see what Vox.com says about it…

BERG: Er…about crime?

(But LiIBRELLE has wandered away already)

And SCENE

Watching Mayor Trudeau crying with all the convincing grace of a rented mourner over the casket of George Floyd, at the not-remotely-socially-distanced funeral (violating the Mayor’s own directives, after a week during which he abandoned a fifth of the city to looters, reigned over press conferences that looked like outtakes from “Reno 911”, got caught like a deer in the headlights when asked what his “plan” was, got bailed out by the marginally-less-incompetent State administration, blamed the destruction (accompanied as it was by thick layers of left-sympathetic graffiti) on nearly nonexistent “White Supremacists” (who managed to somehow leave a thick layer of leftist graffiti and leave an amazing number of clearly labeled “black owned” stores more or less unscathed), I have to wonder…

,..is there some level of unintentional comedy below which the voters of the City of Minneapolis won’t go?

To: Midtown Global Market
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Cancel This

In response to the “revelation” that one of the Holy Land Deli’s employees – the daughter of the owner, himself an immigrant and inspirational story – had some “racist” social media in her past (as in, years ago, while a teenger) you canceled the Holy Land’s lease in your Midtown Marketplace building, at Lake and Chicago, effective immediately

I’m going to guess if you went through the social media feeds of every single employee in your building who grew up in the era of South Park and Idiocracy, you’ll fine something regrettable.,

Speaking of regrets? While I’ve been a fan and customer of Midtown Market ever since it opened, I will never spend another dime there as long as you follow through on this absurd, selective, and by all appearances grudge-driven “cancellation” of the Holy Land space.

I urge you to reconsider forthwith. This is the lowest form of cultural cowardice, I won’t reward it with my time or money, and I’ll be urging everyone I know to do the same when they are able to get out and start spending money again.

M Berg
The Midway

My permit to carry expires in July.  I finished the class May 19th and
called the Sheriff for drop-off instructions on the 22nd.  Sorry, you
have to make an appointment to drop off your renewal application. 
Earliest date is June 9th.

Just called me today (June 3rd).  They have to re-schedule. They’ll be
on lock-down June 9th, I won’t be able to get into the building to drop
off the paperwork.  Soonest I can come is June 26th.

Seriously?  Look, it’s just dropping off paperwork, there’s nothing to
it.  I’ve had a permit to carry for years, my record is clean, it’s
utterly straight-forward.  Why can’t the paperwork be dropped off by
mail, or by email?  If I can’t come into the building, why can’t staff
come out for curbside service like Applebee’s?  Why is it so difficult
for government to do their jobs?

It’s almost as if Sheriff Fletcher is taking advantage of the Covid
crisis and the Floyd riots to intentionally make it difficult for people
to get their permits.  Which is weird, because I never got that vibe
from him before.  The last time he was involved with permitted carriers,
it was to offer us training which was controversial (because he used the
list of permit holders to invite us) but sensible (because if you’re
going to be carrying, you ought to be practicing).  It’s just weird.

Word to the wise – if your permit to carry is up soon, start the renewal
early!

Joe Doakes

Urban pols are not, as they say, wasting thecrisis.

…and I’ll leave plenty of room for those of you who are.

But as re Keith Ellison taking over the prosecution of the officers involved in the George Floyd case, I can’t help but think the following:

Hot Potato: Mike Freeman just got the most controversial case in his misbegotten career off his plate. He can’t help but be relieved to get this “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” monstrosity off his docket.

Priorities For starters, Ellison’s not trying the case personally – the head of his trials division is.

On the other hand, the MN Attorney General’s office, under a fifty-year-long series of DFL occupants (Ellison, Lori Swanson, Mike Hatch, Skip Humphrey and Warren Spannaus), has basically turned into a Better Business Bureau with guns, and a 1-800-ASK-GARY for political non-profits looking to harass businesses into compliance with their pet policies. I’m not gonna say the MNAGO doesnt have the expertise to prosecute a shoplifter caught on camera – but it’s not exactly been their front foot for the last, oh, couple generations or so.

I’m gonna guess the state’ll be paying a lot for “consultants” on this case.

A Charge Or Two Too Far: So let’s take a look – via my admittedly non-lawyer perspective – at the three charges. I’ll add emphasis to what I – again, a non-lawyer – think the “beef” is.

Murder in the Second Degree:

Whoever does either of the following is guilty of murder in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 40 years:

(1) causes the death of a human being with intent to effect the death of that person or another, but without premeditation

[(2) relates to drive-by shootings – clearly not applicable]

Subd. 2. Unintentional Murders. Whoever does either of the following is guilty of unintentional murder in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 40 years:

(1) causes the death of a human being, without intent to effect the death of any person, while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense other than criminal sexual conduct in the first or second degree with force or violence or a drive-by shooting; or
[(2) relates to killing people who’ve taken out restraining orders]

Now, let’s look at Murder in the Third Degree

(a) Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than 25 years.

[(b) relates to selling drugs to someone who dies of an overdose – not applicable here – Ed]

Here’s Manslaughter in the Second Degree.

 A person who causes the death of another by any of the following means is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both:

(1) by the person’s culpable negligence whereby the person creates an unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another; or [several sections related to actions that don’t apply – the statute is linked, holler if you disagree – Ed]

So – knowing what we know now, what do you think is going to fly beyond a reasonable doubt?

That:

1. The officers intended to kill Floyd while committing a felony offense – which would involve proving that “doing their jobs” was a felony? Or
2. Unintentionally killed Floyd while committing an eminently dangerous act? You could say kneeling on someone’s neck might be eminently dangerous, and I might agree 100%, but qualified immunity – the doctrine that if one government employee gets away with something, they all get away with it – and the tactic is not completely outlandish, if discouraged, in police circles, might be a problem, here.
3. The officers were culpably negligent and created an unreasonable (i.e., would fail to convince a jiury) risk.

The usual caveats apply: case law colors how statues are applied, and I’m not a lawyer.

But given that it appears to this non-lawyer that charging Chauvin with Second Degree murder was a) done to placate the crowd and b) find charges for the other three officers and c) looks like a very long shot, I have to wonder if they aren’t banking on, in effect, making a political statement and not bothering with justice.

Politics First: Being entirely a puppet of “progressives” with deep pockets, you knew Ellison was going to have to bump up the charges to…well, whatever he could get away with. The party he answers to needs to have a ritual stoning, or some other red meat to throw its constituents and, ideally, beat Republicans over the head with in the fall…

…without actually having negative consequences for the November elections.

Ellison, himself as graceful and fluid in his deflections as a German jazz band, telegraphed this during his initial presser, saying a trial would take “months”. Meaning – it’ll stay in the realm of political mud-throwing until after November, giving the DFL PR machine plenty of time to repair damage from the inevitable disturbances that erupt after Chauvin is acquitted for Second Degree murder (and, I can’t help but think, delaying that verdict until the depth of a Minnesota winter, deterring a lot of rioting).

A friend of the blog emails:

The Walker Art Center is just one of several venues and school systems that are just now discovering the benefits of privately funded security. They can hire their own private security, do background checks, control unwanted behavior a little better.

Wonder if there will be more support for private funding of other systems that take advantage of all of us- health insurance, school, etc?

I wonder if the cognitive dissonance will ever actually dawn on any of the parties involved?

By the way – I’m gonna guess that spending all day Tuesday putting black backgrounds on every bit of social and traditional media will fix it.

Children of Tim Walz and Ilhan Omar made their sympathies known bright and early last week.

Isra Hirsi, daughter of Rep. Omar, tweeted out calls for ‘supplies’ for rioters. Called on it by Andy Ngo, she reverted to virtue-signaling:

Now, I can possibly cut Hope Walz a little slack. Make no mistake, she annoyed the crap out of me during the election; she spent a lot of time on Twitter dunking on her father’s opponents; when called out, she responded to the effect of “what, you’re attacking a high school kid for supporting her father?” So she’s definitely angling for a career as a professional feminist, and maybe Amy Klobuchar’s PR flak.

But she’s gotten some flak for this tweet:

And she’s not wrong. She was, in fact, relating facts; the National Guard doesn’t come sliding down a fire poll and jump into their Hummers and race to the scene when the governor gets on the radio – as some thought they did.

I’ll cut Walz – the younger, anyway – a little slack.

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s dad was a cop.  I wonder what he thinks, seeing what his son has let the city come to.
Businesses at the intersection of Como, Front, and Dale Street, a mile or so from Mitch’s house. Sign says: “RIP George Floyd, BLM, minority-owned.”

Hoping to be eaten last is not a winning business strategy. But it’s all that’s left in St Paul.

Joe Doakes

That’s what occurred to me last Thursday, watching “black-owned”, “minority-owned” or, in some absurd cases, “community owned” businesses frantically post themselves to throw their white neighbors under the bus (not always successfully – Mexican restaurants in Minneapolis looked particularly hard-hit).

When the Irish underclass in New York City – themselves indentured servants, or descended from them – brutalized black slaves and freedmen…

When the serfs of Russian Eastern Europe, themselves slaves in all but name, terrorized and murdered their Jewish neighbors…

When the “white trash” of the deep south and all over the country – a pretty hopeless underclass even before the Civil War – joined the Klan…

When Germans decided that “subhumans” – Gypsies, Gays, the disabled, Slavs, and of course Jews – were a useful kick toy to exorcise their anger after the miseries of World War 1, Versailles and back-to-back economic collapses…

When people in Los Angeles took our their rage at a catastrophically unjust system on…themselves…

…in no case did they get any more justice, more freedom, more prosperity, more equality. Just the opposite, in fact. “Passing injustice on to others to get more justice for oneself” is batting .000 through all of history. At best it’s a record of horror and misery; at worst, it consolidates power in the hands of those who benefit from horror and misery (see “demigogues”).

Freedom, justice and equality aren’t like toilet paper aisles, with a finite supply to be doled out, or fought over, with haves and have nots. They are a store that can be – needs to be – continually added onto.

Anger is justified. It can be a powerful motivator. And one thinks you, pliural, would have figured this out after 2016, where leading with hatred and oppression got answered with people reacting to being hated and oppressed, to vote for a president you all find hateful and oppressive…

…are you seeing a pattern here, yet?

For those of you in the “Urban Progressive Privilege” set who are trying to spread the injustice around, rather than eliminate it? You think you’re helping?

See the list above.

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.

Police and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) deal with a lot of people in crisis – including various medical crises, exacerbated or caused by drugs, alcohol, mental illness, or physical pathologies.

Combining the stress of a contact with police, the medical episode and other contributing factors can cause all sorts of problems, some of them potentially fatal:

• Excited Delirium – a physical condition involving, essentially, the brain and body speeding out of control. It sounds fun – I thought I was in an excited delirium when I met the Bangles. But no, it’s deadly serious.
• Positional Asphyxia – where someone is in, or is being restrained in, a position where they can’t breathe – frequently because their chest is constrained from moving. When combined with the other effects of high stress, the blood becomes “acidotic“, which can quickly lead to cardiac arrest.

A standard method of dealing with Excited Delirium and Positional Asphyxia, while detaining and maintaining physical control over someone, is to turn them on their side. It’s easy enough, relatively, to maintain physical control – but their chest can expand, their diaphragm can expand and contract the lungs which, with someone in crisis, helps bring down the blood acids that lead to Acidosis, lowering the risk of cardiac arrest.

Or at least, that was what the Minneapolis Police Department was taught by Hennepin EMS, the paramedic service for Hennepin County, which helped train Minneapolis cops in basic first aid and other medical techniques used to stabilize people in crisis, even when they needed to be detained an controlled.

And for cases where more intervention is needed, some paramedics use a drug called ketamine. it’s a sedative, used in operating rooms for starting general anaesthesia – but it works just fine for sedating someone in a crisis, letting them breathe and recover while de-stressing, physically as well as mentally. Hennepin EMS was the first paramedic agency in the country to use Ketamin to sedate people in medical emergencied, along with about a third of all EMS agencies in the US. It’s a “very safe drug that works quicker [in his experience] than anything else”, says my source.

But – says my source – the article, the inevitable raft of subsequent lawsuits and regulatory investigations resulted, in my source’s words, in some EMS medics “…being spooked. As an agency, we were less likely to administer optimal treatments.”

It’s also a component in some “date rape” drugs – which we’ll come back to.

Hennepin EMS trained Minneapolis cops – and used Ketamine to de-escalate medical crises.

That is, until just about two years ago.

That’s when a story came out in the Star Tribune, by Andy Mannix, entitled “At urging of Minneapolis police, Hennepin EMS workers subdued dozens with a powerful sedative“.

A source formerly located in Hennepin EMS, speaking on condition of anonymity, tells me the Mannix article got pretty much every substantive fact about the use of Ketamine wrong (“He spelled Hennepin right”, my source quipped).

But the damage was…well, not done. It began. Minneapolis broke its training arrangement with Hennepin EMS, and stopped the use of ketamine.

Breathing: Fast forward to Memorial Day, 2020, and the infamous encounter outside Cup Foods in South Minneaoplis.

The New York Times put together what my source calls an excellent video on the killing – including some camera angles and audio I hadn’t encountered before. My source says the Times did an “outstanding job”.

It’s distressing, but worth a watch.

And as you do, notice – Floyd was clearly having a medical emergency. He was a big guy, so having his wrists cuffed already restricted his breathing. His claustrophobia was self-stated – but as a 6’5 guy (Floyd was 6’6) the thought of being wedged into one of those passive-aggressively cramped little police cruisers makes me a little panicky all by itself. Stress on top of medical crisis – strikes one and two.

And then officers Chauvin and Moua arrived, pulled Lloyd out of the back of the car, and commenced kneeling on his neck and back – seriously impairing his breathing.

Some wannabe social media doctors have missed the point, borrowing lessons from Heimlich Maneuver training and claiming that since Floyd could say “I can’t breathe”, he could breathe.

But, my source relates, it wouldn’t matter, if the killer symptom – acidosis, which Floyd was unable to ventilate – was leading to a cardiac arrest.

One of the officers figured it out, asking Officer Chauvin if they might roll Floyd onto his side – which Chauvin rejected, keeping Floyd under his knee until EMS arrived.

By which point Floyd was well past mere “crisis” – unresponsive, apparently acidotic, sliding toward the cardiac arrest that was reported by the EMS when they reached 36th and Park – mere blocks from Cup Foods.

Did a sloppy news story and a subsequent frenzy of litigation and regulation take a vital tool out of paramedics’ toolkits? One that might have prevented George Floyd’s death, and the orgy of misery that it led to?

The question “why does anyone need a thirty-round magazine?” is one BIg Gun Control likes to throw around among the uninformed.

To them, there is no valid answer.

As Minneapolis and Saint Paul sloooowly start bundling the last of our “Anti”-Fa rioters up and sending them back to college for summer term, it’s worth noting that the grabbers are wrong of course. There’s a pretty solid justification.

I’m going to answer you with a question. three, actually.

First: are you ever going to be attacked by someone who wants to kill you, then and there? If you answer “I have no idea“, that’s a perfectly valid, honest answer. Violent attacks – robberies, kidnappings, rapes, aggravated assaults, spree killings, terror attacks – are exceptionally rare. Rarer still if you have no criminal record, don’t associate with criminals, and don’t work in a business where a lot of criminals are part of the clientele. That accounts for the vast majority of people.

Not a single person who gets robbed, kidnapped, raped, suffers a home invasion, owns a business near a riot flashpoint, or is at a location where a spree killer decides to stage their blaze of glory, woke up that morning thinking “I bet I’m going to be the target of a violent incident today!“ Did they?

Second: if the person decides to attack you with the lethal force we mentioned above, and you decide to defend yourself, how hard is it going to be the end the threat to your life?: impossible to predict, right? Many robberies, assaults and rapes, and even a few spree killings , have been ended by a good guy pulling out a gun, with no shots fired. Sometimes an attacker falls over unconscious, or dead, after a punch to the face. On the other hand there are records of people who’ve been shot 20 times and still had the strength to shoot, stab or hit before they bled out. I know one story of a woman who barricaded herself and her kids in an attic during a home invasion; when the guy broke into the attic, she shot at him six times at a range of 2 feet, hitting them five times in the face and head – and he lived without a lot of complications ( other than a lengthy prison sentence). Alcohol, drugs and mental illness all affect this as well – drunk people are harder to deter from doing stupid things; people who are extremely high may not experience pain, even pain from a gunshot wound. There are cases of people who were very, very high who never noticed they’d been shot until they bled to death.

So the question is: how many shots (if it’s a gun you choose) will it take to stop one person from following through on trying to murder you? The answer, given the evidence we have seen above, is “0 to 20 shots – maybe”.

Bear in mind that, under stress, almost nobody hits their target with every shot. Even at close range. Even if you practice shooting a lot (although that helps) the police, in self-defense situations, hit with an average of about one shot in every six. Put another way, the police fire an average of 17 shots to end an engagement.

So – you don’t know how many hits you’re going to need to end a lethal or threat to you (or your family, or innocent bystanders), and you don’t know how many shots that you fire are going to hit the person who is trying to kill you.

That’s with one attacker.

Which brings us to the third question

Third: how many people will be trying to kill, Rob, attack, rape or kidnap you?: The scenarios above are predicated on one attacker. Can you predict how many people are going to attack you?

Before you answer, think of this past week. You’re a shopkeeper who runs afoul of a band of looters, a homeowner whose home some group decides to invade.

The riots have those scenarios front-and-center but even in “normal” times, terrible things can come in groups. In Saint Paul a few years back, there was a series of home invasions. Four people would break into a house, violently subdue any occupants who were present, and take what they wanted. Nobody died in that series of incidents – but other home invasions do lead to murder, almost always murder of unarmed people.

Remember – none of the victims woke up that morning thinking “I bet I’m going to have a violent home invasion today”.

Now – if you hear somebody kick in your door in at midnight, ask yourself – how many of them are there? Are they armed? Are they drunk or on some sort of mind altering substance that warps their perception of risk, danger, and/or pain? How will they react to someone resisting (or not resisting)?

You are not going to know. All you know is that there is a potentially lethal threat to your life down there. Maybe the sound of a pistol racking up will send all of them scampering from your house. Or maybe the sight of one of them falling over, gushing blood after you shoot one of them will send them running.

Or maybe you pull out your six shooter, and fire all six shots of the first attacker you see – leaving you holding an empty revolver while robbers two, three, and four come at you with baseball bats, ice picks and a shotgun.

So the answer to your question is “When we are responsible for defending ourselves, our families and our community from a violent threat to our lives and we can’t predict who is going to carry out that attack, how many of them there will be, and what it will take to deter/stop them, we want a magazine that is less likely to run out of ammunition before the attacker runs out of attack”.

I hope that answers your question.

A friend of the blog who fled Saint Paul just in time writes:

this msg is making the rounds of the S.MPLS progressive/arts set

Per Jon Collins at MPR News- “South Minneapolis: I know this sounds crazy. But it’s 2020. And I’m working on story now about white supremacists coming to Minneapolis to foment race war under cover of the protests. I need your help, and your friends help. Please refer anyone with real, credible info (not rumor or speculation) or sources to me at (I’m gonna redact that)

What the heck – let’s give this a shot:

 Mr. Collins,

I’m Mitch Berg.  I’m  a talk show host at WWTC-AM in Eagan, and I write the blog “Shotinthedark.info”.  

Last week you put out a call to your listener mailing lists, looking for confirmed sightings of “white supremacists”.  

I’m genuinely curious – did you find anything?

While I am a very overt conservative (I went from Bob Collins’ Christmas Card list to…well, not on it over the past few years), I also spent time covering radical groups of all stripes back when I was in the mainstream media.  

And while I realize this is very unlikely, I’d like to invite you on my show (Saturday, 1-3PM) to talk about your findings.   Because it’s everyone’s city. 

Thanks, and stay safe

Mitch Berg
Host, WWTC-AM

Given that I saw a lot of “AmeriKKKa” and “Destroy the 1%” graffiti, but not a single swastika or “14 words” reference, I’m thinking the Twin Cities either got the most inept “white supremacists” in the history of bigotry, or they were the most ingenious – fiendishly tricking a whole city full of leftists into doing the job for them.  

In which Mike Freeman drops a banana peel in front of Keith Ellison while saying “Hey, join the team,” and chuckles as Ellison eagerly rushes in.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/05/31/keith-ellison-prosecutions-george-floyd

Freeman is a jerk but he’s also an experienced prosecutor.  Remember the Somali cop who shot the little White woman in the alley?  He got convicted of 3rd degree and got 12 years, nothing close to what the mob wanted. Freeman survived that fiasco and he intends to survive this one.  
He’s read the autopsy report.  He knows Floyd didn’t die from lack of air (obviously not, or he couldn’t have been talking).  Freeman knows the victim was stoned and had other medical issues that may have been exacerbated by the arrest, which might possibly make the officer careless or negligent, but Freeman knows there’s no way to make Murder 1 stick and that’s the only thing that will satisfy the mob.
So how’s he get the mob off his back?  He asks Keith Ellison for help.  Ellison – who has no prosecution experience – will now “take the lead.”  Which means whatever goes wrong with the case from here on out, Freeman points at Ellison and says “Don’t ask me, he’s in charge.”
Early in my career, I spent a few years as a prosecutor.  A criminal case isn’t won by clever speeches or Twitter comments, it’s a s***load of hard work.  Ellison has no idea.  He’s being set up to take the fall when the cop walks.  Freeman will shrug and carry on.  Walz will remind us what a great job he’s done on Covid.  Charlie Foxtrot all around.
Joe Doakes

More on this later today.