77 years ago last month, World War II went into a brief run of extra innings, as German troops launched a surprise attack, trying to drive a wedge between the US and British armies and take the port of Antwerp, robbing the Allies of their main logistics hub on the continent. We know it as the “Battle of the Bulge”.

In a strategic sense, the attack was doomed before it started. It may have cost the Germans more than it ganed them, burning through their last supplies of fuel, ammunition and fresh vehicles, to no gain that they were able to hold for more than a month.

But that was little comfort to the GIs on the ground – many new to the front in brand-new divisions, many more exhausted after six months of constant battle and resting in the “quiet sector” of the Ardennes, and the corner of Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.

The GIs fought on – some of them famously surrounded, others who just happened to be at the wrong place at the right time, still more who rushed to the scene to hold lines in the snow that could not be passed.

They fought an enemy that was exhausted and morally shaped by five years of total war, including troops – the Waffen SS, who had made war crimes part of their “mystique” since the fall of 1939. One SS battlegroup had left a trail of war crimes, including the massacre of a group of combat engineers at Malmédy, Belgiuim, and a smaller and more obscure but perhaps even more gruesome slaughter of African-American troops at Wereth – two of a number of real shootings of American POWs, and dozens more rumored mass killings.

It’s no secret to those who read military history; at times, after hearing news about the GIs gunned down at Malmédy in particular, that GIs – cold, often cut off from higher authority, thousands of miles from home, fighting for people they largely didn’t understand, in a war none of them asked for – took rough revenge. The history of “The Good War” is not void of stories of American troops gunning down Germans, and especially Japanese, without worrying too hard about the rules of war. Americans and Brits were less likely to throw the rules of war under the treads of the passing tank than the Russians or French – all of whom took “take no prisoners” pretty literally – but war, being famously “hell”, brings the worst out of everyone at times.

Suffice to say – while the typical 18 year old American draftee was on balance, as Stephen Ambrose called him, “the. best thing that could have happened to a conquered Germany or liberated France, Luixembourg and Belgium”, some of them, sometimes, had their breaking points. It wasn’t taught in high school history class – which, when I was in school, was still being taught by some of the men who’d been there – but you don’t have to dig too far into history to find honest portrayals by GIs who, as the years rolled on, talked it out (including at least one infamous episode from Band of Brothers itself).

It’s not news, suffice to say.

If you read your history.

But this is 2022. And most Americans, including most of today’s generation of “news” reporters, never read history, or at least nothing before 1960.

“The Reveal” is an NPR ‘Investigative journalism’ program, hosted by Al Letson. This past Sunday’s episode focused on the groundbreaking investigation of a massacre of 80 German POWs in Belgium by members of the 11th Armored Division.

I listened so you don’t have to – but here it is, anyway:

So what’s. the purpose of this “investigation?”

To prove that World War II a reductionist battle between good-hearted, white-hatted GIs and cartoony black-hearted Nazis, and that some Americans did some horrible things?

Again – it’s not news.

To bring out a story that has been hidden by history?

As the story itself points out, the episode was common knowledge among people who follow the war.

That George Patton and other Army brass, at the time and during the telling of the story of the war, found it expedient to either “not publicize” or “cover up” the details of the massacre, to a people who were becoming weary of war and who were shocked by the late-campaign bloodshed? Leaving aside the whole “what the hell do they expect?” angle – who do they expect to hold accountable? 95% of the GIs are gone; all the senior officers who set the policy had passed on forty years ago.

To undercut and sandbag a key part of the American self-image? To throw crap on the notion that America has had, and acted upon, and sacrificed mightilly, for noble ideals that didn’t strictly benefit us? To liberate people we had no moral obligation to sacrifice for?

I think I’m getting warm.

A former teacher, who has drifted far to the left since I was a student, once said “the Walt Disney version of history doesn’t tell the whole story” – to which I replied “either does the Ingmar Bergman version (I suppose I could have said NIkole Hannah-Jones, as well).

Either way – when it comes to piddling on any shred of American exceptionaism, to say nothing of nobility, there is no statute of limitations.

If a Republican wins in 2024, I suspect there will be a bonfire of dox at the FBI headquarters. 

Maybe they’ll make s’mores. 

Representative Todd LIppert is leaving the House so he can tour rural Minnesota teaching rural Minnesotans about January 6:

He’ll be joining OJ, still out there looking for the real killer.

Joe Doakes from Como parks emails:Joe Doakes from Como parks emails:

Hospitals are bringing in foreigners to do the nursing work Americans won’t do.

The article implies the reason for the nursing shortage is that American nurses are tired from working so hard taking care of Covid patients. They’re quitting in exhaustion. Apparently, they will never recover, never return to work, therefore we must replace them with nurses brought in from overseas. Foreign nurses are much more durable, more resilient, I guess. They aren’t quitters. They’re willing to work.

Who believes this rot?

If we’re worried about a nurse staffing shortage, maybe we shouldn’t be firing nurses during a pandemic for violating a vaccine mandate? Particularly not over a vaccine which doesn’t prevent the spread of an illness which is basically just a bad flu. Another example of the endless lack of Second Order Thinking in the Brandon administration.

Joe Doakes

Why, yes – it does seem a little bit like the right hand doesn’t know what stories the left-hand is telling.

If we consider the notion of “sanity“ as a continuum, with “very very sane“ on one end, and “not sane at all“ on the left, it’s pretty fair that our systems Covid fear mongering has driven this particular mother (and teacher) to the “left“ end of the scale:

An arrest warrant has been issued for a Houston-area mother whose teenage son was allegedly found in the trunk of her car at a COVID-19 drive-thru testing site on Friday…According to the charging documents, Beam told Gordon that her child was in the trunk because he had previously tested positive for COVID-19 and as a result, wanted to “prevent her from getting exposed to possible COVID” while driving him to get additional testing at the stadium.

Gordon told Beam that she “would not be receiving COVID testing until the child would be removed from the trunk of the vehicle and place[d] in the back seat of the vehicle.”

On the other end of the scale? This entire Twitter thread:

Sanity is pounding at the door.

And from inside the trunk, where applicable.

Scene 1: Fall, 2020.

Us:  “Eventually, Covid is going to be endemic.  We’ll never eliminate it.  Masks are public health theater.  Shutdowns will make things worse. Vaccines are great news, but let’s be cautious about the claims.   We need to protect the vulnerable, and learn to live with it.  Eventually, between herd immunity and mutation,  this is going to be just like the flu. 

Them:  Hah!  Just like the flu, he says!  Hundreds of thousands have died!  Masks are effective! IF we could only lock down for six weeks, we’d destroy the virus, just like the Germans!  Mask up, Minnesota!

Scene 2: Today.

Them: The experts say Covid is going to be with us for good. Masks maybe useless. The economy needs to breathe! Vaccines are really more like flu shots than smallpox or polio shots. This is going to be like the flu, eventually.

Us: Ummm…

Them: Becasue shut up.

(And SCENE).

To: The World
From: Mitch Berg, irascible peasant
Re: Not the tough, decisive Patton

“Comedian” Patton Oswalt has been taking flak in recent weeks for having tweeted out a photo of him standing with Dave Chapelle – who is trayf among the Wokies.

He issued a groveling apology last week.

My hot take:

If you have ever seen Oswalt’s work, and his record outside of his “comedy”, and thought he was remotely:

a) smart enough to stay on “woke” message in the first place, and

b) solid enough in thought and integrity to stand up for “a”

…then you cared about him more than I did.

That is all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is the first worthwhile analysis of supply chain disruptions I’ve found. It’s worthwhile because it doesn’t focus on one tree (ships in port) but on the whole forest of supply chain issues, particularly the consequences of the abrupt shift in consumption due to Covid regulations. It’s another example of Second Order thinking.

Remember last year when Cub had no toilet paper? That’s because toilet paper in the office restroom is single-ply industrial grade on a huge roll, but toilet paper at home is two-ply softer grade. Toilet paper manufacturers know the normal office-versus-at-home percentages but when everybody shifted from working at the office to working at home, manufacturers weren’t prepared to instantly shift percentages and weren’t thrilled at incurring the expense because nobody knew how long lockdowns would last so they couldn’t calculate whether the shift would be worth the cost. It took months for the industry to catch up.

Everything in the supply chain works that way, including food. The author claims that pre-pandemic, 60% of all food in the US was eaten outside the home, at school and restaurants. How much during the lockdowns? Consider the consequence of shifting tomato sauce from Costco sized cans into Cub sized jars, if you can even obtain that many Cub sized jars because they’re made in Mexico where workers are quarantined for their own government’s lockdowns and the few jars they do make are shipped on boats sitting in ports waiting to unload containers.

The people who thought they could lock down the economy without consequences are the same people who figure they can shut down electric generating plants without consequences. There will always be toilet paper on the shelves and the lights will always come on when you flip the switch, right? They never seriously ask, “What could go wrong?” because they are too busy signaling their virtue to engage in second order thinking.

Joe Doakes

In the “progressive“ world, everything but political science is, in a practical sense, hypothetical.

And then there were six, again: Kendall Qualls has jumped into the MNGOP Governors race.

And the MNDFL’s Ken Martin’s response?

So…for the 2022 Governor’s race, Ken Martin is still running against…

…Trump?

Which is interesting, because it wasn’t so long that his party’s line was completely different:

Why yes. Indeed.

I suppose it beats trying to run on the DFL’s record…

…I was reliably informed that Justice Sotomayor was “wise“.

I’d like to get a check on that.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Ukraine and Kazakhstan border on Russia. They are all mobilizing troops along the borders.

Secretary of State Blinken says NATO never promised not to admit new members, and that the United States is fully committed to defending the principles NATO stands for. The US has moved an aircraft carrier group into position in preparation to defend those principles.

China and Taiwan both agree there is only one China; they disagree whether the mainland or the island is the wayward province which should be ruled by the other. Lesko Brandon said the United States will defend Taiwan if China moves against it.

Defense experts argue over whether Brandon should get the US involved in a two-front war, or only one land war in Asia.

I ask why the United States is promising to go to war against Russia and China at all? What is our vital national interest in Ukraine? How many Americans should die for Kazakhstan? We already have hyperinflation caused by dumping Covid money into the economy – how will we pay for a war against China?

The United States played World Policeman for a century. It’s time to end the farce. We should solve our problems at home before attempting to solve problems elsewhere.

Joe Doakes

I don’t know about you, but I’m half expecting a whole lot of government push on the patriotism of supporting the war effort. Just like our victorious vaccination drive.

The house DFL caucus is starting to “take a crime seriously”.

Or at least that’s what the headlines are intended to say: “In response, we are already drafting bills based on the input of all stakeholders”

All?

Well, not all the stakeholders. Not the party that currently holds the minority in the Minnesota house.

There’s a reason for that, of course; this has nothing to do with fighting crime, and everything to do with fighting the perception that the majority party in the Minnesota house is nothing but a pack of feckless felon coddlers.

In other words, a public relations stunt to pray on a news media that serves as little but a bunch of feckless DFL coddlers.

A friend of the blog emails:

I’m beginning to think that the developers and those councilmembers who get donations from developers supported rent control in order to make the case to eventually exempt developers from rent control, thus allowing them to purchase more property as they pushed out small landlords.

Scratch that- I knew it all along. It was pretty obvious that was the goal. What I don’t understand is all the complaints about the developers pulling out of projects right now, until they get their exemption. People ought to proudly tell us that they voted for this since they were pretty proud of themselves when they were campaigning for rent control, you know, because it helps those poor POC or some such other thing that we don’t quite understand, but gosh darn feels good.

Mid stage single party “progressive“ government is when its stakeholders still haven’t figured out their sense of “charity” is being manipulated.

End stage single party “progressive“ government is when the government doesn’t have to go through the pretense of caring what its stakeholders, to say nothing of voters, think..

Governor Klink had a union obligation to save the bloody shirt yesterday:

I mean, he’s not wrong – although I doubt he knows why.

The part of our “democratic ideals” that the mooks ofJanuary 6 attacked was the process – the Constitutionally-mandated steps for determining who the President is.

The rioters tried to circumvent that process. That – not the hooliganism in the Capitol itself – was the attack on democracy.

When government encourages or (hold onto this word) allows people to chuck the process and impose rule themselves – that’s the very definition of an attack on democracy.

Like, January 6? Sure.

Even if they’re dead sure the election was stolen, because Rudy Giuliani said so, and Sidney Powell had

Like when a group of protesters tore down the statue of Christopher Columbus on the Minnesota Capitol mall – bypassing the rule of law (the Capitol Architecture Committee), but with the tacit blessing of the Administration (whose Lieutenant Governor, Peggy Flanagan, chairs the committee); the DFL machine then “punished” the ringleader by “sentencing” him to preach to school kids why Columbus was evil enough to warrant trashing the process. Which would be more or less like “sentencing” Sheriff Hutchinson to a punitive round of tequila shots.

Is the destruction of the statue as big an assault on the rule of law as the riot a the Capitol?

In and of itself, of course not.

Is the fact that our institutions, and our media, tolerate one side attacking the rule of law while hammering on the oppositions attacks?

Yeah,that doesn’t help one little bit.

Outstate Republican: “Minneapolis and Saint Paul are a mess”

DFLer from Crocus Hill/Linden Hills: “Ack-shu-ally, you never come here, so who cares what you think?”

People from Midway, East Lake, NoMi: “No, he’s right”

DFLer from Crocus Hill/Linden Hills: …

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed me yesterday:

Today is the Honorable Sixth, the day when patriots everywhere raise their fingers to the usurper in Washington, in memory of the innocents slaughtered and the political prisoners still held captive for attempting to secure democracy by peaceful means.

Joe Doakes

I mean, if it were Democrats and the occupant were a Repubican, that’s what we’d have heard all day yesterday…

I don’t disagree with any of the particulars of the National Review’s editorial about January 6:

There is no defense for what the mob did that day. None. The people have a right to form loud, angry crowds to petition and protest their government. They need not do so in ways that are pleasant or polite. The “Stop the Steal” protesters who listened to the speeches and went home were exercising their rights as citizens.

But ours is a government of laws, not of men. A rule-of-law system has no place for physical intimidation or mobs obstructing the peaceful, constitutional transfer of power. The Founding Fathers feared few things more than mob rule. They created a federal district to avoid a repeat of a 1783 riot around the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

Donald Trump, his lieutenants (especially Sidney Powell and the tragically-fallen Rudy Giuliani), and Trump’s personality cult, did something that doesn’t, and can’t, play well with small-“d” democracy: it put the person ahead of the process:

There is also no defense of what Donald Trump did to summon the crowd, tell it that there remained any option but counting Biden’s electoral victory, and urge the assemblage to march on the Capitol because “if we allow this group of people to illegally take over our country . . . you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Trump’s recklessness disgraced the office of the presidency.

Additionally, there is no defense of Trump’s pressuring Pence to take unilateral, unlawful action against the counting of electoral votes, then telling the crowd that Pence might do so, knowing full well that they would discover when they reached the Capitol that Pence would not. Some of them, entering the Capitol, chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” It was Trump who led them to believe that his own vice president was allowing their country to be stolen.

Let’s be honest about what that explosion of personality cult over process actually did:

What happened at the Capitol that day is best understood as a riot that was particularly dangerous because of its setting and context. It was not a purely peaceful protest, or a cartoonish costume party with a little bit of trespassing. The Secret Service had to rush Pence to safety. Members of Congress emptied the chamber and fled for cover. The vote-counting process was interrupted for five and a half hours. The Capitol itself was wreathed in smoke. This is the stuff of a banana republic.

When the subject of banana republics pop up, Democrats perk their ears up, being wannabe Generalissimos in their own ways. Republicans, even Trump supporters, are correct in pointing out that Democrats were trashing the democratic process since before Donald Trump was a reality TV star, much less President:

For two decades, prominent Democrats have attacked the legitimacy of American elections. They claimed that the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore. They indulged ridiculous fantasies about Ohio being stolen in 2004, resulting in dozens of Democratic members of Congress objecting to counting its electoral votes. Many of those Democrats are now powerful committee chairs, including the chair of the committee investigating January 6. Violent protests marred Trump’s inauguration, and leading Democrats denounced him as illegitimate. Polls showed that supermajorities of Democratic voters believed that Russian hackers stole the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton, and she has given every indication that she shares that view. In 2018, Stacey Abrams was anointed a hero by her party for refusing to accept the legitimacy of her loss of a governor’s race. It would have been wrong for Trump to emulate this behavior; but he went well beyond what even the most reckless Democrat has done in contesting an election.

Left-wing mobs have targeted the workings of government, for example overwhelming the Wisconsin state capitol in 2011 to protest Scott Walker’s union-dues bill. Republican legislators had to be evacuated by police, as Democratic legislators egged on the mob. In 2018, protesters repeatedly disrupted the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, chased Republican senators down hallways and into elevators, accosted them in restaurants, and broke through Capitol barricades, resulting in hundreds of arrests. Law enforcement was unduly lax in punishing these offenses against democratic self-government.

It’s true. But it’s no excuse – any more than January 6 will be a legitimate excuse for more Democrat violence and tyranny-mongering. That is, in fact, something that Republicans of good conscience need to stomp on, hard. Because it dismisses nothing to note that January 6 was an attack on the Constitutional process different from others only in its perps:

The New York Times editorializes that “Every Day Is Jan. 6 Now,” and one of its columnists argues that Democrats should “Wave the ‘Bloody Shirt’ of Jan. 6” as Republicans did against Democrats after the Civil War — as if this compares to a four-year war in which 3 million Americans served and 750,000 died. Other opportunists (including Joe Biden) call the riot the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” or say it is comparable to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. CNN and other cable news obsessives plan wall-to-wall coverage of the anniversary in order to inflate its importance and help Democrats wave that bloody shirt.

This is a loss of perspective. In 1915, a former Harvard professor set off a bomb at the Capitol and shot J. P. Morgan. In 1954, five congressmen were shot by Puerto Rican nationalists in the House chamber. In the early 1970s, the left-wing Weather Underground set off bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department. In 1983–84, the Communist group M19 bombed the Capitol, an FBI office, and Fort McNair and the Navy Yard in D.C. In 2001, 3,000 people died on 9/11, air travel was grounded across the country, the president was shuttled to a secure location, and a wing of the Pentagon was destroyed. In 2017, a gun-toting Bernie Sanders supporter attempted to massacre Republican congressmen at a baseball practice, gravely wounding Steve Scalise, the Republican House whip.

I say “Republicans of good conscience” because there are Republicans who have joined the personality cult, and many who’ve prospered, politically and financially, greatly from it.

And some Republicans have reacted by washing their hands of the GOP – some for reasons I can respect (Ed Morrissey), others I can not (the Lincoln Project), many in between. Some “Never-Trumpers” yip and bark at the party like bitter ex-spouses.

Others presume the GOP’s reckoning rates a generation in the minority – as Kevin Williamson says in his otherwise worthy piece on the subject, again, I agree with in most particulars – except for its conclusion:

It is my view that none of the Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 results should ever hold office again, and that no candidate who is unwilling to forthrightly condemn both the violence of January 6 and the lies that inspired that violence ought to enjoy the support of any conservative, any organ of the Republican Party, or, indeed, any American who calls himself a patriot. No candidate who cannot give a simple yes or no answer — and give the correct one — to the question of whether the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump ought to hold office. If that puts the Republican Party into the minority for a generation, then the Republican Party deserves it, having become a menace not only to the conservative principles and governance it purports to cherish but to the political structure of the nation and the Constitution itself. Those who have no use for caudillos and mobs, and who hope to see our constitutional order endure, should seriously consider separating themselves from the Republican Party unless and until it proves capable of reforming itself.

“Reforming itself”

Like, magically?

Well, no. The party “reforms itself” when those who show up decide it shall be reformed.

Our democracy – and the Constitutional process Williamson rightly extols elsewhere – won’t survive a generation of one-party government by today’s Democrat party. The Democrat party of the Watergate era, led by Ernie Hollings and Scoop Jackson and Daniel Inouye, people who believe in America whatever their political differences, didn’t see power as the means to the end. They weren’t the generation of “progressives” that gave us San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore and Minneapolis, or for that matter California and Illinois, as they are today; those are the inevitable consequences of one-party rule, at least by this Democrat party at this time in its history.

Packed courts.

Centralized elections.

A packed Senate.

More promotion of the administrative state to circumvent the legislative and judicial processes that can’t be won in elections.

Those are the consequences of a “generation of minority status” for the opposition.

That’s not acceptable.

The GOP will have to “reform itself” by good people showing up and reforming it.

Not by sitting splendidly above it all listening to Bulwark podcasts and heckling.

Not by waiting for some third-party to spring into place.

Not by waiting for the Reform Fairy.

Not, for that matter, by waiting for someone else to reform it. With all due respect to those who stormed out in a cloud of principled righteousness in 2015, 2017 and 2020, starting next month, your opinions are duly noted, and will no longer be of any relevance.

No. It happens by reforming the GOP.

More on that next week.

Attorney General Elllison has Covid:

I was going to fill in those “mild symptoms” here, but I can’t seem to get rid of the Twitter response, so I’ll multitask. 

Get well soon, Your Highness. 

With Denmark and Sweden tripling down on the free market and abandoning draconian Covid regulations, the longing eyes of the world’s “Social Democrat” noodlers have turned to New Zealand’s. Jacinda Ardern.

She ran a very hawkish “Lockdown” regime in 2020, drawing the admiration of a lot of Mascists – as if they could replicate the lockdown of a country with a population 20% smaller than Minnesota’s, with land area 25% larger, isolated from all other land by a thousand miles, able to cut itself off from the world by closing a couple ports and a few gates at the Wellington airport.

Has it worked? Time’ll tell.

But she’s got more government gigantism in mind:

So – if you’re a smuggler, run an organized crime syndicate, or just like making money off of government-induced shortages?

Opportunity is knocking!

I’d respond “these people never learn from history”, but assuming they would would paradoxically mean I haven’t learned from history.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails

If your wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, would you go with her to chemotherapy treatments?

Why not? Everybody loves a vacation day, right?

Democrats criticizing Gov. DeSantis for being “inexplicably absent” from the office apparently haven’t heard of “. . . in sickness and in health . . . .” That’s a shame. Lesko Brandon never tires of lying about his wife being killed by a drunk driver because he thinks it makes him a sympathetic figure. Ron DeSantis does not exploit his wife suffering every woman’s worst fear, he just quietly does the right thing by her.

The nation could use more people who stand by their mates, who keep their promises, who put family above publicity.

Joe Doakes

DeSantis is a moral, upstanding person.

That’s why the left hates him so terribly.

If you are a carry permittee, you should read this story and literally do nothing the Mr. Davis in this story did.

Workers told police that Davis (the “victim”) was protective of the [liquor store where the incident took place]. Davis accused Edwards [the shoplifter who ended up charged with shooting Davis] of concealing a bottle of vodka and took the bottle from him and demanded Edwards leave the store.

According to the charges, Edwards said he had a gun and started digging through his backpack. But, as it turned out, Davis was carrying a weapon himself, telling the victim that he had a “license” and “displayed” the weapon.

Police say surveillance video showed the two men move out to the parking lot where they started fighting. The charges state:

“Edwards and [Davis] eventually went to the sidewalk outside the store. Edwards appeared to threaten [Davis] with pepper spray, and the two men got into a heated exchange. Edwards grabbed [Davis’] shoulders. KD tried to remove his handgun from his jacket while wrestling with Edwards. [Davis’] handgun fell to the ground. When KD reached to retrieve the gun, Edwards pushed [Davis] away from the gun into the parking lot.”

Mr.. Davis did literally everything wrong, legally and tactically.

• He was a willing participant.
• Not sure how you would claim a threat to your life and health from someone stealing vodka.
• He got into scuffle and allowed himself to lose his weapon.

Don’t do any of this.

GIven his behavior, I doubt Davis had a carry permit; if he did, I’ve got questions for his instructor.

A good Lyft driver with a gun ends a car jacking in west Philadelphia:

Two suspects in an armed carjacking are in the hospital after police say they attempted to take a vehicle from a Lyft who was armed with a gun he was licensed to carry on Monday afternoon in West Philadelphia.

Now, let me be absolutely clear on this; I don’t have any guns, and the thought of shooting someone in self defense is mortifying to me.

But I’m going to bet at least a few carjackers in Philadelphia are mulling changes to career plans.

…of a Midwestern state that’s been wracked by skyrocketing crime, cataclysmic racial strife, a collapsing education system, and an economy that is showing the strain of nearly two years of ham-fisted and largely ineffective government responses to Covid.

Whatcha gonna do?

“I’m gonna go to Disneyworld” might have been a better idea.

And that “interview” sounds more like a slumber party.

Haven’t heard much about the southwest light rail line, have we?

There’s a reason for that. It’s hosed. Hosed perhaps beyond reasonable repair.And nobody in officialdom wants to talk about it – at least, not before the midterms:

The $2 billion Southwest Light Rail Transit Line the most expensive public works project ever undertaken in Minnesota. Besides that, it also holds the potential to be the state’s biggest boondoggle, a potential political scandal in the making in the midst of the 2022 election.

Fox 9 News reports the Met Council, the agency overseeing the project, has essentially clammed up, refusing to provide key construction updates on cost and completion date.

They don’t even have any idea when they will have any idea how bad it’s going to be:

An updated timeline and cost projection, once expected towards the end of 2021, will now come “sometime in 2022,” Trevor Roy, a project spokesman, told FOX 9. Met Council officials have long acknowledged that the rail line will exceed its original $2 billion budget and estimated 2023 opening. They are now changing tactics to renegotiate the project schedule after criticism from an outside evaluator.

Call me a cynic, but I think there’s a reason this story is coming out in January of an election year; so the media can say “we covered it! We’re not actually PR water carriers for the DFL!

Minneapolis now hosts a “Museum of Failure”

It exhibits exactly pretty much what you think it well:

With a unique insight into the risky business of innovation, the ‘Museum of Failure’ aims to inspire and stimulate productive discussion about learning through our blunders. Everyone falls, but what’s most important is knowing how to get back up!

If it doesn’t have three generations of attempt to sell purses and skirts to men – which pops up every 15 years or so – a question the curators commitment to the subject.