REPORTER: “Maxine Waters called for violence”

EDITOR: “Did she do it on January 6?”

REPORTER: “No”

EDITOR: “Then it wasn’t violence”.

TEACHER: “Marco, can you gell us what the ‘Holocaust’ was?

MARCO: “Er…January 6?”

TEACHER: “Correct…”

PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: “Gascoigne checks O’Reilly into the boards…”

COLOR GUY: “Oh, wow. Cheap hit, there…”

PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: “Aaaaand off come the gloves. We’ve got a donnybrook going here”

COLOR GUY: “Hockey used to be such an artistic game. How far hockey has fallen, since it’s first ever fight, last January 7”.

PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER: “RIght you are, Guy”.

MOM: “Why isn’t your homework done, Junior?”

JUNIOR: “January 6”

MOM: “Fair enough”.

GUY A: “Who was that woman who got arrested here in Highland a few years back for being a terrorist?”

GAL B: “Sarah Jane Olson. She was arrested for being involved in January 6″.

GUY A: “I thought it was from in the Symbionese Liberation Army, back in the seventies?”

GAL B: “Couldn’t be. There was no political violence before January 6”

GUY A: “Doh. My bad”.

TOUR GUIDE: “Welcome to Volgograd – formerly Stalingrad”.

TOURIST:”Excuse me – will we see any monuments to the Battle of Stalingrad?”

TOUR GUIDE: “What?”

TOURIST: “The epic battle between the Nazis and Soviets, in 1942-43?”

TOUR GUIDE: “I don’t understand. There was no war or violence of any kind before January 6”.

KOMMISSAR (yelling from off-camera left (where else?)): “Or since!”

GOVERNOR WALX: “Any questions?”

REPORTER: “Tell us why you moved people with Covid into nursing homes?”

WALZ: “It was January 6. It was responsible for everything“.

REPORTER: “Thanks!”

BOSS: “Er, let’s talk. You’ve turned in no work yet this year.”

PROGRESSIVE EMPLOYEE: “After January 6, how could I?”

BOSS: “Fair point”.

TEACHER: OK, Chad, what do the Gulf War, World War 2, World War 1, the Civil War, the War of the Roses, and the French Revolution have in common?

CHAD: Um…

TEACHER: Besides being called wars.

CHAD: Um…I don’t know?

TEACHER: None of them existed. Because there was no violence of any kind before January 6.

COP (PULLING WOMAN OVER): “Do you know how fast you were going, ma’am?”

WOMAN: “After January 6, does it even matter?”

COP: “Good point. You’re free to go”.

PROGRESSIVE PARENTS: “Now, Barack, eat your lima beans…

CHILD OF PROGRESSIVE PARENTS: “After what happend January 6?”

PROGRESSIVE PARENTS: “Damn. He’s right”.

We’ve talked about orders of effect.  The first order effect of a railroaded guilty verdict is X but what are the second-order and third-order and further order effects? 

Sarah Hoyt has an insightful column up: “Sparing the Rod.“

Joe Doakes

I don’t think our society has any idea of the long-term effects of a massive loss of faith in law enforcement, the judiciary, the media and the rest of the institutuions.

In the wake of the verdict yesterday, Speaker Pelosi thanked George Floyd for his “sacrifice”:

“Thank you George Floyd for sacrificing your life for justice,” Pelosi said Tuesday outside the Capitol where she was joined by the Congressional Black Caucus.

“Because of you and because of millions of people around the world who came out for justice, your name will always be synonymous with justice. And now we have to make sure justice prevails in the sentencing.”

Has there ever been a more perfect symbol of what black people really mean to the Democrat party?

Here, in one of the most “progressive” cities in the country:

• The “achievement gap” is the biggest in the nation, and getting worse even as the districts get more “woke” every year (not that those are in any way contradictory
• In cities controlled by Democrats for generations, the wealth gap is among the highest in the nation
• “Black” neighborhoods (we don’t really have them in the sense they exist elsewhere – which actually reinforces the point) are basically social service warehouses. Compare this with places like Atlanta or Jacksonville – Minneapolis doesn’t come across very well at all.

These same patterns are true across all of “blue” America. Quick – think of a “blue” city where that’s not the case? Atlanta is an arguable exception.

Indeed, the decline of the black middle class and the black family coincided – and, let’s be honest, were caused by – the Democrat Party’s ongoing campaign to bring all of black society under its social wing.

So yeah. Nancy Pelosi thanked George Floyd for doing the one thing she expects of any black man – providing her a crisis to not waste.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The “vaccine” is perfectly safe.  Any claims to the contrary are misinformation spread by science deniers. 

I mean seriously, who are you going to believe: the shills paid to sell it to you, or your lying eyes?

Joe Doakes

If the general public took the message it should from this past year, Big Government would never recover.

When “Karen” tells me “I follow science”, I’ve taken to silently appending, often (but by no means always) in my mind, “you absorbed a CDC announcement a little over a year ago”.

The people maniacally scrubbing surfaces? As re Covid, it’s largely a wasted effort.

Via the Atlantic, which nearly along among periodicals has done a good job of actual journalism as re public health:

Whenever I’ve written about hygiene theater, some people have responded with the same objection: “Hey, what’s the matter with washing our hands?” That’s an easy one: Absolutely nothing. “Pandemic or no pandemic, you should wash your hands, especially after you prepare food, go to the bathroom,” or touch something yucky, Goldman said.

But hygiene theater carries with it an immense opportunity cost. Too many institutions spend scarce funds or sacrifice scarce resources to do microbial battle against fomites that don’t pose a real threat. This is especially true of cash-strapped urban-transit authorities and school districts that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on soap technology rather than their central task of transporting and teaching people.

Hygiene theater also muddles the public-health message. If you tell people, “This disease is on surfaces, on your clothes, on your hands, on your face, and also in the air,” they will react in a scattered and scared way. But if you tell people the truth—this virus doesn’t do very well on surfaces, so you should focus on ventilation—they can protect themselves against what matters.

Of course, if you read this blog (and, to be fair, this blog’s citing of writers in The Atlantic), you had a solid hunch about this nearly a year ago.

The Chauvin trial wrapped up yesterday. As this is written, the jury is deliberating.

But well into last week, Saint Paul was strapping in.

Saint Paul is smoking ’em if they got ’em.

The Midway Menards hasn’t yet piled stacks of plywood in front of the store – which is the “smoke ’em if you got ’em” moment, from where I sit.

Some merchants are of the opinion that some kind of supplication to the crowd might buy them some grace.

But most of the biggest victims last year were immigrants and merchants “of color”, and there’s no reason to expect the white left-wing college kids who did most of the burning last year are going to be any different this time around.

If some legislator wants to push a bill removing “duty to retreat” and allowing self-defense of felony-level destruction of property via lethal force, I’ll pound all the pavement they need.

Or, y’know, assert the rule of law:

Assert it equally, regardless of class, race or all the rest? Absolutely – suggest otherwise (or suggest I suggest otherwise) and you are depraved and need to be shunned.

But assert it, for chrissake.

The press “reports” on Maxine Waters’ weekend trip to Brooklyn Center:

Did they cover everything?

Miss anything?

Like…the incitement to violence?

From the party (and media) that seems to think that there was no political violence in this country before (or apparently after) January 6?

UPDATE/BUMP: Oh, yeah – like Lisa Bender and Philippe Cunningham, Waters wanted special treatment while she incite her violence.

…that Reverend King…

…flew coach.

…for any DFLers that happen to be reading.

Yesterday, on the one hand, DFL rep Jennifer McEwen, sounding as if she were nearly in tearms, chided her GOP colleagues for attacking Maxine Waters, who spent her weekend telling Demcorats to riot if they didn’t get the verdict they wanted in the Chauvin trial…

Right after that, the DFL moved a resolution condemning the National Guard – part-time soldiers who live among us all – for supporting the effort to keep “Anti”-Fa from burning down. more poor, immigrant and minority neighborhoods:

Do these people speak for you?

And if you deflect to “January 6”, in the seeming belief that there was no pollitical violence in this country before that day, I will mock and taunt you for a month straight, and you will deserve it.

Governor Walz yesterday morning, as he got ready to head into the studio for his ritual toenail-painting with Esme Murphy:

Ever notice how the press never cares about civil rights being trashed until its their civil rights being trashed?

He’s wrong, of course. A press that holds power accountable is “foundational to democracy”. So we’re screwed.

By the way – not holding “emergency power” long after the emergency has passed is also “foundational to democracy”.

I’ll admit it right up front – the wave of carjackings in Saint Paul is weaponizing my schadenfreud.

And I’m good with that.

Audio not totally safe for work toward the end:

Those are some Aikido moves, I’m informed.

Kids lucky the guy wasn’t into Kempo.

When it comes to “vaccine passports”, the Minnesota Department of Health is keeping its options open:

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said just eight days ago that he does not want to implement a “vaccine passport” system that requires Minnesotans to carry documentation that they’ve received the coronavirus vaccine.

“I have no intention of doing vaccine passports,” he told reporters, per KSTP. “Our vaccine passport is get the shot. Get the shot, and we get beyond this. So we have no intention of doing it.”

“Does not want”.

“No Intention”.

If weasels were the size of moose, they could still slip through the wiggle room the Governor has left himself and his administration.

And here come the elk-sized weasels:

However, the governor’s own health department seemed to broadcast a different message via a statement posted to Facebook just six days later, on April 13.

“We don’t know yet know [sic] if you’ll need to show proof of vaccination for things like traveling, concerts or other activities,” the MDH wrote.

Remember – if you assume the typical MNDFL voter has the critical thinking skills of a tenth-grader, it all makes sense.

Went to Regions to visit a relative who is recovering from a heart attack.  New Covid rules: only one visitor per day.  Not one visitor at a time –  one per day.  If her spouse visits from 10 am – noon, nobody else can visit until 10 the next day when visiting hours start again.

Visitor must wear a mask at all times; must stay in the patient room, use the bathroom there; cannot bring in food or drink but must order from room service and pay by credit card; must leave by 8:00 pm and cannot stay overnight no matter how much the patient begs not to be left alone in the hospital. 

Turns out it’s not only the hospital.  Different relative dying of cancer in a long-term care facility cannot have visitors at all, not even with masks and social distancing.  Might bring in Covid so she spends her days dying alone. 

Covid, you see.  Science.  What am I, a science denier?  Do I want people in the hospital to die? Do I want to kill old people in the nursing home?

Not necessarily.  But heart disease and cancer aren’t the only things that people die from.  People can die of loneliness, too, and from hopelessness. 

Joe Doakes

In the meantime, some facilities have radically different rules. Some long term care facilities are pretty much open (with precaution similar to but less than the ones Jo described in the hospital, above); others, like Joe says, are in full blown lockdown mode.

Science!

Re my interview with Angus Fox – here’s the introductory essay to the series, Part 2, and Part 3.

The series, as noted in the interview, is open-ended.

And, back by popular demand, today’s music setlist!