Looking at the SF article on armed citizens again – 

“As the car fills with the acrid scent of burning chemicals, Ellison tells his friend in the driver’s seat to pull over. Before they come to a stop, Ellison, 30, flings open the door and jumps out with a pistol in one hand and a small fire extinguisher in the other. He walks briskly down the street, scanning the block for the origin of the fumes.”

Even assuming he has a permit to carry, that’s “brandishing,” and it’s a crime.  What are you doing waving a gun around, one-handed?  What’s your target?  Where’s the imminent danger?  Why is that damned thing out of the holster???

His father’s the attorney general. That’s his legal justification, peasant.

“At one checkpoint, a young man nervously looked down the street as a car approached, his finger on the trigger of a semiautomatic rifle half-raised in front of him.”
Get Your Booger Hook Off The Bang Switch!!  What the hell is wrong with you?  Have you no firearms safety training at all? 

The author is PRAISING these idiots for running around the streets with loaded guns and no idea how to use them safely.

Every time a new group gets frightened enough to run out to buy guns – women, gays, trans – I make the same offer:  I will teach you how to use it, safely, for free.  Time to step up my game.  Whole lotta people desperately need help before somebody gets hurt from sheer stupidity.

Joe Doakes

There are a whole lot of people who’ve come over to the 2nd Amendment side this past few months. There are a lot of opportunities for us to show them how it’s done.

Although I’m not sure Jeremiah Ellison is going to be one of the ones who learns much.

Recall Governor Walz – help with money, time, and with a little luck petition signatures before too long.

Sia Lo is running for Congress in MNCD4. Website here.

This is one for my friends to the left of center.

I don’t care much for Christopher Columbus, one way or the other. He wasn’t even the first European to reach North America – that was Leif Ericsson, 500 years earlier. You can make a case that Columbus was an awful person, and I might even agree.

But are you sure you want to make the case that groups of people should be able to destroy public (or for that matter private) property, as long as they feel it’s really really right? That some causes are just more important than the slow, dirty work of seeking consensus and working via a process?

Especially done with the implied threat of violence against anyone who might have tried to stand in the way?

Before you answer, remember: six weeks ago many of you were up in, for lack of a better term, arms over multiracial groups of protesters, some of them openly carrying firearms, demonstrating peacefully at the Michigan capitol and outside the Minnesota governors’ mansion. The demonstrators broke no laws [1], and there was certainly no violence – and yet many of you acted like that was a threat to democracy.

But actual law-breaking and vandalism, and a very clear implication of potential violence (and in many cases, it goes well beyond implication), is OK – as long as its’ the correct cause?

Because there’s a statue of Floyd Olson on the Capitol grounds. He was a socialist demigogue who governed Minnesota long ago, and there’s no rational way to deny that his policies have caused far more damage than good, especially to disadvantaged communities in this state. Olson represents the worst traits of this state – jamming down equality of outcomes as one-size-fits-all decree, with dire effects on the poor. Did he do as much harm as Columbus? No, but we’re talking principle, here, so let’s not quibble about degrees of evil.

It’s high time someone – me and my friends who feel strongly about the damage Olson and his cronies did to this state – did something about that goddess-forsaken statue. And if the process doesn’t work fast enough (and in a state dominated by the Urban Progressive Privilege that Olson’s policies cemented in place as the dominant class, it won’t), then we’ll have to “expedite” things ourselves.

Because if you’re not part of (our) solution, you’re part of the problem (as we define it).

So – are you SURE you want to set this as a precedent?

[1] Open carry is legal in the Michigan capitol, and let’s not even pretend any of you know the actual statute re “brandishing”, so I’ll not allow the conversation to get side-tracked over that subject.

May 14: Ken Martin, chair of the DFL, makes a bold prediction and a really dumb statement:

Fast forward nearly a month: as of June 12, Wisconsin’s death rate per million is half that of Minnesota. Its active cases are a solid 40% lower than Minnesota’s.

And that was after Wisconsin started out “leading” Minnesota in both categories.

The problem?

I don’t suspect it’s that Ken Martin believed anything he wrote in his May 12 tweet (least of all about the useless and idiotic Steve Sack).

The problem is that Martin can count on his DFL voter base – bovine herd animals with the critical thinking skills of a Teen Vogue reader – to know the difference, or care if they can.

This was the House Democratic leadership, doing their (nothing but) symbolic photo-op before the George Floyd funeral:

They’re wearing “Kente” cloths – apparently Ghanaian in this case, but there are similar adornments all through Africa. They have cultural significance.

And to Pelosi and her little claque, they are nothing but costumes.

Some actual Africans were not amused at the virtue-accessorizing:

But remember – don’t go eating burritos, honky.

Urban Progressive Privilege: when making the right progressive-y noises is enough, at least within your social circle.

The Washington Post, which endlessly editorializes in favor of stricter gun control laws and bans, writes approvingly of armed citizens carrying assault rifles, shotguns and pistols in the streets of Minneapolis. 

NAACP, which advocates strict gun control laws and bans, is organizing the armed citizen patrols.

Neither of these organizations come right out and say it, but by their actions, they’re basically conceding that I was right all along, and they were wrong. 

I am now prepared to accept their apologies.

Joe Doakes

The good news: we might be starting to see parts of the left (including, unfortunately, some of the worst parts) voting on this issue with their feet.

The bad news: all that energy is going to go into more bad ideas.

In the wake of – or perhaps as a next chapter of the George Floyd riots, “Anti”-Fa are setting up an “Autonomous” enclave in Seattle. They are extorting businesses in that enclave for protection money.

And unlike Minneapolis, where President Trump steamrollered Governor Walz into sending a more-than-token National Guard force with threats of invoking the Insurrection Act and units of combat-veteran regular military to East Lake Street, the President is silent on Seattle.

People – including fellow Trump-skeptic Mike Cernovich – are asking questions (language NSFW, but who pays attention to that these days?):

Maybe I’m a cynic, but it seems simple to me: nobody is calling Washington a swing state. Their electoral votes are off the table – at least until the parts of Washington outside the Seattle/Tacoma metro area secede and join Idaho.

That’s why Trump “doesn’t care” about Seattle.

Or Pelosi, for that matter. Nothing’s moving Washington out of the “hard blue” column any time soon – least of all an insurrenction led by the children of her biggest donors.

Minnesota? It’s at least hypothetically in play, especially if suburban and exurban Republicans, alarmed by the collapse of the Twin Cities, and bolstered by the President’s strong alternative, turn out in apocalyptic numbers. As they will have to to stave off a complete Democrat majority at the Capitol.

And that’s why everyone – not just Trump – is letting Seattle turn into Beirut on the Sound.

The Daily Caller published transcripts from the Chicago City Council’s “meltdown” during the riots.

And it’s not pretty. It’s the sound of modern “progressive” urban government getting its ass smacked by reality.

A couple of the excerpts are of particular interest (emphasis added by me):

“A war zone.”
Lopez said his district had turned into a “war zone” as gang members were taking neighborhood security into their own hands. “It’s just like a war zone right now … The gang members are now getting involved, walking around with AK-47s, threatening to shoot, I hate to say it, black people,” Lopez said, whose district, the 15th Ward, has a large Hispanic population. Lopez previously said in a May 31 tweet that members of the Latin Saints gang were “engaging and chasing looters” in his ward.

Huh.

So – gang bangers in a city with rigid, comprehensive gun control, have “AK47s”?

Weird.

“There aren’t enough cops.”

“Right now and I’m sure I echo what everybody else has said, there aren’t enough cops. We’re getting overwhelmed in this thing,” Burke said on the call. The mayor agreed. “It’s hard to fathom that we have 13,404 [officers], the highest headcount that we’ve had in probably a decade, and given the volume of looting, it feels like we’re a tiny police force,” Lightfoot said.

“Private citizens, they’re going to become vigilantes, they’re going to protect themselves, because the police aren’t reachable, there’s not enough men or women to respond when the call is made but the call doesn’t get answered,” Burke added.

Wait – you mean if government doesn’t do one if its few legitimate jobs – preserving order – then people will do it themselves?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Political scientists love to talk about the Spectrum, left-wing parties versus right-wing parties.
I look at it more from the point of view of government control. Anarchists are on one end, no government control it all. Totalitarians are on the other end, government control of everything.
Pure Liberty is pure license. It’s the right to do anything you want at anytime to anybody. We saw that during the riots. That’s anarchy. Nobody wants that.
Which means that in order to have real Liberty, there must be order. And ordered Liberty requires restrictions on what people can do. And restrictions require someone to enforce them, with force if necessary. Which means police.
If Minneapolis seriously goes forward with the plan to abolish the police, they are intentionally heading toward Anarchy territory. It’s no wonder businesses are uninterested in rebuilding there, and residents are talking about fleeing.
Joe Doakes

WIthout order, prosperity is impossible.

WIthout prosperity, liberty is pretty much academic.

Without liberty, prosperity is pretty much a “ruling clicque” thing.

The tension between liberty and order is what kept the founding fathers up all night writing the Constitution.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking out of the local Korean joint with a container of Galbi. As he’s committing to going out the door, MyLyssa SILBERMAN, reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats.

SILBERMAN: Mister Berg.

BERG: Er, hi, Ms. Silberman. What’s new?

SILBERMAN: Not much time for small talk. I’m doing a story about cancel culture.

BERG: You mean, about how the titans of the progressive media, the Guardian, have their roots in laissez faire policies regarding slavery and the future of the American union during the civil war?

SILBERMAN: No, no. I’m looking for examples in the world of politics.

BERG: You mean like the town in Alabama whose entire base of wealth was built on the products of slavery, but posits itself as a bastion of “progressive” thought today.

SILBERMAN: Alabama?

BERG: Yuuup.

SILBERMAN: Go ahead. I’m listening.

BERG: This town in Alabama built its entire civic wealth between 1815 and 1865 on textiles – an industry based on slave-produced cotton – and tobacco, which was…

SILBERMAN: …raised by slaves. Yes. Yes. Keep going.

BERG: And they voted for the Democrat, pro-slavery candidates for President, in 1860 and 1864.

SILBERMAN: I already hate them.

BERG: And then, when the Civil War was well underway, they undertook a pogrom against not only blacks – whom they blamed for the war, and for the economic hardships the war brought them – but against whites that supported abolition, destroying their businesses in an epic riot.

SILBERMAN: Perfect. Probably fundamentalist Christianists to boot. These people need canceling.

BERG: I’ll say.

SILBERMAN: What town in Alabama?

BERG: It was…wait, did I say Alabama?

SILBERMAN: You did.

BERG: My bad. It was New York City. Your hometown, if I recall.

SILBERMAN: (Stands, stunned).

BERG: You’ve been canceled.

SILBERMAN: (Jaw flaps, but no sound comes out)

BERG: Try the dok buk uhm. It’s divine. (BERG walks out)

And SCENE

… if anyone has asked Minneapolis’s various city council members if this applies to them?

Remember when the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Governor “Nanny” Evers’ lockdown?

And cheeseheads swarmed into bars, sans masks and social distancing, et avec about two months worth of socializing to catch up on?

Remember the carnage the Twin Cities’ media and Karen class predicted?

EIther will they, if they have anything to say about it:

There were 203 positives out of the total 7,589 test results, or 2.67%. That’s the fourth day in a row the rate was below 3%.

Testing had been above 10,000 daily since last Tuesday.

The state’s death toll is now 646. That’s down from Sunday’s report of 647; the state Department of Health Services (DHS) says a patient in Milwaukee County was counted twice.

The last time the state had no COVID-19 death reports was May 17.

I’ll bet a shiny new quarter that locked down (except for protesters) Minnesota gets and stays sicker than Wisconsin. 

And Iowa. 

And the Dakotas.  Both of ’em. 

And Florida. 

Any action on that bet, Progs?

Our “elites” lecture us about climate change, then fly home in private jets.

They “order” us to stay indoors even as the actual evidence starts to show that the “models” they used, if they were put out by the private sector, would be considered frauds.

As parts of the “elite” get wealthier beyond belief, the media gets ever more flooded with puff pieces touting the virtues of insect-based diets, “high-density” living and “new normals” that sound ever more miserable…for the rest of us?

Worried that our new tech superstars are censoring speech on “social media” just as the political and media superstars do in the traditional media – and their kids at the universities are doing the same, literally and physically, in the working world just as they did in college?

Concerned that political “elites” like Lisa Bender to AOC consider whatever you *have* earned in this world to be a “privilege” to be extracted, statutorily by the IRS or by force by whatever group decides, with a nudge and wink from local politicians whose younger relatives they are, to take it at the point of a Molotov Cocktail and a baseball bat?

Think you’re seeing society sorting out, not by race, but by class, with the “elites” forming an ever-more cloistered pseudo-aristocracy, which gets to play by its own rules?

Well, you’re right. You are.

Hayek’s classic of conservative thought was titled The Road to Serfdom. It envisioned a different mechanism for this decline into feudalism – the telephone was the only social medium, back then – but he was, as always, right.

Joel Kotkin now argues the world is becoming more feudal – an “overclass” that becomes wealthy by turning everyone else, including most of you – into dehumanized production machines, no better than the gilded age robber barons did?

The situation can be saved – but victory is by no means assured, nor easy.

I’ gonna urge you toi read the article. Then the book. And my NARN people are calling his people as we speak.

…I have gotten more furtive, almost samizdat, questions from liberal/progressive friends of mine about buying and carrying firearms than ever before. Other “out” shooters (or in my case, gun rights activists, since all my guns fell into Mille Lacs in 2018 and I’m terrified of them anyway) have reported the same. And on Saturday, the line out the door at Bill’s Gun Shop in Robbinsdale, while admittedly exacerbated by “social distancing” requirements, was still an hour long. To get in the door. Not to mention finding a firearm, and going through the paperwork, if applicable.

The opportunity is there for law-abiding gun owners to win a whooole lot of the support we’re going to need to weather what may well be a challenging decade in Minnesota.

Stay tuned for more.

Republicans have the temerity to point out where DFLers are completely screwing the pooch.

Damn those Republicans:

I, myself, prefer “curb-stomp”.

North Carolina speedway declares its stock car race a “peaceful protest”:

A North Carolina speedway drew a crowd of more than 2,000 spectators in defiance of the state’s coronavirus restrictions after declaring the race a “protest.”

The governor’s office had warned Ace Speedway in Elon earlier this week that a crowd of more than 25 would violate the state’s Phase 2 coronavirus restrictions.

But news outletsreport that more than 2,000 attended a race Saturday night. A sign from management outside the speedway said, “This Event is held in Peaceful Protest of Injustice and Inequality Everywhere.”

That might be what I need to do to have that NARN Tenth Anniversary party.

Minneapolis CIty Council president Lisa Bender thinks having something worth protecting is…

…well, you know how this goes by now:

Minneapolis is Maoist.

There’s really nothing else to be said.

My brother died one month ago today.  No funeral – they were illegal.  Covid. It was SCIENCE!

Then the Covid rules changed: we could have a 10-people funeral.  That wasn’t enough for both our side and the widow’s side of the family to attend.  No funeral.  SCIENCE!

Then the Covid rules changed again: we could have a funeral, 25% capacity, social distancing, masks for all.  SCIENCE!

We’re burying my brother tomorrow.  Afterwards, we’ve rented a picnic shelter in the park to eat box lunch, watch a tribute video and share memories.  Well, some of us are.  The picnic shelter is open on three sides but has roof and one wall so it’s considered a “structure.”  There’s a 10-person limit in the picnic shelter.  The rest of us must stand outside and take turns rotating through, with masks, and social distancing.  Because Covid, you know.  It’s SCIENCE!

I can’t help noticing the crowd at the George Floyd memorial.  Capacity, social distance, masks – whatever happened to all that Science? 

Maybe it’s like rock, paper, scissors: Fire burns Science; Fire wins.  Instead of following the rules like a good little boy, I should have burned down a Black neighborhood. 

I’ll keep that in mind.

Joe Doakes

Well, torching any low-income or immigrant neighborhood will actually do…

NPR’s Mara Liasson, over the weekend, observing the anniversary of D-Day. Or, more accurately, “observing” the anniversary of “D-Day”, really.

When talking with progs about “Anti”-Fa – a group whose origins were as the Communist version of the Nazi “Brownshirts”, and nothing else – I’ve found “progs” (and “elite” media types like Liasson fall out into two camps:

• They judge the book by its cover and nothing more; “Antifa is anti-fascist! That’s a good thing!”. Comprehending this level of see/hear/speak-no-evil ignorance is like looking at a tornado for the first time; you’ve heard about ’em, you’re read about ’em, but they’re incomprehensible when you see ’em in person.
• They think the idea of Big Left having an army of thugs is a necessary evil – or a necessary good, depending on the relative level of depravity.

I’m going to guess Liasson, cocooned in the DC area, is the former.

The DFL bobbleheads who run the Twin Cities? Much more mixed.

To: Governor Walz and the Minnesota DFL
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant who passed College Biology
Re: Help me underdstand this

Governor Walz

So let me get this straight. According to you;

Covid19 is a lethal epidemic.

Attending protests to seek the re-opening of the state during the middle of the pandemic threatens grandma and, since “essential workers” will bear the brunt of any outbreak, likely racist as well.

But when one is attending mass demonstrations, even ones involving violence and property damage, against a politically-acceptable cause, or attending a funeral in a packed church full of un-masked people, it’s utterly acceptable from an epidemiological standpoint.

Unless there’s tear gas involved. Because then, Covid is a deadly pandemic.

Remembering, as always, that y’all are the “party of science”, not febrile superstition, yessireebob.

That is all.

Business gurus are excited that working from home will become The New Normal, everyone will embrace it, and it’ll be great.
I wonder about weird things like the Americans with Disabilities Act.
If I were in the office, I would have a sit-stand desk and ergonomically correct chair, with my keyboard positioned at the proper height to avoid a repetitive motion injury that results in a workers comp claim.
If I’m working from home, doing the employer’s work on the employers time, shouldn’t I be sitting at the employers desk? Aren’t they supposed to supply me with the correct equipment and if they don’t, can I make a workers comp, disability or discrimination claim?
We’ve all been good sports til now, working on a laptop at the kitchen table.  As we realize it’s just a scam,  that we are in no danger,  the goodwill will fade.  The transition will not be as easy as they think.
Joe Doakes 

Perhaps. The ADA wrangling that Joe is talking about is going to put a lot of lawyers’ kids through school.

That being said, my home office is a home-made stand/sit desk (hacked Ikea parts, with a bar stool for when I don’t feel like standing), five monitors on two computers, and everything else I need. It’s like a private corner office. The only thing I miss is – and I mean this sincerely – my co-workers.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking along University Avenue, looking unsuccessfully for “white supremacist” graffiti. Distracted, he misses Avery LIBRELLE, who is roaming the streets with a cell phone, reporting people who aren’t socially-distanced enough to the governor’s snitch line. They nearly run into each other.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Uh, hey, Avery…

LIBRELLE: It’s time for cities to de-fund the police!

BERG: Huh. Seems…illl-advised.

LIBRELLE: It’s high time we did it! It’s the only way to cure systemic racism.

BERG: Right. And deaths from house fires will stop when cities abolish fire departments.

LIBRELLE: We’ll come back to that.

BERG: Huh. Hey, what could go wrong?

LIBRELLE: Camden, New Jersey did it! In 2012! And guess what, Merg? Crime fell!

BERG: Yep. It “fell” because in 2012, it was literally the most dangerous city in the US, of any size. A city of about 77,000 people in 2010 – about the size of Fargo or Duluth – it had 69 homicides. You do the math…

LIBRELLE: Hey…

BERG: Sorry, my bad. I’ll do the math. That’s a homicide rate well over 100 per 100,000 – triple that of Detroit.

LIBRELLE: And guess what, Merg? Crime has fallen!

BERG: Along with the entire rest of the US. And it’s “fallen” to 31 per 100,000. Which is, if it were a city over 200,000, would make it the fifth most dangerous city in the US, after Saint Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It’d be tied with Kansas City.

And they do all that magic with a “re-organized” police force double the size of the old one .

LIBRELLE: (Has become distracted) Hey – is that a white supremacist I see over there? With an assault rifle?

BERG: It’s a city road crew worker with a jackhammer.

LIBRELLE: I”d better see what Vox.com says about it…

BERG: Er…about crime?

(But LiIBRELLE has wandered away already)

And SCENE

Watching Mayor Trudeau crying with all the convincing grace of a rented mourner over the casket of George Floyd, at the not-remotely-socially-distanced funeral (violating the Mayor’s own directives, after a week during which he abandoned a fifth of the city to looters, reigned over press conferences that looked like outtakes from “Reno 911”, got caught like a deer in the headlights when asked what his “plan” was, got bailed out by the marginally-less-incompetent State administration, blamed the destruction (accompanied as it was by thick layers of left-sympathetic graffiti) on nearly nonexistent “White Supremacists” (who managed to somehow leave a thick layer of leftist graffiti and leave an amazing number of clearly labeled “black owned” stores more or less unscathed), I have to wonder…

,..is there some level of unintentional comedy below which the voters of the City of Minneapolis won’t go?

To: Midtown Global Market
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Cancel This

In response to the “revelation” that one of the Holy Land Deli’s employees – the daughter of the owner, himself an immigrant and inspirational story – had some “racist” social media in her past (as in, years ago, while a teenger) you canceled the Holy Land’s lease in your Midtown Marketplace building, at Lake and Chicago, effective immediately

I’m going to guess if you went through the social media feeds of every single employee in your building who grew up in the era of South Park and Idiocracy, you’ll fine something regrettable.,

Speaking of regrets? While I’ve been a fan and customer of Midtown Market ever since it opened, I will never spend another dime there as long as you follow through on this absurd, selective, and by all appearances grudge-driven “cancellation” of the Holy Land space.

I urge you to reconsider forthwith. This is the lowest form of cultural cowardice, I won’t reward it with my time or money, and I’ll be urging everyone I know to do the same when they are able to get out and start spending money again.

M Berg
The Midway

My permit to carry expires in July.  I finished the class May 19th and
called the Sheriff for drop-off instructions on the 22nd.  Sorry, you
have to make an appointment to drop off your renewal application. 
Earliest date is June 9th.

Just called me today (June 3rd).  They have to re-schedule. They’ll be
on lock-down June 9th, I won’t be able to get into the building to drop
off the paperwork.  Soonest I can come is June 26th.

Seriously?  Look, it’s just dropping off paperwork, there’s nothing to
it.  I’ve had a permit to carry for years, my record is clean, it’s
utterly straight-forward.  Why can’t the paperwork be dropped off by
mail, or by email?  If I can’t come into the building, why can’t staff
come out for curbside service like Applebee’s?  Why is it so difficult
for government to do their jobs?

It’s almost as if Sheriff Fletcher is taking advantage of the Covid
crisis and the Floyd riots to intentionally make it difficult for people
to get their permits.  Which is weird, because I never got that vibe
from him before.  The last time he was involved with permitted carriers,
it was to offer us training which was controversial (because he used the
list of permit holders to invite us) but sensible (because if you’re
going to be carrying, you ought to be practicing).  It’s just weird.

Word to the wise – if your permit to carry is up soon, start the renewal
early!

Joe Doakes

Urban pols are not, as they say, wasting thecrisis.