Esme “Rabid Bulldog” Murphy, the dowager dean of Minnesota political reporters and tenacious, utterly impartial reporter on all things political in the state of Minnesota, who has never, ever been fairly or accurately accused of softballing DFLers, twote in re Rep. John “Burn Hugo Down” Thompson and allegations that he snuck out of a not-generally accessible back stairway from Minneapolis City Hall to avoid reporters who, to my amazement, seem curious about his verbal claims of racism and written but unacknowledge claims of multiple residences:

Well, that settles that.

If there’s one thing no DFL pol ever needs to worry about, it’s Esme Murphy violating their privacy. Or asking them anything more involved than their favorite flavor of ice cream.

But let’s pump the brakes – I’m all for respecting peoples’ privacy.

With that in mind, all I really want to know is, which of Thompson’s residences should I plan on not protesting at – the one on the East Side of Saint Paul, the one in Superior, some other residence not yet publicly discussed, or any or all of the above?

Thanks.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Democrats seized on a flu virus to panic the public into accepting restrictions on civil liberties including ‘fortifying’ the election to defeat Bad Orange Man. Now they want storm troopers to go door-to-door, forcing people to take a counter-measure that doesn’t prevent you from catching the virus and won’t prevent you from spreading it to other people. It’s solely intended to reduce the severity of symptoms in breakthrough cases (which we no longer count as “Covid” cases, since May). And why is it any of the government’s business how severe my flu symptoms are?

Because they saved your life and now they own you. No, literally, that’s the justification. ““The federal government has spent trillions of dollars to try and keep Americans alive during this pandemic,” Becerra said on CNN’s “New Day.” “So it is absolutely the government’s business . . . .”

The arrogance is breathtaking. An earlier generation of Americans would have risen up and exterminated such would-be tyrants for their insolence. Push hard enough and maybe this one will, too?

Joe Doakes

There are seriously times where I wonder how this nation doesn’t break into somewhere between two and six different independent countries.

This year isn’t changing anything.

Disclaimers offered in advance: it’s The Blaze, so it’s just a smidgen suspect.

But if it’s true, I’m not sure I like this story all that much: The police charged a Utah woman with a “hate crime“ for destroying a “Back the Blue“ sign and quote smirking and “at a deputy in an “intimidating“ manner.

“As I concluded my traffic stop and released the individuals, I observed some of the individuals’ friends approach them and attempt to console them,” the deputy wrote in a probable cause affidavit, the News said.

“I observed one of the friends, later identified to be Lauren Gibson, stomping on a ‘Back the Blue’ sign next to where the traffic stop was conducted, crumble it up in a destructive manner, and throw it into a trash can all while smirking in an intimidating manner towards me,” the deputy added, according the paper.

On the one hand? I’m not going to say there’s not some smidgen of glorious schadenfreude involved in seeing one of these entitled little “progressive“ twerps getting a comeuppance.

On the other?

Think of all the legitimate hate crimes that “Progressive“, under the cover that urban progressive privilege grant them, have carried out over the past 10 or 15 years; James Hodgkinson and his shooting spree against Republicans, the assault on Senator Rand Paul, and for that matter this little list of politically motivated bias crimes that I used to maintain until it stopped being fun, for that matter, among many others.

Distraction of signs and “intimidating“ “smirking“? That’s every election season for every conservative in Saint Paul.

Is it a good thing that, of all of the non-Leftist victims of bias-based assaults in this country, only cops seem to be covered by hate crime laws?

It’s almost a year and a half until the next elections. But I’m starting to think that things aren’t polling nearly as well for the Harris (or, haha, Biden, sure, whatevs) ticket as the media says.

Reason?

Because the “Christian boogeyman“ is already making headlines.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Some people believe today’s high housing prices are due to stimulus payments. All those people getting unemployment checks and $1,400 gifts are using them to bid $50-60,000 over the market for houses. I don’t think so. I think realtors are correct: there’s a shortage of houses for sale, about 40% lower inventory than normal. Low supply, high price, basic economics.

A person who lost his job during the Covid pandemic could sell his house and reap the equity, but then he’d have nowhere to live. During the moratorium on foreclosures, he can live in the house rent-free. And there’s always the hope he may get back on his feet, the government may offer an assistance program, he might win the lottery, something might work out that he can keep the house. Psychologically, people in financial distress hang on too long, they end up staying until they’re evicted because they can’t downsize and shed debt fast enough. Their houses are being artificially withheld from the market because of the moratorium on foreclosures.

Even if they did sell, there are increasingly fewer places to rent because landlords can’t evict tenants during the eviction moratorium (recently extended to next June). Fewer available apartments, higher rent, basic economics.

Ramsey County’s normal foreclosure rate is about 300-400 per year in good times (2000-2003 and again 2017-2019): people died, got divorced, lost their jobs, etc. Foreclosures dropped to single digits in April 2020 when the moratorium took effect. There’s a 15 month backlog of ordinary foreclosures and if the economy stutters when inflation causes interest rates to rise, there could be a great deal more coming. Hundreds of bank-owned properties will flood the market in a short period. Banks dump properties cheap. High supply, low price, basic economics again.

Sale prices will drop. Appraisers see the value of comparable sales dropping – appraised values drop. You won’t be able to sell sell your house for what it was worth in 2021 because the appraisal won’t support the sale price. It’s the 2008 downward spiral all over again.

The government knew that its panic reaction to Covid would throw millions of people out of work, making them unable to afford their mortgages, sending them into foreclosure, and exacerbating the homeless crisis. The Band-Aid approach was a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. But that’s just a Band-Aid, it doesn’t solve the underlying problem of people out of work, unable to repay their loans. There’s a storm coming. It has nothing to do with stimulus payments.

Of course, there is one way housing prices don’t fall:

Shovel pandemic relief money to the politically well-connected who will stash it in safe currencies; continue endless ‘temporary’ moratoria on foreclosures and evictions to keep masses quiet even as landlords go broke; extend/increase unemployment benefits to hide the destruction of the working economy; and allow hyper-inflation to conceal the destruction of middle-class savings/wealth. Your house will be worth a million dollars, which will be just enough to buy a loaf of bread. Zimbabwe, Argentina . . . America?

If I was one of the well-connected people able to stash my wealth to ride out the ensuing global crash, that might actually be considered a feature, not a bug. I wonder who else is thinking that way?

Joe Doakes

Thinking? Of course.

Able to act?

The transformations of four years of war were readily apparent at 1am in the skies above Al-Afuleh in Palestine on September 19th, 1918.  One British Handley Page 0/400 bomber flew over the city, the headquarters of the Ottoman/German command for Palestine in the Jezreel Valley, dropping it’s payload of sixteen 112-pound bombs.  Four years earlier, the first “heavy” bomber in aerial history, the French Voisin III, could carry one 132-pound bomb, dropping it indiscriminately with little to no accuracy.  Aerial operations in 1914 were reconnaissance-focus; by 1918, both sides were using planes in intra-service coordination to attack and overwhelm their enemy’s lines.  With a singular strike, the Handley Page bomber destroyed the telephone exchange and main railway station, serving communications between the Ottoman/German High Command and their soldiers.

A few hours later, the British army roared to life, with 385 field guns lashing out at the Ottoman line.  A massive coordinated campaign of artillery, cavalry, infantry and Arabian guerillas would destabilize what remained of the Central Powers’ position in Palestine, destroying two Ottoman armies and reducing the Ottoman morale to dust.  As had happened to the Germans and the Bulgarians, now the Turks would face a killing stroke that would set in motion the end of their Empire.  It would be a fitting conclusion to a battle chosen by the British because of the proximity to the ancient city of Megiddo – or as it was known in Hebrew, Armageddon.

British troops advance with air cover – the modern ability of airpower to attack ground forces would set a historic precedent at Megiddo

The capture of Jerusalem in late 1917 had been a welcome victory for an Allied war effort that appeared to be falling apart.  In a few sharp battles, British General Edmund Allenby had driven the Turks out of southern Palestine with thousands of casualties to few losses of his own.  Where the British had been stymied in the Sinai and Gaza for years, racking up losses of tens of thousands of men, in six months Allenby had gutted the Ottoman line, destroyed entire armies and all for the loss of perhaps just over 3,000 men.  Accuracy, speed and guile had been Allenby’s tools and they had worked wonders against veteran Turkish soldiers and accomplished German commanders like Erich von Falkenhayn and Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein.  But the victories hadn’t meant the end of the Palestinian campaign and Allenby would now face his greatest opponent – the British War Office.  Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided but the Supreme Court shows no sign of correcting its mistake.  That decision is here to stay and with it, the societal consequences it generates.  

We’re often told that No Child Should Be Born Into Poverty.  That child will suffer compared to its peers.  Supporters of Roe v. Wade tell us that child should be aborted, instead, out of kindness and mercy.

It follows, then, that No Child Should Have To Grow Up In Poverty. If being born into poverty is a bad enough outcome to justify killing the child who has never known anything else, surely being thrown into poverty after a lifetime of plenty and leisure is far worse.  

Children of families who suffer divorce, death, disability or sudden job loss of a breadwinner will suffer cruelly when Daddy can’t afford Summer Camp or a new car for graduation.  It is inhumane to force those children to bear the deprivations and shame of poverty.  It would be much kinder to put them out of their misery.  Plus, it would break the cycle of generational welfare dependency. 

Kill the children – for the children.  It’s the Roe thing to do.

Joe Doakes

It’s not even that big a caricature of “prog” logic…

A friend of the blog emails:

Reading this story from the strib it sounds like the Birchwood is no longer slinging hash (er avocado toast) for cash, but is providing amuse-bouche for people who are working their way through the three steps of Maoist Self-Criticism. The question for the author, Ms Du, to answer for the reader would be “Is their food any good?” I have eaten there and the answer is they are at their best mediocre, plus they don’t know how to make coffee and skip the pie.There is not much joy in listening to White Urban Privilege whinge about the traumas induced by The Patriarchy while you’re working your way through some dismal chick-pea with burnt bell pepper concoction.

These sorts of places can – I say, can – be fun for the flavor of people watching I’m starting to call “virtue signal intelligence“.

Am I the only one to whom this looks like a press release from the North Korean press office?

It’s a senior official in the Biden administration.

Am I the only person who hopes the protesters in Cuba didn’t choose the wrong Administration during which to break cover?

This entire thread…

…may be the best single summation of the post-Tea=Party right-of-center landscape I’ve seen since, well, the Tea Party.

It’s going to be the subject of a solid chunk of my show on Saturday.

The Center for the American Experiment has had to reschedule a “Critical Race Theory“ event in Duluth.

Due to threats.

Three times:

For the fourth time in a month, a Duluth venue was pressured into canceling the Raise Our Standards event put on by Center of the American Experiment. Within minutes of the announcement yesterday that the Cast Iron Bar and Grill would host the event, the owner received threatening phone calls pressuring them to cancel. American Experiment will now hold the event in the Lafayette Park Community Center in Duluth.

Hundreds of Minnesotans attended the first 16 stops on the Raise Our Standards tour focused on the state’s draft social studies standards and Critical Race Theory. The original Duluth appearance was postponed on June 17 after the Northland Country Club and Holiday Inn both backed out of hosting the event. The AAD Shrine Meeting & Event Center also canceled with American Experiment after signing a contract to host the event next Tuesday.

You see, that’s why Big Left is making such a huge deal about “January 6“; it allows them to deflect away from the way they behave every day, everywhere.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Technological innovations are coming from abroad as Americans obsess over race, gender, and preventing people from questioning The Narrative.

This is how empires crumble.

Joe Doakes

If there’s going to be a backlash, let’s get it going. America’s current New Reality sucks.

NPR (I listen so you don’t have to) has a story on Paris’s crack problem – which, after a year of lockdown, has gone pretty public.

Near the end of the piece, the reporter reassures the NPR audience that at least there isn’t any gun violence, due to France’s strict gun controls.

Thing is, even in the US, guns and all, crack addicts rarely shoot each other. Oh, they sometimes use guns to rob people to get money and fence-able goods for their next fix – but the NPR piece doesn’t favor us with anybody sight as to how French baseheads pay for their buzz. Given hiw defenseless French Gun control, leaves citizens, there’s less need to use a gun to rob people, but again, the report goes into no details.

No, in the US it’s gangs, taking and defending turf and herding beeves, thst do the shooting. And it seems French gangs don’t have that much trouble getting guns.

There are just different priorities so far.

The guns that roared to life across the Bulgarian/Greek lines in Northern Macedonia on September 14th, 1918 had been expected for some time.  What had been a relatively quiet front for the better part of three years since the Allied landings at Salonika had come to life since late May of 1918 as the “Allied Army of the Orient”, a cosmopolitan assortment of divisions cobbled together from Britain, France, Italy, Serbia and finally Greece, slowly began to advance.  Opposing them had once been an equally mixed grand alliance of Central Powers divisions, which had slowly melted away into just two depleted Bulgarian armies.

800 Allied artillery pieces struck the Bulgarian trenches at Dobro Pole (“Good Field”) and Allied aircraft bombed the supply chain behind the line.  The barrage would continue into the next day, doing little direct damage to the Bulgarian line but carving up the barbed wire defenses and clearing paths through no man’s land.  In many ways, the Allied offensive looked the same as literally dozens of others over the past four years on battlefields across Europe and the Middle East.  But as Allied soldiers finally hit the Bulgarian trenches, suffering tough casualties, the outcome was profoundly different.  The Bulgarians broke.  Like the Germans in Amiens just a month earlier, the average Bulgarian soldier no longer wanted anything to do with the Great War.  

What had been hoped to be a minor Allied offensive to regain ground lost to the Bulgarians earlier in the war turned into a rout.  And the first of the Central Powers would fall.

Bulgarian trenches – Bulgaria had managed to hold off a massive Allied army largely by themselves for nearly years

In many ways, the Salonika Front had been frozen in place since late 1916 as first the Central Powers, and then the Allies, had tried in vain to quickly end what had become yet another tertiary front sapping men and materials badly needed elsewhere.  The Germans had coordinated with Greek King Constantine to allow German and Bulgarian troops to invade Northern Macedonia in an attempt to expel the Allied encampment at Salonika.  The move prompted the overthrow of the Greek monarchy and an Allied counteroffensive that regained some of the lost Macedonian territory but otherwise locked the two sides into the same positions they’d share until the summer of 1918.  Forces for both sides would come and go as needs on other fronts dictated, with the Russians leaving Greece with the fall of the Tsar and the Turks leaving as their Arabian and Mesopotamian Empires collapsed.  But the battles were few and far between, with the Allies referring to the front as “Muckydonia” due to it’s mud and boredom and the Germans mockingly calling Salonika “their largest POW camp.”  Read the rest of this entry »

John “Burn It All Down“ Thompson, (DFL, HD67) got pulled over with a valid, Wisconsin license, to replace the Minnesota license that had been suspended quite sometime ago.

He’s getting dragged pretty hard in Minnesota social/political media.

I’m going to break with the crowd, And defended Thompson.

It’s true, he moved to the Twin Cities 18 years ago. And and yet he kept up his Wisconsin drivers license.

I totally get it. When I moved to the Twin Cities, and first encountered metro drivers, I wanted to keep some sort of document that proved I knew how to drive, too.

E

Keith Ellison has wielded in effect unlimited power for this past year, under Governor Klink’s emergency powers. Ellison has in effect been the Sammy Gravano to Tim Walz’s John Gotti – the muscle of the enterprise, making examples of business who didn’t knuckle under on command.

I mused at one point or another over this past year that it was inevitable that Ellison would turn out to have been a firebrand for liberty, if Republican were ever try try to abuse emergency power.

Was I right?

They don’t call it “Berg’s Seventh Law” for nothing.

“There is absolutely nothing more important than safeguarding the liberty of the people we are charged to represent,” Ellison said before the Minnesota Legislature when he was a state representative in 2005. This statement came during a debate about what powers the government should enjoy during times of emergency. At that time, Republican Tim Pawlenty was Minnesota’s governor.

“There should be a sunset in this bill [to provide emergency powers], we should be forced to look at this stuff on a regular basis. We should have to come back to see what works and what doesn’t and review this stuff … we are in an evolving situation as it relates to what we know,” he said.

“I hope we put ourselves in a position where we have to look at this again,” then-representative Ellison concluded. “There absolutely should be a sunset provision in here, and we’ve got to look at this thing on a regular basis, and tweak it and work it and massage it until it fits with our constitutionally-mandated duty.”

What a difference a couple of years of absolute power makes, huh?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Dear Google:
Every time you push out an update for my Chromebook, you default some (but not all) of my settings.  I have certain pages at 125% view for a reason.  Don’t change it. 
Yes, I know your programmers want to show off their clever innovations.  That’s the Microsoft model.  “See, we moved the button you need from the ribbon to a pull-down menu, isn’t that handy?”  No.  I had it there for a reason.  Don’t change it.
And yes, I’m sure it is easier for you if everyone does everything the same.  That’s the Apple model:  “We know this isn’t what you wanted but we’re so smart we know what you should want, so that’s what you’re getting.”   No. I chose Chrome for a reason. Don’t be Apple.  Leave my s*** alone. 
Joe Doakes

As a “User Experience Architect”, the manner of some companies – I’m looking at you, Apple – can only be described as “arrogant”.

SCENE: A conference room at “Minnesotans for All Progressive Causes” – a non-profit group financed by progressives with deep pockets – for the weekly message coordination meeting.

MyLyssa Silberman, reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, waits in the conference room along with Betty Rae Torstengaardsen, senior staff writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, sit, along with Mesme PHURPHY, elite objective political reporter from WCCO-TV They nervously check their watches.

Eventually, Gretel Stromberg Executive Director of “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”, and Inge “Lucky” Carroll, Executive Director of “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”, enter the room.

CARROLL: (Looks at Silberman and Torstengaardsen and Phurphy, clears throat).

SILBERMAN, PHURPHY AND TORSTENGAARDSEN: (quickly rise from their seats)

STOMBERG: Be seated. (All sit, with STROMBERG at the head of the table). Americans are rejecting the term “insurrection” to describe the January 6 riot. We need to come up with another term.

PHURPHY: How about ‘genocide’?

CARROLL: Love the energy, Mesme, but it might be a bit of an overreach.

TORSTENGAARDSEN: I mean, ‘riot’ pretty much sums it up.

(STROMBERG and CARROLL cough nervously).

TORSTENGAARDSEN: Er…never mind.

SILBERMAN: ‘Coup’ usually implies the elites seizing control. ‘Insurrection’ implies a sustained, military campaign, like the Viet Cong or the IRA.

STROMBERG: I’ll go with “Putsch“.

(The three “journalists” sit, somewhat agape. Finally, SILBERMAN speaks)

SILBERMAN: So – a term that, outside a very thin film of political science and history academics, refers in American English solely to Hitler’s abortive 1922 Munich coup attempt?

(The three “journalists” look at each other)

PHURPHY: Works for me.

TORSTENGAARDSEN: Yep.

SILBERMAN: I hear and obey.

STROMBERG: (abruptly rising) Make it so. (Leaves the room with CARROLL).

And SCENE

A friend of the blog emails re what’s going on in Uptown Minneapolis:

If the local media doesn’t report on what’s happening does that mean it doesn’t exist?

As far as political life and the institutional history of Minneapolis at this point in history observed by our political class?

Rhetorical question, right?

Urban Progressive Privilege means never having to feel awkward about the devastation your policies inevitably lead to.

Never forget this:

And when your “progressive” friends and relatives bleat “what about January 6?”

There was never any chance that riot, stupid and despicable as it was, was going to damage, or even significantly interrupt, our democratic process. None.

On the other hand, dismantling trust in our institutions – the legal system, in this case?

That could very well do the treuck, over time.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Setting off a nuclear bomb does immediate damage, but also blasts radioactive dust into the atmosphere which will eventually settle out of the air causing deaths from radiation poisoning.  The death toll from fall-out can be far greater than the death toll from the blast itself.
Governor Walz’ Executive Orders set off a nuclear bomb on Minnesota last Spring.  The immediate blast destroyed civil liberties – placed the entire state under house arrest, banned religion, speech, assembly, and ordinary employment for all except favored groups – but the fall-out damage has yet to be fully realized. 
A family member fell over July 4th weekend, striking her head.  The Urgency Room doctors in Eagan wanted her admitted to a hospital for observation but there were no rooms available at Regions, United or St. John’s in Maplewood.  She ended up at Woodwinds in Woodbury.  She received excellent treatment and is making a fine recovery but the point is beds.  There are no hospital beds.
It’s not Covid.  It’s fall-out from Covid. Walz banned non-emergency medical treatments to keep hospital beds open for the giant surge of Covid cases which were confidently predicted by the U of M computer model.  Hospitals lost millions of dollars every day as beds sat empty. Marginally profitable facilities were closed to save money.  When Bethesda and St. Joseph’s closed in St. Paul, they took 500 beds off the inventory.  Remember our talk about Second Order effects?  This is one of them.  Prohibit hospitals from making money treating non-Covid patients, hospitals close their doors, all patients go untreated. 
We’re going to see more fall-out.  Unemployment remains high because it’s just as profitable to sit home as go to work.  Evictions and foreclosures are halted now but will explode when the moratorium is lifted, adding to the homeless problem.  Business bankruptcies are already on the rise. 
Was it really worth all this so Democrats could ‘fortify’ the election to get rid of the Bad Orange Man? 
Joe Doakes

“Government is the least effective possible way to manage scarce resources”
— Kevin Williamson

If this past year, especially in re healthcare, hasn’t emphasized this to you, then I question whether any emphasis will ever work.

Justices Alito and Gorsuch pimp-slaps the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) with a rolled-up copy of the First Amendment.

FIllmore County, with the MPCA at their backs, wanted to force a group of Amish families in Fillmore County to either put in septic tanks or be evicted from their homes:

Fillmore County in 2013 started requiring homes to have modern septic systems to dispose of “gray water” from dishwashing, laundry and such. The Amish sought an exemption, saying their religion prohibits that technology. They offered instead to use earthen basins filled with wood chips to filter water as it drains, which are allowed in some states including Montana and Wyoming. But the county went as far as seeking a court order to force 23 families from their homes if they refused to comply, Gorsuch wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the Minnesota courts “plainly misinterpreted and misapplied” the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which was also at issue in the Philadelphia case.

The act “prohibits governments from infringing sincerely held religious beliefs and practices except as a last resort,” Gorsuch wrote, urging the Minnesota court and local authorities to swiftly resolve the dispute.

“In this country, neither the Amish nor anyone else should have to choose between their farms and their faith,” he said.

Trump’s judicial legacy is looking more and more to far outweigh all stress he caused.

Rasmussen Poll shows Americans prefer a “Freedom and Equality” candidate to a “Social Justice and Equity” candidate, 54-29 .

Anyone but me worried that the GOP can actually close the circle on that message?

The National Education Association – the organization that actually does ruthlessly wield the money and influence Big Left attributes to the NRA – is tripling down on “social and economic justice” and Critical Race Theory.

You can read the article (about the NEA’s attempts to silence opposition and extend the social justice curricula) at your leisure.

My big question is one that we really need voters to be asking Republican candidates, especially in Minnesota. School choice, we’re seeing, is a winning issue; we see this in the “Tea Party”-like uprisings of parents all over the country against CRT.

And yet – will Minnesota Republican candidates ever come into the city to try to make their cases to charter school parents – overwhelmingly black, Latino, Asian or immigrant? The Democrats and the Teachers Union, pardon the redundancy – and even some of their proxy warriors want to kill charter schools and all meaningful school choice.

And yet you can count on zero fingers the number of GOP gubernatorial, Senate or Consitutitonal Office candidates who’ve even shown up to try to contest the battlefield.

Why does the Minnesota GOP need to be, and stay, so stupid?

Remember all of that “Minneapolis is re-opening“ chatter a few weeks back?

About that…:

Let’s look back at this post in about a year. I’m betting on “no”.