I think Democrat politicians count on their voters having the attention spans of ferrets on espresso:

Is there a Democrat who can think critically?

I’m not trying to ask a trick or rhetorical question…

When “progressives” win, two things happen:

1. Drunk with power, they overreach.
2. They start eating their own.

They won’t be able to try Phase 1 for a bit yet.

But here’s hoping we’re seeing the beginning of Phase 2.

The CDC has issued a new order allowing cruise ships to sail again. 

Without passengers.  They can take volunteers who will pretend to be passengers, so the cruise lines can try out their new antiseptic cleaning and social distancing measures to keep the ship safe from the deadliest virus ever known to mankind, which so far (rounded to the nearest whole number) has killed ZERO percent of Americans.

The volunteer cruise must simulate a real cruise, so there will be on-board entertainment venues, activities and meals. No prohibition on wrist bands to obtain unlimited alcoholic beverages while soaking in the hot tub . . . this sounds like my kind of gig.

Yes, yes, taking a risk, informed consent, waiver of rights . . . look, I could get killed crossing the street, alright?  I’m studied the Covid facts and numbers.  I’m willing to throw caution to the winds.  I’ll take my chances of dying of Covid on my free cruise. 

Where do I sign up?

Joe Doakes

I can’t imagine they’d have a lot of trouble finding volunteers in Minnesota…

Just a further reminder…

…for those who may need it…

…(and “those who may need it” in are pretty much invariably Democrats)…

…that when the left jabbers about “unity”, they mean “everybody who isn’t united with us shuts up”.

At the, er, very least.

So what’s the big problem with American democracy today?

Is it that decades of miseducation has turned Democrats into a lumpen mass of herd animals to whom “critical thought” may as well be Sanskrit – even, maybe especially, the “Educated” ones?

Well, that’s a little hyperbolic, but that’s a big part of is.

But reading Mark Steyn’s piece…

So now we’re told that we all have to rush to Georgia for two months to focus on the run-off election because those two GOP Senate candidates are the only things that stand in the way of Biden-Harris ramming the Green New Deal down your gullet, and giving statehood to DC and Puerto Rico, thus greatly diminishing Susan Collins’ importance in Senate arithmetic now and forever.

Maybe. But it really would be nice if these guys would make an argument for something once in a while, instead of just saying we’re the fellows to block the other fellows. I mean, we’ve been here before even within the shriveled perspective of political memory: A decade ago we were told we had to back Republicans because they’re opposed to Obamacare. They raised a zillion dollars, saved their seats, won total control in 2016 …and had no plan.

It’s not enough. Last time round, the only guy making real arguments was Trump: Build the wall, renegotiate Nafta, get tough with China… So he won the argument, and then he won the election.

If they succeed in taking him out, we’re left with Republicans who have no argument other than process: Vote for me, so we’ll save the Senate. If we save the Senate, we can block Biden’s judges. So we’ll save the courts, so they can keep ruling that, er, Obamacare’s unconstitutional and that Pennsylvania shouldn’t be monkeying with election rules this close to the big day.

…it occurred to me – our biggest problem today is that so much of our “democracy” has become like the Blue state economy. It’s not about tangible things – in the case of politics, actual arguments and choices and ideas, the political equivalent of hopper cars full of wheat, trains hauling oil, cars rolling off the assembly line.

As Steyn noted, Trump made an argument. So did Reagan. So did Kennedy, and Carter for that matter.

But our elections today aren’t so much about selling the American people on an argument as they are about moving numbers in the right direction – by fair means or (as we see in Blue cities) means most foul.

And that’s a very bad thing.

Sarah Hoyt makes an interesting observation: the “mostly peaceful” rioters and looters are suffering from Wealthy Heir disease.

You know what she means.  She means the kid who got his trust fund money for his 18th birthday, bought a Camero, got drunk and wrapped it around a tree.  She means the kid whose parents paid his tuition, room and board so he could drink and whore his way through a degree.  She means the kid whose Daddy ran for Vice-President and can pull strings to have the charges dropped.

Not all of them, of course.  The “mostly peaceful” demonstrators handing clothes out of the smashed window at Sak’s Fifth Avenue didn’t look like trust fund kids.  The ones chasing a white kid down the street to beat him to death didn’t look like college students.  But the young lawyers arrested for burning a police car were hardly the downtrodden oppressed masses yearning to be free.  They’re supposedly the cream-of-the-crop.  They’re oppressors-in-training.  By historical standards, they’re unimaginably wealthy already – only jealousy and greed motivates them to demand more.

Rioters.  Looters.  Ingrates.  Antifa.  Liberals.  Democrats.

Almost makes a guy reconsider that wealth tax we’ve been hearing so much about.

Joe Doakes

This is, of course, a part of Urban Progressive Privilege.

Florida governor DeSantis proposes broadening Florida’s self-defense laws to make shooting in defense of property against looters more legally tenable.

The media is howling that it would enable roaming packs of vigilantes to slaughter people on the streets. Like most media reports on expanding self-defense rights, it’s a lot more nuanced than that:

The law would expand the state’s self-defense law, which currently forbids “the use of force in defense of property,” by increasing what constitutes a “forcible felony,” according to the Miami Herald. DeSantis seeks to make looting or “interruption or impairment” of a business such a felony, thereby justifying deadly force to prevent it…The Republican’s bill would also make it a third-degree felony to obstruct traffic, and would allow drivers to have legal immunity if they unintentionally kill or maim anyone engaging in blocking a roadway during a demonstration, according to the Herald. The law, which is only a draft at the time of publishing, is also set to grant state authorities the ability to withhold funds from localities that choose to reduce their police budgets

Expect much pants-wetting from the class that still thinks looters are “mostly peaceful”.

But they’re missing the point. The target of this bill isn’t looters.

It’s Kamala Harris.

DeSantis is setting himself up as the “Law and Order and Competence” candidate for the presidency in 2024.

And after this past year, I gotta say he’s on my short list.

Testing reveals the Covid virus is spreading rapidly throughout the state; therefore, we must lock down again to prevent a Surge of Covid cases resulting in a huge number of hospitalizations which will overwhelm the medical system, leaving patients to die untreated in hallways and parking lots.  So claims the Walz Administration.

Someone should tell the Star Tribune.  As of last week, they reported:

” . . . 614 Minnesota hospital beds were filled with COVID-19 patients, including 149 who needed intensive care . . . Minnesota hospitals still have intensive care capacity, though, with 1,028 of 1,467 immediately available ICU beds filled with patients who have COVID-19 or other unrelated medical problems.”

We have 400 ICU beds immediately available for all comers, not just Covid patients.  The “immediately” is important, because in his second press conference announcing the extension of the two-week Stay Home Order, Governor Walz admitted we had the ability to ramp up to 3,000 ICU rooms within 72 hours. 

Unless something has changed that the Walz administration won’t talk about, we are using 149 of 3,000 ICU beds for Covid patients DESPITE the virus spreading rapidly throughout the state. There is no evidence of a Surge and even if there were, the medical system has plenty of excess capacity to serve it.

There is no medical reason for the lock down. End it now.

Joe Doakes

Pretty sure it’s all about showing the peasants who’s boss.

I never quite know what to say to veterans.

Hear me out, here.

Saying “thank you for your service” seems trite – almost mawkish.   Someone who never served saying “Thanks for going overseas and getting shot at!”?

See what I mean?

In the meantime, what I want to say is “glad you made it home”.  But I can see that being taken the wrong way.

So I’ll wing it.

Veterans:  thanks for spending the best years of your lives in barracks, troops ships, foxholes, berthing spaces, CVC helmets, cockpits and gun mounts, doing things most of us can’t imagine, to protect the freedoms too many Americans take very much for granted.

If bars ever open again, the next drink’s on me.

It doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it doesn’t have to.

(Adapted from a post I first ran five years ago).

The Lincoln Project is a group of ostensible “principled Republican” Never-Trumpers (which I can respect, so far)…

…who ended the cycle by going all-in for Biden (which I cannot).

But now, there’s this:

And with that, I’m gonna suggest they pick a more appropriate name.

Maybe “The Beria Project”.

(Kids, ask your history-literate parents).

Member of Biden’s “Covid Task force”, Ezekiel Emanuel, has a cutoff on quality of life:

Wondering if “Dr.” Emanuel has checked the “birth date” section of his boss’s bio…

Remember President Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program?  Trade in an old
car for a more fuel-efficient one, get up to $4,500 in federal rebate
money.  Your clunker was crushed.  The effect of the program was to
distort the used car market, driving up prices of starter vehicles for
the young and poor, making it harder for them to get to work.  The
distortion took months to settle out.

Remember the Obama administration pushing mortgages for minority
borrowers?  It was actually possible to get into a house with less
out-of-pocket investment than getting into an apartment; I saw lots of
examples in the land records.  The effect of that program was to distort
the lending market and when sub-prime mortgages crashed, it took a
decade for the foreclosures and bankruptcies to settle out.

Governor Walz issued his Stay Home order closing businesses and throwing
more than a million Minnesotans out of work (we know this because a
million people filed for unemployment, which is not available to youth,
part-time, casual, contract or small business owners; therefore, the
total who lost their incomes is much, much higher).  The mortgage
delinquency rate is the highest in 20 years but Congress put
foreclosures of federally insured mortgages are on hold and Governor
Walz imposed a moratorium on evictions. The effect is to distort the
housing market again.  There’s a flood of foreclosures and evictions
coming down the pike as soon as the pandemic restrictions are lifted. 
That flood will cause a slump in home values as lenders dump foreclosed
homes, which will drive home prices down, which will be reflected in
worse economic numbers for whomever is President at the time.  It may
take years to settle out, again.

None of this was unforeseen.  The foreseeable consequences of the lock
down were ignored in order to gin up support for mail in voting to make
the election easier to steal.  The cost of that decision is going up
every day.

Joe Doakes

This is what happens when there’s no real check on power.

The 2024 campaign has started…

…and the Associated Press is doing its job: trying to undercut Republican challengers.

In this case, South Dakota’s Kristy Noem, widely seen as a solid dark-horse contender (I’ve added emphasis):

It’s unlikely that much, if any, of the money will end up going to Trump, said Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a campaign finance watchdog. Ryan, a campaign finance lawyer, pointed out that the governor can give a maximum of $2,800 to Trump’s campaign under federal law. If she wanted more to flow to Trump, she could have directed donors to the president’s own donation site.

“In all likelihood, she is keeping this money that she is raising,” Ryan said. “If she were actually interested in raising money for Donald Trump’s own legal efforts, she would use a joint-fundraising committee.”

Note the source – Common Cause, a “campaign finance watchdog”…

…that is part of the progressive non-profit industrial complex, outside of media quotations.

They must worry about her.

Alex Trebek, passed away at 80 of pancreatic cancer.

And there goes one of my bucket list dreams.

It’s been my thesis for some time that Democrats know they can say anything they want, because they know their audience are, shall we say, not critical thinkers, and that the media and education systems will do nothing to fix that.

To wit: Democrats who called for defunding the police now say that they never called for defunding the Police, Winston.

Emphasis added by me:

“Not a single member of Congress that I’m aware of campaigned on socialism or defunding the police in this general election,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) said on CNN’s State of the Union. “These were largely slogans or they were demands from activist groups.” The congresswoman, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, added that “Republicans levied very effective rhetorical attacks against our party” by linking Democrats to the movements.

Next, to continue the narrative that “democrats didn’t call for defunding the police”, is Ilhan Omar, who called for defunding the police:

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), who called to “completely dismantle” her city’s police department this year, went further and said it was a Republican “narrative” that radical movements doomed Democrats in swing districts.

I’m fairly convinced that if Red America seceded from Blue America, within a decade the good guys would have to intervene tell the Blues not to water their crops with Brawndo.

Kool 108 has already gone to the all Christmas music format.

No. Just no.

Joe Doakes 

Enjoy it while you can. A Biden FCC will require equal time for lesbian coffee shop folk music.

Apparently, the Menards in the Midway was worried about rioting Trump supporters.

They stacked up huge pallets of lumber in front of the doors – just like they did during the George Floyd riots / May.

Apparently, those Trump supporters I’m going to riot.

Any day now.

Just like those waves of “white supremacist terror“ we’ve been assured are imminent for the past 12 years or so.

If there’s anyone in the world not entitled to call Jonathan Chait “wound emotionally too tight and intellectually too loose”, it’s David Corn.

Words to live by: Don’t go Full-Bore Sylvia Plath.

Corn:

He went Plath.

I’m convinced most of the American Left stopped growing emotionally at around 14.

Whenever we discuss election fraud, Liberals are quick to point out the lack of convictions.  No convictions = no fraud.  They are using the wrong measurement and therefore reach an incorrect conclusion.

To obtain a conviction for voter fraud, the County Attorney must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a specific individual cast a specific ballot with full knowledge that it was against the law to do so.  That’s a high burden and in cases of massive fraud, would take years to clear up all the trials plus it would cost a fortune. No prosecutor wants to spend time and money on paper crimes over violent crimes.
In contrast, to find election fraud, we look for evidence that not all of the ballots were legitimate. A ballot cast by a person who’s been dead for years, cannot be legitimate, and there were lots of them cast.  A normal voter marks most of the races.  A ballot that only marks one race, a highly contested race, is not normal.  Is it possible that it’s a valid vote?  Sure, but when you get tens of thousands of them, all voting for a single race, all voting for the same candidate, the candidate who was losing until those ballots showed up . . . you begin to wonder.

Further evidence that not all ballots were legitimate comes when we see the supposedly neutral election officials violating established procedural safeguards. Election judges count ballots while poll watchers observe. Both sides having poll watchers is a quality control measure to ensure fairness.  But when the election officials kick out poll watchers but only one side’s watchers are expelled, that increases the likelihood of fraud.   

Ballots delivered to the polling place in an unusual manner, at unusual times, raises doubt about the legitimacy of those ballots.  Backdated ballots cannot be legitimate.  When the voting software incorrectly assigns votes to one candidate, always to the losing candidate, across several states, that’s an indication of fraud. 

Ridiculously high voter turnout (in some cases 200%) but only in select counties, is a red flag. 

Finally, the distribution of tallied votes can be mathematically analyzed using established formulas which have been used to detect election fraud in other elections.  The science shows likely fraud in key places.

Does this prove there was serious and widespread election fraud?  It does for me.  There’s just too much evidence to ignore.  If I had a Facebook account, I’d be changing my background.

Joe Doakes

The hard part, of course, is proving it in court, in blue states where the election laws were written to protect ballot-stuffing.

The real answer, of course, will be to take the Presidency in 2024, and clean out the leadership at the DOJ, and then go after Blue city election authorities the same way they went after Klan-run boards in the sixties and seventies.

“Anti”-Fa is an “idea”.

So are ISIS, Al Quaeda and every other toxic ideology in the history of the world.

Here’s the new documentary, “Antifa – Rise of the Black Flag”. It traces “Anti”-Fa’s roots back to the Communist Party of Weimar Germany…

…and straight through to the present day, right here and now.

Watch it:

This is not just an idea. It’s also not just a bunch of crazy kids. It’s not even just a domestic terror group. It is an insurgency.

Watch it.

Pass it along.

Make sure the Democrats, especially the MN DFL, owns it.

…Donald Trump apparently isn’t very good at getting the word out there.

Macalester students, forced to “study” remotely, get not a dime’s worth of break on their tuition.

Their institutions’ president has other priorities:

Now might be a fine time for conservative entrepreneurs to start getting into the higher ed business.

A friend of the blog emails:

MPR hires a white heterosexual male for a management position?

I’m sure he had to prove his bona fides.

There is no Third Wave of Covid cases.  There was no Second Wave.  This is still the First Wave. 

When Covid was detected, the Governor issued a Stay Home order to “flatten the curve” so that we wouldn’t overwhelm our limited number of ICU rooms with Covid patients.  That would have meant leaving people to die in hallways and parking lots, untreated, for lack of ICU space. Instead, the plan was to slow the spread of the virus which would delay some Covid hospitalizations.  Rather than a massive surge, we’d see a continuous caseload that was within our ICU capacity.  And it worked . . . no hospital ICU were overwhelmed.

The Stay Home order was never intended to permanently halt Covid deaths.  We knew all along people were going to die, we just didn’t want them to die for lack of treatment in a Surge.  Instead, we wanted them to die more slowly, with treatment if possible.  That’s working, too.

Covid kills old sick people in nursing homes, which created nursing home bed vacancies. But nursing home beds don’t stay vacant – there’s always a waiting list.  New residents move in, they catch the virus from the existing patients or the staff, they die of Covid.  It’s not a wave issue, it’s a location issue.  Nursing homes are slaughterhouses. 

And it’s not going to end.  As the virus kills today’s old sick people, other sick people are aging.  Tomorrow’s old sick people are going to die of Covid, too.  And the day after that, and the month after that, and the year after that.  Because that’s what old sick people do in the nursing home: they die, of influenza, emphysema, cancer, diabetes and yes, of Covid.

Nothing President Trump could have done would have prevented the virus from acting according to its nature. It’s here to stay, just like other illnesses that kill old sick people.  Get used to it.

Joe Doakes

Lose that extra weight (if I did it, anyone can). Get your blood sugar and blood pressure under control (it ain’t easy, but your life may depend on it). Wear a mask and don’t be lingering around older people and people you know are vulnerable.

Start trying to rebuild the economy the Democrats have utterly f****d.

That’s the way forward.

We hope.

So the pre-election polling saying the electorate was going toward Biden in landslide lots was wrong?

Who could have possibly figured that out?

Oh, yeah – anyone that’s been reading this blog for the past ten years.

There are three possible explanations:

1. Evolution! – The pollster’s craft hasn’t caught up with the “new normal”, in a society where people legitimately fear being “canceled”, losing jobs, social standing and being targeted for violence because of their beliefs.

That is simultaneously possible, and not mutually eclusive

2. Incompetence! – The pollsters absorbed the lessons of 2016, where they actually did a little better than they did this year…

…and learned nothing.

3. Never Ascribe to Incompetence What Can Be Chalked Up To Malice – I’m going to present three facts and a conjecture:

Fact 1 – On December 1, 2016, representatives of the New York Times and Washington Post newsrooms went on WNYC radio’s “On the Media“ program (syndicated on NPR) and said, In as many words, that was time to change the rules of journalism. It was time to move past “passing the facts on to people and letting them make up their own minds” to “Denormalizing Donald Trump“.

Fact 2 – in 1986, a UCLA psychology professor, Dr. Mehrabian, showed the existence of a “bandwagon effect“; when polls showed that a candidate had no chance of winning, “swing“ voters tended to stay home or vote for someone else.

Fact 3 – for the past 30 years, the Star Tribune “Minnesota Poll” has had a fairly clear pattern; the closer a race ended up being, the more wildly distorted pre-election polling numbers were. For example, they showed Tim Pawlenty, Norm Coleman and Tom Emmer getting blown out just before the election. All three races ended up being famously close. On the other hand, they tend to report blowouts pretty accurately; they had Amy Klobuchar and Kurt Bills pretty much dead on.

Conjecture: It’s not an “accident”, or a learning error, that polling predicting a landslide up until election day was completely wrong.

Thoughts?