Tag Archives: Alondra Cano

This Is A Test

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Ever since the retirement of Phyllis Kahn for being too moderate for her crazy-left district in Minneapolis, it’s seemed fairly plain – no matter what happens in Minneapolis politics, the drift will be the left.

So this post is both a test of my theory, and a prediction.

Alondra Cano is leaving office.

Now, you know me. I have never come to praise Cano, but to try to bury her in ridicule.

But here’s my prediction: she will be replaced by someone who makes her look like Phyllis Schlafly in comparison.

Predictions as to what she’ll do next? Leave your predictions in the comment section.

UPDATE: Hardly seems possible this was five years ago, already. It may be my favorite post title in the history of this blog.

He’s Baaaaack

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Ryan Winkler, Minnesota’s House Majority Leader – let that thought rattle around in your head a bit – replies to Senate Majority Leader Gazelka yesterday:

“Trump’s America is deadly!”

But the Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan’s Minnesota is the part that is rioting, burning, looting, shedding businesses and jobs, boarding up, moving to the burbs or Wisconsin or the Greater or Lesser Dakota, buggering off, hitting the dusty trail for freer and safer horizons.

Alondra Cano’s Minnesota is the part that can’t run itself even in good times without massive transfers of wealth from the parts of the state that work (for now), the Republican parts.

Lisa Bender’s Minnesota is the part that considers “law and order” a form of unsustainable “privilege” for all you plebs, but pays a lot of your money so that it has that privilege for itself.

Ryan Winkler’s Minnesota is the part where a Harvard graduate and machine politician from a lilywhite “progressive” suburb full of NIMBYs can call one of the most distinguished jurists of our time an “Uncle Tom”, and then turn around and yap about “white supremacy” when his opponent compliments the men and women who are taking time off from their real lives to clean up yet another DFL mess.

If Ryan Winkler didn’t exist, the GOP would have to invent him.

This Is A Job For The Counselor Squad

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Shot: Vandals of sorts “attack” Lisa Bender’s house:

Chaser: And in response Bender filed a…

…well, let’s look at the Channel 5 story:

The Minneapolis Police Department told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS there is an incident report filed concerning an act of vandalism that occurred at the home of Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender last week.

Bender declined an interview request from KSTP.

I smell some more private security for the more-equal animals.

And I’m not the only one, if you read between the lines:

Three Minneapolis City Council members, Andrea Jenkins, Alondra Cano and Phillipe Cunningham recently received threats that prompted safety concerns, and the city paid for private security companies to provide extra protection.

Jenkins told KSTP there have been protests outside the homes of several city council members in recent weeks. After the vandalism at Bender’s home, she said she has never seen this type of vitriol aimed at the city council during her 16 years of work at city hall.

And remember – there are two Betg’s Laws in effect here; the 18th Law covers the media’s reaction, and let’s not rule out the 20th Law in re Councilwoman Bender or her staff themselves.

Rounds Two And…Three?

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Like a lot of Twin Cities residents, I’m eyeing next spring – sometime after the scheduled March opening of the Derek Chauvin trial – nervously, remembering that the LA riots (at least the ones everyone remembers) began not with the pummeling of Rodney King, but with the acquittal of the four officers involved.

And here’s a fearless prediction (one I’ve already made): Chauvin will be acquitted of Second Degree Unintentional Murder – not because of any legal cop-fu, but because while I’m not a lawyer, I don’t think you need to be a lawyer to see why it’s going to be very hard to show that Chauvin was – check the emphasis, taken from the statute for 2nd Degree Unintentional Murder…:

(1) causes the death of a human being, without intent to effect the death of any person, while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense other than criminal sexual conduct in the first or second degree with force or violence or a drive-by shooting; or

Is a cop responding to a call “the commission of a felony?” I can see Alondra Cano believing that – but Ellison? Someone who’s ostensibly been to law school?

Unless there’s some bodacious lawyer-fu in store, or the Attorney General’s office plans on tampering with the entire witness pool, I’m just not seeing it.

But does the concept of qualified immunity mean there could be yet a third adverse verdict for George Floyd’s supporters and the Twin CIties’ far left’s many professional and amateur hooligans?

Was it “clearly established” on May 25 that kneeling on a prone, handcuffed arrestee’s neck for nearly nine minutes violated his Fourth Amendment rights? The issue is surprisingly unsettled in the 8th Circuit, which includes Minnesota.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit blocked civil rights claims in two recent cases with broadly similar facts: handcuffed detainees who died after being restrained face down by several officers. Unlike those detainees, Floyd was not actively resisting at the time of his death, except to repeatedly complain that he could not breathe.

While that distinction could make a difference in the constitutional analysis, we can’t be sure. Even if the 8th Circuit concluded that Chauvin’s actions were unconstitutional, it could still decide the law on that point was not clear enough at the time of Floyd’s arrest, meaning Chauvin would receive qualified immunity.

The 8th Circuit could even reach the latter conclusion without resolving the constitutional question, as courts have commonly done since 2009, when the Supreme Court began allowing that shortcut. To defeat qualified immunity in this case, says UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz, a leading critic of the doctrine, Floyd’s family “would have to find cases in which earlier defendants were found to have violated the law in precisely the same way.”

The whole piece is worth a read – and the whole concept of seriously reforming qualified immunity is something conservatives need to take an enlightened lead on.

Because it’s for damn sure the other side won’t.

These Are The Barricades

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The similarities in demographics in population between Virginia and Minnesota are inescapable. Both states are large, solid red expanses of land and people, surrounding small, densely populated democrat dominated Metropolitan areas.

And of course, both states have Democratic parties prone to going wild on orgies of spending and power grabbing whenever they get unfettered power. As the Democrats did in Virginia over the past year, driving a wave of “progressive” legislation pretty much across-the-board, but especially focusing on gun control.

And watching Virginia’s Democrats, it’s not hard to think that they might actually be a little bit calm and restrained compared to the ones we have in Minnesota, the party of Ryan Winkler and Alondra Cano and Melissa Melissa and Ilhan Omar.

It’s hard to imagine what that crew would stop at if they got unrestrained power Dash say, by flipping the Senate this fall, giving them raw, unfettered access to all the money and all the power.

This isn’t problem just for Second Amendment advocates, of course.

But Second amendment advocates are among the best organized to do something about it; I’ve been telling conservative groups for a decade that they need to learn something from the Second Amendment movement nationwide.

Four Minnesota counties – Clearwater, Marshall, Roseau and Wadena – have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for the Second amendment (some choose the term “dedicated” to avoid confusion with immigration issue – the effect is entirely the same). It’s not just a symbolic statement; the resolutions include language about litigation against intrusive legislation, as well as well as demurrals from enforcing unconstitutional laws.. Resolutions have been introduced in three more counties – and probably a few dozen more have some degree of activity on the subject.

Yours could be one of them, if you live in Minnesota; in fact, you could be the one to get things going in your county. The Gun Owners Caucus has a list of resources right here, as well as a list of sanctuary/dedicated county groups around the state.

Because what better way to show the DFL; This Is What Power-Drunk Overreach gets you.



Since All Of Minneapolis’s Problems Have Been Solved

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Minneapolis: fighting the battles that matter.

Crime? Achievement gaps in terrible schools? Disposable bags? Gentrification and zoning causing housing to become unaffordable to the middle-class?

Nope. Minneapolis is tackling the scourge of fur.

The ban would not force any Minneapolis businesses to close. Instead, companies which currently sell animal fur will have a phase-in period, during which they can transition to selling fur-free products. There is also an explicit exemption in the ordinance which protects the rights of Native American tribes to sell fur for traditional and spiritual purposes. Secondhand stores too are exempt from the ban.
According to the Humane Society, more than 100 million animals are killed every year for the primary purpose of using their fur. It is estimated that 85% of these animals are raised in factory fur farms, while the other 15% are killed in the wild.
If the ordinance passes, Minneapolis would join Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, and West Hollywood, which have taken similar stances. New York City has also introduced an ordinance to end the sale of fur.

Why, yes – now that you mention it, it was sponsored by Alondra Cano, the intellectual standard-bearer of modern MInnesota progressivism.

The Minneapolis Way

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https://pjmedia.com/davidsteinberg/ilhan-omars-husband-no-longer-works-for-minneapolis-councilwoman-sources-say-omar-asked-for-him-to-be-fired/

Ilhan Omar’s soon to be ex husband’s days of being part of the lifetime sinecure the DFL gives its “elite” are apparently at an end. His job as a bag man…er, community liaison for Alondra Cano apparently got terminated over the summer.

David Steinberg – who hasn’t quite shamed the Strib or MPR to cover the story yet – writes:

My sources stated that Ahmed Hirsi was terminated following a request by Rep. Omar. They added that Omar’s motivation for the request was to force Hirsi to become reliant upon her assets and income.
For the majority of 2019, Ahmed Hirsi has reportedly borne the responsibility of raising the three children he has with Omar. (One source used the term “abandoned” to describe Ilhan’s recent share of the parenting.) Since June 14, Hirsi does not appear to have a reliable source of income.
Meanwhile, Rep. Omar currently draws a $174,000 Congressional salary, and reportedly received a $250,000 book advance in January.

Read the whole thing. Pass it along.

This Is Today’s DFL

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If it could be said the MInnesota DFL party has three intellectual standardbearers – the people who define the full depth and breadth of today’s DFL’s worldview, belief structure and moral parameters – they’d be Minneapolis Congressoman Ilhan Omar, Minneapolis city councilwoman Alondra Cano, and William “Robespierre” Davis.

You might recall Mr. Davis from before the 2018 elections, when he “joked” about hauling Republicans “to the guillotines”, the sort of thing that would have gotten a Republican staffer fired and exiled, but seems to have only cemented Davis’ reputation as a (ahem) thought leader.

And you know what they say – thought leaders’ gonna lead thoughts:

“Murder boats”.

Got that, veterans? Forget Tim Walz’s hopey-changey; this is what the Minnesota DFL actually thinks about you.

Vote accordingly.

By the way – I think it’s fascinating how every time an elected DFLer is in a self-inflicted jam, some DFL staffer says something dissociative and inflammatory.

The Convenient Victims

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2019: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar  thinks “gay conversion therapy” is torture.

2017: State representative Ilhan Omar thinks penalizing parents for allowing their daughters to be carved up and mutilated is a cultural imposition.

Representative Omar – taking the convenient moral stands.

You know the worst thing about the idea of replacing Rep. Omar?

The 5th CD DFL would come up with someone worse.  Am I the only one who can imagine Alondra Cano warming up her primary shoes?

Orwell Was A Pollyanna

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Ben Shapiro challenged prog flavor of the month Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez to a debate – something she’s never had in her “political career”.

Now, there’s no requirement that a pol debate anyone, ever – even their opponents for office, much less pundits.   Of course, it can be used against you – not that it matters in a one-party town like Ocasio-Cortez’ district.

And there are so many ways to decline a debate request like this:

  • “Sorry – I’m getting ready for a general election (coronation?), and I’m too busy”.
  • “Debating you will be of no consequence to serving (koff koff) my constituents and my district.  Why would either of us waste our time?”
  • “I’ve got drapes to measure that evening”
  • “I gotta wash my hair”.
  • Or the old reliable “<silence>”.

That’s not what Ocasio-Cortez did, though:

Asking for a debate is “like catcalling” – sexist, intrusive, unwanted, arrogant.

A response that is, itself, sexist and arrogant, and a sign of a mind that can think on no other plane than the politics of identity and outrage.

Congratuations, New York.  You got another winner here.  (Not that Minnesota has anything to brag about, since the equally risible Alondra Cano  Alondra Cano, Ray Dehn and Keith Ellison remain in office).

SIDE NOTE:   Remember when the same people who are raving about Ocasio-Cortez today were calling Sarah Palin  an ignorant dumbass?

This is the sound of “the bar” in freefall.

Power! Power! Power!

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I’ve been known to mock and taunt the likes of Sarah Jeong, Alondra Cano and Nekima Levy-Pounds for their comical take on “privilege” – including the implication that a guy driving a truck 70 hours a week out in Oil Country has “privilege” over people with elite educations and lifetime political / media sinecures.

Some might think I’m being hyperbolic, or exaggerating the moral dementia of this class of “Progressives”.

Oh, silly pollyannas.   I dion’t have to exaggerate anything:

A feminist professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada recently published a book chapter documenting the myriad ways homeless men allegedly perpetuate “hegemonic masculinity” while discussing their hardships.

The book chapter, “When a Man’s Home is Not a Castle: Hegemonic Masculinity Among Men Experiencing Homelessness,” was published last Wednesday by Professor Erin Dej, in a book she co-edited on patriarchy in psychiatric wards and homeless shelters.

The goal of her research, she explains, was to “assess the ways hypermasculinity is performed among men experiencing homelessness.” And to do this, Dej interviewed 27 homeless men and spent and additional 296 hours spying on them in homeless shelters.

Up next – how lab rats are part of the patriarchy.

Dense

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The argument amongst Minneapolis’s self-appointed “elites” isn’t whether to make Minneapolis into a high-rise, high-density city full of condos for the well-to-do and poverty-warehouses for the poor – but just how dense to make things.

Pun intended.

But as Lincoln said, you can’t fool all the people all time.  Even people who vote for Alondra Cano1.  As the Strib found:

A city staffer explained the rising burden of rental prices on poor residents, and gently pushed a central theme of the draft plan — that the city must build more homes in more places — to a group peppered with skeptics.

“If you just let the market promote density, that doesn’t necessarily trickle down to affordable housing,” said Lara Norkus-Crampton, a south Minneapolis resident. “If it was just density that provided affordable housing, then Hong Kong and New York City would be the most affordable places on the planet, and they’re not.”

Norkus-Crampton’s view cuts to the core of the debate as the city takes public comment on a comprehensive plan that will be finalized before the end of the year. It would be a bold experiment, allowing fourplexes the same size as a large home in every residential neighborhood, and dramatically loosening restrictions on the height and type of buildings allowed on dozens of transit routes throughout the city as part of an effort to drive down rental prices.

Not a bad grasp of economics for someone who clearly votes DFL (the hyphen is the tell); if you make something more scarce (by artificially jiggering the availability of crappy apartments by crappy transit, for example), the price will rise.

The plan, we’re told, is to eventually bar all new single-family homes from the city – turning it into a hipster haunt and poverty warehouse (depending on the neighborhood) with a thin film  of the wealthy grandfathered in around Lake of the Isles and Minnehaha Creek and West River Road (someone’s gotta administer all the rest of the housing – and it’s so hard to concentrate on other peoples’ best interest when you’re jammed into a four plex next to a train station…

1Just kidding.  You can convince Alondra Cano’s voters of pretty much anything.   Someday, I may turn to short con games in her ward for a little side income.

A Sign You’ve Solved All The Serious Crises

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Dogs at Los Angeles’ animal shelters may  be going vegan:

The idea was proposed by Commissioner Roger Wolfson, a Hollywood screenwriter who cited research that he contended shows vegan diets “eliminate” many health problems in dogs, which are omnivores. But he said rethinking the dogs’ meals is about far more sweeping matters — the environmental effect of a meat industry that produces the main ingredients in lots of dog food and the ethics of feeding animals to animals.

“We have to embrace the fact that the raising and killing of animals for food purposes must only be done if we have absolutely no other choice,” Wolfson said at the meeting, according to a recording published on a county website. “This is about the long-term survival of every man, woman and child in this room, and all of the people in our lives.”

While “progressives” are all about “science” when it comes to smooching Bill Nye’s hindquarters or browbeating fundamentalists, it’d seem they’re swimming against the scientific current here…:

The city’s chief veterinarian, Jeremy Prupas, was not convinced. In a report to the commission, he recommended rejecting the proposal, saying that it could deprive dogs of sufficient protein, calcium and phosphorus and that it could be inadequate for injured, pregnant or lactating pups. Prupas said he’d consulted three clinical nutritionists at veterinary medical schools, one shelter medicine specialist and a veterinary toxicologist who works with a pet food company. None endorsed vegan dog diets, he testified.

Oh, yeah – and vegan dog food, not unlike vegan human food, costs four times as much as the regular stuff.

Which is all fine, if you’re just playing “government dress-up” with other peoples’ money.

Which is another way of saying “California”.

Although if it passes in LA, look for Alondra Cano to propose it in short order in Minneapolis.

Of Goals And Means

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Two incumbent Minneapolis city councilbots, and five challengers with decent chances of winning, said they can see a future without a Minneapolis Police Department:

Asked, “Do you believe that we could ever have a city without police?” two incumbents and five serious challengers running for City Council answered “yes.”…Those who did and said they believe “we could ever have a city without police” were Bender, Ninth Ward Council Member Alondra Cano; Phillipe Cunningham, who’s running for council in the Fourth Ward; Jeremiah Ellison, who’s running in the Fifth Ward; Janne Flisrand, who’s running in the Seventh Ward; Ginger Jentzen, who’s running in the Third Ward and Jeremy Schroeder, who’s running in the 11th Ward.

Let’s be clear; even the candidates (mostly) say this is in the realm of imagination, if not fantasy:

“It’s aspirational, but it’s way aspirational,” said Council Member Lisa Bender, who said yes to the question. “We have a very long way to go before we would approach public safety without police.”…”The question wasn’t, ‘Do you promise to eliminate MPD by the end of your first term,’ it was ‘Can you imagine a city without police,’ ” said [long-shot candidate Phillippe] Cunningham, who’s running against Council President Barb Johnson…

Now, let’s be frank; a society without the need for police would be a good thing, from a conservative perspective.  And it can, and has, worked; in the old west, before the idea of “police” had migrated out from places like New York and Boston, communities did in fact police themselves.   Of course, they also governed themselves – without the need for Minneapolis-style city councils and bureaucracies…

…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Here’s the problem; part of it is that it’s a spitballing fantasy.

Part of it is that, being not merely DFLers but DFLers to the left of Betsy Hodges, they’re putting their faith in the wrong institution to bring this utopian vision about:

[Several of the respondents said] they were describing an ideal future in which inequality and racism are eliminated and government policy has solved many of the social problems now handled by police arresting and imprisoning people.

Uh oh.

For starters, government policy is behind most of the social problems facing Minneapolis, especially the North Side; from the warehousing of the poor in places like North Minneapolis, to the inertia of the police reform process, to the artificial hikes in the minimum wage and immigration policies that have made entry level work impossible to get for too many poor youth, most of the problems trace back to City Hall, the State Capitol, or DC.

But here’s a more troubling part:

Prosperity without order is impossible (even if it’s enough “prosperity” to pay taxes to support a leech-like bureaucracy like Minneapolis’s); freedom without prosperity is meaningless.  If you think that’s an idle bromide, look at Detroit, Camden or Stockton.

So something has got to keep order.  Sometimes – like in small towns out west, or in the Old West example above, or in areas where natural disaster has swept away government at least temporarily, that order is kept by the people agreeing on some basic rules to live by, and some simple means to enforce them.

In this day and age, in the big city, it’s a police department, a prosecutor’s office, a judicial system, a corrections system, and a parole and probation system, and the bureaucracies that recruit, train, advise, pay, and take care of all the above after they retire, and the bureaucracies that do the same for those bureaucracies.

What could be worse?

One of the study’s designers answers:

“Police reform doesn’t actually work,” [survey organizer, designer and artist Ashley] Fairbanks said. “We need to radically re-imagine what policing will look like in our community.”

And all those roads seem to lead, according to any of the councilpeople, to policing attitudes, not behavior.  To eliminating badthink.

In other words, they’d get rid of the guys in cars patrolling for speeding tickets, and replace them with thought police.

Bonus Sign of the Apocalypse:  And in this survey, one of the voices of practicality, of feet-on-the-ground common practical sense, of dealing with the “now” rather than fantasizing about the indeterminate future, is…

…Alondra Cano?

Cano said right now she actually wants a greater police presence in the Ninth Ward, which includes several neighborhoods along East Lake Street.

“The solution is not really no cops, but it’s more how do we get rid of homelessness, how do we get rid of commercial sex exploitation, how do we get rid of chemical dependency?” she said. “Then you start alleviating the pressure that a lot of police officers feel to address these very deeply rooted challenges in our community, which they themselves know they’re not going to be able to solve.”

Given Minneapolis’ electorate’s state of mind these days, that might come back to haunt her.

 

 

The North Loop Is Burning!, Part III: Never Never Land

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Note:  it’s been a couple of crushingly busy days, and not really in a good way.    This same piece went out in raw-notes form yesterday.  I’m going to re-release it with, y’know, some actual writing. 

In theran an editorial this past week proposing some solutions in the tony, hip North Loop last week, the Strib editorial board pondered what to do about the rising crime rates in the North Loop, whose problems are a result of policies the DFL supports.  On Tuesday, we noted that the problem is falling exactly into line with urban theorist Joel Kotkin’s theories on the subject (cities are turning into donuts – holes full of the very wealthy, surrounded by a doughy ring of poverty warehoused in the neighborhoods for the convenience of the social service bureaucracy.

Today?  After decades of drawing bars to the North Loops, the City Council is shocked, shocked to discover drunkenness:

Police have lost some tools in the past couple of years that in particular appear to have affected quality-of-life issues. Public drunkenness and aggressive panhandling are more than nuisances — they can be threats to safety. Police used to be able to book inebriates who drank in public. But an order issued by then-Hennepin County Chief Judge Peter Cahill in early 2016 quashed that, allowing only ticketing for public drinking.

“Now you see someone with a bottle at 4th and Hennepin and you write a ticket,” Sullivan said. “A half-hour later, they’re at 5th and Hennepin, then 6th and Hennepin. Before, we could interrupt the cycle, get them off the streets and maybe even get them some help.” Hennepin County is the only jurisdiction in the state operating under such an order. Cahill said that his standing order can be changed, but that to his knowledge no such request has been made. It should be, and city officials should make it.

Right.

But the Hodges administration is too busy virtue-signalling against Donald Trump, and the city council – the only group of people in the metro not well-placed to mock Alondra Cano – are too busy building monuiments to themselves and keeping the graft wagon greased to be bothered, apparently.

Other efforts to help those with addictions should continue, but having created a neighborhood, city officials now have an obligation to ensure that public drunkenness is dealt with effectively.

Is it sexy enough for Minneapolis’ juvenile City Council to bother with?

Panhandling is tougher to deal with, since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2015 — Reed vs. the town of Gilbert — has been widely interpreted as a prohibition on panhandling laws thought to restrict free speech. The high court did not make a specific ruling on that issue, but the Columbia Law Review recently noted that “there is a real danger that virtually all panhandling laws will be invalidated, even though some serve to protect pedestrians and others.”

Isn’t that rich?  Panhandling is better-protected than political dissent from the right in Minneapolis.

Similarly, businesses and patrons alike complain about the large number of young people at night whom some see as intimidating…bars and clubs downtown that lure the 18-and-older set with cover charges that can be cheaper than a movie ticket…Once in, they can party until 2 a.m.

Teenagers and booze mix about as well as politicians and power.  One might think the bars would see a self-interest in curbing packs of drunk teen…

…but then, with a $15/hour minimum wage and mandatory sick time coming up, they have other best interests to see to.

Minneapolis isn’t serious about solving any social problem; the whole city is a vehicle for virtue-signaling.

Tomorrow:  The Same Old Crap About Guns

The Ark

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I saw this story a few years ago, and put it aside until today – the fortieth anniversary of the dedication of the more unusual Catholic churches in the world, Kosciol Arka Pana in Novy Huta, Poland.

Which is interesting in and of itself; Nowy Huta is a district in Krakow that was built as a “Socialist Realist” experiment, an entire community built from the ground up to reflect the ideals of Stalin-era communism.

Including absolute, suffocating atheism.

Poles are, of course, obstreperously Catholic – so the battle between Socialist Atheism and Faith seesawed across the city.  In 1960, a wooden cross was erected with aa permit, prompting police response; violent demonstrations ensued.  The future pope, then-bishop Karol Wojtyla, who began holding annual outdoor Christmas Eve Masses in Nowy Huta in 1959 – and saw to it that ever time the cops removed the cross, another one replaced it.

It took seven years to secure a permit – and, literally, nothing else.  In a society where all resources were officially allocated by the government – picture a government where everyone is Alondra Cano – they did it all with volunteer labor and scrounged material.

With no outside help it was down to the locals to mix cement with spades, and find the two million stones needed for the church’s facade. The first corner stone was laid in 1969 by Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, who would later assume fame as Pope John Paul II, but the discovery of a WWII ammunition dump delayed work, as some 5,000 mines and shells had to be carefully removed. Finally, on May 15th 1977, the church was consecrated. Built to resemble Noah’s Ark, with a 70 metre mast-shaped crucifix rising from the middle, the church houses an array of curious treasures, including a stone from the tomb of St. Peter in the Vatican, a tabernacle containing a fragment of rutile brought back from the moon by the crew of Apollo 11, and a controversial statue of Christ that shows him not on a cross, but about to fly to the heavens. If you think that’s odd, check out the statue dedicated to Our Lady the Armoured – a half metre sculpture made from ten kilograms of shrapnel removed from Polish soldiers wounded at the Battle of Monte Cassino. In the early 1980s, the church became a focal point during anti-communist protests, not least for the shelter it afforded the locals from the militia. Protesting during the period of Martial Law was dangerous business, as proven by the monument dedicated to Bogdan Włosik opposite the church. Włosik was shot in the chest by security services, and later died of his injuries. His death outraged the people, and his funeral was attended by 20,000 mourners. The monument commemorating the site of his death was erected in 1992 and is a tribute to all those who died during this period. As recently as September 2012, Kraków City Council awarded Arka Pana the ‘Cracoviae Merenti’ silver medallion for its significance to the city’s history.

Apropos not much, other than historical interest.

If I Were A Betting Man…

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…and I am not, but if I were, I’d bet good money that the headline at the Strib tomorrow will be something like:

Minnesota Republicans Reject Black Chair Candidate

I can honestly say that I’d have voted for anyone in the field – Rick Rice, Dave Hann or Chris FIelds (who I figured would be the final two in the running) or the actual winner, Jennifer Carnahan.

Jennifer Carnahan (Courtesy Jennifer Carnahan)

Incoming MNGOP chair Jennifer Carnahan (photo courtesy the Carnahan campaign).

Not to say I doubted Carnahan’s merits; she went from attending her first GOP caucus 14 months ago, to running a very impressive MN Senate campaign in downtown Minneapolis, to the little Chair campaign that could.   And I’ve interviewed her, and she is very much a force of nature in person.   Not to say I doubted she’d win; I just thought the notoriously pragmatic State Central would make a more mainstream choice, like Hann or Fields.

So I’m surprised, and happy about it all in all.

I would, of course, be lying if I said that I was surprised by the depravity of today’s DFL.

While I don’t know “Jordan Parshall”, I’m pretty comfortable saying he represents the mainstream of today’s DFL.   I think it’s hilarious – right after telling a Korean-American woman not to get uppity, he congratulates none other than…

…wait for it…

…wait for it…

…Alondra Cano.

(And lest you wondered, Urban Liberal Privilege means “never having to apologize for saying something corrosively racist, sexist and entintled”:

But who cares.   Congrats to Jennifer Carnahan!

Rebooted Morality!

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Remember when questioning the provenance of immigrant voters was a baaaad thing?

Either does Alondra “The Brain” Cano, the “third world feminist” and Minneapolis City Council ward heeler:

Minneapolis City Council candidate Mohamed Farah is accusing Council Member Alondra Cano of “Jim Crow tactics” after she questioned the credentials of many of the Somali-American delegates chosen in the Ninth Ward caucus earlier this month.

Cano’s campaign filed challenges with the Minneapolis DFL saying 101 delegates elected in the near south Minneapolis caucus did not sign in to participate in the April 4 event at South High School. At least 27 delegates and alternates did not write down their addresses when they registered, Cano’s campaign said, and “we have identified at least three delegates who do not live in the precinct they were elected in.”

I love watching tyrants eating each other.

Question For NPR/MPR, The Strib, Alondra Cano, Betsy Hodges And Every Other Minnesota Liberal Figurehead

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To:  NPR, the Strib,  Alondra Cano, and every other Twin Cities liberal that’s spent the lasdt six months romanticizing the NoDAPL “pipeline” protest
From:  Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant and actual North Dakota native
Re:  Just Curious, Here

All,

You all – media and political figures alike – have spent the past six months romanticizing the “No Dakota Access Pipeline” protests more thoroughly than a Scarlett Johansson cheesecake photo shoot.

NPR / MPR?  You had your reporters out in the wilds of south-central North Dakota, doing your best to make the protests sound like an organic grassroots phenomenon, sprung up from the soil to protect the river.  Y’know – the Missouri.  The river that flows through middle of the Dakotas and Nebraska.

Of course, while your reporters (yours too, Strib) plead “It’s Settled Science” on many convenient issues, you ignored it over and over again on this issue.  It’s a simple fact – while the oil that powers your Subarus does indeed have some risk of spilling in its remote location far from any major population center, it’s many orders of magntitude per barrel lower that that same risk the way the oil is currently transported – by truck and train, through the middle of Bismarck, Jamestown (blocks from my father’s house, actually), Fargo, Fergus Falls, Saint Cloud, Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Madison and Chicago.   As in astronomically more safe.

But let’s not pretend that Alondra Cano knows the first thing about statistics, or cares a rats ass about a bunch of white, rural, Trump-voting North Dakotans’ safety (or, for that matter, how many Strib or MPR reporters could name the river the “protesters” are “protecting”).   And your logical consistency about the oil that powers your cars and buses and printing presses and transmitters is no less dubious than about where your food comes from.  Yep, same place.

In fact, let’s forget the logical and moral inconsistency of your entire story – you media figures’ selective and incurious reporting, you politicians’ illiterate grandstanding.  Ignore it all for now.

Let’s focus on today – where the “protesters” have left an ungodly mess at their “protest” site.  North Dakota’s top tow-truck driver notes:

There are roughly 200 vehicles down there at last count, ranging from cars and pickups to rental trucks. We’re going to have a very drastic situation trying to keep these vehicles from getting into the river – what everybody’s been trying to protect from day one. We can’t leave them there. We don’t know what kind of biohazard is going to be produced with all the fluids or any other garbage that’s inside the vehicle.

Here’s a Bismarck TV station’s report:

So – for six months you, the Twin Cities’ left leaning media and grandstanding left-wing politicians, romanticized the NoDAPL “protests” and “protesters”.

Just as you did “Occupy”, and the RNC protests , and the various G7 protests, and every other “protest” you can imagine (except the Tea Party, naturally).

And just like every protest other than the Tea Party, the NoDAPL “protesters” left behind filth and squalor.

And they left by the banks of the river they were supposedly “protecting” – cars full of fuel, human waste, and over a thousand tons of general trash.   All right there, waiting for the next Missouri River flood.

This, mind you, in a part of the state that is very sparsely populated even by North Dakota standards – miles down a two-lane road from Mandan.   Not the wealthy exurbs from which most of you media and political figures hail.

Oh, yeah – and it’s upstream from the Standing Rock reservation.

So – if you’re not running stories about the squalor left behind, and – this is for you, Alondra Cano – actively soliciting people and money and other resources for cleaning up after the people you encouraged to leave the mess, you’re not only hypocrites…

…you’re racists.

Suck on that.

That is all.

Some People Wanna NARN, So They Can Be Free

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Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!

Today on the show:

  • MNGOP Chair candidate Chris Fields joins me.
  • A challenge to MPR, the Strib, Alondra Cano, and other MInnesota liberals

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is normally heard on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

Join us!

Journalism Without Limits!

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Well, the title is a little misleading.  Where I wrote “without limits”, I guess I what I meant was “no bottom to the barrel”.

Because in the arc of downfall for the City Pages, from its heady days in the eighties publishing James Lileks, and its journalistic peak in the nineties, where they ran a lot of excellent reporting, the CP just keeps falling.

And every time I think “they can’t possibly get any worse as reporters?”   They somehow pull it off.

I didn’t think they could get any worse than Dan Haugen’s factual malaprops – but sure enough, Kevin Hoffman was right there with the onanistic panty-sniffing disguised as high-school-caliber schadefreud.  From thence, we’ve had a couple years of the ongoing gift of hilarity that is Corey Zurowski’s writing, which has been its own reward.

So given that the City Pages seems to have no lower limit, I’ll refrain from saying Pete Kotz’s piece about the GOP’s pushback on cities trying to jam down $15 minimum wage laws bespeaks any descent below any journalistic or factual pale.

Because there’s always more ground below the barrel.

But oh, lord – it’s getting worse.

Continue reading →

New Years Resolutions For MTV And Other Ofay Social Justice Warriors

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A week back, I linked to the fairly noxious MTV video showing a raft of millennials giving “white guys” a series of “new years resolutions”.  I’m not going to  display it again – once was plenty.

But I figure, one good turn deserves another.  I’ve got some resolutions for Social Justice Warriors to observe for the coming year.

Enough with the Whitesplaining:  Y’know who I consider the apex of credibility when it comes to running down the crimes of the Caucasoid ethnicity and the scourge of “white privilege”?    Upper-middle-class white pseudoacademics with advanced degrees and cupboards full of Whole Foods packages, that’s who!

The next such person to whitesplain (condescendingly explain the sins of “whiteness” while being, y’know, white) me is getting pantsed.

Snowflakes Who Cried Wolf:   Not everything that you disagree with is “hate”.   Not everyone that disagrees with you “hates” you.

When you call all disagreement, all difference of opinion, all dissent, all views different than yours “hatred”, you make any meaningful discussion impossible.

Speaking of which:

Silence Is Golden:   Stop jabbering about “seeking a dialogue” or “wanting a conversation” about an issue, and then aggressively blocking all attempts by people who disagree with you to actually have the disagreement.  I’m not gonna name names, but it’s  hypocrisy and cowardice, Kim Norton and Alondra Cano and “Protect” Minnesota .

Innocence Until Proven:  Believing that suspects are innocent until proven guilty by a jury of one’s peers does not make one “pro-rape”.  Say it around me and you will get your face singed so bad you won’t be able to get a tan for 20 years.

You’re welcome.

If You Have Ice Cream, I Shall Give You Ice Cream; If You Have None, I Shall Take It Away

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Just because you can’t pay your mortgage is no reason not to give you a mortgage.  That was the thinking behind CRA and it caused the housing crisis that tanked the economy for the last 10 years.

 Seeing how well that worked, Social Justice Warriors in Seattle are expanding the plan.  Just because you can’t pay your rent is no reason not to rent to you. 

 I confidently predict a shortage of rental housing will afflict Seattle within the next five years, and the cause will be a complete mystery.

Coming soon to a local government near you . . . .

Calling Alondra Cano…