EdMinn’s Curious Self-Indictment

Wait – didn’t the DFL in the Legislature spend most of April and May of last year doing the endzone happy dance celebrating having “fully funded” education?

I do believe they did.

So – what is up with this?

Now, when you asked a DFL legislator or an EdMN partisan what “Full Funding” meant, the “answers” should have come with a side of blue cheese for all the word salad. It was gibberish. And that was just the ones that didn’t ignore the question entirely.

As we see now, pretty much intentionally so.

Everywhere, All The Time

I had no idea if I had any musical talent at all when I was in fourth grade. But one day, a string quintet came over from the high school – and I was intrigued.

I knew playing violin would be a problem – people would beat me up. And the bass looked like an awful lot of instrument to haul around. So I settled on the cello.

And I played through the next eight years, from fourth grade till graduation (enter through college, and let’s be honest, I can still crank out a few tunes).

The Jamestown schools had a pretty big orchestra program:  five elementary schools, the junior high, and the high school. The program involved everyone from 10-year-old beginners sawing away on half size violin, all the way up to the occasional musical prodigy who went off to major in music.

And the whole thing was run by one teacher – Donna Nannenga. 

I was a pretty obnoxious teenager – certainly too much so to be impressed by that at the time. But over the years, as I’ve seen, what goes into teaching – and especially into teaching music, one of the more complicated disciplines – I’ve retrospectively had my mind blown.

In my case? I went from playing “Blue Bells of Scotland“ in fourth grade, to second chair at Alls State orchestra my senior year. And she was the only teacher – really, just about the only formal musical training – I had until I was 18.

And I was just one of what had to have been between 70 and 100 kids in the orchestra program at any given time, from age 10 through 18. 

And, of course, it was from learning the cello that I was able to teach myself guitar, bass, mandolin, and everything else I’ve been able to crank out a tune on over the years.

And I was far from the only one:

Donna Nannenga teaches violin, viola and cello at James River Correctional Center. She taught 75 students at the prison from 2002-15 when she stopped counting and estimates the number is now closer to 100.

“Once a teacher, always a teacher,” Nannenga said.

Some of her students were in school choirs, bands or orchestras while others have no musical background at all, she said. Her goal is for the student to reach a high school orchestra level for string instruments, she said.

“I take them no matter what kind of musical background they have,” she said. “I teach them just like I did my students in school with the same books and materials.”

As happens so often in life, I was just wondering how she was doing the other day, when I got the news that she’d passed away. I always wanted to thank her.

I guess I need to stop waiting on these things. 

The Racket

Walter Hudson asks a great question:

Once I get Juan and Goncalvo to cough up the money…

…I think it’s time to guy that 1960 Les Paul Standard.

What are you doing with your cut from the illegals?

Some Feelings Are More Equal

In the modern world, and to the two generations raised in it, feelings are paramount. Your feelings are reality.

Unless they, er, intersect with more important, vogue-y feelings:

Then, those feelings are supposed to be suppressed; “shut up or get cut up”, as Elvis Costello put it.

Precisely As Predicted

“Go ahead, tear down a couple of stores that were half of the commercial heart of the Midway”, said all the people who don’t live in the Midway. “It’ll bring hordes of soccer fans in from their “Urban Life Theme Park” homes in Marcy Holmes and Longfellow over to pre-game at the local bars, and carouse about the place afterward!”

Trust us!”

I warned ’em. I sincerely tried.

The game day ritual:

  1. Watch hordes of cars (and a quick surge of people on the train) pack Snelling, Hamline and University, and the neighborhood streets all the way up to Minnehaha, clogging everything for a solid hour.
  2. A couple of hours of noise and pandemonium and hearing the mob singing “Wonderwall”. By the way, of all the songs they could have picked, why in the flaming hootie-hoo did it have to be “Wonderwall?” I swear, “Afternoon Delight” or “Pilot of the Airwaves” or “Who Let the Dogs Out” or a root canal are less irritating.
  3. Another hour or two of clogged streets and pedestrians stagging through the neighborhood as they get while the getting’s good. Because nobody wants to be stuck on University outside of a crowd.

One will spend less time waiting for Godot than for the wave of prosperity that professional soccer was supposed to bring to the Midway.

The Gift That Keeps Giving

If it’s a year ending in a number, Checkerboard Pizza on the East Side of Saint Paul is back in the news for less than uttelry savory reasons.

And as a Midway homer, it behooves me to point out that, name and signage similarities notwithstanding, the ongoing reality show that is the East Side Checkboard is utterly unrelated to the one on Snelling for the past couple of decades. While delivery pizza hasn’t been much of a part of my life for some time now, Midway Checkerboard is great stuff.

I Have Seen Much Stupidity…

…in my career as a self-appointed political observer.

There are many candidates for the title of “dumbest thing I’ve ever seen”; the Kenilworth Tunnel, evacuating the Third Precinct, going logarithmic on the national debt, “shrinkflation” – I could go on.

But after the Potato’s State of the Union, really, the polls can close; the contest is over:

floating pier and causeway that will be used to deliver critical humanitarian aid by sea to Gaza is expected to take at least one month or possibly as long as two for the US military to build and become fully operational, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said on Friday.

We’ll be counting on the Israelis to keep the huge fat juicy target for drones, rockets and suicide bombers…er, I mean the pier secure, on top of actually, y’know, carrying out their mission.

I’d say “I’ll never mock and taunt a government idea quite like this”, but Americans are going to get killed in pursuit of literally no national interest whatsoever.

In other words, it fits right in with the rest of Biden’s foreign policy.

The Messages Will Continue Until Morale Improves

Joe Doakes, formerly from Como Park, emails:

I keep getting campaign text messages.   “Hey, Joe, the country is going to the dogs. Text Senator . . .”

No, I won’t text.  I don’t live my life on my cell phone, it’s there for my convenience, not yours.  But there’s no escape.

“Text STOP to unsubscribe.”

“STOP”

“You texted STOP.  Are you certain want to unsubscribe from these important messages from Senator?”

“YES DAMMIT”

“Okay we have unsubscribed you.  If you want to receive these important messages from Senator in the future . . . .”

“Hey, Joe, the country is going to the dogs.  Text the Committee to Reelect Senator . . . “

“I already texted STOP”

“That was a different list. Are you certain you no longer wish to receive these important messages from Senator?”

“YES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU”

“You realize that engaging in antisocial behavior affects your social credit, banks will consider you a reputational risk to close your accounts, a Red Flag order will be docketed against you and the IRS will be calling shortly? Do you still want to unsubscribe from these important messages from Senator?”

***

My folks had an old black Bakelite rotary dial phone sitting on a little table near the dining room.  I miss that.

Joe Doakes

Touching

I’ve joked – or, really, “joked” – that I may just make my millions by developing a line of televisions and other technology products with mechanical power switches, channel selectors and other key controls.

It’s not Luddism – at least, not directly. I actually design things for people to actually use effectively in the real world. And much of the world we interact with is designed by people with more enthusiasm than empathy for the person who’s actually trying to use their product in the real world.

I’m looking at you, company that built my washer and dryer control panels with little tiny dark gray letters on a slightly lighter gray background, which if you’re over 40 and have a dimly lit basement makes things a lot more difficult than they should be.

And at the idiots who put the touch-screen interfaces onto damn near everything in every post-2015 car I’ve rented lately:

Touch screens are ubiquitous in new cars. A recent S&P Global Mobility survey of  global car owners cited by Bloomberg estimates nearly all (97%) of new cars released after 2023 have at least one touch screen nestled in the cabin. Nearly 25% of US cars and trucks currently on the road reportedly have a screen at least 11 inches long according to that same survey. These “infotainment systems,” once largely reserved for leisure activity like switching between Spotify songs or making phone calls, are increasingly being used for a variety of tasks essential to driving, like flashing lights or signaling for a turn. Consumer Reports, which regularly asks drivers about their driving experience,  claims only around half of drivers it surveyed in 2022 reported being “very satisfied” with the infotainment system in their vehicles. 

So Im not the only one who wants to bring back mechanincal controls:

Starting in 2026, according to The Sunday Times, the European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) will only award its top safety rating to new vehicles that use old-fashioned buttons and levers to activate indicators, hazard lights, and other critical driving features. The new requirements could force automakers who use the safety rating as a selling point to reassess the amount of driving features they make accessible only through touch screens. Though these voluntary standards are limited to Europe, a battle over buttons is gaining momentum among drivers in the US as well

Any old time, people.

I’ll take the “W”.

Retirement Planning

I think this’d be what the kids today call “saying the quiet part out loud”…

…except it’s really saying the part they keep yelling at the top of their lungs, even louder, really.

Senator Erin Maye Quade thinks parents shouldn’t be bringing their children up with any sense of basic morality when it comes to sex:

That’s right – just cast them out into the world, and let the teachers and Planned Parenthood do the teaching for you.

Which will help keep the meat coming through the doors at Planned Parenthood, who most generously supports her political career (and, one suspects, will be providing amply for her when she one day “retires from politics”).

An American Hero

For like the 21st year in a row, I didn’t watch the State of the Union. I’ve joined the crowd that considers it a useless exercise at best, a nod to monarchy or worse at worst.

But I almost wish I had tuned in, for this alone:

“Thirteen Marines”

Including his son, LCPL Kareem Nikoui, whom I’ll bring out from under the rug under which he and his comrades were swept:

And I salute you, Steve Nikoui, wherever you are.

Mark Your Calendars

This particular bit of elitist Pauline-Kaelery needs to re-appear around November 1.

In fact, I’m going to make sure it does.

“Show Me The Conservative And I’ll Show You The Terrorist”

I started banging this drum in 2009, when the Obama Administration and its camp followers started moving the Overton Window of authoritarianism to encompass basically every variety of conservative group, to gin up hysteria for (as a former commenter used to refer to it) a coming “tidal wave of right-wing terror that’d dwarf 9/11”. This bit of social slander started in 2009, had hit close to home when the Southern Poverty Law Center claimed the Taxpayers League of Minnesota was a “hate group”.

Some have taken to the change in tone with alarming facility – some of them private citizens

…and some, er, not so much.

Two peaceful pro-life students appear to be listed by a University of Maryland’s terrorism center database.

UMD did not respond to inquiries from The College Fix, but a pro-life group said its attorneys would review the research to consider legal action.

The university’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism has endeavored to track alleged “extremism” from 1948 to 2021 through a database titled, “Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States.”

PIRUS lists mainstream pro-life organizations, like Pro-Life Action League, among threats such as the Ku Klux Klan and Al Qaeda. Moreover, two subjects affiliated with Students for Life of America appear to be peaceful protesters who were cleared of charges, The Fix found.

Of course, Big Left knows and operates according to Mark Twain’s aphorism “a lie will travel around the world while the truth is waiting for its Keurig to warm up”. It’s easier to call an innocent person a terrorist, white supremacist, “Christian Nationalst” or “hate group” falsely, knowing that gullible or depraved “Journalists” and influencers will hammer it home like a bunch of monkeys on espresso for eternal preservation on the internet, than it is for the victim to un-call it.

Literal

Exasperated conservatives sometimes refer to the media as “the enemy”.

It’s understandable – the media at the editorial and national level is in general a PR firm for Big Left – and accurate in terms of long-term effect.

But not since Walter Duranty has it been quite this literally true.

Five Israeli families are suing the AP and Reuters for their “journalists” obvious collusion with Hamas on October 7:

The lawsuit filed by the victims’ parents last week alleges that five photojournalists, Hassan Abdel Fattah Eslaiah, Hatem Ali, Mohammed Fayq Abu Mostafa, Ashraf Amra, and Ali Mahmoud who filed photographs in real time of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hamas terrorists were in fact a component of the attacks themselves, and were not conducting legitimate journalistic work.

The journalists were either aware ahead of time that a mass invasion and terror attack was about to be staged by Hamas or, being present from the very outset of the attacks, were culpable for doing nothing to stop the assault, including failing to warn the Israeli authorities, the suit asserts.

While the free market is having its real final say with Big ProgressiveMedia, a little economic justice would be welcome. FIngers crossed.

Agenda

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Notice the list of priorities does NOT include: “Build The Wall and Make Mexico Pay For It.”  

Nor does it include: “StopPissing Away Money in Ukraine.”    “Lock Up Criminals” is mostly a local issue but then, so is abortion (now that Roe v. Wade is gone).   And I don’t know one single person who favors canceling student loan debt, not even the people making payments on their student loans, who routinely tell me, “I paid my loans, they can pay their loans.”

Comparing this list of priorities to mine, I have to ask: how far out of touch with reality am I?

Who, indeed, is out of touch?

More on that next week.

History Rhymes

Shot: AOC, three and a half years ago:

Chaser: AOC, over the weekend:

So – the left is starting to eat its own.

My main question: will AOC call this a hate crime, a sexual assault or a GOP psyop?

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part CXXXI

I’ve told the story so many times, I sometimes wonder if the details have gotten burnished in the re-telling.

Many of the things in my life that actually worked out, started as offhanded, sarcastic, frustrated or intoxicated jokes. My move to the city, my career, this blog…

…and, in 2003, the kind of “what the heck, why not?” vibe that caused me to send an email to the other principals of the “Northern Alliance of Blogs” and ask “Why not try to do a talk radio show?”

The answer was…well, “find the opportunity, and we’ll think about it”. I can’t imagine how far out of left field the idea must have sounded to the rest of the guys – John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson of Powerline, Brian and Chad and Atomizer and JB Doubtless from Fraters Libertas, Ed Morrissey then of Captain’s Quarters, King Banaian of SCSU Scholars, and – trivia alert – a husband and wife pair of lawyers from a short-lived blog called Spitbull whom Hugh Hewitt had added to the NAoB in a frenzy of solicitousness, who weren’t interested in doing the show, and whose names I can’t even begin to remember.

So on Halloween 2003, we met with AM1280 – and to my amazement, they were interested. On January 23, 2004, at a get-together with Hugh Hewitt at the long-defunct Billy’s Lighthouse in Wayzata, we got the formal go-ahead.

And 20 years ago today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network did its first show.

It was a very different production back then: I was the only one who’d done radio (other than King Banaian’s stint as a college radio jock), so I served as more of a traffic cop to keep people from stepping on each other’s lines and prevent the pandemonium that’s usually inevitable with these sorts of group shows.

It has, of course, morphed a lot over the years:

  • Atomizer left after one segment. JB, after a couple of months. Scott Johnson, after ten months.
  • In 2006, we morphed into two shows – Brian, Chad and John took two hours, King and Ed and I the next two.
  • Shortly after, King and Michael Brodkorb split away to do a 3-5PM show on Saturdays.
  • In 2010, King moved to our at-the-time Business station to focus on economics radio and run for office, surviving a ludicrous campaign finance accusation in the process. The show moved with the Business format to AM1440 sometime since then.
  • In 2011, Michael left to take the Senate Communications Director Job. Chad, Brian and John departed, and Brad Carlson joined the lineup on Sundays.
  • In 2012, Ed Morrissey left to pursue a solo project. No idea what happened to him.
  • And finally, in 2021, Jack Tomczak joined from 3-5 Saturdays.

And it’s funny how talking about events nearly every weekend makes it harder to see the slow crawl of history around you. Brad pointed out on his show on Sunday, it’s hard to imagine how much the landscape in Minnesota has changed since the show started.

In 2004:

  • RT Rybak was mayor of Minneapolis, and seemed “far left”. The MInneapolis City Council was divided between union guys and “Greens”.
  • Randy Kelly was mayor of Saint Paul. The Saint Paul city council still had people with private sector experience on it. There was still an elected Republican office-holder, Tom Conlon, on the School Board.
  • Minnesota’s congressional delegation included five Democrats and three Republicans.
  • CD7 was Collin Peterson. One could see the district flipping red, maybe – but only when he left office.
  • CD8 was Jim Oberstar. Thoughts that CD8 would even become a close race were pure madness.
  • Tim Pawlenty was governor, having eked out a win against Roger Moe and Tim Penney.
  • North Dakota’s congressional delegation was Democrat – rural moderates like Peterson – who seemed likely to continue the dynasty.
  • Texas and Florida, we were reliably informed, were going to flip Democrat. It was inevitable.
  • Minneapolis was a great city. Saint Paul was hanging in there.
  • The “Blue Line” was under construction. The Green Line was lurking in the future.
  • “Murderapolis” was a memory ten years in the past. Minneapolis was a very safe city by major urban standards.

And writing that list, right there, was the first time in 20 years I thought “daaaaaamn. Thinks really have changed.

Anyway – I have to thank the whole crowd of people who made it possible:

  • Four rounds of General Managers – John Hunt who agreed to put us on the air in the first place, Ron Stone, Nik Anderson and, now, Mike Murphy.
  • Four “Operations Managers” – Pat Campion, who got us in the door, Nick Novak, Lee Michaels and, now, John “The Consigliere” Berg, who is no relation but was the NARN producer for a bit.
  • And of course, all the producers. There’ve been a bunch – I can’t pretend to remember all the names, but Joe Hansen, Irina Malanina, Matt Reynolds, Megan Fatale, Terminator N, Tommy Huynh (who now sings in Elephant in the Room), The Consigliere and G-Money were all notable .

And if you’re so inclined, the 20th Anniversary party is coming up on April 6th at Exchange Food and Drink in New Brighton. I haven’t thrown a party since the last MOB event in probably 2013, so it’s about high time to retire the running joke that the 10th Anniversary party is coming soon…

Hope see you there.

And thanks for tuning in all these years!

Primary Motivations

On the one hand, I think optimism is extremely premature for Republicans. While some polling is showing deep divides in the Democrat party, we’ve heard this tune more that “Freebird” on KQRS. Democrats may kvetch and moan – they whined about Bill Clinton – but they, being essentially herd animals, always “come home” at election time.

But it looks like a lot of them will have to come home a looooong way this fall:

“Uncommitted” takes almost 20% of the DFL primary vote.

And that was only the half of it:

Looks bad for Biden?

For now, sure.

But don’t get fooled – they’ll get goaded, logrolled, gaslit, threatened, or just talk themselves back into line this fall. Trump (who easily skated through the GOP contest) will have a hard go it it, nationwide and here in Minnesota.

Cycle Of Trivia

Not everyone knows the song.

But if you do, you know the song.

Including some covers.

Or some other covers.

But while I know music trivia forwards and backwards, I’m not even remotely up on motorcycle trivia. I do better at sports trivia than motorcycles.

So this was actually an education:

Now, the only education I need is finding out how James and Red Molly fit on that bike…

At A History Conference, 2174 AD

SCENE: A conference room in Zürich, Switzerland. An international team of historians is gathered in a conference hall. Behind the panel tabel, a large “Powerpoint 2170” holographic slide displays the title for the session: “Origins of the Second American Civil War”.

PROFESSOR A: Welcome, one and all, to this discussion on the origins of the Second American Civil War. We’d like to start with this presentation from PROFESSOR B.

PROFESSOR B: Thank you. As you know, the origins of the Second American Civil War, 150 years ago, are shrouded in mystery. But we found this exchange on “X”, a “social medium” popular around 2024, that sheds some light on the subject.

(B swooshes his hand in the air, and the holograph advances to show a “Twitter thread”i)

ProgressiveDuke1332: ReTHUGlicons have no policies to fix Minneapolis’s problems.

Mitchpberg: Of course we do. Arrest, prosecute and incarcerate actual dangerous criminals. Make life better for law-abiding citizens. Get rid of impediments to affordable life, like rent control, the Met Council’s idiot zoning policies and city policies about “driving density”. Have a a sales tax holiday. Cut spending, and cut taxes, especially some of the more niggling, punitive taxes like parking meter rates and hospitality taxes, to simulate traffic and business.

ProgressiveDuke1332: Hahaha, mitchpberg think you can eliminate crime by lowering parking fees!

PROFESSOR B: This, I hold, was the beginning of a pattern where nobody in society could communicate about anything.

PROFESSOR C: So, part of America lashed out at the other part as a matter of…

PROFESSOR D: Intellectual self-defense?

PROFESSOR B: Precisely.

(Brow-furrowing and beard-scratching follows)

PROFESSOR E: I mean, it doesn’t not make sense…

(General assent breaks out).

And SCENE

One Of The Definitions Of Insanity…

…is, reportedly, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

If at first you build a $500 Million train and it comes in closer to $700M, so you build a “$1.4 Billion” train that comes in over $2 Billion, so you build a $2 Bllion dollar train that’s going to be well over $3 billion if they finish it at all…

…then why the heck not estimate an extension to an existing useless crack den of a train for $2.9-$3.2 Billion and shoot for $4.5B by the time you’re done?

That Smell

What is that smell?

Why, it’s the sound of millions of peoples senses of self-righteous indignation, their mode of instant social sorting, their handy form of smug virtue-signaling, and that little knot of terror that they cultivated and nursed into their worldview, slowly smoldering into ash:

A whole lot of Merriam Park harpies are feeling bereft today. Go easy on ’em.