Fifteen years ago, when Republican Senator Larry Craig was alleged to have sought sexual favors from an undercover cop in a rest room on the baggage claim level at Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Airport, there was no delay in getting the story out to the public.
Today – a few weeks after Sam Brinton, a much-noted Biden Administration official and gender-fluid person was arrested mere feet away for allegedly stealing a woman’s suitcase off the luggage carousel (after not checking a bag of, er, their own for the flight at all), we get…:
Look – if you want to shave your head, put on neon lipstick and a dress and excessively high heels, you go and live your best life. Go with God. Stay tf out of my business, I’ll stay out of yours.
The beef here is, as usual, the Strib had to be shamed into covering news unflattering to Democrats by a newspaper outside the Twin Cities. The New York Post took a shift (the London Daily Mail has spent so much time scooping the Strib on Ilhan Omar, it’s affecting the trade balance).
If they want something passed, they will likely pass it (exceptions exist, and we’ll be talking about them).
Marijuana legalization should be a slam dunk. There’s no need for the party to mobilize its base to get out and pimp for bread and circuses…uh, I mean weed.
And yet they’re doing this:
To celebrate 4/20, why not stock up on some great Legalize It merch from the DFL store?
You'll be supporting the only serious party working to legalize cannabis in Minnesota and you'll look great doing it đ
Seems odd, doesn’t it? Coming up with weed merch for a measure that was a campaign “promise”?
Fearless prediction: the DFL will draw up a weed bill – or amend it onto an omnibus that won’t pass with certain amendments, including weed, included. The DFL will blame the GOP, and use it in two years to get the strung-along weed-voter dupes to trudge to the polls again in 2024.
The article concocts “replacements” for the main components of the traditional Thanksgiving dinner:
Turkey is by far the most expensive thing on the table. Turkey prices have risen about 50% in the last two years, largely because of production slowdowns and an outbreak of avian flu [and, of course, trillions of dollars poured into the economy – a fact NPR goes to great lengths to avoid talking about. Ed]. On average, a 16-pound bird will run you $28.96 and stuffing (prices are up about 70%) will run you $3.88.
NPR Global Economics Correspondent Stacey Vanek Smith decided she would stick with meat for the main dish (many vegetarian options are cheaper), even though that’s not easy. Meat prices have risen significantly across the board: Beef, chicken, fish and even Spam are all pricey. So Stacey opted for pork. Specifically: bacon.
Stacey’s local grocery store was selling family packs of bacon for just $4 apiece. And, of course, a little bacon goes a long way.
Instead of stuffing, Stacey sliced some tomatoes â a relative bargain that she hoped could be put to use with leftovers to create a new holiday tradition: The Thanksgiving BLT.
The worse news: it’s not the their worst idea.
They took a photo – and I swear, this is not a Babylon Bee spoof:
This article alone could be a Casus Belli for a second civil war.
These cameras will snap pictures of speeding cars, with the license plates, and mail the vehicles owner a citation.
A friend of the blog emails
If they actually go through with this, and it passes the legal challenge, it sounds like there will be some overlook or discretion on who gets a ticket.
No chance for abuse here.
It’s good to be king.
Well, kings, queens, qyngs and kweengs and whatever else they get called in woke culture…
One of the key goals of any authoritarian or totalitarian system is to dehumanize its opponents. Because without an opponent to mobilize against, people start looking seriously at the shortcomings the system’s autocrats bring to their lives.
And a good enemy isn’t really very human at all.
Whether it’s a drill sergeant during bayonet practice, or a Stormtrooper yakking about Ăźntermensch, or a kommissar denoucing a kulak or a “wrecker”, the key in getting regular people in any authoritarian or totalitarian system to feel that rage with “the enemy” is to reinforce how really subhuman they actually are.
“President” Biden took the moral arc of American civilization a little further toward tyranny and barbarism over the summer, when he referred to half of Americans as fascists.
But it was far from just national figures. Locally, reverse-McCarthyites were finding “fascists” behind hedges as well:
So proud of @EducationMN members calling for pro-student school board candidates across the state every night! Rochester, Moorhead, Elk River, Sartell, Forest Lake, Lakeville, Minneapolis, Eastern Carver Co and more. Fighting actual fascists in some of these places! #edmnvotes
I hope you all had a happy, blessed, gratitude-heavy Thanksgiving.
I hope you did not spend the day alone in a New York apartment, sitting on your toilet, hunched over your smartphone, obsessively typing bilge out onto social media.
Like this guy seemed to:
Today is a good day to remind you that whitewashing American history is how white supremacy thrives.
Democrats: it is literally violence to âmisgenderâ someone, even unintentionally, even if they are of a chosen gender youâve never heard ofâ.
UnlessâŚ:
"It was obvious with the mugshot that's a man. That's not a non-binary person because in no way shape or form could they appear as a woman the next day."
Trans activist Natalee Bingham settles the gender identity question of the Colorado shooter. pic.twitter.com/eAnJi6khsK
Check this out: a computer application slowly, insidiously saps the compassion, perspectivel, moral equilibrium and finally, intelligence from millions of unwitting people.
It’s a shame, too. Given Hollywood’s constricted sense of imagination these days, it’d likely become a franchise spawning sequels and reboots for decades).
I was on the road, driving somewhere the other day when the notion of listing the things for which I’m grateful popped up. I started trying to list them all – and the list only really came to an end when the car stopped, far too soon, at my destination.
So what the heck – I’m just going to start a stream of consciousness list of things for which I’m grateful on this, our country’s festival of thanksgiving.
I’m thankful for my family, and my family in law. Looking back over the past twenty years since I’ve been writing about all of us, there are so many ways things could have turned out differently, and much worse – but yet here we all are, and things are all right.
And I’m thankful for the family I grew up in – my sister and my brother, of course, and my father, who is blessedly still with us. And for my mother, who we’re spending our first Thanksgiving without, this year. And as I noted back last spring, I’m profoundly grateful for one of the greatest gifts my mother and father gave us all – boring, non-remarkable childhoods, free of the sort of pointless, mindless drama that has always afflicted less fortunate families, and that a certain segment of society has taken to celebrating these days.
The more families I get to know, the luckier I know we all were, and are.
So for Bun, Zam, Syd, Watermelon, and of course Barb, Jim and Dad, I’m happily thankful.
Oh yeah – and Pickle, the cat. Best cat ever.
‘m thankful for the career I have. I blundered into it 24. years ago, more out of boredom with my short career writing instruction manuals – and yet after all this time, I still look forward to going into the office every day, literally or virtually.
I’m grateful in particular for the job I have with the company I’m at. Not naming names – but it’s a place I genuinely enjoy being, with people I genuinely enjoy working with. There aren’t many places where a UX designer with a BA in English could land on two engineering patents. For that story alone, I’m exceedingly thankful.
I’m grateful for the path I took to get there – all its myriad chicanes and hairpin turns. Starting in radio at 15, burning out on it when I was 21, getting back at 22, out again at 25, nightclub DJing, technical writing, and the various twists and turns that got me here.
At the very least, there are a lot of stories to bore my kids stiff with.
On the other hand, every once in a while I can offer someone a perspective they don’t have. And that is a great feeling.
Oh, yeah – I’m immensely grateful that my first run at “Mentoring” in my career field has been successful; my first mentee – actually the child of a long-time friend of the blog – got their first job in the field after an amazingly and satisfyingly short time (by my standards, not theirs) learning the trade. That was such a blast.
I’ve become keenly aware in recent years that there are people who’ve been very important at one time or another, that I will likely never see again. The time for chance serendipity random encounters gets shorter every year. So one thing I didn’t expect, but for which I’m intensely grateful – my show and blog and, to an extent, social media have led me back into contact with a lot of people I likely wouldn’t have via the normal course of random encounters – high school and college classmates who tune in, and occasionally shout out on my show’s various social media feeds. In three particular cases – my college friend Ray Zentz, and my high school and colleg4e classmates Eric DeMar and Pennie Werth – they passed away, very unexpectedly, and (gulp) way too young. And in this past couple of course, I’ve been blessed to have had at least some contact with each of them, while I still could.
And for my many friends who are still with us, and who I do get to see and hang out with? Yes, I’m even more thankful for each and every one of you!
It’s easy enough to say “I’m thankful to be healthy”, and it’s true. But in the four years since my crash weight loss (most of which is still gone), I’ve become humbly aware that most guys who spend as many years sedentary and overweight as I did, aren’t nearly as lucky as I am, to be as relatively healthy, after all that, as I am. I’m very aware I’m as lucky as can be. “I’m healthy” is, in this case, delivered with a bit of “whew – close call” as a happy nod. And for that, I’m thankful.
Back to a bit of nostalgia – I’m thankful for my entire high school class. I can’t say I’m friends with everyone in the Jamestown High School Class of 1981 – but this past couple of reunions have blessed me with a deeper appreciation of quite a few people who, between cliques and crowds and circumstances I barely knew in the day, with whom I’ve spent more time over a few drinks at reunions than we ever did in high school, and intensely glad for the opportunity.
I’m glad I got the education I did. It’s become the fashion these days among a certain crowd of conservatives to dunk on the modern college education – and from what I see among 20-and-30-somethings today, there’s something to it – but my BA in English has served me far better than I’d ever thought it could when I graduated from college. It taught me how to think, reason, look for the question behind the question, for the additional questions that every answer launches.
I’m grateful that this version of the RIchard Thompson Band released this version of this day-appropriate song:
Perhaps a bit less ethereally? I’m so happy to have a band again. Oh, it’s just a classic rock cover band – it’s not the flaming-hot passionate “mission in life” vibe the twenty-some me wore back in the 1980s, when I took my swing at being a rock star, or at least a songwriter, producer and whatever else came my way. But I get to play guitar in front of rooms full of people who seem to enjoy it. And even if it’s a slow night at an out of the way bar, my Fitbit says I burn 6-7000 calories and rack up a zillion steps, so even then it’s a win-win.
Anyway – for that, I’m thankful.
Given the sturm und drang of this state and nation’s political scene, I’m deliriously grateful for the voice this blog, and the NARN, have given me over the years. On the one hand, social media have given everyone a voice, of sorts – and what people have done with that voice is another entire subject. But being able to do this on my own terms (within FCC and Salem Communications rules, natch) for all this time? To the extent I’m still sane, that’s probably why.
Of course, I’m grateful for the friends I’ve made during all these years of writing – Professor Reynolds, Gary Gross, Joshua Sharf, Sheila O’Malley, and the group of local bloggers that, about this time 19 years ago, started coalescing into that radio show: Scott Johnson, John Hinderaker, Brian Ward, Chad the Elder, Atomizer, Michael Brodkorb, and of course Ed Morrissey, King Banaian, Brad Carlson and Jack Tomczak. And of course, for the many friends I made in the “Minnesota Organization of Bloggers” days – including the three whose contributions still bless this blog, Mr. D, Jeff Kouba and First Ringer.
Why, yes – even Paddyboy! I’m thankful that Pad – someone I’ve considered a friend for over three decades, and to whom I owe an odd little debt of gratitude from back before the word “blog” meant anything but something that happened about an hour after you ate a gas station burrito – drops by, pique and all. I owe you a drink or two. Have your people call my people.
And I’m thankful for this little ephemeral bit of internet I’ve been wrangling this past 20.75 years.
As I noted elsewhere around the time of the 20th anniversary, writing this every weekday morning has been sort of a Zen-like lesson – come rain or shine, feast or famine, writer’s block or fit of logorrhea, the exercise of sitting down and writing, five mornings a week, has been a way of centering myself for this past two decades. For better or worse – I have to think it’s better – one of the great takeaways from doing this has been, I think, one of the great lessons of life; keep plugging away, and things eventually explain themselves.
Of course, I’m profoundly and humbly thankful that people still choose to read it, after all this time. Thank you all!
I could keep at this for hours more. And perhaps one day I should. But cooking calls.
And so to borrow a line from that first Thanksgiving post on this blog, way back when:
But I forgot one. I’m thankful to be here. Now. Doing what I’m doing, and with the chance to be doing the same thing – or better – next year.
Thanks to all of you. I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving and a blessed holiday season.
Jackson and Rao are the founders of an organization called Race2Dinner. For $5,000 the two women will attend your eight-person dinner party and bring along “Lisa Bond, our Resident White Woman.” For that price, they will berate you about your racism. They will share their own experiences with racism, which sometimes donât sound like actual racism. But if you object or even if you agree, they will tell you thatâs what white women do and youâre part of the problem. The two have a lot of observations about “what white women do.” White women are mean to each other, for instance. When they are accused of racism white women accuse black women of being “angry” or “crazy.” White women also say theyâre not racist. White women like dinner parties. And they like to say theyâve donated money to the ACLU. If you suggest that black women may be mean to each other or that they may like dinner parties, youâre also a white supremacist. Because how would you know? Donât say you have black friends because that too would be a sign of white supremacy.
Questioning whether spending $5,000 to have people call you names is also “white supremacy,” and the authors explain, “we are tired of it.” The fact that you are complaining about the price is evidence that you “see this work as charity. You doing us a favor. ⌠White supremacy culture has you believing that you are doing us a favor by even caring about racism or antiracism. This results in your incessant demands that we educate youâon your own racism, on a system you created to harm us for your benefit. For free.
On the one hand, it sounds as hellish as the left tells us Thanksgiving with one’s family ostensibly is.
On the other hand, if I had a lot more money than bills – or friends who’d be willing to pitch in – I think it’d be fun to pony up, invite the ladies, and watch the sparks fly.
Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event â a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything â should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident. Â It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to âscoopâ each other even on incorrect facts.
But after a couple of days of listening to people like you claiming that all conservative social and economic thought was a form of “stochastic terror” aimed directly at LGBTQIAetcetc people, it’s worth noting that I wrote it even more for you.
Iâm going to guess most of you didnât know that Sunday was âWorld Toilet Dayâ (I personally celebrate the Eastern Orthodox Toilet Day, which is December 3)
Something I didnât know about the humble toilet; to at least one part of Big Left and, to at least one part of Big Left, itâs a social justice issue:
Unsafe toilets are robbing girls of their futures.
Are you old enough to remember when our Expert Class (TM) sicced it’s PR machine, and Big Left’s army of howler monkeys, from Stephen Colbert down to its horde of demi-human twitterbots, on anyone who expressed even ambivalence about Ivermectin?
“Hahaha, he’s peddling horse medicine!” was about the level and extent of the discourse?
Are you that old?
If you’re a toddler, yes – you are.
If you’re older than a toddler, you remember the “expert” response – from the ridicule…
Shooting at an LGBTQetcetc club in Colorado over the weekend.
While the perp was apparently “on the radar” (in a state where the progressive prosecutor ensures there are no consequences for being there), expect this atrocity to be used less for gun control and more to demonize any criticism of LGBTQetcetc activism of any kind in any place – pushing the notion of “stochastic terrorism”:
âStochastic terrorismâ is just a silly concept that dovetails with âwords are violenceâ and opens the gate for any favored group to shut down all debate because the very existence of the debate will drive people to violence. Of course, no one, at least no sane people, believes it exists, but it is a handy cudgel with which you can belabor your opponents.
“If you say you disagree with me, it must be because you want me dead”.
That’s how society gets to Orwell’s “Duckspeak” – when it becomes impossible to commicate in any but the most innocuous terms without fear of some consequences, rational or not.
Hard to live in a civil society with that hanging over every social question.
Liberals call for Covid Amnesty. They say Conservatives should forgive Liberals for all the bad things resulting from government’s response to Covid. They say none of those bad things are Liberals’ fault because They Didn’t Know.
Nonsense. We knew when the Diamond Princess docked in February 2020 that Covid afflicted mostly old people with existing co-morbidities. We knew the death rate was 2% of those affected while the death rate of the entire cruise ship population was 14 out of 3711 or .3%. And that’s using the phony numbers from counting all respiratory illness deaths as Covid deaths. Covid was never a threat to the population at large – it was never more than a bad flu – and we knew it early on, which is why we learned to elbow bump and wash our hands while singing the alphabet song.
Yes, but Liberals were forced to impose lockdowns, mask mandates and school closings because all the best scientists said so. If there were alternatives, They Didn’t Know.
Nonsense. The Great Barrington Declaration was signed in October 2020 by some of the worlds leading experts in epidemiology to codify in a simple statement what medical and statistical experts had been saying since the panic began. Lockdowns, mask mandates, and school closings were never the correct way to respond to the outbreak – traditional responses were the correct way – and we knew it within a few months.
Yes, but those people were outliers, malcontents, reactionaries and nay-sayers. Liberals were forced to rely on government bureaucrats and computer models because Liberals had no other source of information. Liberals were left with no choice but to implement lockdowns, mask mandates and school closings to avoid the looming surge of infections and resulting hospital overloads.
Nonsense. Governor Walz announced his lockdown based on computer modeling that was proven wrong within two months. There was no surge and hospitals were not overloaded but instead laid off staff for lack of business, keeping beds open for Covid patients who never arrived. The models were worthless and we knew it long before school resumed. Nurses knew it too but danced in the hospital to prove how much smarter they were than those of us watching. They had time to dance. They had no patients.
Yes, but lockdowns, mask mandates and school closings were necessary to prevent the virus from spreading until we had a safe and effective vaccine, which was not generally available to the public until after President Biden took office. Liberals had no choice but to enact temporary stopgap measures to keep the public safe.
Nonsense. There was never any compelling evidence that lockdowns, mask mandates or school closings prevented the virus from afflicting those it targeted most – the elderly frail population – and considerable evidence that warehousing sick elderly with healthy resulted in killing far more of them. Controlling for age, existing illness, and quality of medical care, there is very little difference in Covid mortality between states like Minnesota (strict restrictions) and Florida (few restrictions). There is substantial difference in economic difference and, I suspect, in education outcomes.
The blogger Sundance writing at Conservative Treehouse coined the phrase “pretending not to know” to explain why Liberals keep doing things which Conservatives can plainly see are wrong, but never expect to be held accountable for the consequences. That’s what’s happening with Covid Amnesty. Liberals are pretending they didn’t know so they shouldn’t be held to account.
They knew.
And did it anyway.
And we’re never going to forgive the damage they’ve done.
Now, let’s talk about the election.
Joe Doakes
Forgiveness without atonement is meaningless.
And that’s what those asking for the “amnesty” are trying to sideslip.
No amnesty. As noted elsewhere, I’ll settle for a Truth and Reconciliation commission.
So you read the headline of this Strib article, and you think perhaps straw-purchased guns are turning up more often, or maybe that some people out there with clean criminal records are going out to Fleet Farm, picking a gun from the display case, conducting a completely legal and above board purchase, and then embarking on the life of crime.
But then you read the lead, and itâsâŚ
âŚabout stolen guns being used in crime.
That were purchased legally, at one point or another.
Iâm not sure if theyâve thought this through.
Unless some enterprising gang conducts a heist from the loading dock add Glock USA, literally every firearm available in the United States was legally purchased at one point or another.
âEven the Mauser KAR 98K grandpa brought back from World War II?â
Well, yeah, the German government purchased it from Mauser in the 1930s or 1940s, and give it to some soldier, from whom your grandfather got it by means fair or foul.
I donât mean to make light of what is, honestly, a fairly scabrous campaign on the part of big left, the anti-gun movement and the media; the latest chanting point is âthereâs a very fine line between legal guns, and legal gun owners, and criminalsâ.
Of course, with the owners, there is almost invariably not. The overwhelming majority of people who commit crimes with guns have significant criminal records and arenât allowed to touch, much less own, a firearm.
With the guns? I mean, as long as you gloss over theft (or the federal felony of straw purchasing), itâs both technically true and complete balderdash.
Nancy Pelosi – who has been Speaker of the House for most of the time this blog has been a thing – is back to being a mere Congresswoman from San Francisco.
Dean Phillips feted her on Twitter:
Even her devoted adversaries and opponents will tell you sheâs among historyâs most remarkable and effective leaders. Books will be written, movies made, and extraordinary stories told. pic.twitter.com/H3gy4SCErP
You can say exactly the same thing about Francisco Franco and Pol Pot.
No, she’s neither. But she is cynical, opportunistic, theatrical, has a dubious relationship with the Constitution, and somehow became immeasurably wealthy while “serving” in Congress, not that that means she’s corrupt nosirreebob.
But it’s fair to say she has certainly lowered the bar for “powerful female leaders”.
Have you noticed a lot of news stories detrimental to the narrative the left wrapped itself around before the midterms, have suddenly come out now that the (most of) the votes are counted?
I’ve always detested “Generational” politics. Among all the things that divide us as a nation, artificial, externally-defined demographic trends have to be the dumbest of all.
Still, a huge chunk of the population perceives them – and perception is reality.
David Hogg – like many “prog” human message bots before and many more to come – repeats a set of chanting points that years of indoctrination have inflicted on a disproportionate share of Generation Zs:
Among all the ideas that are sapping the vitality of American civilization, there may be few more corrosive than the devaluation of the term “right”. To much of GenZ, the term is interchangeable with “virtues” at best, “stuff we want” at worst.
The notion that inalienable rights come with ineluctible responsibilities eludes many of all generations – but Millennials and Zeepers appear to be the most vocal in imposing their misapprehension on the world.
So if you’re a Zeep and reading this:
There is no more “right not to be shot” (or to “Go to school and survive”) than there is a “right not to have a car crash” . There is a right to live – with a concomitant responsibility and moral imperative to see to your safety, and the safety of those you’re responsible for (a responsibility that law enforcement at Parkland fell dismally short at).
You desire peace and tranquility – but it’s not an inalienable right. It can, indeed, be taken away arbitrarily and horrifically. One has a responsibility as an adult to maintain both of them – neither is guaranteed in anyway in the real world.
