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RealNoDeuces's avatar

There’s something so beautiful about these psychos (like Jan 6 guys) being true believers, acting on beliefs, willing to die for the king and cause and then they turn on newsmax and get called a Marxist homo boyfriend of tampon Tim that’s trying to make Trump look bad.

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

lmao

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Dierk Groeneman's avatar

Right wing accounts I follow seized the opportunity to disown Boelter, painting him as another deranged leftist friend of the governor on his way to a No Kings protest. Everyone is on edge so it's very effective. Nobody stops to ask if the story makes sense.

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J. Rock's avatar

When I heard the victims were Democratic politicians I figured the most likely explanation was a right wing nut job. I did see the picture of the "No Kings" flyers but that made me think that it was a possibility that he was going to target one of the demonstrations. It also occurred to me that he might be working with others which could be horrific.

Even if we assume people like Mike Lee were acting honestly the real test of their worth as human beings is if they apologize for jumping to ugly conclusions. An actual conservative would apologize but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen with Trump world.

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Clif Brown's avatar

Law enforcement and the military have almost always, though I can't think of an exception in American history, been on the right and willing to bear down, either psychologically or physically or both, on the people (that's us). When coups have occurred and the military took over in Latin America it was always in defense of wealth and against the rights of the people. Reaction holds the cards of power.

What was supposed to change with the American experiment was that the individual would be protected in his rights (her rights, too, more recently) against the power of authority.

What we are seeing with "No Kings" is recognition of the promise against the actuality of what Trump is doing as he treats us as the Israelis have always treated the Palestinians; that there is one party in charge and all will submit without question. Trump's actions are pure bigotry being defended as somehow making things "right" when it is only an extreme move to the political right. I heard today that Trump removed the MLKJ bust from the Oval Office, and we just had the ridiculous military salute to the Dear Leader on his birthday.

America has gone so far off the rails to the right that any kind of nonsense such as you describe can be expected daily and those who speak carelessly as did Lee can never be expected to recant except under exceptional pressure, though never changing their attitude of hatred toward the other.

As all Americans should have learned from the Vietnam War days, it is foolish to credit anything that comes from the government as truth. This has become so obvious from Sean Spicer right on through KJP up to now, that press conferences are a joke. Matthew Miller, John Kirby, the whole gang lies as a profession.

Noam Chomsky was a pioneer in truth telling, as has been Seymour Hersch. You, Ken, are upholding that truth telling tradition.

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Bonnie Blodgett's avatar

I think you're doing the thing you say they're doing: overthinking this to find a conspiracy where there isn't one. Some 80,000 people marched in St. Paul despite warnings from Walz (a Democrat) and others that a killer was loose who hated Democrats. Walz knew full well that the murders would only embolden us. More than ever, we wanted to "demonstrate" what a peaceful demonstration looks like. Two right-wing commentators had to pull some incident at a Salt Lake City "No Kings" protest (yeah, there was bloodshed) out of their asses to counter the inordinate amount of civility on display everywhere else—including in D.C. where Trump's armored tank parade was every bit as boring as the ones in North Korea. I just wish we'd get off politics and talk about the root causes of our national discord. I blame the Democrats for embracing Republican ideology circa 1990 and leaving ordinary people without representation when popular and effective progressives like Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, and Bernie Sanders were unceremoniously dumped in favor of corporate-sponsored "neoliberal" neocons of the Clinton/Obama/Biden stripe. As the wealth gap widened, the 99 percent (well, most of them) turned to the only contender left standing who gave lip service to what the Occupy movement was literally bulldozed (by "Democrat" Mike Bloomberg) for demanding eons ago. Citizens United was a catastrophe, but where was the pushback from the likes of Mike against a decision that was as certain as anything Trump has done to undermine our Constitution?

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Luke Diaz's avatar

Public communication is actually pretty difficult, especially in high tension situations. It's worth going back and figuring out ways to improve. This really should just be standard procedure for public officials.

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Bonnie's avatar

Another manifestation of of "group think" or maybe I should say group mental illness, or infectious online mob mentality. This is the kind of world we now inhabit, sadly

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

Funny, that's exactly the word my editor used - "mob rule"

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Dierk Groeneman's avatar

Ochlocracy

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Gordy's avatar

The fact that they refuse to clarify now says a lot about the police. They are the right wing military arm. The right is quick to set the narrative for any crisis, the left not so much. Now that the facts are known should be jumping all over those spreading lies without evidence. Tina Lee should address Lee's on the floor in the congressional record. Everyone else needs to inform the media of the lies. Thank you Ken for being a voice for the truth.

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Chris's avatar

Does anyone think it odd Boelter was able to run out the back door in the initial police encounter? I know LE is patting themselves on the back, but I think that first miss defines a police failure.

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Erik Paulson's avatar

The cops refuse to talk about how the originally let him escape,and their story makes zero sense. They had to know the guy. I will grill my sister until she cracks. She works for Champlin park mn as hr for the city, the cops in that department are extremely stupid… this whole thing happened about 10 blocks from her house and yes many Champlin and Brooklyn park cops live in the same neighborhood the state reps. She is not talking to me bc I have been ripping on her about how incredibly incompetent cops are in general and right in her neighborhood a classic case of keystone cops is on display… and she helped put them on the payroll… what a waste

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Jim's avatar

You're a good boy, Klip.

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

?

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Jim's avatar

Just sayin'

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

I can't tell if this is a compliment or a diss!

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Jim's avatar

Such is my way.

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Bob Martin's avatar

I wouldn't put it past the police to have planted those signs in his car. That'd be right up their (criminal) alley.

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Ken Klippenstein's avatar

i think you're underestimating how incompetent they can be

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Bob Martin's avatar

Pretty surprised at your response and the number of likes it has received. Sure, anyone can be incompetent, but remember, if the police are competent enough to plant drugs, they're certainly competent enough to plant flyers on a car seat. And most police are rabid right-wingers so they'd like nothing better than to make this seem like the work of liberals.

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Cécile Stelzer-Johnson's avatar

The Government has traditionally allied with the police: During unrest, the Police are the ones called upon to quell it. Also, psychologically, choosing a profession where you have a baton a gun, a tazer and other paraphernalia to beat on the crowds puts you in with the kind of crowd that likes to have the upper hand through violence. (When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail"?)

Don't get me wrong, I love the Police when they do their job professionally, and for the most part, I think they do it well. It is just that the profession they chose predisposes them to beat on something and to get the upper hand through violence. We would all like more "Sergeant Fridays" and less "Dirty Harrys" in the Police Force.

Releasing the picture without context was 100% wrong, but they probably sought to kill the protests by trying to scare protesters into thinking that they might be in danger. Connecting it with the marches going on that day gave them an excuse to cancel, and Tim Walz, unfortunately, fell for it. (They may actually have given him the idea to cancel along with perhaps, an exaggerated idea of a threat to the protesters).

Instead of patting themselves on the back, they should figure out how, when they got to the scene the perp was allowed to slip through the back and escape. How did he acquire all the stuff he had with him to fool people? While I'm happy they eventually got him, this first slip was a FAIL.

That is what they should focus on.

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Shannon Walsh's avatar

These conspiracy theories even punctured my carefully curated feeds of trustworthy sources, and that's unusual.

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Anjelica O’Brien's avatar

Guarantee you they’re not releasing his writing because it would clarify that his political views are extremely right wing, and that would ruin everything for publications like the New York post, who are still trying to link him to Walz

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Boris Petrov's avatar

A very confusing text - unclear what happened

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