That’s the sound of DFLers realizing they’re going to have to jam ten days worth of fraud into one evening.

And they’re not happy about it.

The 8th Circuit returned a decision in Carson v. Simon yesterday. The presser from the Minnesota Voters Alliance explains:

 The 8th Circuit reversed a lower court decision which authorized the Minnesota Secretary of State to accept ballots seven days after the election, and required an injunction against Simon for extending the statutory deadline for election day for receipt of absentee ballots. 

In our view, this was a scheme concocted by Secretary Simon in the first place, where he identified and encouraged his allies to file a lawsuit against him, knowing all along that he would enter into a consent decree with them just to circumvent the legislature and the will of the people.  We can not prove that of course, but in our view, that is exactly what happened.  

To sum it up:

1. “Progressive” “group” “files” a “suit” against a “progressive” Secretary of State.
2. The SOS “settles out of court”, signing a consent decree with his allies signed off on by a “progressive” judge.

Presto change-o. Law changed by executive fiat (under cover of a convenient bit of “litigation”), without any pesky “checks and balances” or “legislatures” getting in the way.

It’s an end-run around state law, and due process.

And it’s a foreword to what we can expect – well, expect much more of – if the Democrats win on Tuesday, or whenever the actual decision is announced.

The DFL PR nomenklatura are doing their best to obscure the facts:

Could Murphy have gotten anything about the story less right?

The problem isnt that Trump hasn’t condemned racism and “white supremacy”.

In fact, here we see him do it 38 times:

The problem is that it isn’t literally the first and last thing out of his mouth whenever he speaks, which Democrat messaging seems to assume puts it outside the attention span of the typical Democrat voter.

Which the partisan media is counting on.

And yes, the media is partisan.

Dear Governor Wallz.

Follow the science!

Joe Doakes

Joe is mistaking “science” – means of focused questioning, observation and analysis – with “science”, a set of memes and commandments designed to exhort compliance.

Common mistake.

I do “get” nostalgia.

My first radio station – KEYJ, which became KQDJ during my senior year of high school – was one of the formative experiences of my life. 

But sometime around 2000, it changed from a local middle-of-the-road station to a “computer in a closet” station relaying ESPN Sportsradio and the occasional high school sports event.  They moved the studio from above the drugstore on mainstreet to a nondescript suite in a strip mall downwind from a Walmart.  I don’t drop by to visit, because it’s not the station it was when I was 16.  It’s not a radio station anyone in 1980 would have recognized at all. 

The past is a keen, formative memory.  The present is a 10 year old PC passing along people jabbering about the NBA.   

If it disappeared tomorrow, the memory would remain.  The present wouldn’t be lamented at all. 

The CIty Pages – which was the last survivor of an endless stream of “alternative” weekly tabloids (Twin Cities Reader, Nightbeat, Cake, Buzz, and no doubt others) that used to sit in bins outside record stores, co-ops and cafes all over town – has closed, effective whoah, that was fast:

“Since City Pages revenue is 100% driven by advertisers and events—and those investments have dropped precipitously—there’s no reasonable financial scenario that would enable us to continue operations in the face of this pandemic,” Star Tribune Chief Revenue Office Paul Kasbohm said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we foresee no meaningful recovery of these sectors or their advertising investments in the near future, leaving us no other options than to close City Pages.”

City Pages will stop publishing in print and online immediately, according to a news release. The last print edition of City Pages will be distributed this week.
The closure eliminates all City Pages positions.

I come not to praise the City Pages, but to bury it. But fairness demands a little clarity.

The City Pages were the last survivor of what used to be a bumper crop of freebie tabloids that popped up in bins outside restaurants, co-ops, record stores and bars. There were a bunch – Nightbeat in the eighties, Twin Cities Reader in the eighties and nineties, joined by Cake and Buzz and a few others in the nineties. The field winnowed down to just the City Pages by about 2000.

In the eighties, it was where writers like David Brauer, Brian Lambert and James Lileks got their starts – indeed, it was where Lileks gave me my first legit-media plug, 33 years ago.

And for a few years, in the ’90s and early 2000s, City Pages did some great journalism. They did more, better long-form and investigative reporting than the Strib or PiPress, at their best, under editor Steve “Don’t even think about singing ‘Oh Sherry’ around me” Perry. It was biased to the left to a fault. But beneath all that, the reporting was otherwise generally solid. And Perry could go off the reservation; in about 1997, Perry was the first journo in the Twin Cities to write that the swelling push for carry permit reform in Minnesota hadn’t brought blood to the streets of a couple dozen other states, wasn’t going to bring it to Minnesota, either.

When Perry left in 2005-ish (to return as editor of the Soros-funded attack-PR site Minnesota Monitor, which became the Minnesota Independent, and distinguished itself in journalistic glory under neither guise), the City Pages slid and slid hard. For most of the past 10-15 years, the paper’s “journalism” has been at best risible hackery, or incompetent hackery, self-parodying hackery, or sloppy gurgitations of DFL chanting points or, when female conservative politicians were involved, creepy panty-sniffing.

If the City Pages had been its 1998 self, its collapse would have been something to mourn, maybe, for some reason other than the nostalgia local establishment journos have been venting about.

But the City Pages of the 21st Century has been not a shadow, but a mockery, of anything of real value that it may once have been.

Late pot party candidate left recording saying he was recruited by GOP to pull votes away from Angie Craig:

Y’know – sorta like the DFL did with Tom Horner in 2010.

OK, Strib – now do Ilhan Omar.

Q: “How far left will the radicals push Biden if he’s elected?”

A: As far as they need to. And then they invoke the 25th Amendment.

Governor Walz’ team of experts confidently predicted a Surge of Covid cases so large it would overwhelm hospitals. Patients would die on gurneys in hallways and parking lots, untreated. Bodies would lie in streets, uncollected. Everyone was at risk, from 6-month-old infants to 91-year-old seniors. 75,000 people would die, unless we ‘flattened the curve.’

To prevent that, the Governor declared a Peacetime Emergency and issued a Stay Home order which effectively suspended the United States Constitution, an act never before attempted in this country. Religious worship was banned. Political assemblies were banned. Jury trials were banned. Non-essential travel was banned. And non-emergency medical treatments were also banned, to keep hospital beds open for the Surge of Covid cases.

There was no Surge. Hospitals had on-going expenses for heat and lights, payroll, benefits and insurance amounting to nearly $1 million A DAY for the state’s largest medical providers, but no patients to pay those expenses. Medical providers are still scrambling to catch up.
Fairview Health is closing two hospitals in St. Paul – Bethesda (two blocks North of the Capital) and St. Josephs (downtown). The move will save the company money but it will cost the community hundreds of hospital beds and the entire psychiatric care unit. The company also is closing 14 primary care clinics in Minnesota and two in Wisconsin, a total of 900 jobs in all, hoping to slash expenses fast enough to keep the company alive.

Ramsey County is helping out. It’s leasing Bethesda Hospital for $1.2 million to use as a homeless shelter, December through May. Room, board, staffing and security for 100 homeless people will run about $66 per person per day, which is a pretty good rate (slightly cheaper than staying at the Motel 6 on I-94 and White Bear Avenue). The Board of Commissioners didn’t mention where that money was coming from.

To date, rounded to the nearest whole number, Covid has killed Zero percent of Minnesotans. The long-term costs of the Stay Home order have yet to be totaled up.

Joe Doakes

It’s a crisis not to waste. They’re doing a fine job of it – or so the polls tell us.

The Star-Tribune “Minnesota” poll coming out on Sunday will show Biden with an absurdly large lead in Minnesota.

12 points?

18 points?

Eleventy-Teen Points?

Doesn’t matter. The poll will make Minnesota look like a dead lock for Biden and the DFL.

Because as I’ve shown in the past, the closer a race actually is, the bigger the margin the Strib always shows for the DFL right before the election. It creates – accidentally or by design (you know where my money is) it creates a “bandwagon effect”, causing less-zealously partisan voters to stay home if they think “their” candidate has no chance.

So – how do we know the race in Minnesota actually is close?

Here’s how.

Some say Minnesota is Trump’s “great white whale” – his ego would be fed by flipping Minnesota for the first time in almost fifty years.

Perhaps. I don’t think there’s any reason ego and opportunity aren’t at work, here.

…it’s great to find Minnesota is the champion at something again.

Well, not “good”…:

More “notable”, I guess.

Read the whole thread.

The problem with democracy today is that just about half the voters are incredulous herd cattle who believe whatever they’re told, and one party makes damn sure they take advantage of it.

Biden says millions have died of covid.

OK, so he’s a guy with some early onset dementia.

What’s Kamala Harris’s excuse?

Poker players look for the other guys’ “tell,” a facial tic or mannerism that indicates the bid is a bluff. When they see the tell, they know he’s faking.

The security precautions to get into the doctor’s office include standing in line 6 feet apart wearing a mask and answering a bunch of questions. But they’re self-reported answers, unverified. No, I haven’t been out of the country, I don’t have a fever, I haven’t been in contact with anybody who has the deadliest virus known to man. What if I’m lying?

It reminds me of the pre 9-11 security precaution. The airlines used to ask did you pack your own bag? Did anyone ask you to carry anything on board? Has your bag been out of your control? No. But what if I’m lying?

Self-reported security. That’s the tell. It’s all fake. And they know it. So do you. So why do we put up with it?

Joe Doakes

Because you need the damn appointment or the load of groceries, and you just wanna get home and get back to work without a pack of murder hornets…er, Karens descending on you.

Standing on principle is time consuming and emotionally wrenching. Having no boundless supply of either, I pick my battles. I suspect we all do.

In a shocking late-breaking story, Roseville – a first-tier northern suburb of Saint Paul – has broken with its long-standing tradition of embracing and upholding racism, and has undertaken a bold stance:

It’s good to see cities swim against the current.

Courage.

Of course, I drove further, and on seeing the single coolest jungle gym I’ve ever seen in my life, something that actually made me want to be six years old again, I had to wonder…

…if their next bold stance would be against militarism, and phallocentric patriarchy.

Because you just know one of the Karens that’s taken the suburb over is going to go there, don’t you?

The media:

“The week before the election, Mike Pence is coming to a state that our polling says is supposed to be a blowout for Biden AND HAS BEEN EXPOSED TO COVID!

My hypothesis: “Progressive” politicians can say anything, no matter how outlandish or false, not only because they know the media will nearly never call them on it, but – more importantly – because they know people who are susceptible to voting for them are gullible, lacking in critical thinking skills, and so poorly-informed and in curious that they’ll never know better.

Data point: Alexandria “Tide Pod Evita” Ocasio Cortez claims President “disrespected” [1] her by calling her AOC.

Experiment: Does she make “AOC” a part of her public persona?

Observation: Why yes, she does! #Unexpected

Conclusion: AOC isn’t a gullible rube. She can merely count on anyone who takes her seriously to be a gullible rube.

[1] If you use “disrespect” as a verb, I dis-hear and dis-care-for, and have no respect for, anythingi else you have to day. Disrespect is an adjective.

During election season, I get lots of robocalls encouraging me to get out and vote for The People’s Choice, The Working Man, the guy who struggled his way up and wiil take on the big special interests. They’re annoying, but they’re seasonal, so I can put up with them.
What puzzles me are the other robocalls. The IRS has levied a judgment on my Social Security account. My automobile warranty is about to expire. I can get rid of my timeshare condo without paying any fees. I’m paying too much for health insurance.
I can see where get-out-the-vote calls might actually make a difference, but honestly, how many of these other robocalls can possibly connect with a person gullible enough to call and give out their personal information?
If these calls are targeting the elderly, the ignorant, the vulnerable, then they are particularly heinous and the government should be doing something about them. Since they’re not, I’m going to step up and offer my services. I’ll issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal to anyone who wants to go head hunting, you can keep the loot you collect, and I will pay a bounty for each telemarketers head delivered to my doorstep. No CODs.
Joe Doakes

Phone spam strikes me as supremely counterproductive (outside the few cases Joe notes). But it must be working somewhere, or why would people be doing it?

Larry Jacobs got dunked hard over this tweet last week:

I’m going to come to Professor Jacobs’ (partial, and let’s be honest, largely comic) defense.

I suspect he’s referring to the Uptown Bar. Which was at one point one of the most popular bars in Uptown, which is “in a college town” in the sense that Minneapolis has several colleges in it (rather than, say, Morris or Mankato or even my hometown). It was certainly a place to see and be seen back in the day – and I certainly saw and was seen there, a couple of lifetimes ago.

But it closed in 2009. Long before Covid.

It was replaced, by the way, by an Apple Store.

Which announced its impending closure last week, in the middle of a hamfisted lockdown and the Uptown neighborhood’s descent into crime and violence. While urbanists claim “stores close all the time in Uptown”, citing a number of flavor-of-the-month boutiques and restaurants, I’ll hasten to remind you – in the middle of a neighborhood full of hipsters with enough disposable income to, well, live in Uptown, it was an Apple Store.

And it’s gone. #Unexpectedly.

We interrupt this blog post for a song, which is not remotely thematic, nosirreebob.

Or, more to the point, Nosirree Bob:

Oh, yeah. The establishment in Dr. Jacobs’ tweet is…

…er, was the Uptown Theater. One of the signal arthouse theaters in Minneapolis, a place with some of my most treasured movie experiences.

But it’s gone, too.

Hey, how about another song?

Seems appropriate.

I have two observations about Joe Biden’s performance in last Thursday’s debate.

First – his campaign is all platitudes. He has a “plan” for everything. A government “plan” and three bucks will get you a cup of Caribou. It’s all there to gull the gullible.

Second – like all Democrats, he can pretty much say any billshut he wants, because his voters are all low-information drones who have the critical thought skills of herd animals, and the media like it that way.

There were many examples of this during the debate on Thursday – “I never said I’d ban fracking”, “nobody lost their plan to Obamacare”, and on and on.

The one that made me jump out of my seat with the most incredulity? “We had a great relationship with Hitler before he invaded Europe”.

He was half right. The US had a lousy relationship [1] with the Nazi regime – to FDR’s rare credit

The U.S. didn’t have a good relationship with Hitler before he “invaded Europe. The German dictator was, however, beloved in certain quarters, including the editorial offices of the New York Times.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t attack Hitler directly before the war began, but relations between the U.S. and Nazi Germany were by no means good. In September 1938, Roosevelt sent a telegram to Hitler lecturing him about the importance of keeping the peace and stating: “The conscience and the impelling desire of the people of my country demand that the voice of their government be raised again and yet again to avert and to avoid war.” Implying that Hitler was a warmonger was hardly a hallmark of cordial relations between the two countries.

Failing to get a satisfactory response from Hitler, on October 11, 1938, Roosevelt announced that he was increasing national defense spending by $300 million (over $5 billion in today’s dollars). No one thought that money was going to build up our defenses against Britain and France.

But the New York Times? They loved them some Hitler:

The historian Rafael Medoff recently noted that on July 9, 1933, just over five months after he became Chancellor of Germany and years after his virulent anti-Semitism and propensity for violence had become notorious worldwide, the New York Times published a fawning puff piece on Hitler that rivals even today’s media adulation of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi in its one-sidedness, myopia, and disdain for essential facts.

Pulitzer Prize-winning “journalist” Anne O’Hare McCormick traveled to Berlin to become the first reporter from an American news outlet to interview the new chancellor, and she was an intriguing choice for the Times editors to make to conduct this interview, as in the presence of this man whose name has become justly synonymous with evil, she was decidedly starry-eyed: “At first sight,” McCormick gushed, “the dictator of Germany seems a rather shy and simple man, younger than one expects, more robust, taller. His sun-browned face is full and is the mobile face of an orator.”

As if that weren’t enough, she continues with a description of the Führer as outlandish and adulatory as likening the supremely zaftig Stacy Abrams to a supermodel: “His eyes are almost the color of the blue larkspur in a vase behind him, curiously childlike and candid. He appears untired and unworried. His voice is as quiet as his black tie and his double-breasted black suit.”

This, of course, as Walter Duranty was all but french-kissing Joseph Stalin. The NYTimes were equal-opportunity up-suckers.

It wasn’t just the NYTimes, of course – Time named Hitler their “Man of the Year” in 1938:

Although as Time laboriously clarifies:

That choice abided by the dictum of TIME founder Henry Luce, who decreed that the Man of the Year — now Person of the Year — was not an honor but instead should be a distinction applied to the newsmaker who most influenced world events for better or worse. In case that second criterion was lost on readers, the issue that named Hitler dispensed with the portrait treatment that cover subjects typically got. Instead he was depicted as a tiny figure with his back to the viewer, playing a massive organ with his murdered victims spinning on a St. Catherine’s wheel.

Which, in context, makes sense.

Moreso than the NYTimes’ excuse, anyway.

[1] Speaking generally in re the government, of course. Some in the government – Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, Ambassador to the UK, Democrat eminimento and father of progressive icons John F. and Robert F. Kennedy – spent the early years of the war pulling for the Nazis to conquer the Brits, whom he hated.

I’d like a list of the 25 former GOP members who crossed the aisle to keep Governor Walz’ one-man-regime in power, in exchange for endorsements from trade unions who will benefit from the spending bill.

Please include home addresses, so I can send fruit baskets to thank them for selling out the people of Minnesota.

Joe Doakes

Not gonna lie – and if you are a MNGOP staffer, by all means feel free to pass this on to Jennifer Carnahan, Paul Gazelka and Kurt Daudt – but the whole “acting like DFLers” thing wasn’t amusing even before the state got swallowed up in a DFL coup.

It’s not been an easy few weeks to be a Minnesota Repubican.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network:

• Lacy Johnson, GOP candidate to replace Ilhan Omar in the Fifth Congressional District.
• Jason Lewis, candidate to replace Tina Smith in the US Senate.

I’ll be on from 1-3PM. You can find the show on:

• AM1280 or FM 107.5 in the Twin Cities
• Streaming
• Podcast

Or use your favorite streaming apps!

Join us at 651-289-4488, or on Twitter at #NARNShow.

I may owe Ryan Winkler an apology.

I mean, growing up in rural North Dakota back when only Al Gore had access to the Internet, even I knew what “uncle Tom” meant when applied to a black man – so naturally I figured someone in his position, Harvard grad and all, would as well. Clearly, so did many others.

And although I’m an Anglo from the northern Plains, I’ve known what a Coyote – a slang term for a human trafficker who brings people across the border, either as illegal immigrants, sex slaves or mules – was for quite a while now.

But apparently a Harvard education does one no better in this context:

Y’know what’s “sickening”? Having a bunch of people whose opinion is considered above the rest of the world by dint of being a “blue check”, who are given to lecturing the deporables about their cultural illiteracy, who are themselves so culturally illiterate:

Just remember that when Blue America starts talking about getting rid of the electoral college.

Biden: “I’ll raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, but have the government bail out all the businesses that can’t afford it”.

Also Biden: “Don’t you DARE call me a socialist”.

Jeffrey Toobin – caught on his own camera doing some, er, internal polling earlier this week – doesn’t have the problem.

All of you who are complaining that he was seen, non-social distancing, during a work meeting – you are the ones with the problems!

And that’s also what everyone is going to remember about Jeffrey Toobin, I’m afraid. But that says more about us than it does about him.

According to a 2016 survey, 95% of men and 81% of women in America have masturbated. Yet in the same poll, over half of respondents said they felt uncomfortable talking about it.

So we joke about it, instead, which relieves our anxieties but reinforces the taboo. Witness the outpouring of juvenile humor over the past two days about “Toobin his own horn,” his “sticky situation,” and so on.

Well, there was the little matter that he was “going on his third date with Rachel Maddow” or “universal gun registration” or “nationwide mask mandates” [or whomever it is that “progressive” guys think about while in flagrante solo] during a work meeting. On camera. A nation full of people who’ve been stuck on Teams or Zoom meetings (if we’re lucky) for seven months and joking about people not wearing pants “to work” are suddenly seeing how our self-appointed “elites” spend their time.

So of course you’re the one with the problem.

Fernandez writes about the urge to escape confinement, and how it’s universal. Even throws in a Shawshank Redemption quote. He labels it “rebellion,” a word that implies the authorities are right and the rebels are wrong.

Close, but no cigar. His analysis doesn’t distinguish the need to escape UNJUST confinement, which was what occurred in that film, and has occurred with all the lock-downs.

“Cases” are skyrocketing despite lock-downs and mask orders, but “deaths” are not, and particularly not among children, teens, young adults and working people. That means universal house arrest is not necessary, never was. We’re being punished for no good reason. That’s unjust confinement.

The urge to escape unjust confinement is not only natural, it’s right and moral and just. It’s not an act of rebellion against lawful authority. The people trying to continue the unjust confinement are in the wrong, not those of us trying to escape it.

Joe Doakes

I’ve got a mother in memory care. I’ll be protecting her (and/or going along with her facility’s plans for taking care of her), whatever it takes.

I’m also going to get a ^%$#@ social life back.

Both can be done.

Usual disclaimers about “the only poll that counts is on November 3 [1] inserted here.

But pessimist that I am, I really didn’t see this coming

KSTP/SURVEYUSA: Tina Smith 43%; Jason Lewis 42%; 12% undecided; 3% people other. Confidence Interval +/- 5%. Smith had 11-point lead in September and 7-point lead earlier this month. pic.twitter.com/mX91q0MI6X

— Tom Hauser (@thauserkstp) October 21, 2020

Fluke?

Polls finding more-likely voters, ones who’ve actually been paying attention?

We’ll see.

I’ve heard more than a few fellow D-list pundits exclaim disbelief at “12% undecided”. I’m going to chalk that up to some misdirected Pauline Kael syndrome, from people who “write”/tweet about politics constantly, thinking everyone is the same as they are. Smith has tried hard to follow A-Klo’s model of being innocuous and invisible. We’ll see if it works.

Lewis beating the Butcher Of Vandalia would be an early Christmas present.

[1] And, let’s be honest, as we saw in 2008 and 2010, it still may not count, really, but let’s try not to go completely down the rabbit hole.

From the “Bitter Barrista” comedy videoblog, we get what may be the most perfect, if coarse, response to the excesses of modern authoritarian therapeutic culture. (Language occasionaly NSFW).

First, the vid:

Then, the line:

“Has it ever occurred to you that that it’s no one else’s responsibility to make sure that you’re emotionally stable? But you can’t comprehend that, can you? Because being an alleged victim of circumstances is the only identity that you possess. You use minor inconveniences to belittle other people just so you can inflate your own sense of self-importance, because you’ve never actually accomplished shit in your life. And if you were to take that time to look inwards to reflect, you would weep at the pathetic puddle you’ve reduced the confines of your life to. Then again, life was never a game of rock, paper, a scissor, where logic doesn’t always defeat entitled bitch! By the way, I called you Karen because I’m a nice person. What I mean is C__t”

When you apply this to so many peoples’ responses to so many of life’s travails – quarantining, the results of the last Presidential election, any sort of cognitive dissonance in education, society or the workplace – it really is perfect.

I suspect Bitter Barista is affiliated with Black Rifle Coffee Company, which can only be a good thing. And it’s one of the funniest channels on Youtube, which is a low bar, I know, but it jumps it with style.