One Day In The Star/Tribunes “Morgue”

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SCENE: It’s the “Morgue” at the Star-Tribune’s “Morgue” – a room full of file cabinets, deep underground, where no light has penetrated since the Kennedy administration.

The door opens, and the MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY, wherein mismanagement under two DFL administrations led to hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, including credible allegations of welfare money being transferred to terrorists – is tossed into the room, which is crowded with other news stories.

ILHAN OMAR’S APPARENTLY FRAUDULENT-MARRIAGE STORY: Hello.

MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY: Hi. Where am I?

WELL-CONNECTED DEMOCRAT KIDS GET OFF WITH A WARNING FOR MASS AGGRAVATED ASSAULT AND HATE CRIMES AGAINST REPUBLICANS STORY: This is the Star-Tribune’s “morgue” file.

STEVE SIMON IS STONEWALLING THREE COURT ORDERS DEMANDING HE RELEASE INFORMATION ABOUT VOTING IRREGULARITIES STORY: It’s where news stories that the DFL establishment doesn’t want covered go to…

KEITH ELLISON’S HISTORY OF ANTISEMITISM STORY: …for a nice long break.

(The other stories chuckle)

MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY: So when do we get out of here?

(The question is met with a few guffaws)

ILHAN OMAR’S ANTISEMITISM STORY: When the Strib reports about Minnesota having “paradoxically” liberal gun laws and the lowest crime rate in the nation for a state with a major metro area in it.

MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY: So – a long time?

KEITH ELLISON’S HISTORY OF ANTISEMITISM STORY: You have no idea.

(And SCENE)

Planning

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The world is coming up on the 80th anniversary of World War 2.

And to commemorate this, I’m going to reprise – and update, and add to – the series of World War 2 70th anniversary posts that First Ringer and I started on this blog almost…

…holy crap, ten years ago.

I’ll re-run a lot of the originals – augmented with new episodes, and in some cases updates based on, let’s just say, an evolving view of some of the history.

Starting…well, September First.

Or maaaaaaaaybe August 31…

Conversion

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When I was a kid, cars didn’t have seat belts.  My Dad installed some and we thought they were a nuisance but I don’t have to listen to flight attendants, I know how to operate the buckle on a 1960-style seat belt. 
I remember when George Bush the Elder was running for President, Doonesbury made fun of his support for air bags, calling them over-regulation (Google the cartoon for May 9, 1980). 
I never used to think airbags and seat belts made much difference, I figured it was all a bunch of Ralph Nader hype. No longer.  I’m a believer.  My car is totaled but I walked away without a scratch (bruises, but no scratches).
Friday night about 9:45 pm, dark but clear skies and dry road, coming home from Wisconsin on Hwy 36, stopped for a red light at Century Avenue (the at-grade crossing just East of the snowman, the intersection with the Dairy Queen).  I was in the right lane, last in a line of cars, sitting behind a Chevy Trailblazer.  Wham!  I got hit from behind. Never saw it coming.  I don’t think I blacked out, but one moment I was looking at the truck ahead of me, the next moment there was no truck ahead of me and my car was slowly rolling toward the ditch, the windshield wiper was flapping, I could hear a car alarm behind me and smell smoke inside my car.  I got my car stopped in the right turn lane before it rolled into the ditch, shut off the wiper, turned on the flashers, and sat there for a few seconds to gather my wits.
A passer-by pulled his car over in front of me, ran back to my car, and helped me get out because we didn’t know if the smoke meant my car was on fire.  He helped me walk around the back of my car where I had to lay down on the edge of the road, my back hurt too much to stand.  The ambulance came, cops came, I went to Regions Hospital for X-rays, the car went to the tow company’s storage lot, my wife rescued me from the hospital.
I have a sore back, sore rib, bruises on my knees where they must have hit the dash, and a big rash on my left bicep where it must have scraped the airbag.  Oh yes, my airbags deployed (two of them, one in the steering wheel and one under the dash).  That’s the smoke I smelled – they use a powder charge to propel the bag.  No car fire.
The state trooper who gave me the PBT on the side of the road (I passed!) visited me at the hospital.  He said the kids in the car that struck me were 19 years old and did not pass the test (passenger was .08 and driver was .01).  They claimed the light was green, they were changing lanes, I was sitting in the road for no reason.  The trooper took one look at my car and laughed at them.  He said they never touched their brakes, no skid marks at all, they hit me at highway speed 55-60, and that’s why my trunk is all smashed in.  They hit me so hard, the garage door opener hanging on the visor came loose but by the time it started to fall, my car had already moved forward so far that the garage door opener ended up in the back seat.  The impact shoved my car into the back end of the Trailblazer hard enough to push my engine back a foot.
I asked the trooper if anybody else got hurt and he said no, the kids were fine and the guy in the Chevy ahead of me fled the scene.  Another passer-by followed him and got a license plate.  The trooper suspects that driver was drunk too, or uninsured, or had no license – some reason he didn’t want to talk to the cops.
There is no doubt in my mind the safety improvements built into my car saved me from serious injury.  I was searing my seat belt with shoulder harness which stopped me from hitting the windshield.  The driver’s headrest was properly adjusted to avoid whiplash.  The airbags kept me from hitting the steering wheel. The crumple zones designed into the car’s frame soaked up the impact on both front and back.
KIDS!  Wear your damned seat belts!
I’m stiff and sore but I’m going to be okay.  Going to get ready for church now.  Got a lot to be thankful for today.  Take good care, everybody.
Joe Doakes

I’m a believer.

54 years ago this coming Monday, my mom was driving me around Jamestown in my dad’s old Mercury. It was a two-door – and folding front seats didn’t have seat locks. The dashboard was all metal, except where it was even more metal. Seatbelts? Forget about ’em.

This was also long before car seats. And I was a squirmy toddler who was standing up on the passenger-side back seat…

…when Mom slammed on the brakes when someone ran a stop light.

I still fairly clearly remember sailing over the folding back seat and face-planting into the all-metal glove box. I’m less clear on remembering the stitches that followed – six, I think – but the scar is there over my right eye to remind me.

What Joe said. Wear your seat belts. And stay sober when you drive.

Anti-Woke Marketing

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The PO police are setting their crosshairs on Home Depot:

Shoppers have taken to Twitter and other social media platforms to call for a boycott of Home Depot following news that one of its founders will back Donald Trump’s bid for a second term in the White House. 
In an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bernie Marcus said that he intends to support Trump’s re-election campaign, saying that while the president “sucks” at communication, his impact on employment and aggressive stances toward China and Iran have been positive.
Many on Twitter appeared to disagree.

Side note: Any “news” story that uses “…many people” as the source for a PC assertion should be required to name them all.

But I digress. This being modern Snowflake America, there are no doubt “many” people like this:

And being modern America, some execudrones are being pusillanimous.

Some executives just haven’t learned the lesson of this past decade .

To wit: Real Americans respect companies that stick to principle. They desert companies that don’t.

Double-Dog Gun-Free Zone

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The downtown “Crave” restaurant, which suffered a shooting over the weekend, has been called on the carpet by Mother City:

In the wake of a brazen double-shooting at a downtown Minneapolis restaurant, the city’s licensing division wants the owners of Crave American Kitchen & Sushi Bar to establish stricter security protocols to protect its patrons.
The city sent a letter to Crave owner Keyvan Talebi on Monday citing two code violations related to the early Saturday shooting, including failing to provide adequate security to prevent criminal activity. The letter asks Talebi to provide an updated security plan for staff training, how management will stop people from bringing in guns and how staff can work better with police in case of an emergency. The plan must be submitted to the downtown police precinct by July 23.

They were already a “gun free zone”.

Y’mean, that doesn’t work?

Huh.

Thought Experiment

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If I walked into your store with a sawed-off shotgun, demanded you hand over all your money, turned to leave with the loot, slipped on a banana peel, and cracked my head open, gushing blood all over the floor and rating a trip to the ER, would the local newspaper say I’d “donated blood” and “brought extra income to the local hospital?”

Only if I were a “progressive” who was the vessel of all the area’s media and Big Left felt about themselves.

As Predicted

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At the end of a dismal midterm broadcast last November, I wrapped up the show by observing that the one thing in which conservatives and other Real Americans could take comfort was the inevitability of Democrat overreach. They would take the normal first-term mid-term surge as a mandate to go crazy.

Progressive gonna progressive, in other words.

As Peggy Noonan notes, all is going exactly as foretold – and among the symptoms are Minneapolis’ own Ilhan Omar. I’ve added a bit of emphasis here and there:

The more serious Democratic Party problem with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Omar is not that their great talent seems to be for political manipulation, or that they constantly set fires, portray the universe as consisting of angels and demons, and put people off with their arrogance while exciting them with their ferocity—though all these things are true.
It is that in doing these dramatic things, and amplifying them through their impressive social-media skills, or compulsions, they have fully broken through and made their mark. In their fame and celebrity they altered the face and feel of the party into something that appears more radical, more hissing and accusatory, more hard-left.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s success last June scared fellow Democrats across the country into thinking she is the future, that they must get aboard and get with her program, which many of the party’s presidential nominees have. She has very effectively changed the ideologicalshape of the Democratic Party with her de facto open-borders policy and other extremisms.
Mature liberals and moderates know this will come back to bite them.
She does this from a completely safe district. She can’t be primaried from the left. She feels a job security no Democratic moderate can feel. Nancy Pelosi said a glass of water could be elected in her district if it were a Democrat, and it’s true.
For all these reasons Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has been destructive to her party’s chances in 2020. She is a one woman Committee to Re-Elect the President.

As embarassing and toxic as Ilhan Omar is, she is a gift that will keep giving to conservatives for …

…well, being in the Fifth CD, for as long as she wants.

Perhaps Avocado Toast And Video Games?

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Democrat candidates for President are in a bidding war for votes. Free college, home ownership for blacks, Medicare for everybody, the new green deal, universal basic income, slavery reparations… trillions of dollars and they haven’t even got to the good stuff yet.
Not one candidate has offered me bread and circuses, the traditional bribe for ignorant voters. To hell with them, I’m sticking with Republicans.
Joe Doakes.

Democrats gonna democrat.

And The Social Media Lynching Will Begin In 5…4…3…

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Scarlett Johannson lashing back, in her own way, at the PC police’s affect on acting:

She addressed was she called the ‘political correctness’ in casting without directly mentioning her controversial casting in Rub & Tug. 
‘You know, as an actor I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job,’ she said point blank.
She continued: ‘I feel like it’s a trend in my business and it needs to happen for various social reasons, yet there are times it does get uncomfortable when it affects the art because I feel art should be free of restrictions.’ 
‘I think society would be more connected if we just allowed others to have their own feelings and not expect everyone to feel the way we do.’

Between that and supporting Israel, she’s never gonna do lunch at Spago again.

But you know what? The interview was in conjunction with a very style-y retro photo shoot for a magazine. I’m gonna focus on that, if that’s OK. Thanks.

Conundrum

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President Trump’s “go back where you came from” Twitter jape against The Four Horsewomen of the Derpocalypse (hat tip to Sean Sorrentino), Reps. Omar, Pressley, Tlaib and Ocasio Cortez may be his dumbest yet.

But let me ask you this:

Let me describe someone who is:’

  • Not really cut out for their office
  • Given to petulant ranting on social media
  • Elected by people whose politics and logic I frequently don’t respect a lot
  • Supported by a lot of people, staff, and a narrative intended to logroll and gaslight skeptics into silence and submission
  • Does, seemingly, little but jab back at their many, many critics, to the point where you wonder if you’re watching someone in junior high

Which of the five am I describing?

By the way – if you’re a Democrat, it is your duty to rally around the Four Horsewomen, to the exclusion of all else (except working toward impeachment). If you do not, the ghost of Wellstone will cry.


Backlash

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Last week, I caught Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix special.

I’ve always like Ansari. This special is far and away the best thing he’s done in his career.

Is it connected to his getting caught up in the #MeToo purges?

Perhaps.

But far from groveling to “woke” culture, gives the PC horde the sort of response it’s been needing from more participants in pop culture – an astringent satirical enema:

From Robert Verbruggen’s review:

Perhaps the most memorable routine, though, involves the famous Pizza Hut swastika story, where a restaurant was accused of making a pizza with the pepperoni arranged in the shape of a Nazi symbol — but some people saw it as just a regular pizza. Ansari asks the audience to clap if they thought it was a swastika, and then if they thought otherwise.
The story is made up. There never was a swastika pizza. But some audience members take sides and clap anyway. One even identifies the news source where he read about the incident. It’s a stunning illustration of how political polarization rots the brain, and it fits into a broader theme that we could do with less outrage and more honest discussion among people with differing opinions — a point Ansari makes more explicitly when discussing the uproar over a white teenager who wore a traditional Chinese dress to prom.
Refreshingly, Ansari avoids the incessant and usually unfunny Trump-bashing too many comedians rely on when short on better material. To the contrary, he points out how trivial modern America’s problems are relative to what previous generations dealt with. “Could you imagine if we had a draft with today’s people?”

It’s worth a watch.

The Knowledge Gap

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Modern journalists are innumerate.  The numbers in this article don’t work.  270 million people world-wide were lifted out of poverty, 271 million of them in India, alone.  Huh?
But far more importantly, HOW was it done?  Taxing the rich?  Foreign aid?  Free college?  Moving to the US?  The article is conspicuously silent.
Perhaps . . . say it softly . . . capitalism works?
Joe Doakes

Typos happen – especially now that “layers and layers of gatekeepers” have gone through fifteen years of layoffs are are now just a metaphorical doorbell camera.

But altering the fundemantal principles of most journos’ lives? That capitalism has, at best, yuge problems, just like their profs used to say?

Good luck with that.

Unquestionable

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Big fight over whether the Trump Administration can ask census respondents about their citizenship. The census is used to determine who gets seats in the House of Representatives. So the real issue becomes who are we counting them for?
If the House of Representatives is supposed to represent the citizens living in a district, then we need to know how many of the people responding to the census are citizens. They’re the only ones who should count in determining proportional representation.
If the House is supposed to represent all the residents of a district, then we don’t care about citizenship.
I strongly suspect this is a holdover from slavery days. Slaves didn’t count as full citizens for purposes of proportional representation. And neither do illegal aliens. But people who think they will pick up votes, want them to.
I doubt counting foreigners was the intent of the framers of the Constitution. I foubt counting illegal aliens was the intent of the Voting Rights Act. I think Americans all along, have wanted the House to represent the citizens who reside in the district, not everybody wandering through the district.
I don’t think the court should be meddling with that intent. Add the question.
Joe doakes

I coudln’t agree more. Of all the great scams that Big Left has foisted on us, positing open borders as “kindness” is the most cynical of all.

Why Does Anyone Need An AR15?

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So they don’t run out of bullets before their attacker runs out of attack.

Or attackers, plural:

Marion County sheriff’s officials say a homeowner armed with an AR-15 shot and killed two intruders and was injured himself during a home invasion robbery in Summerfield Wednesday night.
Two other robbery suspects — Robert John Hamilton, 19, of Ocala, and Seth Adam Rodriguez, 22, of Belleview — were detained near the scene, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
Nigel Doyle, 22, of Summerfield, and Keith Jackson Jr., 21, Ocala, were killed. The homeowner, whose name was not released by the Sheriff’s Office, was in stable condition at a hospital Thursday afternoon.

But they were good kids, just about to start school to become missionary medics:

Sgt. Micah Moore found Doyle with a gunshot wound and a shotgun next to him on the ground. Deputies entered the home and found Jackson dead on the dining room floor. Detectives said he was wearing a “Jason” mask on top of his head, gloves on both hands, jeans and a black shirt.

Wait – indicting a criminal for murder when one of their accomplices is killed during their spree?

Why, if the Ramco Attorney office learns about this, law and order might break out.

Priorities

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

My office assistant is a nice young lady, pink hair and piercings, knows nothing but she’s cheerful and shows up every morning, which is about as much as you can expect these days.
She complains that she has no money, living in her uncle’s basement cuz the rent is cheap, then says she has to take her kitten to the vet to be neutered. Wait a minute, you already have a bird and a dog, why’d you buy a kitten? Oh, she didn’t, someone gave her a free kitten but now she’s looking at vet bills that she can’t afford.
I didn’t even bother to suggest giving it to the animal shelter. I knew that would be unacceptable, because they kill animals that no one wants, and that’s cruel.
How do you explain to someone that their entire view of the world is slanted the wrong direction? If you can’t afford to support yourself, then you can’t afford to support any animals. And you certainly can’t afford to go clubbing in Minneapolis, or have your hair done a brighter color, or a new tattoo. No, just no. You can’t afford it. That’s not cruel, that’s just the way it is.
I am officially a fuddy-duddy.
Joe Doakes.

I’ve had more than a few conversations with “broke” (and woke? I dunno) Millennials with “Sleeves” of tattoos up and down their arms, and wondered “how much less broke would you be without that collection of tacky, tasteless, ugly ink all over you?”

Among other things.

Arsenal Of Hospitality

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SCENE: Mitch BERG is taking a walk through a local winery, when he notices Avery LIBRELLE trying to open the tap at the bottom. He tries to reverse course, but LIBRELLE, as always, notices him.

LIBRELLE: Merg! You’re a racist misogynist!

BERG: Uh, OK. Why now?

LIBRELLE: On, no reason. It’s just my new greeting. But Trump is holding children in squalor on the border.

BERG: Separating kids from their parents is a bad thing. But this speaks to the same incompetence that covers most aspects of dealing with the bureaucracy. Nothing to see here.

LIBRELLE: We must treat pre-documented immigrants of color with the respect they deserve.

BERG: Question for you, Avery. Is the US the world’s policeman?

LIBRELLE: No. We can not solve all the world’s problems with the military.

BERG: OK. Are we the the world’s moral arbiter?

LIBRELLE: It is to laugh! We are the most corrupt, least just society on earth!

BERG: Huh. Is the spread of American culture through the world a good thing?

LIBRELLE: We have the most despicable culture there is, buried to its eyeballs in racism and hate. The world’s authentic cultures must be preserved.

BERG: Does the US have anything to teach the world?

LIBRELLE: How to be hateful and horrible.

BERG: So can we keep people from coming here, with or without regard to the law?

LIBRELLE: What are you, a fascist? Everyone has an absolute right to come to the US!

BERG: So if someone comes to this country illegally, or uses an exceptionally broad asylum statute to gain entry to this hateful, horrible, despicable, racist, corrupt, militaristic place, then we are in fact the world’s ATM machine?

LIBRELLE: Why yes! (Turns back to trying to open the tap on the fermentation keg).

BERG: I know I’ll hate myself for asking, but what are you doing?

LIBRELLE: Wine is an appropriation of California culture.

BERG: Of course it is.

And SCENE

Idiots Abroad

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One Ron letnes (it’s his capitalization – and reading the rest of his not-very literate screed, I’m pretty sure it’s not a “style” thing), who writes for “Engage”, the “progressive” Evangelical Lutheran Church’s anti-gun propaganda blog, took a trip to Europe.

And he writes…:

Linda and I spent a month touring Europe this summer. We anticipated a wave of discomfort because of the global immigration demands for life and safety. We anticipated verbal antagonisms and increased gun visibility by persons and authorities. We anticipated the isolation of Muslim and African peoples from events and sites.

In other words, he “anticipated” exactly everything that the narrative police are telling the demented lunatic fringe to anticipate.

Have a free range cigar, Ron.

Narrative Shot Down Like A Dog

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If you listen to Minnesota’s gun control activists, do you think this state had become South Bronx in 1970 – because of law-abiding gun owners, naturally.

But statistics are pesky little buggers.

Minnesota – with one of the highest gun ownership rates in the country, more carry permit holders per capita than Texas, and not coincidentally one of the safest states in the country with a major metropolitan area in it – just keeps getting safer.

And one of the most satisfying exercises in all of gun-rights-activist-dom is getting grabbers to admit they just don’t realize how the world has left them behind, and watching them deflect from street crime to “mass shootings”.

And then do that badly.

Four-Way Intersection(ality)

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THE WORLD: “Tide Pod Evita, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar are the most toxic form of “progressive” there is.”

ALONDRA CANO: Hold my kombucha:

From somewhere in the great beyond, Tailgunner Joe is yelling “Dial it back, toots – you’re embarrassing John Birch and George Wallace”.