Trump goes to hostile areas – Minneapolis, the Nationals’ stadium.

“Progressives” – spoiled, entitled public unioneers, academics, PR flaks disguised as journalists, “students” and non-profiteers, eternal beneficiaries of a prosperity they had nothing to do with creating – act like spoiled toddlers, continuing the tantrum that started three years ago and looks unlikely to stop until 2025 at least.

In Minneapolis, hundreds of testosterone-raging post-adolescent rage-o-holics and their soy-boi significant others/servants beclowned themselves and ganged up on the occasional lone, elderly or diminuitive rally-goer, presumably feeling the earth move in the process.

And in DC?

And I have to think that Trump has got to be looking at more such appearances in “Blue” territory; these outbursts of toddler tantrum-mongering have got to be racking up the contributions, the votes, and the moderate Democrats thinking “OMFG, who are these clowns?”

Mayor Carter, presiding over the worst murder rate in almost a quarter century (even as crime outside the metro continues to fall) is holding a series of meetings:

In the midst of an uptick in gun violence in St. Paul, Mayor Melvin Carter announced on Monday that he’ll host three community meetings about public safety.
Carter said last week he’s considering proposing a supplemental public safety budget to the City Council. The Council is slated to vote on next year’s city budget in December.
The community conversations will be at the following St. Paul locations:
Thursday, Nov. 7, 6:30-8 p.m., Central Baptist Church, 420 N. Roy St.
Tuesday, Nov. 12, 6:30-8 p.m., Rice Recreation Center, 1021 Marion St.
Saturday, Nov. 16, 1-2:30 p.m., Arlington Hills Community Center, 1200 Payne Ave.

I’m going to go out on a limb, and guess that ending pre-emption and “universal” background checks will be the only subjects seriously discussed.

It’s about time for President Trump to suggest that Congress repeal Title IX and eliminate Girls’ Sports on the grounds that since Boys can compete in Girls sports simply by declaring themselves Girls, having a separate sports system is a wasteful, duplicative, expensive boondoggle. 
We’ll just have one system, winner take all. True, boys will win everything forever, but that’s where we’re headed anyway so might as well jump right into it.
The money we save can be used to build The Wall.
Joe Doakes

Joe, of course, is aware of Berg’s 21st Law: “When it comes to “progressive” policy, yesterday’s absurd joke is today’s serious proposal and tomorrow’s potential law.”

And satire, like Joe’s sarcastic note, is closer to the news than the news is. 

I mean, is it any dumber than the WaPo’s headline about Al-Baghdadi? 

One suspects had Obama ordered the raid that erased Baghdadi, the headline would have been a little less…conciliatory toward the man who brought seventh-century horrors back to the world, murdering thousands in ways designed to cow and horrify his enemies, the stuff of legends of the Mongols.  

California congresswoman Katie Hill is a pretty loathsome person (and that’s without even referring to  her ideology, which seeks to do to the entire country what it’s done to Califonia, Newark, Chicago, Detroit, NOLA and Baltimore), whose sex scandal – she was apparnently doing with her husband (asterisk; west coast version), a female campaign staffer, and another guy on the side – is nothing more than her doing with three other people what the entire Democrat party is trying to do to the United States without the courtesy of buying dinner [1] first…

…but this article (which has NSFW photography, unless you work in a pr0n theater, an art gallery, a tabloid, or the curriculum office of a blue-city elementary school), among many others, makes a key story point out of the notion that she has a  “Nazi” tattoo in the headline – a reference to a tattoo visible just outside her fun zone in one of the bluer photos in the article

Thats just wrong.

The Iron Cross was the emblem of Prussia, and then the German monarchy, for hundreds of years, up until 1918, and of the Republic until 1933. The Nazis kept it around as a decoration (the “Iron Cross” was sort of like the American “Bronze Star”), but it was German, not Nazi.

Those Eisernkreuze can be distinguished from the regular German ones by the, y’know, swastika the Nazis incorporated.

It’s what the kids call “Cultural Appropriation” these days.

But after the war, the “Eisernkreuz” survived Germany’s stringent “De-Nazification” with flying colors, seventy years ago, to become part of the utterly non-Nazi Federal Republic’s regalia. It is still the emblem of the German military; you find it today on all German planes, tanks and ships.

Not defending Ms. Hill – that’s MSNBC’s job. Just checking facts.

Something nobody in the media seems to care about doing anymore.

[1] And heaven forefend the Democrats socialize “dinner”; it’ll be a 2,000 page bill that costs $400 billion a year for ten years and feeds us dogfood.

Saint Paul’s new garbage hauling program is a rousing success and if you don’t vote to continue it, taxes will increase dramatically to pay for the five-year contract the City illegally signed.
Mayor Carter’s statements in the linked article defy common sense, casting doubt on his credibility.
We have significantly reduced emissions from our garbage trucks.  Really?  You monitor that, somehow, and have data to prove it?  Can I see it? 
We have significantly reduced wear and tear on our streets, too many potholes.  Really?  In just the few months the program has been in operation, you’ve been able to measure the wear and tear on streets, and have data to prove it?  Can I see it? 
We have significantly reduced truck traffic through neighborhoods where children are playing. What, in the streets?  Well, there’s your problem right there – those kids gotta learn to stop running out in front of garbage trucks. 
And Hizzonor is going to address gun violence, not by hiring new cops but by having a meeting with his cabinet, as soon as we can get those key players together.  What’s the hold-up? They’re your cabinet, Mel.  Don’t they report to you? 
It sounds as if the Mayor is reciting talking points, not taking action.  I wonder if that’s because he has no idea what to do about the mess he finds himself in?
Am I the only one getting the impression this Mayor is not ready for prime time? 
Joe Doakes

Why, it’s almost if the Saint Paul DFL has taken “Perception is Reality” to its logical extreme.  

The last living Bataan Death March survivor in Brainerd – and, one suspects, one of few remaining anywhere – turns 100:

A once unthinkable centennial looms large on Walt Straka’s calendar.
It’s led to a host of reflections for the former prisoner of war, who didn’t believe he had a snowball’s chance of surviving Bataan, let alone 10 years after the war.
Let alone to the age of 100.
But, nevertheless, it’s real and it’s here. On Thursday, Oct. 24, Walt Straka is 100 years old, the last Minnesotan survivor of the 60-mile journey of torture and death, followed by 43 months of incomprehensible captivity in sub-human conditions. He also stands among the few remaining members of a shrinking club: the veterans of World War II and all their living, breathing connections to a century of seismic changes and events.
“Oh God, I never dreamt I’d ever get that old,” Walt said. “I never thought I’d get there. It’s almost unbelievable. It’s almost unbelievable. I’m happy. I’m just thankful to be alive.

It needs to be pointed out that Brainerd had a higher than normal concentration of Bataan survivors; a National Guard tank battalion from the town was sent to the Philippines and fought against the Japanese invasion in the opening weeks of the war. 64 left Brainerd; three died in action, 29 more in captivity.

I grew up influenced by these people, pretty much daily; several of my high school teachers, and principal, were veterans. They didn’t talk much about the war – some showed it (one teacher still flattened out on the ground when some idiot would pop a paper bag behind him). But the examples they set, behaviors learned during the best years of their lives spent fighting overseas, that stuck with me. Calm down. Focus. Get your damn job done. Your feelings and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee – what do you have to deliver tangibly?

Happy birthday, Walt Straka, and as many more as you can manage, God willing.

Why isn’t Trump getting credit for this?


Joe Doakes

Heh. 

Along those lines:  while I’m the Twin Cities’ best feminist, I am actually 104% male, so I have to wonder; do women ever feel patronized by all the “First Female…” <fill in the event> hype?  Especially given that the event took place on the shoulders of a lot of brilliant men who built the space program from its inception?

Also – am I the only one who feels like his teeth are being filed with a cheese grater at the term “HERstory?”

Without government, who would “inspect” the retro-pinup girls before they visit vets at the VA?

Pin Ups for Vets received an email from the San Diego Veterans Hospital on Monday banning the calendar and telling them the outfits of their volunteers must be scrutinized in advance. Additionally, the costumed volunteers will not be allowed to hand out their signature calendar.
“It’s insulting that our outfits have to be preapproved,” Gina Elise told the Washington Examiner. “It feels like it’s discriminatory behavior. Is that happening with every single visitor that comes in the hospital?”

Feeling proud, yet?

…if “educators” – secondary and university-level – in the “humanities” know anything about the history of the “humanities”.

Teachers are worried about teaching the otherwise (ostensibly) brilliant work of artists whose personal lives are, well, problematic, in the #MeToo era:

For Martina Myers, a high school English teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, Sherman Alexie’s novel “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” seemed too good to be true: funny, well-crafted and focused on Native American youth.
Her students at Piñon High School, many of whom struggled with substance abuse and mental illness, took to it immediately. They wrote poems in response, on native pride, addiction, self-acceptance and suicide attempts.
So when Ms. Myers learned last year of the allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Alexie, who issued a statement admitting he had “harmed other people,” she felt two waves of betrayal — first for her students and then for herself, a survivor of abuse.
“When the #MeToo movement happened I told my story,” Ms. Myers said. She knew some of her students, too, had experienced sexual assault.

Where do these hamsters come from?

The history of arts and humanities is clogged with deeply dysfunctional people. The drive to be an artist seems, in fact, to be closely linked with personal and emotional instability.

And the “artists” that fit neatly into the bounds of what’s considered socially acceptable today largely aren’t that interesting.

Why, it’s almost as if someone is trying to dumb society down, or something…

I knew actors were an odd bunch, but now the Guthrie Theater is embracing its inner drag queen with a special event.  And on Armistice Day, no doubt to honor all the cross dressers who died in the trenches.  
I don’t think I’ll be going. 
Joe Doakes.

I could not be dragged – as it were – kicking and screaming to the event.

It’s become a little like the classic movie “Groundhog Day”.

A new scandal comes that will supposedly rend the Trump Administration to its core.

It turns out to be a damp squib.

Lather, rinse, repeat, until 2020.

Why do people still trust the media at all?

Joel Kotkin – who’s moved from being America’s foremost urban planning critic to one of our best social critics – has noticed:

This divide can be seen in public perceptions of the news media. Although somewhat improved from its low point in 2016, only 40 percent of Americans, according to Gallup, trust the media, compared to over 50 percent in 1999. As befits the media’s increasingly partisan stance, the small improvement over 2016 comes almost entirely from Democrats. Only 15% of Republicans and barely a third of independents now trust media compared to nearly 70% of Democrats.
Once the news business had enough sense of propriety and professionalism to at least maintain an appearance of objectivity.  There’s ample reason, as Glenn Reynolds suggests, to see many mainstream journalists as little more than “Democrats with bylines,” willing participants in what long-time leftist and fiercely anti-Trump reporter Matt Taibbi describes as the upper bureaucracy’s “permanent coup” against Trump. If this “coup” now actually succeeds, it will be one that will simply accentuate hostility to the media among a large segment of the population.

The whole thing is worth a read, naturally.

And it matters, because democratic society needs institutions – law-enforcement, courts, a news media – that it can trust to hold all parties accountable.

And this past decade has shown that we really have none of them.

According to at least one bit of research (qualify accordingly), turns out testosterone isn’t linked with rage and other mood problems.

On the other hand, this factoid is cited as an apparent part of the ongoing effort by Big Lefty Culture to erase the perception of differences between the sexes, so there’s that.

Greta Thunberg is used to swimming in the warm water of the adulation of the deluded blue-state masses.

But getting outside the moldy blue confines of the parts of this country that take CNN seriously is a whole ‘nother thing.

Even if it’s the red part of Canada:

I’m a member of a gun club just East of The Cities. Every member volunteers two days to serve as range safety officer while members of the public use the range to sight their hunting rifles. It’s always an eye-opener to see all ages, races, genders, incomes, occupations, coming together to get ready for their annual family deer hunt. And uniformly, they are grateful to have a place to do it.
If Republicans made a bigger show of supporting hunting, I think they’d have stronger grassroots support.
Joe Doakes

I agree.

And gun rights groups – while rightfully disdaining all too many hunters’ myopia over gun rights (all too many believe the fight over the AR15 will never affect their deer rifle or duck gun) – would do well to reach out to hunters as well.

Oh, look – the Trib has another badly worded poll intended to elicit results to be used as blunt-force DFL rhetoric. In this case, on Minnesotans’ views on gun registration – AKA “Universal Background Checks”

And yes, it’s dishonest. I add emphasis:

A strong majority of Minnesota voters support universal background checks on all gun sales and a ban on semiautomatic military-style rifles like the AR-15, a new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll has found.

It’s not “gun sales”. It’s all transfers; lending or borrowing, inheritance, any transfer at all.

And – again – there is no way for “background checks” to be “universal” without trackjng the various transfers through a firearm’s lifetime.

Each of those transactions over time is a data point.

In the world of IT, we have a term for tracking data points; a database.

You can not call this anything but gun registration – and given the DFL’s tack on guns, you can not look at it as anything other than a prelude to confiscation.

Not. One. More. Compromise.

2015: “There is no deep state, paranoid conservative”.

2019: “Of course, there’s a deep state. And it’s a wonderful thing”.

Of course, it’s only Michelle Cottle, who is a one-woman argument in favor of a gender pay gap.

Lara Logan has figured out the problem with modern journalism – namely, having spent the past couple of decades leading with bias and advocacy have left them less trusted than used-car dealers:

Today, as a whole, we are not at our best. Just ask people in towns and cities across this country, as I do. Everywhere I go, people tell me they have lost faith in journalism. It comes from all people, all walks of life and all political stripes. Frankly, I don’t blame them. Responsibility for this begins with us. It is a fact that the vast majority of journalists in this country are registered Democrats. The colleges we come from are similarly dominated by one political ideology. This matters today because the reporting has become so one-sided. As we try to figure out why people have lost faith in our profession, let’s start by being honest about who we are.

I would feel the same way if the media were tilted in the opposite direction. It is the one-sided nature of this fight that disturbs me. Is that what the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the first amendment?

We dismiss conservative media outlets for their political bias, but we don’t hold liberal media outlets to the same standard. Many journalists who claim to be objective have publicly taken a political stand, saying the urgency of the time justifies a departure from journalistic standards. Yet they ask us to believe their reporting is still unbiased?

There may no be a more self-unaware institution in America today than Big Media.

In response?  The first rule of being part of the big media club is you never speak against the big media club.

I don’t suspect Logan will be doing lunch in New York or Washington again any time soon.

Imagine the Mayor of some Southern city announces Kamala Harris is not welcome in his town but since she’s coming, he extends an open invitation for all KKK to protest her visit in the spirit of “free speech.”  
The city demands she post $1 million security bond “in case there’s trouble.”  The police chief assigns dozens of cops to line the route Harris’ supporters must walk, wearing riot helmets, slapping nightsticks into their palms, holding the leashes of snarling police dogs, “to maintain public order.”  
The Health Department temporarily closes all food vendors within several blocks and disables all restrooms in the rally building, for fear of a “potential cholera outbreak.”
Every one of these actions has some non-discriminatory reason.  Would Harris have a valid complaint for voter intimidation?  Would those actions be a violation of voters’ civil rights? 
Joe Doakes

C-130s full of ACLU and Justice Department lawyers would be winging their way southward before the last porta-potty got chained up.

Actual anti-fascists coming to the U of M:

A global debate over democracy and Hong Kong’s relationship with China boiled over at the University of Minnesota on Friday, as Hong Kong protesters marched through campus in the state’s first known organized event. 
The organizer of the march, a Hong Kong native and university student who remained anonymous due to fear of retribution, said he hopes to raise awareness in Minnesota about Hong Kong’s democratic struggle. The demonstrators spent the afternoon chanting and carrying signs that read “FIGHT FOR FREEDOM, STAND WITH HONG KONG” and “SUPPORT THE HONG KONG HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY ACT.”

Amazingly, the counterprotest wasn’t actually upper-middle-class white kids with “Anti”-Fa banners, but rather students from the “Peoples’ Republic”. Never mind them, they’re on the payroll for just that sort of thing.

Mayor McDreamy tries to intersectionalize.

Swings.

Misses:

Especially conservatives on “the internet” who happen to be women, gay, black, latino, or any other that Mayor McDreamy’s party thinks are “theirs”.

But if you’re worried about you’re safety, I’d be happy to provide security.

For $500,000.

Safe space abolished, snowflake:

He deserves a medal.

With all the ominous news about President Trump lately, I’ve been considering whether to vote Democrat.  But who to choose? 
Beto O’Rourke supports the Menstrual Equity Act to guarantee women everywhere have access to feminine products during their “time of the month.” And he’s outspokenly in favor of banning certain guns, the Second Amendment be damned. Bold positions, those.
Marianne Williamson, who warned of Trump’s dark psychic forces, assures voters she’s not a kook.  Every politician should have learned the lesson from Richard Nixon – that never works, it only confirms what we all suspected. 
Kamala Harris seems nice.  She was a prosecutor who may have refused to let an innocent man off death row.  And she started her climb up the ladder of success the old fashioned way – on her back.  Plus, she’s Negro so she has the moral authority to address the shameful legacy of slavery.  Well, nearly.  She’s certainly as much a descendant of African slaves as Elizabeth Warren is a descendant of Native American Indians. 
Hillary Clinton says Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein are Russian moles, planted in the primaries to help Trump win.  Hillary’s an expert on Russian collusion, she would know.  Plainly, I can’t vote for either of them.
I dunno, it’s almost as if all the people calling Trump’s pot black have black kettles of their own.  Maybe stick with the devil I know?
Joe Doakes

As with all current Democrat messaging, it’s about gulling the gullible, not convincing those who check their facts.

Not really sure who this person is…

An abortion is not killing. Do you think a miscarriage should be investigated like a murder? What about a stillborth? Should men pay child support for unborn children? https://t.co/7TGVNY66g2

— Katherine Wertheim (@KathWertheim) October 14, 2019

…but if the Democrat messaging strategy is, as it seems, to be to say pretty much anything without bothering with fact, logic or reason, it seems to be working.

Beto O’Rourke takes a quick break from dishing up the hopey-changey to go all tough-guy.

Democrats will take your guns by force.

Q: "exactly how are you going to take away weapons from people who do not want to give them up?"

Beto O'Rourke: "That weapon will be taken from them. If they persist, there will be other consequences from law enforcement." #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/tbBb8WYhFn

— Trump War Room (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TrumpWarRoom) October 16, 2019

Come to think of it, he looks a little like a young Janice Reno.