This past weekend the Strib went after the Minnesota Political Class’s elephant in the room:  what’s the problem with Minneapolis?

I’m not going to do a bunch of pull quoting – I’m not going to pay, and the piece was pretty much meh.  

But I’ve found another problem;  when you try to discuss the collapse of Minneapolis with people under, say, 45, it quickly becomes clear – they have no idea what Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and the state declined from.   

When I moved here in 1985, Minnesota was an economic, cultural and technological powerhouse. It was a destination – which was a big part of the reason I moved here.  

Let’s recount what we’ve lost

In 1984, Minnesota was a legit competitor to Silicon Valley. The top two supercomputer companies – the highest tech of the time – were here, spinoffs from a Cold War defense industry that was a national destination and made MN a tech leader.

It wasn’t just defense. In the ’90s, Minnesota had the densest concentration of medical R&D in the world. Hundreds of companies in biotech, medical devices, bio-engineering and every other corner of medical technology sprang up here; it was called “Medical Alley” for a long time. This concentration of money, technology, infrastructure and talent made the state a business hub. “Wait”, you say, “MN still has a lot of Fortune 1000s!” Sure. Headquarters. But 3M used to have plants all over the place, bringing manufacturing jobs and middle class incomes to places like the *East Side of Saint Paul*. Honeywell, Ford, 3M, Ecolab, Medtronic, Whirlpool and countless other companies used to BUILD things here. And it wasn’t just business – although we’ll come back to that.

Minnesota was a cultural center, too. Everyone remembers Prince; many remember Flyte Time – Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and some of the biggest hits of the era; some of us recall when the Twin Cities were a hotbed of *all* kinds of music, pop and punk and what later become grunge.

And it wasn’t just  music; in the ’80s, MN was the greatest concentration of theater outside NYC, and we punched WAY above our weight in other performing arts – everything from dance to standup comedy.

And there was a film industry – one that actually employed a lot of people, full time, doing Hollywood production for MN prices.

That’s all gone now.

Some of it was external: the Cold War ended, so the big defense companies (Sperry, Burroughs, CDC, Honeywell) downsized. Technology changed, so Cray, ETA and 3M followed suit. NAFTA moved some of the manufacturing elsewhere.

But tax policy was exporting jobs long before NAFTA. 3M started shifting R&D and headquarters to TX in the ’80s; the film industry succumbed to a DFL tax grab in the ’90s, and disappeared overnight. And as to the rest of MN’s cultural scene?

There’s a reason places develop thriving artistic cultures, and it’s got little to do with artists. Look at every flourishing of ANY art, anywhere, throughout history; they all coincide with places and times where there was enough surplus wealth to support that talent.

Broadway didn’t create a wealthy NYC; it was the opposite.

Minneapolis in the 70s-80s was like that – a place with lots of people with extra time and money to support talented people doing cool stuff, and who were inclined to participate in great things. In 1986, Fodors Travel Guides called the Twin Cities “the Athens of the 20th Century”. Hyperbolic, perhaps – but not all wrong, either. Nobody’s said anything of the sort in almost 30 years. We’re just another Midwestern city now.

People like the Strib columnist, and people who take the Strib seriously, are saying we’re “witnessing the birth of a new city – different from the old one, but just as good in its own way.   

Maybe. Sure.

But cities and cultures don’t happen because of wishes. They are responses to economics, policy and demographics. So ask yourself this: Do this state’s current policies foster creation of things – cardiac catheters, R&B records, naval cannon, software, scotch tape, and the ultimate vote of confidence for the future, families?

Or is it just a bunch of people in buildings, just consuming goods and services?   And I’m not just talking welfare stacks – the “walkable city” is nothing but a vision for how people consume goods and services – a genial fantasy that never includes offices, warehouses, repair shops, utilities – or schools, playgrounds or kids.  

Because that determines the city and state you get. MN has become a consumer, not creator, culture.

That’s a problem.

The other day, I went to downtown Saint Paul and actually parked and patronized a downtown business for the first time in probably over a year and a half.  I was meeting someone at a downtown cafe to talk some business.  

I met them at 4PM, on a Robert Street where a desultory car or two swished past as I wrangled with one of Saint Paul’s byzantine meters.  

I hit the button, entered my space number, and waited while it buzzed and whirred…

…and said “Invalid Space: Rush Hour No Parking Zone”.  

I looked up and down the street.  I saw a northbound car a block away.  

That was it.  

Downtown Saint Paul hasn’t had a rush hour that “rushed” since Norm Coleman was mayor.  

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

The American government should put the interest of American citizens first, before all other countries. If not America First, then who?

I agree with Thomas Jefferson’s vision of American foreign policy: 

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”

 A century ago, Europe got itself into trouble and America bailed them out.  We went back two decades later and did it again.  We’ve been babysitting them ever since. 

True, the NATO treaty does not require Europe to assist us in our Iranian endeavor. But they should.  The missiles launched by Iran could have reached Paris or Bonn but not New York. The oil bottled up in the Strait of Hormuz was headed for them, not us. 

What brings the issue to a head is not their unwillingness to help, but their inability.  The British navy has a dozen operational vessels.  French, Spanish, and Italian air forces claim 400 combat aircraft each, but how many are operational and how many have the legs to reach the Middle East?  How many German tanks?

NATO was formed with eyes East toward Russia but The Fulda Gap is no longer the threat. President Trump is correct that the United States should reconsider its membership in NATO. And then let’s talk about the United Nations.

Joe Doakes

 

Even as NATO’s civilian populations swelled, their militaries shrank to – I’m not kidding – 1/6 of their 1992 size. They shifted their missions to “peacekeeping”, and treated their militaries accordingly – becoming global mall cops.

Hey, Eurotrash.  Meet Americans.  

We’re pretty famous for not letting each other get captured by barbarians:

Aw, shucks.  But no, our greatest military success of all time was liberating this weasel’s homeland and the rest of Europe, in a war we didn’t start but that the French could have ended in 1939 before it really got going.  

Anyway, yeah – that’s us. Once we lost 18 men trying to get back a single chopper pilot – and he was already dead .

So – we lost two MC130s, each costing $114M, plus three Kiowa “Little Bird” choppers that couldn’t be loaded out in time.   To save one guy.   

To a European Air Force, that’d be a crippling loss to their fleet. 

To the US, it means we’re down to 57 MC130s.  

Now – if you’re a Euro fighter pilot, what does this tell you?

Although I wouldn’t worry too hard. If you’re a European pilot operating outside of Continental Europe, you’re gonna have to have American support to have gotten there in the first place. So you’ll probably get rescued too. By Americans.

This is, as Barack Obama might have called it, a “composite conversation”. It happened – in bits and pieces, with different people. 

No Kings Protester (“NKP”): No kings!

Me: Couldn’t agree more. And what luck – we don’t have one!

NKP: You know what we mean. Donald Trump is acting like a King!

Me: I mean, if you disagreed with ICE’s tactics, I might agree – but that doesn’t make Trump a king any more than it made Bill Clinton one when the FBI killed Randy Weaver’s family or killed almost 100 people, disproportionally children, in Waco…

NKP: I don’t know anything about that, and I don’t care. 

Me: OK ,that’s fine. But you DO know that the “No Kings” organization demonstrated against the removal of Victor Maduro, who has murdered tens of thousands of people…

NKP: I don’t know anything about that. 

Me: And in favor of the dictators of Cuba, who’ve murdered tens of thousands of Cubans and many more around the world. 

NKP: Don’t know, don’t care. 

Me: Huh. And today the organization is supporting keeping the Mullahs in power – and they may have murdered more of their own people in a single day than the Nazis ever managed. 

NKP: Not sure how that’s relevant. 

Me: Well, “No Kings” keeps supporting actual dictators. 

NKP: I don’t know about any of them. 

Me: And billionaries, too?

NKP: Yep!

Me: So you’re aware that “No Kings” is funded by a network of plutocrats, including not only the usual Soros family trash, but Neville Singham, the billionaire who moved to Shanhai and is dedicated to spreading Communism – which has murdered as many as 100 million people?

NKP: So you say. I can’t confirm any of that. 

Me: You certainly COULD if you wanted…

NKP: I oppose kings in the US. That’s ALL I care about. 

Me: Huh. Like when Trump created a snitch line, an Orwellian thoughtcrime database, fired people who stood up for their medical autonomy, and pushed censorship of dissent and drove legislation to gut the Fourth Amendment for law-abiding citizens…

NKP: Yeah! That’s some real fascist snizzle, there. 

Me: Every last one of those was either Tim Walz or Joe Biden. 

NKP: <blinks>

Me: So it appears to me, a mere casual observer, that while you may oppose kings, you seems to be fine with dictators. 

NKP: JANUARY 6! 

Me: How so?

NKP: FASCIST! FASCIST!

Me: Wait’ll next week when we talk about the leftist and socialist roots of “fascism”

(But NKP has left the conversation).

Al

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Trump is threatening to send 10,000 troops to Iran, boots on the ground,  which moderate Republicans fear would be crossing a “red line” and would cost Republicans the midterm elections.

The fear is that if we lose seats in the midterm elections, then we won’t have power so we won’t be able to get Presidential appointments confirmed or judges confirmed or the Save Act passed or DHS funded.

Which would be different from now, how, exactly?

Maybe the problem is not lack of Congressional power but lack of willingness to use what power we have. That problem won’t get solved by backing down from Iran. 

Joe Doakes

 

Yep. I think we’re past the point where timidity is the prescription for the midterms.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I’ve been a Comcast customer since 1998 when I moved to The Cities. They recently jacked my rate to $103 per month.  I called but there is no customer loyalty reward program so fine, I’ll switch to T-Mobile.

That was a bust. It seems T-Mobile internet uses the same technology as my ordinary T-Mobile cell phone data plan, but somehow prioritizes ordinary cell phone data packets higher than internet data packets.  In busy times, the internet lag was worse than dial-up.  And that’s if the connection didn’t drop. 

Makes me wonder about other options. What do SITD readers use for internet connection? How fast and how reliable is it?  Anybody still using the telephone wires?  Anybody using Elon’s satellites?

Joe Doakes

 

I’m a little curious myself.   I’ve been on Comcast since ’99, and given that I do so much work from home the speed and, yes, reliability is hard to argue with.  

Starlink is JUST the wrong side of a viable option for me ATM.  But only just.  

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is talking with Bill GUNKEL, former Republican who is now chairmain of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul…er, Dennis Massie”.  

GUNKEL:   Illegal immigrant voting is impossible.   

BERG:  Of course it is.  

GUNKEL: Glad we agree!

BERG:  Of course.   When the DFL jammed down automatic vote registration on issuing drivers licenses, and then passed drivers licenses for illegal aliens. and pointedly shot down GOP attempts to have those IDs labeled “Not to be used for voting”, in a system that allows any voter to “vouch” up to eight other voters in with a – wait for it – drivers license, that was all just to spike the rhetorical ball in the end zone during the “trifecta”.  

GUNKEL:  There’ve only been five examples of illegal voting found in the past 400 years…

BERG:   Er…OK, so let’s say some illegal does vote in Minnesota.  We can’t identify illegals at the polls, and we don’t have provisional ballots, so once a ballot is cast, there’s nothing we can do about it in the unlikely event we do catch them.  Which, if you assume the oh-so-extreme hypothetical that Secretary of State Simon and Attorney General Ellison are in on the fraud, there’s absolutely no impetus for them to do.   Aren’t these “small numbers” small numbers because the system is designed not to catch illegal immigrants voting?

GUNKEL: (pregnant pause)

BERG:   Not to mention the thousands of cases of fraudulent registrations found in 2012, which I’m sure were there just for the fun it. 

GUNKEL:   Illegal immigrant voting is impossible.   

BERG:  Of course it is.  

The most reliable weapon in the arsenal of anyone at war with the United States is Americans – specifically Americans of the left and, lately, the “horseshoe right”, who’ve pretty much taken Jane Fonda’s mantel and run with it.  

The Mullahs knows this – it almost worked for them in re Gaza.  

And I’m pretty sure they’re counting on it working again – and that it’s behind the missile “attack” on Diego Garcia over the weekend.  

Launching two missiles at a target like that is like having your six year old nephew throw the first punch in a brawl.  It’d take a pretty serious “saturation” attack and/or a lot of luck to get anything onto that airfield that’d explode.  

And whoever fired the missiles had to know that.   The target wasn’t the B2s or B52s.  It was X, MSNow and Tucker Carlson.  

Oh yeah – and nations, especially nations that Mossad penetrated decades ago, don’t likely just arf up a missile that doubles the known range overnight, do they?

Not really, no.  

The target wasn’t bombers. It was an influence bomb.

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, writes:

When the people of a nation have been disarmed and oppressed, it is fanciful to expect them to rise up against the well-armed government which is oppressing them.  The Founding Fathers knew that and thus enshrined in the Constitution the right to keep and bear arms, not solely for defense against robbers or home invaders but also against a tyrannical government.

In World War 2, the United States air-dropped Liberator pistols to enable disarmed people in The French Resistance to kill Nazis. That wasn’t enough to win the war – troops in the air, on the seas and on the ground were still needed – but it was a gesture of faith in ordinary people’s ability to seize control of their own future.

I think we should do it again, in Cuba and Iran, with leaflets saying. “It’s your country. Take it back.”

What can it hurt?

Joe Doakes

 

The Liberator was a single-shot .45 pistol with a rate of fire of about one round a minute; it had a plug bolt, and no extractor – the user would run a stick down the bore to extract the case after firing. It was literally useful for nothing but knifepoint range assassinations. It came with, essentially, a Bazooka Joe comic (kids, ask your parents) showing illiterate tribesmen how to use it.

Records of its use are sketchy, but doesn’t love the concept?

I’m going to advocate for a revival of the “Sten” gun – a submachine gun designed and built in record time in the UK right after Dunkirk, when speed and simplicity were king;  made out of stampings so crude the Soviets looked and said “uh, that’s some crude stampings, there) with only the bolt and barrel being machined, and using the trove of 9mm ammunition captured in North Africa until domestic manufacturing started, It equipped most of the Commonwealth armies (at least among troops that didn’t rate a Thompson) and was airdropped into occupied Europe in prodigious numbers.  Iy was also so simple that plans airdropped into Poland, France, Norway and Yugoslavia allowed them to be manufactured in quantity in occupied Europe.   

Crude?  Absolutely.  Some Brits claimed theirs jammed every time they were fired.  The one I shot had the back receiver cap fall off with the last round I fired. 

But it cost $15 in 1944 dollars to build, with maybe five man-hours of time, including machining.   

Apropos not much.  Honest.  

What can I say, it’s been a busy year.   Details upcoming (and by “upcoming” I don’t necessarily mean “soon”.   

I pulled the plug on my attempted redesign.  It was just gruesome.    I thought I could make it work, but…well, you see what happened. 

I’m going to try to restore things to more or less the way they were from (ahem) 2006-ish to last year.   And yes, try to write more while we’re at it.   

Stay tuned.

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Forty years ago, I volunteered to serve as Election Judge for the 1984 Presidential election. Paper ballots. Hand counted. Two judges verified each ballot.   We had one volunteer election monitor watching us count for a while but he got bored and left early. Yes, it took a while – I remember the sun coming up as we were finishing – but nobody in the room had the slightest doubt the count was accurate and fair.

I remember watching lawyers scrutinize “hanging chads” on television for the 2000 election that even the New York Times finally admitted was accurate and fair.

I remember watching poll workers hang cardboard over the windows so nobody could watch the count in 2020. I still don’t believe that result was accurate or fair.

The key difference is transparency.  Why can’t we supplement eyeballs with technology?  

Hang a camera over every counting table, broadcasting to the internet in real time. The whole world can watch. Why not? What is there to hide?

Joe Doakes

 

Because that would risk delivering the undesired result.  

American society eventually coughed Alex Jones out of its system. 

Could we maybe do the same with Tucker Carlson?

The thing is, once he gets up the nerve to finally name Trump the person he’s yapping about, he’ll have a whole new career joining Marjorie Taylor Greene and Arne Carlson as “the good Republicans”.  

Not sure why he’s waiting.  

SCENE:   Velma pulls an “Elliot Ness” mask off of the crook, revealing Governor Tim Walz.  

DAPHNE AND SHAGGY:  “It’s Minnesota Governor Tim Walz”

WALZ:  “And let me tell you, I’d have gotten those fraudsters if its weren’t for…”

SCOOBY: “Rose Doggone Resky Kids?”

WALZ:  “No, knucklehead, those ICE agents.  I was just about there!”

He was —>this close<—-. 

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Got invited to be a lab rat. No thanks. My Dad participated in the national vaccine experiment during Covid and it gave him the myocarditis that killed him. But it occurs to me that Democrats always claim illegal aliens are here to do the jobs Americans won’t do.  Perfect. Step right this way, folks. 

This is a friendly reminder from Walgreens that you’re invited to join our Vaccine Research Community.

By joining, you’ll:

• Receive updates about future vaccine studies
• Learn about opportunities near you
• Decide if participation is right for you — with no obligation

Joining is voluntary, free, and you may opt out at any time. Every person who signs up helps researchers move science forward and support healthier communities.

 

Speaking for myself?  They gotta get research subjects somewhere.  

But the only ones that should do it for free have four legs.  

War is hell. 

I’m not going to be out there chanting “USA! USA!”. War generally means a lot of suffering and misery for the people who *didn’t* start it. It’s nothing to celebrate. 

Put a pin in that thought. We’ll come back to it. 

So, about some of the stuff I’m seeing on social media about this weekend’s happenings:

1. “Congress needs to approve this kind of thing”

Forget for a moment that no President, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, including Obama, has gone to Congress *before* going medieval since Harry S. Truman. 

Let’s go back to December 11, 1941. Remember when Congress declared war on Germany and Italy? 

Yeah? You do? Liar. They didn’t. 

They didn’t have to. Germany declared war on us. When someone goes to war *against us*, we don’t have to declare anything. 

Now – did Iran *declare* war against us? I mean, they stormed our embassy, kidnapped its staff and held them hostage for a year and a half (an act of war all by itself – even Jimmy Carter figured that out eventually), funded and equipped proxies that blew up our Marine barracks in Beirut in 1982, funded other proxies and murdered many Americans all over the world between then and 2003, and covertly but directly supported attacks on US troops in Iraq; they perfected the modern “IED”, and Iranian money (and sometimes troops) were directly responsible for the deaths of 600 US servicepeople and indirectly for many more. And that’s just their attacks on America; their proxies conquered Lebanon (once a moderate, pluralistic nation), Yemen (which was not, but which they drove even further back into barbarism), and were the prime funders of Hamas through years of rocket attacks on Israel, 2-4 Intifadas, and October 7. 

So – do we need a notarized form to tell us that Iran considered *itself* at war with the US? 

Don’t get me wrong – I would very much like Congress to vote on this. I want to get votes on record. But I don’t care how “libertarian” you are – responding to acts of war against the US is a legitimate executive branch role. 

2. “Heyyyyy! Trump ran on being the ‘peace’ President!”

Yep. And the Middle East is the least peaceful place on earth, and with Al Quaeda pretty much vanquished most of that war (see above) has come to us courtesy of Iran; the *many* attacks on Israel by Hamas, Hezb’allah, the Houthis, the Iran/Iraq war that may have killed a million, the civil war in Lebanon that saw a modern, moderate, prosperous multireligious society destroyed with tens of thousands of dead, and replaced by a mini-Iran, the Yemeni, Libyan and Syrian civil wars that’ve claimed perhaps a million lives between them. 

And let’s not forget internal peace. Iran’s government had murdered it’s own people well into the six digit range over the past five decades. The Shah’s secret police were really nasty – but the “Revolutionary Guards” were much, much worse in terms of numbers and, yes, cruelty over time. 

Will removing the Mullahs make the middle east more peaceful or less? 

Oh, yeah – Russia is about to lose its main supplier of drones to shoot at Ukraine, and China just got a big warning sign about invading Taiwan (not to mention the very real chance that the US could cut off China’s supply of oil, especially given the removal of Venezuela). So it’s not just the Middle East. 

3. “It’s *reckless!*”

You know what’s reckless AND pointless? Responding to a terror attack that kills dozens of Americans and hundreds of other people by shooting a cruise missile at some empty tents and calling it square. That’s what Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did – “sent messages” that, if you got us made enough, we might get angry. At best, it killed some terrorist foot soldiers; at worst, it convinced them that we were impotent – that they could, I dunno, crash planes into our skyscrapers and Pentagon without worrying too much. That all they had to do was hang on; they had plenty of red shirts for us to kill off. They didn’t care. 

But now, with Sulemani, Maduro, El Mecia and the Mullahs, we’re doing it different; we’re taking out the head of the snake. War is hell, indeed – but if you’re going to do it, taking out the leadership makes a whole lot more sense than killing bag men, camels or empty tents. We’re not trying to “Send messages” to people who answer their voice mail less often that Gen-Zs. We’re sending it to the foot soldiers: “See what happened to your leaders? You’ve got a chance. Take it”. 

Think of it this way: if the US and UK could have killed Hitler, Göring, Himmer, Göbbels, Seyss-Inquart and the rest of the leadership, and skipped Warsaw, Rotterdam, the Blitz, Barbarossa, Stalingrad, Hamburg and Dresden and the extermination camps and millions of lives – is that not a better plan *humanity as a whole*?

4. “He’s acting like a dictator”

He’s doing what Obama did. I was about to say “exactly what Obama did”, but that’d be false: Obama did a lot more of it, but it was a lot less effective. It – his policies and those of Big Guy after him – set the permission structure that led *directly* to Yemen, the Russo-Ukraine war, October 7, and were (and may still) lead to China invading Taiwan. 

5. “Regime change is bad, and we suck at it”

We certainly had a 20 year losing streak. 

But, er, remember Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, the eastern third of Germany and, eventually, Ukraine ? The people there will tell you we’re pretty GOOD at regime change when we do it right. 

6. “I mean, overthrowing governments to change the regime”

Like, Poland? It was, to borrow a phrase, “mostly peaceful” – but the US, UK, Germany, the Vatican and the *AFL-CIO* joined forces to undermine the Polish government. It was unironically mostly peaceful – ZOMO did all the killing – but it most definitely overthrew the government and changed the regime. 

So let’s give ourselves a couple of retrospective “W”s. The people of Poland, Estonia and Czechia sure do. 

7. “What about the schoolgirls we bombed!”

Nobody outside the Iran State News Service is reporting that yet. As loathsome as America’s mainstream media is, the ISNS is an *official* propaganda ministry. This time yesterday they were also saying Ayatollah Khamenei was alive and well and leading the troops at the front (?). To the extent there HAS been any independent investigation, there are reports that the school was next to an IRGC base. So did it happen? We don’t know – and when I say “we”, that means “neither of us”. Like I said – war is hell; it is inherently arbitrary, capricious and cruel. Like the mullahs – who, given the context, we’d *really* best make sure are gone for good. 

And if you’ve skipped past the murders of 32,000 Iranians in the streets, and likely hundreds or thousands more in prison, not to mention the many tens of thousands murdered over the past 47 years, let’s just say my respect for your point is, er, “nuanced”. 

Let’s get this over with, and help Iranians build themselves a free country.

I’ve been hearing the plaintive stories of Americans, many of them seniors, stranded in Puerto Vallarta by the Cartels’ tantrum over their jefe being put down.  

I’ve got a simple solution.  

They should form groups, organized online, to follow the sicarios around and blow whistles at them.  

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

A friend who owns a contracting business writes:

***

I’ve driven past a certain St. Paul grade school a few times this week, on the way to a job site. Each time, I see adults standing on the sidewalk wearing yellow vests, no kids around, apparently watching for ICE.

Just what the hell do they think they’re doing?   First off there is zero, absolutely zero, credible evidence that immigration efforts are directed at snatching kids from schools.  There is no interest in the government to waste time on that.  None.  So do these jackasses still think that’s what they’re protecting?  Or do they stand there because school administrators, janitors, indoctrinators (there are no teachers), and other adults are invaders?

And what is their plan?   Let’s assume they think they’re standing guard against ICE showing up to snatch up invaders of any type.  What do these jerks think they will do about it?  Do they intend to alert the invaders and assist them to flee to avoid arrest?  Are they intending to aid and abet known criminals?  Are they intending to engage in knowing obstruction of federal immigration enforcement?

I suspect the answer is yes to each of those and in each case it’s a crime.

They’ve been prosecuting people for silently praying outside baby murder factories for years now.  Isn’t it time to start prosecuting people who are intentionally obstructing federal law enforcement?  

***

He has a point. 

Joe Doakes

 

One the one hand, he’s got a point. ‘

On the other?  

It’s Minnesota.  Any county attorney that participated in the prosecution would find themselves doing document review for public works before the ink was dry on their motion. 

We’re all (*) familiar with the basic “logical fallacies” – flaws in reasoning that weaken or invalidate arguments. Things like the “ad hominen” (attacking the person rather than their argument), “appeal to authority” (comparing credentials rather than arguing the facts), “tu quoque” (comparing an argument with previous argument) and so on. 

I’m here to submit a few new ones. 

“Ad Foxinem” – claiming that someone’s argument is invalid because they supposedly “watch Fox News”. (And yes, the same applies to MSNow. Or would, if anyone watched it. That was an “Appeal to Ridicule” for those paying attention). 

“The Epstein Fallacy” – claiming that someone’s argument on an unrelated matter is false because the Epstein Files haven’t been released. 

“Argumentum ad Terminus” – believing that ending an argument by saying or typeing “Period” or “Full stop” makes an argument, whatever its merits, absolutely solid. 

“Faux Possibilitus – starting a claim with “What if I told you that…” does not make the claim true”. 

The Shifted Burden Fallacy: Ending a claim – solid or absurd – with “prove me wrong”. 

And “Argumentum ad LOL” – Ending your response to an argument with “LOL” is absolutely factually dispositive”. This is closely relate to the “Argumentum tu Emoji” – attacking an argument with an emoticon (for instance, the passive-aggressive “Laugh” emoji). 

Also – “Ad Omniciens” – responding to an argument with “Not EVERYONE believes that” (or its sibling, “Many people believe…”, also known as “the NPR Assertion”). 

“Argumentum pro Tantrum” – regardless of the merits of the argument, if you don’t acquiesce without question, I will unfriend you and never talk with you again. 

Discusss.

(*) I’m feeling optimistic, so sue me.

And poof, just like that, people who always venerated “due process” and chanted “NO KINGS” on demand…

…had always opposed due process and believed themselves kings. 

It’s not news – liquor licensing has always been a political meat tenderizer, used to beat businesses into whatever the powers that be want the business to comply with, frequently things most of us agree with (like punishing flagrant serving of minors or lots of unchecked brawling.   

But to “punish” businesses for patronizing a class of people who are doing something completely legal?

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Recently watched the Amazon Prime movie “Heads of State” starring Idris Elba as Prime Minister of the UK and John Cena as President of the United States.  They join forces to defeat the bad guys who want the US out of the NATO alliance.  

One of the bad guys gives a moving speech explaining the plan and the most amusing thing happened:  I found myself cheering for the bad guys. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Pretty good movie but a massive propaganda failure. 

Joe Doakes

Every time I’m tempted to re-up Prime, I hear something like this.

This is what’s been bothering me.  

We’re heading toward an election that might be the MNGOP’s best chance to move the needle in executive offices in a very long time.  The DFL’s fraud problem should by all rights give the GOP a shot at governor, if the GOP can pick a solid candidate (and the straw polls so far say we just might).  

And on the surface Richard Carlbom, the new chair of the DFL, doens’t appear to be the glib money master that his predecessor, Ken Martin, was.  (And don’t you dare let anyone say he looks like a young Herman Göring).

Here’s the problem.  Remember 2012?  

The Voter ID Amendment – which is an 80/20 issue nationwide, and even wins a majority of Democrats in public opinion polls- should have been an easy winner.  

But Carlbom engineering a campaign that emotionally logrolled ignorant, emotion driven Minnesotans into tying voting “yes” on same sex marriage to voting “no” on voter ID.  

And the morons did it.  

And he’s doing it again, with the ICE thing.   

Joe Doakes, ere of Como Park, emails:

Amazon just implemented two factor authentication. I hate it.

I get a daily email of free Kindle book listings which I receive on my phone

I sign into my Amazon account on my phone so I can download the free Kindle book

Amazon places a telephone call to my phone to recite the six digit authentication code. It is spoken so I cannot cut and paste

I flip from the phone app to the sign in page and enter the code they just told me over the telephone

And it’s an invalid code

Go all the way back to the beginning to start over

Even if it worked, all that would prove is that the person who’s trying to log into my account has my phone. Doesn’t mean it’s actually me. 

 I wish there was an opt out

Joe Doakes

 

It’s cut down my Amazon orders from mimimal to almost nil.  

Most of Secretary of State Simon’s, and his defenders’, responses to questions about election irregularities come off as some variant of:’

• Because I said so
• It’s the law, no take-backsies
• Don’t make me turn this car around.

I’m not convinced. 

Either is Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park:s

For those who don’t think it could happen

Am I the only one who thinks thar either:

1. All the posturing about ICE is to deflect attention from the fraud, or
2. if the focus turns to the fraud, all those protesters will switch from casing ICE agents to hassling auditors and FBI agents?

Remember when militant militias who rejected government authority were the bad guys?

The left, either.