Who’s “Pro” and Who’s “Con’ About “Don’t Look Up”?

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I can’t say how telling it is. But there’s a sociologically and culturally interesting schism currently on display over the Netflix movie, “Don’t Look Up.” Maybe you’ve seen it. Maybe you thought it was hilarious. Or important. Or heavy-handed. Or so unspeakably dull you turned it off 10 minutes after Leonardo Di Caprio and Jennifer Lawrence discover a Mt. Everest-size comet heading straight for Earth.

Movies, like music and fashion and every other damn thing you can think of comes with a lot of subjectivity. “Consider the source” is usually the best you can say about someone calling “Transformers 4” “really cool” and “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “unbelievably dull, except for the monkeys at the beginning.”

“Don’t Look Up”, is a star-packed satire of modern America’s utter inability to take anything seriously. Not even to the point of uniting long enough to deflect our own doom. Released Christmas Eve, it has not just dropped a cleaver between the usual tribes. It has also divided a majority of critics from a generally pretty bright chunk of the audience.

Because it is ambitious, and energetic and full of ideas and more than a little angry, it is also illuminating the short-comings of another sub-set of modern America.

The film is the latest from Adam McKay, a guy with a very long list of producing and directing credits, including “Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby”, HBO’s “Succession”, “The Big Short”, “Vice” (the Dick Cheney story) and the two “Anchorman” movies. McKay is as Ron Burgundy would say, “kind of a big deal.”

So big that Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Mark Rylance, Ariana Grande, Timothee Chalamet, Tyler Perry and Meryl Streep, (as the Trumpier-than-Trump POTUS) and a dozen others signed on at fees significantly below their starring rates.

With the mere mention of that list of names, the MAGA crowd is already on its hind legs howling about “liberal Hollywood elites”.

Hence you get this from The National Review: “Don’t Look Up is Netflix’s evasive, misstated excuse for political satire that fails very badly because writer-director Adam McKay doesn’t grasp his own political prejudices. Unlike Jude, McKay has no real sense of humor, just sophomoric ridicule. He brazenly broadcasts the entitled sense of obnoxiousness encouraged in Hollywood or Broadway environs, where liberalism has turned into progressivism. And as essayist David Horowitz observed, “inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” [The guy’s quoting David Horowitz with a straight face. Jeeezus.]

And then there’s the far-from-Hollywood-and-only-dreaming-I-was-elites, like me, who find it hilarious. And not just the Streep White House. Where characters can’t focus on doomsday because of bad polling over (and looming mid-terms) over a lunk-headed Supreme Court candidate revealed as a one-time porn actor (with whom POTUS once canoodled). That’s funny. But better, richer and even more relevant is the dead-on, can’t be over-stated satire of a culture so addled by entertaining itself it has lost the ability to find seriousness in anything that doesn’t deliver celebrity-scented sex appeal, charm and, you know, constant distraction from “all that ugly stuff out there.”

Beyond the salaried critics who have given it a low 55% score on Rotten Tomatoes, most complaining about “lack of focus”, “heavy-handedness”, “too long” and how it is “aggressively mean-spirited and smug”, there’s the social media backlash, (ironically a constant target of the movie.)

Here’s a hot take from a local PR guy: “Just watched the worst movie we have seen in five years. Make it 10. It’s on Netflix and is called ‘Don’t Look Up’. Everyone in its all-star cast should be embarrassed. Storyline, acting, concept all awful. Total waste of time!”

And these responses from his “friends.”

“It was a weird one… that presidential role played by Streep turned me off and tuned me out. I can’t believe an HOFer like her signed off on this.” [Who remembers The Orange God King calling Streep “overrated”?]

“Yep, it’s a total satire & sad whim of Hollywood’s elite directed at a young audience. Several of my educated & arts-cultured friends under 40 loved it.”

And this from someone who obviously had no trouble identifying with the film’s fattest targets, “What, you didn’t like a bunch of Hollywood snobs telling us how stupid we are?!?”

Now, as I say, people disagree about everything … all the time … (another point McKay plays with.) But the need to jump out and get on record … about a movie … is interesting and kinda goads me into the following conjecture.

Among all our tribes, there is the one I refer to as the Traditionalists. They’re a significant bunch.

In my experience over lo these many years this crowd works its way into respected institutions because they have some talent. But primarily, they clean up well, show up and do exactly the job they were hired to do. Soon upon arrival they burrow into the bureaucracy and usually flourish … because they, like their institution, they respect and never seriously question the status quo.

“Challenging” equals trouble.

Basic fact of life here: institutional movie critics are expected to be in step with the institution’s audience. Those who regularly wet their pants over obscure Bulgarian dramas are usually not hired to begin with, and certainly find themselves in a difficult place, newsroom-wise, if they can’t get on board with the latest “Spiderman Returns for the Fourteenth Time” re-boot.

Other Traditionalists include people who have respected the norms of American commerce, especially of the media-manipulation variety, where the status quo sells things to each other, again something McKay ridicules with exuberant relish. “Don’t Look Up” is an almost wall-to-wall mockery of The Great American Shill. The arena where people are products and ideas are interchangeable frostings.

My bet with “Don’t Look Up” — which I’m not saying competes with “Citizen Kane”, “The Seventh Seal” or “2001” in terms of art, (although there’s a heavy dose of “Dr. Strangelove” at play here) — is that it is one of those cultural artifacts that will grow in popular estimation as the months and years go by.

I.e. “cult status.” (We can sell that!)

‘Don’t Look Up” is the sort of thing Traditional minds may never accept as anything but “terrible”. But it I strongly suspect so many others appreciate it they’ll turn it into a cultural touchstone. A “classic.” Thereby, long after first blush, embarrassing those refusing to see the sad comedy of the world around them.

Yellowstone Offers a MAGA-era Rorschach Test

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Paramount Network’s television series Yellowstone is a huge hit, and I’ve been pondering why.  After all, raising cattle is not something that one would guess most contemporary Americans would likely find particularly riveting.

It strikes me that there are two very different ways to view Yellowstone.  To many like me, it’s consumed as a mafia story. Mafia families use extortion, violence, and other criminal methods to make money and preserve power and privilege, and that is precisely what Yellowstone’s Dutton family is all about, episode after episode.

There’s a lot to like about Yellowstone. It is entertaining, beautifully shot, and well-acted.  As with many a mafia story, the story about what will become of the family members pulling out all the stops to maintain their power and privilege has been worth watching.  Before watching it, I might not have believed that a Montana-based Sopranos yarn would work, but it does for me.

It’s far from perfect. The story line gets preposterous at times, the trash-talk scripting often feels particularly contrived, the level of violence displayed is gratuitous, and the simplistic characters seem mostly unwilling or unable to see gray areas in the situations they encounter.  Talented actresses like Kelly Reilly could have been even more interesting to watch with scripts that weren’t so simplistic and over-the-top.  

But beyond the familiar mafia formula, there is another very different way to view Yellowstone.  Many viewers see mega-rancher John Dutton and his loyal family as superheroes, not criminals.  They see an ultra-honorable family fighting for what they believe was once great about America – more hard work, more family loyalty, more agrarian lifestyles, less “politically correct” nonsense, and a might-is-right approach to ensure you always get your way. 

In this case, the superheroes’ superpowers involve guns-a-plenty, humiliating trash-talking, bullying of dissenters, corruption of state and local government, and an unflagging certainty that it’s their God-given right to control anything they damn well want, despite what “the others” – urbanites, environmentalists, the insufficiently macho, and Native Americans – do or say.

A lot of people seem to see Yellowstone this way.  Go to any rural or small town area, and you’re going to see folks wearing Yellowstone gear, just the way people wear Captain America, Superman, and Wonder Woman gear.  These folks not only want to watch the Duttons, they want to be them.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported that Yellowstone first became a hit in smaller, more rural markets, not on the coasts.

The show wrapped its fourth season Sunday night with an average 10.4 million total viewers on the Paramount Network, up from 4.5 million in season 1.  The unconventional path “Yellowstone” took to ratings dominance shows how audiences can accrue and change over a series’ lifespan and how regional differences still matter…

Lafayette, Ind., is a “Yellowstone” stronghold. The area around Purdue University had the highest proportion of viewers during season 1 of any small market outside Montana and Wyoming, the region where “Yellowstone” is set, according to Nielsen data on viewers ages 25 to 54.

Loyalists there include Jim Hedrick, 62, whose company Horizon Ag Consulting works with farmers across the Midwest. He says “Yellowstone” mines issues that matter in his circles, such as family cohesion and the development of rural areas.

When “Yellowstone” premiered in 2018, the show ranked fourth in the 25-to-54 age group in the least-populated TV markets, categorized by Nielsen as D markets. In the country’s most populous areas—dubbed A markets, which include New York and Los Angeles—“Yellowstone” didn’t crack the top 50.

Like other superhero tales, Yellowstone sometimes gets pretty unrealistic.  In the real world, no business, including ranching, is immune from criminal law enforcement, environmental protections, eminent domain rules, and political realities.  Deep red rural states trend in those directions, but they’re not nearly as extreme as the Dutton-dominated Montana.

As such, the Yellowstone fantasy offers an escape for viewers who dream of a world where people who look and act like them find ways to control everything. That seems like the “secret sauce” that makes Yellowstone so delicious for so many.

Why are the Duttons viewed by so many as heroes rather than criminals?  For many viewers, the Dutton’s brutal crimes are forgiven – lustily cheered on, even – because of the enemies involved.  The Duttons hate the same people that Trumpists hate — fakey latte-sipping urban dwellers, clueless environmentalist brats, rule-bound government dweebs, hopelessly soft beta male, snowflake cucks, and coddled minorities.

And who doesn’t want to see someone stick it to those guys?

Yellowstone is a kind of Rorschach test that is being seen different ways depending on the individual viewer’s biases and values.  How you interpret it reveals personality characteristics, such as an authoritarian instinct and willingness to rationalize violence and other crimes. 

I have no proof of this, but it seems a safe bet that there is a strong correlation between Trump fans and people who view the corrupt, murderous Duttons as righteous superheros rather than a privileged, power-obsessed crime family.

(By the way, the other way that Yellowstone is fantasy is that the actors like Kevin Costner and Kelly Reilly who are playing right wingers’ heroes are not conservative in their real lives. After campaigning for Reagan earlier in his life, Costner has campaigned for Barack Obama and the Biden Administration’s Pete Buttigieg. And the English actress Reilly is reportedly a Democrat.)

Because Yellowstone has proven so overwhelmingly popular, we surely will see more programming like it. We can expect more “us against them” narratives giving comfort and encouragement to viewers whose fondest wish is to own the libs without pesky laws in the way. 

If I were a right-wing billionaire intent on fanning the culture war flames as a means to maintain and grow my financial power and privilege, I’d bankroll more Yellowstone-like shows to provide entertaining propaganda tools to compliment the news-like propaganda tools that those billionaires already control to great effect.

Everyone likes to fantasize about being a superhero, and shows like Yellowstone offers heroic role models and road maps for white people bending and breaking laws to maintain their privilege in a rapidly changing world. 

And you know what? If the acting, story, scenery, and production levels are as good as they are in Yellowstone, the chances are that plenty of liberals like me will probably watch the coming Yellowstone clones, though through a very different lens.

Kim Potter is Unequivocally Guilty of Failing to be a Professional

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Kim Potter on Daunte Wright death: 'I'm sorry it happened' | WKBN.com

The jury is still out as I write this Tuesday morning. And I concede I’ve never had high expectations for a conviction in the Kim Potter trial. But that said, I was startled and relieved that not even one juror in the Derek Chauvin case clung to the “my cops for good or bad” line of thinking.

First degree manslaughter was always going to be a stretch. Potter would have to be a persistent, unbridled, nearly sociopathic menace to public safety (a la Chauvin) for a jury to go that far. But second degree should be a slam dunk.

Deep in ForWhatIt’sWorth land, my view of Potter’s guilt, her culpability, is built around her failure to be the experienced cop, the Alpha Dog, of the incident that ended with Daunte Wright’s death.

In her testimony she admitted that the trainee cop riding with her that day instigated the stop. Her failure, as a 26-year veteran, was not saying, “Uh, no. We’re not going to bother with expired tabs and an air freshner hanging off his mirror.” Moreover, as a veteran training a newby, she should have admonished the rookie that just because he spotted a young black kid driving a late model car was not a satisfactory reason to rolling in closer and look for some kind — any kind — of “stop-worthy” (revenue-enhancing) violation.

But rather than exert veteran, professional influence, Potter allowed the stop to go forward, then got so swept up in the bully boy(s) confrontation she panicked — panicked — mistook a yellow Taser for a black gun … and killed the kid.

A good number of people were moved by her emotional, sobbing testimony last week. Maybe it was real. Or maybe every reckless Minneapolis cop’s best friend, attorney Earl Gray, advised her that a good tissue-grabbing crying jag might work as well for her as it did for Kyle Rittenhouse over in Wisconsin.

(And on the subject of Mr. Gray, has anyone ever seen the precise numbers of the payouts to him for his defense in lo so many panicked cop cases?)

And speaking of theater, I loved Officer Potter’s costuming. Not a uniform. (She’s no longer on any force.) Or anything too, you know, “authoritarian.” But instead, a soft, cream-white embroidered Christmas-y blouse. By which, with tears and tissue, she was transformed from an out-of-control, gun-wielding assailant into everyone’s favorite middle-aged Minnesota mom.

There are reasons I’d never make the jury on a case like this.

If it were in my power to re-write sentencing guidelines, I couldn’t care less if Potter ever does a day in jail. Unlike Chauvin, a career thug with more than a dozen complaints for unnecessary violence against him, not to mention that $460,000 tax fraud he and the Mrs. were running when he killed George Floyd over a maybe fake $20 bill, Potter presents no on-going threat to the (mainly black) citizens of the Twin Cities.

But she is indisputably guilty, of failing to maintain command over subordinates and her own professional composure. Is it really asking too much that a court and a jury assert, with a verdict, that cops have a legal responsibility to control their biases and emotions?

California Goes Full Logan Roy on Texas and the Supreme Court

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For the First Time on 'Succession,' Logan Roy Might Lose - The Ringer

In Logan Roy, the sociopathic Rupert Murdoch-like patriarch of the”Succession” clan, we truly have a philosopher for our gamed-out, laws-are-for-chumps, post (and maybe pre-) Trump era. Old man Roy sees 21st century America as it is.

    In last week’s penultimate episode (of the best series on TV) the elder Roy explained the harsh reality of life to his hapless son Kendall, a classic soft millennial who thought doing the right thing was everything he needed to do to win.

    Said the billionaire baron to his benighted off-spring, “Life’s not knights on horseback. It’s a number on a piece of paper. It’s a fight for a knife in the mud.”

    There are so many contemporary scenarios that fit that paradigm it’s hard to know where to begin. But there’s always this: the constant complaint that liberals or anyone still clutching some level of respect for both the letter and spirit of the law are forever playing a losing game against conservative adversaries gleefully and shamelessly flaunting the “norms” of good faith, common civility and legislated standards.

    For many it gets translated to “liberals gotta learn to play dirty.”

    While that might be a tough sell for the progressive-liberal base, i.e. better than average educated civic-minded types who prefer a rule-based society to whoever bellows the loudest and waves the most guns. A better suggestion would be to, “play more offense against the bastards and be more cunning.”

    Like the move a couple days ago by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his think tank to replicate Texas’ vigilante bounty attack on abortion rights, only with guns, gun merchants and gun manufacturers as the victims, not pregnant women.

    As usual, the proposal, which has a ways to go before becoming law, was quickly submerged beneath the next day’s headlines.

    A massive tornado in Kentucky (with arch Libertarian Rand Paul pleading for a federal/socialist rescue he blathered against when hurricanes hit Texas, Florida and the eastern seaboard), news that a Trump moron actually put together a goddam PowerPoint for overthrowing the government and today, text messages from FoxNews hosts pleading with … Mark Meadows? … to get Trump to stop the January 6 riot because it reflected bad on all of “us.”

    I’m trying to imagine Walter Cronkite, so confident in his control over Lyndon Johnson, that he puts in a call to the White House to stop the Vietnam War.

    Anyway … this move by Newsom/California is the kind of “in-your-face dickwad” aggression and cunning that liberals need.

    The basic idea is to craft a law against guns as precisely — and as cynically, some might say — as Texas has contrived its vigilante abortion law. (A law whereby any zealot gets a $10,000 check from Texas for suing anyone involved in an abortion, from doctors and nurses to Uber drivers.)

    Done right, and quickly, California could — at the least — force the Supreme Court into conceding its naked partisanship. To separate Califoernia from Texas, Roberts’ court would have to apply an even finer chef’s knife to the intent of the Constitution than they already have. Which is a lotr, considering the hearing they’re giving a preposterous argument for a case and a cause never supported by more than 15% of the public.

    Not that contravening established law and the will of the majority means all that much to blindered zealots like Amy Coney Barrett, Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas and the rest of The Handmaid’s Tale crew clogging The Highest Court of the Land.

    Said Newsom in a statement last Saturday, “If states can now shield their laws from review by the federal courts that compare assault weapons to Swiss Army knives, then California will use that authority to protect people’s lives, where Texas used it to put women in harm’s way.” Just like Texas, Californians could win up to $10,000 per gun violation plus other costs and attorneys fees against “anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon” in California.

    “If the most efficient way to keep these devastating weapons off our streets is to add the threat of private lawsuits, we should do just that,” Newsom said.

    Amen, brother.

    With the help of Mitch McConnell, Senate Republicans, Trump and The Federalist Society, John Roberts’ court is one titanic decision — repealing Roe v. Wade — away from rendering itself illegitimate in the eyes of the 60-70% of the country that has been opposed to repealing abortion rights for the past 50 years.

    Again, this is in contrast to polling that regularly shows upwards of 80% of Americans in favor of some kind of enhanced regulation of guns.

    The insider’s prediction is that in the end (next spring) the court’s conservatives will go full-Scalia and convolute a decision into the most pretentious, tortured pretzel logic imaginable, in order to argue they’re really just, you know, protecting “states’ rights.”

    Recognizing the mud and understanding the potential of the knife, California could force Barrett, boozy frat boy Kavanaugh and the rest to shame and discredit themselves in a way that offers their credibility no possibility of historical restoration.

    My read is that only Roberts himself is concerned enough about history’s verdict on his court’s reputation to argue against such bald-faced partisanship. Which means he may be the only one of bunch that sees the knife in California’s hands as a real threat.

    But watch the hysteria build against it.

    Like this today from the (wholly corrupt and literally bankrupt) NRA:

    “Gov. Newsom misunderstands the actions of the Supreme Court – and the limits of his war on lawful gun ownership. His promise to run roughshod over the Second Amendment is little more than political theater. He and fellow Democrats should proceed at their own peril: the American people will not tolerate another taxpayer-funded assault on constitutional freedom.”

    Heh, I like the sweat.

    Fauci, Mengele and Plastic

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    Yeah … a new picture.

    I don’t know about you, but I wake up every morning — grab a cup of coffee, walk the dog — and register amazement at just how many things I could rant about, how many things are so deeply crazy I could spend all day dabbing at the foam around the corners of my mouth and bemoaning the barely Cro-Magnon state of some of the world.

    I mean, here’s a quick re-hash of the past month:

    A Republican Congressman shunned by his own family for being a vile idiot posts an anime of himself stabbing a congressional colleague in the neck.

    A Republican congresswoman is caught — twice — telling (and gilding) a likely entirely bogus story of her confronting a congressional colleague as “a terrorist sympathizer.”

    A former “60 Minutes” correspondent, long since dismissed for fabricating a story about the Benghazi incident pops up on FoxNews — where she is currently employed — comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to Joseph Mengele.

    And here in Minnesota, St. Paul cops, allegedly hired to protect the public, are playing the Joe Rogan/Tucker Carlson “personal choice” card in the context of refusing to vaccinate themselves — to avoid spreading a contagious, deadly disease to that same public, i.e. the people who employ them and pay their salaries.

    I mean … it just goes on and on … . Where do you start, if you choose to start at all? Sadly, like many people I talk to these days, the post-Trump moment, this interregnum we’re in, isn’t providing the necessary respite from the exhaustion of the Orange God King’s constant vulgar grifting. People want to forget about all the stupidity, racism, fraud and shame and “get back to normal.” Except that “normal”, when Christmas shopping, football and “The Bachelorette” could fully consume our attention, keeps back-drifting off toward the horizon.

    Which explains why I just want to say something about … plastic.

    Yesterday, there was this story in The Washington Post, reporting on a long-in-development congressional survey of plastic consumption/production.

    “The United States contributes more to this deluge than any other nation, according to the analysis, generating about 287 pounds of plastics per person. Overall, the United States produced 42 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2016 — almost twice as much as China, and more than the entire European Union combined.”

    TWICE AS MUCH AS … CHINA.

    Since I became deeply obsessed with plastic a couple years ago, and I began regularly filling a (plastic) bag with all the plastic wrappings we accumulate every day, I haven’t stopped being amazed at the beach ball-sized glob of plastic waste the two of us here at La Casa Lambert accumulate in a given week.

    And worse, I’ve become convinced that our recycling efforts are largely illusory. (“Plastics accounted for 12 percent of the 292 million tons of municipal solid waste generated in the U.S. in 2018, totaling some 35.7 million tons. However, the volume of plastic waste recycled in the U.S. that year was 3.1 million tons, giving a recycling rate of just 8.7 percent. Nov 22, 2021.”)

    Probably once a week I stroll through Costco — one of the more enlightened major retailers — and stare at water, bottled in plastic, swaddled by the case in another layer of plastic and then wrapped together on shipping pallets in yet another layer of plastic.

    Water.

    Here’s a petition you can sign to tell Costco they can do a lot better than they’re doing in terms of wrapping everything they sell — from water to bananas to socket wrenches — in plastic. (Usually I doubt any big company will give this a second thought. But Costco has demonstrated a heightened interest in civic-minded retailing in the past.)

    Among the crazy, socialist ideas for weaning ourselves off plastic — 287 pounds per American, per year! — is … buying less. How about fixing or restoring what you already have? (It’s insanity, I know.) Screw keeping up with the fashion of the minute. Use what you’ve already got. Instead of complaining about how Biden has clogged up the ports so bad you can’t get all that plastic/plastic-wrapped Chinese Christmas crap out off ships floating outside LA and Long Beach.

    Anyway, before I take a deep breath and plunge back in to the flaming sewer hole of conservative America, where a conscientious scientist is compared to a Nazi mass murderer because … he wants to stop a pandemic that has already killed 750,000 Americans … I had to cough up the plastic twine ball logged in my throat.

    Fear of Crime Always Sells

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    [UPDATED] I take very little pleasure in correctly predicting the ignominious defeat of Minneapolis’ “police reform” amendment. A couple weeks ago, when I wrote, “Bold Prediction: Police Reform (i.e. “Question Two”) Will Lose by at Least 10%” all the signs pointed to the same conclusion. Since no one knew — really — what came next after “reforming” the cops, the only safe choice was sticking with what we’ve got.

    Were I a Minneapolis resident I would have voted in favor of “Question Two”. But that decision would be based on:

    1: Having had (way more than) enough of a clearly diseased cop culture. (And judging by the number of Minneapolis cops willing to slap on an ugly t-shirt and howl approval for Donald Trump, the case is closed on whether “diseased” is fair judgment.)

    Trump hates us': President's Minneapolis visit gets no welcome from Minnesota Somalis | MPR News

    2: A belief that the city’s generally well-educated activist community would have had impact on the creation and function of … what would come next.

    And 3: I’m a white guy in the “safe” quadrant of town. Stories of car jackings and catalytic converter thefts are frequent, but I give next to no thought of getting caught in gang-banger crossfire.

    I haven’t yet seen a precinct-by-precinct break down of the vote, but my guess is that Question Two’s 57%-43% thrashing was heavily influenced by northside residents saying, “Hell no.”

    [UPDATE: Well, well, well. It seems the area of Minneapolis most heavily opposed to Question Two was my neighboring hood. Comfortably middle to upper class, predominantly white, liberal, safe-as-it-gets southwest Minneapolis. This opens another interesting line for ranting … but not right now.]

    That said, Democrats and progressives justifiably horrified by what (again) is fair to describe as constant cop thuggery/racism/sexism/neanderthalism, are going to have to take a painful reality check before the next election.

    Department of Justice opens investigation into Minneapolis Police Department | News | insightnews.com

    Fear of crime — heavily and cynically hyped by conservative media and candidates — is Issue #1 for the forseeable future. And it’s the easiest sell imaginable.

    The progressive version of law and order doesn’t play on a bumper sticker.

    Even comfy, otherwise liberal-minded whites, people who accept that the cop culture is such an entrenched tumor, capable of aggravating (if not generating) so much fear and hysteria through “blue flu” work slowdowns and the shivving of any politician who crosses their union, are here to stay. The slightest attempt to reform or “correct” (as Delbert Grady says to Jack Torrance in “The Shining”) will set off a new, more intense round of fear-stoking by the usual suspects.

    Perhaps someone can offer a scenario where the newly powered-up Mayor’s office can end an era of cop impunity (Derek Chauvin and Mohamed Noor withstanding) and restock the department with ethical, composed professionals instead of ex-telemarketers and mall cops waving their fresh-issued police revolvers in the face every black guy with a broken tail light.

    But someone else is going to have spin up that scenario, because I sure as hell can’t.

    Minnesota Gubernatorial Candidate Proposes Gift Cards for Families Who Make Kids “Herd Immunity Enhancers”

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    Saint Paul, Minnesota — Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen today called on the Minnesota Legislature to give $2,000 gift cards to eligible Minnesotans who “responsibly refuse” COVID-19 vaccinations for their children.  Jensen, a medical doctor and former state senator, says his proposal is the best way to help families without resorting to “sick Nazi-like forced medical experimentation of the Walz regime.”

    “We’re putting out a call for patriotic families who agree to keep their children free of tracker chips and DNA mutilation, and instead serve as beautiful little herd immunity enhancers,” said Jensen surrounded by unmasked young children at a news conference held in conjunction with a protest of a community vaccination event. “As a doctor, I know we must end the so-called virus the way we did before humans went soft, by fearlessly facing it maskless and trusting in God and his gift of natural herd immunity.”

    The Jensen proposal comes in the wake of a recent announcement by Governor Tim Walz that his administration will provide $200 gift cards to Minnesota families who agree to vaccinate their 12- to 17-year old children.  The families of vaccinated children will also be entered into a lottery for $100,000 in tuition for a Minnesota public college of their choice.

    Jensen, who is seeking the Republican endorsement for governor in party caucuses that are expected to be heavily populated by vocal Trump loyalists and vaccine opponents, announced that Minnesotans who don’t get vaccinated will get $2,000 gift cards to TrumpStore, the official retail arm of the Trump Organization. 

    They also will be entered into a lottery for a scholarship to Trump University. Upon questioning, Jensen clarified that the scholarships will be revert to the Trump Organization in the event that the university is unable to serve the children.

    In what Jensen called a prudent move to conserve tax dollars, he also indicated that the offer would not be available to citizens in Hennepin, Ramsey, St. Louis, and Cook counties.

    On his website, Former President Trump praised Jensen and his proposal as “a beautiful doctor who knows a great store and university when he sees it and is going to be a great pro-Trump governor of the corrupt election-stealing fake state of Minnesota.”

    Note:  This post is satire, the use of humor and exaggeration to make a point. Jensen did not make this proposal. Only the part about Walz and his proposal is true.

    Truth: The non-partisan fact-checking organization Politifact cited Jensen as a major source of its 2020 “Lie of the Year 2020 about coronavirus downplaying and denial. Politifact noted Jensen’s appearances on Fox News claimed that overflowing hospitals were committing Medicare fraud by overcounting COVID-19 cases. Then-President Donald Trump repeated the unsubstantiated claims as he minimized the seriousness of the COVID pandemic while other wealthy countries around the world were implementing effective public health protections.

    Experts     say the number of COVID deaths are likely under-counted, not over-counted, due to false negatives on tests and a lack of testing.

    In May 2021, Jensen also joined U.S. Capitol insurrectionist Simone Gold and others in suing the federal government to prevent children from receiving COVID-19 vaccines. The lawsuit claims that COVID-19 poses “zero risk” to children. The suit indicates that Jensen believes “it would be reckless to subject anyone in that age group to the experimental COVID-19 vaccine” and that he believes recommending that children get vaccinated “would violate his oath as a doctor and place him in an untenable position.”

    Data from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that more than 6 million children have tested positive for Covid since the beginning of the pandemic.  While children are less likely to get hospitalized and die than adults, it does happen.  Children also help spread the virus to more vulnerable people.

    According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) , 77.9% of Minnesota adults (18+) have been vaccinated.

    How About We Start with “What in Hell was Boogie Smith?”

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    Unless Winston “Boogie” Smith was the second coming of Pablo Escobar the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the U.S. Marshalls and several other offices have some serious ‘splainin’ to do. And by all indications they are yet again taking the attitude that they don’t have to explain anything to anyone, even when their latest shoot-out set off a riot that pretty well drove the last nail into the life of an entire neighborhood.

    You can tell by the tone and placement of a couple recent Strib stories that the paper isn’t buying much of what the BCA, et al are trying to sell.

    In her October 15 story Strib reporter Maya Rao makes the following points:

    1: ” … officers at the scene were never interviewed as part of the state’s investigation.”

    2: ” … officers submitted only written statements giving their accounts of the June 3 shooting.”

    3: “Officers were not wearing body cameras”

    4: ” … the BCA did not interview the officers.”

    5: “Why was a federal task force involved in pursuing Smith on a state-level case?”

    6: “Why did officers shoot at him 14 times?”

    7: “Smith had only one weapons case … tied to his warrant, which originated in 2019 when a friend he was going to see tipped off police that he had a gun. Officers found no gun on him [when he was killed], but searched the car that he arrived in and found a firearm under the seat. Smith was prohibited from carrying a gun as a felon. He had an aggravated robbery conviction stemming from a dispute with his ex-girlfriend.”

    8: “One of the family’s biggest questions is why officers waited to apprehend Smith.”

    9: ” … officers watched while Smith and a woman had a lunch date on the rooftop of Stella’s Fish Cafe, and continued monitoring him as the pair walked across Lake Street and into an elevator to the top floor. The officers didn’t confront him until the couple were already in a car, boxing him in with their own vehicles and announcing he was under arrest.”

    And then in a follow up story this past Wednesday, Rao and two other reporters added …

    10: “After they had a lunch date at Stella’s Fish Cafe, [Smith and his date] returned to his vehicle in the Uptown parking ramp across the street when ‘all of a sudden like 50 police cars’ came up to them and officers ordered them to put their hands up.”

    11: “There were so many officers, and helicopters whirring overheard, that Askar [the girlfriend] wondered, ‘What the hell did he do wrong’?”

    12: “An unnamed Ramsey County sheriff’s deputy said in a written statement four days after the shooting that he ‘developed information’ that Smith was at Stella’s that afternoon and asked members of the fugitive task force to come to Uptown to assist him with the case. The deputy’s statement indicated that at least nine task force members confronted Smith in the parking ramp.”

    That’s a quick dozen lines of questioning for whenever the BCA or whoever decides the public deserves an full explanation for what otherwise looks and sounds like yet another jacked-up cowboy operation.

    You don’t have to be a highly-trained law enforcement professional to wonder what in the hell all this action was really about? A missed court appearance for one gun charge? Nine armed and ready-for-combat personnel and a chopper? Give me a break.

    Unless Boogie Smith — who we can agree was probably no altar boy — is revealed to be a central cog in a violent national meth manufacturing operation, or a wanted hit man for MS-13 with a high likelihood of blowing out of town on a second’s notice, the size of the “apprehension”, the confrontation in a high-traffic shopping/dining district with no consideration whatsoever of providing the public with 21st century transparency makes no sense at all.

    Post- Boogie Smith, the Uptown business district is pretty much a zombie zone. The enraged rioting that ensued his killing looks to have put a shuddering stop to any recovery from … the rioting after Minneapolis cops killed George Floyd over a fake $20 bill.

    What, I ask, might have been the reaction if the cops involved in the Smith operation had body cams running — that proved Smith fired at them first — and then quickly followed up with a definitive accounting of his very serious, very threatening-to-public-safety crimes? How much of Uptown would have been wrecked again?

    This is 2021, not 1985. The public has a justifiable expectation that any police encounter, especially one where cops are anticipating violence, is recorded. Any cop, cop supervisor or politician overseeing cop behavior has to be smart enough to understand public expectations, particularly in yet another killing of yet another black guy.

    To date, none of that crowd seems to comprehend the era they’re living in.

    Bold Prediction: Police Reform (i.e. “Question Two”) Will Lose by at Least 10%

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    Despite what you read here, I am not auditioning to be some kind of trans Debbie Downer. Good things, improvements even, are happening … somewhere. But just not now in Minneapolis if we’re talking police reform.

    My joyless prediction for the upcoming vote on fixing The Problem with Minneapolis Cops is that Question Two will be defeated by at least 10%, essentially a wipe out. And that folks, will be the last time for a long time that voters will be able to do anything directly about, dare I say, one of the most notorious police departments in the USA.

    The reasons for this crushing defeat are painfully obvious.

    A: Based on my highly unscientific anecdotal research, way too few people understand what comes next if they in some way reduce the size and authority of the cops we have. (Since I live in Edina, so I should say “they have.”) People I hear and talk to seem to agree that the average Minneapolis cop is a poorly-vetted, poorly-trained “thumper”, a national embarrassment with a hair-trigger penchant for racially-based violence. But …

    Murder of George Floyd - Wikipedia

    B: … fear of street crime and personal assault is as high right now as I can remember it. Upscale residents of southwest Minneapolis (one of the safest neighborhoods in the country) can’t tell you how a “public safety” force would protect them from Hollywood-style gang banger shoot-outs in moving vehicles or crowded bars. And voters over on the north side don’t care if the average cop is a racist Trumper as long as they chase down the thugs turning grade school kids in to collateral damage.

    Union head draws ire after calling George Floyd a criminal - New York Daily News

    And C: The excruciatingly naive cry to “defund the police” is the most poisonous egg from a toxic goose any group has squeezed out since free love hippies raged about dismantling the military. Paranoid, status quo cop supporters couldn’t have invented a more potent slogan to prevent any kind of change in how Minneapolis goes about “protecting and serving.”

    Making matters worse — more Downer here — is that Minneapolis is a national test case. When, not if, this “reform movement” goes down in flames, it’ll chill similar campaigns across the country.

    That of course is the voter referendum variation on reform. City councils could, if they dared, initiate reforms. Somehow they could decertify police unions. It would not be easy, (what is?), but it would clear away the single most effective barrier to cop accountability.

    Minneapolis police union president Lt. Bob Kroll at the union's headquarters.

    Cops would howl and their fear-addled supporters would throw countless expensive law suits in the city’s face. But it has always seemed to me that selling “police accountability” and “transparency” is an easier argument than “replacing” the force with some nebulous “public safety” corps. The latter is a wishful(ly) concept which many residents think of as where sweet little Indivisible ladies and wispy-bearded grad students sit down for chai tea with the Crips and the Bloods.

    One short-term upside to the crushing defeat of Question Two is that by not being in effect next November it will tamp down “crime” (which always means black street crime and never big money white collar fraud) as a Republican vote-stoker in the 2022 election cycle.

    Question Two’s ignominious defeat won’t eliminate crime as the biggest issue, because “law and order!” is as evergreen a campaign rallying cry as you can get. But it would shave — says Mr. Downer — a few degrees off the fear fever, and maybe a few votes from anyone vowing more money and fewer restrictions on “our” valorous cops.

    We Have Every Reason To Expect a Lot More from the NFL

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    There’s at least one more level to the Jon Gruden disaster that NFL fans should consider about the league’s remarkable influence. Like many other enormous corporations the NFL, selling a slick, bristling mix of testosterone and patriotism, ducks away from anything with a whiff of political conflict.

    I concede, as others who know him personally have, that I’m stunned that a guy like Gruden who has been a high-profile media/cultural presence for over 20 years, regularly giving live interviews, chewing up air time as a TV analyst and obliging all the other requests for personal contact that go with being a football celebritry … could conceal his essential meat-headedness so long and so well. I suspect he had help. His is another example of how well powerful systems, in this case, the almighty NFL, can throw a PR cocoon around people and project to the public only the parts of its culture that serve its business interests … until they don’t.

    Las Vegas Raiders: Jon Gruden faked coronavirus to players, report

    Two Gruden compadres, ex-Gophers star and former NFL coach Tony Dungy and his ESPN partner Mike Tirico, both black, are in a bad spot for defending Gruden about his “michellin [sic] tires” description of another black guy’s lips. That coming the day before the New York Times dropped the bomb(s) about Gruden calling the NFL commissioner a “faggot”, ripping the league’s concussion protocols, (in other words, Gruden’s pro-concussion) and trading nudie pictures of cheerleaders. All of which is, y’know, really classy stuff.

    My suspicion is that while Dungy and Tirico and dozens if not hundreds of other NFL “leaders” may have been surprised by Gruden’s racist imagery, they aren’t as unfamiliar with his other boy’s club stupidity.

    So that’s Gruden. A reckless high-profile meathead, now out the $60 million remaining on his contract.

    But it’s the NFL itself that should be held to greater account and responsibility than it ever is. Given its footprint, we have good rights to expect a lot more from this monolith.

    The Gruden e-mails were leaked from a (way too) long-running investigation of the toxic (i.e. meathead) culture inside the team formerly known as the Washington Redskins. A company where we already know from law suits the team’s executives treated its cheerleaders like Vegas escorts and, yup, traded nudie pictures of them changing outfits.

    Redskins Cheerleaders In Town for Calendar Shoot • VRAC's Costa Rica Blog

    The trouble is that the NFL is not coming clean on that investigation. It is making no promises that it will reveal everything it has found out about the Redskins and others who had contact with the team. (“Confidentiality”, you know.) It is in effect protecting the team’s owner, a guy regularly reviled by sportswriters, players and fans as a (very wealthy) toxic idiot.

    To anyone interested in a deeper dive into NFL culture I strongly recommend, “Big Game” by New York Times Magazine writer Mark Leibovich for an inside-the-suites sense of who says what to who when it’s more or less just them — peer billionaires — talking. (To his enormous credit, Leibovich burned up all the access his name and the Times brand afforded him to tell a story the average sports writer only dares hint at.) The NFL owners club is a remarkable collection of avaricious gargoyles. One where guys like the Vikings’ Mark and Zygi Wilf and Arthur (Home Depot) Blank of the Atlanta Falcons come off as comparatively rational.

    But the level where this Gruden idiocy touches the country’s perilous moment is where the NFL — arguably one of the most popular and therefore influential organizations/corporations in the country — could and should use Gruden’s buffoonish racism and sexism to make unambiguous statements to its fans, which is to say just about everyone in the country.

    The NFL could and should be a leader among other giant corporations in taking stark stands against belligerent stupidity like racism (which it is sort of good at in a lipservice/signage kind of way, considering 70% of its players are black) and sexism (where it has a long ways to go, despite promoting Breast Cancer Awareness Month with pink shoes), but also right now … for … wait for it … COVID vaccinations.

    The league has recently been running in-game PSAs pushing cancer and mental health awareness screenings, etc. Players and coaches appear giving quick testimonials. That’s great.

    But what, I ask, would be the effect of a dozen or so top current and former stars, coaches and league executives stepping up to a camera and telling pro football’s millions (and millions) of fans to get vaccinated … for the sake of other people — like the season ticket holders sitting next to them — if not themselves? In order to put this grinding pandemic behind us once and for all?

    I seriously doubt the league’s TV ratings or ad revenue would suffer an iota.

    The problem for the big, powerful, macho NFL, as it is for every other giant public entity, is that racism and cancer are kind of the easy stuff. They have no serious public, political advocates. (And I’m not forgetting Colin Kaepernick’s protests against police violence, and how the league effectively blackballed him before paying him off to avoid a certain-to-be-nightmarish public trial.)

    But COVID vaccination, as a consequence of being made “political” by belligerent partisans, many of whom love football more than life itself, is terrifying territory for the NFL. (Airlines resisting vaccination mandates for passengers are another prime example of failure of true “leadership”.) It’s appalling how heavily-to-tightly-managed entities, especially those controlled by a small cluster of well-heeled egos turn into shuddering eunuchs at the thought of riling just an ugly faction of its consumer base.

    How best to put it? Shrinking from conflict over something as valid, real and life-protecting as a vaccine is not what I’d call, manly, brave, courageous or patriotic. It’s more like cowardly, and meatheaded.

    Only Its Investors Can “Reform” Facebook

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    Who doesn’t love a good coincidence? Alfred Hitchcock used to say that you’re entitled to one coincidence per movie. After that you’re just being stupid. Well, Facebook just had its coincidence and would be wise not to try selling us another.

    Barely 12 hours after a whistlebower goes on “60 Minutes” to pretty much reaffirm, with internal documents, what most of us have long known, the whole friggin’ Facebook system collapses, due, Facebook tells us, to some of its own boffins in its server cave flipping the wrong switch.

    Riiiiight. (For the record, I do not think that story will hold up.)

    Facebook hacked cartoon, Facebook unsecured personal data, privacy breached, Cambridge Analytica, social media cartoon, editorial cartoon by John Pritchett

    After The Orange God King, Tucker Carlson, Ted Cruz and maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene I don’t know if any public figure has less credibility right now than Mark Zuckerberg or any other top Facebook executive. Who believes anything he says?

    Most likely Zuckerberg will be “invited” to appear again before some Congressional committee and explain how his (publicly-traded) company, which he dominates like few other CEOs, continued to let his Instagram platform provoke young girls into eating disorders and suicide while having research in hand to prove it was doing exactly that.

    Given the tech sophistication of some of our most powerful elected officials — I’m thinking your Chuck Grassleys, Tommy Tubervilles, Diane Feinsteins and the like — I would not expecting a robust cross examination, no matter how good their staff preparation might be. And beyond a lack of functional understanding of algorithms and confusion in the face of slick Silicon Valley-speak, there’s the fact that in a fundamentally bought-off Congress, where Senate reelection campaigns are now pushing $60-$100 million, Facebook throws too much money around for anyone, Republican or Democrat, to push too hard for any “reform” that diminishes its revenue.

    Bruce Plante Cartoon: Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook | Columnists | tulsaworld.com

    We long ago passed the point where Facebook could make a credible argument that it isn’t a publisher, like The New York Times, The Washington Post or the East Boogertown Sentinel, and therefore can’t be sued for spreading flagrant lies. Lies, you know, like how horse dewormer is a better bet for beating a pandemic than a vaccine that’s protected over 180 million without a single death attributed to an adverse reaction.

    So I don’t see Capitol Hill, where Facebook served as a willing messaging vehicle for insurrectionist rioters, doing much if anything to truly reduce the now clear and definitive harm unregulated social media is doing to a gullible, unsophisticated world.

    What might move the needle a bit isn’t any outrage over a system that provokes depression and suicide in young girls, and convinces none-too-bright average Joes to get off their barstools and attack the Capitol. What might … might … matter a lot more is if Facebook’s stock takes a slide and it’s investors decide that that is a bridge too far (i.e. farther than inducing suicide in children) and sues Zuckerberg/Facebook for insidious damage to their portfolios.

    The head-spinning rationale that, like gun manufacturers, Facebook can’t be sued for the damage its products do, has never made sense. The “We’re not a publisher” dodge was never credible given Facebook’s obvious reach and impact on over nearly three billion users. (The Times and Post would kill for three billion sets of eyeballs every day.)

    But in this moment Republicans won’t touch Facebook because the rampant fear-mongering, hysteria and misinformation it injects into the so-called conservative base, is a toxic accelerant for fanaticism as it tries to retain minority rule in the United States. (Waaay right-wing posts have been the most-trafficked sludge on Facebook for years.) Meanwhile, Democrats, who make regular hem-of-the-garment kissing pilgrimages to Silicon Valley for campaign cash are so convinced they’re going to lose it all — again — next fall they’re not about to make more than a few tut-tutting noises, wring their hands, clutch their pearls and hope someone else quickly replaces Zuckerberg as Sinister Robo-Nerd #1.

    Should Mark Zuckerberg keep control of Facebook? | Financial Times

    It’s unlikely I’ll be here when the clock turns over to Jan. 1, 2200. But my bet is that the Dawn and Reign of the Social Media Algorithm that we’re living through right now will be regarded as the single most deleterious influence on this era.

    Do I Think Robert Kagan is Right? The Responsible Choice is Treating Him as Though He Is.

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    Every few weeks one article or piece of punditry in the avalanche of expert bloviating hits a nerve and stands out, head and shoulders above the rest. Last week it was a long column by veteran neo-con warrior Robert Kagan, (i.e. anything but a hippie Socialist), in The Washington Post, titled “Our Constitutional Crisis is Already Here.”

    It’s impact was obvious by the sheer number of mentions it got and reaction it provoked — and continued to provoke for days — from talking heads at CNN, MSNBC, PBS and other credible news organizations. The fact that it garnered responses — with multiple quotes — from other political outlets confirmed that Kagan had stuck a prod pretty deep into the collective consciousness.

    If you haven’t already, you owe it to yourself to set aside 20 minutes and read the whole thing. Why? Because, as the reaction to it makes clear, Kagan is talking about something both immediate — as in right now and getting worse — and very scary.

    The absolute minimalist gist of it is that while most of us have tried to enjoy a post-COVID summer and return to normalcy (it hasn’t worked out well), taken the kids out to overrun national parks and are now revved up for football season, the seditious actors who enabled Donald Trump through his reign of idiocracy, fomented and then denied the insurrection of January 6, are (very) actively at work on a more comprehensive, sophisticated plan/plot for 2022 and 2024 in particular.

    Much of that has been said elsewhere, but Kagan went where others have not, by saying things like:

    “What makes the Trump movement historically unique is not its passions and paranoias. It is the fact that for millions of Americans, Trump himself is the response to their fears and resentments. This is a stronger bond between leader and followers than anything seen before in U.S. political movements.”

    And … ” … no doubt a good number of Trump supporters have grounds to complain about their lot in life. But their bond with Trump has little to do with economics or other material concerns. They believe the U.S. government and society have been captured by socialists, minority groups and sexual deviants. They see the Republican Party establishment as corrupt and weak — ‘losers’, to use Trump’s word, unable to challenge the reigning liberal hegemony.”

    And … “Most Trump supporters are good parents, good neighbors and solid members of their communities. Their bigotry, for the most part, is typical white American bigotry, perhaps with an added measure of resentment and a less filtered mode of expression since Trump arrived on the scene. But these are normal people in the sense that they think and act as people have for centuries. They put their trust in family, tribe, religion and race. Although zealous in defense of their own rights and freedoms, they are less concerned about the rights and freedoms of those who are not like them. That, too, is not unusual. What is unnatural is to value the rights of others who are unlike you as much as you value your own.”

    And … ” … [in 2024] Trump would have advantages that he lacked in 2016 and 2020, including more loyal officials in state and local governments; the Republicans in Congress; and the backing of GOP donors, think tanks and journals of opinion. And he will have the Trump movement, including many who are armed and ready to be activated, again. Who is going to stop him then? On its current trajectory, the 2024 Republican Party will make the 2020 Republican Party seem positively defiant.”

    It’s a very dystopian view, (much like Bart Gellman’s startling pre-election 2020 scenario in The Atlantic), and vividly imagined. Kagan asks why we would assume violence would not be a logical option were the 2024 election in dozens of states challenged and locked up for months in tortured Federalist Society-style arguments?

    The people I think of as sanguine conventionalists, the musty, tradition-bound crowd who prefer to believe that even today Trumpism is a passing fad and that soon enough … one of these days … when he’s gone too far … adults will step in and stop the madness, simply block out Kagan’s view rather than fully considering everything already in motion at this moment.

    I shouldn’t have to go through the long list of irrational, cult-like behavior erupting across the country. But when school districts are pleading for law enforcement or the National Guard to control school board meetings where Trump-ish partisans are brawling and throwing out death threats over “liberal” vaccines and masks, how difficult is it to imagine gun play as the next level down?

    Video shows parents threaten experts over TN school mask rule | Charlotte Observer

    Kagan points a damning finger at the precious few Republican “adults” who have taken the occasional defiant stand against Trump, Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse in particular. Neither he notes have dared risk anything more in the face of flagrant voter suppression and all the various attempts at election chicanery moving through state legislatures. (The adults in corporate America could be rolled in with Miutt and Sasse.)

    People ask if I think Kagan is on to something or merely being hyperbolic?

    I say that given just what we can see there’s no good reason to disagree with Kagan’s nightmarish vision. Human nature has a deep animalistic/atavistic component, an ugly, visceral response activated by a distorted sense of community. This is the heart of the Trump cult. It’s a cult that, as Kagan says, is intensely fearful and feels deeply threatened. Like a cornered animal you might say.

    So fearful and so irrational that many are already at the point where to lose everything — their lives to a disease they could easily avoid, for example — is more appealing, seems braver, more patriotic and principled than accepting the traditional standards we used to live under.

    So yeah, I think he’s on to something.

    Minnesota Continues to Soak The Poor

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    Minnesota Republicans love to portray Minnesota as a liberal la-la land that unfairly victimizes their oppressed wealthy donors by “soaking them” with high taxes. 

    Not true.  The reality is, Minnesota’s state and local taxes remain regressive, meaning that the rate of taxation actually decreases as incomes increase. 

    This is wrong. Those with higher incomes should pay a larger proportion of their income in taxes, because they can afford to do so without suffering as much of a blow, proportionally speaking, to their quality of life.  

    Conservatives typically point to state income tax rates to make their case, because that tax is indeed progressive.  The problem with that tired old spin is that the income tax is far from the only tax.  Minnesotans also pay sales, property, and excise (on alcohol, tobacco, and motor fuels) taxes, and those taxes are all very regressive.  That is, those types of taxes all hit people with lower incomes much harder, as a percent of income, than they hit people with higher incomes.

    So the most relevant measure of whether Minnesota’s overall tax system is based on the ability-to-pay is the effective tax rate for all state and local taxes combined.  Every year, the Minnesota Department of Revenue calculates this amount.  Here is what the most recent version looks like.

    Here are a few important things to note:

    • Tax Burdens Are Decreasing, Not Increasing.  Between 2018 and 2023 (projected), tax burdens are decreasing at every level of income.  Remember this the next time you hear conservatives whining about “skyrocketing taxes.”
    • Progressivity Is Improving, But Not Enough.  Between 2018 and 2023 (projected), the gap between the effective rate for the poorest and wealthiest Minnesota pay is narrowing , but it’s not a large or sufficient improvement.  The arc of the moral universe is bending towards justice, but it’s a painfully slow rate-of-change.
    • Minnesota’s Taxes Remain Very Regressive.  This is the most important thing to take away from this chart. Minnesota still has a very regressive tax system that hits poor people much harder than rich people.  Minnesota’s poorest taxpayers pay a 24.7% state and local tax rate, while our wealthiest taxpayers only pay 11.6%.

    Before you shrug this off, stop and really think about it. The wealthiest Minnesotans are required to pay less than half the tax burden the poorest Minnesotans are required to pay.  For those who want Minnesota to be a more just and equitable place, the work is far from done.

    Yes, stalwart conservative protectors of the wealthy will be quick to say, but the wealthy pay much larger tax bills than the poor! This is true. But it’s also true that when someone at the bottom of the income heap has to pay 24.7% for taxes out of their nearly empty wallet, that takes leaves a lot less to provide for their family than when the wealthiest Minnesotans only have to pay 11.6% for taxes out of their much fatter wallets and investment portfolios.   The poor person may not be able to pay rent, while the rich person may only need to leave ever so slightly less to their already well-pampered scions.

    Every time someone proposes asking the wealthy to pay more in taxes, wealthy news anchors, pundits, and politicians breathlessly characterize the proposal as “controversial” and “unrealistic.”

    For what it’s worth, Americans disagree. For instance, a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found an overwhelming 76 percent of registered voters believe the wealthiest Americans should pay more in taxes. It might be controversial at the large donor soirees, but not most other places in America.

    So when Minnesota DFL legislators propose, as they did this year, to create a new fifth tier state income tax rate of 11.15% on income above $1 million (or $500,000 for single filers), don’t fall into the trap of repeating the conservatives’ well-focus grouped “it’s soaking the rich” narrative.

    Instead, look at these data and say “it’s a start.”

    MN GOP’s Freedom-to-Infect Agenda As Bad Politically As It Is Morally

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    Minnesota Republicans are falling all over themselves to the appeal to non-maskers and non-vaxers who they apparently believe, probably correctly, will make up a majority of Republican caucus participants in the 2022 election cycle.  They’re obsessed with the people in their partisan echo chambers.

    Take Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen, MD, who made his name in conservative politics by questioning how serious a threat COVID was and suing to keep life-saving vaccines away from young people. Jensen is calling for  businesses and citizens to engage in “civil disobedience” by ignoring experts’ vaccine and mask recommendations and requirements.

    The physician turned politician who is under investigation by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice for spreading misinformation about COVID19, also wants to pass legislation to make Minnesota something called a “health freedom sanctuary state.”  Dr. J was light on details about what this would mean for Minnesotans, but presumably it would ensure we all have the sacred right to infect and kill others.

    Jensen is hardly alone.  Throughout the pandemic, Minnesota Republicans at the state and local level have continually questioned the need for measures to protect Minnesotans against COVID.  They have advocated freedom-to-infect positions similar to those used by neighboring deep red state South Dakota, which has by far the worst per capita COVID death rate in the midwest region (236 COVID deaths per 100,000 residents). Meanwhile, Governor Tim Walz’s Minnesota has one of the best in the region (142 COVID deaths per 100,000 residents).

    Being opposed to masking and vaccinating is another issue that looks to be a savvy political move for Republicans during party caucuses and primaries, but potentially disastrous when it comes time to win a plurality in general elections, where Democratic and independent voters get their say.

    After all, about 75 percent of Minnesotans over age 12 now have at least one dose of vaccine, and that number will be higher by election day.  And national polls show large majorities of Americans back extremely tough restrictions.

    • 64 percent support state and local governments requiring masks to be worn in all public places.
    • 59 percent support requiring teachers to wear masks in schools.
    • 58 percent support requiring students to wear masks in schools.
    • 57 percent support limiting travel on airplanes to vaccinated people.
    • 51 percent support limiting attendance to bars and restaurants to vaccinated people.
    • 56 percent support limiting crowded gatherings — movies, sporting events, concerts– to vaccinated people.
    • 60 percent support requiring vaccines for federal government and large business employees.

    At a time when 80 percent of Americans are concerned about the spread of the COVID19 Delta variant, Minnesota Republicans are hell-bent on making opposition to restrictions their centerpiece issue.  These surveys show that only about one-quarter to one-third of Americans agree with Republicans, with the remaining respondents unsure. 

    Oh and by the way, Minnesota’s DFL Governor Tim Walz, the person Republicans portray as being way too radical on COVID restrictions, hasn’t supported anything anywhere near as restrictive as the previously mentioned widely popular measures. Not even close. And since Republicans stripped Walz of his emergency powers in the spring of 2021, he hasn’t been able to do much of anything to protect Minnesotans.

    Even if opposing safe and effective COVID protections during the deadliest pandemic in a century were savvy on a political level, it would be morally unconscionable. But it’s every bit as indefensible politically as it is morally.

    And Who Will Be the Biggest Abortion Hustler of Them All?

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    The Paralympics in Tokyo have just ended. But here in the States the race among the sociopathic and ethically-challenged has only just begun. The starting gun for this particular level of competition was of course fired in Texas, where gun totin’ and medieval thinkin’ pretty much comes as a right of birth.

    To re-cap, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, his approval rating under water by 9% (50-49), facing a possible re-election threat from Beto O’Rourke and desperate to make Texans forget about last winter’s fatal natural gas FUBAR, signed into law the country’s most restrictive anti-abortion law … while promising to, you know, get all the rapists off the streets. (Never mind the nuance about how a rapist has to first rape someone before they can be … oh, never mind.)

    Gov. Abbott signs 'heartbeat bill' into law, fight in court expected | KEYE
    A Texas cross-section

    In (very) short order, ex-beauty queen Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, (a.k.a. The Alabama of the Midwest) , a bona fide Sarah Palin 3.0 in the GOP’s galaxy of presidential contenders, ordered her staff to find some way to outdo Abbott and Texas and make her and her state the most restricting-est in the whole big red country. (She didn’t quite pull off Abbott’s East German Stasi shtick of turning in Uber drivers for a $10,000 bounty. But give her time.)

    Cat Scratch Fever: Ted Nugent tests positive for COVID days after flight with Gov. Kristi Noem | KELOLAND.com
    Noem with Ted Nugent …

    With that bit of theater out of the way, all eyes have turned to Florida’s Ron DeSantis, still over-seeing the worst-ever surge of COVID deaths and still actively crushing his state’s health care system with Alex Jones-like factlessness. Clearly, if he wants a shot at the 2024 nomination, DeSantis not only has to fight off vaccine mandates, masks and basic science, but now is going to have top Abbott and Noem in abortion restriction. (Not a big concern with his geriatric base in The Villages, but tougher with any woman under 50.)

    Petition · Recall and remove Florida governor Ron DeSantis. · Change.org
    Master … puppet

    Up home here in Minnesota we can soon expect any and all of the Republicans running to beat Gov. Tim Walz to do the triple-down on Texas and South Dakota. (Make that quintuple down if sex-trafficker-huggin’ Jennifer Carnahan makes good on her threat to get in the primary.) But who among us doubts former GOP Senate Majority Leader, Paul Gazelka, a guy I swear Margaret Atwood had to have met in person before she wrote “The Handmaid’s Tale”, isn’t right this minute conjuring up some kind of ultra-pious, quasi-religious, Torquemada-style restriction on the freedom of women in his “flock”? You know it’s coming.

    Sen. Paul Gazelka on Awakening God's People in the Workplace & More | Truth and Liberty Coalition Livecast

    And while we’re at it, do note that over east, in Wisconsin, (a.k.a. The Florida of the Midwest), Scott Walker’s #2, former TV anchor-turned-lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch has announced her candidacy, with early indications that she’ll be incumbent Tony Evers’ toughest competition. (Her “platform” includes this: “Vigorously enforce antitrust laws against monopolistic Big Tech,” protect free speech on campuses and in high schools, stop church closures during pandemics, ban most state gun control laws, an anti-abortion “Born-Alive Infant Protection Act” and “Appoint originalist judges in the mold of Justices Thomas and Barrett.”)

    So yeah, the race to full Gilead/”The Divine Republic” is on.

    The Handmaid's Tale' Turned a DC on the Verge of Shutdown into Gilead | IndieWire

    This despite recent polling that shows only 13% want the kind of laws Texas has put in place, (31% of Republicans), and that two-thirds of educated workers are saying they would not live in Texas or any other state with similar laws.

    The Biden Justice Department today sued Texas to stop the law Abbott signed in to law. But until it goes back to the Supreme Court and Amy Coney Barrett (or as I think of her, Aunt Lydia), the fight will just be a huge money-maker for Abbott, Noem and every other moralistic conservative poseur ambitious for a cushy Big Gummint job.

    Aunt Lydia Quotes - MagicalQuote

    What’s left to wonder, post-Texas, really is the “dog catches car” scenario many pundits have observed. Cynics like myself have long regarded the Republican vow to over-turn Roe v. Wade as just another cheesy, transparent hustle of credulous evangelicals. It’s a “fight” Republican con men (and women) never really want to win because as long abortion abolition remains a goal — a moral goal, y’know — its a golden goose. A fat bird consistently crapping out checks from the religiously enfeebled. Deliver the overturning of Roe v. Wade and all that easy chump money dries up.

    But for now through primary season next year the race for maximum abortion restriction is on. I predict one of these cheap abortion hustlers will be pitching the new and improved “trans vaginal ultra sound” before the year is out.

    Let’s Hear It for a Few of the Good Guys.

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    Ok, time out for some good news. While the remaining 25%, the so-called “vaccine hostile” raid veterinary supplies for the cow and horse de-wormer Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity are telling them is a good option for fighting off COVID-19, actual fully functioning adults are putting their money where their mouth is and doing something to avoid another winter of masked shut-ins.

    Patagonia. The upscale outdoor clothing/equipment company took a look at a $2000/plate fund-raiser headlined by Republicans Jim “Gym” Jordan, Mark Meadows and Marjorie Taylor Greene, noticed it was hosted by a three-store outfitting chain run by Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming and essentially said, “Take a [bleeping] hike.” As it pulled the plug — i.e. cut off a revenue stream — Patagonia said it believed in, ” … our really strong commitment to using both our business and our brand to advocate for our strong priorities. When there’s a misalignment on that, then we take action.”

    Patagonia's Latest Jackets Made From Recycled Fishing Nets

    This is the kind of episode Patagonia could have easily ignored, and that many … many … other companies invariably prefer to let slide without comment. But Patagonia didn’t. Worth noting is that the company isn’t publicly traded, meaning its executives didn’t have to worry about angry calls from shareholders convinced “getting involved in politics” (that aren’t, you know, supportive of the status quo) is “bad for business.”

    It’s much too early to discern any impact on Patagonia’s sales, but my bet is that like Nike with Colin Kaepernick, taking a public stand against sedition and unvarnished stupidity will work toward enhancing, not diminishing, its brand.

    Jason Isbell. In the modern country music world, (often referred to as “radio country” to distinguish it from the likes of Hank Williams, etc., musicians who actually had soul rather than just a keen ear for product endorsements), you’re taking a big time career risk going up against anything that Trump Nation is believing at a given moment. But Isbell, a guy with a devout following, has stepped up and said he will not perform at any venue that doesn’t require either proof of vaccination or a recent negative test. And this includes Minneapolis’ own Basilica Block Party — which piggy-backed on Isbell and announced that its grounds will be off-limits to the un-vaxxed.

    Jason Isbell on Trump, Modern Country and Alienating Fans - Rolling Stone

    Isbell — who I still think did some of his best work with the Drive By Truckers — is a bit too brainy to be influential with the usual WeFest crowd. But among promoters, critics and your more thoughtful country fans, his is seen as a bona fide act of conscience and courage.

    New York City and San Francisco. Leave it to a couple of the most notorious liberal hell holes to lead the rest of the nation in requiring … proof of vaccination … for admission to restaurants, bars, gyms and the like. I like to think they were inspired by my people, the French, who moved in this direction close to a month ago. A move there that set off an uproar from the usual dead-enders but had over 75% popular support among every other Frenchman.

    It's the first day of San Francisco's vaccine mandate. But some businesses had a requirement weeks ago - CNN

    With today’s full FDA approval for the Pfizer vaccine we are truly at the point of hard division, between the morally responsible 75% and the sociopathic 25% who will forever believe they have the “rights” and “freedoms” to spread deadly disease wherever they choose.

    There’s no more reason to pander to them. Close the door in their faces. Thank you, Liberal Hell Holes. I hope to visit you soon.

    Education Minnesota and 150 other vendors. In stark contrast to all of the above, State Fair administrators did not have the guts to do what needed to be done for The Great Minnesota Get Together. Instead of following the lead of Isbell, the Basilica Block Party, New York and San Francisco, the folks in charge of “the Fair” choked. Clearly they could not stomach the thought of refusing entrance to anti-vaxxers. (Many if not most are likely to be rural or non-metro residents.)

    Said a Fair spokeswoman, “We just don’t have the capacity to enforce a mask mandate.”

    Dear, allow me to mansplain this for you. You don’t have to enforce a mask mandate … if you enforce a vaccine mandate. If the anti-vaxxers are not allowed on to the fairgrounds you have 95% less problem.

    Letters: After a visit to the Minnesota State Fair, we ask, which party is inciting bad behavior? – Twin Cities

    But lacking courage, Fair administrators now have a Minnesota version of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally on their hands; a roiling, sweating, heavy-breathing sub-culture tolerable in the best of circumstances, but a bona fide deal breaker for 75%-ers amid a fourth wave of COVID. We won’t be making the scene.

    As it bowed out, Education Minnesota said, “We decided that we could not in good conscience ask more than 150 educator-volunteers to work at the 2021 fair under the current conditions and then go back into their classrooms a few days later. The risks to educators and their students were just too high.”

    And that was before we get a judicial decision on whether the anti-mask/anti-vaxxers can also tote their revolvers and rifles around the place … for their safety and peace of mind, you understand.

    Dear Minnesota GOP: Thank You, Thank You, Thank You.

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    Just a brief word of thanks to Minnesota’s Republican party. Amid such a torrent of bad news — a new wildfire of COVID infections thanks entirely to MAGA Nation, half the West and northern Minnesota turning to ash, religious lunatics overrunning Afghanistan and (Trumpus Americanus again) demanding to tote their firearm/penile extensions through the State Fair — our local Republicans have served up a delicious late summer sexual distraction.

    Colleague/site czar Joe Loveland has had his say on the matter of GOP chairwoman Jennifer Carnahan and what has been revealed following very close pal “Tony” Lazzaro’s indictment on sex trafficking, which is a euphemism for pimping under age girls.

    Since Joe posted, a new round of stories — every political reporter in town is salivating over this mess — has revealed a gay staffer’s complaint that Carnahan “outed” her when convenient to show some LGBTQ bona fides to “moderate” Republicans, (I’d like names and numbers on that crowd if you don’t mind), but then turned around and vilified her to the (presumably much larger) GOP base laser-focused on keeping America free of swishy “preversion”, to paraphrase the great Col. Bat Guano.

    To absolutely no one’s surprise, four other local party muckety-mucks stepped up to describe Carnahan’s basic office theology as “morally bankrupt”, not to mention “toxic.”

    A modern Republican bureaucracy dedicated to fund-raising and messaging “morally bankrupt” and “toxic?” I could not be more shocked!

    Back in my newspaper days — in the rare times I was actually in the newsroom — it was amusing to listen to the guffawing and snickering among hardened reporters over the latest statement from the chairs of either party. The stuff was always so ham-fisted and hyperbolic. Every other day one or the other was “demanding” or “calling for” the other party to concede moral dereliction, humiliating defeat and accept a month in the public stocks.

    Who in god’s name were they talking to? What sort of imbecile responded to that kind of spittle-flecked ranting? (Not that I’m opposed to spittle-flecked ranting, you understand.)

    Remember Tony Sutton? A lot of us didn’t think the Republicans could top a guy who so grossly “mismanaged” the party’s finances he was found guilty of “circumventing” finance laws, fined $33k, forced to resign as chair and then a couple years later filed for personal bankruptcy for not having the wherewithall to cover $2.1 million in debts, despite being CEO of the Baja Fresh chain of taco joints.

    Former state GOP Chair Tony Sutton files for bankruptcy | MinnPost

    The guy was a hapless cartoon. Must watch TV every time he stepped up in front of a mic to rail against the ruinous depravity of free-spending liberals.

    But now we have Carnahan. And Anton “Tony” Lazarro.

    May be an image of 2 people and people smiling

    As I follow this story, Carnahan and Lazzaro linked up several years ago — when “Tony” was in his mid-twenties and already living the high-life, a bit like Mr. Sutton. I’d like to think Carnahan was charmed by Lazzaro’s ethics and sense of civic responsibility. But you know … I’m thinking it was really all about the Benjamin’s, as the kids say. Young Mr. Lazzaro had a lot of cash and was soon writing a lot of checks — a quarter million dollars plus of them — to Carnahan’s candidates. With each check he was brought deeper into her embrace … figuratively speaking, of course.

    This was the same young man living downtown at the Hotel Ivy, (a quite posh residence), driving a Ferrari and pictured sitting atop a private jet on his Facebook page.

    May be an image of 1 person

    Some of us, perhaps you and me, would observe that spectacle and ask something like, ‘Where is that little douchebag getting that kind of cash?”

    But apparently where her new BFF “Tony” was getting Saudi sheik-style dough never crossed Ms. Carnahan’s mind. (Quite Trump-like, Carnahan is now playing the “I don’t really know him that well” game.) All that mattered waas that he had it and she was tapping him.

    So I guess I’m really not that shocked that “toxic” and “morally bankrupt” are words in current fashion to describe Ms. Carnahan’s office environment.

    While we await some morally righteous, hyperbolic condemnation from the likes of the GOP’s Senate Majority Leader, Paul Gazelka — Minnesota’s Cotton Mather — or Congress critters Tom Emmer, Pete Stauber or Michelle Fishbach or … well any Republican whose name regularly makes the news, we can at least express a little appreciation.

    This farce is a lot more entertaining than watching a bunch of morally righteous, routinely hyperbolic, fundamentally transactional zealots rampage across some hell hole on the other side of the planet.

    Cruelty Is No Longer A Disqualifier For Republicans

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    I can think of lots of legitimate reasons why Republican Party Chair Jennifer Carnahan should resign.

    Pathetic fundraising.  No statewide offices held.  Unwillingness to condemn traitorous insurrectionists and their inciter.

    However, knowing a donor and activist accused of sex trafficking isn’t one of them. 

    Now, if it’s discovered that Carnahan knew about the child victimization and did nothing about it, that’s different.  But as far as I know, that evidence doesn’t exist.  Until and unless proof surfaces, Carnahan doesn’t deserve to lose her position over a purely “guilt by association” charge. Party chairs and politicians need to work with thousands of people, and they can’t be expected to know everything about all of them.

    Meanwhile, however, the evidence that Chair Carnahan is breathtakingly cruel has been confirmed.  Oddly buried at the end of a long Pioneer Press article is this shocking tidbit:

    Carnahan also confirmed that an audio clip being circulated by her critics on social media contains callous comments that she made about her husband’s (Minnesota Congressman Jim Hagedorn) medical condition during a phone conversation. Hagedorn is battling stage four kidney cancer, and announced last month that he’d had a recurrence. He was first diagnosed in February of 2019, shortly after he took office and a couple months after they were married in December 2018. Doctors removed his affected kidney in December of 2020 after a course of immunotherapy.

    “I don’t care. Jim, he’s going to die of cancer in two years,” she can he heard saying. “So be it.”

    Gulp.

    For the record, the leader of the party that endlessly preaches “personal responsibility” blames the comment on, wait for it, wine and grief. 

    That might be the most lame crisis response I’ve ever heard. Millions of spouses with terminally ill spouses feel grief and indulge in wine, but their grief and buzz doesn’t cause them to express indifference.

    This part is pretty damning.  Then again, it probably won’t drive her out her job.  If mere cruelty were a disqualifier, Republicans still wouldn’t be worshiping en masse at the altar of a man who mocks handicapped people, brags about being a serial groper of women’s genitals, screws a porn star while his wife is carrying his child, and belittles a decorated prisoner of war. 

    Fortunately for Carnahan, in today’s Republican Party, cruelty clearly isn’t close to a disqualifier.

    Does Walz Care About ONECare?

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    So far, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has largely been a responsive caretaker governor, responding to the crises du jour rather than than actively pushing a progressive agenda and building a legacy for himself.

    Governor Walz’s legacy is essentially “pissed off all sides while consumed with thankless pandemic management.” I think he did a reasonably good job managing the pandemic, but he definitely had to make enemies doing it.

    One partial break from caretaker mode was his poorly named “ONECare” proposal, which would give Minnesotans the option to buy into MinnesotaCare. MinnesotaCare is a longstanding program serving low-income individuals and families who can’t get employee-sponsored health insurance and don’t quality for Medicaid, which is called Medical Assistance (MA) in Minnesota.

    Giving Minnesota health insurance consumers of all income levels this additional option would ensure that every Minnesotan in every county had at least one health insurance option available to them. That’s a big deal. It also would bring more competition to an individual market that sorely needs more competition. Over time, this could result in lower premiums for consumers.

    Walz has not pushed his proposal particularly hard. Meanwhile, other states’ Governors are leading their states forward.

    Colorado and Nevada this year passed public option plans—government-run health insurance plans—that are set to launch in 2023 and 2026, respectively. They join Washington state, which enacted its law in 2019 and went live with its public option in January.

    The early results from Washington state’s experiment are disappointing. In many parts of the state, premiums for the public option plans cost more than premiums for comparable commercial plans.

    Many of the state’s hospitals have refused to take part in the public option, prompting lawmakers to introduce more legislation this year to force participation if there aren’t sufficient health insurance options in a geographic area. And consumer buy-in is also meager. In its first year of operation, the state health insurance exchange sold only 1,443 public option plans, representing fewer than 1% of all exchange policies.

    Michael Marchand, chief marketing officer for the Washington Health Benefit Exchange, the state’s health insurance marketplace, said it’s premature to judge the program by its first year.

    During the earlier years of Obamacare, the premiums for many commercial plans were high, he pointed out. Eventually, as insurers became more knowledgeable about the markets, prices dropped, he said.

    If Governor Walz would get re-engaged in this issue and actively market his plan, they could learn from the experiences of Washington and avoid it’s mistakes. For instance, in areas where there is insufficient health insurance competition, Walz could require hospitals to participate.

    A MinnesotaCare buy-in option is extremely popular — only 11% oppose it, according to a Minnesota Public Radio survey. This is probably in part because it is an option. Any Minnesotan who opposes buying into MinnesotaCare — because of conservative ideology or because MinnesotaCare turns out to be expensive or poor quality — they can vote with their feet, as consumers in the state of Washington are doing.

    Fighting for a MinnesotaCare buy-in option makes sense for Walz. The polls consistently show that health care is a top issue for voters, and huge majorities consistently trust Democrats over Republicans on that issue.

    Moreover, in the 2022 gubernatorial general election campaign Walz may very well be running against a physician, Scott Jensen. This will ensure that health care is high profile in the race. Therefore, candidate Walz needs to be seen fighting for better health care, and this proposal gives him that platform.

    If a MinnesotaCare buy-in option passes, Walz finally has a legacy beyond pandemic management. If Senate Republicans kill it, which seems likely, Walz has a great political argument to make while running for reelection and trying to retake the Senate: “I worked my ass off to give you another health insurance option and bring you some price competition, but Republicans like Scott Jensen opposed it on orders from private insurance lobbyists. If you want to more options and more price competition, vote for me and change the Senate leadership.”

    Pushing a public option is a great political option for Walz. So why is he so damn cautious about it?

    Afghanistan’s Collapse Was Inevitable

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    Everything about the situation in Afghanistan is bad, and the way these things work, “ownership” lands in the lap of whoever sits in the Oval Office at the time. So the collapse there will be in Joe Biden’s obituary.

    But watching news reports the last few days I kept remembering first-person descriptions of the country and it’s people — especially its men — in New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins book, “The Forever War”. Assigned to the country shortly after the US’s post-9/11 invasion, Filkins was merciless in his assessment that the deeply conservative rural population being “recruited” to hunt down Al Qaeda was so impoverished, so illiterate and so feudal in their attachment to their local war lords that they were functionally useless. They had no loyalty whatsoever to far away Kabul, and given a couple hundred dollars they’d switch sides in a heartbeat and go off hunting men they had served with the day before.

    The chances that that particular crowd — the essential core of the Taliban — would ever submit to America’s idea of “nation building” by, you know, embracing US-style democracy, by getting a dozen years of classroom education, by marrying a nice girl with a career of her own, by buying a big truck and by starting a family in the suburbs was significantly less than zero.

    And that was before Filkins got to the gobsmacking corruption of the educated classes running the so-called government.

    Put simply, civilizing Afghanistan, bringing it into the 21st century, was always mission impossible.

    The stain on Biden right now is the abandonment of the thousands of Afghanis who served US interests over the past 20 years. That’s inexcusable.

    But the the original idea of turning one of — if not the most backward and least educated countries in the world — into a version of Oman or some other “moderate” muslim theocracy was misguided from the get-go. And again, because in actual fact Afghanistan is more a name on a map than an actual, unified country.

    Joe Biden will have ‘splainin’ to do when he makes his speech to the country sometime this week. But from what I’ve read, he accepted the CIA version of Afghanistan’s reality — profound ignorance, tribal loyalties, medieval religious zealotry — and not the military’s, who told everyone from George W* to Barack Obama to The Orange God King, (whose eye-roller of a “deal” with the Taliban last year set this collapse in motion), to Biden that progress was being made. That Afghani soldiers could be trained to fight off the Taliban, and protect their daughters, wives and mothers from the Taliban’s, um, “toxic masculinity.”

    And maybe they would have if corruption wasn’t so bad they were rarely paid, fed adequately or the Taliban hadn’t offered them a better deal … which the CIA said was always a likely scenario.

    Corruption in Afghanistan | CTV News

    The argument that the 3000 US troops left in Afghanistan as of this spring was so modest we should have just accepted leaving them there … forever … like we do in Korea and Germany, overlooks the fundamental fact that Afghanistan is barely even a country, and more a collection of mini-empires riddled with religious-inspired ignorance and overall, wildly more corrupt than First World colossi like Korea and Germany.

    The scenes coming over the next weeks and months, particularly the degradation of Afghan women back into 13th century subjugation, will be very hard to digest. But if you’re inclined to believe societies get the leadership they deserve, it’s hard to argue that the Afghanis aren’t getting exactly what was always inevitable.