A friend of the blog emails:

Saw this on Facebook last night. My sense is that there is more to this story, but then again, it is Saint Paul Public Schools, so maybe there isn’t….

There may very well be more to the story. If I were a gambling man, I would say that that “more“ is a St., Paul Schools bureaucrat list ir misfiled the title.

As I’ve noted in this space, assuming the SPPS operates for anyone’s benefit but it’s own is always your first mistake.

Read:

I’m watching this one.

Minnesota is getting its thoughtcrime registry.

First, some credit where it’s due. I actually found a relatively fair, well-balanced story on the subject.

Of course, I had to go to Grand Forks to do it.

The piece covers the registry’s background – including some of the fairly inspired quesistoning by Republicans Harry Niska and Walter Hudson:

The key moment that caught the most attention? An exchange during a floor debate when Rep. Harry Niska, R-Ramsey, asked House bill sponsor Rep. Samantha Vang, DFL-Brooklyn Center, if publishing an article on the theory that COVID-19 was a bioweapon that had originated in a Chinese laboratory could count as a bias incident under the new legislation.

Vang said it would be possible.

“With the rhetoric we have seen since the pandemic regarding accusing Asians of bringing in the coronavirus, that is bias-motivated,” the first-term representative said. “So that can be considered a bias incident.”

Now, the bad news.

Wags in some conservative circles floated the idea of flooding the agency with reports of progressive hate speech, of the type that run of the mill DFLers are constantly dribbling out.

No such luck. The lsw’s DFL sponsors saw the potential for the registry to be buried in “progressive” hate, and tightened it down. (Emphasis added).

In its final form as a law, language calls for the department to “analyze civil rights trends … including information compiled from community organizations that work directly with historically marginalized communities.”…

In other words, they did for it what they did for “Feeding Our Future” money: made sure only the DFL Non-Profit/Industrial Complex could participate.

But what about safeguards?

Why, after spending a decade and a half obliterating all rational grounds for the “high trust society” that democracy needs to survive, we’re supposed to just trust ’em!

What officials do know right now is community organizations such as Jewish Community Action, the Coalition of Asian American Leaders, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, will provide reports of bias incidents to the state…Putz said it would have been more of a problem if the human rights department were to take direct reports of discrimination from individuals. With nonprofits and other groups with a track record of documenting discrimination being the source of information, that won’t be a concern, he said.

Nothing says “trustworthy” like a (partial) list of non-profits that are also DFL farm clubs.

Senator Zaynab Mohammed – a “devout Muslim” who voted for chemical neutering and abortion after birth – should put your mind at rest (although hopefully not “at rest” enough to vote DFL) (emphasis added again):

Asked by Forum News Service whether spreading a lab theory on COVID would count as a bias incident, Sen. Mohamed said she trusted the judgment of Human Rights Department officials.

“Could that happen? Sure, maybe,” she said, but added: “They know exactly what they’re doing. They understand the goal of what this legislation is supposed to do.”

That whole idea of breaking CD1, 6, 7 and 8 away into a separate state is sounding better every day.

City of Minneapolis will be closing the Stone Arch Bridge – one of the city’s iconic attractions, and one of the very nicest overviews there is anywhere – for the entiire Independence Day weekend:

This should help solve downtown’s crime problem.

In much the same way that France’s surrender solved that whole “German invasion” problem in 1940.

A friend of the blog emails:

[This advertiser] had it right.

Oh, I completely agree.

It was still morning in America.Notice, of course, thst it was 34 years ago. Reagan had barely left office. The Berlin Wall had yet to fall, but it was teetering.

But this is a good time to remind d you to be the backlash you want to see.

It’s faint – easy to miss in the din and blare of the DFL celebrating its just-finished legislative orgy, in the bleating of the news media, in the squawking of Governor Klink and honking of Lieutenant Governor Flanagan at a restaurant or parade.

But it’s out there.

Listen, and you can hear it: “The typical “independent” MInnesota voter is no more enamored of abortion on demand throughout and after pregnancy, at taxpayer expense, for all people of all ages who make it to Minnesota, legally or not, than they are of the idea of completely banning abortion”.

Because as the hangover from the DFL’s legislative orgy sets in, the DFL’s elected officials are telling you they know it, although not much more loudly than the whisper, so as not to offend their “progressive” overseers.

Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Sunday she supports allowing limitations on abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy wading into the thorny political debate of abortion procedure time frames.

“I support allowing for limitations in the third trimester that do not interfere with the life or health of the women,” Klobuchar told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” while also reaffirming her support for codifying Roe v. Wade.

So while every Democrat will wriggle away from the question “at what point in pregnancy would it have no longer been OK for your mother to abort you” like it’s a live hand grenade, you can see that they’re not aware that some people can and do answer it.

Metro progressive DFLers don’t hear it, of course – or will turn up the volume of their little show:

But Amy knows.

The simultaneous human tsunamis of Pride and two nights of Taylor Swift saved downtown Minneapolis!

Here’s one of about 50 Twin Cities media stories to that effect – almost as if they were written in advance:

Besides the obvious economic benefit of having half a million people wandering about with purpose, big crowds (that aren’t there to riot, anyway) are generally pretty safe from most violent and property crime.

So the solution is clear.

Downtown Council needs to make Taylor Swift the house band at USBank Stadium, and turn Hennepin from 10th to Loring Park into a new “PrideLand” theme park.

Simple as.

Big day for Greta on the blog today, huh?

Sweden has ditched the Greens “100% Renewable” goal, doubled down on nukes:

More than 40 years after the country voted to phase out nuclear power, Sweden is now looking to build more nuclear reactors after its parliament formally abandoned its 100% renewable energy target to meet net-zero by 2045.

“Living close to Russia focuses the mind, and the Swedish people not only wish to join NATO, but also to ground their economy in an energy source, nuclear, that is physically sound and secure, unlike renewables which are neither,” said Dr. John Constable, NZW’s energy director.

This follows close on the utterly unrelated move to bar “Gender-Affirming Care” for minors in Sweden…

…and the Minnesota DFL’s uncritical mad dash to embrace unicorn power and allowing people who can’t buy vape, rent a car, consent to sex, buy a beer or sign a contract to commit to

Some people are hopping up and down about Greta Thunberg’s prediction from five years ago:

Me? I say we’re still on borrowed time from the Ozone Layer, the hole in which (we were told by noted physicist Ted Danson, was going to kill us in 10 years.

Starting in 1988.

Minneapolis has big plans for transit, and Minneapolitans are part of them, whether they like it or not.

June 24, 2023 – 2:00 PM

In seven years, Minneapolis transportation planners want 60% of trips in the city taken on public transit, or made by biking, walking or rolling.

The effort to achieve that ambitious goal, which is laid out in the city’s Transportation Action Plan, began this month as the city partnered with marketing agency Vision Flourish to kick off the mode-shift campaign called “As You Go Minneapolis.”

“We want to shift people’s behavior and thinking about how to move about the city,” said Amy Barnstorff, a transportation planner in the city’s Public Works Department.

No word on how they plan to enforce compliance with this diktat.

It was about this time fifteen years ago that I was in the middle of my 11-month experiment at doing without a car.

Among my conclusions from that experiment:

I want to laugh when I see some of the lefties – especially the transit-oriented leftybloggers – yapping about running their lives on transit.  I notice that not a single one of them seems to have kids; children are the big clinker in the “transit-oriented lifestyle”.  If you have to get kids to an after-school event, it’s a major expedition; if you have to take one to urgent care, it’s either miserable (hauling sick kids on the bus is a rotten feeling, although I never had to do it) or expensive (cabs in the Twin Cities are nothing to write home about). 

Just to run down the hunch, I checked out the transit planner featured in the article.

And sure enough, she punched all the expected tickets; her and her significant other apparently have a dog, but no children.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who can walk that particular walk without having a car for a backup.

Someone prove me wrong.

Parts of the Twin Cities housing market are doing very well.

Others…not so much:

“Nowhere have home prices fallen more in the past year than in Uptown Minneapolis — specifically the 55408 ZIP code that includes Lyn-Lake and part of Whittier — where closing prices last month were almost 51% less than what they were in April 2019.”

Amazing what three years of crime, ongoing “civil disturbances” and endemic disorder will do to stability.

Rebecca Brannon is one of perhaps half a dozen actual reporters in the Twin Cities media.

She captured this yesterday at “Pride“:

Looks like someone came up on the wrong end of the intersectional lottery…

Today’s song list:

I didn’t have “coup” on my bingo card for today.

Free reign to romp and play in the comments is granted. is granted.

Don’t let it go to your heads.

The rule changes in baseball this season got a lot of press.

But a rule change in basketball seems to have gotten less press.

Apparently, two field goals inside the three point line is now worth five points.

In related news, the Wooves/Linx “community” group has decared its “Inspirinig Women” winner for 2023:

Sunday, June 25 is the 30th anniversary of the last episode of “Late Night with David Letterman“ on NBC.

Today is also the 30th anniversary of the last time David Letterman was consistently funny.

The DFL did so much damage this past session, it’s hard to track all of it.

Rep. Hudson did a pretty good job of cataloging it – and why it matters (expand the tweet to see it all).

I’ll be talking about this extensively on the show this Saturday.

At some point over the last five or six years, Big Gun Control – a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Left – decided they were done trying to debate second amendment rights groups.

Its hard to fault them on their reasoning. Every time they have tried to debate the issue against a “near pair opponent“ in the past 35 years, they have fared incredibly badly.

With the flameout of the mascist establishment over Dr. George Hotez crab walking away from a challenge to debate Robert F Kennedy, Junior, the entire the left’s noise machine has switched into full gaslighting mode.

After two solid years of being busted using power, instead of fact to shut down debate on issue after issue after issue – on Fomite spread, the Wuhan Lab origin story, on vaccines preventing spread, and on and on – suddenly not only will they not debate, but…

…debate itself is bad.

Of course, when you’ve been wrong about climate change guns, transgenderism, welfare, the Soviet Union and pretty much everything else, I suppose avoidance is understandable.

But let’s call this what it is. Gaslighting.

The Left is America’s narcissistic abusive spouse. .

Today is the 18th anniversary of the opening of the Metro Transit Blue Line – the beginning, or re-beginning, of light rail transit in the Twin Cities.

So on this anniversary, let us remember the people who gave their lives – unwillingly and in most cases unwittingly – to further Minnesota’s political class’s obsession with feeling like a Big City.

It was a relatively quiet year on the rail lines – if you leave out crime at the train stations and on board the trains, of course. But the trains didn’t run over anyone new.

Still:

• The Blue Line has mowed down 15 so far – eight pedestrians, three bikers, a man in a wheelchair, and three people in cars. There was also a stabbing death in the winter of 2021 on the Blue Line, and three more murders at stations along the line. That’s an average of almost one death per year.
• The Green Line has harvested ten victims in nine years – the first just six weeks after the train started operating, mostly pedestrians trying to navigate the badly-designed street-level crossings. The most recent was last July 4. A shooting last month on the Central Avenue platform claimed another, although that wasn’t directly transit-related.
• The Northstar line has five fatalities so far. The last was in 2019 – which, to be fair, was about the last time anyone rode the Northstar.

That’s 30 dead, so far. 30 lives snuffed out so that the Met Council, the various governments, and other people who love to play with the dials and levers of government can feel like they’re “running” a big city with all the trimmings. 

Let’s take a moment today to remember these innocent victims of government narcissism and megalomania.

The missing submersible that went into the depths of the North Atlantic, taking tourists down to view the titanic, apparently had a design shortcoming or two, according to at least one whistleblower lawsuit:

At the meeting Lochridge discovered why he had been denied access to the viewport information from the Engineering department—the viewport at the forward of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters. Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (“PVHO”) standards. OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters.

2700 meters short of the target depth?

Not exactly close enough for county work.

The US military learned the hard lessons about building submarines out of parts from the lowest bidder almost 60 years ago. its one of the very rare cases of government learning something before the private sector.

Something doesn’t quite smell right about this story.

It’s a gay bar, dumping Bud Light over them, abandoning the Dylan Mulvaney campaign.

The stereotype of gay bar patrons is that they have impeccable taste.

We are talking Bud Light.

Anyone else seeing the problem here?

Of course, the lesson to companies is, or should be, “don’t get involved in the culture war. Because once you dip your toe in, there is no “middle ground“.

Fantasy: Group of mewling progressive soft (among other things) racists “plan” to “buy every eligible black American an AR-15”:

Progressive activists concerned about gun violence are launching a campaign to drum up the support they need to pass more restrictive gun laws. The group plans to purchase an AR-15 for every eligible black American to scare Republicans into backing stricter regulations on firearms.

“We’ve known for a long time that racist Republicans are terrified at the thought of black men owning guns,” said Shelby Harris, chief operating officer of “Unpull the Trigger,” a non-profit anti-gun group. “By making sure every black man has a rifle, we can finally get Republicans to support universal background checks, gun buybacks, and confiscation of assault weapons.”

Dubbed the “Scare the Racists Straight” initiative, this controversial proposal is intended to get Republican politicians and their conservative constituents on board with the effort to limit gun ownership as much as possible.

“It’s a really exciting project,” said Tiffany Petit. “When these racist rednecks see video after video of black men shooting assault weapons at the range and carrying them in public, they’ll get on the phone immediately to tell their Congressperson to support more gun control pronto!”

Reality: a day at the range is more egalitarian than almost anything in modern society…

…especially a DFL executive meeting of any kind.

Also – let the record show that “23 and Me” says I have a black ancestor in the past 6-7 generations. Please make mine a .300 Blackout if you’d be so kind.

…when “Cultural Appropriation” was considered a bad thing.

Realtor markets to gays who are hysterical about Texas laws about…

…checks notes…

…restrictions on chemical neutering of mentally-ill minors, by calling his marketing ploy “the Rainbow Underground Railroad”:

When someone goes to the website FleeRedStates.com, a message reads, “As LGBTQIA+ citizens in Red States, many of us feel at risk. Current laws are highly discriminatory against trans youth and their families. Our marriages, our families, and even our safety are at risk. If you feel the need to leave the jurisdiction of a Red State, let us help you sell your property here and connect with you an LGBTQIA+ or ally agent in a better location of your choice. We are licensed in Texas and we have affiliates in all 50 states and several countries.” People can share their contact information to create an account and start the process of connecting with a real estate expert.

“We’re calling it kind of the ‘rainbow Underground Railroad,’” McCranie said. “We’re trying to get people out quietly and get them to someplace where they feel safer.”

And if you are more than two months old, you’re old enough to remember it, too.

Humans: “My God, this is horrible. Those poor girls…“

DFL/Media (pardon the redundancy): “OK, who leaked the video?“

Well, no – I’m actually not exaggerating (thread):

The problem, Ms. Moriarty, is that nobody trust you or your office. Not even a fair chunk of people who would never consider not voting for the DFL.

Fox9 – the laziest of the Twin Cities four TV stations – is suddenly concerned about “divisive rhetoric”.

“Jared Goyette” – never heard of him – cited a grab bag of more or less conservative statements absent any meaningful context, including one from Albertville Rep. Walter Hudson…

Speaking five days after Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Miami, Minnesota GOP Rep. Walter Hudson used militaristic rhetoric to describe Democrats in a speech to the Republican Seniors of Minnesota.

While making no reference to Trump, Hudson, who has a background in conservative talk radio and is known for his bombastic style, referred to Democrats as “unAmerican” and accused them of engaging in “demonic behavior.”

“You’re dealing with a party that has declared war upon you. The goal of modern Democrats is to conquer you. What do I mean by that? Conquer you? Think about what’s entailed in conquering a people. You’re physically displacing them, get out, go somewhere else,” he said.

…that was dishonestly wrenched out of context, as Hudson invites you to see for yourself, and which is in no way completely inaccurate, as we pointed out last week.

In the meantime – criticizing gender ideology is “Genocide”, according to gender ideologue and Woman of the Year Leigh Finke:

Not a word from Fox9 or Jared Goyette about that.

Still waiting for declarations of sympathy from Jews, Tutsi, Cambodians and Rohinga on the whole “genocide” thing.

The descriptions of the accident over the weekend that killed five MInneapolis women were bad enough.

Seeing it is another matter entirely:

Not sure how any jury seeing this video doesn’t go into the room with a serious bias against the driver…

…assuming it ever goes to trial. How sick is it that we have to preface all accounts of tragedies and atrocities in Minneapolis with a reference to “Moriarty Justice”.

And we do – because the driver, Derrick Thompson, has apparently already skated from one heinous traffic crime – a fact we learn on the 22nd and final paragraph:

Thompson has a long history of driving-related offenses, including multiple convictions for driving with a revoked or suspended license, according to state court and Department of Public Safety records. His license was reinstated in March 2023 and remained active at the time of the crash.

Which was five paragraphs below the fact that he is the son of former DFL representative John Thompson:

Though police have not publicly named the driver, two sources identified him as 27-year-old Derrick John Thompson, of Brooklyn Park. Public records indicate that he is the son of former state Rep. John Thompson, DFL-St. Paul. John Thompson did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Just as the sins of the father aren’t visited on the sons, a son’s crime isn’t a father’s fault. The fact that Thompson the Younger apparently benefitted from revolving door justice.

But the dead are Somali, in Hennepin County. I doubt even Moriarty can ignore that.