Karen hardest hit.

A friend of the blog emails:

This article tells me a lot of things that are happening in San Francisco aren’t progressive. 

Thing is, a lot of what they’re saying isn’t progressive seems to be actually what the “progressive party” nationwide supports. 

Progressivism = weaponized idealism.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A heckler can shout down a speaker, preventing the audience from hearing the message.  This activity is known as a ‘heckler’s veto.’  The heckler is abridging the freedom of speech rights of the speaker and audience while asserting his own freedom of speech right.

A troll can shout down a poster by thread-jacking or multiple inflammatory posts, thus preventing the audience from reading the message.  This activity shall henceforth be known as a ‘Troll Veto.’ The troll is interfering with the free exchange of ideas between the poster and readers while hiding behind the rules of etiquette for polite society which the troll refuses to follow himself.

Unbounded liberty without order is anarchy.  The first requirement of ordered liberty is order.  In both examples, a balance of the rights justifies removing the heckler/troll.

Drop the ban hammer.

Joe Doakes

I’m loathe to do arbritrailty what the group is perfectly good at doing organically.

But thread–jacking is wearing out its dubious welcome.

I’ve repeatedly said that satire – the Babylon Bee, the Onion, of course Betg’s Law, and of course Titania McGrath, among a few others – are the real journalism of the age.

McGrath [1] proves it with this Twitter thread:

It’s really uncanny; satire exposes our reality better than NPR and Sixty MInutes, combined, have in decades.

I’ve got a lot of Catholic friends who are also conservatives.

I keep asking them – “when is your bureaucracy going to start enforcing the church’s supposed beliefs, like publicly supporting the right to life, or at least not being pro-infanticide, on “Catholic” politicians?

“We will. We will”.

But they don’t. Never.

But is the specter of Joe Biden, a publicly practicing Catholic, being called “the most faithful President in recent history” (by a chattering class that generally regards Christianity as a den of know-nothjing ignorance) and a representative face for Christianity and Catholicism in public, finally goading the Bishops into action?

Maybe, but don’t bet your mortgage payment on it:

But we now hear from a few murmuring bishops that the Church must address Biden’s unworthy reception of Communion. “US Catholic bishops may press Biden to stop taking Communion,” reads a recent AP headline. Nothing concrete, however, is likely to come from these complaints. The U.S. bishops, as a whole, lack the will to withhold Communion from Biden, even though canon law says that they not only have the right but the duty to do so. Canon 915 “obliges the minister of Holy Communion to refuse the Sacrament” to those in “manifest grave sin.” If Biden’s direct facilitation of the killing of unborn children doesn’t fall into that category, what does?

Not being Catholic, I’m not hip to the vagaries of intra-curial politics, but the American bishops strike this Orthodox Presbyterian as not a whole lot more concerned about such things than the ELCA.

My handwriting is atrocious. This dates back to elementary school, and it crosses all styles, from the cursive they tried to teach me and that I tried to practice into high school, to the regular mixed-case print I painfully adopt when filling out paperwork, to the all-cap scrawl I picked up working in radio when it was a convention.

And yet I do most of my note-taking by hand. I find it helps me to retain things in memory better. I usually transcribe the important notes to a Notepad file when I have spare time, but the written word just stick better with me.

But at best, unless I’m being very careful – as in, just about doing calligraphy (which, by the way, I’m pretty good at), my handwriting is barely legible even to me.

This article – along with a fascinating explication of the history of the modern pen – explains why. It’s the damn ballpoint.

Which might at least impart explain why I almost always use Paper Mate “Flair” felt-tip pens for my note taking – for the best combination of speed and low stress on my hand.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

How bad are things under the Garden Administration?  This bad: we are facing a shortage of chicken wings.

Oh, sure, they’ll blame bad weather in Texas or supply line interruptions from Covid and of course, everything changed on January 6th.

But this never happened when the Bad Orange Man was President.  Just sayin’.

Joe Doakes

The number of things coming up scarce these days – from wings to plywood to ammo – all have rational supply chain explanations.

The fact that they all started in January? Right after the Harris administration unilaterally made the increase in gas prices inevitable, with ripple effects throughout the supply chain?

Weird.

The good news: there are jurisdictions in this country where election integrity is non-negotiable.

The bad news: it’s for high school homecoming royalty elections.

While employed as an assistant principal at Bellview Elementary School in the same county, [Queen candidate’s mother Laura Rose] Carroll accessed the school district’s internal system to cast fraudulent votes for her daughter [Emily Rose Grover] so that she would win, officials said. The investigation began in November when the Escambia County School District reported unauthorized access into hundreds of student accounts, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Investigators found that in October, hundreds of votes for the school’s homecoming court were flagged as fraudulent, the news release said. There were 117 votes from the same IP address within a short period of time, the investigation found.

Ms. Grover and her mother face up to…

…are you ready for this…

…16 years in prison for rigging a high school homecoming royalty vote.

The FBI agent that presented false information to a FISA court, leading to a fraudulent FBI investigation that contributed materially to the rage that led to much of the electoral BS of this past eight months? He got probation.

And five’ll get you ten that school requires voter ID next year.

…whose first question was…

…where in the flaming hootie-hoo are these punks getting all the ammo?

I’m kind of a radio nerd. Not only for doing radio, but I’m a geek about the history of the medium. Sometimes I think I should have been born in about 1900, so I could have been there at the birth of radio, which was in its own way every bit as exciting as the birth of the Internet.
And every bit as fraught with the capacity to be exploited by tyrants and demigogues, and flooded with dubious news in service of dubious narratives which are intended to become dubious history…

…but I digress.

I’m especially a nerd over the history of the use of radio as propaganda – especially the supremely fascinating story of the British and American “parody” broadcasts into German-held territory during WW2 – think “Babylon Bee”, but in service of a wartime objective.

Another story that’s always fascinating is “Tokyo Rose”. An American-born woman of Japanese descent who was marooned in Japan at the beginning of the war, Iva Toguri was the most prominent of several women associated with the radio name. A popular show among GIs and sailors – my ex-father-in-law recounted listening to her on board his destroyer off the Philippines and Okinawa – her story has always been portrayed as a bit of petty treason, at least to my generation.

But as Mark Fel.on, the world’s greatest history teacher, explains, the story was a lot more interesting than that.

And with all respect to H-Bomb, Consigliere, Megan Fatale, Duane Patterson, the Living Martyr and the rest, it’s the story of three of the world’s most fiendishly clever producers..

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

There are three weeks [as this was written. Currently a little under two weeks, Ed.] until the legislature adjourns. Republicans continue working with Democrats to keep Dictator-for-Life Walz in power and to enact Democrat agendas in police reform, tax increases, and legalizing marijuana.

Why?

Shut everything down until Walz ends the Permanent Emergency and the law
is changed to say he can declare another only with consent of both houses.

Or else drop the masks, change parties and come clean with us. You’re
not staunch conservatives standing up for what’s right. You’re
Republicans in Name Only working hand-in-hand with Democrats to pass
their agenda.

Joe Doakes

It’s high time the MNGOP stood for what’s right, here.

Twelve years ago, during the first year or so of the Obama administraiton, I pointed out my, shall we say, skepticism over the Administration’s, and Big Left’s, claims that we were on the verge of a wave of “white supremacist terror” that was going to, in the words of more than a few pundits, “dwarf 9/11”.

White supremacist terror was certainly a real thing. In the 1920’s, aided and abetted by Woodrow Wilson, the Klan was a major power in the South, and could even muster thousands of member to rallies here in Minnesota.

And I”m old enough to actually remember active White Supremacists doing bad things; the Medina Shootout, the shooting of Alan Berg, and others.

But to paraphrase Martin Luther King, the arc of White Supremacist organizations has been long, and has curved toward Palookaville. According to actual sources that had to keep their jobs by reporting facts, groups like the Klan, the Bund and other radical white supremacist organizations mustered:

• Millions of members and active sympathizers in the 1920s
• Hundreds of thousands by the 1960s
• A few tens of thousands by the time I graduated from high school, after a decade and a half of rigorous prosecution.
• As of 2015 or so, a few thousand, powerless, isolated, ridiculed, inbred losers living in their parents basements.

The number of actual identifiable active “White supremacists” has shrunk, in terms of verifiable numbers, by an order of magnitude every generation.

Of course, with the election of Trump, the narrative turned: while there were fewer verifiable, actual members of organizations, the “rhetoric” of the new administration “created more sympathizers”…

…which was simultaneously unverifiable, un-testable, and conveniently allowed the keepers of the narrative to brand anyone to the right of Amy Klobuchar as a “potential” “white supremacist”. Like Candace Owens.

But I digress.

The narraative saw comical spectacles like the pathetic gaggle of a hundred or so endomorphic cretins gathered from across ten or more states to Charlottesville, parading with tiki torches before set upon by a much larger mob with the active connivance of a “progressive” mayor, presented as evidence of the coming Racemageddon.

Berg’s 20th Law reads “All incidents of “hate speech” not captured on video (involving being delivered by someone proven not to be a ringer) shall be assumed to be hoaxes until proven otherwise” has heretofore concerned itself with dime-bag racial huckstery like last week’s collossal FUBAR at Adelphi University, where university staff indulged in a “Ready, Fire, Aim” moment: an anonymous social media post declared that there was a wave of lynchings of blacks headed toward…Adelphi?

In response to the anonymous post — which included no corroborating evidence — the school sent a statement to the student body.

“There have been recent incidents of students using racial slurs, hateful comments, and reported threats of violence and retaliation on social media — and sadly, this is not the first time these issues have occurred,” said Adelphi President Christine Riordan. “To those among us who have been targeted, directly and indirectly, we hate that this has happened to you, and we hate that we have not yet found a way to stop it.”

“Ignorance, racism, hate and violence hold no place in the Adelphi community, yet those things keep happening here,” continued the communication. “We know there is no place at Adelphi for inexcusable messages of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, but such racist attacks are a stark reminder of the work we need to do to combat systemic inequality and ongoing racism in our very own community.”

Adelphi University Strategic Communications Director Todd Wilson directed Campus Reform toward another statement published the following day.

The second statement admitted that public safety and local police officers “have continued to ask for direct evidence of threats from those who have received them firsthand and none have been submitted for investigation.” 

As with the entire wave – remember that word – of such hoaxes, so significant as to lead to the enshrining of Berg’s 20th Law, there shall be none.

But maybe I, and my law, have thought too narrowly.

The law focused on penny-ante hoaxes like Adelphi, or this one (one of several such in recent years, which seem to come up so frequently I have to check to make sure they’re not the same episode) or the similar one at Saint Olaf a few years back (a school which is no stranger to hate crimes, but all of them seem to be directed at the right).

But the entire “wave of terror” narrative applies. Like the scads of little hoaxes, everything about it must be observed, questioned, verified…

…and, if the pattern continues, as it usually seems to do, mocked and taunted from public life.

Woman, teacher, paranoid racist?

Product of a decade and a half of Critical Race Theory indoctrination?

Why choose?

Some of the social media feedback quips “this woman could be teaching your kids”.

If your offspring’s teacher is a member of the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers, the odds are actually pretty decent she already is, one way or another.

It would seem there are two black Americas.

One whom upper middle class white progressives have appointed themselves leaders – the type that call Tim Scott “Uncle Tim” and jabber on about defunding and actively harassing the police “for racial justice“…

…and the actual people who live in the neighborhoods that are being gutted.

In Brooklyn Center, where the destruction was visible firsthand, respondents (nearly all black men of various ages) overwhelmingly opposed rioting. An African-American man in an “Army Veteran” hat commented: “We’re human, and we want to be treated with respect,” but we also need to show “respect.”

A man in construction gear remarked: “I guarantee you the people that were looting, nine times out of 10, weren’t from this area. . . . If you feel the need to lash out, then don’t get mad when people, you know, address you as a looter or a rioter.”

A woman in a Black Lives Matter mask agreed: “These are two different things: We have protesters, and then we have rioters.”

The people of Brooklyn Center seemed to hold a pretty nuanced view about the difference between protest and destruction.

On the streets of Washington, on the other hand, support for riots among the capital’s bourgeoisie was almost universal. One young woman said that “if change needs to be made, and it’s not getting done in the traditional avenues, then rioting is a good option.”

All the Democrats had to do to get the black working class that voted for Trump in two-generationi-high numbers back in the fold was not be crazy.

They just can’t do it.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Andrew McCarthy writing at National Review says the Chauvin jury was correct to convict him, not based on anything reported in the media or introduced as evidence at trial or the pervasive atmosphere of intimidation, but because the conviction means Chauvin is a bad cop and that exonerates the rest of society from the charge of systemic racism. 

Sacrificing a victim to the mob is shameful.  Twisting your shameful act to pretend it’s all for the greater good is disgusting.  But I expect nothing less from a Never-Trumper. 

Joe Doakes

It’s the sort of rationalization I expect from someone who spent way too much time in the prosecution industry.

The one, single public official in either city that didn’t marinade themselves in shame in the face of the rioting last year was Saint Paul’s top cop Todd Axtell.

Don’t get me wrong – Axtell has been no less DFL-doctrinaire an anti-gunner than any other urban police chief. He knows where his next paycheck is coming from.

But as Jacob Frey went blank in front of the cameras (only to wake up to tear into a Trump tweet, as Lake Street burned west to Nicollet), as Lisa Bender mumbled about public safety being a sign of privilege, and Melvin Carter apparently went into hiding, Axtell had the great common sense to go on TV and send a message to the rioters that had scourged my neighborhood the previous day: “We’re not abandoning any part of Saint Paul” – which, tacitly, also said Yes, public safety is a privilege, one that every %$#@@ one of you taxpayers of every race and orientation pays for with your tax dollar. And the SPPD, which got behind on the count on Thursday the 28th, at least went on to prove it Friday the 29th, meeting the rioters on the Marshall-Lake Bridge and sending them scampering back to easier pickings west of the river.

It was one of precious few times I’ve been happy to live in Saint Paul in recent years.

It sounded a little like riot night in Saint Paul over the past weekend – three separate shootings, including one at a crowded house party, combined with apparently hundreds of street racers dicing up and down the freeways, gave the city that Black Hawk Down kind of vibe.

Axtell commented:

And I don’t doubt Axtell means it. If nothing else, he’s built up some confidence in some parts of the public, including this mere taxpayer.

But if the SPPD catches them, then what?

They get handed over to a Ramco prosecutors office that is about as tough on crime as Mitra Jalali?

All but the trigger men, maybe, will be back out on the street before the ink is dry on their arrest records. Which are digital.

At least, that’s the sense people get.

If there was ever a time Saint Paul needed to be something other than a one-party desert, this is it.

The DFLin the metro likes to chant “We OWN This Town” after they win lopsided and at least partly fraudulent elections.

Yep, DFL. You do. And like a trust fund baby with a car you didn’t really pay for, wrecking it has no consequences for you. The trust will just get you another. Roseville. Maybe Rochester.

Good luck, Chief.

…Senator Scott would be a contender for the Presidency.

I knew the guy was sharp. This speech clinched it for me:

And I suspect the Dems know it too. That’s why we had…well, this going on on Twitter last week:

Someone with hope about race, the economy, and the world?

Can’t be tolerated.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Empty magazine rack in the hospital waiting room. Because you can catch The Deadliest Virus Ever Known from toilet seats and grocery store check-out belts and waiting room magazine covers.  

Okay, actually, no, you can’t. Scientists have confirmed that the endless cleaning for the last year has been a complete waste of time and resources. But we can’t admit that now or people will suspect the experts don’t know what they are talking about and will no longer blindly follow our orders. 

The Covid Nazi has spoken: no magazine for you.

Joe Doakes

I have a hunch socieity is on the tipping point of a tsunami of satirical mockery.

Well, OK. I hope so.

Established in advance: Saint Paul’s sitting city council is never going to be the most completely detached-from-reality elected body in the United States. Even if you leave out Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Berkeley, Cambridge and DC, we are across the river from Minneapolis.

But it’s not for lack of trying.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Ramco sheriff Bob Fletcher – his record of passive-aggression against law-abiding gun owners needs some atonement – but his current term in office has been notable for one of the most interesting social media experiments I’ve seen, his “Live On Patrol” weekly video stream.

The stream – which involves the Sheriff and his partner rolling “tape” for 2-3 hours on, usually, Friday nights around Ramsey County, mostly Saint Paul – have become a hit around the Metro and likely, elsewjhere, as Fletcher just drives from place to place and shows the viewer what Saint Paul is like after dark.

I’ve watched it a few times. As Fletcher notes in describing the show, “‘Live on Patrol’ focuses on community relations, instead of arrest. In addition to preventing crime, the goal … is to build community relationships and improved trust through transparency”

That runs directly counter to the interests of a good chunk of Saint Paul”s radical-left City Council. And they’ve made their displeasure known:

A resolution, which seeks an independent review of the show, is sponsored by council members Amy Brendmoen, Mitra Jalali and Rebecca Noecker and will be discussed at the council’s meeting on Wednesday.

Fletcher said his detractors don’t like that his livestreams show why police are needed.

“Some elected officials are opposed to ‘Live on Patrol’ because it builds trust with the police and that runs counter to their narrative to defund law enforcement,” Fletcher said. “Many council members would prefer the public not be aware of the current increase in violent crime. They are opposed to transparency when it reflects on their failure to keep the community safe.”

The council members are requesting the State of Minnesota Peace Officers Standards and Training Board evaluate the video to determine if it violates the Sheriff’s office’s policies and the Minnesota police code of conduct.

Should be an interesting meeting.

Brendmoen, the City Council president, said it’s not a political issue.

“We’re trying to answer questions that community members have brought to our attention,” she said Thursday, adding that those questions have included: “Why is an elected sheriff able to not wear a body camera while he’s on patrol? Why is a sheriff able to do this patrol with a camera on that’s violating what we believe are the St. Paul police’s rules of conduct and rules of pursuit?”

Brendmoen accuses Fletcher of violating SPPD rules of conduct – and he’s not a Saint Paul cop? Violating rules of pursuit, when (I saw this episode) he was probably seventh car back in a pack of cops pursuing a suspect on 35E?

If Brandmoen says it’s not a political issue, then it is a purely political issue. They see Fletcher – who, while neither conservative nor Republican, seems to be the closest thing the county has to a dissenter with any sort of even potential political oomph – not only gaining popularity, but doing it via media that outflank their political control. That’s got to make the non-profiteers nervous – being doctrinaire progressives from a single party autocracy, they have no idea how to deal with opposition, other than using the bureaucracy to shut them down.

Just like in any non-profit.

This episode may be the first example of oppositional politics outside a DFL convention in Saint Paul since Norm Coleman left the DFL.

Stillwater students stage a walkout…

…and I can hear you tuning out already, thinking this is just another bit of canned outrage, with “woke” teachers and administrators using students as their pawns, but hear me out…

…in favor of “Back the Blue“.

A group of Stillwater Area High school students walked out of class Thursday morning to show support for police officers.

Students were encouraged to wear blue and bring thin blue line flags.

Look – I’m not a police fanboy. I think bad cops get the same treatment as bad criminals; being a bad cop is a betrayal of the trust (and power) the public gives them. I’m conservative enough to know why we need poice – and libertarian enough to want just enough policing.

And we don’t have just enough of it in the Metro. Not even close .

But let’s focus on the kids. The fact that some of them are being heard against the woke mob is encouraging. With a little luck, and good parenting, perhaps they’ll start engaging the commies in the classroom, too

This is to be supported.

Tim Scott says America’s not racist.

So many Democrats call him “Uncle Tim”, it trends.

A journalist with an improbable sense of balance asks Kamala Harris the same question. Several times. Which ekes out an answer…

…the same as Scott’s.

Nothin’.

I know I”m not the only one seeing a pattern, here…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I expect a new sign in the British Library:

“This is the original copy of the “The Canterbury Tales” written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400.  Written in Middle English more than 500 years ago, the book is known primarily for having once been owned by a family with connections to the slave trade.  Further information about slavery is available in the Humanities Wing, the Social Sciences Wing and most of the Rare Books and Music Wing.”

Joe Doakes

Today’s parody and satire is tomorrow’s reality.

Today’s set list:

Question: Why did President Harris go so long on gun control at Biden’s “bedtime chat” the toher night?

Answer: Because Big Left may not get another chance at it, at least not via due process of law.

Americans are ditching gun control:

The number of Americans supporting enacting new gun laws over protecting gun rights fell from 57 percent to 50 percent, a seven-point drop from when the poll was last conducted in 2018. The number of Americans favoring gun rights jumped from 34 to 43 percent, a nine-point jump. The difference between the two positions narrowed by 16 points overall.

The sharpest decline in support for new gun-control measures came among 18 to 29-year-olds and Hispanics. Both groups saw a 20 percent drop. Rural Americans and strong conservatives saw a 17-point drop.

The downturn in gun-control support comes even after multiple high-profile mass shootings in Colorado, Indiana, and Georgia. The ABC/Washington Post poll is the second in as many weeks to show support for gun control waning. A Pew Research poll released on April 21 found the same seven-point drop in support for stricter gun laws.

The polling trend lends support to the idea new gun owners are beginning to change their attitudes on guns. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun makers and dealers, estimated there were 8.4 million new gun owners in 2020. Since gun owners tend to oppose new gun-control measures at a higher rate than non-gun owners, the drop in polling support for new gun laws may be a result of those new gun owners changing their minds.

There’s a strong case to be made that gun rights are winning the culture war – we’ve talked about it before – and this stiudy is some fairly solid evidence toward the thesis.

That’s the good news.

Here’s the problem: when we’re on defense, gun owners and gun rights supporters are second to none. If every conservative constituency in the US were as diligent at organizing and wielding power as shooters, Congress would look like the North Dakota legislature – there wouldn’t be enough elected Democrats to staff their committee assignments. When there’s a threat, we turn out like an onslaught of biblical wrath.

But when times are good?

Most especially when Republicans – who are reliably pro-gun, and the few exceptions prove the rule – control Congress and our legislatures, we go back to “real life”. Which befits us, as (mostly) conservatives; we don’t want politics to be our daily grind. We have real lives.

But with the SCOTUS on the brink of taking on a case that could impose strict scrutiny on state gun control laws, we, the good guys, need to resolve to fight this thing through to its bitter conclusion, just as our grandparents and great-grandparents did in 1945 – until the war is over for good. Until there’s no doubt.

Until gun control is as dead as the slavery in which is was born.

No quarter. No compromise.

UPDATE: Well, that went to hell quickly.

Erin Maye Quade – who, you may recall, came within an epic suck up to the progressive movement of being Minnesota’s lieutenant governor – had this to say about Tim Scott’s rebuttal to the presidents… whatever that was Wednesday night:

This, on top of Ryan WInkler’s “Uncle Tom” jape at one of the most accomplished jurists of any race in US history, and of course the “Uncle Tim” slur earlier this week, is enough to make any moral creature ask…

…what is the Democratic Party going to do about its racism problem?

UPDATE: I’ve “cloned” this post from yesterday. You’ll see why in a moment.