Further evidence that the “state of emergency” is more about power and wealth transfer than public health: the ritzy French restaurant where Gavin Newsom (among many Democrat pols) entertained his friends in flagrant violation of his own quarantine rules, keeps on profiting from its special connection.

And as Megan Fox at PJM notes, the story comes from an unlikely source – a mainstream media investigative unit:

But real journalists still exist and ABC7, a local station in the Bay Area, did an amazing piece of investigative work that uncovered that The French Laundry applied for and received more COVID relief than any other restaurant in town. And not just more, but seventeen times more.

The luxury restaurant where Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed were notoriously spotted dining during a COVID-19 surge, reportedly received millions in PPP funding.

Yountville’s highly acclaimed French Laundry received multiple loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, totaling more than $2.4 million, according to an ABC7 analysis of newly-released data from the Small Business Administration.

The French Laundry received two loans that were both approved on April 30, 2020. According to the SBA, the first loan was for more than $2.2 million to retain 163 employees. The second loan was for $194,656 to retain five employees.

ABC7’s analysis found the company received 17 times more than what the average Bay Area restaurant received.

Other restauranteurs weren’t so lucky.

“That’s a lot of money. But, what can I do about it?” said Dennis Berkowitz, former owner of San Mateo restaurant Vault 164.

Berkowitz struggled to get around $318,000 to retain roughly 50 employees. The loan amount wasn’t enough to sustain his business, and he was forced to sell the restaurant in July.

“I’ve had a 40-year run in the restaurant business, so I consider myself fortunate,” he said. “I really feel bad for the next generation of restaurateurs because they’re screwed.”

The investigative team at ABC7 ought to win an award for this one. They uncovered what we have suspected for a while. Most of those COVID loans went to the guys with the big bucks who can purchase influence, while the little guy got screwed. 

My hunch, on the other hand? Nobody in that newsroom will do lunch on Market Street again.

To: The City of Saint Paul
From: Mitch Berg, irascible peasant
Re: Scruples

Dear Co’SP

Huh.

OK. Now do Saint Paul and Minneapolis teachers with Che Guevara stickers or t-shirts, or any other Hammer-and-Sickle-wear.

TIA.

A list – and a partial one at that – of the Twin Cities restaurants that’ve spun in so far in 2020.

I say “partial”, because every Khan’s Mongolian BBQ I’ve driven past in the last few weeks has been either listed “for Lease” or, in the case of the Roseville store, been replaced by…

…you guessed it, a national chain (Olive Garden, in this case) with the resources to ride out a government-induced depression. I don’t see them on the list.

Not sure what’s more disturbing – the number of restaurants that list “burned down during the riots” as their cause of death, or the ones that say from beyond the business grave that they support Governor Walz’s draconian state of emergency even though it’s destroyed their business/es.

The state’s “guidance” – read “rules” – for public gatherings, enacted as part of Governor Klink’s endless emergency declaration, are pretty clear, by government standards.

Moral and scientific gibberish? Sure.

But not especially ambiguous:

Here they are (via Michael Brodkorb on Twitter).

15 people. Even if they’re spread out all over the place.

So there’s this – an event honoring the swearing-in of the new (DFL) Senators:

Now – there are two possibilities at play here. Either:

1. There are three household families of 33+ people planning to attend, or
2. The event used its intra-DFL pull to get a permit for an event that mere proles couldn’t possibly get.

Let’s sum up: The Department of Admin (which reponds to Walz) gave permission for a rally for a rally for people and legislators who mark, as Walz, bark on the DFL’s orders.

This is what’s “essential” in Minnesota.

UPDATE: Erin Murphy – career politician, former Rep, failed gubernatorial candidate and now back to the Senate – tweeted:

To which our old friend Andy Aplikowski responded:

Followed by peaceful protests, natch.

Ever since the retirement of Phyllis Kahn for being too moderate for her crazy-left district in Minneapolis, it’s seemed fairly plain – no matter what happens in Minneapolis politics, the drift will be the left.

So this post is both a test of my theory, and a prediction.

Alondra Cano is leaving office.

Now, you know me. I have never come to praise Cano, but to try to bury her in ridicule.

But here’s my prediction: she will be replaced by someone who makes her look like Phyllis Schlafly in comparison.

Predictions as to what she’ll do next? Leave your predictions in the comment section.

UPDATE: Hardly seems possible this was five years ago, already. It may be my favorite post title in the history of this blog.

“We’d have solved Covid, if only the American people weren’t so petulant and childish about petty infringements on freedom for the public good”

It’s the Karen lullaby.

And it’s wrong:

Polls since March have shown that Americans overwhelmingly aren’t in denial: They believe the threat of Covid-19 is real, they are reasonably good at identifying medical misinformation, and they are largely complying with public health recommendations. Compared to their peers in Europe, Americans are more willing to get vaccinated against Covid-19, similarly likely to wear masks, and no more prone to believe common conspiracy theories about the pandemic’s origins.

The U.S.’s response to Covid-19 has been bungled in many respects, but widespread public denial doesn’t explain why.

The obsession with denialism isn’t just inaccurate. It’s corrosive for at least three reasons. First, it needlessly alienates the interested public with false accusations. Second, by conflating reasonable dissent with unreasonable misinformation, it stifles debate, even about issues that genuinely warrant discussion. Third, the myth of denial deflects blame from the policy failures of politicians, who use it to claim they’ve done all they could, leaving only the denialists (and cheesecake eaters) to blame.

Back last summer, when an orgy of Blue Fragiility had Minnesotans claiming that the state’s Covid numbers were driven by unmasked Dakotas residents flagrantly crossing the border, I pointed out, as someone who (unlike pretty much any progressive in the world) had been to a Dakota (four times in 2020 so far) that people there were no less socially-distanced (above and beyond their normal natures, even) and masked up than Minnesotans.

And to about the same effect.

Dennis Prager has a great line – “Relationships can survive a lot, but no relationship can survive contempt”

When parties can’t see one another as human, forget about reaching common ground on differing ideas and ideals, can there be any point to trying to live together? I wouldn’t work for couples – why would it work for a nation?

It dawned on the world too late that when the Nazis actively portrayed the Jews as not very human…

…they meant it.

If there’s one thing more useful than one eliminationist Nazi cartoon, its’ two. Here goes:

Wait.

That wasn’t even in German.

That was the Washington Post.

On Christmas Eve.

This is up there with “bitter, gun-clinging Jeebus freaks” and “Deplorables” and the rest of the litany of conceits Blue America holds on Red America.

But most importantly? It’s about contempt.

I’ve been pointing out examples of Blue America’s contempt for the rest of us in this space since the beginning, really. And if the Trump era has done anything, it’s helped parts of the right come out of their shells (yes, some, like our friend Pete Strunk, haven’t been in their shells fir a very long time, but its fair to say Pete’s always been an outlier)

As clubby, self-referential and solipsistic as the modern “elite” (and even not-so-elite) media is, I should have probably predicted we’d see scenes like this whenever Trump was on the brink of leaving office.

Never mind that “the Lightworker” Obama was did a whole lot more actual oppressing of “journos” than Trump.

Links

No. To these coddled hamsters…:

…covering Trump was up there with going ashore with the first wave on Omaha Beach, or like riding in a B24 with Charles Collingwood.

Which is a little ironic, given that The LIghtworker was, in fact, the most press-hostile President since Woodrow Wilson – and given the deep-state leaks with which the executive branch was riven, it would have been pointless for The Donald to even try to match Obama’s record.

Do you know the one thing I always hated about Joe Soucheray’s Garage Logic?

For a show that constantly railed on about the need for individual responsibility, he rattled on an awful lot about “the mystery” and its attendant “mysterians”.

It struck me as a little incongruous – demanding responsibility from everyone else, but blaming the things that vexed “logicians” on some, well, mysterious force above and beyond anyone’s control.

It’s an oddly “progressive” trait – ascribing fault to systems and groups rather than individuals. And not in a good way.

The urge to roll things up in to all-encompassing narratives, and to try to “solve” them with all-encompassing proposals – “The New Deal”, Obamacare, The Great Society, and on and on – has been part of “progressivism”‘s DNA since there was a word for it (other than “Leninism”).

And while I give Trump the credit he’s due, he’s brought out a trait among way too many Republicans to do exactly the same.

Make no mistake – our election system has problems, problems big enough to warrant bringing in the Department of Justice under consent decrees no less drastic than those that governed southern elections after the Civil Rights Act was passed.

And state laws that make corruption almost impossible to identify, much less charge and prosecute, must become an electoral scarlet letter among those who care about the American Experiment.

But let’s stop all this jabbering about “Krakens”. Put up or shut up.

Because the real problem isn’t even hiding. It’s in plain sight, and it’s largely legal.

Two of them, really:

What happened in 2020 is something more fundamental and profound. What happened in 2020 is cultural and systemic, and sadly, generally legal. Until Republicans, and more importantly Trump supporters, understand what happened to them this year, it will happen again.

Two things happened in 2020. First, COVID led to a dismantling of state election integrity laws by everyone except the one body with the constitutional prerogative to change the rules of electing the president – the state legislatures.

Second, the Center for Technology and Civic Life happened.

If you are focused on goblins in the voting machines but don’t know anything about the CTCL and what they did to defeat Donald Trump, it’s time to up your game.

I’ll urge you to read the whole thing.

Tiki bars are racist, donchaknow.

It’s rhetorical, because Big Media never actually responds to the plebs.

But is it possible…:

…that there could be a less scientifically literate phrase than “believe in Science?”

How about “Think Critically about the data in front of us, and make an informed decision?”

Nah, that’s just more radical conservative talk.

People who invested their lives and fortunes, who filled out forms and jumped through hoops, who passed background checks and credit checks and character checks, people who pay wages and taxes and fees and support the local schools, are dirty, rotten, low-down criminals who ought to be thrown in the hoosegow.  Keith Ellison is all over it.

From the article: “Two more courts have recognized the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the firm legal foundation of the State’s legitimate interest in putting a stop to it,” Ellison said.

Somehow, I doubt that. I’d bet a brand-new nickel the court didn’t listen to one minute of testimony from anybody about the Covid virus, its infectiousness or its fatality rate to determine whether Covid was actually a severe problem or not.  And I seriously doubt there was extensive briefing on the rational basis between the alleged problem and the Governor’s solution, which is the Constitutional standard for government restrictions that take away a vested property right.  Governor Walz’ restrictions are so arbitrary, so whimsical, so ridiculous that even the New York Times had to admit they were unscientific and bizarre.  I’d be surprised if a court found differently.

Instead, my guess is the court simply presumed the order was a valid exercise of executive power and like the Red Queen, skipped the trial to go directly to punishment.  As long as Democrats refuse to return power to the elected representatives of the people, Ellison will use the infinite power of the state to crush business owners, the courts will lie back and let him, and Minnesotans will continue to suffer.

When the political process is unavailing, the judicial system is unavailing, and the result is unjust, what’s the remedy?

Joe Doakes

Whatever it is, let’s f*****g get on with it.

Someday, when I’m absolute ruler and I impose a libertarian society by force, it’ll be legal to boobytrap packages to maim and mutilate “porch pirates”. So help me.

But until then, as Covid-era buying patters beget yet another wave of porch piracy plagues yet another holiday season, I figured this we the pick-me-up we all need:

Not enough fun to assuage your rage?

Well, lhere’sthe sequel:

And then, bigger and badder than before, this year’s episode:

And what the heck – since I know some of my readers are engineers, and others are just plain diabolical (but in a good way), here’s the how-to:

I, myself, see a glorious commercial manufacturing and marketing opportunity.

…for a Senator who knows science is a system of analyzing the world involving healthy skepticism of conventional wisdom and relentless questioning…

…rather than a pseudoreligion used to browbeat people into acquiescence.

Which, if you take her at her word, is apparently what she thinks it is:

Yesterday, Joe Doakes’ piece lamented the MNGOP’s perceived indolence on Governor Klink’s one-man power.

Senator Dave Osmek responded:

Mitch: I must respond to the re-post you made earlier today from Joe.

“Acquiescence is approval.” Recently, I have seen idiot lawn signs that say “White Silence equals White Racism”. I guess Joe believes that must be true too. Let’s all get our white hooded robes on! The Senate GOP has voted 6 times to rescind those “emergency” powers of TIm Jung Walz. That’s all we have. I guess if the 34 Senate Republicans (RIP: Jerry Relph) don’t strip naked, paint ourselves purple, and dance on top of the Capitol dome to protest enough, we just are a bunch of Quislings. Right? The Senate GOP has been trying, every month, to move the narrative and gotten zero Media pick-up. If the Media isn’t reporting on every breath of Walz propaganda, willfulling not asking hard questions, and laser-focused on the color of Kim Kardashian’s panties…they aren’t happy and are too busy to do their real jobs.

“Let the Democrats try to pass laws without a single Republican vote, until Walz relinquishes power to the Legislature, where it belongs.” Well, I have a little news for Joe: Tim Jong Walz is doing this NOW! Until the “emergency” powers are removed, he can pop out Executive Orders like a Pez dispenser, and he has. And the GOP senate…votes to remove the powers. Over and over again. Walz has written laws, and penalties to go with them. King Timmy can fine you and imprison you, with no actual law passed by the Legislature to back it up. And if we DON’T pass funding to help the victims of Walz (businesses and unemployed), who will get the blame? I guarantee you the Media would leap into gear and make sure EVERY person in Minnesota knows that the GOP Senate Grinches are responsible. Walz is responsible for this mess, but we have to try to help those businesses before they collapse because of Walz’s stupidity.

“Otherwise, what do we need Republicans for? Just let Walz run everything forever and save the per diems.” Be careful what you ask for, Joe. Nobody is more frustrated than the 34 Senate GOP Republicans, infinitely more than even Joe is . The Constitution is being used as toilet paper. The Legislative branch has been relegated to the Children’s Table at the Christmas dinner. We continue to try. We tried to change the law at the end of the regular session. If Joe wants a dictatorship, disbanding the Legislative branch, good luck.

Elections have consequences.

Minnesota law grants the governor a lot of power – predicated on the antique notion that governors would be people of unshakable integrity and commitment to republican government.

Events have shown the naïveté of that conceit, and the need to guard against it.

In 2015, a bipartisan majority voted to bar the governor from confiscating firearms, closing gun stores, and other anti-gun measures under color of a “state of emergency”. It was signed into law, amazingly enough, by Gov. Dayton. Its perspicacity should be obvious.

And people who care about liberty and checks and balances are going to have to do the same in coming legislatures.

Probably not this one – the DFL in the House is addicted to their governor being able to rule like Francisco Franco.

No – in 2022, we need a GOP sweep of the legislature and the governor’s office.

Seems like a tall order. But if I didn’t believe in miracles, I wouldn’t be a conservative in Saint Paul.

Remember – it’s not what you know.

It’s who you know that has the power and media acquiescence to flout the rules any damn way they want to.

…it’s important to remember that, being leftists, they will inevitably eat their own.

To: Governor Walz
From: Mitch Berg, impudent peasant and Covid “Survivor”
Re: I’m Here To Help

My Liege,

You and your administration have been having a hard time getting ahead of the Covid virus, and your stated goal of “controlling the spread”.

I’m here to help.

More proximately, I’m here to help by showing you policies from elsewhere in your own career that can fix things, deux ex Moderna, for you.

So this is what you need to do solve Covid’s violence against Minnesotans:

1. Find some national organization to whom you can (falsely, without any actual link) tie Covid. Which organization? Doesn’t matter – could be Ducks Unlimited for all we care. Just fine one, and start demonizing them.
2. Get your progressive plutocrat funders to pony up to created “grassroots” non-profits to push “common sense Covid laws” in the Legislature.
3. Support creating a registry of people who get Covid. Because it’s just common sense to know who’s got this deadly disease.
4. When citizens suspect someone might have Covid, allow citizens to file court orders allowing the policy to go into their homes and enforce quarantines.
5. If people have the kind of Covid that includes the skin rash, take it away from them. Nobody needs that.

Glad I could help with these commonsense Covid laws.

That is all.

A friend of the blog writes:

I say we name a snow plow “Amy Klobuchar”.

She’s not getting named to anything else.

Not making it to post(electoral) season. How very Minnesotan.

To: Mike Lindell, Likely Gubernatorial Candidate
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Conservative Peasant
Re: Love Your Pillows. Don’t Love Your Rhetoric.

Mike,

For someone who wants to represent the party of liberty, the rule of law as opposed to the rule of men, and rationality, this is a really terrible look:

Look @dougducey you made the list and your crooked buddy @BrianKempGA! @realDonaldTrump please impose martial law in these 7 states and get the machines/ballots! https://t.co/GXWkRtHlRW

— Mike Lindell (@realMikeLindell) December 20, 2020

Now yes, you did delete the tweet – but nobody’s fast enough to get past the DFL’s oppo researchers and media. But I repeat myself.

Berg’s 16th Law exists for a reason. While a prominent elected Democrat can beat the snot out of his girlfriend with impunity, anything rash, impudent, ill-timed, context-mangled or yes, stupid, said by any Republican, anywhere, no matter how fringe, how isolated from power or the mainstream (which doesn’t describe Lindell, obviously), will be reported to the widest audience possible, in the least flattering context that can be engineered, and held against the entire part.

Love the pillows, Mike – but think.

That is all.

Minnesota legislature passes bill to help victims of state government, unless someone else does.

That’s not how they worded it, of course. The state legislature adopted a bill to give aid to small businesses closed by Governor Walz and to extend unemployment benefits for workers laid off by Governor Walz, but the aid is conditional. If the federal government adopts an aid package, then we use the federal money and the state does nothing. So it’s conditional virtue signaling, based on gaslighting the public that the Covid pandemic is a force of nature, not a product of arbitrary and destructive rule-by-executive-order.

I award Republicans one point for at least voicing the objection that Walz is the problem, not Covid. But I penalize them 10 points for going along with business as usual. Acquiescence is approval. Let the Democrats try to pass laws without a single Republican vote, until Walz relinquishes power to the Legislature, where it belongs. Otherwise, what do we need Republicans for? Just let Walz run everything forever and save the per diems.

In a state as Great-Sorted as Minnesota is, voters who are swingable are going to need a reason to choose GOP in 2022.

The Senate GOP has given them some little reasons. They need big ones. Stat.

Details on American Commitment and the Pelosi Drug plan.

A friend of the blog emails:

I don’t really like having police departments barricaded. But, I understand it. I look at [Saint Paul city councilwoman] Nelsie Yang’s post and I really don’t see a lot of support for her demand that the barricade be torn down, especially from non-White constituents, the very people she claims to be supporting in this action-

To social justice warriors like Yang and, let’s be honest, most of the Saint Paul and the entire Minneapolis City Councils, “social justice” with all its intellectual and political trappings is an abstract, academic concept that has little to do with the lives of their constituents – or at least the ones not employed in non-profits and academic humanities and soft science departments.

Rarely do people like Yang allow themselves to come into contact with the real life concerns of those they “represent”

When they do? It’s entertaining, at least.

Governor Fredo bans the sale and most display of “hate symbols” like confederate flags and swastikas in New York.

Because he can, that’s why.

I mean, there’s that pesky First Amendment and all..

But noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams argues Cuomo may have a larger problem on his hands, extending beyond a quick “technical” fix. 

“Governor Cuomo is correct that the First Amendment may require changes in the law in light of the First Amendment. A private entity can choose to sell or not sell offensive symbols but when the government bans the sale of offensive, but constitutionally protected symbols, on its property the First Amendment comes into play,” Abrams told The Post.

A Cuomo spokesman said the governor’s legal team will be reviewing the bill in consultation with the state Legislature to make a possible amendment.

If we only protected speech everyone agreed with, we wouldn’t need a First Amendment.

Also – it appears Hammers and Sicles and “Che” t-shirts were untouched. #Unexpectedly.

From the never-ending “It depends on what the meaning of the term ‘is’, is” files – after seven months of demanding the defunding of the police, and a week of acting on it, members of the Minneapolis Student Senate…er, City Council claim they’re just misunderstood:

In June, Minneapolis city council members Steve Fletcher and Phillipe Cunningham appeared with seven colleagues on a stage bearing a huge sign reading ‘Defund Police’ during a protest in Powderhorn Park.

Now, the duo seem to be mincing words, with Fletcher telling KSTP-TV on Tuesday: ”Defund’ is not the framework the council has ever chosen,’ as Cunningham audibly agreed. 

‘If we’re going to look at how we fund different programs, it would be very hard to do that without taking that money from the Minneapolis Police Department,’ he continued.

Have you ever noticed that the only establishment media that ever actually reports on Minneapolis is in the UK?