I hereby wager a shiny new quarter that this episode is one of two things:
Any action on that bet?
… then stories like this have to be incredibly confusing.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Looking at the recycle bin at my house, I’m curious how many trillion board-feet of lumber get turned into cardboard for Amazon boxes every year?
The lumberjacks and paper mills should be kissing the ground Jeff Bezos walks on.
Joe Doakes
Oh, I have a hunch they are.
And how long has it been since you heard someone protesting forestry?
The state is going after Senator, and Doctor, Scott Jensen, for…
…well, counterrevolutionary activity, apparently:
Minnesota senator and medical physician Dr. Scott Jensen says he is under investigation by the Minnesota State Board of Medical Practice for allegedly spreading misinformation about COVID-19.
Jensen revealed the investigation in a Facebook video on Sunday, saying the medical board is focusing on “reckless advice” he had given by comparing COVID-19 with the flu, as well as comments he made regarding CDC guidelines for the completion of death certificates in an interview with Fargo news broadcaster Chris Berg in April – which went viral.
“When I got this news, I was ticked,” Jensen, who is rumored to be considering a run for Minnesota governor as a Republican, said in the video, which has now been viewed one million times.
“If this could happen to me because of my views, it could happen to b ‘=, anybody,” he added.
Let’s sure we’ve got this straight; the state’s bureaucracy is actively moving to squelch a prominent dissenter to Governor Walz’s incompetent, logrolling response to the pandemic.
Powerline’s Scott Johnson on his wrapup of what happened in Minneapolis over Memorial Day.
In his initial comments the morning after the Third Precinct was destroyed, Governor Walz threw Frey under the proverbial bus for the decision to abandon it. Warned in advance of the decision by Frey, Walz professed himself “not comfortable” with it. These were perhaps the most truthful only words uttered by Walz in this entire series of events. Walz quickly reverted to the style of the stereotypical used car salesman that is his characteristic mode.
The decision to abandon the Third Precinct on the evening of May 28 was an open secret. The Wall Street Journal now looks back in “‘We’re Just Going to Walk Away From This?’ How Minneapolis Left a Police Station to Rioters.” MPR looks back in “‘The precinct is on fire’: What happened at Minneapolis’ 3rd Precinct — and what it means.”
Unfortunately, MPR has no idea what it means. Led by the Star Tribune, we have a massive failure of the Minnesota media to settle accounts and assess responsibility. Their view is utterly blinkered, not by the fog of war, but rather by the fog of leftist sympathy. Sheer cowardice must be a substantial contributing factor as well.
The perpetrators of the terroristic crime wave were many and varied. Only a few have been charged so far. The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Minnesota has brought arson cases against a dozen or so defendants to date. See the US Attorney press releases compiled here. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seems to be taking the lead in the investigation of the 150 arsons throughout the Twin Cities in the week following Floyd’s death.
The whole piece is worth a read.
But let’s set the record straight, here. Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s wrapup of the abandonment of the Third Precinct:
Police were preparing another round of tear gas to use against a rock-throwing crowd when they got word from Mayor Jacob Frey on the night of Thursday, May 28, to abandon the city’s Third Precinct,
Here’s MPR’s team report:
It was 9:53 p.m. when a Minneapolis police officer sent out an urgent call to the other officers who remained in the 3rd Precinct.
“We need to move. We need to move,” he shouted over the police radio.
Protesters were breaking into the back of the station, and officers were preparing to take an unprecedented step in American policing: to abandon their precinct building.
Let the record show that Shot In The Dark, informed by a source with close connections in the Minneapolis Police, broke the news that the decision had been made, in a post timestamped 2:54PM Thursday afternoon.
Shot in the Dark – more better news.
The Paper of Walter Duranty, the one that published the deeply ahistorical, revisionistic and nothing-but-inflammatory “1629 Project”, the one that published Paul Krugman’s innumerate claims that “blue” America bankrolls “red” America, which has been openly advocating “progressive” ideals in its editorial pages since I was in high school, which has been one of the primary PR agents for the left in America’s cultural cold civil war, the one that has not only been a “progressive” flak for generations but whose young, “woke” red guard faction has moved beyond shaping the informational battlefield to actively purity-testing the left-leaning editorial staff to drive it further to the cultural and political left…
…has the victorian vapours about “cultural divisiveness” over Trump’s weekend speech at Mount Rushmore.
Watch for yourself.
The only thing that I could find that was remotely “divisive” was exhortation about three minutes in stating that Mount Rushmore would never be desecrated – which, I imagine, some post-modern academics find profoundly hostile.
Or maybe the bit around 5:10 here he said the rights of man will never be taken away. That has got to make Tim Walz nervous.
Perhaps the part around 6:10, where he points out that Americans aren’t “weak and submissive” in facing the war on American culture, but will in fact prevail. That’s a pretty clear and direct threat to…someone.
Too bad, so sad.
Berg’s Seventh Law is iron-clad and absolute.
Manny Laureano – friend of the blog, of the show, and of the good guys all over the Metro – writes this love letter to America on the Independence Day holiday.
You should read the whole thing.
I’m gonna pullquote a bit anyway:
I love being an American.
I love that in an airport terminal I can hear a strong Bronx accent, a Texas drawl, a sweet North Carolina lilt, and L.A. surfer-speak all spoken by people whose parents came from Germany, Japan, Ghana, and the Dominican Republic.
I love being an American.
I love that I’m different from others in the world. Because I love that I am secure enough in who I am to not want to be like others. I am content with the richness that is part of who I am without coveting the nature of others while accepting my foibles. I derive pride from living under the oldest constitution in the world. I love that we have grown over the last 233 years to amend that constitution to reflect some newer acknowledgements over earlier decisions. I love that we can bend without snapping in two although once we came close. We fought an internal battle and spent a long time healing.
And I love being an American.
And reading this – among so many other stimuli – so do I.
Happy Independence Day, everyone!
The Senate GOP – the only real bit of power the opposition has in Minnesota – is finally going to ask the question that it seems nearly nobody in our media will.
Why didi the DFL politiclal “chain of command”, from Mayors Carter and McDreamy up through Governor Klink, allow two of the Twin Cities poor, blighted but slowly recovering neighborhoods to get torched, looted and bludgeoned almost beyond recognition?
Republicans specifically want to know the details of what led Minneapolis police to abandon the Third Precinct police station. Additionally, they want to know why the National Guard was not a visible presence on the ground in Minneapolis until the weekend, four days after the violence started.
At the press conference, Gazelka did not directly answer a question about whether there will be subpoenas issued for the hearings, but a top aide clarified that the Senate Judiciary Committee does have subpoena power, and they will be involved in these hearings.
Democratic senators will be part of these hearings as well. It sets up for what is likely to be a spectacle at the Capitol, with Republican Senators, most of whom are from greater Minnesota, grilling top state and even city officials over the basic question of what happened.
The DFL’s evasion controls are set to “emergency”:
Susan Kent, the DFL Senate leader, responded to Republican plan to hold hearings, saying that Republicans should be just as focused on criminal justice reform as they are on the destruction of property. She noted that these hearing come after a recent special session, where no police reform proposals were agreed upon, during which the Senate held a single, informational hearing for criminal justice reform.
“It is deeply discouraging and troubling to see Senate Republicans prioritize hearings that completely fail to address racial disparities within our criminal justice system,” she said, adding: Minnesotans statewide are asking us to do our jobs and take meaningful action. The one informational hearing they held on weak proposals doesn’t cut it. It is now abundantly clear they were never really interested in passing critical legislation.”
And I’ll agree with the suburban doyenne Sen. Kent, at least halfway; we should examine the “racial disparity”.
Why is it always the black neighborhoods that the hordes of white “anarchists” and “anti”-fa and other members of the DFL’s direct action force flock to to burn and loot?
…but that doesn’t leave Republicans off the hook for the collapse of America’s cities:
Despite all of these Democrats, the number one factor stopping real progress in the inner city is Republicans. If Republicans can’t figure out how to speak to minority voters, it is pointless to discuss alternative solutions. President Trump has been the first “Republican” in years to really talk to minority voters and also work to pass bills that directly affect them. We need others willing to seize that momentum and work to demonstrate that Democrats have done nothing for the inner cities but hurt them. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, then that is exactly what being a minority and voting for Democrats is like. Nothing ever gets better for them, but they continue to vote for Democrats.
Recently, Sean Combs said the “black vote is not going to be for free,” and he should be right! Politicians should be working for the black community as well as all communities if they want our votes. No one should give away his vote without question. All politicians should work a little harder and not assume that they will get our votes just because there is an R or D next to their name.
If Republicans can actually begin having constructive conversations with minorities and inner-city residents, these are just some of the many conservative ideas that can and will help inner cities if implemented:
Democrats, until a few years ago, were wont to chant “WE OWN THIS TOWN” after elections where their people were swept into office by near-three-digit margins. It’s tempting to tell them “Yes, Sparky, you sure do. Clean it up”.
So tempting that I do it myself.
But when you get a wasp nest under your back porch eaves, do you leave the back porch to the wasps?
There was an apparent homicide last night – a woman was killed in the alley behind the Trend Bar on University at Pascal. The Trend – known throughout the neighborhood as “the place where alcoholics go to get drunk and robbed, and the drug trade goes to romp and play” – is eight blocks south of my house.
It’s squarely in the district of Councilwoman Mitra Jalali – who ran for office as “Mitra Jalali-Nelson”, but apparently that whole Swedish surname thing has become less convenient in Saint Paul politics in recent months.
She’s the one who advocates de-funding Saint Paul’s police department.
Seems like a bit of a conundrum, no?
In watching yesterday’s kerfuffle about the couple in suburban Saint Louis who strapped up – to a horde of catcalls about their deeply flawed gun handling – against a bunch of “peaceful” protesters who’d just smashed their community’s gate – I can’t help but recall four scan weeks ago…
…when armed Americans were briefly all the rage, if a confused sort of rage, to our cultural betters…
Shizzle just got way too real:
This is getting personal.
Keegans was where I met some of the favorite arcs in my social circle: the NARN guys (Brian, Chad, Ben, Ed Morrissey, King Banaian, Michael Brodkorb), John Stewart and Marjorie Farnsworth Stewart and their kids Patience Stewart and Faith Worley , who at least started the process of meeting her husband Ben Worley (long story) there at a Trivia night one summer. It’s where I first met (socially, at least) David Strom and Margaret Martin, and Christopher K. Senn and Chris Neugent, where we were trivia regulars with Brad Carlson and Nancy LaRoche and Bill Charette and Guy Collins and Peg Kaplan and so many more, a place where Gary M. Miller and Bob Collins shared a table over a couple beers and some sports talk, where I met the likes of Tracy Eberly and Julie Hanson and Mark Heuring and Jacq Smith and Sean Michael and Diane Napper and Bridget Cronin, where I met Don Lokken after 20 odd years. where celebs like Mike Nelson and Lynn McHale’s husband rubbed elbows with a bunch of my other closest friends, and the last place I saw Joel Rosenberg and Sarah Janecek before their untimely passings, and…
…well, so many memories, it’s hard to catalogue them all.
Keegans – and the Savoy next door, both owned by the redoubtable Marty Newman – is closing after Tuesday night. Marty, like Terry (a Marine vet from Vietnam) and Virginia Keegan before him who founded the place, is a classic small businessman, is pretty much SOL.
The place was always jam packed – always – so let’s hear none of this “bars and restaurants close all the time” bullsh*t. This place was killed by the Governor’s ham-fisted quarantine combined with Minneapolis’ unicorn-driven small business policies.
This is a kick in the teeth.
I will be heading there Tuesday night. I guess that would be tonight…
The left, last week: “People don’t need the police! People can defend their own communities!”
The left, this week after people defended their own community:
“Chilling”. The “protesters” were encroaching on private property after forcibly breaking down a gate. The implied threat could miss nobody who isn’t already insulated by Urban Progressive Privilege.
The only “chilling” part of this episode is the atrocious firearm-safety the couple are exhibiting; fingers on triggers, sweeping each other and people who aren’t immediate threats. Get some training, people.
And it’s instructive to note how “chilling” it wasn’t to the mainstream media last month, when stories about black neighborhoods and business owners strapping up to deter looters met with…uncomfortable acquiescence.
Democrat run cities are crime infested hell holes.
It’s not even a controversial premise.
Which isn’t to say the “fact checked industry – which exist primarily to uphold, or at least try and prevent the destruction of, leftist narratives Dash isn’t going to take a run at it.
From WaPo:
And let’s just say that the “ Independents” aren’t too far to the right to be Republicans, either.
Is there anything about today’s American left that isn’t built on exploitation, violence and lies?
Minneapolis voted last week to change its police force into…
…well, something.
And if that makes you nervous, don’t worry – accountability for the results of this sweeping change is going to be split 14 ways. Because we all know the stories of successful enterprises in the worlds of politics, business and ideas that’ve had 14 co-equal chief executives.
What it does mean, so far, is a transfer of power from the mayor to the City Council, a transfer of wealth from the taxpayer to the myriad “community” groups and non-profits that will be part of the system – a system that feeds money, influence and people to the DFL…
…and a transfer of accountability for public safety from a police chief and a mayor (both of whom flunked the test terribly this past month) to…well, leave a message and someone will get back to you.
But hey – if you’re really worried about your safety, there are other options…
Some Henco Commisioners want to declare racism a public health crisis:
Hennepin County Commissioners Angela Conley and Irene Fernando plan to introduce a resolution on Tuesday declaring racism a public health emergency in the county.
“We need to be explicit about racism,” Conley said. “We need to say that at the root of the disparities is systemic racism . . . and we need to do it now while this conversation is ripe.”
Nearly a dozen other counties across the country have passed similar resolutions, many doing so in recent weeks as governments and businesses aim to address racism within their own organizations in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis…The move to declare racism a public health crisis is symbolic, but would also direct the county to consider racial equity in all of its decision making.
When you mix politics and science, you don’t get scientific politics. You get politicized science.
It is a strong contender to be Berg’s 21st Law.
Here’s Peggy McIntosh’s article that coined the term “White Privilege“. Here’s the facts about Peggy McIntosh’s class privilege. And this is where I coined “Urban Progressive Privilege“.
And here’s the link to Dr. Frank Models – which is, well, Doctor Frank’s modeling of the Covid pandemic.
Diane Napper is running for the MN State Senate in Senate District 63 – southeast Minneapolis.
I left North Dakota for a lot of good reasons. Pretty much everything I wanted in life, especially back when only Al Gore had the Internet, was in a major metropolitan area; a place to try to be a songwriter, a musician, a writer, or something just different than I could be back in one of the most rural states in the US.
And that judgment was largely right, then and now. I found opportunity in the big city that would have eluded me back in the rural west, then and, let’s be honest, now. I’d have never fallen out of college into a major market talk radio job; I’d have never tripped into either of the careers I’ve had since then; nothing that is my life today had I stayed in North Dakota, other than faith and family – and my family is mostly here, too.
And for better or worse, that’s the way it’s going to be for at least the next five years. I was working remotely – at least for a while – before it was cool; from 2015 through most of 2017 I worked from home. And it was great. But when the jobs ended – and they did – the immutable fact is, being where the work was, having a network and a presence and a reputation among a critical-enough mass of people in the industry to find the next job was pretty much non-negotiable.
So the ties that bind me to the big city are emotional, financial and personal.
Oh, yeah – and I’m stubborn. I may eventually walk away from the city, to someplace in Minnesota with a functional two-party system, or across the river to solid, competent, red Northwest Wisconsin. But I’ll do it on my own time. I won’t run away from the mob, either on the street or in city hall. Not if I can help it.
So I’ve got my reasons for being here, and I’m fine with that.
Still, I brought a little bit of my home here. North Dakotans are famously stoic, and calmly but ruthlessly pragmatic – and it shows in the way the state governs itself. And, to be honest, it did, mostly, even when the state’s governor and its congressional delegation were longtime Democrats – although the likes of George Skinner and Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad would look like Barry Goldwater in the modern Democratic Party; Collin Peterson is as close as you’ll find in the wild today. And I compare the public life of my “new” home of 30-odd years to my old one, and find it grossly wanting. Perhaps the lower population density means that there’s noplace to escape the wrath of an angry populace; perhaps the more modest budget for a permanent political and non-profit class means that politicians of all stripes need to mind their manners, since they are unlikely to wind up in permanent political sinecures. More than a few former governors in the Dakotas and Montana went back into private legal practice after leaving office; perhaps knowing they were going to be back on Main Street one day tempers behavior in a way that looking forward to a “teaching” job at the Humphrey Center and a cushy and largely ceremonial “job” at a law firm or non-profit doesn’t. And I suspect it’ll take a genuine catastrophe – not the twin, training-wheels problems, Covid and the Floyd Riots – to strip away enough of the surplus wealth that enables rot-enabling dross like our non-profit/industrial complex and academic complexes to thrive. And that’s a level of catastrophe that will make Governor Walz’s original models look pollyannaish – a serious epidemic, like aerosol Ebola or a reawakened Bubonic Plague; rioting with guns instead of spray paint.
And let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
I’ve got a fair number of people in my metro social circle who are making active noises about moving to the rural west. South Dakota is a current favorite – Governor Noem has distinguished herself in leading SoDak through the Covid crisis to the point where there’s talk of her being, unthinkably, a national contender. (In a just world, Governor Burgum of North Dakota would be a legitimate contender as well – but being a billionaire and by all indications pretty dang happy where he’s at, he’d have no reason to want to). I ask, mostly in fun, “you have two Dakotas to choose from, and you pick that one?”, but I get it…
…mostly.
My next question is absolutely serious: “Go to South Dakota…and do what?” If you’ve got a career that’s genuinely portable and can exist anywhere – or no career at all, and able to start over from rock bottom – then that makes sense. If you earn your living via the many, many parts of the economy that only occur in metro areas larger than 250,000 (and Fargo makes the cut, more or less, batting well above its weight economically – but it’s also developed its own class of “progressive” useless mouths, and along with Grand Forks the state’s only real collection of institutional Democrats), you may be looking long and hard to find a way to make ends meet. And if you’re counting on your remote job to carry you through – check those connections, both on the Internet and on your LinkedIn. You’d best have a very high profile in your industry to be able to find your next job from your den in Aberdeen.
Still, for all the Metro governments have poured into the bogus, politically-correct, perverted-to-the-point-of-Orwellian definition of “resiliency”, Victor Davis Hanson reminds us in his meditations on Æsop’s fable of the City Mouse and Country Mouse that life in the more rural areas offers the real thing – the ability to provide one’s own “safety net” far more resilient than that of even a well-intentioned social one, a genuine community.
And there are times that sounds attractive.
What’s the most dangerous phrase in the world?
1980: “I’m from the governent and I”m here to help”
2020: “I’m an ‘ally’ and I’m here to help. “
A friend of the blog emails:
Privileged Liberal White People: we’re going to help those poor communities of black people. We’ll build a train so they can get around with a car!
Black people: But, we’d like to get around by car just like you.
PLWP: We’re going to help those poor black people by raising the minimum wage!
BP: But we’d like to have a job to support our families. This will just get rid of our jobs.
PLWP: We’re going to help those poor black people by building high density housing in their neighborhood. Let’s tear down the affordable single family housing stock to help them!
BP: But we’d like to own a house, just like you.
PLWP: We’re going to help those poor black people by taking away on street parking around their apartment buildings to build bike lanes!
BP: But we’d like to park by where we live just like you, especially in the winter. We aren’t biking.
PLWP: We want to help black people by not calling the cops when thugs take over their neighborhood. And we’ll tell the whole world!
BP: Seriously, stop helping us.
________________
Biggest problem in my neighborhood, other than the issues above, most of my neighbors don’t bother voting in local elections.
Semi-related: It’s interesting, to me, to note that John Lesch’s district has the lowest voter turnout numbers in the state.
To the original point: Urban Progessive Privilege means never having had to confront the notion that your ideals are only “ideal” for people in your own class.
In college poli-sci classes, you learn there are two schools of thought about what humans would be like in the absence of government.
Some think humans are Basically Good and government corrupts us, so if we could get rid of government, everything would be wonderful.
Others think humans are Basically Rotten and only government protects us from ourselves. If we got rid of government, our lives would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.
Recent events don’t answer the question. Did people riot because government pulled back and let them, or because government was so corrupt they had to?
Ask yourself this: if we get rid of the police, and the Basically Rotten people are correct, what will take the place of the police? Individual citizens maintaining Eternal Vigilance, dispensing Street Justice? Are we certain that’s a better solution than a municipal police force? Are we willing to bet our lives on it?Joe Doakes
The “better solution” our social justice-y betters are splaining to us is Camden – whose new, woke, exquisitely expensive law enforcement organization has improved it from the worst murder rate of any city of any size in the United States to tied with #6 (Kansas City), were it over 200,000 people, which it’s not; it may be the most dangerous small city in the US.
Today is the sixteenth anniversary of the opening of the Metro Transit Blue Line – the beginning (or re-beginning) of light rail transit in the Twin Cities.
So on this anniversary, let us remember the people who gave their lives – unwillingly and probably unwittingliy – to further Big Minnesota Left’s obsession with feeling like a Big City.
The Blue Line has claimed 15 lives – eight pedestrians, three bikers, a man in a wheelchair, and three people in cars. There was also a stabbing death this past winter on the Blue Line, and two more murders at stations along the line. That’s an average of just one death per year.
The Green Line has taken eight victims in only five years – the first just six weeks after the train started operating, mostly pedestrians trying to navigate the badly-designed street-level crossings. The most recent was less than a year ago. j
The Northstar line has five fatalities so far, the latest just last winter.
That’s 29 dead, so far. 29 lives sacrificed so that the Met Council, the various governments, and other people who love to play with the dials and levers of government can feel like they’re “running” a big city with all the trimmings.
Let’s take a moment today to remember these innocent victims of government megalomania.
… why I will never donate a single penny to Minnesota Public radio, even though I listen to them (primarily news and classical music) constantly.
Two of them, for starters, are:
But a few more million of them are right here; as Minnesota Public radio lays off much of what used to be a pretty good news room, their executive staff still keep getting paid, well, like this:
To add insult to injury, MPR’s national production group, “American Public Media”, is canceling “Live from Here with Chris Thile” – the excellent show that grew from the ruins of “Prairie Home Companion”, and one of the few original production non-news shows worth listening to.
MPR hastens to point out that their C-suite is taking a 30% pay cut. Which sounds like a big deal, until you realize that a whole lot of private sector CEOs are cutting their pay to $1 for the duration.
We don’t like the statue of Columbus on the Capitol Grounds.
We tried to get it removed through official channels.
We lost.
We announced we were going to tear it down ourselves.
We heard the Governor tell us not to, that the police would stop us.
We didn’t care.
We weren’t stopped.
We weren’t arrested.
We weren’t charged.
We weren’t even scolded.
We are heroes, taking back the lands our ancestors sold a century ago.
We’re coming for your house, next.
Joe Doakes
Some animals are more equal than others.
Georgetown and Harvard universities were both built with slave labor and the proceeds from sales of human beings.
Yale is named after an actual slave trader.
The city of New York didn’t ban slavery till 1827, and people in NYC still owned slaves into the 1840s, and the industries that made it wealthy before 1861 – textiles and cigars – were entirely powered by cheap material produced by slavery. New York City voted for the proslavery candidate for president in 1860 end, after three years of Civil War, 1864. The New York City draft riots of 1863 overwhelmingly targeted freed black men and pro-abolition businesspeople, politicians and groups.
The father of modern progressivism (as well as today’s bureaucratic administrative state), Woodrow Wilson, was one of the most corrosive racists In the history of American government; he is overwhelmingly responsible for the institution of Jim Crow at the federal level, which had cascade effects throughout the country, including an expansion of Jim Crow laws at the state and local levels, and the expansion of the KKK to its greatest power.
So if today’s “protesters“ are really serious about tearing down the legacies of a racist history, they need to tear down the ivy league, New York City, the Internal Revenue Service and about half of the executive branch departments.
Let’s go to it!
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