They Were Doing So Well

Posted on by
3

The Homicide rate in Minneapolis was way below recent trends…

…well, “was” is the operant word, here, isn’t it?   Shootings in the past 36 hours killed five, and left five more injured, several critically:

The shootings occurred at the following locations.

  • 25th Street and Bloomington Avenue, just before midnight on Tuesday.
  • Cedar Avenue and 17th Avenue at 1 p.m.
  • 3300 block of Harriet Avenue at 2:25 p.m.
  • Girard Avenue North around 3:50 p.m.
  • 15th Avenue South and Lake Street around 7:45 p.m.

In the first shooting near 25th Street and Bloomington Avenue, police say two men, two women and a teenage boy were found shot at the scene: Four were inside a vehicle, and another was on the sidewalk.

The 17-year-old boy, a 20-year-old woman and a 27-year-old man were pronounced dead at the scene, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said. The remaining man and woman were taken to Hennepin County Medical Center with life-threatening injuries.

Welcome to Spring in Minneapolis!

Feeling Seen Yet?

Posted on by
8

Tim Walz is not the savviest politician who ever kissed a baby or shook a hand.

But yesterday’s “knucklehead” admission may be the dumbest own goal he’s ever made:

Admitting that one is a marketing charade is a bold move, Cotton.  Let’s see how it works. 

Ed Morrissey notes:

In that sense, perhaps this is Walz’ attempt at sincerity — by acknowledging what seemed pretty apparent all along. What’s mystifying is why Walz would admit publicly that Harris was pursuing a race-based calculation in her running mate rather than, y’know, finding the best person for the job. And not just in the one-heartbeat-from-the-presidency sense either, but also in the ability to campaign and to compete against J. D. Vance.

Like candidate, like running-mate, I guess.

A Lion At The Bar, A Kitten On The Battlefield

Posted on by
10

For all the aggressive rhetoric that accompany his flouncing and jazz hands, Tim Walz is not exactly a self-assured man.

He almost comletely avoided debating Scott Jensen in the 2022 Governor tilt – limiting it to one debate at a small TV station in Rochester.  For good reason

How good, we learned last summer

It would explain his debate performance in Minnesota; he avoids them like they’re a…

…well, there’s nothing Walz avoids more than a debate.  Even deployment. 

I could fling more pithiness.  Indeed, this weekend on the air I most likely will.

But I’ll leave it to John Kriesel – former state representative, and veteran who lost two legs in Iraq – to do that:

It’s gonna make a presidential run kind of interesting.  Presuming he gets anywhere near endorsement. 

Ellison Meets Meatgrinder

Posted on by
1

The House Fraud committee got a chance to ask Attorney General Ellison two hours worth of questions yesterday.  

It didn’t go well for the Attorney General:

To recap – the top lawyers in the state was working against his client, on behalf of peole who were giving him and his son a ton of money.  This was in the lead-up to the “Defund the Police” vote in 2021, when Jeremiaih Ellison  barely held his seat, and four other anti-cop council members lost.  

I don’t think we’re done with revelations about Ellison’s activities on this issue.  Just a hunch. 

Bill Glahn at the Center of the American Experiment has a thread on the testimony. 

LIttle birts tell me there’s more to come.  Stay tuned. 

Question

Posted on by
2

Is Nicole Mitchell the most self-unaware person between Chicago and the Sierra Madre?

Or is the Senate DFL’s social media intern in the dark about Minnesota news because she’s working in as boiler room in Manila?

Lucky’s Gonna Lucky

Posted on by
6

First, the good news: in the last week or so, the Minneosta Gun Owners Caucus won its long legal battle to extend carry permits to citizens over 18 years old.   The Caucus has long held that it’s absurd that Minnesota restricts carry permits to people over 21 years old, when they can sign contracts, join the military, and are held fully responsible for their actions as adults at 18. 

Several levels of courts agreed, and the US Supreme Court refused to hear Keith Ellison’s final round of appeals.   While I’m sure Minnesota’s regulatory state will squawk, qualified 18 year olds can now exercise the same rights, as citizens, that the rest of us do. 

Which didn’t land quite the same way with everyone.

“Lucky” Rosenbloom, who runs a…er, unique shop on Dale at Saint Anthony, just off I94 in Frogtown, a long-time permit trainer, isn’t going to take students below 21:

“It’s more important to have safety,” Lucky Rosenbloom, a state-certified firearms instructor, said. “These kids are impulsive. They’re not going to think. Some of these kids still think that they’re invincible,” he added about his decision to not have 18–20-year-olds in his classes.

“I’m ruling it out. I will not teach [them],” Rosenbloom added. “I’m not worried about the backlash.”

Well, that backlash is already starting to roll in.

And roll, it did:

Now, Lucky has always been a colorful character. He’s got a knack for publicity.

And it’s his business.  He can serve anyone he wants, unless they’re gay, trans or have any other special political privileges; it’s not like he’s a baker or anything. 

And it’s not like I was going to Rosenbloom for my refresher training, so it’s not like I can boycott the guy. 

But it’s a bad look. 

If They Held A State Of The State, And There Were No Donald Trump…

Posted on by
2

…could Tim Walz have just skipped the whole thing?

After squandering an $18B surplus and, by the way, governing like a dictator (and not even a competent one), Walz’s state of the state mostly tried to gaslight the viewer into thinking Donald Trump caused the state’s problems:

…not to mention trying to haul another bid for national office slowly, painfully off the ground.

Smart people were not fooled:

…but DFL messaging isn’t aimed at the smart people. 

Too Obvious

Posted on by
1

It hardly bears saying that if it weren’t for double standards, the DFL would have no standards at all. 

But does anyone seriously think that if someone used AI to make and circulate a caricature of Melissa Hortman, Brion Curran or Erin Maye Quade capturing all the “crazy woman” cliches that this one does…

…of Republican rep Krista Knudson, it’d launch an army of femiminsts and “feminists” into paroxysms of rage?

Undue Process

Posted on by
16

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Liberals keep saying “due process” as if it’s a magic phrase like “abracadabra.”  Tim Walz’ idiot daughter uses it, claiming Trump would have denied Jesus Christ due process in order to deport Him.  The implication is that if Jesus had received due process, He would not have died on the Cros

 
According to the Bible, Jesus Christ DID receive due process.  He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane on Thursday evening, was convicted after a trial before the local magistrate (Herod) on Friday, lost His appeal to higher authority (Pilate), and had His sentence of capital punishment promptly executed by crucifixion on Calvary.  He elected to represent Himself at trial and did not contest the charges.  “Due process” didn’t save Him. It wasn’t supposed to.  That wasn’t the point of His death.
 
And due process won’t save illegal aliens from deportation.  Any illegal alien who admits to being a member of the MS-13 gang will be deported.  Any illegal aliens who denies being a member of the MS-13 gang is still in the country illegally and therefore will be deported.  Reciting the magic phrase “due process” won’t alter the outcome for them any more than it did for Jesus.
 
Joe Doakes

 To paraphrase my late crim-def attorney, “‘Due Process’ isn’t a synonym for a jury trial, or even justice.  It means ‘the process in the statute and case law'”. 

A “red flag” process, with its ex parte hearings and lopsided standards of evidence are a travesty – but they are “due process”. 

Visa holders sign an agreement acknowledging that they can be deported without ceremony for violating the terms and conditions of their visa.  That is the “due process”.  

I’ve never been to a Holiday Inn Express, but even I know this.

Blast From The Past

Posted on by
4

I was out at the Mall of America a week or two ago, perhaps for the second time since 2020. 

And as with the other time, I wondered – whatever happened to Landen Hoffman?

Yep, I remembered the name – the little kid hurled off the third floor balcony at the MOA six years ago by a deranged man. 

Turns out he’s doing pretty well. And as with most Twin Cities crime and political news, you have to go to London to get the news. But the kid’s doing well.

‘So many miracles happened [since then],’ Kari said in a phone interview Friday with DailyMail.com. ‘It was a big, long journey.

‘It took time for him to be back to him… He had to learn who he was again.’

That journey of getting Landen ‘back’ took around three years and was rough on the whole family. Kari watched her son’s personality change from sweet and kind to angry and mean to back again.

Read the whole thing. The kid’s mother wrote a book about it. Can’t honestly say I blame her.

That kind of episode had been exactly my worry when I used to take my then-little kids to the Mall. I saw those third-level balconies and thought “this is a headline waiting to happen”. I made sure the kids and I walked across the concourse from those not-nearly-tall-enough railings, or that I was watching everyone around me very carefully. And this was 15-20 years before the Landen Hoffman episode.

The lunatic who threw him over the edge is up for parole in seven years, by the way.  Five’ll get you tel Mary Moriarty helps the perp sue the family for a share of the book revenues.

The Press Conference I’d Like To See: Take 2

Posted on by
6

TAKE 2:  A couple of key paragraphs disappeared from this one on Friday, the first time I tried it…

SCENE:   A press conference at the Minnesota State University system.   Spokesperson Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK stands nervously in front of a podium, facing a gaggle of barely-engaged press, and Mitch BERG of Shot in the Dark/AM1280/HotAir. 

BIRKENSTOCK:   So, with the changes in federal funding, it appears the Minnesota State University system is going to have to make unprecedented hikes to tuition:

BIRKENSTOCK: Any questions?

BERG:  Yes – wouldn’t that $18 billion in surplruses that the DFL wasted in 2023 and 2024 have come in handy for this?

BIRKENSTOCK:  No hablo ingles…

BERG:   Si no hubiéramos desperdiciado el excedente, ¿seguiría siendo un problema?

BIRKENSTOCK: No further questions.

BERG:  That was English.

(But Birkenstock has left the podium)

(And SCENE).

Like A Walking Hunter Biden Painting

Posted on by
2

Q:  Why is Joe Biden having, according to his agent, trouble scoring bookings for his big comeback tour

Former President Joe Biden referred to black children as “colored kids” Tuesday as he explained what motivated him to get involved in politics during his first public remarks since leaving office.

Biden, 82, used the outdated and offensive term while telling an anecdote about his childhood move from Scranton, Pa., to Wilmington, Del., in which he noted that before his family relocated to the First State, he’d “never seen hardly any black people.”

“I was only going in fourth grade,” he said as he recalled his mother driving him to Catholic school in Wilmington. “And I remember seeing kids going by, at the time called ‘colored kids,’ on a bus go by — they never turned right to go to Claymont High School.”

With an asking price of $300K per speech, one might expect he’d bring some, y’know, speaking chops to the proverbial table. 

Alas – not so much:

During a television debate with Trump in June last year, Biden performed poorly, repeatedly losing his train of thought, which led to calls for him to step back as Democratic presidential candidate.

One unnamed student told the paper that the protesters’ chants accusing Biden of genocide were “faint and indistinguishable inside the classroom, but still audible”.

Other students who attended the event said Biden celebrated the way Harvard refused to give in to Trump’s demands, saying: “Harvard stepped up in a way no one else has. You should be really thankful.

Hm. Think about it. Harvard is superannuated, corrupt, a hotbed of nepotism, wealthy yet dependent on its ties to government…

Harvard basically is Joe Biden. 

Headline: 2027

Posted on by
5

Minnesota Star Tribune, April 17, 2027:

FEDS INDICT 20 IN WATER FRAUD SCANDAL

The US Attorney for Minnesota has announced indictments of 22 executives and board members ‘”Watering Our Future”, a Methodist-affiliated non-profit ostensibly dedicated to providing water at public events.

“WOF spent $230 million in state money”, said Assistant US Attorney Ashley Bouffant, “but we’ve found no evidence they ever provided any water to a single person at a public event”. 

The headline in 2025?   “Minnesota lawmakers push for free water access at public events“. 

The bill, introduced in February by Rep. Leigh Finke, (DFL-66A) has been added to a larger House commerce package. If passed, it would mandate that all qualifying events provide at least one of the following:

  • Free bottled water

  • Permission to bring in sealed water bottles

  • Access to refill stations for those who bring empty bottles

  • Exemptions: art galleries, museums and presentation spaces where beverages aren’t allowed

“This bill just kind of came to me last summer when I was having conversations with people about the heat,” Finke said. “There are numerous ways for this to be successful at very low stakes and with high rewards.”

Any government program opportunity, at best, for creating a new transfer of wealth from the real world to the political class; at worst, another opportunity for fraud and graft.

And under this version of the DFL, let’s just leave out the “at best” part.

I’m just waiting to see what special interest group can carve / has carved out a piece of the public water action.

Because you know there’s gotta be one.

Schooled

Posted on by
8

Joe Doakes, looking at Como Park through his rear-view mirror, emails:

Harvard is pushing back against President Trump’s demands for reform. President Obama praised them for resisting. He is joined by several Thoughtful Republicans Of Moderate Bona fides On Neither Extreme Side (TROMBONES, the new and more acceptable word for people formerly known as RINOs) who agree that yes, racial discrimination is bad, and viewpoint discrimination is bad, and antisemitism is bad, but is that any of the federal government’s business, particularly at their elite private Ivy League alma mater?

Harvard’s defenders have a point. But so does Trump.

The purpose of federal student loans is to help poor kids go to college. The purpose of federal research grants is to subsidize schools who can’t afford to hire good people. Why should grandma pay income tax on her Social Security to subsidize leftist hatred at a billion dollar private school?

Trump should announce that henceforth, student loans and research grants will be based on need – individual and institutional. Harvard can subsidize its own students and researchers to hate whomever they like on their own nickel.

Joe Doakes

I’d love to see schools fill out a FAFSA form and spend a few weeks waiting to see if they get qualified.

So The Question Of The Day Is…

Posted on by
5

…what is Boss Hogg trying to get ahead of, here?

What does the little guy know about Hillary?

Ex-Cel

Posted on by
3

XCel Energy’s sponsorship deal with Saint Paul’s major arena is over:

All I know is that after twenty years of calling it “The X”, the new sponsor is going to have to be Excedrin, Microsoft Excel, X, Space X, or Ex-Lax, or I’m never going to remember it.

Oversold

Posted on by
6

Look – I’m all for women.  My mom was one.  So are my sister, daughter and daughter in law.   Go, women!

But the trifle that is modern feminism has gone a little overboard with claiming “firsts for women”.  One of my more glaring recent examples was the Saint Paul City Council, who are indeed seven women (or were until one left, and was tentatively replaced by a man), but aren’t really running the city because they aren’t much of a council. 

But this week’s “Blue Horizon” flight seven prominent female space tourists had moved into a solid first place. 

Among the tourists was pop start Katy Perry, who imbued the event with, er, immense gravitas:

Community notes for the win.

I imagine going into space is something of a “high”, so I won’t make the inevitable “someone snuck some THC gummies onto the flight” joke, pinky swear…:

So, like David Strom, I don’t really care if people with cash and connections wants to pay for a trip across the Karman Line.  The revenue will help advance private sector space flight.  Yay free enterprise. 

But…Astronaut?

Perry’s only real training for the event was getting measured for her designer jumpsuit, before being shot to the edge of space as a passenger. 

Unlike Valentina Tereshkova, who went into space 62 years ago, after at least qualifying as a cosmonaut and pilot. 

Or Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.

Or even Christa MacAuliffe, the teacher killed aboard Challenger, who at least went through some version of astronaut training, among the many other American women who’d qualified and been into space by that point.

Sorry to say, Perry was about as much an “astronaut” as Laika the Space Dog – although Perry at least survived her trip.

Glad we could settle that. 

It Ain’t Over

Posted on by
7

Even as the “Feeding Our Future” scandal appears to shift into a new gear with the release of the recording of Keith Ellison appearing to:

  • put the lie to several of his statements about when he did or didn’t know about the fraud scandal
  • tell some future defendants that the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) could “chill” the ardor of other agencies to investigate them
  • accept campaign donations for his son and himself,

…it appears we’re nowhere near done with scandals in DFL-run Minnesota:

And while Feeding Our Future is just pedestrian stuff like fraud, jury tampering and maybe racketeering, this one gets into TMZ-fodder:

Gabriel Adam Alexander Luthor (a.k.a. Langford), 39, and Elizabeth Christine Brown, 42, were arrested in Las Vegas, where they made their initial court appearances in U.S. District Court in the District of Nevada earlier this week.

The indictment alleges:

Luthor and Brown intentionally devised and carried out an overbilling scheme for medical services provided through their neurofeedback therapy business, Golden Victory Medical, LLC (GVM). Luthor and Brown were in a relationship and together founded GVM in 2018…In total, GVM submitted hundreds of thousands of false claims to insurers, many of which the insurers paid, resulting in an estimated loss of over $15 million. Millions of dollars in fraudulent proceeds were transferred from bank account to bank account and ultimately retained by Luthor and Brown. Luthor and Brown used the funds to purchase a 9000-square-foot mansion in Eden Prairie and to pay their living expenses and the living expenses of other girlfriends of Luthor’s, who lived with Luthor and Brown and assisted in the fraud scheme.

 

It’d sure be a great time to have a functional state GOP with an election coming up, wouldn’t it?

The Mean Girls Club Strikes Again

Posted on by
4

Saint Paul’s much-ballyhooed all-boss-lady City Council not only can’t do its job.

It breaks the law while doing it. 

Jane McClure is a long-time writer for the Highland Villager. 

And as she points out, it seems the Council is walking all over the state’s Open Meetings Law:

The Open Meeting Law prohibits serial meetings, or meeting one-on-one or in smaller groups to make decisions before a public meeting. Serial meetings can be seen as ways to avoid public discourse or to reach some kind of agreement in advance of an open meeting. This depends on the facts of each matter, of course.

Serial meetings can also occur through electronic or written communication, including phone conversations, emails, texts and social media.

City Council members contend that they have long discussed issues one-on-one before taking major votes. This practice predates the current council. That still doesn’t make it right.

Discussing is one thing. Making decisions in private is another. Making promises that lead to decisions is another.

 

The rule of law is the first casualty of all-“Blue” government – in city hall as well as on the street. 

Just In Time To Start Another Audit

Posted on by
10

An audit of the Southwest Light Rail project – which is years late, and running at well over double the original projected cost, and (this is my longtime prediction) will end up over $3 Billion when it finally lurches to completion, got a hearing at the Legislature earlier this week. 

A years-long audit of the construction of the embattled Southwest Light Rail line has concluded the Metropolitan Council had issues with “non-compliance” and a lack of “internal controls” managing the mega project, which is now expected to cost taxpayers $2.86 billion.

The presentation by the Office of the Legislative Auditor also gave frustrated lawmakers another opportunity to tee off on Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle. 

“You can’t blame it on anyone else, blame it on the consultant, you are the decision maker,” said Sen. Mark Koran (R-North Branch) at the hearing on Monday morning.

The audit highlighted huge discrepancies in estimating the costs of hundreds of change orders on the project, including one for the construction of a barrier along the Kenilworth Corridor, which drove up the price of the project by more than $40 million.

How about we just start the next audit now, to save time?

Ellison On Tape

Posted on by
7

In the six years Tim Walz has governed Minnesota, and especially in the two years the DFL, the state’s bespoke version of the Democratic Party, has had unfettered control of the state’s government, Minnesota has become something of a hotbed of corruption. 

The marquee case, so far, is “Feeding Our Future”, named after a non-profit that allegedly took hundreds of millions of dollars of state and federal Covid relief aid, and “spent” it on feeding centers that served no meals and fed no hungry people.  

Federal money is involved, so the Feds have been doing the heavy lifting on prosecutions this past couple of years.  Cases are going to trial, and sentences are being handed down.  

But in a bombshell Wednesday evening, Bill Glahn of the Center of the American Experiment (a conservative think tank run by Ed and my former radio colleague John Hinderaker) released an audio exhibit from the federal cases, appearing to show Minnesota’s controversial Attorney General, Keith Ellison, discussing a wide range of subjects of interest in the case with several people involve in the case at various levels:

American Experiment has exclusively obtained the complete 54-minute, 44-second audio file of a private December 2021 meeting between state Attorney General (AG) Keith Ellison and key figures in the Feeding Our Future scandal. 

As I wrote last week, the audio file was named as Exhibit 710 on the evidence list presented to the court by Aimee Bock’s defense attorney, Kenneth Udoibok. The recording was not offered into evidence during the six-week trial that concluded last month, with Bock’s conviction on all seven counts she faced.

As a document, it exceeds expectations. Voices can be heard clearly and are clearly identifiable. The highlights, which are many, tend to be front-loaded. I’ve included below some clips from the meeting to highlight a few points.

Glahn presents the receipts, as the kids say. In this clip, Ellison discusses how his flex can get other state agencies to back off:

The “Jodi Harpstead” referred to is state’s former Human Services commissioner – no stranger to other problems, and who, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune, resigned last January as controversy swelled around the department.  

Here, Ellison pledges to fight on behalf the non-profits:

Perhaps most revealing, according to Glahn, the tape changes the timeline presented by Ellison in the past.  

At 30:38, Ellison interrupts, saying, “This is the first I’m really hearing about it.” At 37:08, Ellison says, “This has not come to my attention until now.” These private statements in December 2021 completely contradict his September 2022 public statement:

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and his office have been deeply involved for two years in holding Feeding Our Future accountable. 

Two years. Do the math. 

The entire tape is included in the Center’s story. 

Pop your popcorn.

 

Calculated Risk

Posted on by
13

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Scott Johnson from Powerline has a column explaining why Trump’s tariffs are calculated incorrectly and are therefore too high.  He gives a formula from some academics showing that the inelasticity of trade was improperly factored into setting our new rates.
Missing the point, Scott.  The point is foreign governments have been taking advantage of our generosity for years and it’s time to fix that. Yes, we’re a party to GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) but renegotiations have been stalled for decades – too many rice bowls at stake – so Trump’s unilateral new tariffs are a way to break the stalemate.
 
The specifics of Trump’s tariffs don’t matter, 10% on penguins or 90% on Vietnam, these numbers are just the opening round of negotiation.  It’s like the guy selling sombreros on the beach in Mazatlan, or the guy selling rugs in the souk in Marrakech.  His opening offer is ridiculous because you are expected to bargain with him. That’s the accepted practice in that culture.  So, too, in every real estate deal, which is where Trump learned his lessons.  You always set the listing price high to give yourself room to negotiate down.  And now we’re seeing it’s also true in setting foreign trade policy, as more than four dozen countries have already lined up to renegotiate their trade policy with us.
 
Scott’s column is so typical for RINOs. The other side can state any lie and it’s accepted at face value while our facts are scrutinized and debated endlessly, with the result that the opposition’s policies get enacted but ours get nibbled to death by ducks quacking around our ankles.  With friends like that . . . . . . .
 
Joe Doakes
 
Gonna reject the premise that Scott’s a “RINO”.  
 
Might he be guilty of, as Selena Zito once said, “taking Trump literally but not seriously?”  Perhaps.  It’s easy to do.