A friend of the blog emails:

I would love it if the pandemic caused developers to incorporate more parking into their apartments. The sky is the limit- we don’t have to use more land just to build out parking. I think of the benefits this could have on lower and middle class neighborhoods in regards to snow plowing, if people actually had space to put their cars. Of course, elite ruuing class liberals look at an article like this and laugh at the poor. They say, “I got my parking garage, and I got you a bike lane, what’s your problem?” Oh, on opportune days, they ride their bicycles and opine about the freedom bicycles give, ignoring the car they have tucked away at home. I would wager that most in this article even supported policies that took away parking and allowed development without adequate parking for tenets. Will they relate their support/votes with problems affecting them?

I’ve written in the past, during my years as a single parent, that a transit and bike-centered lifestyle is pretty much unsustainable, even in the urban core, for middle class people, to say nothing of the “working class”.

Being “able” to go without a car, in this age of fluid jobs and multiple careers and services that families need increasingly centralizing rather than moving closer to people, is perhaps the ultimate sign of disonnected “privilege”.

Here’s Minnesota governor, transcribed from a “virtual fundraiser“:

“ They are using this as a way to try to divide us along cultural lines, along ethnic lines“

Clearly the DFL has a problem in greater Minnesota; look at the results of the last three or four elections. The DFL is losing, not gaining, traction among those whom Governor Klink refers to as “rocks and cows“

Let’s translate this.

In 2018 Governor Klink threw “Greater Minnesota” under the bus and french-kissed the Metro Progressives to get into power.

In 2020, the DFL is all but extinct outside the Metro – and his hamfisted, incomptetent Covid quarantine has disproportionally affected Greater MN. Klink has to try to make inroads in what could be a pretty monolithic GOP vote outside the Twin Cities, because the Metro vote alone may not be enough.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is at Fleet Farm, looking for new liners for his old chopper mittens. Engrossed in his search, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE walking around the corner, a quizzical look on hi…er, he…er, Avery’s face. LIBRELLE notices BERG.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Uh, hi, Avery. What brings you out to Fleet Farm?

LIBRELLE: Picketing against the Navy and farmers!

BERG: Of course…

LIBRELLE: It’s time to tax the billionaires for all the excess profits they’ve been earning because of the deadly Trump pandemic.

BERG: So let me make sure I get this straight…

LIBRELLE: Uh, heteronormative…

BERG: Huh? Oh, for f…ranklin Delano Roosevelt’s sake. OK. Let me make sure I get this correct: you want to raise taxes on the e-commerce billionaires who are prospering mightily…

LIBRELLE: Yes.

BERG: …because the small businesses that were competing with them were destroyed by the government’s ham-fisted handling of the pandemic, which was imposed by the government that you now want to make the ultimate beneficiary of the government’s own dork-fingered, utterly catastrophic mis-handling of the response?

(But LIBRELLE has already wandered off, looking for wherever the ships are).

(And SCENE)

Times change.

Politics swing from left to right and back and forth again.

Perceptions go from one extreme to the other.

Fashions and social mores skitter back and forth and up and down over time.

So what on this earth can we always count on?

If there’s a totalitarian, somewhere, anywhere, the New York Times will shill for them:

I mean, when they’re not shilling for totalitarians like Fredo Cuomo and Squiggy DiBlasio.

The Minnesota State Legislator is back in session today.

Things to be thankful for: this time six months ago, I fully expected the GOP to lose the Minnesota Senate. The good guys held on by one vote, and actually cut the DFL’s margin in half in the House, meaning the good guys might see some progress – if only some floor votes forcing vetos by Governor Klink, to be bandied about in the 2022 elections. Which is a start.

Is it enough to shut down Governor Klink’s emergency powers? Well, we’ll see. More on that later.

If you’re a gun owner ? I talk here with Rob Doar and Bryan Strawser of the MN Gun Owners Caucus about the outlook for this session, and by extension the next one, and the 2022 campaign season.

By the way – if you’re a Minnesota gun owner, or even just sympathetic with civil rights in general you need to be supporting the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus. If nothing else, get on the mailing list – we excel at bringing the civil, rhetorical biblical-level wrath down on legislators when a gun bill comes out, and to be honest it’s fun being on the side of righteous fury once in a while.

Do it!

It’s reapportionment time. And Minnesota – which held onto its eighth US House seat just about the lowest possible margin ten years ago – finally stands to lose a Representative.

California and New York appear to be in line to lose 2 or 3 seats apiece, with Florida and Texas the big winners so far, by all appearances.

But what’ll happen in Minnesota?

You can wager money that “combining the 4th and 5th CDs” won’t be on the table. Don’t even bother.

To my mind, it looks a little like this:\

• The 4th and 5th are sacrosanct. They’re not going anywhere.
• The 1st, 7th and 8th are associated with large, socially and geographically distinct areas.

But the 2nd, 3rd and 6th are all mixed bags. Now, I don’t think there’s much case to be made to dissolve the 6th, much as the DFL would love to send Tom Emmer back to private practice.

But getting consolidating either the 2nd or 3rd, and expanding the neithboring districts to fill in the gap, makes a lot of sense.

Thoughts?

Remember when “Electronic Pull Tabs” were going to get the taxpayer off the hook for paying for Zygi Wilf’s big real-estate upgrade? Yeah, someone pointed out that that was baked monkey doodle, and it wasn’t someone with a tin “Journalist” badge.

Of course, Minneapolis and Minnesota government has been busy rationalizing riots and carnage in nursing homes lately, so the ongoing – and utterly predictable disaster – of the Vikings Stadium has slipped from the headlines.

But, as predicted, Minneapolis is going to be going to the state taxpayer because it just can’t afford to pay for Helga Braid Nation’s entertainment anymore.

However, now that the city’s first debt payment of $17 million is about to be due, DFL state Rep. Mohamud Noor says his city can’t pay, according to the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.

Noor, who was recently appointed chair of the House Workforce and Business Development Committee, said the coronavirus pandemic makes it impossible for his city to afford the stadium.

“That was then,” he said, speaking on the payment deal Minneapolis signed eight years ago, “this is now. We’ve got a global pandemic.”

If you recall, the city was on the hook forl about 13% of the cost of the stadium – about $150 million (emphasis added by me):

Who’s got two thumbs, writes a blog and hosts a weeken talk show and predicted this about the time the stadium opened?

“I’m just kind of surprised that they’re taking this approach,” remarked Republican state Sen. Julie Rosen, according to the Star Tribune. “It [the original agreement] was a very good deal for Minneapolis.”

Arguing economics, finance or logic with the Minneapolis City Council is a little like arguing hip-hop technique with Mitch McConnell. Neither party is equipped to play the game.

ME (talking with a political operative who shall remain nameless): “So I see The DFL houses committee assignments are out, and representative Rena Moran is the chair of the house ways and means committee“.

OPERATIVE: “Ha ha. That’s pretty funny. “

ME: “No – I’m serious. Rena Moran. Chair of Ways and Means.”

OPERATIVE: “…”

ME: “ I know, right?“

Q: “Mitch – you said during the campaign that Biden – and, indeed, all Democrats – were campaigning on messages that couldn’t possibly be true, but that it didn’t matter, because people susceptible to voting Democrat are gullible herd animals with no critical thinking skills who vote based on knee-jerk emotion and reaction to chanting points, knowing that nobody will ever call them to account on their promises once the dust settles and everyone gets inaugurated. Why?

A: Because it’s true. Every time.

Today on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, I’ll be talking with a disgruntled Minnesota teacher who goes by the social media handle “DisgruntledMNTeacher”. We’ll be talking about why they’re disgruntled.

That, and my continuous mission to diagnose Big Left.

Join me from 1-3PM on AM1280

Let’s get everyone’s predictions for the new year on record.

I’ll start:

• After nine months of whinging “2020 is the worst year ever“, Americans will discover that events don’t read calendars. Things’ll stop sucking pretty much whenever they stop sucking.
• Joe Biden will come out of the White House basement no more often after being sworn in than he did before.
• Nonetheless, his mental decline will become so apparent that by autumn, the Democrats will attempt to remove him using the 25th Amendment. Of course, if Biden doesn’t resign, and Harris and the Cabinet have to vote to remove Biden under Section 4, while the Veep and Cabinet can temporarily remove him, throwing the issue to Congress…where a 2/3 vote is required to permanently replace Biden with Harris. Which presents Mitch McConnell with a bit of a dilemma: would it be better to leave Biden in place as leader of the Democrat party, flailing and walking into walls and wandering into odd tangents, or install a “president” who never got over 5% of the vote in any primary and is pushing an agenda that would motivate Republicans and conservatives like nothing since Obamacare?
• Americans, fatigued by over a year of restrictions that, outside of a few liberty-first states, and armed with the gradually escaping knowledge that T-cell immunity has made vast swathes of the population already functionally immune, will start to treat Covid restrictions the way their great-grandparents treated prohibition.
• While waiting for America’s idiot ruling class to wake up and smell the public health coffee (ew), China will gobble up vast shares of the world market.
• With the trials pushed back to the start of summer, the George Floyd trial’s verdicts will lead to rioting that make Minneapolitans look on the last week of May 2020 as the good old days. By 2030, Minneapolis will be generally revealed to be a failed city along the lines of Detroit, Newark and NOLA.

Your turn.

Minneapolis police note that they were kept from the crime scene of a recent shooting near “George Floyd Square“ near 38th and Chicago in south Minneapolis, and that parts of the “citizens committee“ that have turned the area around the intersection into a de facto “autonomous zone“ contaminated the evidence that could be used to try to prosecute the perps, if they are ever found.

A couple of the inspectors involved have emailed a few members of the student Senate… um, City Council.

To give the minimum possible credit where it is due, and indicate how very low the actual bar is, Councilman Andrea Jenkins seems to have a veered close to something within rifle shot of common sense in her response:

Jenkins told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS she supports the memorialization of George Floyd Square and wants it to become a permanent fixture as she and others on the City Council pursue racial justice and police reform. But she does not condone any action which inhibits police investigations.

‘We want justice for everybody and it concerns me and I am not happy with what I read in the email,’ said Jenkins. ‘To somehow disrupt or delay that kind of response is completely irresponsible and an obstruction of justice.’

My fearless prediction; Jenkins will be castigated as a conservative reactionary, and will have a primary opponent from the left. be castigated as a conservative reactionary, and will have a primary opponent from the left.

Further evidence that the “state of emergency” is more about power and wealth transfer than public health: the ritzy French restaurant where Gavin Newsom (among many Democrat pols) entertained his friends in flagrant violation of his own quarantine rules, keeps on profiting from its special connection.

And as Megan Fox at PJM notes, the story comes from an unlikely source – a mainstream media investigative unit:

But real journalists still exist and ABC7, a local station in the Bay Area, did an amazing piece of investigative work that uncovered that The French Laundry applied for and received more COVID relief than any other restaurant in town. And not just more, but seventeen times more.

The luxury restaurant where Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed were notoriously spotted dining during a COVID-19 surge, reportedly received millions in PPP funding.

Yountville’s highly acclaimed French Laundry received multiple loans through the Paycheck Protection Program, totaling more than $2.4 million, according to an ABC7 analysis of newly-released data from the Small Business Administration.

The French Laundry received two loans that were both approved on April 30, 2020. According to the SBA, the first loan was for more than $2.2 million to retain 163 employees. The second loan was for $194,656 to retain five employees.

ABC7’s analysis found the company received 17 times more than what the average Bay Area restaurant received.

Other restauranteurs weren’t so lucky.

“That’s a lot of money. But, what can I do about it?” said Dennis Berkowitz, former owner of San Mateo restaurant Vault 164.

Berkowitz struggled to get around $318,000 to retain roughly 50 employees. The loan amount wasn’t enough to sustain his business, and he was forced to sell the restaurant in July.

“I’ve had a 40-year run in the restaurant business, so I consider myself fortunate,” he said. “I really feel bad for the next generation of restaurateurs because they’re screwed.”

The investigative team at ABC7 ought to win an award for this one. They uncovered what we have suspected for a while. Most of those COVID loans went to the guys with the big bucks who can purchase influence, while the little guy got screwed. 

My hunch, on the other hand? Nobody in that newsroom will do lunch on Market Street again.

To: The City of Saint Paul
From: Mitch Berg, irascible peasant
Re: Scruples

Dear Co’SP

Huh.

OK. Now do Saint Paul and Minneapolis teachers with Che Guevara stickers or t-shirts, or any other Hammer-and-Sickle-wear.

TIA.

A list – and a partial one at that – of the Twin Cities restaurants that’ve spun in so far in 2020.

I say “partial”, because every Khan’s Mongolian BBQ I’ve driven past in the last few weeks has been either listed “for Lease” or, in the case of the Roseville store, been replaced by…

…you guessed it, a national chain (Olive Garden, in this case) with the resources to ride out a government-induced depression. I don’t see them on the list.

Not sure what’s more disturbing – the number of restaurants that list “burned down during the riots” as their cause of death, or the ones that say from beyond the business grave that they support Governor Walz’s draconian state of emergency even though it’s destroyed their business/es.

The state’s “guidance” – read “rules” – for public gatherings, enacted as part of Governor Klink’s endless emergency declaration, are pretty clear, by government standards.

Moral and scientific gibberish? Sure.

But not especially ambiguous:

Here they are (via Michael Brodkorb on Twitter).

15 people. Even if they’re spread out all over the place.

So there’s this – an event honoring the swearing-in of the new (DFL) Senators:

Now – there are two possibilities at play here. Either:

1. There are three household families of 33+ people planning to attend, or
2. The event used its intra-DFL pull to get a permit for an event that mere proles couldn’t possibly get.

Let’s sum up: The Department of Admin (which reponds to Walz) gave permission for a rally for a rally for people and legislators who mark, as Walz, bark on the DFL’s orders.

This is what’s “essential” in Minnesota.

UPDATE: Erin Murphy – career politician, former Rep, failed gubernatorial candidate and now back to the Senate – tweeted:

To which our old friend Andy Aplikowski responded:

Followed by peaceful protests, natch.

Ever since the retirement of Phyllis Kahn for being too moderate for her crazy-left district in Minneapolis, it’s seemed fairly plain – no matter what happens in Minneapolis politics, the drift will be the left.

So this post is both a test of my theory, and a prediction.

Alondra Cano is leaving office.

Now, you know me. I have never come to praise Cano, but to try to bury her in ridicule.

But here’s my prediction: she will be replaced by someone who makes her look like Phyllis Schlafly in comparison.

Predictions as to what she’ll do next? Leave your predictions in the comment section.

UPDATE: Hardly seems possible this was five years ago, already. It may be my favorite post title in the history of this blog.

“We’d have solved Covid, if only the American people weren’t so petulant and childish about petty infringements on freedom for the public good”

It’s the Karen lullaby.

And it’s wrong:

Polls since March have shown that Americans overwhelmingly aren’t in denial: They believe the threat of Covid-19 is real, they are reasonably good at identifying medical misinformation, and they are largely complying with public health recommendations. Compared to their peers in Europe, Americans are more willing to get vaccinated against Covid-19, similarly likely to wear masks, and no more prone to believe common conspiracy theories about the pandemic’s origins.

The U.S.’s response to Covid-19 has been bungled in many respects, but widespread public denial doesn’t explain why.

The obsession with denialism isn’t just inaccurate. It’s corrosive for at least three reasons. First, it needlessly alienates the interested public with false accusations. Second, by conflating reasonable dissent with unreasonable misinformation, it stifles debate, even about issues that genuinely warrant discussion. Third, the myth of denial deflects blame from the policy failures of politicians, who use it to claim they’ve done all they could, leaving only the denialists (and cheesecake eaters) to blame.

Back last summer, when an orgy of Blue Fragiility had Minnesotans claiming that the state’s Covid numbers were driven by unmasked Dakotas residents flagrantly crossing the border, I pointed out, as someone who (unlike pretty much any progressive in the world) had been to a Dakota (four times in 2020 so far) that people there were no less socially-distanced (above and beyond their normal natures, even) and masked up than Minnesotans.

And to about the same effect.

Dennis Prager has a great line – “Relationships can survive a lot, but no relationship can survive contempt”

When parties can’t see one another as human, forget about reaching common ground on differing ideas and ideals, can there be any point to trying to live together? I wouldn’t work for couples – why would it work for a nation?

It dawned on the world too late that when the Nazis actively portrayed the Jews as not very human…

…they meant it.

If there’s one thing more useful than one eliminationist Nazi cartoon, its’ two. Here goes:

Wait.

That wasn’t even in German.

That was the Washington Post.

On Christmas Eve.

This is up there with “bitter, gun-clinging Jeebus freaks” and “Deplorables” and the rest of the litany of conceits Blue America holds on Red America.

But most importantly? It’s about contempt.

I’ve been pointing out examples of Blue America’s contempt for the rest of us in this space since the beginning, really. And if the Trump era has done anything, it’s helped parts of the right come out of their shells (yes, some, like our friend Pete Strunk, haven’t been in their shells fir a very long time, but its fair to say Pete’s always been an outlier)

As clubby, self-referential and solipsistic as the modern “elite” (and even not-so-elite) media is, I should have probably predicted we’d see scenes like this whenever Trump was on the brink of leaving office.

Never mind that “the Lightworker” Obama was did a whole lot more actual oppressing of “journos” than Trump.

Links

No. To these coddled hamsters…:

…covering Trump was up there with going ashore with the first wave on Omaha Beach, or like riding in a B24 with Charles Collingwood.

Which is a little ironic, given that The LIghtworker was, in fact, the most press-hostile President since Woodrow Wilson – and given the deep-state leaks with which the executive branch was riven, it would have been pointless for The Donald to even try to match Obama’s record.

Do you know the one thing I always hated about Joe Soucheray’s Garage Logic?

For a show that constantly railed on about the need for individual responsibility, he rattled on an awful lot about “the mystery” and its attendant “mysterians”.

It struck me as a little incongruous – demanding responsibility from everyone else, but blaming the things that vexed “logicians” on some, well, mysterious force above and beyond anyone’s control.

It’s an oddly “progressive” trait – ascribing fault to systems and groups rather than individuals. And not in a good way.

The urge to roll things up in to all-encompassing narratives, and to try to “solve” them with all-encompassing proposals – “The New Deal”, Obamacare, The Great Society, and on and on – has been part of “progressivism”‘s DNA since there was a word for it (other than “Leninism”).

And while I give Trump the credit he’s due, he’s brought out a trait among way too many Republicans to do exactly the same.

Make no mistake – our election system has problems, problems big enough to warrant bringing in the Department of Justice under consent decrees no less drastic than those that governed southern elections after the Civil Rights Act was passed.

And state laws that make corruption almost impossible to identify, much less charge and prosecute, must become an electoral scarlet letter among those who care about the American Experiment.

But let’s stop all this jabbering about “Krakens”. Put up or shut up.

Because the real problem isn’t even hiding. It’s in plain sight, and it’s largely legal.

Two of them, really:

What happened in 2020 is something more fundamental and profound. What happened in 2020 is cultural and systemic, and sadly, generally legal. Until Republicans, and more importantly Trump supporters, understand what happened to them this year, it will happen again.

Two things happened in 2020. First, COVID led to a dismantling of state election integrity laws by everyone except the one body with the constitutional prerogative to change the rules of electing the president – the state legislatures.

Second, the Center for Technology and Civic Life happened.

If you are focused on goblins in the voting machines but don’t know anything about the CTCL and what they did to defeat Donald Trump, it’s time to up your game.

I’ll urge you to read the whole thing.

Tiki bars are racist, donchaknow.

It’s rhetorical, because Big Media never actually responds to the plebs.

But is it possible…:

…that there could be a less scientifically literate phrase than “believe in Science?”

How about “Think Critically about the data in front of us, and make an informed decision?”

Nah, that’s just more radical conservative talk.

People who invested their lives and fortunes, who filled out forms and jumped through hoops, who passed background checks and credit checks and character checks, people who pay wages and taxes and fees and support the local schools, are dirty, rotten, low-down criminals who ought to be thrown in the hoosegow.  Keith Ellison is all over it.

From the article: “Two more courts have recognized the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the firm legal foundation of the State’s legitimate interest in putting a stop to it,” Ellison said.

Somehow, I doubt that. I’d bet a brand-new nickel the court didn’t listen to one minute of testimony from anybody about the Covid virus, its infectiousness or its fatality rate to determine whether Covid was actually a severe problem or not.  And I seriously doubt there was extensive briefing on the rational basis between the alleged problem and the Governor’s solution, which is the Constitutional standard for government restrictions that take away a vested property right.  Governor Walz’ restrictions are so arbitrary, so whimsical, so ridiculous that even the New York Times had to admit they were unscientific and bizarre.  I’d be surprised if a court found differently.

Instead, my guess is the court simply presumed the order was a valid exercise of executive power and like the Red Queen, skipped the trial to go directly to punishment.  As long as Democrats refuse to return power to the elected representatives of the people, Ellison will use the infinite power of the state to crush business owners, the courts will lie back and let him, and Minnesotans will continue to suffer.

When the political process is unavailing, the judicial system is unavailing, and the result is unjust, what’s the remedy?

Joe Doakes

Whatever it is, let’s f*****g get on with it.

Someday, when I’m absolute ruler and I impose a libertarian society by force, it’ll be legal to boobytrap packages to maim and mutilate “porch pirates”. So help me.

But until then, as Covid-era buying patters beget yet another wave of porch piracy plagues yet another holiday season, I figured this we the pick-me-up we all need:

Not enough fun to assuage your rage?

Well, lhere’sthe sequel:

And then, bigger and badder than before, this year’s episode:

And what the heck – since I know some of my readers are engineers, and others are just plain diabolical (but in a good way), here’s the how-to:

I, myself, see a glorious commercial manufacturing and marketing opportunity.