Remember during the impeachment fiasco, when a few Democrats who weren’t smoking pot outside school during civics class remembered the order of succession? And realized Mike Pence, not Hillary Clinton, would be taking over?

The fear they felt?

You could see why last night. Mike Pence mopped the floor with Harris.

How bad?

Bad enough that “feminist” pols had to revert to calls for victorian deference, that’s how bad:

Mike Pence showed that talk radio background of his. He controlled the tempo, seized the initiative, and led Harris into more traps than the Road Runner vs. Wile E Coyote.

He got her to contradict herself on tax increases.

He made her deflect to “diversity” when the question of packing the court came up.

He got her to sweep her record as a prosecutor under a rug of bluster.

He reduced her to a smirking, hectoring blob.

How bad was it? Even NPR had to step in to do Harris’s deflecting for her:

One pundit called the Veep debate “the first debate of the 2024 campaign cycle”. Judging by tonight, Harris isn’t going to do any better this time around than in 2020.

…to punch up. To treat people with respect. To treat people the way I’d like to be treated. To always take the high road.

But Maureen Dowd?

I’m going to take a walk on the dark side, here.

MoDo is an invincibly stupid person.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails

Went to Dunn Brothers in Wisconsin this weekend, saw this sign on the door.

Why is Wisconsin’s Mask Order subject to federal law and the US Constitution, when Governor Walz’s is not?

Joe Doakes

Because shut up.

… Republicans are crazy conspiracy theorists.

“Anti”-Fa, we’re told, is not a real group, but rather an ideology.

So, for that matter, was Al Quaeda.

An the comparison holds up all the way down to the root level:

There are different types of bloc organization styles. The building block of antifa is what’s called an affinity group, people you live and work with and trust and know in real life. All the planning is done within that closed bloc, and they don’t let everyone know [what they’re going to do]. I didn’t know that they were going to burn the Portland Police Association when I joined. What they did was put a call out that said, “Anyone show up in black that night at this place, and you can join the action.”

That’s called a semi-open bloc. The planning is done within the closed group, but anyone who’s dressed in black can come join the action. If you know what you’re looking for, you can spot affinity groups that are working together. One thing they’ll do sometimes is have written agreements with other protest organizations that aren’t in black bloc. I know of one from Berkeley that illustrates this: “We agree that to not take pictures of anyone in antifa.” It will say that literally in writing, so everyone’s working together. It’s like a combined arms type thing, almost like the military. They work together and are mutually reinforcing.

Cells, “Affinity Groups”, tomayto tomahto.

…that there might be some portion of society too inherently based in innate logic and divorces from social subjectivity to get sucked into the madness…

…well, you’d be wrong.

Let’s say you had again for a candy bar. Maybe even a whole bunch of them – like, you wanted to distribute candy bars.

A “Mars“ bar, perhaps, or maybe a pack of M&Ms? Which are, as it happens, a product of the Mars company?Where would you go? Especially if you are a diligent quarantiner, and can’t leave the house?

“Maybe“, do you think, “I can go to the Capt Mars Candy Company website“.

Certainly, you might think, that would be a place you could go to find out more about candy bars.You might think that.

And you would be wrong.

Go ahead – see how far down you have to scroll to find any reference to, well, candy.

Forget, for a moment, the fact that not only has President Trump denounced ‘white supremacist” groups frequently and unequivocally, but he’s done it roughly 100% more than Joe Biden has denounced “Anti”-Fa.

What if the ‘group’ that the press is mau-mauing on command…

…isn’t “white supremacist” at all?

But there’s a small problem with this narrative about the Proud Boys besides the fact that Trump didn’t even know who they were and has no connection with them.

First, Proud Boys have brawled with Antifa because they regard anarcho-Communism as a danger to Western society. They’re not the ones rioting in the streets attacking the police and other people, that’s BLM/Antifa who have been the leftists’ shock troops to push radical reform. The only group that seems to be connected to a political party and political agenda is BLM/Antifa. The Biden campaign specifically endorsed the BLM during their convention and has yet to denounce BLM/Antifa violence by name. Joe Biden even denied the existence of Antifa, completely ignoring their involvement in hundreds of BLM connected riots in the last few months.

Second, there’s another problem with the accusation. Proud Boys have members of all races and have black, Hispanic and Asian leaders. They may be many things but white supremacists they aren’t, they’re multi-racial.

They didn’t like Joe Biden calling them white supremacists and following that came out in Salt Lake City, Utah to publicly say they were not in any way white supremacists.

I can’t speak for the “Proud Boys” – of whom I’ve heard very little, notwithstanding the fact that I’m, well, not tuned out of that scene.

But I do recall the local media and DFL (ptr) riffing on the “Boogaloo Boys” during the “Anti”-fa tantrum last May, as if they were a “white supremacist” group…

…when, in fact, they tend to be radical libertarians. And the closest person I’ve ever know to a Boog was in an interracial marriage.

#shrug.

If you get it from the media or Democrats, it’s probably wrong, likely intentionally so.

Employees at Spyhouse Coffee – which is sort of like Dunn Brothers, although tonier, more expensive and generally less tasty – want to unionize.

If for no other reason that this response, I may just give them another try:

I’ve always wanted one of these unions, trying to organize a low margin service business like coffee shops or bars, to test the “Labor Theory of Value” by grabbing a group of baristas, huddling them up in a vacant lot, and seeing if a coffee shop spontaneously erupts around them.

More infants voting.

This comes up every couple of years. It usually founders when people remember how ghastly young people are – why “we” have raised age limits for drinking, buying tobacco and renting cars.

But determining the future of a democracy most of them don’t understand and many have been indoctrinated to hate?

Why, it’s almost like there’s a malicious plan…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hi, I’m from the CDC and I’m here to ask you to take a free Covid test. If we detect Covid antibodies, you will be forced to skip the next two weeks of work, banned from restaurants and stores, your kids’ school be closed, and everyone you know will be under the same quarantine. Would you like to take the test?

No, get the hell away from me.

It’s because I identify as Black, isn’t it? Hater.

Joe Doakes

Why, it’s almost as if those expeditions were testing for social compliance more than Covid.

Amy Alkon’s piece in Quillette, “LA’s Failed Homeless Policies Turned My Home Into A Prison“

And here’s the Legislative Evaluation Assembly’s annual report.

The flotsam and jetsam of the left’s social media legion of the invincibly depraved has legs so tingly this morning at the news the POTUS and FLOTUS have Covid, they had to drag themselves hand over hand to the kitchen to make their avocado toast.

Of course, they were in Duluth before the news broke, so the Twin Cities media has jumped into high gear to investigate, not ballot harvesting (oh, good heavens, no) but just how close Minnesota’s GOP congresspeople and candidates actually were to the President.

Strib columnist Jennifer Brooks:

Don’t worry, Jen. John Thompson is on it.

If the FCOTUS recover without complications – fingers crossed, prayers being prayed – I’m almost tempted to send all these “journalists” sympathy cards.

A whole bunch of general counsels for a whoooole bunch of media outlets are changing their drawers right about now:

I’m smelling panicky settlements in the air.

One of them thinks the other is wrong, and a little crazy – in both the “annoying” and, increasingly, “dangerous” senses of the term.

The other hates the other America. Also America itself.

The longer this goes on, the less I think there’s any point in trying to preserve a union, barring some unforeseeable commitment to radical federalism.

The first requirement of an orderly society is order which must be imposed by an impartial judiciary.  That cannot happen when the judicial system is afraid of violence.

***

Old:

From: Chief Judge
To: All Employees

You may have read or heard that the Court House was locked down today for about 15 min. After a sentencing hearing on a homicide, the families of the defendant and victim engaged in a dispute that was broken up by deputies. Soon after, gun shots occurred on Wabasha and 6th St.  Deputies locked down the courthouse as a result of the gunfire. It is not clear to me if the events were related. 

Based on information I have received, no one was injured and bullet casings were collected. The matter is under investigation. It appears that at no time was our courthouse security compromised. The deputies took swift and appropriate action throughout this disturbing incident.

New:

From: Chief Judge Joe Doakes
To: All Employees

In the past, when the judicial system was subject to violence, we hid and hoped to be killed last.  From now on, when a violent situation arises, all employees shall report to the nearest Arms Locker where the Master at Arms will distribute restraints, gas masks, and weapons, at which time use of deadly force to protect both judicial property and employee lives is authorized.  Employees may stand their ground to do so; the requirement to retreat is suspended.

***

That ought to help. Now, let’s talk about the George Floyd trial, and about Supreme Court nominees.

Joe Doakes

The policies that’d go into effect if Mitch Berg were in charge – suffice to say it’d be more than judicial branch employees.

Once the governor declared “state of emergency” related to the breakdown of public order, the order to retreat would go the way of the Hibbing chopstick factory, and the sign of a weapon in the hands of a violent mob would serve as reasonable threat of death or great bodily harm, and one’s property would be every bit as defensible as lives.

Make me Governor, and this, I promise.

This past weekend on the NARN I talked about Carson v. Simon – a case that’s been filed with the Supreme Court of Minnesota over the Secretary of State’s plan to allow up to a week work of counting of ballots, including mail-in ballots with no postmarks – which as we saw earlier this week, could scarcely be better-designed to facilitate fraud.

The case, by the way, went a little like this:

1. A far-left advocacy group brought a suit…
2. …against a far-left Secretary of State…
3. …who, mirabile dictu, reached a settlement and signed a “consent decree”, that was…
4. …approved by a far-left judge, mandating enforcement of the decree…
5. …by the far-left secretary of state.
6. All parties passed this at least tacitly as an “adversarial” process, although some previous, lamentably deceased DFL-leaning Strib columnists would have referred to it as a “circle jerk”.

Now, word comes that this same pattern – leftist activists getting sweetheart consent decrees from friendly judges and election authorities – intended to warp the election systems toward unrestricted, unverifiable mail balloting.

We’ll be talking about this on the NARN on Saturday.

My wife as a 40-year history of low back pain.  It’s been good lately,
but she stumbled and fell the other day.  Now, she’s in intense pain,
can barely move.  We’ve been icing and heating, ibuprofen and Tylenol,
not helping.

Because of the opioid crisis, she cannot get stronger pain medicine
without a diagnosis.  She can’t get a diagnosis without imaging (MRI). 
She can’t get imaging without a doctor’s order. She can’t see her doctor
because she’s out of town.  So today we’re going in at 6:00 p.m. to see
some new doctor hoping for an imaging order and some temporary pain
relief, a couple of Vicodin, just to get through the night.

It’s insulting, it’s shameful, it’s infuriating that a senior citizen
must lie in pain because some bureaucrat is worried about junkies
getting high.  If I knew where to get black-market Vicodin, I’d buy it
in a heartbeat.  And don’t even get me thinking about sticking up – I
mean, peacefully protesting – my local drugstore.  I’ve already got the
mask.

Joe Doakes

I had some exposure to this issue during the session – I was involved with some friends, drumming up phone calls to help reform the “Reforms” that led to the situation Joe describes, “reforms” that made it possible for the authorities to destroy the careers of doctors who prescribed painkillers out of line with untrained bureaucrats’ recommendations.

Talking with Representatives on the subject – including my own “representative”, Rena Moran – was a truly horrifying experience. One got the impression that the original “Reforms” had been pure ass-covering for the legislators (and neither party was blameless, not that I’m going to give Moran any slack), and with asses covered, they were done discussing the issue.

I used to joke that for Ron Paul to achieve the goals for which he campaigned in 2008 or 2012, he’s have had to have staged a libertarian coup d’etat, and imposed liberty by force via an absolute libertarian dictatorship.

That’s becoming less and less facetious over time.

My take on the debates:

BIDEN: “Trump [as opposed to Democrat governors and their idiotic lockdowns] tanked the economy”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “He let the Russians put bounties on our troops!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “He said the Nazis at Charlottesville were perfectly fine people!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “I was brought in to solve the 2008 recession, and I did it!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “Trump inherited massive job gains [not a dead cat bounce, nosirreebob]!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “He called the military ‘losers’!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “Hunter was completely exonerated!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “Nobody has ever established that there has ever been any election fraud!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “Climate changed causes stores that ahve already wiped away entire counties!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “Trump didn’t do anything about Covid!”

THE LEFT AND MEDIA (PTR): (Bobs heads approvingly)

BIDEN: “Antifa doesn’t really exist, but roaming gangs of White Supremacists do!”

MITCH: Trump needed to shut up and let Biden talk more. The more Biden talked, the more Wallace had to step in to rescue him. He was meat on the hoof, especially about forty minutes into the debate.

Mr. President, for your own good, practice shutting the front door up.

Once upon a time, I got some great life advice.

“Find what you’re good at, and run with it”.

John Thompson, would-be DFL rep from District 67A, the East Side, apparently got and practices the same advice.

He does seem to like burning down suburbs. Or at least talking about it.

A lot:

Sure, that’ll solve police overreach against blacks. Run with it.

Hey, DFLers – this is the mainstream of your party.

Representative Omar, in a recent interview:

I am, by nature, a starter of fires

Ooofda.

A friend of the blog emails:

Downtown St Paul does need some improvement. It has been pretty lifeless for a while.

But, I don’t think collecting more money from the few businesses that remain there is quite the way to improve it, though I guess it is better than burning it down as they did for the Midway Improvement Project.

If you see both projects as glorified transfers of wealth from whatever private sector remains in Saint Paul to the political class, it all makes perfect sense.

Netflix is taking heat for a show about young girls dancing.  They dress in skimpy outfits, wear makeup, do sexually suggestive dance moves like running their hands over each other, twerking their little behinds and thrusting their tiny pelvises.  People are outraged at the implicit pedophilia.

Bad news, people, you’re about 30 years late.  Dance teachers were putting kids in these costumes and teaching them the same moves, when my daughter was a kid.  At that time, all the sophisticated people assured me it was adorable, not perverse.

Of course, that was before Pizzagate and #metoo and Epstein.  Has the pendulum begun to swing back?

Joe Doakes

When you’re in the middle of a bad swing, it’s hard to remember that pendula do – or at least can -move both ways.

These tweets have made the rounds of conservative social, cable and broadcast media.

Which doesn’t mean they don’t need to be splattered far and wide.

Berg’s Seventh Law is omnipresent:

“Irony” – Judge Coney Barrett is already one of the nation’s most powerful jurists, even if she never gets on the SCOTUS (and here’s hoping she does, and soon). She’s accomplished more in her life, so far, than any of the people yapping on Twitter about “The Handmaids Tale” “parallels” in her faith life.

Just saying – if “People of Praise” preaches “subservience for women”, they’re doing a terrible job of it.

Oh, yeah – Berg’s Seventh Law”

If the left didn’t have double standards…

…well, you know where we go from here.

Nearly every American partisan voter will tell you one presidential candidate is not of sound mind.

Half of us have documentary evidence: