A friend of the blog emals:
I
I’m at the Vikings game tonight.
Almost no one wearing a mask.
Lots of Hennepin county law enforcement on hand.
I have to suspect the deputies are just as sick of Karen as everyone else is.
…what we in the Twin Cities have known for a while: that if you want something resembling detached reporting (there is no such thing as “objective” reporting) of Democrats, you need to go to the UK.
For the past several years, the only place in the mainstream, non-conservative media (with all due shouts out to Powerline, David Steinberg and Alphanews) has been the Daily Mail, and occasionally the Guardian. Literally no Twin Cities media outlet will report on Omar, barring being occasionally shamed into doing the bare minimum; the Mail is all the coverage there is.
An
The world appears to have woken up to an important truth this week: which is that Joe Biden is a truly terrible president. It is a shame that it took America gifting Afghanistan back to the Taliban for so many people to realise this.
To be charitable, there were perhaps two reasons why this had not become more obvious before. The first is that Joe Biden is not Donald Trump and for a lot of the planet that seems to be recommendation enough to occupy the Oval Office. A break from the Trump show appealed to an awful lot of people.
But the second reason why too few realised what the world was going to get from a Biden presidency is that the US media simply didn’t ask the questions it needed to ask. Before the election a near entirety of the American media gave up covering it and simply campaigned for the Democrat nominee.
d on the national level? Same:
Democracy needs institutions – like the media – to survive.
Which means, at present, that we’re screwed blue.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I ran across a colorful graph but I’m having trouble understanding it, as I’m not a World Class Expert In Everything like some of our commenters, but merely an old country lawyer trying to make sense of it all.
This graph seems to tell me that Americans in general have a 1 in 10 chance of testing positive for Covid but only 1 in 600 chance of dying from it. And, of course, the risk of dying is skewed heavily toward the frail elderly, so my odds are even better – let’s say 1 in 1,000. That’s nowhere near the top of the list.
Why do I need the vaccine?
Why does the government need to FORCE me to take the vaccine?
Joe Doakes
Do you have questions, and the only answers seems to be “shut off or get cut up“
I went to the GOP headquarters last night, with a small group of activists and with what seemed for a while to be an even bigger group of media
And there, we waited for the puffs of smoke for the chimney (that none of us could find):
Gradually, some of the members of the executive committee started showing up:
And then, things settled into negotiation. Which was when I left. It was hot out there.
And, apparently, it got a little hot in there, too:
Carnahan started the evening demanding ten months of severance – likely over $100K, which is probably triple what the MNGOP has in the bank at the moment.
After a 2-3 hours of hammer and tongs, it came down to a 7-7 vote for a $38,000 severance deal. Aaaand, under the rules, Carnahan got to break the tie. Which she did. Basically skipping out with the MNGOP’s bank account.
Not, naturally, without leaving the DFL and media (ptr) a natural punch line:
I mean, on the one hand, it’s so obvious, even Jennifer Brooks got it.
And it’s not wrong.
Anyway – between the upcoming audit, the election for party chair in the next 45 days, the gut-shot this likely provides the Hagedorn race in CD1 (presuming his health permits a re-election bid), and Carnahan’s stated intent to run for that congressional seat (which has to be described as “dead on conception”, at this remove), not to mention the inevitable drama of the Lazzaro trial (or, more likely I suspect, guilty plea and showing where the financial bodies are buried, likely followed by the inevitable and justifiable clawback lawsuits on behalf of the victims, which will lead back to the party’s currently nonexistant coffers), the drama’s not over.
To say nothing of the that will attend the next year in MNGOP internal politics. Of the 14 non-Carnahan members of the Executive Committee, seven voted against the severance:
The rest of ’em need to have a short, sharp conversation with their voters. Hopefully leading to some down time, in many cases (although I can be convinced).
It’s not the end of the drama. It’s not even, as Churchill said, the beginning of the end. It’s onlyh yet another end of another frustrating beginning for the MNGOP.
…will need to talk with our patent and trademark attorneys.
But all in all, I think we can reach a satisfactory agreement in our mutual interest.
…the Biden Administration starts chattering about gun control, just mentioned this:
Without going into specifics about weapons, that’s enough to put a new firearm in the hand of every member of every NATO military, with quite a few left over.
As far as the human cost, especially to those afghans who helped us (and his records are no doubt being circulated by the Taliban as we speak)?
That’s just too depressing to engage with at the moment.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails,
Today’s headline: Biden demands all nursing home staff get vaccinated or lose federal funding.
Tomorrow’s headline: Nursing homes overwhelmed, closing, staff quit.
The day-after-tomorrow’s heading: It’s Trump’s fault.
Joe Doakes
Good thing it’s not a bet. There would have been no action.
During her first campaign for #MNGOP state chair, I supported Jennifer Carnahan. It wasn’t a slam-dunk – Keith Downey was very capable. I thought she told a good story, and had a good plan.
The vote made sense at the time.
But a lot has changed during Carnahan’s administration.
I left activism in 2018 – but heard the stories about the goings on at the GOP HQ. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt – and politics tends to draw big egos and hair-trigger tempers (much like radio) – so like a lot of grassroots voters, I paid them little mind.
But the tsunami of stories this past two weeks hasn’t left a lot of room for rational doubt. It’s time for Carnahan to go.
It’s not even really about the allegations about Tony Lazzaro, awful as they are. I think it’s entirely plausible Carnahan didn’t know that her close friend, guest at her small wedding, and primary campaign donor was involved in the activities for which he now faces Federal criminal charges; it’s not like sex traffickers advertise it in polite company.
I said plausible. But while rumors abound that Lazzaro’s side hustle was an open secret in inner party circles about (including from Andy Aplikowski’s letter this morning), let’s just leave that, noxious as it is, to the FBI and the DOJ.
The allegations against Carnahan and her staff, though? It’s impossible to read the credible, against-interest allegations of sexual harassment on the parts of various staffers and not get outraged at the “bro” culture that seems to have erupted in *our* party’s HQ.
As a conservative, a Republican and a father and grandfather of young women, I see these stories (none of them *completely* news to me, even outside the party) and wonder, not just why any woman would *work* there, but why they’d vote for the GOP?
Are they merely allegations, not court verdicts? Sure.
So what about when the “allegation” go to court? With discovery, testimony under oath? Imagine the anger every parent will feel at a party that’d foster that kind of depravity, when allegation turns to judgment? When that revulsion goes to vote?
Do you, loyal GOPer, feel lucky?
As to the allegations about Carnahan’s HR style, and her staff’s dubious HR practices, and the allegations four former Executive Directors made? Those just bounced the rubble.
It’s time for Carnahan to go.
And maybe others are reaching that conclusion:
And if Carnahan doesn’t? The Executive Committee must relieve her of her duties.
And if for whatever reason they don’t? The State Central needs to do it. Not just because the alternative is electoral disaster – although it is. No – because either way it’s the right thing to do.
It should go without saying – the GOP needs an independent investigation of the HR and financial allegations, including the out of control spending and tens of thousands in hush money purportedly paid to departing staffers.
Minnesota Republicans – the heart and brains of this state – may nor may not “deserve better”, but we had best demand better.
I’ve been frank about my long-term ambivalence (at best) about Donald Trump.
In fact, if the universe were a purely binary construct, I could say with a straight face that the only think I like less than Trump…
…is “#NeverTrump”, the reaction to Trump among Republicans that became ever-more knee-jerk over time, to the point of having “Republicans” endorsing Biden over Trump last year.
One of the worst – and by “worst”, I mean “Most Perennially Dim” – offenders is Tom Nichols.
And on a weekend where the Administration lived down to something far below our worst expectations, Tom Nichols exceeded even them:
Naturally, there are Democrats who, given their dubious critical-thinking skills, accept this notion – that Kristi Noem abrogated her foreign policy and national defense duties attendant to being governor of South Dakota, and being seen in public on a day when the person Tom Nichols endorsed was not.
Joe Doakes from Como park emails:
Here’s New York’s vaccine passport plan. Governor Walz is a New York wanna-be; his will follow shortly, no doubt.
Normally, I’d say “Who cares? I don’t go to any of those places,” except for the fact Hy Vee has in-store dining and I will need groceries. Delivery? Oh no, you can bet every delivery service will refuse to serve customers who lack a vaccine passport. They’re private businesses, they can do whatever they want.
Dang it, I should have listened to the preppers.
Joe Doakes
The divide between sane America and crazy America is getting bigger and bigger.
The opening chapter of Paul Johnson’s Modern Times: A History of the World from the 20’s to the ’80s, relates the reporting, academic as well as journalistic, of the discovery of the theory of relativity – and the intellectual shockwave it sent through the intelligentsia and technocracy of the day.
Which was dwarfed, over time, by the side-effects of what it helped introduce – relativism, a version of the universe very much at odds with the Western Judeochristian notions of truth, creating an intellectual climate where materialistic philosophies like Progressivism, Marxism, Socialism and all manners of intellectual and (eventually) political totalitarianism throve.
Modern Times goes on to relate the history of that struggle – both World Wars, the (first) apex of Marxism, the West’s (first) attempt at suicide in the ’60s and ’70s, and ends (in its first edition) right around the elections of Reagan and Thatcher – both hopeful developments (that led, in the second, early ’90s edition, to a little burst of unaccustomed triumphalism from the normally utterly sober Johnson, relating the collapse of Communism.
Reading this piece in Federalist, it appears relativism won the rematch – at least, in regards to how the latest generation views “reality”:
Reading this piece in Federalist, it appears relativism won the rematch – at least, in regards to how the latest generation views “reality”…
“In 1998,” Derek Thompson wrote, “The Wall Street Journal and NBC News asked several hundred young Americans to name their most important values. Work ethic led the way—naturally. After that, large majorities picked patriotism, religion, and having childre“Twenty-one years later,” Thompson continued, “the same pollsters asked the same questions of today’s 18-to-38-year-olds—members of the Millennial and Z generations. The results, published last week in The Wall Street Journal, showed a major value shift among young adults. Today’s respondents were 10 percentage points less likely to value having children and 20 points less likely to highly prize patriotism or religion.”
The good news: there’s a vacuum out there. Nature – and the human mind and soul – abhor vacuums.
The bad news: the “other side”, being intellectual empty carbs, are much better at filling vacuums quickly than the hard-to-digest protein of the cultural right.
I suggest reading the whole thing.
It would appear the only real option in Afghanistan at the moment is picking the type of failure we want to shoot for…
…while remembering that many Afghans who worked for us and are in mortal danger are hiding out (and nationwide), and many Americans – read “potential hostages” – are “sheltering in place” as well, in Kabul.
It would appear our options are:
Securing an urban corridor through a hostile semi-guerrilla army to try to evacuate not only thousands of civilians, but themselves, from a single-strip airport that can potentially be rocketed out of business at the drop of a hat?
Which would subject the US to a choice between:
“Build Back Better” indeed.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Richard Fernandez writes an insightful column about The Garden Administration’s stunning reversal of fortune. From the economy to the border to foreign affairs to the culture war, we’re losing everything, everywhere, and all at once. On the bright side, they may have killed the last, best hope for freedom in the world; but their pronouns are up-to-date.
Joe Doakes
As someone who was there (albeit very young, and very Democrat), this feels an awful lot like the 1970s.
But there is no Herb Brooks warming up in the wings. R
on DeSantis has a chance of being well Reagan, at least.
The MN Gun Owners Caucus is suing the Minnesota State Fair for unilaterally breaking Minnesota state statute (714.624, in this case) by unilaterally banning law-abiding citizens right to carry, with a permit, on the MN State Fairgrounds – as they literally have been doing since the fair started in the 1800s, with literally not one single incident. We spoke about this last week, and on my show this past weekend.
Over the weekend, the DFL, er, shot back.
On that clip of jabber-y, too-close-to-the-cheap-mic audio are DFL chair Ken Martin, and…
William Davis – the guy who “joked” before the 2018 mid-terms:
Last week, DFL staffer William Davis responded to a Facebook post that said, “On 11.6- take back your country.” On that post, Davis commented, “On 11.7- bring them to the guillotines.”
That’s the hamster that’s referring to law abiding gun owners who have a fraction of the violence record of, well, Twin Cities democrats, as cartoon characters.
WIlliam “Robespierre” Davis.
One of the people that, if you take his own rhetoric seriously, half of the state needs protection from.
You don’t even need to write a punch line with these hamsters.
Crime in Minneapolis is running, at last look, ahead of “Murderapolis” levels.
And so an angry, fearful county looks to the true source of all of its crime problem.
Lake Minnetonka:
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol Unit has been hard at work this summer, because of a growing problem on Lake Minnetonka.
Law enforcement says people there are breaking the law by renting out boats without first having them inspected. Some of the boats were also being operated by people without the proper licensing.
To be fair, perhaps their intelligence group has found evidence that gangbangers are chartering boats to settle beeves with each other, pirate style.
The “Reverend“ Nancy Nord Bence provided this blog years and years of fodder on the hoof.
The former lutheran minister, ELCU Hair model,and former head of “Protect Minnesota“, the little gun grabber group that never really could, was living proof of and inspiration for Berg‘s 19th Law: no Minnesota gun control group has ever made a claim that was simultaneously original, substantial and true.
Even the board at PM eventually had enough; they tossed her sometime ago, to the chagrin of material starved Second Amendment pundits. She left to go into whatever flavor of political consulting she could find that, one would guess, involves clients who don’t really think that hard or care about results.
I hesitate to say “she’s back“, but she popped up on the radar over the weekend in regards to a Star Tribune editorial:
“Even the Star Tribune…“
The Star Tribune “editorial board“ may as well have gotten its “editorials“ on gun policy written by Mike Bloomberg, for these past…
… well, literally as long as I can remember.
If you are an organization that employs “Reverend“ Nord Bence, please, I implore you; have your people call my people.
I have so many questions.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails
I’m about to save me a fortune on parking, food, and new pants after making myself sick eating things on a stick. Thanks, faceless bureaucrats!
Joe Doakes
The state fair was “nonessential“ to me after my kids got to a certain age, and it’s still is.
I’d like to say the MN GOP Executive Committee took at least a half-measure at its emergency meeting last night.
To be honest? It was maybe more of a quarter-measure, voting for a financial audit.
The party really needs an independent legal review over the sex harassment charges, on top of the financial audit…
…and of course, Carnahan, whose financial and personal relationship with Lazzaro remains the elephant in the room.
Rebecca Brannon was able to watch the Zoom meeting – which, apparently, was itself a subject of a fair part of the meeting, by her account (read the whole thread):
So the party apparently plans to go into the State Fair with this as its status quo.
I may just have to go to the fair, if only to see how that works out.
More constructively? Anyone leading a petition effort to get signatures to force a Central Committee emergency meeting can have time on my show. Have your people call my people.
With only a couple of exceptions since the Battle of Jutland in the summer of 1916, the German High Seas Fleet had sat mostly at anchor at the Schillig roadstead off of the main German naval base in Wilhelmshaven. Days of inactivity had turned to weeks, which turned into months, which transformed the expensive, mighty battleships of the Kaiserliche Marine into rusting hulks crewed by aggravated, bored sailors. The attitude around Wilhelmshaven had only become worse in recent days as the U-boat fleet had been ordered to return to port as the new government of Max von Baden ended Germany’s unrestricted U-boat campaign as an American-requested prerequisite to armistice negotiations.
But there was an air of excitement at Wilhelmshaven on October 24th, 1918. Orders had come down from the Chief of the German Admiralty, Reinhard Scheer – the High Sea Fleet would prepare to launch it’s entire armada out into the North Sea. 18 Dreadnoughts, 5 battlecruisers, 14 light cruisers, 60 destroyers and torpedo boats and nearly 30 submarines would sail for the Thames Estuary to engage a numerically superior British Navy in the thick of their home waters. The likely endgame was clear to German officers. The Chief of Staff to the High Sea Fleet’s admiral wrote in his diary that the coming offensive was “a battle for the honour of the fleet in this war, even if it were a death battle,” yet was necessary as “it would be the foundation for a new German fleet.”
Acting clearly against the wishes of the civilian German government, and even the Kaiser, the Kaiserliche Marine had put into the motion the first pieces of what on paper would be the largest naval battle in human history – twice the size of the forces at Jutland if all ships became engaged. It would end with their nation in defeat and engulfed in revolution.
German sailors – and a variety of civilian supporters – march in the major naval base in Kiel. The “Kiel Mutiny” would become the first acts in the German Revolution that ended World War I
The condition of the German Navy had seemingly been both a source of concern and a blind eye for the Oberste Heeresleitung or German High Command.
The sailors of the High Seas Fleet returning from Jutland on June 1st, 1916 were exuberant, having won a tactical victory and believing the congratulations sent to them by their Kaiser that they had “started a new chapter in world history” by defeating the vaunted British Royal Navy. But the cost of Jutland – 11 ships – had precluded another significant campaign in the minds of the German command, and the High Seas Fleet had only left Wilhelmshaven three times since June of 1916, and only once since the fall of that same year. Scheer, the commander of the High Seas Fleet until August of 1918, had in part led that charge, arguing that unrestricted submarine attacks were the only hope Germany had for winning the war on the seas. As a result, outside of the U-boats, the Kaiserliche Marine had nothing to do but wait. (more…)
Looking at the collapse of Afghanistan, and the likely re-emergence of Al Quaeda and ISIS, as well as the inevitable surge of Chinese, North Korean, Iranian and Russian aggression that will attend the adminstration’s show of not just weakness but pathetic senility, one looks for some bright spot.
“But it’s not actually Saigon…”
So – a bright spot to the most dismal day of American foreign policy since I watched that Huey take off from the roof of the embassy in fifth grade?
Maybe it’s this: some of the top “minds” in DC Democrat messaging are going to have to spend so much more time thinking of ways to convince people that “conservative white supremacist terror” is the greatest threat facing this nation, they won’t have time to think of anything new.
I said I was “looking” for a bright spot. I didn’t say I found one. But then, what the heck, we can’t even find the ^$#@ President:
Site note: as I watch thousands of Afghans trying and failing to flee for their lives because American bureaucracy is more concerned about Covid testing than mass murder…
…I have to wonder if Michelle Obama is still proud to be an American .
Because I’m have a touch of “not”, at the moment.
More tomorrow.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails
My Comcast bill seems high for what I get. I have the Basic TV package which we use for watching Family Feud and that’s about all. Basic TV, Service to extra TV, Extra TV cable box, Broadcast TV fee, and Taxes – it’s $50 per month. I’m thinking of dropping cable TV for a couple of those Over the Air digital TV antennas. Anybody have any experience with ‘cutting the cable?’ Do they work? Am I on the right track?
Joe Doakes
Comcast cable service is pretty ridiculous. But their Internet is still the best option available (that I’m aware of, anyway) where I live. And it cost more to on bundle them then to take them together
More’s the pity.
As this is written, the MNGOP Executive Committee is scheduled to meet on Sunday night. The Lazzaro Fiasco is forcing action.
The following needs to happen, while events are still even partly in the Executive Committee’s control:
The EC, in short, needs to rip out the rot, fraud and corruption by the root, while it still can.
Because if they don’t, the following will happen:
Will the EC act?
Please tell us the EC is smarter than the Judicial Nomination Committee.
Anyway – fix this.
While you can.
Not many people ask me what my dream job is. But if they did, my response might be to spend half my day as a network talk show host, and the other half as a music producer.
And by “producer”, I mean, “fly by the seat of the pants creative type” – sort of like Jon Landau, moreso than the “frequency-chasing audio engineer” type, your Jimmy Iovines or Steve Lillywhites or Brendan O’Briens.
But nobody’s hiring.
Still, I enjoy the bejeebers out of this sort of tale – the day by day, take by take, track by track recaps of how a classic album, in this case George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, was produced.
So if you’re like me – a Harrison fan and a recording geek – you’ll love this long, minutely detailed read.
But it whets the appetite for more. I want someone to tackle more of these histories.
So in case the writer tunes in for this – let’s get cracking on:
Let’s see to this. Thanks!
There’s a case to be made that we fought the wrong war in Afghanistan; that we should have gone in, rooted out the Taliban, and installed the best awful people have given them three steps toward the door and left in 2003.
There’s an even better case to be made that nation-building, especially in a place like Afghanistan, just can’t work.
I’m all ears.
It was America’s longest war by a fair turn, and it needed to end, somehow, someday.
But the idea that burning ithrough hundreds of billions of dollars of “investment” and just plain pouring money on the ground, and the lives of 2,372 American servicepeople, and it all ends with a Saigon moment? One our administration practically begged for, and seems unable to comprehend?
That is a little hard to swallow.
It should be, shouldn’t it?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Typical Trump-supporting white supremacist confessed to setting cell phone store on fire in Minneapolis (oddly, he didn’t claim to have been inspired to commit his crimes by Umbrella Man). Case was broken by crack federal law enforcement officials surfing the web on company time who ran across this guy’s confession on social media. Heckuva job, fellas.
Joe Doakes
To the Minnesota Left, the fact that he is from out of state is all the evidence they need that he’s a Trump supporter.
Yeah, no. Look at the guy.
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