While the Biden Administration continues to install express check-in kiosks all across the southern border, this article from the Wilson Center points out there are other implications beyond just importing what the Democrats hope will be a compliant voting bloc and dependent class.

Russian aggression against Ukraine may jeopardize Mexico’s relationship with the United States. This is the opinion of many Mexican commentators, who are generally critical of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). It is a war (a word forbidden by the Russian government) that has universal repercussions, something that does not seem to be understood by a president who has not shown any personal interest in international relations, unless it is to complain to Spain, to the European deputies, or to Antony Blinken for his judgment on the murders of journalists.
…
That is why the organization Morena Youth (Juventudes de Morena) of the State of Mexico supports Russia and receives the gratitude of the Russian ambassador; that is why certain deputies of the government majority form a Mexico/Russia Friendship Group and invite the Russian ambassador to Congress (March 23, 2022). Mexico’s former ambassador to the US, Arturo Sarukhan expressed that this, “portrays full-length the stale, rancid and aimless left that Mexico does not deserve.”

On March 24, the commander of the United States Northern Command Gen. Glen VanHerck appeared before the US Senate Committee on Armed Services Committee, and he made this comment regarding Russian agents in Mexico (transcript here, comment from page 54, bold is mine)

General VanHerck: There are actors who are very aggressive and active all across the NORTHCOM AOR, to including the Bahamas and Mexico, China and Russia. I would point out that the largest portion of GRE members in the world is in Mexico right now. Those are Russian intelligence personnel, and they keep an eye very closely on their opportunities to have influence on U.S. opportunities
and access.

(The GRU is Russian military intelligence.)

A porous border unguarded by a feckless Administration will attract malignant operators. Increasingly, migrants crossing the US border come from outside Mexico and Central America, including, ahem, this from BusinessInsider… Do we know who they are?

In December, over 2,000 Russians and 300 Ukrainians made their way to the border. Axios reported most of them had either arrived or were found at a legal port of entry in San Diego, California.

By comparison, only 53 Russians were found at the US-Mexico border in December of the previous year.

The aforementioned Arturo Sarukhan writing at Brookings a couple days ago had a few pointed comments, shockingly so for a diplomat, on Mexico’s coy game of footsie with Moscow.

Now, with the president’s MORENA party and its allies in the lower house of Congress having unconscionably launched in late March a Mexico-Russia friendship caucus — inviting Moscow’s ambassador and providing him with a bully pulpit to disseminate lies and disinformation — Mexico is blindly playing with fire. López Obrador apparently believes he can have his cake and it eat too when it comes to ties with the United States and the EU, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) framework, and Mexico’s global and multilateral diplomatic footprint.
…
Over the years, a combination of navel-gazing and lack of purpose, ambition, budget, and overarching grand strategy have all meant that when it comes to global or even hemispheric affairs, Mexico’s diplomatic payload tends to be woefully puny, particularly compared with other emerging economies and regional powers. Now, with López Obrador’s disdain for foreign policy and his general austerity drive eviscerating Mexico’s foreign service corps and its footprint abroad, the nation is punching even further below its weight in global affairs. Not even the best-funded diplomacy could make up for decisionmaking like López Obrador’s.

Fatherhood is high on Big Left’s hit list – especially Big Feminism and Big Intersectionality. Without strong fathers, families are missing half of the behavioral background the children need to grow to be strong people.

Debasing fatherhood is key to Big Left’s crusade to “reinvent” – i.e. destroy – the nuclear family.

Ron DeSantis signed a bill designed to rehabilitate fathers in Florida. And there’s a Minnesota connection:

DeSantis signed the bill at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers training facility in Tampa, according to WTSP, noting that he put pen to paper at the team’s AdventHealth Training Center alongside former Bucs head coach Tony Dungy, who is also the spokesperson of and contributor to All Pro Dad, a national fatherhood nonprofit program that will be provided funding via grant opportunities by the bill. DeSantis said the organization uses “evidence-based parenting education.”

Dungy gave an impassioned speech as he backed the bill, saying that it will “be such a big help to fathers in Florida agencies that support fathers in Florida.” He commended DeSantis for bringing his children with him.

The program is designed to rehab fathers who’ve gotten out of jail, and whose kids are in the social-services system.

I’m waiting for Big Feminism to start with the gaslighting.

I’m also waiting for DeSantis to make them look like the yawping psychopaths they are.

DeSantis is pulling waaaay out front in my personal 2024 poll. .

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky produced a sobering report for Chapman University on the plight of California and its prospects for the future. It might be more accurate to refer to “the Californias”, plural, as the report describes two Californias.

The state is blessed with immense natural resources and generates riches that make Croesus seem a pauper. Yet, the wealth is far from evenly distributed.

According to the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, 20% of state wealth is held within 30 zip codes that account for just 2% of the population. Less than 33% of state wealth is held within 1,350 zip codes that house 75% of Californians. Since the 1970s, California middle-class incomes, once ebullient, have stagnated.

Even before the pandemic, California experienced lower growth than the other states it competes with for business and people. The most glaring losses have been in well-paying blue collar jobs. Even without adjusting for costs, no California metro ranks in the
US top ten of well-paying blue-collar jobs. But four—Ventura, Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Diego—sit among the bottom ten.

You might think that being a tech center would make California immune to disruption at the higher end of the scale, but that may be changing.

There is much controversy over the extent and importance of business flight from California, but the most recent evidence reveals that the tide of business headquarters leaving the state is accelerating. A 2021 Hoover Institution report presents a compelling set of data about recent business behavior. From January 1, 2018, to June 30, 2021, 265 companies moved their headquarters
out of the state, an average rate of 6.3 per month. The speed of exodus accelerated significantly (to 12.3 per month) in the six months from January through June of 2021.

Most of these firms departed from the Bay Area and Southern California, the state’s premier urban areas. Where did they go? Five states—Texas, Tennessee, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado… Since the beginning of 2018, some 107 companies have moved their headquarters to Texas from the Golden State.

While the über-wealthy bunker down in their coastal, leafy enclaves, the people the Left claims to care oh so much about are sinking.

…but in this case, “going where late night TV and Saturday Night Live apparently don’t dare go anymore”: Saudi TV lampoons Lesko Brandon:

I’m old enough to remember when all presidents were fair game on American TV.

Years and years ago, on a NARN broadcast at the “Back to the Fifties’ car show at the Fairgrounds, James Lileks made a point that summed up why “progressivism” is so noxious to so many people; there would, and could, never be an electric equivalent of the 1965 Ford Mustang.

Progressivism isn’t about muscle, happiness, abundance. It’s about shared misery – spreading it, virtue-signaling it (and, if you’re one of the “Big Guys”, quietly and flagrantly avoiding it). It’s no accident that it’s the “progressives” that are still wearing masks as they walk their dogs, alone, down empty streets.

The problem is, poor societies don’t solve problems. It takes prosperity to innovate. Leftists never get that.

Not everyone on the left believes in the virtue of wallowing in privation for “the common good”. Ruy Texeira – author, TED talker and public radio regular guest, who describes himself as a committed liberal – writes an excellent piece in the National Review about all the things the Democrats are getting wrong. It’s a longish and excellent read (and might require a subscription, i dunno)…

…and makes a similar point; Democrat disdain for prosperity (among the proles, at least – nobody’s coming for Zuckerberg’s spare yacht) is hurting them among the normies,

Energy is a big fault line:

Closely related to Democrats’ relative indifference to economic growth is their lack of optimism that a rapid advance and application of technology can produce an abundant future. More common is fear that a dystopian future might await us thanks to AI and other technologies. This is odd, given that almost everything ordinary people like about the modern world, including relatively high living standards, is traceable to technological advances and the knowledge embedded in them. From smartphones, flat-screen TVs, and the Internet to air and auto travel to central heating and air-conditioning to the medical devices and drugs that cure disease and extend life to electric lights and the mundane flush toilet, technology has dramatically transformed people’s lives for the better. It is difficult to argue that the average person today is not far, far better off than her counterpart in the past. “The good old days were old but not good,” as the Northwestern University economic historian Joel Mokyr puts it.

Doesn’t the Left want to make people happy? One has to wonder. They show more interest in figuring out what people should stop doing and consuming than in figuring out how people can have more to do and consume. They rarely discuss the idea of abundance, except to disparage it.

Texeira may never do lunch on Nob Hill again, but it’s worth a read.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

One of the most frustrating things about the Ukraine situation is sorting truth from lies, made harder ever-changing lies.

For example, Russia initially claimed it was invading because the US secretly funded bio-weapons research labs in Ukraine, a charge the US hotly denied as Russian propaganda. Until Saturday, when the US admitted it secretly funded bio-weapons research labs in Ukraine but they were not Offensive bio-weapons, only Defensive bio-weapons, so plainly Russia’s claims were mere propaganda.

For another example, Russia claimed it was invading to ‘de-Nazify’ the break-away provinces of eastern Ukraine, a charge the Ukrainians hotly denied as Russian propaganda. Until Saturday, when President Zelenskyy was asked about the Azov Battalion being Nazi-affiliated and shooting Russian prisoners, and he admitted “they are what they are” and justified their actions because they were defending Ukraine, so plainly Russia’s claims were mere propaganda.

The lies keep changing but not on Russia’s side. Doesn’t prove the invasion is legally or morally justified but it justifies asking hard questions of the liars. What else are they lying about?

Joe Doakes

The fact that the Azov Battalion was of European far right white supremacists sympathy was an open secret. The fact that they’ve been in action for eight years, and have been pressed into service by an initially fairly desperate Ukrainian military, is not a huge surprise, unfortunate as the fact is.

It’s also been, if not an open secret, at least not a complete shock that the US farmed out a lot of less savory activities – including CIA “black sites“ for interrogating terrorist suspects Dash to Eastern Europe, taking advantage of the lax or nonexistent laws on the subject.

Both are certainly moral defects that are easily turned into pretexts by even less above board regimes.Or at least that’s what it smells like to me…

Yesterday Mr. D posted on what any conservative more than five minutes old has learned, which is conservatives are not allowed to have certain thoughts. And, a couple days ago I posted on an irony I’ve longed noticed on the Left, that they view themselves as tolerant and open and decry attempts to enforce, as they see it, conformity, yet they themselves are wholly intolerant when faced with opposing viewpoints.

All this reminded me of a friend of mine from my school daze. He’s a genuinely gentle and nice fellow, but he’s of the Leftist persuasion.

He posted this on facebook awhile back, before the election, and the resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.

I believe that the most valuable ideal is kindness.

I believe that all people, regardless of ethnicity, race, religious belief
or non-belief, political alignment, sexual orientation and status in life
are deserving of respect.

I’m not perfect in embracing this next ideal but I do my best. It’s all
about having an open mind. I may not agree with the political positions,
religious beliefs, or phobias of others but I do my best to listen to and
respect others.

Then, pulling a 12-G turn, he posted this awhile later…

I am tired of listening to you all! And now I ask that if you truly believe
that we are better off under the current President, if you believe that we
don’t need stricter laws and bans of certain guns, and/or if you have or
intend to disparage the young people of March for Our Lives…then please
unfriend me now and save me the trouble of having to do so myself, which I already have done for some others.

I no longer have the patience to listen to you.

The resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.

This past Saturday, I had a Minnesota Fifth congressional district republican congressional candidate Cicely “Cee Cee“ Davis on the show.

Ilhan Omar is entitled to equal time.

If you’re one of Rep. Omar’s people, have her call my people. she is entitled to equal time.

I hope she claims it.

So over the weekend, DFL representative Kelly Morrison, and other DFLers, ran a loooong series of tweets from her district (SD45, the far west ‘burbs) endorsing convention on Saturday.

Looks like a typical bunch of urban DFLers; masked up like bank robbers:

I mean, their healthcare decision, their business. I don’t tell them what to do, and they don’t tell me…

…oh, Right.

But then we move on. Her staff was certainly with the program…

…as was her (presumably) husband or significant other…

(I mean, I have no idea who he is, or about Ms. Morrison’s personal life).

But wait – apparently you go to the other corner of the building, and – apparently, the Russians have invaded, because Covid has vanished – or at least, the masks:

And then – people with masks shunted to the back of the shot?

And then, posing cheek-to-cheek with Congressman Phillips, with their masks scientifically dangling from the ears – perhaps waiting for word of Russian invasion?

Good thing the #science is so settled…

Suwana Kirkland, DFL-anointed candidate to replace Dave “The Drunk Driver” Hutchinson, is running in a moldy blue country. She doesn’t have to worry about Real Americans votes.

So if she’s caught on camera snuggling with gun-grabbers at DFL caucuses, no biggie for her.

You just shouldn’t expect much new from the HCSO.

Well, less drunk driving.

Probably.

CORRECTION. I’m informed the woman in the HCSO uniform is Duwanna Witt. Not being a Henco resident, I’m not nearly as up on the candidates as I should be.

I regret the error.

Almost two weeks ago a UN-brokered ceasefire in Yemen brought a glimmer of hope for a way out of the years-long war there that according to this UNDP report has taken just under 400,000 lives.

By doing so, we found that by the end of 2021, Yemen’s conflict will lead to 377,000 deaths – nearly 60 per cent of which are indirect and caused by issues associated with conflict like lack of access to food, water, and healthcare.

The UN Special Envoy for Yemen said:

I would like to announce that the parties to the conflict have responded positively to a United Nations proposal for a two-month Truce which comes into effect tomorrow 2 April at 1900hrs. The parties accepted to halt all offensive military air, ground and maritime operations inside Yemen and across its borders; they also agreed for fuel ships to enter into Hudaydah ports and commercial flights to operate in and out of Sana’a airport to predetermined destinations in the region; they further agreed to meet under my auspices to open roads in Taiz and other governorates in Yemen. The Truce can be renewed beyond the two-month period with the consent of the parties.

The war in Yemen has become a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and much like the dog that didn’t bark, Iran’s reaction to the ceasefire announcement was upbeat despite the supposed prospect at losing its weapons training ground. Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman said:

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh has welcomed an initiative put forth by the UN chief’s special envoy for Yemen to stop military operations for two months and to allow ships carrying fuel and to partially reopen the Sanaa airport.
Khatibzadeh expressed hope that this move will be the prelude to the full lifting of the blockade on Yemen and a permanent ceasefire in order to find a political solution to the country’s crisis. The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman reaffirmed Iran’s policy to support a political and humanitarian solution in Yemen, saying, “We hope that on the eve of the holy month of Ramadan, humanitarian issues will be prioritized, the ceasefire will hold and we will see an improvement in the humanitarian situation and a prisoner swap between the warring sides.”

This excellent report by Katherine Zimmerman out of the AEI’s Critical Threats project goes into detail about Iran’s involvement in Yemen.

Shared interests underpin the relationship between the Houthis and Iran and the Axis of Resistance. Houthi leaders uphold Iran’s Islamic Revolution as a model to follow, and Iran’s revisionist ideas and efforts to reshape the regional order resonate with them. They thus have found common ground with other Axis members seeking to change the status quo through force, including Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi’a militias, among others. For Iran, the Houthis initially presented an opportunity to threaten Saudi Arabia’s southern border, and Iran has led an effort to cultivate the Houthis as part of its network. The Houthis now rely on Iran and the Axis to retain certain capabilities necessary for their ongoing projection of power from Yemen and have begun to support Axis initiatives from which they do not necessarily benefit.
…
The Houthis now form an integral part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance. Iran cultivates this network to expand its own influence, leveraging its partners in pursuit of its regional objectives: expelling the United States and establishing Iranian hegemony. Members, including the Assad regime, Hezbollah, some Iraqi Shi’a militias, Hamas, PIJ, and some Bahraini militias, benefit from Iranian state support and shared resources and capabilities among Axis members. The Houthis rely on Iran and the Axis to retain certain capabilities crucial to their continued success in Yemen and have begun supporting Axis initiatives that do not necessarily benefit them directly.

In this February 2021 speech, Biden announced an end to “American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.”

As players in the region deal with a disengaged United States, this ceasefire is an opportunity to clarify negotiating positions. From the Asia Times:

Iran’s expected surge following any lifting of sanctions becomes an “X” factor for all regional states, which Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt will have to handle in a different way than previously by taking into account the United States’ steady disengagement from the region.

Unlike former president Donald Trump’s administration, US President Joe Biden tends to regard the past uncritical support for the Saudi-led war as a delusional mistake. This is already a tipping point, where the Houthis will negotiate without having to surrender their weaponry. The advantage goes to the Houthis. Equally, Iran emerges as the regional player to gain the most. Its robust support for the Houthis has paid off.

If the Biden Administration buries its head in the sand when it comes to Iran’s wider aims, Zimmerman summarizes what the Administration might find when it comes up for air:

Yemen is now a single theater in a larger, regional war. The Houthis have developed extensive ties across the Axis of Resistance and have integrated Axis narratives into their own. Iran is waging proxy warfare through the Houthis, and Iran’s limited investment in them has expanded the scope of the conflict beyond Yemen’s borders. Weapons in the Houthis’ arsenal threaten Gulf states and Israel, as well as maritime traffic in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Iran and its Axis of Resistance oppose the deepening of relations between Israel and Arab states, particularly the UAE, and have signaled they will contest these developments. Understanding the Houthis only within the context of Yemen misses this shift in regional security dynamics. The United States must change its approach to securing its interests in the Middle East given the new reality of the Houthis as part of the Axis of Resistance.

Let’s start with a little music:

The facts we hate
We’ll never meet
Walking down the road
Everybody yelling, “Hurry up, hurry up!”
But I’m waiting for you
I must go slow
I must not think bad thoughts
When is this world coming to?

Can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s tough avoiding bad thoughts these days. The larger question isn’t having bad thoughts, but whether you can express them. John Hayward, a/k/a Doc Zero, notices something important — the calls are coming from inside the house:

There is a part of the conservative sphere that has always felt populism is the ultimate sin, only the Left should be allowed to fight culture wars, and genuine conservative grassroots movements should be immediately run down with rhetorical lawn mowers.

There are different reasons why some conservatives gravitate to this way of thinking. Some are paid grifters. Some live deep inside the left-wing information sphere and inherit its prejudices, such as the notion cultural combat is toxic for conservatives but OK for lefties.

It’s always about the rice bowls. But there’s more:

For these timid elements of conservatism, the worst offense of the Right is questioning the motives of the Left. Nothing makes them spring into action against other conservatives faster than insinuations of bad faith or sinister motives against the Left.

Bad faith has been a growth industry on the port side since, I dunno, Rousseau maybe. It’s certainly not a recent development. Continuing on:

Run through the list of top issues: if you want border security, you must be a xenophobe. If you oppose abortion, you must be a blind religious fanatic or misogynist. If you want smaller government, you’re cruel and greedy. Question global warming? You’re a tool of Big Oil.

We are rat bastards, aren’t we? I must not think bad thoughts. But there’s more:

But as soon as any head of steam builds among grassroots conservatives for questioning the motives of the Left on similar grounds, the timid conservatives leap into action. Tut tut! That language is out of bounds! How dare you imply Lefty’s agenda is deliberately destructive!

They’ll tell you it’s paranoia and slander to talk about the destructive agenda of the Left even as hyperventilating lefties are busy laying out their agenda with hundreds of social media videos and vowing to destroy anyone who gets in their way.

I believe Mel Brooks had a number in Blazing Saddles about this, calling it the French Mistake. In modern parlance, that would be David French. But we’re not done:

Too much of the conservative commentariat is exactly that: commentators. They were comfortable remarking on the passing scene, not changing it. “Activism” was a dirty word, something the OTHER guys did. Tossing harmless Nerf footballs of theory around op-ed pages was good enough.

Change is hard and things are pretty cozy in the covens along the Potomac. And most of all, dudes wearing tricorner MAGA hats are not our kind, dear. We must not think bad thoughts. I’ve pulled a lot out of Hayward’s thread, but there’s even more. You should read it in full. But while his cri de coeur is compelling, it is clear our betters remain in their sinecures. And we’ll come back to that topic in the coming days.

I come neither to praise nor “improve” the Southwest Light Rail. I come to bury it.

Bill Lindeke – “urban geographer” and transitphile – is more or less the opposite. He wrote a critique of the troubled (doomed?)( project in the MInnPost a few weeks ago – fascinating on some levels, and a complete howler on at least one other.

Fascinating: Lindeke details the NIMBY-ism that led the line to skirt around the north and west edges of Kenwood (where people are more wont to take the Mercedes or the Tesla than take the train, thankewverymuch).

Unstated: it makes the same mistake rail transit always makes in this decentralized era. Rail transit was desiged at a time when the middle class woke up in a bedroom suburb and commuted downtown to their factory or office jobs. Today, as the decentralization of jobs and the economy continues, accelerated by the pandemic, that model is as quaint and obsolete as a rabbit-ear antenna for your TV. By their very nature, and that of society, trains these days largely take people who don’t exist from places they aren’t to where they don’t need to go. Only the money being transferred from taxpayers to the transit-industrial complex is real.

Now, the Howler: Remember how driving a train down 5th, Washington and University gutted the Midway?

Lindeke apparently doesn’t. His plans for Hennepin Avenue are…

…welll:

In the case of Southwest Light Rail, the best alternative — a tunnel underneath Hennepin Avenue, interlining with the Green Line downtown — was never studied as an option. Instead, early on in the process, planners studied an at-grade route down Hennepin Avenue that would have been disruptive to the existing urban fabric. Then, as the routing decision came to a head, planners analyzed a tunnel down Nicollet Avenue that would have been impossible to connect seamlessly downtown. Nobody ever studied a Hennepin Avenue tunnel that represented the best combination of speed, density and efficient use of infrastructure.

The Midway may never completely recover from the building of the Vomit Comet straight down the middle of its main street, University Avenue.

Can you imagine what years of excavation, tunnel construction, the associated utility and infrastructure rerouting and, let’s be honest, the inevitable planning blunders would do the Uptown?

Above and beyond the fact that tunnels cost at least 10 times as much as at-grade rail – likely raising the cost of the entire route from (I predict)( $3 Billion to (assuming couple of miles of subway) $7-8 billion (before the inevitable Met Council incompetence and government inflation kick in)?

Don’t praise it. Bury it. Not literally. Figuratively.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

CEO: “Alright everybody, settle down. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. First up, the White House proposes a tax on oil company profits as a way to stop . . . let me quote . . . “despicable price gouging and exploitation.” Any suggestions?”

VP Sales: “Sir, I don’t understand. How does raising taxes on our company help consumers at the pump?”

VP Diversity: “Higher taxes raise money to give to women, trans, and persons of color.”

VP Human Resources: “We could cut employees’ salaries, bring down our cost, reduce the price of gas at the pump?”

VP Finance: “Wouldn’t help. ‘Profits’ are what’s leftover after paying salaries, we’d still be taxed.”

VP Labor Relations: “The union wants wage increases. That would reduce our profits, right? Pay less taxes?”

VP Finance: “Yes, but profits are how we pay dividends to stockholders. Eliminate the profits and our stock price falls, including the value of all our stock options.”

-silence-

CEO: “We can’t cut costs, we can’t increase costs, we need a creative solution. Think people, think. Say, is there any more coffee? You there, I’m afraid I don’t know your name. More coffee?”

New Hire Secretary: “Yessir, right away. Um, sir?”

CEO: “Yes?”

New Hire Secretary: “Couldn’t you just pass along the new taxes to the customer? I mean, so the price of gas goes up, so what? What are people going to do, sell their cars and buy electric?”

CEO: “Meeting adjourned. You, miss, come with me. And bring that coffee, we have a lot to talk about.”


Joe Doakes

Not quite “ripped from the headlines “. Or… Is it?

Dennis Prager once wrote “whatever the Left touches it ruins.” In the 1950s, Leftists beheld Eisenhower’s America and set about trying to ruin it. In those years, America was the colossus astride the world. The only major power in the post-war years with its economy and infrastructure intact, America’s economic engine was roaring. Fueled by the GI Bill and real purchasing power, nuclear families ignited the rise of the suburbs while doubling the country’s Gross National Product.

Entertainment of the time reflected social norms. Programs such as Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, and Leave It to Beaver depicted stable, healthy families. Naturally the Left saw what was good and recoiled in revulsion.

The Beat Generation was a major Leftist reaction to 1950s culture. It began at Columbia University where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and other early Beats attended. William Burroughs attended Harvard, but he spent a lot of time in New York City’s subculture and was introduced there to Kerouac and Ginsberg.

I don’t think it is an accident that the Frankfurt School had relocated to Columbia University to escape the Nazis. Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer and Erich Fromm among others helped found the basis of critical theory, the destructive brew of Marxism and philosophy that is the grandfather of today’s wokeism.

Months after being exposed as a Federal “shake and bake” operation, the DOJ’s prosecution of the “kidnapping” case against Gretchen Whitmer ended in complete ignominy:

Exactly 18 months to the day, Birge’s prosecutors suffered a humiliating defeat in a Grand Rapids courtroom after a jury acquitted two of the men and deadlocked on the guilt of two others. (Two defendants pleaded guilty and testified for the government during the three-week trial). Despite endless resources and favorable rulings by the judge overseeing the case, the government failed to secure a single conviction in what the Justice Department considered one of its largest domestic terror investigations ever.

Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, after a year and a half in prison, went home to their families on Friday night; Adam Fox, the alleged ringleader, and Barry Croft, Jr. remain incarcerated while Birge’s office prepares to retry the men—a fool’s errand, as they didn’t know each other prior to the FBI’s involvement in the faux plot and live almost 1,000 miles apart. (Croft resides in Delaware.) It’s a desperate attempt to save face, regardless of the lives and the principles of justice at stake.

Not only were jurors unpersuaded by Birge’s prosecutors, the jury instead seemed to believe defense attorneys’ arguments that their clients were entrapped by the FBI. At least a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants, working out of numerous FBI field offices across the eastern half of the country and at the direction of supervising agents, concocted and funded the sting operation. Dan Chappel, the main informant compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for “bringing people together,” as his FBI handler ordered him, took the stand to explain his role. But his testimony was lackluster and ultimately did not convince the jury the men were guilty.

So, let’s review the facts as we know them today. The “attempt”

• Was a federal “shake and bake” – a setup driven by FBI agents and informants.
• It was released precisely in time to affect the 2020 election, where Whitmer’s mortal enemy,, Trump, was a candidate.l

How is this not election interference – which, we are reliably informed, is a threat to the very fiber of democracy, when it’s “Republican” yahoos trampling through the Capitol?

Here’s one huge reason:

And beyond that, speaking for myself (and I suspect an awful lot of us)? Because they can say things like the WaPo’s Applebaum says in the video above out one side of their greasy maw, and ignore the fact that they said this out the other side, in public, with their own mouths.

They truly think you’re all idiots.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

We’re told Lesko Brandon got more votes than Barack Obama. A friend asks where’s the show of support?

“We used to see Obama bumper stickers everywhere, that sun rising over the fields symbol. Drive the back roads out-state and you’ll still see Trump signs. I even saw a Wellstone bumper sticker in Mac-Groveland the other day (no, the driver was not a late-middle-aged white woman with resting bitch face and an ELCA haircut – her daughter was driving). So where are all the Biden/Harris bumper stickers? Did Biden voters scrub them off in shame?”

My guess is Biden voters ran out and bought new cars after the election, using their new-found prosperity under the Lesko Brandon administration. What other explanation could there be?

Joe Doakes

To be honest,I don’t recall ever seeing a whole lot of them, even during the campaign.

My non-satirical answer is, Donald Trump broke enough moderate brains to push Branden over the top. People are having their “morning after” moment – like all such moments, a day late and a dollar short.

I didn’t intend to make this “China Week”, it just sorta worked out that way as things caught my eye 🙂 That said, this interesting article from Prospect highlighted something that has probably flown under the radar as we go about our daily lives and wonder why our favorite Acme Widget isn’t on the shelf at Wal-mart this week.

Standardized intermodal shipping containers have revolutionized the worldwide transport of cargo. When a container can be shipped to a port, then lifted off the ship by crane and placed directly on a rail car, then transported to another hub and lifted off the train and placed directly onto a truck trailer, all without unloading that container, costs are greatly reduced.

Guess who manufactures the lion’s share of those containers, though?

Three large Chinese companies—CIMC, Dong Fang, and CXIC—produce approximately 82 percent of all containers, according to the report. Combined with some smaller firms, China makes over 95 percent of these containers, and the only other ones produced are for specific regional markets or in nonstandard sizes.

So essentially all standard-sized containers used in global shipping, roughly 44 million boxes, were manufactured in China, as well as around 86 percent of all intermodal chassis. China’s state-owned container manufacturers benefit from large government subsidies and other benefits. And in seemingly coordinated fashion, they slowed production of new containers when demand initially rose during the pandemic, leading to prices nearly doubling from early 2020 to today.

China took control of container manufacturing in the 1990s, stealing market share from South Korea, according to FreightWaves. A coalition known as the China Container Industry Association, or CCIA, directs most of the activity, and it’s dominated by CIMC, the world’s largest container manufacturer, producing about 40 percent of the world’s containers.

Some restaurants – including one Twin Cities favorite – are instituting “equity charges“.

They would appear to be doing it, at least in part, because they believe their customers are idiots:

On its website, Broders’ has a notice to customers notifying them of a new 15 percent “benefits and equity” charge they’ve instituted. They justify the charge, first, by explaining that “many states have allowed reduced minimum wages for service staff in the form of a tip credit.” (More on this in a minute.)

But Minnesota (the restaurant being referred to is in southwest Minneapolis) is not one of them.

Oh, also they think you’re a bigot…

“Studies have also shown that there is inequity and built-in bias in the way consumers give tips,” the statement reads. “In general, Black or Brown servers receive less tips than Caucasian servers. There is gender bias as well.”

Has anyone noticed how the phrase “studies show…” may as well be a shorthand signal for “weasel words will follow”?

I used to like to ask “what studies? Where?“, But that would get us into a Bergs 16th Maw situation, almost immediately, almost every time..

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Hillary figured out how to turn Haitian Relief donations into family funds. Of course she did, she’s the Smartest Woman in America (TM).

But Lesko Brandon figured out how to convert Ukraine foreign aid into 10% for The Big Guy, and he’s the dumbest man in Congress. He didn’t think up the scheme on his own, someone coached him. Who? And who else did they coach to use a similar scheme: maybe not Haiti but some other grant recipient, some other non-profit, some other book deal or art sale?

There doesn’t seem to be much enthusiasm in Washington for investigating money-laundering corrupt politicians, not even among Republicans. I wonder if the reluctance to throw stones has anything to do with living in glass houses?

Joe Doakes

That’s why I’m really, really, really hoping DeSantis gets the nod in 2024. Call me naïve, but I think he will at least have enough moral high ground, personally, to try to tackle this.

This year will see the 80th anniversary of the Guadalcanal campaign. Guadalcanal was at the end of a chain of Japanese bases radiating from their main bases at Rabaul and Truk. Japan pushed these bases out with the aim of interdicting supply routes between the US and their ANZAC allies. After relieving the threat to Port Moresby on New Guinea with the Battle of the Coral Sea, the US saw an opportunity to check Japan’s advance towards the New Hebrides. Guadalcanal’s strategic location was ideal for the airfield Japan had under construction. The Marines invaded in August 1942 and after a tough six month battle, the US had secured a base that set the stage for Operation Cartwheel, a major campaign aimed at neutralizing Rabaul.

Gudalcanal’s location in relation to sea lanes between the US and Australia is no less strategic today, which is why plenty of alarm bells are sounding after the government of the Solomon Islands announced a security agreement with China last week.

Solomon Islands Ministers of Foreign Affairs and External Trade Hon Jeremiah Manele and Minister of Police and National Security and Correctional Services, the Hon Anthony Veke jointly announced that officials of Solomon Islands and the Peoples Republic of China have initialed elements of a bilateral Security Cooperation Framework between the two countries today.

The draft Framework Agreement will be cleaned up and await signatures of the two countries Foreign Ministers.

Solomon Islands reiterate that the Framework of Cooperation is to respond to Solomon Islands soft and hard domestic threats. Solomon Islands continue to roll out the implementation of its National Security Strategy and uphold its Foreign Policy of “Friends to all and enemies to none.”

Voters in Kenosha County – which has been voting Democrat for literally decades – threw out Democrats for county executive and school board in county elections this week..

Former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, a Republican candidate for governor, endorsed 48 school board candidates. Of those, 34 won including eight incumbents, based on preliminary results. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, a former teacher, school administrator and state superintendent, did not endorse in any race…

Conservative candidates picked up school board seats in Waukesha, Wausau and Kenosha, but lost races in Beloit and the western Wisconsin cities of La Crosse and Eau Claire.

The Republican-backed candidate for a state appeals court seat in southeastern Wisconsin, Maria Lazar, also defeated a sitting judge who was appointed by Evers.

Kenosha?

Huh. Where have I heard of Kenosha.

I wonder why a habitually Democrat county seems to be swinging red?

Why could that be?

am a small-town Scandinavian at heart, and have spent decades involved in Minnesota and Metro Republican politics, so optimism doesn’t come easily. I’m waiting to see how the MNGOP screws this potential wave up.

Let’s not screw this potential wave up.

SCENE: A suburban family room. MOTHER and FATHER are anxiously looking at their SON, who’s watching…TV.

MOTHER: It’s all he’s watching lately. .

FATHER: What is it?

MOTHER: He’s binging Band of Brothers

FATHER: Again? This is like the third time.

MOTHER: And before that, it was 13 Hours. And then Taken.

FATHER: I caught him watching Die Hard the other day.

MOTHER: He has the scene of him rescuing his wife from being pulled out the window with Hans Gruber as his social media avatar.

FATHER: God. I wonder what’s going on with him?

So I started binge watching “The Flight Attendant” last night.

Pros: it’s really well written. That’s nothing to sneeze at. I’ve been terribly disappointed by the writing in a lot of things I’ve seen lately (I’m looking at you, Love Life, whose laziness completely wasted Anna Kendrick).

The writers toss out a completely un-subtle “Crime and Punishment“ reference in the first couple minutes, and then go on to deliver on it throughout everything I’ve seen so far (#StuffEnglishMajorsLike). And Kaley Cuoco makes a completely believable protagonist.

Bonus pro: it’s got Rosie Perez, who may be the most underrated actress of her generation (although she’s just a tad underutilized in the first couple episodes).

It’s not Dial M for Murder, much less Gaslight, but it ain’t bad.

Speaking of that Ingrid Bergman / Charles Boyer classic…

Cons: These aren’t all in re Flight Attendant alone – far from it.

Hollywood writers seemed to have gotten together and signed a weird, junior high quality pact amongst themselves: “For decades, we wrote women as one dimensional caricatures; madonnas, whores, bimbos and housewives. Let’s pack a century of retribution into a couple of years worth of television and movies.“

Apparently, women can be protagonists, or nuanced, complex characters, or turbocharged badasses, for good or evil – or at least not incompetent caricatures.  That’s a good thing.

On the other hand, rules for men of these days seem to be boiled down to:

• Gay besties
• stock black, Asian, Latino or Semitic guys
• The villain (usually an older white guy, usually played with all the subtlety of a mustache-twisting melodrama villain, although occasionally a white woman)
  – The love interest – who is usually safely ethnically ambiguous.
• pathetic, beaten down sacks
• Buffoons, tools, frat bros (apparently all white anglo-saxon protestant males get lacrosse scholarships. I didn’t know that), frat bros that have grown up to be buffoons and tools, cliché rednecks and every kind of cad ever offered up by central casting.. Almost inevitably white, although I guess it’s a sign of evolution the screen writers are showing the occasional less than bright/moral/ethical black male character.
• Part of a married couple – usually as a hapless schlub whose league his spouse is waaay out of, but with plenty of dysfunctional, abusive cads thrown in. (Same sex couples apparently are immune to most serious dysfunction in Hollywood. Who knew?)

Patronizing? I think so.

Virtue signaling? Sure.

 Lazy? Completely.

Gaslighting?

FATHER: Junior? Why are you watching all these…

MOTHER: …movies and TV shows?

SON: Because it’s fun, for a change, for the first time in my life, to see people like I am, or plan to become, not portrayed as idiots, buffoons, fools, blackguards and expendable simps?

MOTHER: (sotto voce, to FATHER). Do. you think we should call a therapist?

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Richard Fernandez writes an uncomfortable column about Ukraine, and the United States.

Joe Doakes

As with pretty much everything Fernandez has ever written, it’s worth a read; in this case, a pull quote:

In a counterfactual world where the Russian president agreed with this site and continued to feint, where NATO was still in awe of the supposedly unstoppable Russian army and Putin still hitting Biden up for nickels and dimes to keep him from unleashing it, the Kremlin might still be the capital of a great power. But it would be no more substantial than a fleet-in-being that is nine-tenths shadow and one part solid is; a thing powerful only in narrative. For in truth, Russia fell a long time ago with its crashing demography; its uncompetitive, oligarch-ridden industries; its incompetent autocratic leadership. Ukraine was a mirror into which Putin dared look when a man of his mien ought not. But whether he looked or not he was ugly just the same.

If there’s any lesson in this for Washington, it must be to ask: how much of America’s power is a myth, like Russia’s? Dare we collapse the wave function? If too much is spin, then put it not to the test, but keep on bluffing until the reality is restored. You can’t live in the narrative forever.

I’m going to suggest you read the whole thing anyway.