I got a note from our university advocate at the capitol, announcing the completion of the Minnesota state budget. Is it good news? I don’t know. It’s not great news, that’s for sure.

The higher education bill maintains current funding for the University of Minnesota’s core operations in the next biennium. The capital investment (also called bonding) bill provides $60 million in bonding to repair and renew existing University of Minnesota buildings across the state. The transportation bill provides $8 million from the general fund for safety improvement to Washington Avenue Bridge. These bills have been sent to the governor, who is expected to sign them as part of the special session agreement.

Although the funding for core operations amounts to a 3.5% reduction when adjusted for inflation, we recognize it was a tough budget year at the State Capitol. UMN Advocates minimized cuts and secured a bonding bill despite narrow partisan divides by helping legislators understand the statewide value of the University.

The legislature held the line. The budget was already skin-tight and our bones were showing, so we’re going to have to cinch it up a little tighter, but it could have been so much worse. But have you ever heard of the Minnesota starvation experiment?

During World War Two, conscientious objectors in the US and the UK were asked to volunteer for medical research. In one project in the US, young men were starved for six months to help experts decide how to treat victims of mass starvation in Europe.

Do we need to repeat it? Really?

It got published on the WSJ opinion page, so you know it’s garbage. It turns out he’s a real chickenhawk…but we all knew that already.

The article begins,

Violent insurrectionists turned areas of Los Angeles into lawless hellscapes over the weekend, with anarchists setting fire to vehicles, throwing scooters and debris at police, and looting businesses—all while waving foreign flags.

We can stop right there. I’ve heard this before, about Minneapolis, another lawless hellscape. There are people who still claim that Minneapolis was burned to the ground by rioters, but I can drive into the city and see it thriving. This is a common game played by the far right: take any protest against authoritarian rule, no matter how peaceful, and inflate it into apocalyptic chaos. It’s a contrived casus belli, where the the war is targeted against the poor, the working class, and non-white people. Don’t listen to Tom Cotton, the WSJ, or Fox News, and instead read what actual residents say.

The crowd in Grand Park, and at a handful of downtown hotspots on Monday, mixed intense anger at Huerta’s detention, the immigration raids he was protesting when he was injured and arrested, and the presence of National Guard troops at the Roybal Federal Building, with determination, pride and even joy. You could see mini-reunions break out in the crowd, people reconnecting to join in common purpose. (I had a couple of these moments myself.) Los Angeles has thus far emerged from four days of protest with a clear set of goals: driving ICE, the National Guard, and apparently now the Marines from the city and county. And there’s a sense of this as a beginning, a cross between an organizing kickoff and a backyard barbeque, complete with the ubiquitous bacon-wrapped hot dog carts, manned by migrants as well.

The spasms of defiance, impressive though they may be, are scattered. Practically the entirety of the city is going about its business, blissfully unaware of what’s mainly taking place within a five-block radius. Even from block to block you could encounter nothing, followed by a combination of cries of “¡Chinga la migra!” (“Fuck the border patrol!”) and Tejano music. And while lingering images of burnt-out self-driving Waymo cars continue to play out on television and social media, the mood and spirit on Monday was overwhelmingly peaceful. The tensest standoff was led by clergy.

I didn’t know hellscapes featured bacon-wrapped hot dog carts! I don’t eat either bacon or hot dogs, so maybe that’s the horror Tom Cotton is whining about. Fortunately, alternatives are available.

A crowd of a few hundred protesters had marched along the bridge over the 101 Freeway and toward the historic El Pueblo de Los Angeles, a public park featuring a gazebo and a statue of King Carlos III of Spain. Just as the protesters had taken root on the gazebo and begun chanting, a massive semi-trailer rolled up, with a five-piece Tejano band in the bed of the truck. The band, Los Jornaleros del Norte, is made up of day laborers; the lead singer had a “Fuck ICE” shirt on, while a man holding another hybrid U.S./Mexico flag hung off the back. And the entire crowd shifted its attention to cheer raucously along to the music.

Suddenly, the protest had transformed into a celebration of the culture of Los Angeles and the roots from which it came. People waved their signs in time with the music and beamed as they danced and sang their free expression. Representatives of Homeboy Bakery, a local business that employs former gang members and at-risk youth (“Nothing stops a bullet like a job” is their motto), started giving out scones and pastries. Others handed out water.

Tejano bands and free scones? That’s more like it. Tom Cotton wants to end that.

The solution now is the same as I said then: an overwhelming show of force to end the riots.

Here’s a slogan in response, painted on the Edward Roybal Federal Building:

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty

Here. Read this essay.

Much has been made of an alleged “crisis of masculinity” among America’s young men. This sort of sweeping cultural proclamation should always make you skeptical. As an angle, it is catnip because everyone can fill in its details based on their own lives, and male writers, in particular, can use it as a launching pad to subtly cast themselves as the sort of well-developed masculine figure who might—now that you mention it—serve as a good role model.

I don’t know about all of that. What I do know is that if you are looking for negative role models for masculine virtue, there is an easy way to find them. They are employed by ICE. They are employed by the Department of Homeland Security. They are employed by the sprawling and unaccountable security state, and right now, they are out on the streets of our cities, snatching up mothers and infiltrating elementary schools. There is much to be said about the political processes that deployed these men, and the chain of socioeconomic failures that placed our nation in the position we find ourselves. But there is another important thing to be said directly to the men who go to work every day and don the tactical vests and facemasks and act like the willing gestapo agents of our idiot political leader: You guys are fucking cowards.

Tough guy? No. Straight up fucking coward, man. Pathetic. Jesus. Have some self-respect.

Exactly. Tough guys don’t wear masks and rough up working class people on the street. And they don’t follow the orders of America’s psycho version of Goebbels like these petty thugs on a power trip.

The Wall Street Journal reported on a meeting last month where Stephen Miller summoned ICE’s leadership to a meeting where he demanded that federal agents lower their standards and “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” outside of 7-11 or wherever. “‘Who here thinks they can do it?’ Miller said, asking for a show of hands.” The outcome of that demand can be seen in the ongoing terrorization of immigrants happening across the country.

Now, Stephen Miller is a little rat-faced Nazi bitch. Since his youth just about everyone around him has despised him because he has always been a miserable racist little shit whose evil heart is manifested in his detestable rodent-like visage. Knowing that, I like to imagine all those big, bad, ICE agents, manly men, so macho, shifting uncomfortably around a conference room table as they are harangued by that psychotic little bureaucrat, and then rushing out to kidnap working men from a Home Depot parking lot in order to demonstrate to their master, Stephen Bitch Ass Miller, how good they are at being America’s new gestapo.

You want to see real bravery? Click here. There’s the hero we need.

Twitchy, puffed up, goofy ass cops. No amount of guns and steroids and tear gas will ever make you cool. Fuck off, losers.

In case you’re looking for role models, here’s another one.

California is creating absolute legends.