People filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Data Practices Act (DPA) requests over the past few years have wondered how it is that Governor Walz leaves such a light state-documented electronic trail.
Could he just be old fashioned? Or, like Paulie Cicero in Goodfellas, maybe he just never does business electronically?
Well, no:
Because information is privilege. And privilege is power.
“…Mitch, why do you keep saying that media attention to ‘white supremacy’ is just a diversion tactic, a political cudgel with which to beat down, bully and shame dissent, with otherwise no substance whatsoever?”, I respond “because that’s exactly how your side treats it“.
There are so many reasons to flush the Biden administration like a bad tequila and gas station burrito bender the next morning.
This story is merely one of them. But it’s a big one:
Veterans that chose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine and are dismissed from their posts will not receive any special protections or preferential evaluations for veterans’ benefits eligibility, with the decision being ultimately determined by their discharge status.
The decision of whether to give these veterans other-than-honorable discharges will be left to their local commanders.
I don’t care what Betty McCollum and Ilhan Omar have to say about this – it’s perfectly predictable.
Now Dean Phillips and Angie Craig? That’s an opinion I’d like to get.
This was seen on the outskirts of Brandon, MN.
It was, perhaps, inevitable. And hilarious.
But watching central Minnesota “progressives” react has been fascinating. They want the BCA on the case, tracking down the miscreants!
Civility suddenly matters, I guess.
Last Friday, heading into the closing weekend of the Virginia Gubernatorial contest, a group of ‘white supremacists” showed up “in support” of GOP challenger Glenn Younkin, in full Charlottesville regalia, lest anyone miss the reference. .
There was something a little fishy, though:
After they were thoroughly busted, the “Lincoln Project” – the group of “never-Trump” “republicans” that seems to always work toward Democrat Party interests [1] – admitted they were behind the stunt:
“But wait! Macauliffe and/or his staff weren’t involved!”
Ben Shapiro noted last week that Macauliffe’s campaign has boiled down to “Trump!”, which is odd considering Trump isn’t in the race.
Is it a stupid, desperate stunt, intended to deflect attention away from Macauliffe’s catastrophic performance this past few weeks, along with the fact that he’s tied to the coverup of sexual abuse claims in Loudon County?
Sure.
But it’s worse than that.
This is a less-polished episode from a campaign that’s been going on since 2009 at the very least, from Obama and Biden’s cabinets (ptr) all the way down to failed “fact-checker” Dog Gone, who used to promise in this comment section that there was a wave of white supremacist terror that’d dwarf 9/11 coming up, any day now.
Tne notion that, notwithstanding the fact that actual “white supremacist” groups have been shrinking by roughly an order of magnitude roughly every generation, that white American society is building a militant arm that is just acheing to go out and take over. Every event of recent history, and even distant history, is bent to support that narrative – from the very founding of this nation to the Minneapolis riots to Emmanuel Goldstein…
…schwoops. I skipped narratives, there.
I mean, not like the narrative was ever subtle, but how stupid do you have to be to miss it?
This is just another chapter in the left’s attempt to slander half of our nation.
The fact is was.a flailing and incompetent attempt doesn’t make things better.
[1] Perhaps it should be called the Tom Horner Project?
If this sign is a Democrat campaign sign…
…(and it’s likely not, since it includes none of the mandatory “Paid For By…” subtitles) then I’d love the DFL to get honest and bring it here.
And if it’s a false flag GOP parody?
Then I hope someone brings it here even more
Ilhan Omar, Jeremiah Ellison and Phillipe Cunningham – the three biggest champions of the “Defund the Police” madness – had a campaign rally in North Minneapolis yesterday.
It was apparently sparsely attended.
But it was the people nearby that drew the attention; audio tweet below::
The MPD apparently doesn’t respond to shootings that don’t hit anyone anymore (although I have a hunch that’d change around Omar, Ellison, Cunningham or Lisa Bender’s houses), so the media will feel no obligation to cover it. Although that might also have something to do with the fact that the “machine guns” involved are utterly illegal, have been for eight decades, and are still everywhere.
It’s enough to make you wish there were a viable politifal opposition in Minneapolis. Because this’d be a great opportunity.
I speak only for myself. That’s pretty much a given
But speaking for myself – and, I suspect, not a few conservatives – I’m going to give Republicans a little unasked-for advice on approaches not to take in the upcoming midterms.
“Covid is a Hoax” – Of course it was ineptly handled by two different presidents and one unbroken chain of public health “experts”. But most of us have had someone in our lives die of it, so no, it’s not a “hoax”. Try again.
Masks Are The Beach To Die On – Like most people, I suspect, I hate them, and I ditch them everyplace I can. One of those places I can’t is the nursing home where one of my very, very vulnerable family members lives. Quote your Ayn Rand elsewhere. Change policies that matter.
“The Election Was Stolen” – Was there fraud? Yep. But Sidney Powell was worse than useless, and the extent to which Giuliani squandered his legacy last year was a national tragedy. Bring the actual evidence – not Alex Jones guests, actual hard evidence. We’ve got enough issues with actual evidence to deal with – like the MN Secretary of State defying court orders on turning over info on registration fraud.
Same with the endless recounts and audits. Do them if you can justify them – but shut up about ’em until you find something actionable. Otherwise it’s nothing but fundraising fodder – and if conservatives can’t raise funds in this climate on real issues, they shouldn’t be in politics.
Defending January 6 – Let’s be clear – Big Left is trying to turn January 6 into a bigger assault than Pearl Harbor. It was a riot, at a place and time that was very symbolically fraught – but that was never going to affect the constitutional process, never going to overturn the election, never going to directly affect our democracy (as opposed to the indirect effects of the ramping up of surveillance and the politicization of law enforcement and the turning of the Capitol Police into a Congressional Praetorian Guard with national scope).
But the rioters themselves? Especially the ones that made serious threats, and did serious actions? Don’t be defending their actions (beyond the Fifth Amendment duty to give them a solid defense in court, naturally). And do not run your campaign around it, Miss Taylor Greene.
Hopefully that helps.
Scene: it is 2020. The scene fades up in a DNC/Biden campaign office, in the middle of the 2020 presidential race.
A group of democratic party operatives is sitting in a crowded, messy campaign office, with video screens silently relaying the news all around them.
Operative 2: “OK, we are clear on this; rebuilding the economy from this pandemic is going to be a huge issue.“
Operative 1 (the campaign Manager): “That is why the “American Phoenix“ program, the presidents plan for what he will do about the economy after he’s elected, will be so important“.
Operative 3: “So we’ve gone over with the president exactly how he supposed to message this plan?”
Operative 4: “We’ve been rehearsing it every waking hour”
(Operatives 2-4 chuckle)
Intern: (Walks into the room, holding a TV remote, looking nervous) “Sir? Senator Biden is on television right now…)”
Operative 1: “Right? He’s supposed to be, isn’t he“ (Other operatives vigorously nod)
Intern: (points remote at television monitor, clicks a button) “I think you need to see this, sir…”
Candidate Biden (on video) “… my Build Back Better plan will put Americans back to work…“
(All of the operatives blanche)
Operative 4: “what the…“
Operative 1: “How the hell did he get from American Phoenix to… what did he say?“
Operative 2: “build… Better… I have no idea.“
Operative 3: “What?“ Operative 1: “Well, I’ll be; he actually was too senile to remember “American Phoenix“.
Operative 2: “so what do we do?“
Operative 1: “Well, he’s sort of made the decision for us. American phoenix is now… Better… Build now? What was it?
Operative 3: “back build…“
Operative 4: “I have no idea“.
Intern: (Silently rewinds the video)
(And SCENE)
Crosstabs from the California recall vote include some potentially troublesome news for Democrats:
Now, it’s entirely possible that Newsome’s patrician behavior during a lockdown that disproportionally affected Latinos is partly, even largely, the cause.
But we know a couple of things:
Did the Newsome recall, and the largely Democrat-led pandemic response that has disproportionally impacted Latino society, accelerate this trend?
Well, if I have anything to say about it…
A “Minnesota” Poll – which ,as we’ve noted in the past, has historically favored Democrats, sometimes to an absurd extent with deeply suspicious and one-sided patterns, even after numerous reboots and changes in management and pollsters – shows Governor Walz under water:
The crosstabs are even more ominous for Walz, and show President Biden to be a bit of a drag down-ticket.
Fearless predictions:
I’m going to put a pin in this.
…don’t get cocky.
But a Democrat who’s in power and isn’t overreaching like a crack whore with a stolen Obsidian Card probably isn’t much of a Democrat.
And it just may cost them.
To: Gavin Newsom, Premier of California
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Congratulations
Governor Newsom,
In a state dominated 2:1 by registered voters from your party, you evaded being recalled by a 7:4 margin.
After outspending the initiative by 5:1, with the united efforts of an in-the-bag media and a full turnout of the national social nomenklatura, in a vote that still saw your support among Latinos erode still further.
Sleep tight, Democrats.
That is all.
President Trump used to say that, with him as president, we would win so much, we would eventually get tired of it.
I don’t know about that.
But after eight months of this administration, I am sure as hell tired of losing.
When I first heard that there was going to be a recall vote against Gavin Newsom, I figured “Quixotic” was an understatement. The early polling showed California’s incompetent governor walking away with a recall election.
And when Larry Elder took leave from his national talk radio show (Disclosure: on my station, on the Salem Network, for which I work part-time), I figured it was yet another symbolic drive to get people talking about the issues.
But as Ed Morrissey notes, I want to believeˆ.
Indeed, I believe in miracles.
We’re not anywhere near “Miracle” level yet, and we may never get there. But the path to get there just got a little more brightly lit:
Californians who say they expect to vote in the September recall election are almost evenly divided over whether to remove Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, evidence of how pivotal voter turnout will be in deciding the governor’s political fate, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
Ed Morrissey notes:
Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder, who last week won a court battle to appear on the Sept. 14 recall ballot, leads in the race to replace Newsom among the dozens of candidates in the running, while support for reality television star Caitlyn Jenner remains low, the survey found. Forty percent of likely voters remain undecided on a replacement candidate, providing ample opportunity for other gubernatorial hopefuls to rise in the ranks before the Sept. 14 special election…
One potential advantage – special elections (and a recall is the special-est election there is) offer at least a slight premium for the motivated. Has this past couple of years of incompetent elitism left enough Californians angry enough to bring on a spasm of rebellion?
The odds are still very, very long. But maybe not as long as we’d thought.
And if it succeeds? Mid-terms are gonna be lit.
It’s almost a year and a half until the next elections. But I’m starting to think that things aren’t polling nearly as well for the Harris (or, haha, Biden, sure, whatevs) ticket as the media says.
Reason?
Because the “Christian boogeyman“ is already making headlines.
As the state heads toward a mid-term election with the control of both the House and Senate, to say nothing of the Constitutional Offices, at stake, a poll shows MInnesotans are un-thrilled with government’s handling of events:
Considering opinions on Gov. Tim Walz’s approach to handling crime, the results have virtually flipped since last year in terms of approval. In June of 2020, 59% approved and 35% disapproved of the governor’s approach to crime, but in June of 2021, 55% disapproved and only 39% approved…Fifty-eight percent of respondents said they visited Minneapolis less than normal in the past year, compared to 4% who said they visited the city more frequently than in the past.
Despite this, a majority of Minnesotans do trust law enforcement to keep the city safe — far more than they trust elected leaders in the state to do the same.
Ample reasons for dissatisfaction are obvious. And some are not so much . More tomorrow in this space.
They’re not even bothering to couch it in academic abstractions anymore:
If the people have any kind of memory or moral sense at all, 2022 is going to be a bloodbath.
But I’m worried about the whole memory and moral sense thing.
My old friend and radio colleague Ed Morrisey is one of more than a few Republicans who, disgusted by (obviously) the riots, but moreso by the usurpation of the state control of elections and Electors that happened in Congress last week (the real “coup attempt”, and one of the most self-destructive power grabs in my memory), is leaving the GOP.
Read the whole thing at your leisure. Here’s the conclusion
The caveat of “I don’t support violence in any way” is meaningless — a dodge around the betrayal of the principles on which this party stood at one time. This is nothing more than an endorsement of brute-force majoritarianism at best, and at worst an explicit endorsement of mob rule. In fact, it seems like a celebration of mob rule, one cheered on by Donald Trump’s closest formal adviser in the White House.
Before this, questions had already arisen as to how republicanism could coexist with populism. This goes waaay beyond that question. The disgrace in Congress, even apart from the mobs, severed the connection between Republicans and republicanism in any meaningful American sense. They aren’t republicans now, but instead a radical form of small-D democrats whose only aim is gin up outrage in sufficient quantities to “own the libs.” That’s not just on Donald Trump; it’s now on the entire party and its leadership.
That’s their choice; my choice is very clear. I don’t choose to participate in such a nihilistic political party. I’ll stand on my own as an independent, ready to vote for responsible conservatives but under no obligation to vote for or support anyone else. Until the GOP comes to its senses and returns to true republican and federal principles, I will not be back.
Speaking for myself? I’m not going to pretend that my party affiliation matters for much of anything to anyone. I stopped donating money to non-conservative candidates years ago, after the party’s establishment slandered the Tea Party away from its place at the table. I stopped being an activist two years ago – not “over Trump” per se (again, I’m not of the opinion that my choices of affiliations, or activism, matter in the great scheme of things all that much).
For what it’s worth? I intend to fight to re-save the soul of the GOP. There is a legacy worth saving, and passing on to people who haven’t seen much evidence of it in the past decade.
But it ain’t gonna be easy.
On the one hand, Democrats have (aside from any contrariness Joe Manchin may express) complete control of Federal government for the next couple of years.
What does this mean for law-abiding gun owners?
Well, they are certainly floating the trial balloons already. And Biden (and, perhaps more importantly, Harris) were pretty clear during the campaign: they want to ban “assault weapon”, clap arbitrary limits on magazine sizes, and make it possible to register guns and allow pretty much anyone with a personal beef to get your guns confiscated.
It’s in their DNA, of course. But I suspect there’s going to be a certain urgency about it.
For one thing, even before 2020 there was a solid case to be made that gun culture” is winning the culture war.
And while the mainstream media will never dig into it, there’s a solid case to be made that gun ownership and the culture that goes with it broke even farther out of its traditional white/male/30-60/rural niche and went even more widespread in society.
“First-time gun buyers favor Biden over Trump,” the Dallas Morning News reported of pre-election Texas survey results. “In fact, 51% of first-time purchasers surveyed favored Biden, while 43% favored Trump.”
As you might expect, this complicates matters for Democrats who have long used gun restrictions as an easy way to bash political enemies while doing minimal harm to their own constituents. With gun ownership becoming a nonpartisan taste, restrictive laws threaten to inconvenience and anger supporters as much as opponents.
Sure enough, “Americans’ appetite for gun control is the lowest it has been since 2016,” according to Gallup. And while a large majority of Democrats still favor tighter restrictions, support has declined even in that group by five points. New gun owners, along with long-time shooters, are likely to respond to stricter gun laws with prickly defiance.
And this bit here – which is something I’ve been hoping would evolve for a loooong time:
“Previous studies have proposed two sides of gun culture: one focused on recreational use and a second on self-defense. But the new BU study identifies a third mentality, made up of people who view the defense of the Second Amendment as necessary to freedom in the United States,” Boston University (BU) announced last summer. “This so-called ‘gun culture 3.0’ has increased the most in states that have strengthened their gun laws to the greatest degree, suggesting it may be triggered by perceived threats on individual liberty by the government.”
So my thesis – call it aspirational, if you want, because you’re not wrong – is that the Progs who now control the wheels and levers of federal government need to make their move now, because they may not get another chance.
And given that depending on Joe Manchin’s sympathies (and perhaps a few other relatively moderate Dems in the Senate), the difference between a bill being “Law” and “Oppo research ready for the 2022 campaign to extinct every non-metro anti-gun candidate between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre” might be one vote? That might just moderate the push.
I’m hoping not, of course – I want the progs to put their cards on the table, and have it blow up in their faces in two years.
Here’s Minnesota governor, transcribed from a “virtual fundraiser“:
“ They are using this as a way to try to divide us along cultural lines, along ethnic lines“
Clearly the DFL has a problem in greater Minnesota; look at the results of the last three or four elections. The DFL is losing, not gaining, traction among those whom Governor Klink refers to as “rocks and cows“
Let’s translate this.
In 2018 Governor Klink threw “Greater Minnesota” under the bus and french-kissed the Metro Progressives to get into power.
In 2020, the DFL is all but extinct outside the Metro – and his hamfisted, incomptetent Covid quarantine has disproportionally affected Greater MN. Klink has to try to make inroads in what could be a pretty monolithic GOP vote outside the Twin Cities, because the Metro vote alone may not be enough.
Minnesota legislature passes bill to help victims of state government, unless someone else does.
That’s not how they worded it, of course. The state legislature adopted a bill to give aid to small businesses closed by Governor Walz and to extend unemployment benefits for workers laid off by Governor Walz, but the aid is conditional. If the federal government adopts an aid package, then we use the federal money and the state does nothing. So it’s conditional virtue signaling, based on gaslighting the public that the Covid pandemic is a force of nature, not a product of arbitrary and destructive rule-by-executive-order.
I award Republicans one point for at least voicing the objection that Walz is the problem, not Covid. But I penalize them 10 points for going along with business as usual. Acquiescence is approval. Let the Democrats try to pass laws without a single Republican vote, until Walz relinquishes power to the Legislature, where it belongs. Otherwise, what do we need Republicans for? Just let Walz run everything forever and save the per diems.
In a state as Great-Sorted as Minnesota is, voters who are swingable are going to need a reason to choose GOP in 2022.
The Senate GOP has given them some little reasons. They need big ones. Stat.
Make this your mission. Whatever it takes.
Please see to it that Tide Pod Evita has a role to fit her, er, capabilities at least a year before midterms.
Thanks in advance.
The election’s over.
Maybe Biden takes office in seven weeks. Maybe one of Trump’s legal challeges gets traction.
For purposes of this post, I don’t know and don’t care.
Because the 2022 and 2024 campaigns have already begun.
The good news: without Trump, the Democrats are going to have to find someone to unify around. And it ain’t gonna be easy.
From New Republic – now, they have to try to focus on their own problems:
The coming weeks may see the reemergence in backrooms and boardrooms of the tensions that loomed over the 2020 Democratic primaries. Let us review the three power centers in the party as they existed then:
The new economy. Two titans of the finance world (Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer) sought to win the Democratic nomination by funding their own and various down-ballot candidacies. (Both would eventually back Biden.) There was also one impecunious primary candidate who had some original ideas about the tech world: Andrew Yang. The new economy provides wealth for so few people that it can never command the party’s rank and file. But it exercises a dizzying gravitational pull on its leaders.
Socialism. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were its candidates, the former in a doctrinal way (unions, benefits, income redistribution), the latter in a way adapted to strike more precisely at modern power relations (financial regulation, economic rights), which she denied was any form of socialism at all. Each was a more dire threat to the interests of people like Bloomberg and Steyer than anything the tax-cutting, deregulatory Republicans might produce. This is the great drama of the Democratic Party: They are the party of the 1 percent. They are also the party of expropriating the 1 percent.This is the great drama of the Democratic Party: They are the party of the 1 percent. They are also the party of expropriating the 1 percent.
Civil rights. The party’s glue is civil rights, broadly understood. Civil rights long meant looking out for the practical and principled interests of Black people—naturally a commitment on which cooperation with socialists is possible. But over the decades, civil rights has also become a regulatory and judicial system for advancing the interests of other groups, including immigrants (elite and mass), women executives, two-income gay couples, and lawyers—commitments more consistent with those of the Democrats’ plutocratic wing. The role of civil rights as reconciler-of-contradictions can be compared to that of anti-Communism in the tripartite Reagan coalition of the 1980s, which appealed in one way to Christians who thought the country ought to be more fraternal and in another to businessmen who thought it ought to be more rapacious.
Without a boogieman, can they boogie?
That’s the good news.
Now, the bad news: without Trump, the Republicans are going to have to find someone to unify around. It that ain’t gonna be easy.
The Trump “movement” is a lot like Ron Paul’s crowd, eight and 12 years ago – they pretty much came for a single personality, in whom a bunch of hot button issues coalesced; immigration, economic decay, identity politics. Like the Ron Paul crowd, they could easily disappear from the GOP for another generation.
Then there’s the remaining Tea Party, Reagan and even Chamber of Commerce Republicans – none of whom are big enough to put someone in the White House, all of whom are big enough to deny a nomination or scupper an election if they stay home.
The GOP needs a New Gingrich to articulate a vision that brings that throng together in time for midterms, when the reaction to the inevitable “progressive” overreach peaks.
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