…that a city run by Kim Norton, which has been becoming blue-er and blue-er over time, would play passive-aggressive bureaucratic pattycake games with the citizenry…

…right?

A group of parents, with a Twin Cities law firm, are asking for records related to the district’s adoption of Critical Race Theory.

And how did that go over?

“On Nov. 12, an attorney representing the district said that it would cost ‘Equality in Education’ $901,121.15 to obtain the records and they must prepay before the district completes their request,” the report reads.

The battle lines for next November could not be clearer.

It was a generation ago – when I was in high school – that Margaret Thatcher become Prime Minister. The media and popular culture were less tribalized then than they are today – but the drumbeat from the cultural authorities was this is a very bad thing.

And it foreshadowed the great American resurgence that followed; a wave of center-right leaders followed – Kohl in Germany, Mitterand in France, Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, and of course Ronald Reagan – who altered the course of, and in many ways saved (or postponed the demise, at least) of Western Civilization.

Is Eric Zemmour cut from the same cloth?

I don’t know, and he’s only a candidate at the moment.

But if he turns into the man of the moment in France, perhaps there’s still hope for the West.

Here’s his speech announcing his candidacy. Translation here.

It’s an incredible work of political rhetoric and, if not oratory, certainly videography.

Steven Hayward:

Today Zemmour released a video declaring his candidacy for president, and I’ve heard comparisons (including from a French student in my political science class this semester) comparing it to Charles de Gaulle’s famous July 18, 1940 radio broadcast pronouncing the cause of Free France amidst the nation’s collapse before the German army. 

This caught me:

We are worthy of our ancestors. We will not allow ourselves to be mastered, vassalized, conquered, colonized. We will not allow ourselves to be replaced

It’s an overtone of my wish, every Memorial Day, that we leave a society worthy of the sacrifice so many have made for this civilization.

The other overtone?

The moment isn’t a whole lot less grave.

Countdown to anguished “think” pieces on NPR starts now.

This is on the façade of the former uptown theater Dash the long beloved, offbeat art house theater that was a victim of the pandemic, and, perhaps more so, what Minneapolis has become.

“Transtifa”.

Will they be getting into a war with “Anti-“Fa? And will “Anti”-Fa Now I have to change them to “CisFa”, Or risk losing its Progressive cred?

It’s sort of reminds me of the old joke; Q: if the hair-metal bands Poison and Cinderella got into a flamethrower fight, who would win? A: The world.

As many of you noticed, the blog was offline yesterday. And it’s been running slow for a few months before they.

The two were, as it happens, unrelated; there was a move to a new server that caused a few problems, and a denial of service attack bogged the blog down yesterday.

Hopefully we’ve got them both fixed.

Thanks to the good folks at Hosting Matters, who have hosted this blog for the past 15 years, and who are still the best in the business.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club asks whether the Lesko Brandon administration is strolling into our next quagmire.

We canceled pipelines and oil leases at home, to signal our virtue on climate change. The price of gas at the pump, and natural gas for home heating, is going up. We’ve called on Saudi Arabia to pump more oil for us but we’ve also removed sanctions on Iran, which is funding Houthis in Yemen, who are attacking Saudi oilfields. The US could back the Saudis with arms sales or troops so they could keep pumping the oil we want, except Progressives insist the Saudis are repressing the Yemenis so we must not help them. Can “no blood for oil” be far behind?

We’ve caused a world-wide oil shortage and are about to stumble into another war in the Middle East with conflicting policy goals and no clear mission. But all the Left wants to talk about is Kyle.

Joe Doakes

If it weren’t for gullible, low information voters, the Democrats will be pulling somewhere below the libertarians.

…that looks at an article like this, (and, for that matter, infuriating junior-high-level behavior like this among America’s future US attorneys) cheering on the demise of regard for academia outside, well, academia, and things “More, faster, now!”.

But while it’s a fact that academia has tutyhis rned into a cesspool of leftist indoctrination, I get to this bit here (I’ve added emphasis):

Unfortunately, as we’re starting to see, there’s a bit of a pushback against that sort of thing. It’s limited, but more and more people are flocking toward non-woke entertainment. People are starting to look to the trades as an option after high school. Folks are backing laws restricting some of the leftist indoctrination on our school campuses.

Nothing wrong with looking at the trades.

But academia, worthless as it largely currently is, is of disproportionate importance in a society’s future. As Orwell said, “He who controls the future, controls the past. He who controls the present, controls the past”. Academia controls, not history, but how history is passed down to future generations; they control a disproportionate share of the cultural “present”.

And telling kids who have it in them to fight that battle, to instead go and be an apprentice electrician, is a little like Eisenhower sending the D-Day invasion ashore in New Jersey rather than Normandy. It’s a path of lesser resistance, but it doesn’t really win the war.

I suspect what society really needs is an academic equivalent to Fox News: for conservative money to go to building a classically-liberal academic system, and letting people vote with their feet.

Which is far easier said than done – but then, isn’t everything that’s worth doing?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’d bet a brand-new nickel the guy who drove his pickup into the
Christmas Parade was not protesting the Rittenhouse verdict by mowing
down White people.  I doubt he follows civic events closely enough to
realize the parade was happening.  He drove down that street running
over people like an entitled ass who isn’t required to follow any of the
rules of civilized behavior because . . . he’s not.  As a Black man in
America, he’s a member of The New Nobility, a class above the law, not
subject to it.

Junior Level, of course.  This particular nogoodnik isn’t a jet setter
flying to the climate change summit.  He won’t be invited to any
birthday parties on Martha’s Vineyard or Hollywood awards events.  But
he’s minor nobility just the same.  Imagine if 200 years ago, Lord
Brooks had driven his carriage through a group of peasants dancing in
the lane, killing several of them.  The commoners would have been
outraged but the Powers That Be would express their hope his horse
hadn’t chipped a hoof while trampling those filthy vermin. That’s why
certain Black men believe they can loot stores, jack cars, rob people,
drive like crazy, shoot from car windows and beat their women.  It’s
learned behavior.  They’ve learned it’s okay for them to do.  You see it
on the highways around the Twin Cities every day.

But now, suddenly, after a string of wrist-slaps for years of crimes,
Brooks is charged with five counts of intentional murder. How completely
unfair.  That’s like giving a puppy a treat every time he poops on the
floor until one day he poops on the rug and you bash his head in.  How
was he to know?

If you’re looking for a greater social commentary in this incident,
that’s the lesson.  Stop treating criminals like nobility.

Joe Doakes

If you remove consequences from doing something, people will do it. Whether it’s shoplifting or having babies out of wedlock or putting money in investment bubbles.

…that the current, possibly-excessive, garment-rending over the “Omicron” variant is the sound of an awful lot of people who’ve gone through lives with little purpose or meaning, and have found a perverted version of both in bullying, shunning and scarlet-lettering people with different conclusions and means of dealing with Covid?

That depression and anxiety might be the least of society’s mental health issues when it comes to this pandemic – that the wave of cultural narcissism it’s released dwarves everything else (except, obviously, the suicide?)

I just started nioting the “Land Acknowledgment” – the laborious-yet-offhand “acknowledgment” that an event was being held on land once occupied by Natives – in the last couple of years, mostly among the sorts of Twin Cities “social justice” non-profits that exude self-righteousness like some people exude bad breath.

It’s struck me as mawkish and purposeless, the sort of consequence-free moral preening that, well, defines the modern “social justice” mob, while putting none of their own skin in the game. It is to history what the term “Latinx” is to sociology and linguistics; a way to make a complex subject palatable to socially fussy white progressive social justice lemmings.

I finally have an arsenal of responses, from this article, which has almost too many great points to try to pullquote.

I said “almost”:

It is difficult to exaggerate the superficiality of these statements. What do members of the acknowledged group hold sacred? What makes them unique and identifies them to one another? Who are they, where did they come from, and where are they going? The evasion of these fundamental questions is typical. The speaker demonstrates no knowledge of the people whose names he reads carefully off the sheet of paper. Nor does he make any but the most general connection between the event and those people, other than an ancient one, not too different from the speaker’s relationship with the local geology or flora.

Things get more substantial, but no less acerbic. I recommend it.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Richard Fernandez at The Belmont Club asks whether the Lesko Brandon administration is strolling into our next quagmire.

We canceled pipelines and oil leases at home, to signal our virtue on climate change.  The price of gas at the pump, and natural gas for home heating, is going up.  We’ve called on Saudi Arabia to pump more oil for us but we’ve also  removed sanctions on Iran, which is funding Houthis in Yemen, who are attacking Saudi oilfields.  The US could back the Saudis with arms sales or troops so they could keep pumping the oil we want, except Progressives insist the Saudis are repressing the Yemenis so we must not help them.  Can “no blood for oil” be far behind?

We’ve caused a world-wide oil shortage and are about to stumble into another war in the Middle East with conflicting policy goals and no clear mission.  But all the Left wants to talk about is Kyle.

Joe Doakes

Well, and Orange Hitler.

Who is hiding under youer bed.

Ooogabooga!

My blogfather from nearly 20 years ago, Andrew Sullivan, on the many, many ways modern media fails Democracy in its slavish service to the left’s narrative.

It’s hard to come up with a single pullquote, but I’ll run with this:

I still rely on the MSM for so much. I still read the NYT first thing in the morning. I don’t want to feel as if everything I read is basically tilted through wish-fulfillment, narrative-proving, and ideology. But with this kind of record, how can I not? 

We need facts and objectivity more than ever. Trump showed that. What we got in the MSM was an over-reaction, a reflexive overreach to make the news fit the broader political fight. This is humanly understandable. It is professionally unacceptable. And someone has got to stop it.

I have a hunch most Americans won’t know the value of a conscientiously neutral media until the inevitable results of the lack of one become truly apparent…

…more than they are.

Minneapolis school parents had the opportunity to attend this virtual seminar on “Critical Race Theory“…

… Which, we are authoritatively informed, doesn’t exist, and never has existed.

I suspect that would be interesting to “demystify“

Not being able to reasonably expect your business not to get burned? That’s going to put a damper on a community’s sense of possibility.

Being afraid their children aren’t safe coming home from school?

“We have had students who have been walking home or walking to the bus stop and they have been robbed, and told to empty their pockets, hand over their cellphones,” Friestleben said. “I really would like to know what the public safety plan is. I don’t see it.”

This is not just a north Minneapolis thing. Washburn High School principal Dr. Emily Lilja Palmer also shared the post, and said that carjacking and robberies are up on the south side. She also added that the city is in crisis, and it’s hurting students. She said there are discussions currently happening about how to keep kids safe as they leave from winter activities in the dark.

But remember – the parents are the “domestic terrorists”.

If the City of Minneapolis doesn’t figure out what city government is for, Kyle Rittenhouse will seem like an episode of the Brady Bunch.

“Feminist” organization “Times Up” – established with the help of progressive plutocrats with deep pockets in the wake of the “#MeToo” movement – has collapsed, very publicly, very messily:

The vast majority of Time’s Up’s remaining staffers were laid off Friday in what they described as a debacle that began with leaders revealing they gave the news to the Washington Post first and ended with board member Ashley Judd breaking down in tears.

The embattled organization, limping since its CEO and entire board resigned this summer, announced Friday that it would lay off the vast majority of its remaining staff. Leadership informed staff of the decision in a virtual meeting that started 15 minutes before the Post article made the pink slips national news.

Turns out that while Big Left doesn’t care about morality, there are certain levels of hypocrisy that even the left can’t stomach – sometimes, anyway:

The attorney and women’s advocate Roberta Kaplan resigned Monday as chair of the prominent #MeToo group Time’s Up over the over fallout from her work advising Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration when the first allegations of sexual harassment were made against him last year.

Kaplan cited her work counseling the administration last winter and her more recent legal work representing Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to Cuomo who resigned Sunday, nearly a week after a report by the state attorney general concluded that the governor had sexually harassed 11 women.

“Justice” means what they say it means. No more, no less, no different.

“A lie will travel around the world while the truth is waiting for its Keuirig to heat up” [1]

As re the “crossing state lines”, “shooting black men”, and many other issues that the Mainstream media will be parroting until they are forced to stop, that’s exactly what is going on.

It’s a Dennis Prager line, and it’s utterly correct.

John Miltimore goes over the “why”, on two issues Democrats claim to hold dear in their platforms – affordable housing and hunger.

And shows that in the 18 states that Democrats control, housing is less affordable, that people are hungrier, and it is in fact their fault, since there is in effect no Republican opposition for them to, er, overcome.

Prefer your left-shredding in convenient video form, from that noted tool of conservative intellectual thuggery…

…, the New York Times?

SCENE: Mitch BERG is having a cocktail at a downtown Saint Paul bar when MyLyssa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, happens in.

SILBERMAN: Merg…

BERG: Er, hey, MyLyssa…

SILBERMAN: Last week, Kyle Rittenhouse was aquitted of domestic terrorism for shooting up a Black Lives Matter rally.

BERG: You got one fact correct in that sentence, so I guess that’s a start.

SILBERMAN: What if that would have been a black man? Leaving aside the fact that he’d be dead right now, for a moment, what would all of you white male gun owners be saying about it? Would your reaction be any different?

BERG: Funny you mentioned that. Last week – the same day of the RIttenhouse verdict, in fact – Andrew Coffee IV was acquitted of murder, and attempted murder of police, when he shot at a no-knock raid on his house. No cops were killed, but Coffee was up for homicide in the death of his girlfriend was shot 10 times by a SWAT team. He was acquitted, for exactly the same reasons Rittenhouse was. He was a felon with a gun, so he might get some time for that, but he had nearly exactly the same self-defense case as Rittenhouse.

And we started finally getting some details about the acquittal of Jaleel Stallings, who returned fire at cops who were firing rubber bullets from a van without announcing their presence; Stallings fired back until the cops identified themselves (and beat the crap out of him), and got acquitted – again, for exactly the same reasons that Rittenhouse was.

Both were in reasonable fear of immediate death. Both used appropriate force. Both met their states self-defense rules. Both were acquitted.

And gun owners – presumably including many of us “white males” – supported them, as the facts got out, in their self-defense claims – albeit not necessarily Coffee’s having his illegal gun…

SILBERMAN: Mitch, Mitch, you’re missing my point.

BERG: Which is…?

SILBRERMAN: I asked if you white male gun owners would support a black man with a gun defending himself.

BERG: And I gave you two where the answer was “yes”,and that major media seemed to avoid covering. Including NPR.

SILBERMAN: You gave me concrete examples. I asked an abstract question. Please give me an astract answer…

BERG: Yes, we would and do…

SILBERMAN: …that confirms my prejudices.

And SCENE.

The left is reacting to the Rittenhouse verdict with the calm, dispassionate, intellectual rigor one expects of “smart America“:

But remember – mostly peaceful.

I’ve had to spend a long weekend explaining to a lot of “progressives”: it’s entirely possible that not only are both of the following true:

• Something can be a bad idea, legally and in common sense terms,
• Self-defense is not only legitimate, but a very high hurdle to meet under the law in every state I’m aware of; that it’s a “license to kill” if you consider being arrested, spending two months in jail, having to bond for $2.5 Million to get released, spending 15 months in legal limbo, God only knows how much in legal bills, standing trial with a risk of two life sentences and a couple more decades to boot, and having to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder in case some depraved, entitled lefty narcissist decides to “even the score” to be a “license to kill”.

Most disturbing? Beyond the number of people who think that:

• we should just ignore the law and make Rittenhoue an example because “we don’t want people wandering around defending themselves, or that
• “crossing state lines” is a crime, or that
• Kyle Rittenhouse was a “vigilante” for going to a riot with a gun, but Gage Grosskreutz wasn’t, or that
• Rioting is sacrosanct protected speech?

…what could be worse?

This: I think both sides missed the most important lesson.

Which is, I believe, this.

Some Background: It is human nature to create order.

thout order, prosperity is impossible – and by “prosperity“, I don’t mean “his and hers Bentleys“, I mean living as something other than a subsistence farmer.

Without prosperity, freedom is academic. (And without freedom, order is tyranny, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves).

I’m no expert, but I think this is the real lesson of Kenosha that a lot of people on the right, and a lot more on the left, need to get.

We pay taxes to government – lots and lots of them. And providing “order” is the one unambiguously legitimate role of government.

And if government isn’t going to provide order, fairly and equally across society, in exchange for the burden of supporting it, and keep our businesses from getting burned, our cars from getting stolen, our kids from getting mugged on the way home from school?

People will start creating order for themselves. And one of these next times, it won’t be a 17 year old kid with more idealism than common sense and a loaner rifle.

It’ll be people who won’t run to the police to surrender when nasty nastiness happens.

It’ll be people who do their self-defense pre-emptively. People who don’t care about the high rhetoric and due process of the legal system.

People for whom shooting people isn’t something from video games; it’s something they do or did for their livelihood, either in the neighborhood or in Fallujah or Mogadishu or Helmand or somewhere in the Pine Barrens.

It’ll be people who keep secrets – you could even say, people who observe, and enforce, “codes of silence”.

Sounds like…the Mob? A Cartel? Omar’s crew from The Wire?

Weird.

Madame Vice President [1] on the Rittenhouse verdict:

So – the woman for whom giggling about putting black men in jail for simple weed possession was pillow talk with Willie Brown, and who came out in favor of prosecutors hiding exculpatory evidence in death penalty cases, has been…

…sorry. Couldn’t finish that with a straight face.

[1] Keep checking back on this.

… when it comes to public health, for Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, it’s all about the science.

Nothing but the science.

I don’t believe the doomsayers. In reply, they call me a science denier. Actually, I’m practicing a different kind of science – pattern recognition – which informs my analysis.

Most political hoaxes are based on the logical fallacy “Appeal to Authority.” The hoax follows a familiar pattern. Once you recognize the pattern, the hoax is obvious.

“There are only a few years left to save the planet from global climate change. No, you can’t see my data, you aren’t capable of understanding it. I am a climate scientist. You must trust me and do as I say.”

“The Second Amendment does not protect a personal right to bear arms. We know this because hardly anybody owned guns in colonial America. No, you can’t see my probate court data, you aren’t capable of understanding it. I am a historian. You must trust me and do as I say.”

“There is no evidence the election was stolen. No, you can’t see the ballot counting software, you’re not capable of understanding it. I am an election official. You must trust me and do as I say.”

It never works, of course. The truth leaks out eventually. Michael Mann’s climate change “hockey stick” graph has been thoroughly discredited. Michael Bellesiles’ probate court research was simply made up. Statistical analysis shows significant election fraud occurred. These were not cases of “science” being challenged or denied, they were cases of “science” being manipulated and distorted to promote a specific political agenda. Once it became clear the “science” didn’t say what the proponents claimed it said, the hoax was laid bare for all to see – all who were willing to see. Not everybody is willing to see.

And now this: “The Covid virus is deadly to everyone of all ages. Only the Pfizer vaccine can save you from it. No, you can’t see my data, you aren’t capable of understanding it. I am a medical doctor. You must trust me and do as I say.”

The funding and origin of the virus is shrouded in lies. Mortality statistics are inflated even as breakthrough cases are undercounted and vaccine adverse reactions are downplayed. Policies of lockdown, masks, social distance, mandatory vaccination are based on assertions, not evidence, backed by threat of prosecution and financial ruin, but only for those who lack political privilege.

The existence of the Covid virus is not a hoax. The panic response to the Covid virus is the hoax. This is not a medical problem. This is a political problem. We must begin treating it as one.

Joe Doakes

I hope the actual science finds a way to recover from this past two years.

Live feed.

Count 1 (Rosenbaum): Not guilty

Count 2 (McGuinness) Not guilty

Count 3 (Jump Kick Guy) Not guilty

Count 4 (Huber) Not guilty

Count 5 (Grosskreutz) Not guilty

Strap in, Kenosha. It’s gonna be a bumpy night. :

And here’s hoping Rittenhouse follows Nick Sandman into civil court.

UPDATE: Judge Schroeder after the Jury left the room: “Motion of the defense is granted, the charges are dismissed with prejudice. Mr. Rittenhouse is released from the obligation of his bond”.

That was what you call “bouncing the rubble” .

We’ll allow for a moment that ‘Medium.com”, when the subject is race, criminal/social “justice” or the economy, is like Tumblr for people with unsupportably high self-esteem .

With that being said, this happened this morning:

Now, for whatever reason it’s not loading for me at the moment, or I’d be llinking to it. I’ll try to catch it later today.

But if we’re judging by the headline?

As I noted last week, people are projecting their views of the rest of American on this trial -and while I pointed out that all “sides” were doing it, let’s be honest; it’s the left that’s making it into a cottage industry.

Two observations:

Pick Your Poison: If you thought Januarhy 6 was an epic assault on America, but don’t see the attempt to bully and intimidate jurors – the backbone of our justice system, as imperfect is it and they are – as something every bit as serious, you are an idiot.

Allow me to say it to your face.

Literally, if need be.

Rules for Radicals: And of course, chaos benefits the extremes – of both sides. Especially the extreme that has a plan and the political and social “infrastructure” to capitalize on and exploit the chaos .

In 1933, the German Communists supported President Von Hindsenburg giving Chancellor HItler – the leader of the Reichstag’s (Parliament’s) largest party, the Nazis – near compete control under an emergency powers decree. The Communists – with their direct action arm, Rote Fahne, which later became “Anti”-Fa – figured they had the political will and street power to capitalize on the chaos they saw ensuing .

They bet wrong.

Big Left, today, isn’t betting wrong. While “Red” America is proud of its traditions, and owns a hell of a lot of guns,there is no organization on the right that is waiting in any significant numbers, with a plan and people with their own willl to power, least of all a will to power that leads back to a Constitutional Republic.

The riot on January 6, stupid and illegal as it was, was never in any real position to alter the Constitutionally-mandated process.

Bullying the justice system? That most certainly is.

Schools in Edina – once known as a good school district – are

Pictures of Normandale Elementary School in Edina show students eating their lunch outside with hats, coats and mittens on.

“Since the beginning of school, I learned that essentially if you brought a lunch from home, you were eating outside,” said Carissa Palm, the mother of a third-grader at the school.

The related article, from KSTP-TV, is too full of nauseatingly idiotic school administrator pullquotes, or, worse, “no comments”, to get through without yelling at the screen.

Government is the things we do together – stupidly and with the lowest common intellectual denominator in charge.