I’ve been a voracious reader all my life.  My brother can sit at the breakfast table to eat a whole bowl of cereal without reading a single word on the cereal box.  I have no idea how he does it.

I never cared about the authors.  I lived for the stories.  The Archmage Ged, Kip Russell, Archie Goodwin, and Miss Marple were more real to me than Ursula LeGuin, Robert Heinlein, Rex Stout or Agatha Christie.  I relied on national book awards to steer me toward the best stories: the Hugo, the Nebula. 

So when the latest Hugo Awards controversy erupted, I felt left out.  I don’t know who any of these people are, or what their race or gender or politics might be.  And I really don’t care.  Can they write good stories?  Sadly, the answer appears to be No.  If they could, they wouldn’t need affirmative action awards to make themselves feel better. 

Joe Doakes

I’m not a huge SciFi fan – but Joe’s premise confirms Dennis Prager’s dictum: the left destroys everything it touches.

This is DFL-endorsed candidate for the MN House, Bob Thompson, this past Saturday in Hugo, outside the home of Lt. Bob Kroll.

It certainly didn’t end there:

Additional footage of Thompson’s speech showed him wondering why protesters “were so peaceful.” He then told a man holding a blue lives matter sign to “take that sign” and “stick it in [his] ass.”

“We coming for everything that you motherf–ers took from us,” he added. “This whole [vulgarity] state burned down for 20 [vulgarity] dollars. You think we give a f– about burning Hugo down?”

Huh.

The story has evaded the Mainstream Media, of course – they want the DFL to hold those suburban seats. You’ve got to go to the honest, conservative media to get the story.

By the way – when former state rep Matt Dean asked one of the area’s freshman DFL reps to comment, this was what Amy “Profile in Courage” Wazlawik had to say

Pretty sure Rep. Runbeck’s position on the demonstration is clear.

Unlike Wazlawik’s.

Or those of Ken Martin, Melissa Hortman or Ryan Winkler, for that matter.

Quick question for our DFL readers – do you disavow this?

Yes or no.

Oh, yeah – we know where Governor Klink stands:

This is the party that wants to rule Minnesota. Not govern – rule.

…claim the Democrats are just a little bit deranged.

No sirreebob:

UPDATE: And Kim Du Toit – long time no hear! – agrees. With the concept, anyway.

Rioting in Portland for 60 days now, most recently trying to burn down a police station. The Press says the riots are “mostly peaceful.” 

Puts me in mind of a certain movie. I can imagine our anti-fa hero coming up from the basement, dressed in black, telling Mom he’s going out with his friends. “That’s nice dear, have fun storming the courthouse.”

Joe Doakes

It’s all funny until self-government becomes impossible because nobody trusts our institutions…

Far be it for me, a mere peasant, to question the journalistic integrity of the New York Times…But, may please the court of opinion, there might be a slight difference in the way the “newspaper of record” carried the two different announcements of vice presidential candidates, four years apart.Well, the key and I might notice it, anyway. Let’s see how you do:

Flashback four years:

But don’t you dare say the media is biased.

Charges have been filed and the destruction of the state owned Christopher Columbus statue on the Capitol Mall last June.

The episode – which occurred as cameras from all for local TV news stations and every newspaper that can still afford photographers churned out footage, and as state patrol officers looked on – has been “under investigation” for two months since, as the full resources of the state “criminal justice“ system were able to swarm on several bars and a rodeo in Outstate Minnesota practically while the seats were still warm.

The discrepancy between the events was enough to get some sex to say it looks as if there might be a two-tiered justice system in Minnesota; one for progressives who are tightly connected with the metro political system, and everyone else.

Oh, yeah – as usual, the cynics were right:

According to the attorney’s office, [the accused, Michael] Forcia, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, acknowledged at the time that he wanted to be held accountable for the statue being pulled down, with the investigation finding he was the “organizer, leader, and executor of the incident.”

He will get the same brand of “justice“ that Woody Kane got, of course; it is good to be part of the ruling class.

Q: “But Mitch – why do you say science “journalism“ is a spiraling vortex of ignorance, credulity and stupidity?“

A: Oh, no reason in particular“

Bonus question: how will intersectional theory affect the thesis? Especially if you look at it post-structurally?

Millennial parents, themselves raised by insipid helicopter parents, are reproducing.

God help us all.

Minneapolis Police Chief tells residents to prepare to be robbed, to hand over cars, wallets and cell phones, to obey criminals. 

Wonder if lack of law enforcement will affect the rape situation around the U of M?  Outstate parents still thinking of sending their daughters to college in Minneapolis might want to reconsider.
Speaking of reconsidering . . . do Minneapolis crime victims have any thoughts on reviving Stand Your Ground legislation?

Joe Doakes

It’s been a little depressing, reading the number of Powderhorn Park residents on some of the neighborhood social media who think that they deserve what they’ve got coming to them.

And when you think about it, they’re right, although not for the reasons they think. They think their “privilege” makes them justifiable targets.

Call it schadenfreud, but I say it’s “60 years of voting DFL as if it’s the only option you have”.

But there are a few that are getting the message.

The Democrats are proposing Kamala Harris as the next President (after, let’s be honest, Creepy Joe’s inevitable resignation or removal).

It’s not like I’m in any danger of voting for any Democrat, ever – that shouldn’t be a surprise.

But I wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris if she were a fiscal conservative free-marketeering Second Amendendment advocate (which she has never been and will never be).

Let’s just cut to the chase: there is no circle of hell cold enough for prosecutor with Harris’s dubious relationship with honesty, ethics and morality.

She’s not ethically fit to be President – even in the post-Bill-and-Hillary Clinton sense of the term. Or even the post-Trump sense, if you’re wired that way.

She’s not morally fit to be mulch.

Minneapolis businesses destroyed when the City failed – no, abnegated, competely – at its responsibility to deliver the public safety and order that taxpayers expect…

…have to pay in advance on their taxes to clear the rubble of the businesses that the City didn’t even bother protecting with last year’s taxes:

Light leaving “moral” today won’t reach Minneapolis’s city goverment until long after Mayor McDreamy’s great-grandchildren are collecting social security.

All the people working from home because of the Democrats’ Covid-19 response think they are essential. No, their jobs were declared essential to prevent widespread unrest, but the individuals performing the function are not essential. They are largely  interchangeable personnel units.

If a job can be done from my basement in Como Park, it could be done from a warehouse in Bombay, India. Think about this Summer as a giant dry run for outsourcing your job.
 The Luddites were right, in the end.

Joe Doakes

That’s true in all too many cases – although there are quite a few jobs where that has historically worked out very badly, mine (fingers crossed) among ’em.

But is this something that’s being harnessed to pave the way for “Universal Basic Income”? Which is another term for “Universal Dependence on Government”?

“Peaceful protesters” in Portland attack an elderly woman with paint, berate her in front of a threatening crowd.

So by my count, that’s a couple of dozen swarthy, sweaty “Anti”-Fa thugs, as well as the castrati man-buns that travel with ’em, teaming up on an elderly woman. Probably the only way to make it a fair fight.

Reminds me of this:

In the thirties, Brownshirts, Hitler Youth and (as in the pic above) German cops rode roughshod over older, less physically-adroit Jews, humiliating them in public for sport…

…before moving on to nastier plans.

There is going to be a backlash.

I’m fairly sure Big Left is counting on it, in fact.

A little background: I support capital punishment for every reason but one – the inevitability, whether through accident or deliberate prosecutorial malfeasance, of executing innocent people. It’s already happened at least once, and at least 14 executions in the last since the death penalty was rebuilding a 19 7600s of people have been released directly from death row, their convictions “beyond a reasonable doubt“ vacated, very frequently because of prosecutorial misconduct.

That’s a sign, if you think about it, somethings very, very wrong with capital punishment.

Kamala Harris is one of those things that is very, very wrong.

I have a little personal background with a case of a man wrongly convicted in a grisly rape and murder case,

He spent those 22 years on death row because a prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence that would have led to his acquittal in the initial trial.

There is no circle in hell cold enough for a prosecutor who withholds exculpatory evidence in any case – least of all a death penalty case.

Kamala Harris has a long history of playing fast and loose with ethics rules, including gundecking exculpatory evidence in capital cases.

People like that aren’t fit to be president of the United States.

People like that aren’t fit to be mulch, morally speaking.

Democrats and the media hyped Covid as the deadliest plague ever.  Citizens panicked.  Hand sanitizer flew off the shelves.  Foreign companies rushed to fill the demand.  Now, FDA warns us not to use some of those products because they’re contaminated.

Even more suffering to lay at the feet of Democrats trying to make life in America worse, so people will vote President Trump out of office, to make it stop.

Joe Doakes

I’m just mortified at all that prime beer and spirit production being diverted to sanitation products.

In the late 1980s, Gallup took a poll about race relations among African-Americans. About a third said racism had an effect on their lives.

Thirty years later – during the regime of the nation’s first African-American president – that percentage had doubled.

The graph over the past 20 years or so looks like this:

Note the beginning of the slide – the middle of an election where the Democrats needed to pull out all the stops to counter the Tea Party and general dissatisfaction with the collapse of the healthcare system.

Unexpected?

Hardly. It was by design.

Graph depicts the prevalence of the terms “Race” and “Racism” in our “elite’ media’s narrative:

Why, it’s almost as if the “elite” media needed to create a crisis for the “elite” political class not to waste.

Remember – “race conflict” is merely a delivery system for “class conflict”.

Is Rob Reiner really so stupid that he believes Gettysburg is a “monumente to white supremacy“?

Or is he merely counting on progressive voters all being that stupid?

It’s a tossup in my book.

Dozens of businesses are expecting to leave downtown Minneapolis.

A new survey by the Downtown Council shows 45 business owners say they are considering leaving downtown – citing the lack of people working or socializing downtown – and the idea that the police department could be dismantled.

Though they won’t say which businesses are considering pulling out of downtown, the council says one of the businesses employs 600 people.

That could mean a lot of empty spaces.

On the up side, I suppose “moving” implies some intent to survive.

Wonder how many downtown businesses have closed for good without making it onto any surveys?

This is the kind of analysis the jury is likely to hear in the Floyd case, which is why I’ve been saying all along that it’s going to be a tough case to win.

Not saying this guy is correct, or that the jury will find his analysis persuasive, but this column shows why serving on the jury is not as simple as watching the video before voting to convict.  The defense gets a turn, too.

Joe Doakes

Attorney friends tell me Earl Gray is the real deal, defense-wise.

In other words, buckle in and pray for an April blizzard.

Minneapolis launches the next phase of the PR battle over the destruction of East Lake Street:

Of course, the story soft-pedals Mayor McDreamy’s pandering to the mob – reported here on Thursday, May 27, long before the rest of the media got to it – that Mayor Frey had ordered the Third Precinct to be essentially abandoned.

An over-his head mayor and a bunch of gauzy idealist staffers more suited to hosting grand openings for bike lanes than leading a city in crisis.

A passive-aggressive governor reverting back to his gym teacher background (“you didn’t specify the ages and MOSes of the requested guardsmen, or their deployments down to squad level! Do another cruncher, Frey!”).

You’re in great hands, Minnesota.

It’s been percolating about “prog” social media lately – the notion that Trump, should he lose the election, wouldn’t relinquish office.

Never mind how, or whether it’s remotely plausible. All that is necessary for the left-wing noise machine is to get the chatters chattering.

But as to “why would they be spreading such palpable poppycock?”

If you’re a regular reader, you know Berg’s Seventh Law.

And if you know Berg’s Seventh Law, you already have your answer.

It’s easy to “joke” – especially living as a Republican in places like Saint Paul – that “Mike Judge’s cult classic Idiocracy isn’t a comedy, it’s a documentary”.

But you – we – are not wrong:

And for exactly the reason Judge lampooned…

So why are we supposedly getting dumber?

Previous research has found that women of higher intelligence are having fewer children, meaning women of lower intelligence are driving population growth, according to the study.

Over time, experts say, that would affect the average IQ of a population.

…or “lampooned”, as the case may be.

It’s only funny if you don’t look at the world around you.

First Amendment of the Constitution protects the fundamental right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.
60 days of rioting, burning down buildings, destroying property, is not what the Framers contemplated. Those are not peaceful protests so they’re not covered by the First Amendment. They are Insurrection, which must be put down to preserve civil order.

Portland needs to announce that we’ve had our little fun, but we’re done now. Starting tonight, anybody suspected of Riot will be shot on sight. Then shoot a few people,  “a whiff of the grape,” to encourage the others.

The time-out from reality is over. We are going back to constitutional republic.

Joe Doakes

The government of Portland – like that of Minneapolis, except apparently the Charter Commission – is so dependent on the (politically connected parents and aunts and uncles of the) mob in the streets, they wouldn’t dare raise a finger to them.

Here’s where to find out more about the effort to recall Governor Klink.

Er…Walz. Governor Walz. My bad.

Also – Doug Willetts is running for MN Senate in SD51 – the greater Eagan area.

Can you imagine the tone if the two “idealistic young lawyers” in this story had worn MAGA hats?

I’m sure those young lawyers will do just fine pleading “moment of madness’ in court.

Mr. Spoor (a prog lawyer who has the most wonderfully occoponymous name, if you speak any Dutch at all) says that young people are prone to doing stupid things (true), and that we should have some forgiveness in our hearts. Throwing a firebomb shouldn’t rate 35 years in federal prison.

But forgiveness without atonement is meaningless – and I wager a shiny new quarter that the overentitled, over-schooled, under-educated wannabe Che Guevaras in this story feel no remorse whatsoever.

Regret over being caught? Sure.

Remorse? That’s for plebes.