It is a mad, mad, mad world!

"Erase history, take guns away from people, disband the police. We have seen this movie before. We know how it ends, and it does not end well."      

I was thinking about that movie from yesteryear. Many are too young to remember it, but it was a big hit in the day. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World was a must see movie at one time. But it was fantasy - a comedy. What is happening today is also a mad, mad, mad world. Only this is reality. And it scares the hell out of many of us. I know it sure does to me.

On what planet in this universe, is it okay to travel to the capitol of a state, go up to a statue of an historical figure, and then destroy it? Just because this historical figure might have hurt your feelings, or you feel differently today than how this historical figure did centuries ago? That is Nazi Germany crap. Gestapo tactics.

That is what happened yesterday in St. Paul. But here is the really disturbing part. The Governor in his presser, mentioned this. He knew it was coming. When this band of anarchists came to destroy the Columbus statue, the capitol police were just spectators. Nobody did anything to stop these people. The statue hurt their feelings, so they destroyed it. SMH. 

In Seattle, the Eastern Precinct of the Seattle Police Department was ceded over to the thugs. The cops pulled out, and let this part of town be put under mob rule. Why? Who knows. Maybe another knee jerk reaction to the George Floyd matter. In any event, just like when Minneapolis ceded the Third Precinct to the thugs, and allowed it to be trashed and torched, once again the inmates are running the asylum. This is nuts - purely nuts.

This is the tail wagging the dog - big time. A minority of nut balls in this country are now calling the shots. They are behind the riots, the defunding of police movement, the rewriting of our history. Why can't they be stopped? Votes and pandering. Pure and simple. We have allowed too many socialists and progressives into our government. And nobody panders better than this bunch. The President would like to intervene, but he has this brick wall called Congress stopping him.

Speaking of Congress, the Speaker of the House now wants to get rid of almost a dozen Confederate statues in the Capitol. This is part of our history. Just like Columbus is. Some also want to rename many of our military bases. Why? The people they are named after might hurt some feelings. So just like the minority forcing the City of Minneapolis to rename Lake Calhoun to some name few can pronounce, that small group of troublemakers are at it again. Beam me up Scotty.

This really is turning into a mad, mad, mad world. If we don't get the majority to quit kowtowing to these vocal and obnoxious minorities, we will lose the country. We really will. Erase history, take guns away from people, disband the police. We have seen this movie before. We know how it ends, and it does not end well.      

The coming explosion(s)?

"Americans have got to collectively decide this anarchy is poison to our way of life. It is like a cancer which needs to be cut out and destroyed. We need to get these leftover hippies out of our government, and let the adults come in and fix this mess."

It is summer, and starting to get hot. Very hot. So hot, there is a chance of explosions in the future. Actually, the types of explosions which might be coming are very different from each other. The first type of explosion, is one we have been hearing about from the Administration. It will be an economic explosion, as our economy comes roaring back to life. The jobs report last month might have been the first indicator of what is to come. The other type of explosion will not be as rosy.

The nationwide riots which happened after the George Floyd killing might have only been the precursor to what is to follow. To the lovers of chaos, mayhem and anarchy, the events which just happened, might have only been the foretaste of their feast to come. Why do I say that? Mission accomplished for "part one" of the dismantling of America. Many large blue cities in America are now second guessing why in the world they have a police force. And their cops are wondering why in the world they are putting it on the line, each day, every day, for cities which not only don't back them, but also can't stand them.

This thing with the cops is huge. Much bigger than I first thought. To take the cities confidence and backing away from their police force is to squash their authority. They become neutered and ineffective. When that happens, our famous thin blue line becomes no more than a blue smudge. Evil doers and criminals will have the day. How can I say that? Most police forces are comprised of highly trained men and women. Effective and professional. Not all of them, but the vast majority of them. However, their "juice" comes from a strong and effective city government, which supports and backs their police.

What happened post Memorial Day, with our continuing civil unrest, is going to happen again. Count on it. Antifa is emboldened. BLM is emboldened. New anarchist groups yet to be named, have been emboldened. This is Abby Hoffman's, Revolution for the hell of it, coming to us, live and in color.

When the next riot happens, it will land like a sucker punch on the chin of city leaders. Their view and desire for a socialist Utopian society, will burn like Rome while Nero fiddled. By the time they realize they made a HUGE mistake by eliminating, or emasculating their police force - it will be too late.

Where do we go from here? How do we focus on the first type of explosion, where the economy comes roaring back like a caged tiger? Here is the bottom line. The first type of explosion will never happen while our cities continue to explode and burn. Americans have got to collectively decide this anarchy is poison to our way of life. It is like a cancer which needs to be cut out and destroyed. We need to get these leftover hippies out of our government, and let the adults come in and fix this mess.

I do know this. I remember reading this years ago. Vigilante justice only comes about when people lose faith in their government. When the government can no longer take care of law and order, then the people will. And it is messy.

A well regulated militia works very well when it is in the hands of a well regulated government. That is the way our Founders envisioned it. However, in the absence of a well regulated or functional government, the well regulated militia will still stand. It will stand by and for the citizens and patriots.         

Something evil this way has come...

"The riots which happened post Memorial Day should be a wake up call to us all. The calls to disband our police forces should be met with the strongest of all opposition." 

Yesterday, there was a YouTube video circulating about with some very interesting facts contained therein. Facts about how all this rioting which happened (nationwide), did so at the drop of a hat once George Floyd was killed on Memorial Day. I watched the entire video (about 20 minutes long) and was stunned once it was over. I immediately put it on my wall for others to see. Then YouTube decided the truth on this subject did not need to get out. So they pulled it. 

This video was not for "conspiracy buffs" - it was for everyone who gives a damn about this great country. It was about how these riots were all well planned and staged. In other words, gasoline and accelerant had been spread around many different areas. All there was missing was a spark. And the spark could have come from anywhere. Unfortunately, it came from Minneapolis when George Floyd was killed. 

Now, there are those who will scoff at the idea that sinister forces are at work in our own country. Trust me, they are. There are groups of people, from many different backgrounds and areas, who would like to see out current form of government crash and burn. Then replace it with a communist or socialist utopia. Some even want anarchy. Wait a minute Bird! Are you not talking about sedition? That is exactly what I am talking about. It is happening right under our noses. At our colleges and universities. In our deep blue cities. Believe it or not, right on Capitol Hill.

By the way, part of the strategy to change our government is to get rid of the police forces. Sound familiar right now? Keep the citizenry from arming themselves (dilute or eliminate the Second Amendment), and then get rid of the cops. Once that happens, the next riot which takes place could be the game changer. Especially if the socialists in Congress keep the President from deploying troops to restore order. 

This is a time when all citizens and patriots need to sit up and take notice. This is NOT a time to blow this stuff off as histrionics or fantasy. This evil which has permeated our land is not new to us. It has been around since the 1960's - maybe even earlier. It has been incremental, so many have not noticed it. It has been like the "boiling frogs" example. That is, until now. 

The riots which happened post Memorial Day should be a wake up call to us all. The calls to disband our police forces should be met with the strongest of all opposition. It has been said by many a pundit that this coming election in November, will be the most important in our history. I believe it will be. Why? If the election goes the other way, it could be the end of our history. Then the evil in our country will rule the day.    

2020 - A whirlwind year (so far)

"Many of us will make the most of this summer of 2020. No, it will not be normal, but we will try to squeeze as much normalcy as possible out of the next three months. We will go into fall with caution and trepidation. As we get closer to New Year's Day of 2021, the cold realization will set in. Our world changed in 2020. It will never be the same."

We hosted my sister-in-law's 60th birthday party yesterday. Made me feel kind of old. When I first started dating my wife, her sister was much younger, and basically a kid. Now she is 60 and looking forward to retirement. Wow. After the party was over and everyone left, I started thinking about all which has happened this year. Never seen a year like it. So, I decided to make a timeline of things which many of us in Minnesota have gone through this year.

Timeline:

• January 1, 2020 - Gophers beat Auburn in the Outback Bowl. Unbelievable!
• January 5, 2020 - Vikings beat the Saints to advance in the playoffs. Life is good.
• January 11, 2020 - Vikings lose to San Francisco and are eliminated. Boo hiss.
• January 13, 2020 - LSU beats Clemson for the national championship. Great game! 

NOTE: Now the fun part of the year is over.

• January 16, 2020 - Senate impeachment trial begins. 
• January 20, 2020 - First confirmed case of COVID - 19 in the US. It was in Seattle.
• February 5, 2020 - Impeachment trial over, with the President acquitted.
• March 1, 2020 - First confirmed cases of COVID - 19 in New York and Minnesota.
• March 6, 2020 - My wife and I return from Florida, me with pneumonia, she with bronchitis. 
• March 20, 2020 - Stores in Minnesota start to look empty as the supply chain breaks.
• March 27, 2020 - Minnesota receives its first "stay at home" order from the governor.
• April 1, 2020 - Economy starts to tank, and unemployment starts to climb.
• May 8, 2020 - Unemployment is the highest since the Great Depression.
• May 25, 2020 - George Floyd is killed by a cop in Minneapolis.
• May 26, 2020 - A week of rioting starts across the nation.
• May 30, 2020 - First Space X launch with humans on board. Mission to ISS.  

I have quoted this man before. Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock back in the 1970's. Things will happen too fast, too many choices, too much going on, too much, too much. None of this (according to Toffler), will be good for folks in the future (that is us). As crazy as the tail end of the decade of the 2010's were, that was NOTHING compared to how 2020 has started out. To quote a good friend of mine, "This is nuts man - totally nuts!"

The question which begs to be asked is this - where do we go from here? We are in summer (June) right now, and how school will be handled this fall is still a mystery to most of us. The economy is started to sputter back to life, and the recent jobs report was surprisingly good. That being said, way too many people are still out of work. Those who have been working from home, might be doing so for years to come. Some jobs will never come back.

I do know this. The next seven months in 2020 will be time of great change. How we care for our elderly in long term care facilities will change. No more killing fields for COVID. How we do school will change. At home learning will become more in vogue, and time off for snow days are soon to be a thing of the past. Work will change. New employment opportunities will start to appear, as some of the older jobs will disappear. Large urban cities will continue to boil and churn. When Minneapolis burned last month, so did Thrive 2040. Sorry, Met Council. 

Many of us will make the most of this summer of 2020. No, it will not be normal, but we will try to squeeze out as much normalcy as possible during the next three months. We will go into fall with caution and trepidation. As we get closer to New Year's Day of 2021, the cold realization will set in. Our world changed in 2020. It will never be the same. Change will become the norm, not the exception. Hang on and buckle up. This ride is far from over.    

Hey Jacob! All that and a bag of chips!

                                       

                                            

"You might have to resign over this one Jacob, put your tail between your legs, and head back to New York. Your reputation has been sullied beyond repair. You have a law degree - go practice law on the east coast. On final thing - don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out."   

That poor man-child mayor of Minneapolis. He wants so hard to be a major player in DFL or DNC politics. But the past couple weeks have not been kind to him. First, he allowed a police precinct to be overrun and torched by the miscreants who were causing trouble. Then he allowed hundreds of shops and businesses (many of them minority owned) to be looted, trashed, and burned. Then to top everything off, he was "booed off the stage" by protesters yesterday, as he was the sole dissenting voice to de-fund the cops. 

Where does that leave Jacob Frey? In no man's zone. The Republicans can't stand him, and the Democrats now think he is weak. What do I think? And I have said this before many times. Electing Jacob Frey was the same as electing Omar or AOC. How so? Totally unqualified for the positions they hold. Now we have circus clowns rather than adults in civic leadership. And that Star Wars bar crowd called the Minneapolis City Council? Please - don't get me started.

Running a big city, even a deep blue one like Minneapolis, takes some chutzpah and know how. Unfortunately young Mr. Frey - you have neither. You are a fish out of water in the City of Lakes. When those of us who grew up either in Minneapolis, or close to it, saw the lawlessness and brazen disregard for authority the nights of the riots, well, it was hard to watch. Rather than have law enforcement go into that melee, crack some heads, and then take people to jail, you had your police force watch as spectators. It was the most shameful act of civil disobedience I have seen in my lifetime. And the resulting damage is all on you brother.

Don't expect Uncle Sam to be generous with the $55,000,000 you are asking for in aid. I mean, why should someone else dip deep into their pockets to pay for the mess you created? Much of the bill will come from city taxpayers. Hope they are happy with it. Why? Because once the police department is de-funded and total anarchy rules the streets, the bills the fix the mess left behind will be never ending. 

No Jacob - you broke it. Not only did you break the city you were entrusted to run, you broke the confidence of the people who elected you. If you had taken civics and history while in school rather than gender studies, you would have learned about Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. He was the Mayor of New York City from days gone by. He was a progressive Republican, yet both sides of the aisle loved this man. He was able to make things work in that massive city, and to this day, is considered one of the finest mayors in American history. Instead of fashioning your leadership after someone like La Guardia, you instead used Nero as your mentor. All you were missing was the fiddle as your city burned.

You might have to resign over this one Jacob, put your tail between your legs, and head back to New York. Your reputation has been sullied beyond repair. You have a law degree - go practice law on the east coast. On final thing - don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.   

Knee Jerking (again...)

"What is next? Undo the Second Amendment? Good luck with that one. People, people - years of knee jerk voting for lunatics have given us what we have now in city and state government." 

In the business world, there is a term for over-reacting (quickly and without too much thinking) to a situation. It is called a knee jerk reaction. Seasoned managers seldom do knee jerks. Rookie managers, as well as managers who don't think strategically, are known to act this way. Nothing good usually comes out of knee jerk reactions - except more knee jerk reactions trying to undo them.

The way much of the country has reacted to the sudden onset of the COVID - 19 virus demonstrates knee jerk in many states. It sure did in Minnesota. The knee jerk was to shut just about everything down, and have the citizens huddle in their basements. Meanwhile, our economy ground to a halt, and going to the grocery store to buy the barest of essentials, was iffy. Meanwhile, many red states which practiced common sense safety, and gave the virus a wide berth, kept on doing what they do, and life went on somewhat normal. 

But the knee jerk reaction to the virus was NOTHING compared to the knee jerk reaction to the death of George Floyd. First off, let me say this. What happened to George Floyd was terrible. I think so, and everyone I have talked to feels the same. There is simply no debate on that issue. However - the aftermath of his death is up for debate. The burning, the looting, the mayhem - that was bad enough. But the politics which have come, and which are yet to come - are way, way beyond the pale.

What do I mean? First off in DC. Painting a street for two blocks, in the heart of our capitol, which spells out in large letters, "Black Lives Matter". Why? It was a message to our President from the Mayor of DC. Like President Trump was the one who authorized the killing of George Floyd. Here is a news flash for the loony Mayor of DC. That is the nation's capitol. It is not your driveway, you can graffiti up with chalk. This President is NOT a racist. There is not a shred of evidence he ever has been. Before the flinch from came from COVID, people of color have never done so well economically. This graffiti on the streets of our nation's capitol needs to come off NOW! Your reaction Mayor, war totally knee jerk.

Then there is the call to disband the police. Get rid of them. Replace them with community organizers. Normally, a suggestion like this would have been laughed at, or put on Babylon Bee for sarcasm. Unfortunately, because we have let the infestation of socialists get so deep in many city governments (hello, Minneapolis), goofball City Councils might actually get this passed. No more cops in cities which are already crime ridden. Can't wait to see the stats in Chicago it they also get rid of their cops. What is dystopia like? We will soon find out.

Another goofy knee jerk idea was to disarm the National Guard. What? The National Guard is part of the armed forces. Get that? Armed? Do the kooks want the National Guard to go around handing out flowers to law breakers? Good flipping grief people - wake up! Our nation is on the verge of total lawlessness and anarchy right now. And we want to get rid of cops and disarm the National Guard? This is enough to make Canada look normal!

What is next? Undo the Second Amendment? Good luck with that one. People, people - years of knee jerk voting for lunatics have given us what we have now in city and state government. It has given us Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. If we are not careful, it will also give us Joe Biden. Remember that in November. No knee jerking voting this time. Vote for sanity. Vote for the adults.   

Re-opening Minnesota

"What have we learned about this COVID - 19 experience? Tons. Books will be written on the lessons learned from this virus. Books will be written on the social disruption which happened after Memorial Day. Are the two related? They might be." 

Okay. Now we have lost our Penny's store. Our once busy shopping area is still not looking as it once did. Why not? We are not back to our previous "normal" yet. Wisconsin is well on its way to being back to its original normal. South Dakota is at its normal, as it never left. But Minnesota took the "No Balls Walz" blue pill, and now we are still in la-la land. It has been reported that today, the great and powerful wizard of Minnesota, will allow more of our previous "privileges" to return. We will see.

Sorry, it that sounded a bit snarky. It was meant to be. If anyone is wondering why so many citizens are taking their ire out of our governor, let me put it this way. Minnesota, which has been locked down tighter than a drum, has almost as many COVID deaths as Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota combined. What does that mean? Our stats on this disease suck, and we have sacrificed a chunk of our state's economy for nothing. A big flinch.

Enough about the past. Now to look forward. Like now that we are in summer, what is there to do? Many beaches and pools are closed, and our parks have tight restrictions on them. Baseball is still a mess, and how this shortened season will play out is still a mystery to most. Football in the fall? Who knows. 

The big question in many parents minds - is school. After this most strange school year, what happens next fall? More distance learning? And who will be the home monitors for that? More and more parents, who had been off this spring due to COVID, are being called back to work. Even those who can work from home, can't focus on their work AND be a tutor to their students at the same time. Plus, it has been reported that if schools do open up fully, up to 20% of the teachers will quit rather than go back into the classroom. Why? Too risky.

We need our restaurants opened up fully - and now. In order for us to truly be re-opened, it has to FEEL like we are normal once again. Restaurants today feel anything but normal. Stores? Same way. I guess one of the lessons we learned from the past week, is since protests and funerals for martyrs are except from social distancing and face masks, then none of the other restrictions should be enforced. No masks, no social distancing. Open the churches, the ball parks, the beaches, the state fair. LET'S GO!

What have we learned about this COVID - 19 experience? Tons. Books will be written on the lessons learned from this virus. Books will be written on the social disruption which happened after Memorial Day. Are the two related? They might be. In any event, first things first. Open up Minnesota, then we can write our books about lessons learned. Please Walz, do the right thing - just once.