…is always, always, always be looking for more ways to transfer taxpayer money to the political class.

And that is exactly what they are doing.

The CVS store that has served for the past few decades as one of the anchors of the MIdway’s “main street”, at Snelling and University (but for seven months after the George Floyd riots, of course, where it stood boarded up, a monument to the perfidy of the metro DFL) is closing in a couple of weeks.

A friend of the blog emails:

CVS is keeping the store in a residential neighborhood on Fairview open, but not the one on a busy urban corner next to transit and a “world class” soccer stadium? Why would they ever not want to do business there? We’ve been told over and over again how precious that real estate is, how the train and the stadium were going to be a boon.
http://www.twincities.com/2022/03/09/longstanding-st-paul-cvs-at-snelling-and-university-to-close-at-the-end-of-the-month/

Perhaps boon is in the eye of the beholder- it certainly has been a boon for vagrancy, crime, and vacant lots. I shouldn’t assume that that wasn’t the goal.

Expect apologists for the Carter, Walz and Biden administrations to claim “It’s not our fault! Look at this:”.

In mid-November, the Rhode Island-based pharmacy chain announced a major realignment of its national retail footprint, with a heavy focus on consolidating retail locations operating in close proximity to each other. The closures amount to 300 stores per year for the next three years.

Of course, the fact that that location is in an increasingly crime-ridden area, and has a record of being looted from wall to wall, couldn’t have possibly.affected the decision to close this store, rather than the one in Mac-Groveland, Crocus Hill, the Target on Uni, or the two at the University of Minnesota, nosirreebob.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

No masks? Well crap, now what?

Joe Doakes

Senate majority leader Gazelka called it: the various metro teachers unions are making a grab for a chunk of the “9 billion dollar surplus”.

Erin Murphy – Senator from the mean streets of Highland Pari, and living proof that the DFL is the party of misogyny – decided to chirp:

Yeah, those damn teachers…

…who work for a system that is the biggest consumer of tax dollars in the state, whose administrative overburden is the biggest single expense, and whose union is by far, not even close, the biggest and most powerful lobbying body in the state.

Less anyone wonder why the teachers unit in Minneapolis is out on strike – besides grabbing “their share“ of the “surplus“ – their union boss spells it out pretty clearly:

At least she was honest-ish.

History is full of parallels.

Trying to use them to predict the future is a fool’s errand. It almost never works. .

Almost.

But huimans instinctively seek out patterns; it’s evolved into our brain; it’s a survival mechanism. We see things that belong together. We find Waldo.

And the historically parallels with Finland’s 1940 “Winter War” (Talvesota) against the USSR are hard to ignore.

One Finnish historian runs down the comparisons in this long, but utterly worth-reading, Twitter thread:

John Fund:

No one disputes that Russia dwarfs Ukraine’s military — just as the Soviet forces dwarfed Finland’s in 1939. In 2020, Russia spent ten times more on its military than Ukraine did.

Nonetheless, historian William Farley recently wrote, “the Winter War offers a hopeful lesson for Ukraine, in that it is possible for a smaller country to badly bloody Russia’s nose.”

Robert Service, a veteran historian of Russia at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, told the Wall Street Journal’s Tunku Varadarajan that he thinks the Ukrainians could well lose the war eventually. But he finds it inconceivable that they will accept subjugation. “The Ukrainians have become more nationally conscious over the 20th century, and they’re a proud people who’ve seen what happened to them when they were subjugated by the U.S.S.R.,” he noted. “They had it in the early 1930s, when millions died under Stalin’s famines. They had it again in the late 1940s, after the war ended. I don’t think they’re going to let history repeat itself.”

Finland had one advantage the Ukrainians don’t – most of its frontier with Russia was dense, wooded Taiga, broken up by swampty motti that made movement of any kind difficult.

Ukraine? It’s got distance – some, anyway – and cities, which favor the defender in other ways – ways that Russia isn’t above solving with high explosives, which have their own political and military disadvantages.

On Sunday, Governor Walz declared “solidarity day“ with a population whose home was invaded, looted, pillaged and burned.

No, not Lake Street or University Avenue.

I know, I was confused, too.

Anything to deflect away from the unrolling disaster that is the Metro…

SIDE NOTE: Have you never noticed how the correlation between “People who use the phrase ‘stand in solidarity with…'” unironically and “irreparable douchebags” is just shy of 100%?

Ron DeSantis crushes a reporter for…

…,well, doing what reporters do these days; omitting the parts of the story that need to be omitted to serve the progressives narrative about conservatives.

In this case, saying that a proposed Florida bill forbade “teaching sex Ed to Florida schoolchildren“ – when it forbids it from ages pre-K through grade 3.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Two weeks. That’s all the longer the Virtue Signaling crowd can follow a story. After that, they lose interest in the story. And they never really care about the underlying causes or long-term consequences, only today’s headlines. That’s a terrible way to run a polity.

Governor Walz suspended the Constitution for two weeks “to flatten the curve.” Nobody questioned whether a state governor had the power to place the entire state under house arrest in peace time; to overrule the United States Constitution’s guarantees of religious worship and political assembly; to take away businesses owners’ livelihoods unequally – deeming some essential, some not, some owned by important contributors and some jailed for trying to make ends meet. Nobody knows and nobody is asking. The people who lost everything? Forgotten. We changed our Facebook pages then, and now we’ve moved on.

The truckers in Canada were a big deal for two weeks, but now it’s all over. Except it’s not – not for the participants. “While the Emergencies Act has been revoked, Justice Minister David Lametti, who appeared with Trudeau — said violations of it that occurred while it was in force would continue to be prosecuted in the justice system.” The answer to whether the Emergencies Act should have been invoked at all (and therefore whether violations of an unlawful order are still unlawful) is: Nobody knows and nobody’s asking. The people who lost everything? Forgotten. We changed our Facebook pages then, and now we’ve moved on.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was green-lighted by Lesko Brandon, who admitted his sanctions were never intended to deter invasion. The giant column of back-up troops is not attacking. Nuclear power plants are secure. Civilian casualties are being minimized. The United States is still buying oil from Russia, helping to finance the invasion, even as we contemplating sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Poland to rally the troops that we’re not sending in. The invasion is stalled, Nike isn’t selling shoes (but Coke is selling cola) in Russia, and Apple Pay won’t buy groceries for children in Moscow; what’s next? Nobody knows. The people who are about to lose everything? Not forgotten yet, but we’ve changed our Facebook pages. We’re ready to move on.

What’s next?

Joe Doakes

Maybe the effects of inflation on the poor?

No, that’s just crazy talk.

After a few fairly quiet years, gun control is back in the MN Legislature.

Alice “The Phantom” Hausman (who isn’t any better about being seen in 66A today than she was in 66B fifteen years ago, and whose upcoming retirement from office is greeted by many with “I thought she already was…“) has introduced the House version of a bill unreeled a few weeks ago by Senator John Marty.  The only real question this time around is “which gun control activist is she going to pick to introduce her bill in committee this time?”

So – in a year where people have had enough of crime, where gun sales and carry permits have broken all previous records, and when gun control in general is polling the lowest it has since it became an issue, about 55 years ago, why is Minnesota’s radical left suddenly going long on it?

I’ts simple.  Science. 

We’ll come back to that. 

Fighting For His Life:  Redistricting has pitted Senator John Marty (DFL-Roseville) against Senator Jason Isaacson (DFL-Suburb Full Of The Un-Bright).  In the scramble to reorganize around the new boundaries, they both have roughly 6-8 weeks to appeal to their party’s base – insane “progressive” extremists – to get the nomination to go ahead.  

It is a race to the bottom in ever since.  And Marty, on the subject of “who’s craziest about guns”, jumps out to an early lead.  He wrote this op-ed on some astroturf radical-left blog a few weeks ago outlining the philosophy behind his bill:

The recent conviction of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery is welcome news; it has been described as “justice being served.” The convictions were appropriate for the three white men who followed a young black jogger in their cars, confronted him, and then shot him. But it cannot bring back Ahmaud Arbery. Convictions alone cannot be seen as justice.

Beware.  A “progressive” is going to start talking about what “Justice” really is.  

When people – and in many states, the laws – allow armed people to chase others they suspect might have committed theft, and if they get scared about their safety in the ensuing struggle, kill the person they are chasing, we have normalized lynching.

What Marty has done, here, is take a couple of facts, and turn them into a bald-faced, inflammatory lie. 

You are allowed to chase thieves.  Even alleged thieves.  

And if you reasonably and immediately fear death, use only the force needed to end that threat, are not the aggressor, and in many states make reasonable efforts to disengage, you can defend your life.  

A jury found that the Arbery’s killers didn’t meet – or come close to meeting – the standard for self-defense (even given the antiquated pre-Civil War law allowing whites to chase blacks, which the defense tried in its desperation to use).   

If the rules in Georgia “normalize lynching”, they’re sure going about it the long way, since all three men have been “normalized” into life terms in jail, at the very least.  

So Marty’s lying. 

The killers in the Arbery case, like the killer of Trayvon Martin in 2012, claimed that they were authorized by the law to make what they considered a citizen’s arrest. In both cases, when the young black men being hunted down, undoubtedly frightened, resisted their assault, the killers said that they became frightened and needed to shoot as a matter of self-defense. The people who provoked the incidents claimed self-defense.

And again, Marty’s lying about the Martin case.  I won’t go through all the details…

…because Massood Ayoob already did, and with a level fo detail that everyone should bring to the table in trying to debate gun grabbers like Marty and Hausman. 

Although the courts convicted the killers in the Arbery case, our laws are encouraging vigilantism. Multiple states have enacted the NRA-backed “stand your ground” laws, where a person can shoot someone based simply on their subjective feeling that they are at risk, even if walking away and avoiding the confrontation was a reasonable alternative. In Minnesota, there are currently at least three proposed bills to adopt a stand your ground provision here.

Marty is not only lying, here – self-defense involves the “subjective feeling”,  provided a jury agrees that the feeling was reasonable, the fear was immediate, the shooter wasn’t the aggressor, and the force used was reasonable. 

And he’s playing word games.  Years of abuse of “science” have trained ignorant people with big vocabularies that “subjective” is a synonym for “inferior”.  I’ve had at least one person – with a PhD in Education, no less – say this regarding “Stand your Ground” laws. 

To which I respond “what ‘objective’ standard “perceiving an imminent threat’ do you recommend?”

It was a short conversation.  

These laws give people a sense of entitlement to bring high-powered weapons to public settings, ostensibly to protect themselves or other people or property. In the recent Kenosha case, Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who was acquitted, felt it was his right to bring a high powered, semi-automatic rifle to a protest. Rittenhouse’s lawyer said that he did “nothing wrong.”

Marty’s lying again.  Rittenhouse’s defense claimed his shooting was justified.  A jury agreed.  

Stand your ground laws promote vigilante justice, and guns in the hands of racist vigilantes lead to modern-day lynchings. We need to repeal those laws and take a comprehensive look at how we regulate guns.

Marty is lying and preying on his audience’s ignorance.  

“Stand your ground” wasn’t a factor in Rittenhouse’s defense; he may have tried harder to retreat than any self-defense defendant I’ve ever seen (with the possible exception of this guy).  

And it wasn’t part of the Arberry case, either.  

Practically anyone can purchase an arsenal of weaponry powerful enough to gun down dozens of victims in minutes, including semi-automatic rifles and large capacity ammunition magazines.

And yet practically nobody actually does it.  

In a nation with more guns than people, if law-abiding gun owners were a problem, you’d know it. 

After so many years in which the gun lobby dominated the political system, it is a hopeful sign that we are seeing the beginning of a national conversation about gun laws.

As we’ve noted countless times in the past, whenever leftists start talking about “conversations about giuns”, they mean “they lie, scream, defame, slander and insulit; you listen”. 

Which is what Marty is doing.

Up next, Big Left’s inevitable deflection to cars:

As we work to promote safer communities, consider how we regulate automobiles. There are lawful uses for both guns and cars, but both are deadly when misused.

With cars, we require the operator to be trained, licensed, and insured. We register the vehicle, and re-register it when transferring to a new owner.

Except literally nobody says owning and driving a car is a constitutional right – a mandated “Right of the People”, on par with free speech, assembly, worship and the press.

John Marty should propose training for people to be allowed to vote. 

Licensing for the news media (that may be redundant these days). 

Insurance before worshipping. 

Make that dog hunt, Senator.  Then we’ll talk.  

We don’t have a gun registration system because the gun lobby has used fear tactics to fight even modest regulation. They say, “First they’ll register your guns, then the next thing they’ll do is take ’em away.”

Right. Just like they did with cars…

Well, no.  Just like they did with guns, in New York. DC, Chicago, and like they tried to do in California, Virginia and New York State.  Not to mention the UK and Australia, in the past few decades.  

But keep talking about cars. 

So what is Marty proposing (with emphasis added by me):

Here are some reasonable changes that are long overdue:

– Licensing gun owners and registering firearms, requiring training and insurance.

Which takes us back to having to get permission from a state functionary to exercise a constitutional right, and requires trust that a future administration won’t revoke the licenses and send cops around to the registered addresses to round ’em up at their pleasure.  

Like they did in Chicago, DC, New York City, Australia, the UK, and like they tried to do in New York State, California and Virginia. 

– Prohibiting people without occupational need or personal safety risks from carrying weapons, whether concealed or openly brandished, around the community.

This is just pandering to “Karen”.   There is an extremely negative correlation between carry by the law abiding citizen, with or without a permit, and crime committed by those citizens.  

– Putting a lifetime ban on gun ownership for people convicted of violent crimes.

This is just pandering to the ignorant; these people are already banned from owning guns until their rights are restored by a judge.  Someone convicted of a violent crime will have a pretty steep burden of proof to get a judge to restore their rights – outside Hennepin and Ramsey counties of course.  

Perhaps Marty should propose registrations, licensing and lifetime bans on judges that catch and release violent criminals?

– Banning certain dangerous weaponry such as large capacity magazines.

Which are, again, not correlated in any way with the street crime that accounts for most gun homicides.  

These modest proposals do not punish responsible gun owners any more than vehicle registration punishes responsible car owners.

And again, this is mealy-mouthed double talk.  Marty is lying.  He proposes confiscation of guns – which only happens to those who are law-abiding and responsible. 

But these proposals will help stop the arms race on our streets where gang members are more heavily armed than the police and where anyone with a temper or a minor grudge can end up murdering someone in a road rage incident.

Wait – what?

Gang members aren’t “responsbile gun owners”, or even legal gun owners.  Ands they will not be getting licensed, buying insurfance, or registering their guns.  

None of my audience needs to be told this.  And I suspect none of Marty’s audience gets the distinctionn

Regulation saves lives. Over the last 75 years, motor vehicle regulations have cut the traffic death toll by about 90 percent, based on the number of miles driven.

Logic isn’t a long suit of Marty, or anyone who votes for him.- but the distinction wouldn’t confuse a moderately bright fifth grader; the lawful, ordinary use of cars is prone to accidents.  Ensuring their safe use, and making cars themselves more accident. proof, will have an effect. 

Guns are designed to poke holes in targets, whatever that target is.  That’s their purpose. 

If gang members start running down crowds of people with cars, Marty’s analogy would be marginally less nonsensical. 

Speaking of nonsense, Marty is going to butcher the sainted memory of Justice Scalia:

Regulating firearms would reduce fatalities too. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Second Amendment gives an individual right to bear arms in self-defense, but that is not an absolute right. The court says that reasonable restrictions may be placed on the possession of firearms.

Commenting on Scalia’s dicta on the Heller decision should only be allowed to people with licenses and insurance.  

“Reasonable regulation” incliudes keeping them out of felons hands – prudent restrictions against objective issues.  

Not the sort of Karen-baiting ninnyism that Marty and Hausman are yapping about.

Blindsided Them With Science: So – why are Marty and Hausman going long on gun-grabbing, at the tail end of a decade that saw the most radical turnaround in public opinion in the history of the gun rights debate?

Polling shows that the public isn’t smelling what the DFL’s been cooking. Crime is making the Twin Cities – once the pride of the upper midwest, and crown jewels in “progressivism’s” CV, gradually unlivable.. Schools are collapsing, and the teachers union seems hell-bent on accelerating the unfolding disaster.

But the DFL has dealt with all of that before.

But there’s one more challenge – one the DFL hasn’t had to face in the past.

Science.

Let me explain.

After two years of lockdowns, mask hysteria, Vaccine Summer followed by Omicron Winter, and mandates, it turns out that pure, unadulterated science has found a cure for Covid-19: war.

And with the end of Covid, comes the end of the sort of bullying, log-rolling and virtue-screaming that validates and affirms the self-esteem of today’s generation of “progressives”.

With the end of Covid, and of bullying, log-rolling, of snitch-lines and the hierarchy of officially-blessed paranoia atop which they sat for two glorious (to them) years, their reason for existence has been undercut.

Marty senses – out of self-preservation, but not incorrectly – that trying to logroll and bully and harp on law-abiding gun owners (not gang bangers, nosireebob) might provide the sense of mission that events have so cruelly yanked away from Marty’s base.

Show me where I’m wrong.

Minneapolis teachers will likely be walking off the job.

The timing…doesn’t seem great, from their perspective:

I think Majority Leader Gazelka got this one right:

The curiously omnipresent Lt. Governor Flanagan:

Let’s translate:

“Empowering communities to lead with state support” = “transferring public funds to ‘community’ non-profits who do nothing bout crime, but who do serve as the DFL’s farm team and ‘enforcers’ in the community’.

“Be good partners” = keep transferring state money to that political class.

Once you understand the language, it gets so much easier.

A friend of the blog emails:

Neil Young’s Unknown Legend, one of my all time favorite songs, came up on my playlist.

It’s been, geez, two or three weeks now. I’m not sure if I’m not supposed to listen to Neil or not.

(Name Redacted)

One of the greatest aphorisms about music Dash art, really – Asia “ love the art, ignore the artist”. And I figure, once the song goes out into the world, it belongs to us (subject to copyright and intellectual property), not them.

But it is getting to the point where it’s hard to tell what you are, and are not, supposed to support if you want your dollar to stop working for the enemy.

For example, a certain brand of razor blades (which shall remain unnamed for purposes of this post) was a revelation to me when I first discovered it; I actually enjoyed shaving for the first time in my adult life.

Now, I happen to like this particular brand of razors every bit as much as I like Michael Knowles (who is an excellent writer, but kind of ok as a talkradio host) – so I was relieved to see that this particular brand of razor still sponsors other conservative talk radio, and I wasn’t going to have to go out into a razor market dominated by “woke “brands like Gillette to try and find a new brand of blades.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This author suggests Ukraine should have adopted the Finland model: every citizen a citizen-soldier. Makes sense to me, and also aligns with the “well-regulated militia” concept of the Second Amendment.

Point of order: the Finnish (And the very similar Swiss and Israeli) models presume that service in the military is part of a citizens duty to the stage, like paying taxes and serving on juries.

For millions of Americans, you wouldn’t even need to issue weapons. We have them already. Just give us a couple of weeks’ training in small unit movement, ambush basics, sniping, asymmetrical warfare, guerilla tactics. Conquest by invasion would be impossible. The Wolverines would prevent it.

Of course, giving people military training assumes the government trusts its own citizens and vice versa. Can we say that with confidence in America today?

Joe Doakes

We can, of course, assume those such thing; in fact, the Government/Media-Industrial complex has spent the last 40 years demonizing the concept of “the militia“ to a fine sheen – One might assume, to protect itself from any organized opposition. At the moment, the social cost of supporting, much less belonging to, a “militia“, are just too high, whatever the finer points of constitutional ideals, for the average schmuck.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

One thing I’ll say for Lesko Brandon, he’s been effective.

I used to trust my doctor. Nowadays, he preaches the Vaccine Gospel that HMO management requires him to give, which parrots the CDC party line, which is based on partial and incomplete data (the rest is intentionally being withheld) and completely ignores medical studies on effective medical treatments used in other countries. Lesko Brandon has effectively destroyed my faith in the medical profession.

I used to trust my banker. Nowadays, he assures me the bank has no intention of seizing my accounts as an unvaxxed customer, unless ordered to cease providing financial services to me as a biological suspected terrorist under Lesko Brandon’s extension of his Emergency Powers. Lesko Brandon has effectively destroyed my faith in the banking business.

I used to trust my military. Nowadays, the top brass assure me they would never abandon Americans left behind in a war zone (except Afghanistan) and would never get involved in a land war in Asia (except Ukraine, where US troops are already on the way). Lesko Brandon has effectively destroyed my faith in the military.

I used to trust the US economy to be the most productive, most secure economy in the world. Nowadays, inflation is running at Venezuela levels and the labor force participation rate is lower than the Carter Malaise years, with no discernible plan in sight, not even WIN buttons. Lesko Brandon has effectively destroyed my faith in the US economy.

Most effective President ever? Probably not – Lincoln destroyed more but Lincoln had five years in office. Give Brandon time.

Joe Doakes

Shawn Towle is pushing legislation to help house homeless vets. He’s the proprietor of Checks and Balances.

Shukri Abdirahman is running for the GOP nomination to run against Ilhan Omar.

Peggy Benicke is from the Robbinsdale Women’s Clinic.

And here’s our song list for today’s show.

Our cities are a little like Charlie Brown.

Every time Lucy puts the ball on the ground, Charlie remembers all the times she’s pulled the ball away. And yet, he has faith; maybe this will be the first time.

Lucy’s back:

Let’s make sure we’re clear on this – the only “fans” of this idea are the members of the non-profit/industrial complex and the consultant class, who’ll benefit handsomely from it.

As they did from light rail, and the “urban reimagining” of which it is a part.

As they did from the Saint Paul Port Authority’s grandiose, costly, failed urban utopian visionmongering.

As they did from “Urban Renewal”, which did the opposite of renew urban life, replacing old downtowns with sterile, brutalist concrete canyons (see also – Downtown Saint Paul, from Minnesota to Jackson).

A friend of the blog emailed:

I94 was built to “revitalize” middle class Black neighborhood and poor white neighborhood. Historically, it is now said to have destroyed the Rondo neighborhood businesses. 
But, people were not defeated. Black businesses persisted. Businesses by Immigrants from Asian countries also moved in. Perhaps I94 worked. It revitalized!
How dare they. So the Green Line was built to “revitalize” marginalized neighborhoods of working class Americans (of all races, ethnicities).
It kind of worked-businesses closed or left to areas that were no longer on Green Line. Many Black owned, Asian American owned, and immigrant owned businesses left.
Any hope of retail that appealed to work class neighbors was squashed by Allianz Field construction. It was further solidified once the remaining businesses were allowed to be destroyed in the 2020 riots.
Yet, our elites must believe there are still too many of the wrong people lurking around the neighborhood. We need to be further revitalized out of the community. Maybe Bill McGuire and his soccer fans are scared of us. Thus, people like Councilmember Mitra Jalali and urbanist activists propose to once again destroy what communities have built around. 

In a city destroyed, over and over, by urban planning dilettantes, this is yet another fun project for the urban wonk class, which will be paid for literally by taxpayers, and figuratively by generations of the urban miserable yet unborn.

During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Biden said the key to controlling inflation is for businesses to “control costshttps://”:for businesses to “control costs”

“We have a choice. One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer. I think I have a better idea to fight inflation: Lower your costs, not your wages. Make more cars and semiconductors in America. More infrastructure and innovation in America.”

No word if the department of labor has reclassified “wages“ as “not a cost“ yet.

I will await Paul Krugman‘s word on the costs thst can be lowered by CEO degree.

Ukrainians have a quick remedy for looters:

I’m liking it.

In 2010, faced with running against charismatic Republican Tea Party firebrand Tom Emmer with somnolent and visibly addled Mark Dayton, Big Leftymoney rallied enough money to prop up “moderate” “Republican” bureaucrat Tom Horner, an Arne Carlson/Dave Durenberger-era functionary designed to soak up “moderate” “Republican” votes from Republicans who found themselves disaffected by Tom Emmer’s “extremist” (as established in the coordinated media campaign supported by the same big leftymoney).

It worked. Horner soaked up enough squishes to give Dayton his margin of victory.

They’re trying again:

The signs are all there; Hepola gives off all the indications of being Leftymoney astroturf.

Of course, times are a little more parlous than they were in 2010. And the DFL faces two legal weed parties on the ballot, which will eat up a lot of younger DFL voters.

So the rationale is as clear as the provenance is murky.

By the way, I hereby invite Mr. Hepola on my show. I may be the only person in Twin Cities media who doesn’t paint his toenails on the air, which will likely be the showtopper, but the offer is made.

Given the modern left newfound love for an armed populace, maybe this will go over OK:

Oh, not for me of course. I’m about 10 inches too tall to fit in one of those things.

Idaho bill would require prosectors to reimburse people with successful self-defense claims, whom they opt to prosecute anyway:

If enacted, the legislation would require the county or prosecuting state agency where the person was charged with a crime to reimburse the defendant for “all reasonable costs” if they are found not guilty by reason of self defense. Reasonable costs would include lost wages, the costs of any lost business opportunities and legal costs including bail, expert witness fees, attorney’s bills and other expenses. The bill also includes a “safety net” to protect defendants if they are sued by victim in a self-defense case, she said.

It’s intended to provide consequences for the sort of malicious, specious prosecution of people like Kyle Rittenhouse – cases with lots of political sturm und drang but little to no actual evidence of unjustifiable homicide.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Russia invades Ukraine, a massive war on par with WW II. Photos don’t look like it. Looks pretty quiet to me. Cleanest war since January 6th.

One wrecked bus shelter. A traffic jam of cars leaving town. People talking on cell phones, waiting to catch public transportation. This could be Minneapolis any day of the week.

There’s one radar antenna damaged and one apartment building on fire (I wonder if it was accidentally hit by rounds intended for the military installation which fell short, or if it was set on fire by mostly peaceful protesters?) Nobody pushing a wheelbarrow with all their belongings. No mile-long columns of marching soldiers. No piles of bodies in the streets.

Ukraine has had weeks to fortify the area but apparently did not. I see no reason the US should do it now.

Oh wait, scroll down a bit to the blonde wearing pink. Now I understand why Lesko Brandon wants the United States involved. I’ll bet her hair smells terrific.

Joe Doakes

Events have perhaps left some of the events in this email behind in recent days…

I don’t even qualify as an armchair private, much less an armchair general.

But watching the Russian army‘s performance in Ukraine, I cooked up a theory.

Modern dictators know they can’t trust their armies; They have to find some way to counterbalance them. That is usually some combination of a smaller, fanatically loyal, better equipped force to serve as a backstop against potential disloyalty from the regular army.

Hitler had the SS (and even then, kept the SS divided against itself, including a special force within the SS that was even more loyal to Hitler). Hussein had the Republican guards. In addition to infiltrating the entire army with the KGB, the Soviets actually built two parallel armies (KGB “border forces “and MVD “internal security troops”) to protect the regime against perfidy by the Red Army,

Even the modern British Army has some vestigial remnants of that same practice; the Guards regiments are technically separate from the rest of the army (hence they are still called “Household Troops”), A throwback to a time when the monarch had a private army to guard itself. The practice is more a nod to the tradition and esprit de corps that is such a huge part of British military practice – nobody thinks the Coldstream Guard will need to beat back a coup by the Rifle Regiment – but that’s basically where i tall started.

Under the Soviet system, the army was kept at a lower state of readiness than the KGB and MVD. And of course they were informants everywhere. Whenever the army bate became too “good “, or a general two popular, the KGB and the party would unite to get rid of them, and cut the army down to size. Frequent purges, with the commensurate loss in combat effectiveness (to the Soviets immense grief in the Winter War with Finland, and the first year of the war against Germany – were deemed acceptable, at least initially, compared to the risk of a coup.

And then the Soviet Union fell.and then the Soviet Union fell.

I am speculating, here – but I suspect modern Russia’s diminished circumstances, and the need to line a lot of oligarchs pockets (including his own), means, I suspect, that Putin may not be able to afford as elaborate a set of redundant military precautions, and may have to keep his army even less capable than before, for his own safety‘s sake.

That’s the only theory I can think of, after 10 years of the Russian military supposedly evolving into a force capable of competing with the first world.

(Want an actual expert? Try this guy).

For the first time in 2021, over 100,000 carry permits were issued in one year in the state of Minnesota.

There are currently well over 350,000 permits in circulation. in 2003, the MN House research department estimated no more than 90,000 would ever be issued.

That is close to 10% of all eligible Minnesota adults. which has to mean in greater Minnesota, at least a fifth of adults have permits.

Only 90% to go.Only 90% to go.