Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
A general in Iran claims Iran has been preparing for all-out war on the US and its allies for years.
No doubt the Obama administration is pondering this message for subtle clues. What could it mean? Is it a plea for carbon credits? Living-wage jobs? What do Iranians really want?
Joe Doakes
It’s something about launching nukes if any state implements Voter ID, I think.
When I was a kid, country-western was trying its darnedest to cross over with pop music; the Nashville power-brokers were pushing to try to rake in some of that Top 40 money. From the early seventies to the mid-eighties, C&W was sodden with bloated pop pretenders – the Eddie Rabbits and Ronnie Milsaps and Lee Greenwoods and Barbara Mandrells that peaked during that lost 15 years, not to mention the legit country singers – Dolly Parton among others – who bottomed out during thqt woebegone stretch.
Standing athwart that current, yelling “stop” before Waylon and Willie, before the Highwaymen and Dwight Yoakam and all the Outlaws of Country, much less the “country roots” revival of the late eighties, was Merle Haggard.
Even before I worked my first country gig (KDAK in Carrington ND, in 1982), I was drawn to the fact that Merle was a legendary anti-hippie:
And while he was never a flashy player, he was no slouch on the guitar.
Anyway – if you’ve been under a rock or on a ballistic missile sub on patrol, Haggard passed away yesterday at 79, leaving behind a C&W scene dominated by American Idol winners and frauds like “Florida-Georgia Line”.
Just when we needed him most.
The Republicans of the Upper Midwest have made their distaste for Trump pretty obvious. The Donald lost Minnesota and Iowa bright and early, and went on to tank in Wisconsin and, over the weekend, North Dakota.
I won’t say I predicted it in as many words – but this bit summarizes what I’d hoped and believed; Trump’s braggadocio doesn’t resonate with quiet, modest, stoic, passive aggressive Minnesotans.
Most of us have heard of “Minnesota Nice” — the friendly, reserved, play-by-the-rules behavior favored by that state’s residents. But Wisconsin has a similar Scandinavian (though more German) culture, as do North and South Dakota. When the Upper Midwest of Europe relocated to the Upper Midwest of the United States, they brought their politeness, understatement, and emotional restraint with them.
All of these characteristics are diametrically opposed to the Trump ethos of baseless braggadocio, histrionic complaint, and conflict as first resort. Critics of Minnesota Nice cast it as barely masked passive-aggressiveness, but active-aggressiveness is considered not only unseemly, but unmanly.
Scandis find virtue in stoicism. When you’re shoveling a sidewalk buried in three feet of snow, your neighbor doesn’t want to hear your complaints — especially since she’s 68, has a bum leg, and cleared her driveway before the sun rose. Just do what needs to be done, and would it kill you to put a smile on your face?
Invoking “Minnesota Nice” is lazy – but it’s not wrong, either.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Hillary Clinton clarifies that children have no Constitutionally protected rights until the moment of birth.
This is a critical point. Roe v. Wade turns on a woman’s right to privacy, to be free from government snooping in her personal life. The unborn child’s right to liberty and pursuit of happiness never appear in that case because the law assumes that unborn child doesn’t even have the first right – a right to life – without which, none of the other rights matter.
It’s exactly the same legal analysis that applied to Negros in the Old South, or to Jews in Nazi Germany: they were technically homo sapiens but they were not “persons” in the eyes of the law. They had no rights. They could be murdered with impunity. Nowadays, Democrats have taken us one step further – we fund the murder with taxpayer dollars to supplement the profits from sale of infant body parts.
Abortion-for-convenience is the most sacred plank in the DFL party platform and it’s unconscionably evil. Never stop reminding them of it.
Joe Doakes
It almost make slaveholders look rational in comparison.
First, let me establish a couple things.
I’ve never really been into comic books. It just wasn’t really a thing when I was a kid. I won’t say “you stopped reading comic books when you were 12” where I came from. But I guess I did.
And while I am a pretty “live and let live” kind of guy, who is perfectly fine letting people have their own foibles and peccadilloes, I’ve always found over-the-top comic book fans inscrutable. That’s a polite way to put it; I’m tempted to mock intolerant people who get into holy wars about the DC and Marvel “universes”.
Comedy? Or documentary? You be the judge.
Like Star Trek fans writing each other out of their wills for preferring “Next Generation” over the Gene Roddenberry original, or Star Wars fans literally – I’m not making this up – screaming in anger over George Lucas’ re-editing of the Cantina scene in Srar Wars. I’ve always found the obsessions of fanboys worth a chuckle: “Comic Store Guy” may be the only character on The Simpsons that really sticks with me; he’s so brilliantly dead on, I can practically smell the waves of postadolescent funk rolling off of him. There just isn’t much in comic book “culture” that’s ever interested me. (Except, of course, for The Flaming Carrot, which was a glorious spoof of comic book “culture”, and Queen and Country, which was just cool. Shut up).
And adaptations of comic books? X-Men? Captain America? Iron Man? Avengers? I’ve never watched any of them. I really just don’t care.
This ain’t hell. But it’s close.
So I’m probably as surprised as you are that I ever tuned in AMCs “The Walking Dead”. Moreso, in fact; I’ve always hated the horror genre, zombie movies in particular.
But I binge watched the first four seasons on Netflix; for seasons five and six, the weekly installments are just about the only thing I ever watch on my actual TV anymore. It’s generally more or less capably written, frequently well acted, and by hook or crook generally winds up being a fairly addictive watch, even for this famously nonaddictive viewer.
“Hey – didn’t you play an almost identical part in Jericho?
But the most interesting thing about The Walking Dead is it’s timing. Think about previous shows that won the title of “number one show on television”; they cover a wide stretch of the media waterfront, obviously, but most of them have something to do with the mood of the nation at the time.
And for the last six years, the most popular show on American television is about a small group of misbegotten friends and neighbors surviving a civilization-ending catastrophe. In the age of Obama, the number one show through most of the administration has been about complete, absolute, existential collapse.
And so I watch.
A cliffhanger out of a mole hill: if you have been near a browser or television for the past few weeks, don’t kid yourself; you’ve heard people talking about TWD’s season six finale, last Sunday night.
There has been much Sturm und Drang about the episode; superfans, especially the ones who go back to the comic book, have referred to it as a “jumping the shark” moment.
Of course, they tend to be the same people who get disappointed by episodes where there is more story and less chopping off zombie heads, so I take that with a grain – no, a block – of salt.
So I won’t go that far. Fact is, I expected a lot from last Sunday’s season finale – and year in, year out, the show has delivered.
But I have a couple of big beefs with the story, anyway.
“Negan”. The comic version. Not that it makes much difference at this point.
The first is with the idea of the Omniscient Villain. To fully explain this, I have to throw out a bunch of spoilers – so I won’t.
But the worst, dumbest, most insulting overstretch of the imagination and over suspension of disbelief?
One of my favorite characters is Abraham – a grizzled veteran of combat, not just against zombies but against actual armed, trained humans.
Patton’s armored column drives toward the Elbe River. No, just kidding. It’s the group, debouching from their chosen combat vehicle.
The season finale asked us to accept the notion that a supposedly seasoned veteran of actual armed combat, would accept the idea that, although the party is at war with a large, powerful, human enemy (not to mention a countryside awash in zombies), he would allow Rick to load the entire group, including the sick pregnant girl, into a Winnebago – a flimsy, unreliable, unarmored, heavily-glassed-in vehicle that is the absolute worst combat vehicle ever designed – and blunder around the post-apocalyptic countryside, like they’re Chevy Chase on the way to Wallyworld, with no scouts, no reconnaissance, no mutually supporting teams, no overwatch?
Tactically speaking, this might have been a better formation than they tried in the Season 6 finale. Even with red coats and pipes and drums.
Not only did I not buy it, I groaned out loud. These idiots survived the apocalypse for two years?
This is what happens when comic book writers take over.
Note to producer Scott Gimpl, if you happen to be reading this: it was a terrible ending to a good season. Don’t do it again.
The Obama Department of “Justice” – part of an administration utterly beholden to Big Left, including Big Infanticide – is trashing the Constitution…
…again. As usual:
Agents seized all video footage from his apartment, along with his personal information, David Daleiden said in a Facebook post. Daleiden, the founder of a group called the Center for Medical Progress, said agents left behind documents that he contends implicate Planned Parenthood in illegal behavior related to the handling of fetal tissue.
Center for Medical Progress spokesman Peter Robbio confirmed the social media posting is authentic, but he declined further comment. He said Daleiden lives in Orange County.
Harris said in July that she planned to review the undercover videos to see if center violated any state charity registration or reporting requirements. She said that could include whether Daleiden and a colleague impersonated representatives of a fake biomedical company or filmed the videos without Planned Parenthood’s consent.
Since when does “journalism” require the subject’s consent? (Yes, I know – some states require consent for recordings. Generally, “Journalists” get a pass on that, when reporting stories in the public interest).
This is Big Infanticide (and Big Media) calling in its markers with the Administration.
Western Civilization. It was a fun run. Adios, Representative Constitutional Republic. Welcome to the dawn of Authoritarian Bureaucracy.
…and, lets be honest, inevitable.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
This report claims deaths caused by Muslim terrorists are on the rise, exponentially. I remember when Muslim terrorists were the JV, when they were petty crime, and when attacks were proof they were losing.
Joe Doakes
There’s a JV involved.
It’s in Washington.
It’s nothing new for America’s pollyannaish, historically-and-economically illiterate left to jabber “why can’t we try Scandinavian-style ‘Democratic Socialism?’ What do they have that we don’t?”
The correct answer is “they have small countries – about the same population as Minnesota – with socially, ethnically and economically-homogenous societies (seriously – ethnic and social homogeneity is so ingrained in Scandinavian society, they have a word for it – Janteloven) with traditions of simultaneously-uplifting-and-suffocating communitarianism dating back hundreds of years”.
You could also add “…and a willingness to reassess how their sustainable their systems actually are in the real world“, which is something the American left flops at.
Obama apparently had so much fun during the original Housing Bubble, he’s setting up another.
President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.
In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.
Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.
Read: Again, the government will socialize the risk, while privatizing the rewards.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is shopping in the dairy aisle at Target in Roseville.
Suddenly, Avery LIBRELLE rounds the corner. With LIBRELLE is Ashley FIGG, a young woman of apparently mixed but minority-ish ethnicity.
LIBRELLE: Merg! It’s time for you to admit your privilege!
BERG: OK. I was born into an intact family who made sure I stayed in school, kept my pants zipped until I could support a family, and ensured I grew up knowing that actions had consequences.
LIBRELLE: No, no, no. You’re white! I want to introduce you to Ashley Figg. She is a student at Macalester College.
BERG: Ms. Figg.
(FIGG glowers at BERG)
LIBRELLE: We’re going to have a debate!
BERG: A debate?
LIBRELLE: Yes. First, Ms. Figg.
BERG: …I”m not really…
FIGG: You are white. You have privilege.
LIBRELLE: Your turn, Merg.
BERG: Um, OK. Ms. Figg, what is it you would have us do about this “privilege” you talk about.
FIGG: The fact that you even ask is racist.
BERG: Um, how do you figure?
FIGG: That’s racist, too.
BERG: Seeking clarity in the discussion is “racist?”
FIGG: You’re using your power over me. That’s racist.
BERG: That’s just bizarre.
FIGG: F**k you. I hate you. I hope you die.
BERG: (Turns to LIBRELLE): Er, Avery? What’s the…
LIBRELLE: We should stop the debate…
BERG: …um, yeah?
LIBRELLE: Because clearly, Merg, you are racist.
BERG: What, now? I never mentioned race.
LIBRELLE: You were using your power, being a racist. Being a racist, race is endemic in everything you say, and do, and don’t say, and don’t do. Right, Ashley?
(FIGG glowers)
BERG: Lavrentiy Beria called. He said “dial back the kangaroo”.
LIBRELLE: And now you’re mansplaining.
BERG: (Looks beyond FIGG and LIBRELLE). Hey, look – it’s Hillary Clinton! And she’s giving out suckers!
(LIBRELLE and FIGG wheel around, as BERG slips away)
(And SCENE)
(LIghts fade up in screening room. BERG is sitting in the middle of the room. A few rows behind, covered in popcorn debris and spilled soda, are Edmund DUCHEY and CAT SCAT, bloggers with “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com” a possibly fictional Minnesota liberal blog. )
(DUCHEY leaps to his feet, scattering popcorn debris in all directions)
DUCHEY: Merg! Unless you can prove every word in that film short was true, you’re a liar!. (Pauses to wipe drool from his chin).
BERG: It’s satire. It’s meant to illustrate larger truths through a caricature of people and events. In this case, that the left’s social justice warrior class has become simultaneously obsessed with virtue-signaling, McCarthyistic witch-hunting and public shaming of dissenters, while simultaneously becoming less able to state a coherent case.
SCAT: The fact is, the law says you have to have a degree in satire from an Ivy League school to practice it!
BERG: You’re making that up.
DUCHEY: So you’re saying it never happened? Hah!
BERG: Actually, of the dozens and dozens of these “dramatization” scenarios I’ve written in recent years, this one may be the least fictional of all.
DEUS (EX MACHINA, via thunderstorm). You’re kidding?
(Urine stain appears on DUCHEY’s pants)
BERG: (Looking upward) Nope. It pretty much happened.
DEUS EX MACHINA: Wow.
(And SCENE)
Whenever someone on the left mentions Hillary Clinton – ever! – you, and I, need to repeat these seven words that came straight from her entitled piehole:
Earlier this evening, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters noted how Hillary Clinton committed an obvious gaffe for someone who is supposedly radically pro-abortion. On NBC’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked, “When, or if, does an unborn child have constitutional rights?” Mrs. Clinton responded that “the unborn person doesn’t have constitutional rights.”
If you don’t believe this, then how do you believe rights are endowed by our creator?
It’s simple. You don’t.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Two men shot and killed five Black people in an ambush shooting at a cookout in the poor part of town. Police had no leads.
TV reporter posts comment on television station’s Facebook page:
“You needn’t be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday. … They are young black men, likely in their teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They’ve grown up there. They know the police. They’ve been arrested.”
She’s been fired because her comment was “inconsistent with the company’s ethics and journalistic standards.”
Question: if she HAD been an FBI Behavioral Analyst, would the FBI be required to fire her for giving the exact same profile of the suspects?
Does the Truth depend on the speaker’s Credentials?
Joe Doakes
What? Is that a trick question?
And I’m gonna guess the FBI’s behavioral analysts are going to be getting a call from HR before too terribly long.
A Saint Paul substitute teacher who went to the press about having had the crap beaten out of her by a seventh-grader is being blackballed by the SPPS:
On Tuesday, Egan said, she was subbing at St. Paul’s Johnson Senior High School when her employer, Teachers On Call (TOC), called. A manager told her the St. Paul Public Schools had contacted TOC to say Egan could not sub for the district again.
Candice Egan, a St. Paul substitute teacher, said a student repeatedly shoved her, including into a wall, at a St. Paul school on March 22, 2016. (Courtesy photo)
Candice Egan (Courtesy photo)
“She claimed it was because I didn’t notify Teachers On Call about what happened and that no one at Creative Arts (High School) knew what happened, and that I had gone to the media about it,” Egan said. But Egan said none of that was true.Egan said she had told plenty of people at Creative Arts what happened, as well as Teachers On Call. And she spoke with the Pioneer Press after a reporter initiated contact with her.
“I think this is happening because I talked about it,” Egan said. “I don’t know if it’s because I filed a (police) report or not.”
The SPPS is reacting to the collapse in discipline in the schools…
…by waging a PR campaign to convince everyone that there’s no problem.
The next time the DFL jabbers about being “for the little guy” and “fighting for the 99% against the 1%”, wave this bill in their face.
Then let them read it. Then read it to them and explain what it means, since they won’t get it. Because they’re DFLers.
It’s Senate File 2405. It does two things, both of which should make a putative “liberal”, to say nothing of conservatives, yak up their skulls in disgust.
Plugged Into Your Wallet: The bill directs the state’s various electric power utilities to start building more charging stations, so that electric cars have some place to plug into.
And to pay for all these dictated power stations, the utilities are being directed to…
…raise rates for everyone in Minnesota.
That’s right – every Minnesotan that uses electricity from the grid will be paying for the infrastructure to support the fun and frolic of the electric car hobbyist. Every struggling family in North Minneapolis, every family of every unemployed Iron Range miner, will be paying for that charging station in Edina. via their power bill.
Or they can freeze.
But it gets worse.
Dear Poor People: Thanks Suckers: If you’re in the market for a $70,000 Tesla Model S, a $160,000 BMW i8, or even just a $35,000 Chevy Volt, you get a $7500 federal tax credit. To this, the bill would add a $2,500 state tax rebate. The rebated is funded from the General Fund – in other words, from general tax revenue.
This rebate, by the way, is not means-tested. So when a CEO in Edina buys a $35,000 Nissan Leaf for their daughter’s “going to Macalester” present, or a Twins player nabs a BMW, they’ll get that $2,500 rebate…
…paid for by the gas station attendant on Forest Street in east Saint Paul who’s trying to coax another year out of a 1996 Buick Century he got for $3,000 on Craigslist five years ago; from the family in Thief River Falls that’s hoping the transmission in their Dodge Caravan doesn’t bonk out before they get their IRS refund; from the guy in the ’04 Corolla that just topped 200,000 miles.
In Other Words, the bill robs from the poor to give money to the well-to-do who are following the latest PC trend.
When people say “politics is the least effective way to allocate resources”, this is what they mean.
This is today’s DFL.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Despite passionate denials by the Pollyanna Pair — Dog Gone and Penigma — I remain convinced that Brussels and Paris are linked. They are small unit actions in an slow-motion war being waged by fundamentalist Muslims against the West. The incomparable Fernandez explains why it’s worse than I thought.
In the six months since the Paris attack, Belgian authorities searched the Muslim-dominated neighborhoods where they believed accomplices were living. Authorities couldn’t find the bombers because they were being hidden by their neighbors.
The Brussels bombers were not lone wolves acting against the wishes of the Muslim community. They were supported and protected by members of the Muslim community. When Dutch householders hid Jews from Nazis, we applauded. But when Belgian Muslims hide suicide bombers from law enforcement, we have a different view.
Digging out the remaining co-conspirators and future martyrs will be arduous if the Belgian government even has the stomach for it, must less the money and manpower to answer the question: When will we know we’ve got them all? How far down does the tap root go? When will we be safe?
Geert Wilders, candidate for Prime Minister of the Netherlands, says if he wins he’ll crush Islamic terrorism, close the national borders and de-Islamize The Netherlands. Sounds like a new buzz-word has been coined, more catchy than Reconquista 2.0. One could pass it off as racist hatemongering except Wilders presently lives under a death sentence because of a fatwa issued against him by Imam Feiz Muhammad.
Now the really big question: are there embedded terrorist cells here, in the United States? Maybe even in our own Minnesota Muslim community? The San Bernardino attack and US Attorney Luger’s recent indictments suggest there may be. What are we going to do about it?
Joe Doakes
What are we going to do?
Where “we” means “our current ruling class?”
I’m going to guess “vigorous virtue-signaling”.
Here’s Senate File 2405 – the DFL’s wealth transfer bill that’d force lower and middle-income Minnesotans to pay for electric cars and infrastructure for upper-middle-class and wealthy Minnesotans.
Here’s ♫ today’s music playlist
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today!
Today on the show, I’ll be talking about Mike Freeman’s decision not to charge the officers involved in the Jamar Clark shooting. Also – to a liberal, the whole world has to be a safe space.
Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
When I was a kid, the world’s social justice warrior crowd warned us that the world was headed for inevitable catastrophic famine. Some of the very voices behind “global warming” today – Paul Ehrlich springs to mind – warned (and profited greatly from warning) us that India would be down to under 100 million people by 1990, and that Africa was going be pretty much revert to nature, its human inhabitants all starved out. Even the US was going to be the subject of “inevitable” food riots by the mid-eighties.
Naturally, the only possible remedy was to socialize the world economy.
Today?
People are wondering with a straight face if we have “too much food”, as the world has more overweight than malnourished people for the first time in history.
I fully expect to see a Kyoto Treaty for fat, sooner than later.
Because outside the Twin Cities,every once in a while, the editorial cartoons slip up and tell the truth about Democrats;.
The Rochester Post-Bulletin printed this editorial cartoon about Rochester Representative Kim Norton yesterday:
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Of course, there’s always room for improvement. During a session in which representative Norton has wasted taxpayer time jabbering about exploding bullets” and numbers from surveys that wouldn’t rule in elementary school music teacher, I think I could come up with something pretty good, here, too…
Yeah, that works too.
Yep. Of course the Capitol shooter was a lefty.
I’m not going to say every homicidal nutcase is a lefty.
But it’s pretty close.
(Commenters who want to take exception? Provide solid specifics, or have your comments mutilated for my pleasure. I can be a graceful host the rest of the year).
Reverend Dawson joins my rogues gallery of Lefties who’ve committed violence on their fellow human in the name of “progressivism”.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Ron Fournier, political reporter for National Journal, claims Hillary should not be prosecuted because there’s a higher standard to prosecute someone who’s running for public office.
Well, no, there isn’t. But maybe there should be?
Let’s have a show of hands – who remembers a Democrat prosecutor announcing an indictment against a Republican candidate just in time to influence the election, only to quietly drop the charges after the election, or have them thrown out in disgust by a higher court? Any of these names ring a bell: Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska; Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas; Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wisconsin?
There’s a law that politicians can’t be arrested while they’re doing their jobs, under the theory of Parlimentary Privilege. But what about candidates? What about their supporters and contributors? Google the phrase “Democrat Lawfare” for an eyeful of interesting examples showing how one party abuses the power of the judiciary for partisan political advantage. Maybe we should rein in that power?
Joe Doakes
But that’d involve giving up power.
And Democrats fight for power the same way Republicans fight for unborn babies and the right to defend oneself.
Last week, social conservatives on social media vented their disgust at a mother whose son had been shot and killed in an armed robbery attempt; the woman infamously asked how it was her son was supposed to get money for clothes, being in “the hood” and all.
The landed punditry pummeled the mother; with such an upbringing, how was the kid supposed to grow up? was a common refrain.
I’m not going to bag on a distraught mother. She’ll have an eternity to wonder about what she did or didn’t do wrong as a mom. I’m not going to chuckle at grief, even if it provides what seems to be a window into a worldview utterly foreign to mine.
And because there’s a much more galling example of corrosive entitlement happening on a much bigger, but less dramatic, scale.
The Detroit Way: A dozen current and former Detroit school administrators received the equivalent of federal indictments for bribery and kickbacks totaling over a million dollars over 13 years. The administrators allegedly worked with a crooked vendor to take kickbacks for school supplies that weren’t delivered, funneling funds through dummy companies set up to try to fool auditors.
That case will wend its merry way through the courts for many more years, no doubt.
But if I may, I’ll ask the world’s collective dogs to leave the grieving mother of the late robber alone, and take a gander at this ripe turd of entitlement (with emphasis added):
“It’s pitiful that they’re going after principals who are probably just doing what they need to do even if it might be a little bit unethical in order to provide the students in their schools with the supplies and materials that they need that district and the state should be providing us,” teacher Cathy Brackett said. “They should be going after the big thieves who have come into the district under the guise of emergency managers and consultants who have skimmed not just thousands of dollars but millions of dollars away from our students and just move on to their next gig, seemingly without repercussions.”
While Ms. Brackett is right to a point – the educational consulting racket is basically an under-the-table wealth transfer from the taxpayers to the political class, which in Detroit means Democrat hangers-on – it’s that emphasized bit that made me forget all about the robber’s mom’s outburst; people skimming taxpayer money are “probably” doing it for their kids’ benefit? Read it for yourself.
You’ll notice that this happens only in cities where one-party rule has ossified into a permanent political overclass – which happens only in Democrat-run cities, as it happens.
Alondra Cano – “third world feminist” (whatever that means) and Minneapolis City Councilwoman – took time off from not bothering with her actual constituents’ real problems to sound off, like every other demigogue, on the Freeman press conference yesterday.
Her Facebook page seems to be set up to disallow copying, so I screenshot the whole dismal lashup:
Let’s be clear, here; I don’t find the inquisition into possible police wrongdoing comical.
I find Alonda Cano – industrial engineer par excellence, social-media bully and frothing-yet-brittle demigogue – comical.
“Political pressure?” The City of Minneapolis has bent over backwards to accomodate Black Lives Matter. If a Tea Party or Pro-Life group ever blocked a freeway, the Minneapolis or Saint Paul police departments would rain down attack dogs and billy clubs like the Great Deluge.
Like all wannabe liberal demigogues, she’s making up her reality as she goes along, knowing the stupid and gullible won’t care.
What had been a roar of artillery weeks earlier had quieted to a trickle of distant, infrequent thuds. Where the men of the Russian Second Army had charged forward over snow-capped passes days earlier, on March 31st, 1916, survivors now limped back through a morass of mud and blood at Lake Naroch, in what is now modern Belarus.
It should have been a momentum-changing victory for Russia and the Entente. Eager to recover from their rout in the summer of 1915, 373,000 Russian soldiers had attacked only 82,000 Germans holding one of the weakest portions of the Eastern Front. 887 pieces of field artillery had pounded the German line for two days – an eternity by Eastern Front standards – under a battle plan crafted by the Russian Imperial Army’s own Chief of Staff. The Russians had optimistically believed they were about to achieve their breakthrough.
Instead, it was yet another major Russian defeat. Only this time, it had the fingerprints of the rest of the Entente all over it.
—
Lake Naroch carried all the hallmarks of early Russian defeats – bad intelligence, terrible tactical execution, and overconfidence. The difference was the Russians thought they had addressed these issues before the battle
The seeds of the Russian debacle at Lake Naroch had been planted months earlier in the French city of Chantilly. Indeed, many of the Entente defeats of 1916 could trace their lineage to the Inter-Allied Conference at Chantilly in December of 1915. Read the rest of this entry »
You are currently browsing the Shot in the Dark weblog archives.
