The Top Ten Things you Never, Ever Hear in Real Life.

10. “Hey, hand me that piano”.

9. “Gosh, the Star Tribune does a great job of balanced coverage on divisive issues”

8. “You know what I could use right now? A plate of “Scrod” from Embers”

7. “The fact that the Vikings, T-Wolves, Wild and usually the Twins disappoint me terribly is a sign that my priorities in life are terribliy out of whack”.

6. “See how much clearer and more fluid writing is when you arbitrarily and mindlessly adhere to the ‘Oxford Comma?'”

5. “The ‘zipper merge’ has made my life better”

4. “I got a call back from Alice Hausman’s office!”s

3. “That Mike McNeil on AM950 is appointment listening for me!”

2. “I always feel healthy and safe riding the Green Line after 6PM!”

And the #1 thing you never, ever hear in real life:

Number 1: “Oh, good. Al Sharpton is in town. Our racial divide and social crisis is going to get better”.

Joe Manchin ain’t much of one.

But…:

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) came out against his party’s push for gun control this week, saying that he does not support bills that were recently passed in the House.

“What the House passed? Not at all,” Manchin said, according to The Hill.DailyWire

“I come from a gun culture. I’m a law-abiding gun owner,” Manchin said, adding that he supports background checks on commercial transactions because the seller in that case does not know the buyer.

“If I know a person, no,” Manchin added.

…barring a pretty decent showing in 2022, he’s all we’ve got.

Fact: The Garden Administration recently bombed Syria, killing at least
one person, possibly a civilian.

Fact: Ahmad Al-Issa, the Boulder shooter, was born in Syria.  He shot up
a grocery store killing Americans.

These are completely unrelated random facts.  Unlike incidents during
previous administrations, there is no connection, no cause-and-effect,
no reason to link bad foreign policy to domestic terrorism because this
administration . . . are Democrats.

Joe Doakes

On the other hand, we didn’t really have a whole lot in the way of mass shootings rom 2018 on. Suddenly, we hear about ’em again…

Lauren Boebert, 34 year old business owner and freshman Congresswoman from Colorado, is to the 2020s what Michele Bachmann was to the 2000s – further proof of Berg’s Eighth Law.

Boebert actually is what Big Left has been trying to teach the world AOC is; a young woman who actually accomplished something.

At what point will the common-usage definition of “conversation” merge with “monologue” in popular parlance?

Because I can see that happening sooner than later.

Liquor Lyles, my old band’s former headquarters and the “Dive Bar” that made “dive bars” safe for a generation of Gen-X and Millennial hipsters, is yet another casualty of Covid.

I haven’t been down Hennepin Avenue – north or south of the freeway – in over a year. I can’t imagine there’s much left.

I’ve been thinking about impunity.  It’s why:

-Black Lives Matter and Antifa can burn down cities;

-Keith Ellison can orchestrate a lynching;

-Tim Walz can imprison the whole state for an entire year;

-someone in the Biden Administration can send troops to kick down doors
in Syria;

-China can humiliate our diplomats in Alaska;

-sex fiends and pedophiles can prey on victims for years;

-illegal immigrants can swarm our border.

When people know they can get away with bad behavior, they engage in
more of it.  Swift punishment deters bad behavior.  How can we restore
the deterrent necessary to end bad behavior?

Joe Doakes

A city without any political opposition, and a political system without any major media scrutiny, all lead to people acting with impunity.

Dissenters are the first target. Especially the ones whose dissents actually work:

If I were him I’d run background checks on every customer coming through the door.

Even at the peaks of their evil power, Mussolini was never able to get authors to drop off boxes of books at their bonfire parties. The Nazis weren’t able to get the Brownshirt leadership to beat themselves to death. Stalin never got the Kulaks and Wreckers and “KRs” to check themselves into the Lyubyanka.

Say what you will about modern “woke” culture – they’ve been able to develop the self-canceling apparatchik.

The good news: people are taking a second look at Ron DeSantis and Florida’s approach to Covid.

The bad news: to our cultural overlords, that means the same thing as “Jaws” taking another pass at Roy Scheider’s boat.

A friend of the blog emails:

Essentially this article blames the pandemic as the reason for higher Minneapolis property taxes next year.  The reason is because commercial real estate in the city has been jumping so much over the last 10 years before 2020, home owners have not seen as much increase in property taxes.  It’s all relative.  The city spend money like a drunken sailor and has been able to pass that on to the growing apartment buildings, restaurants, other commercial ventures that have popped up in the last 10 years.  That growth has halted and I predict commercial properties and values will decrease which will shift the burden to homeowners.  Get ready homeowners.

2020 has changed all that.  Part of the change is the pandemic as businesses realize they can keep workers working at home and reduce the amount of office space needed.  But it is also true that businesses will not move into a city that has no police force and allows blocks of businesses to be looted and burned.  Target is downsizing.  There wasn’t even a thought of the Canadian Pacific merger of having the headquarters in downtown Mpls where it is now.  Who thinks Minneapolis will see a Final Four or a Superbowl in the next 10 years?  The airheads running the city have created a bigger mess than just the pandemic.  I am glad to see my favorite establishment, Brit’s Pub, has re-opened but I am not tempted to go there even in daylight due to the dangerous downtown. 

Right now I am watching the discussion on the local Nextdoor.  People are noticing a big jump in their assessed home values yet their property taxes are stable and some even falling a bit.  The respite in tax increase this year is a big head fake.  The 2022 property taxes will increase mightily as these higher home values will shift a big piece of the real estate base from business to homeowners.  Maybe not if the city’s spending can be cut.  Unfortunately those cuts will likely come from the police force which is already being decimated by resignations and retirements.  The city can just recognize reality that they cannot retain and recruit enough badges.    My heart is sad for my beloved Minneapolis.  The local voters have been mislead by the local media and the chickens have come home to roost.  They will appeal to the state of MN for help.  God give backbones to the state legislature to say “NO.”  Just say “no” as Mpls voters caused this problem, they need to fix it.

Let this be a cautionary tale for other cities.  You don’t want this.

The same story can be said for all of Hennepin County. This will affect them as well.

Two observations.

First: when the MInnPost is too far to the middle for a Democrat machine…

Second: This is what a death spiral looks like.

See also: Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, Newark…

…well, you get the idea.

Reading the headline of this piece, my response is “sleep in, and don’t much bother with accomplishing much“.

The Strib is trying to shame people into getting the Covid vaccine:

Let’s apply this (for sake of argument) “Logic” to other patterns of behavior, shall we?

• People who are “child free by choice” are “demographic moochers”. Everyone else’s children are going to have to pay the taxes and premiums to support them in their dotage, as well as their own parents.
• People who live bike and transit-centered lifestyles are “fiscal moochers”. The taxes that pay for their bike lanes, paths, and transit routes and vehicles are paid, extremely disproportionally, by drivers and their gas taxes.
• Those of you who are getting vaccinated, as opposed to getting and recovering from Covid the old-fashioned way, are moochers on multiple levels.
• People who net out at no taxes paid in are “tax moochers”. The benefits they disproportionally receive are paid in their entirety by others.

Please see to this, Strib.

Thanks.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails re Kristi Noem’s much-attacked decision on trans athletes in SoDak high school sports:

Conservatives are throwing her under the bus for failing to sign virtue-signaling legislation that would have subjected her state to crippling litigation. The Keyboard Warriors excoriating her in the comments are not footing the bill, and none of their sons or daughters will lose the opportunity to play college sports if she stands up to NCAA.

Her decision is correct: do something smart, or don’t do it at all. If only we could get other governors to think that way.

Joe Doakes

If you’re a conservative, be careful over what you let wedge you. Or, us.

Pick your battles.

The DFL and the Teachers Union – pardon the redundancy – is rejecting the idea of allowing high school kids to take their standardized tests from home…

…because there’s no way to make such an important bit of work reliable and honest.

Democratic senators said Minnesota’s testing provider, Pearson Education, would not be able to develop a remote testing option in the next few weeks. It would be impossible to control the at-home environment like a classroom to monitor for cheating, they said.

“You can’t have anything on the board that would give a student an unfair advantage. How can we ensure that is going to happen at home?” said state Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton.

Huh.

Gotta hand it to the DFL. They know the value of keeping institutions, the ones vital to democracy, un-sullied by essentially sending them home on the honor system.

Yessirreebob.

A few regular-ish Democratic commenters have taken umbrage at my occasional statments along the lines of “Democrat voters have no critical thinking skills”.

Let me explain.

I say it because…’

…well, it’s true. Universally. Without exception.

Case in point:

“Shots in arms” – thanks to Trump.

Billions for schools – that, with the DFL calling the shots, are still squabbling about reopening.

And every dollar in the pocket paid for by five dollars taken from someone else – including your own grandchildren.

But no – don’t you dare assume the party that would write tripe like this can’t safely assume their voters are a lumpen, bovine mass.

Science: Draconian lockdowns are, at best, of no real effect in containing the effects of Coronavirus:

The Associated Press picked up on the theme over the weekend, finding that states which enacted tight restrictions on commerce and other activities performed no better in preventing coronavirus deaths or confirmed infections. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, imposed some of the most draconian curbs in the nation. Florida was at the opposite extreme. Yet “California and Florida have experienced almost identical outcomes in COVID-19 case rates,” the AP reports, and both rank in the middle in terms of deaths per capita.

The latter is even more significant given that California’s younger demographic means that a higher percentage of Florida residents were at high risk for serious virus complications.

The AP also highlights the contrast between South Dakota and Connecticut, which are both among the 10 worst states in terms of death rates. But the latter was much more aggressive in restricting the actions of its residents, while the former took a laissez-faire approach.

While there are obviously many factors in play when making comparisons between the states, such anecdotal evidence is in line with a peer-reviewed Stanford study of eight countries — including the United States — published in January that found “no clear significant beneficial effect” from stay-at-home orders and business closures.

Politics: “They’re not about containing viruses, silly deplorables”.

I received an update from the Bar Association lobbyist on activities at
the state capitol.

“To avoid a government shutdown, the House, Senate, and governor will
need to agree on a new budget by the end of June. Throughout
negotiations, the MSBA will be focused on ensuring that Minnesota’s
courts, public defenders, and civil legal services are adequately funded.”

Governor Walz has been able to hold the state hostage for an entire year
with impunity.  This is how Republicans free the state.  “Governor Walz,
end it now, agree to reforms to prevent it from happening again, or we
shut everything down.”

Anything less is not merely capitulation, it’s enabling.

Joe Doakes

It’s gotta happen, GOP.

We’re running out of patience with the excuses.

The good news: After hearing Ben Shapiro roasting Rupar last week on his radio show, I have to say it’s been amazing seeing that more people nationwide are learning what we in the Twin Cities have known for most of a decade: that City Pages alum and Vox “writer” Aaron Rupar is a really terrible “journalist” and not an especially bright man (read the whole thread):

The bad news: these days, competence and discernment are less important than ideological purity and loyalty.

And, Rupar being simultaneously a definer and beneficiary of Urban Progressive Privilege, he’ll never be held to account for it any more than Jim Acosta or Esme Murphy.

…and writing Bonfire of the Vanities, the classic satire on late-eighties class and race relations, I’m fairly sure he’d move on and pick another topic. Our class war (the race war is really a class war) is beyond satire.

Case in point: even though we know the Atlanta shootings last week were not motivated by anti-asian hate, the media is still playing it as an anti-Asian grievance, at best – and at worst, the media’s grievance pimps seem to be actively wishing yet another racial fault line into being.

It was 20 years ago today that AM1280 The Patriot – the station that I’ve been on for the last 17 years – changed to its current, conservative talk format.

For starters, if you’ve followed the history of AM radio in the Twin Cities (as one does), that’s a pretty amazing number. The 1280 kHz frequency was one of the first ever assigned in the Twin Cities – but in the decade and a half between my moving to the Twin Cities and March 19, 2001, probably changed formats, and often owners, at least annually. Business (several times), R&B (a couple), Classic Rock, Oldies (at least one), and even Dance music (in the early ’90s, almost as a “pirate” operation – the 1280 frequency seemed to be a metaphor for the ongoing collapse of the AM radio band

Then Salem – which had been running Christian-format radio for some time – bought the 1280 (and its sister station, AM980, which went through almost as many gyrations as the 1280 over the previous couple of decades), and converted it over to what was a new format for them, conservative talk.

And two weeks shy of three years later, they took perhaps an even bigger flyer – putting a bunch of local bloggers, only one of whom had ever done commercial radio (and one other, student radio) on the air to do a weekly weekend show. That’s where I come in.

So it’s an unbelievable story nested inside another unbelievable story – a bunch of guys doing a grass-roots talk show on a station that managed to stake out a piece of wan, forgotten turf in a crowded radio landscape, with both managing to hack out an enduring piece of Twin Cities media mindshare.

To celebrate, we’ll be doing a special (deep breath) four hour NARN tomorrow, featuing just about everyone that’s ever been on the show: John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, King Banaian, Ed Morrissey, King Banaian, Briand “Saint Paul” Ward, “Chad the Elder” and Brad Carlson, along with a few of our former producers (Tommy Huynh, Jon Osburne and The Consigliere).

Hope you can tune in! It’s going to be just as mad and chaotic as those first couple years of shows were!

See you then, 1-5PM tomorrow!

As such, I have no idea if the City of Minneapolis is trying to find ways to throw the Chauvin trial, or to create grounds for endless appeals, each of them a potential spark for more riots and, of course, more springboards for more political grandstanding.

But if it were…:

Cahill’s decision followed a defense request to delay or move the trial in the wake of last week’s $27 million wrongful death settlement announced between Minneapolis and the family of George Floyd.

Chauvin’s attorneys argued that the massive settlement and the notoriety around it might taint the jury pool.

Cahill, who’s expressed his unhappiness over Minneapolis publicizing the settlement during jury selection for Chauvin’s criminal trial, acknowledged Friday that the high-profile nature of this case would be inescapable no matter if it were postponed or moved.

“I don’t think there’s any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity on this case,“ Cahill told the court, explaining his decision to keep the trial in Minneapolis.

…I’d be at a loss for what they’d be doing differently.

Back in the early days of this blog – the early 2000s – I used to refer to then -Senator Wes Skoglund of MInneapolis as “A Lying Sack of Garbage”.    

It was deeply uncivil – but it was accurate.   If it came from his mouth, and it was about guns, gun owners, gun laws, gun crime, the Second Amendment, it’s legal and factual history, it was a lie.  Full stop.

Favorite pullquote from history – in 2003, he opposed Shall Issue carry permit reform because he said, in the Strib, that it’d allow gang members to get carry permits (a claim never fact-checked by any local media).  I’m fairly sure he knew better – but then as now, DFL pols could count on their voters being less than adept at critical thinking.  

It’s been almost pointless to note which Democrat pols have inherited the “Lying Sack of Garbage” mantel – it’s generally easier to point out the ones that tell the truth than the ones that don’t.   

But in this op-ed in the Strib, Senator John Marty strips down to his skivvies and rolls around in a slop pit if lies, slander and dishonor, putting himself on the short list to inherit the title.

It’s about his proposal to ban carry at the capitol – an attempt to roll back legislation from 2015 that allowed Minnesotans with valid carry permits to not be disarmed at the Capitol.   

It’s almost Nancy Nord Bence-level:

The sight of people flaunting assault rifles is becoming commonplace at political rallies of Trump supporters and right-wing causes. During the past year, Michigan, Oregon, Kentucky and Idaho all had incidents where people, armed to the teeth and dressed for combat, walked into their state Capitols to threaten public officials. These incidents made national news because the brazen intimidation was so shocking.

It’s so cute that the party that has no problem with “Anti”-Fa thugs patrolling the outskirts and aftermaths of their “peaceful protests”, that employs “woke” culture to intimidate dissent at schools, in the workplace and in the public square, and sicced the IRS on their opponents as suddenly developed scruples about “intimidation”.

Fifty years ago, it wasn’t this way. In 1967, when the Black Panthers walked into the California state Capitol heavily armed, there was strong bipartisan support for prohibiting the carrying of loaded firearms. Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and even the NRA supported the Mulford Act, which sharply restricted the carrying of guns, not just in the California Capitol, but elsewhere. Reagan said there is “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.”

When people on the left start quoting Reagan, stand by for a gale of mangled context.

Reagan’s response to the Black Panthers was among the worst of his few mistakes. Marty deserves to be told as much.

Now however, when it is largely white conservatives who are taking guns to Capitols, the NRA and the Republican Party seem to consider it perfectly appropriate for their allies to use guns to intimidate political opponents.

I can’t speak to Senator Marty’s sense of proportion or stability. But given that the people with the gun are all people who are over 21, have all passed training courses and multiple background checks thereby proving that they are better bets, criminologically speaking, per capita, than the House DFL Caucus, one might suggest Marty is crying wolf.

And either doing it ignorantly, or (more likely) presuming his Democrat audience just doesn’t care that much about the facts:

We do not allow people to bring guns into county courthouses, into many big office buildings in the Twin Cities or at Vikings, Wild and Twins games. Thirty-two other states require people to walk through a metal detector before entering their Capitol buildings.

Where to start with that graf?

• We don’t allow carry in any courthouse, federal, state, county or municipal. Anywhere. The 2003 Minnesota Personal Protection Act let the judicial branch make those decisions itself.
• The office buildings and sports venues are private property. They have the ability – misguided though it is – to ban firearms. It’s one reason I rarely if ever patronize major league sports.
• Re the metal detectors – so?

Now, we leave mere ignorance – personal or implied – and get into actual prevarication:

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus urged their members to show up, armed, to those committee meetings. There were about 150 notifications for one such hearing in 2013, almost triple the number in the entire previous year.

A hearing on gun legislation does not pose any greater safety risk than other hearings and there is no greater need for personal protection. Opponents of gun legislation carry guns to those hearings to intimidate.

There are other ways guns are used to intimidate as well. One lobbyist told some legislators whom she was lobbying that she carried a gun at the Capitol because she feared people lobbying on the other side of the issue, calling them dangerous — an insidious way of undermining her opponents. It is not surprising that the opponents reported difficulty getting appointments to make their case with legislators.

The 2005 law that allowed carrying of handguns in public allowed the same people to carry assault rifles and other long guns in public. That has led to the increasingly common sight of heavily armed people at rallies and protests. They are not armed for personal protection. They do so to intimidate and strike fear in others.

Minnesotans can consider and discuss gun legislation as rational adults; hearings should be conducted without armed intimidation. Consequently, I have introduced SF 2048, which would prohibit the carrying of guns at the Capitol and restore the law that blocked people from bringing assault rifles to rallies and protests.

We should take security at the Capitol and at political rallies seriously before there is a tragic attack that kills people. At some point, security experts might determine that metal detectors are needed at the Capitol. Unfortunately, metal detectors create an oppressive climate which makes a place feel more militarized and less safe. Whether or not they are necessary now, we should prepare and plan for the possibility in the future, including quick implementation if a credible threat appears. But for now, it’s time to treat the Capitol like county courthouses and other places that prohibit guns. Public discourse on contentious issues can be done in a rational manner without allowing some to intimidate others. Public safety will benefit as well.

Allowing guns at the Capitol in these divided times is a recipe for disaster.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus urged their members to show up, armed, to [the 2013 House] committee meetings. There were about 150 notifications for one such hearing in 2013, almost triple the number in the entire previous year.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus wasn’t founded until 2014. The MNGOC has never urged people to bring guns anywhere, and has always eschewed the idea of open carry at the Capitol.

Marty is either lying, or assuming his audience is too stupid to know better.

My vote is “both”.

Oh, yeah – and that 2015 legislation that allows citizens to carry firearms, legally, with a permit, on the Capitol grounds?

Marty voted for it.

“Look through any window, yeah. What do you see?”

If you follow the directive from the classic Hollies single, you can see a lot of things – smiling faces all around, little ladies in their gowns, bits and pieces of a typical Minnesota spring.

One thing you will not see, in this second Covid spring in Minnesota, is deciduous leaves on your trees.

So when Governor Tim “One Minnesota” Walz announced earlier this week that he and members of his staff were quarantining due to (yet another) Covid exposure, people – not the media mind you, just people – asked a lot of questions.

Why isn’t he vaccinated?

After a year, how does this keep happening?

And now – thanks to a friend on social media – another question the media won’t be bothered to ask.

Where the flaming hootie hoo is the Governor, where…

…you look through any window behind him and see green on deciduous trees?

Mankato?

I don’t think so. I mean, if you’re in southern MN, are the trees leafing out yet? Leave a comment.

Color me green with disbelief.

UPDATE – on second glance, the tree appears to be some sort of pine.

To paraphrase a certain former president, when you run a blog that roasts DFL hypocrisy and media indolence, you do get tired of winning. But not, apparently, this time.

North Dakota appears poised to legalize recreational marijuana – largely to keep the process under legislative control. North Dakota has a pretty liberal initiative and referendum statute – it’s relatively easy to bring legislative issues to a popular vote in NoDak.

I honestly don’t care if North Dakota, or for that Minnesota, legalize ganja. I’ve never used it, and never actually will.

But it would be great if it were possible to pass companion laws making it legal to taze people who sound like stoners. Because they really, really annoy me.