Have at it.
What could possibly go wrong?
Have at it.
What could possibly go wrong?
…that the people who most need to read articles like this (I’m not going to pull-quote it; it deserves a quick read) will be the last to actually read it.
Of course, those who have been through the history of the various characters in this blog’s comment section know that while the tendency flowered under Trump, it didn’t start in 2015.
This sums up the moment we’re in as well as anything I’ve seen.
Worth a watch.
After almost five years, the City of Minneapolis “plans” to “do” “something” with the former Speedway in “George Floyd Square”.
I’m adding emphaiss to the quote below for a reason:
The City of Minneapolis has received four applications to redevelop The People’s Way, which was formerly a Speedway gas station at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue.
The gas station turned into a gathering place in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. For the past four years, the community has used the site for twice-daily meetings, annual events honoring George Floyd, gardening and other activities, according to the city’s Request for Qualifications presentation.
City Councilmember Andrea Jenkins represents the area and she told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS not much is known about what the private groups would do with the property, but said it is a positive step toward progress and growth at George Floyd Square.
I’m gonna guess we know one thing about them: They’re dues-paying members of Minneapolis’s DFL/DSA non-profit/industrial complex.
And if you look at Rise & Remember, Minnesota Agape Movement, P3 Foundation and Urban League Twin Cities, you’ll realize not only that nobody ever went broke betting against the City of Minnepolis transferring money to its political class, but that whatever “happens” at George Floyd Square is going to be both exquisitely expensive and a magnet for blight.
Rise and Remember – run, among other people, by George Floyd’s aunt.
Minnesota Agape Movement – headquartered in George Floyd Square. Their “team” page is blank.
P3 Foundation – if I’ve got the right one, they appear to be national nonprofit that is into all sorts of things.
The Urban League needs no introduction.
Anyway – it’s going to wind up being a “community space” that turns into a graffity-coated monument to blight. But the non-profits will get their payoff. So tomayto/tomahto, I guess.
So – AlphaNews and Liz Collin released Minneapolis has Fallen a little over a year ago.
One of the signal scenes in the movie happened when Assistant Chief Blackwell testified that the “Maximal Restraint Technique” – which a series of current and former MPD officers testified was part of MPD traininig, and which Chauvin’s mother pointed out in her son’s MPD training manual – was not part of MPD training.
Blackwell is suing Collin and Alpha over this claim.
To wit:
I’m more against police brutality than most conservatives – but to a non-lawyer, it seems like the evidence pointing toward a new trial is approaching critical mass.
2. Keep on letting it stew. Let the “steam” build:
3. Go “I’m shocked, shocked that there’s a crime problem!
4. “Ride to the rescue” with a meaningless band-aid that doesn’t come close to addressing the cultural crisis you, yourselves, fomented:
Of course I’m not the first or only one to notice this:
Apparently “chaos” and “crime” aren’t polling well enough to overcome the loss of the ‘Trifecta’.
Am I the only one that heard about Taylor Lorenz’s “Joy” at the murder of Brian Thompson…
…and thought “that certainly puts a new spin on the Harris campaign’s theme?”
One “joy” I try to deny myself is excessive schadenfreud. Pinky swear.
But I’ll confess, I feel quite a bit of it seeing Lorenz’s sociopathic level of self-unawareness splashed about the place:
Less schadenfreud, Mitch. Less schadenfreud.
John Kerry – who came waaaay too close to becoming President, and that’s after acknowledging what a disappointment Dubya was in retrospect – accidentally told the left’s truth:
“our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it”
It’s disheartening how many Democrats consider that a bug rather than a feature.
“Klan” leaflet with “German”-style type appearing “according to a pastor” in Springfield Ohio:
“Stamped Self-Addressed Envelope?”
Berg’s 20th Law governs:
All incidents of “hate speech” not captured on video (involving being delivered by someone proven not to be a ringer) shall be assumed to be hoaxes until proven otherwise.
Now, let’s take bets on how long it takes for the story to come out as a hoax.
Closest without going over?
(And that German-style font? Isn’t it just amazing how “white supremacists” are mouth-breathing cretins who also love to slip in sly historical illusions via graphic presentation?
Now that Tim Walz is enjoying the first of his fifteen minutes, it’s high time we revisit some of his greatest hits.
Here’s Gwen Walz – who seems more and more like a Jill Biden character lately, and that’s not a good thig – talking about her, uh, odd perspective on the 2020 riots:
As someone who didn’t need to leave any windows open to smell the smoke – it came from three blocks away – I want to make sure this clip sees a nice, wide audience.
Chaya Raichik, of the account “Libs of TikTok”, and her seven-digit collection of followers, have gone scorched earth on social media accounts that cheered last weekend’s assassination attempt on former president Trump:
I get the urge. Perhaps more than most. I’ve had at least one job get tanked because some (very “progressive”) management found out about my alter ego life (which I have never, not once in 20 years, mentoined in a workplace. I don’t talk about politics at work – and yet I know of one contract job that didn’t get extended, notwithstanding the fact that I saved the project I was working on (long story for another time) because someone googled up some portion of my shadowy talk-radio existence and complained.
And that’s just the once I know about. I have suspicions about other jobs.
It was fine as far as it went – I found better jobs. But I’m not going to say I was never angry about it.
I never had the time, bandwidth or following to act on it like Raichik even if I had. And Raichik has certainly endured plenty of harassment herself. And the two of us aren’t alone.
Of course, on the right the “cultural memory” of the left’s social oppression is pretty hot and current; “cancellation”, including losing jobs, having professional license challenged, and other active harassment over quesitoning and refusing the Covid vaccine; losing jobs over photos in MAGA caps, having kids harassed because their parents were open conservatives.
And it is a little disturbing to see some people – doctors, nurses, teachers – not only cheering on the assassination, but actively wishing the same on half the population. It’d be great to help them recognize how stupid and evil they are being.
But this?
This is pretty much the definition of “punching down”.
I’ve had a policy on this blog from the beginning; I don’t go after peoples (non-elective) day jobs – and I am absolutely hands-off their families.
Does that make me a better person than those that don’t have those scruples?
Yes. Absolutely.
Has it deterred people going after me, my job and family? Well, not all of them. I don’t have the means to scorched-earth them all. WIth some, its irrelevant. With others? Karma’s a bitch. But I’m the one that has to live with myself.
Joe Doakes, no longer from Como Park emails:
In Murthy v. Missouri, the Biden administration was accused of unconstitutional infringement of free speech by pressuring social media to suppress stories unfavorable to the administration. A lower court found it was the most blatant act of censorship in American history.
The Supreme Court sidestepped the issue in cowardly fashion and reversed. The court did not say the government’s action was constitutional, it said citizens have no standing to challenge the unconstitutional action.
There’s no such thing as “standing” in the Constitution, it is strictly a made-up rule that courts use to get rid of nuisance cases they don’t want to hear. It’s a convenient way to avoid making hard decisions. Minnesota courts have used it to rule that ordinary citizens have no standing to challenge the governor’s Covid lock down order, even though it cost them their livelihood or landed them in jail. There is simply no legal remedy for those acts.
Imagine that Biden stays in the race so Democrats have to steal the election to keep the Bad Orange Man out of power. Imagine that the courts act for this instance as they did in 2020 denying that individual citizens have standing to challenge the result and refusing to hear the merits of the election fraud case. What’s the remedy?
If the court is correct citizens have no peaceful remedy within the constitutional system for unconstitutional government action, then the only remedy available is the one the founders exercised: insurrection leading to revolution.
Plenty of rope in the hinterlands and plenty of lamp poles in Washington. No wonder the elites are terrified.
Joe Doakes
One hopes they are.
Joe Doakes, no longer from Como Park, emails:
Biden says Americans do not need firearms to resist government tyranny because we don’t have F15s so can’t win anyway.
Biden surrendered to the Taliban. How many F15s did they have?
Asking for a friend
Joe Doakes
Ooh, I can answer that! None!
Lots and lots of other stuff – enough to resist a pretty good-sized government, in fact.
There’s really no other word to describe what happened in Los Angeles on Sunday:
Nothing small or isolated about it.
I’m old enough to remember when Jews feared the right in America. But barely.
This guy…
…looks like a skinhead reliving his “glory days” from the ’80s. That the modern “Palestinian” movement allies with them tells you something.
And the mayor of Berlin…er, Los Angeles had a predictable response:
Of course, that’s scarcely worse than what POTATUS is doing.
The closest thing to good news?
Apparently The New Kristallnacht isn’t polling well outside LA, Dearborn and, probably, south Minneapolis.
To: Jason Chavez, Minneapolis DSA/DFL councilbeing
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Punching
Councilbeing Chavez,
You tweeted this on Wednesday:
Let’s talk about the term “uprising”.
It usually connotes a group of subjugated, beaten-down people, “rising up” against their oppressors.
Good examples of uprisings that fit some variant of that definition:
Each of these uprisings have a few things in common: the people doing the uprising were being actively oppressed by those up against whom they rose; the targets of their attacks were the actual oppressors; tax authorities, the SS, the monarchy.
In May of 2020, people who considered themselves oppressed (we’ll accept that for sake of argument) “rose up” and destroyed…
…hundreds of businesses, extremely disproportionately owned by immigrants, people of color, people in the neighborhood. Oh, the Third Precinct got destroyed – after a couple of days of generalized looting and arson, seemingly almost as an afterthought, to give the “uprising” some window-dressing sense of political virtue other than “looting and burning cafes owned by first-generation Americans”.
I may be just an obstreporous peasant, but I think “downrising” might be a better term.
That is all.
POTATUS – or “Doctor” Jill, or the social media intern – spoke last week:
Question: do any of them know how this nation started?
Or why?
To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public Radio
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Anniversary + Findings
Mr. Collins,
As I have every year since 2021, I hope this day finds you well.
It was four years ago yesterday you sent this out on your listener mailing list::
“South Minneapolis: I know this sounds crazy. But it’s 2020. And I’m working on story now about white supremacists coming to Minneapolis to foment race war under cover of the protests. I need your help, and your friends help. Please refer anyone with real, credible info (not rumor or speculation) or sources to me at (I’m gonna redact that)
What the heck – let’s give this a shot:
Now, I know MPR reporters don’t generally deign to respond to the peasantry – in fact, I know MPR News management specifically tells staff not to engage with the unwashed masses. In fact, I have the receipts.
But I’m genuinely curious – did you find anything?
It’s not of idle interest to me. Mine was one of the neighborhoods that got burned, looted and vandalized in May of 2020 (noting at the time that I saw a lot of “AmeriKKKa” and “Destroy the 1%” graffiti, but not a single swastika or “14 words” reference, I’m thinking the Twin Cities either got the most inept “white supremacists” in the history of bigotry, or they were the most ingenious – fiendishly tricking a whole city full of leftists into doing the job for them – the sort of fieldcraft that’d make a Mossad agent envious).
While I am a very overt conservative (I went from Bob Collins’ Christmas Card list to…well, very much off of it during his unfortunate unpleasantness a few years ago), I also spent time covering radical groups of all stripes back when I was in the mainstream media.
I ask because a not-so-cursory look through the last three years of your reporting doesn’t seem to show anything.
And as I do every year on the anniversary of this event, I’d like to invite you on my show (Saturday, 1-3PM) to talk about your findings. Because it’s everyone’s city.
Thanks,
Mitch Berg
Host, WWTC-AM
To: Central Science Bureau, Planet Xymorg.
From: Forward Observation Base, Dark Side of Sole Moon, Planet Terra, Sol System
Re: Initial Observations
Central Bureau,
Enclosed please find the report on our observations of the inhabitants of planet Terra (aka “Earth”).
Methods
Our team observed the inhabitants of Terra via an extensive observation of “Advertisements” – a Terran form of content carefully calibrated to simultaneously reflect and suggest reality.
As Terrans accept this as reality, so shall this experiment.
Findings
According to statistics compiled from ten solar cycles of observation of Terran “Advertising”, we conclude the following:
Social Hierarchy: Terran social hierarchy appears to be organized, in descending order of social standing:
Social structure: Terran families appear to fall into three categories, displayed in descending order of statistial occurrence:
Manifestations of Society: Observations of the “advertising” content indicate that human activity is overwhelmingly focused on:
Social Hierarchy: The Terran social hierarchy as observed in “advertising” content appears to be based around a triune religio-governmental structure:
Further study is warranted.
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.
…while it’s always the Democrats who fantasize [1] about turning the military loose on Americans…:
…it’s the Republicans who are really the “Fascists”.
Representative Wu went on to bleat…:
That’s right – a guy who openly fantasizes about shooting missiles at Americans is concerned about “dangers to his community”.
Gene Wu may be the modern Democrat party’s intellectual thought leader.
[1] One suspects “arousal” to the level of, uh, showing physical symptoms, at least in Mr. Wu’s case.
I saw “The Fall of Minneapolis” again last week.
Now, when I first mentioned seeing it a few months back, a few smart people whose opinions I never discount asked “is there anything new that the courts didn’t settle?”
That brings up a couple of questions.
In our society, we usually think that if a court – an impartial jury of our peers, a couple of adversarial attorneys patiently digging out the facts, a fair and impartial judge facilitating it all via “due proces” – decides something, that’s that. The truth has been found.
There’s problems with that.
The was this guy, James Fleming, a Facebook friend, shooter and criminal defense attorney. He used to snap at people who referred to “due process” by itself as a reason to trust something. Paraphrasing: due process isn’t a guarantee of fairness, much less justice. It means the proceedings all check the same checkboxes and standards. The fairness and justice is all in the details.
So – how can that go wrong?
Years ago, I was *very* tangentially involved in the case of a man who’d been accused of a fairly grisly rape and murder in 1982. He had been kind of a lowlife, a petty criminal and drug addict, the kind of guy you’ve seen on a thousand episodes of “Cops” insisting to the officer “I have NO IDEA whose gun and cocaine that is!” He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.
The courts settled the matter.
A decade and change later, a group of people did enough digging and agitating on his behalf to get the attention of “The Innocence Project”, a group of pro-bono lawyers that works on what they believe to be unjust convictions.
The lawyers found that the original conviction had been secured via:
– A jailhouse snitch with a history of perjury whose testimony nonetheless was allowed
– A District Attorney hiding exculpatory evidence.
– An incompetent public defender.
The exculpatory evidence included forensic evidence that, with modern DNA testing, could have shed some light on who the attacker was. But it vanished as completely as whispering “due process” in the wind.
After years of legal wrangling, the lawyers found the evidence – and with more modern DNA testing, determined that the man, who’d been convicted “beyond a reasonable doubt” after “due process”, couldn’t have possibly been the murderer. In 2003 he was released, after 21 years on Death Row.
And he’s not alone. In the past 50 years, *185* inmates have been released from Death Row. Not granted new trials. Not commuted to lesser sentences. *Released* from Death Row to the world – because their “convictions beyond a reasonble doubt” were in error, due to perjury, official misconduct, incompetence, and even some honest but terrible mistakes.
So – do I think the answer to “is it true?” is “the courts have spoken?”
Let’s just say I believe in (grudging, conditional) trust but verification. Throw in a heaping dollop of skepticism about the integrity of public officials and systems.
More later this wee4
Earlier this week, the Minnesota Reformer – a news outlet financed by “progressive” plutocrats iwth deep pockets – did its review of AlphaNews’s “Minneapolis Has Fallen”.
The claims – well, I’ll let the tweet do the talking for the piece, entitled “I Watched Minneapolis Has Fallen So You Don’t Have To”.
Let’s go briefly through Winter’s claims.
Restraint
The biggest hit Winter has against Collin is that, according to her, the movie’s revelation that Chief Arredondo and his training officer lied about whether “Maximal Restraint Technique” was part of the MPD’s training and policy. Collin showed cops, and Chauvin’s mother, opening the manual to the exact section, and showed multiple current and former MPD officers saying they’d been trained in the technique. The movie also said the jurors were not allowed to see the body cam footage that showed that Chauvin did the technique correctly – with his knee on the shoulder blade, rather than on George Floyd’s neck.
Winter claims that yes, the jury saw both.
OK – so if that’s true, and the jurors saw the same training that the officers had, then could someone explain to me why Chief Arredondo still lied about it?
Neither reporter has clarified that for me, so someone else has to.
UPDATE: Danger Close
And as I wrote this in a hurry, I forgot this. But as “Bigman” noted in the comments – why the fact that Cahill failed to sequester the jury – who came to and from a courthouse that was being fortified like the Green Zone in Baghdad, and who were being told more or less directly that if they reached the “wrong verdict” that they were in huge trouble – not being discussed?
I’ll ask the question because Winter didn’t think she had to.
White Riot
Winter goes on to discuss the parts of the film dealing with the riot, most specifically the evacuation of the Third Precinct (on which. apropos nothing much, I scooped the entire Twin Cities media), I’m trying to figure out what Winter’s point is.
I’ll dispense with the fact that Winter…lacks a certain amount of empathy, or at least insight outside her own apparently narrow experience (emphasis added):
Collin also spends considerable time questioning why the MPD and local and state officials were slow to take action as protests devolved into riots and arson that destroyed hundreds of buildings across the metro.
Retired MPD officer Jason Reimer tells Collin what bothered him the most is “they let people throw rocks and bricks and firebombs and we’re supposed to just put on a helmet and take that.”
Well, helmets, but likely also bulletproof vests and eye-irritant spray, handcuffs, Tasers and semi-automatic pistols.
Bulletproof vests don’t keep you from burning to death. Spray and tasers are useful to get control one on one, not against a mob.
And I’ll let Deena Winter’s idea of shooting into a crowd of rioters hang out there, because I sure didn’t want to have to do it for her.
Winter cites some fairly wrenching scenes in the movie (that reflect what I reported in May of 2020), to which I’ll add some emphasis:
“We were in the middle of a war zone,” Herron said. “We were ordered not to do anything.”
She said the fire department wasn’t responding to calls, and officers were “wandering around aimlessly, waiting to be told what not to do next.”
“They weren’t doing anything to control the riot,” she said. “They wouldn’t let us do our jobs.”
All true – but keep the emphasis in mind – the “they” that left them wandering around were the city and MPD leadership. We’ll come back to them.
Winter adds:
The city and state’s failed response and inability to quell the violence and arson are well documented, but it’s inaccurate to claim police were standing down.
They went on joyrides, fired rubber bullets at protesters (see Jaleel Stallings); an officer, who went on to run an actual banana stand, was caught on video by a journalist macing protesters for no discernible reason; lots of cops in riot gear teargassed crowds.
They shot protestors like Soren Stevenson with a rubber bullet and blinded him in one eye. They maced a journalist from Vice News in the face. They fired rubber bullets at journalists, including Reformer reporter Max Nesterak and Star Tribune reporter Andy Mannix.
Side note: anyone but me notice how journalists only get really irate about injustice and official overreach when it’s other members of the Journo Club who are affected? Lake Street – and a fair chunk of the Midway, my neighborhood – got burned. The Minneapolis Police Department was, and remains, gutted. Crime soared, and is still double what it was as recently as 2018 – enh. But journalists got attacked ZOMG!
Not that Winter’s article tells you, but the main contention of the cops in the movie was that the city and the. MPD leadership – the “they” in the emphasized text in the first round of quotes, above:
So when Winter snarks:
To the people on the other end of a rubber bullet or tear gas or mace, the police response sure didn’t feel like “standing down.”
Stop me if I”m wrong, but everything she cites supports the cops contention. Some cops, operating in a complete vacuum, followed the normal human inclination to fucking hit back.
Either way, there was no plan. They were left danging in the breeze.
Winter doesn’t write about that, so I have to.
Who’s The Boss?
Winter goes on (and I’ll add emphasis):
[retired MPD cop Jason] Reimer says the weak response was all a deliberate attempt by politicians to use Floyd’s police killing to their advantage.
“The elections were coming up,” he said. “They were gonna use this incident for a political narrative, and they did.”
Let’s hope Reimer was a better cop than he is a political analyst: The riots were a political disaster for the mayor, the governor and the entire DFL establishment. DFL political operatives blamed the riots and the defund/abolish police movement for key suburban losses that prevented a 2020 DFL trifecta.
Although both Frey and Walz won reelection, they did so in part by hitching themselves to police during their reelection campaigns and would soon be accused by partisans on the left of being too cozy with cops.
I’m tempted to get cute and “hope that WInter is a better political analyst than Jason Reimer” – because it’d be more accurate to say the riots were a disaster for one city political establishment; the one where Jacob Frey and Andrea Jenkins and Lisa Bender were the “middle” and Alondra Cano was the loony left.
And for them, the riots were a disaster. For the new establishment, the one that gained huge ground in the ’22 elections and is poised to take the city over, the one led by the Democrat Socialists of America, against which Frey and Jenkins barely survived, and Bender and Cano retired lest they be seen as “too conservative” (literally the language the DSA droogs use to refer to Jacob F*cking Frey and Andrea Jenkins – the riots, and the aftermath (including the far far far left’s well-funded and well-organized response to whatever backlash there was in the ’20 elections) were a prime organizing opportunity.
But I won’t call Winter a myopic political analyst. Someone else will have to.
A Bonus I’ll Answer So You Don’t Need To
“Minneapolis Has Fallen” refers to quite a number of former MPD cops. Winter reminds us that a number of them are living on disability pensions and workmens comp settlements.
Someone needs to explain why that’s relevant (as opposed to, frankly, kinda pointlessly bitchy) since Winter will no doubt say she doesn’t have to.
Among the “setter projects” that Americans established as we (yes) conquered the North American continent, along with representative democracy, were universities.
And I’m thinking that those are among the “settler projects”…
…that actually need to be dismantled.
Or at least, it’s time for an actual honest-to-god McCarthy-style purge of Universities.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is loading some garage junk into a truck. He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, whjo is walking up the alley writing down the addresses of homes without handicap parking spots.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Uh…
LIBRELLE: Christian Nationalists can’t handle freedom of religion! They’re having a cow and melting down over a Satan Club at a school!
BERG: Huh.
LIBRELLE: What do you have to say about that?
BERG: Other than “Satanism is a religion in exactly the same way as “The Onion” is, only even less funny? It exists only to mock faith. Well, to mock Christianity. It’s not a worldview. It’s a running adolescent jape.
LIBRELLE: You’re gonna crrrryyyyyyyyyyyy…
BERG: So, if a school had an “Amos and Andy” club, or a “Speedy Gonzales” club, or an “Apu” Club, or a “Boring Basketball” club, do you think Blacks, Latinos, Indian-Americans or women might take umbrage?
(But LIBRELLE is already skipping, literally, down the alley.
And SCENE>