Minneapolis goes Bagdhad

The Minnesota state authorities held a press conference at 10:00 yesterday morning. Governor Walz led the parade with a classic yammer yammer yammer blah blah blah performance. I have embedded the video below. He is — they are — over their head, out of their depth, out of it, clueless. You have to see it to believe it.

Long-time race hustler Attorney General Keith Ellison is worse than out of it. He is on the other side. The governor, however, is calling the shots. At the press conference Governor Walz performed in his usual used car salesman mode. You might have bought one from the guy in the first minute of his pitch, but the second, third, fourth, and fifth clunkers he tried to peddle gave the game away. It’s time for him to pack it in.

I wrote yesterday that 500 National Guard soldiers constituted a force too light to deal with the widespread disorder in the Twin Cities and that proved to be the case. Anticipating further difficulties, the authorities declared 8:00 p.m. curfews in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Undermanned, overwhelmed, the forces stood down as the second hand crossed the 12 at 8:00 yesterday evening.

We are under assault by terrorists and anarchists conducting offensive operations throughout the Twin Cities. The unified command of soldiers and law enforcement officers withdrew to defend critical and targeted infrastructure. As arsonists set fires, as looters continued their activities, as terrorists destroyed businesses, law enforcement forces withdrew and redeployed.

The Twin Cities are coming to resemble Baghdad before the surge. Is General Petraeus available? We need the deployment of overwhelming force to conduct offensive anti-terrorist operations and retake the cities. Governor Walz called a press conference overnight to acknowledge that events had overtaken his plans. Five hundred Guard soldiers are indeed insufficient. Five thousand or 15,000 or 50,000 would be would be more like it, but Walz announced that he is calling up 1,000 more Guardsmen.

I watched the shellshocked press conference live at 1:30 a.m. overnight, but cannot find a video of it this morning. One needs to view it fully to comprehend the trouble we are in.

Ellison, incidentally, was conspicuous by his absence. He might have been catching 40 winks or, however unlikely it seems, Walz might have begun to understand that Ellison’s heart is — how to put it? — not in law enforcement.

Here I borrow from the detailed Star Tribune report including an account of the shellshocked 1:30 a.m. press conference:

“The absolute chaos — this is not grieving, and this is not making a statement [about an injustice] that we fully acknowledge needs to be fixed — this is dangerous,” Walz said. “You need to go home.”

“The terrifying thing is that this resembles more a military operation now as you observe ringleaders moving from place to place,” he said.

“I will take responsibility for underestimating the wanton destruction and the sheer size of this crowd,” Walz said. He said repeatedly that the sheer scope of the crowds and violence have been shocking, and that there was no way for for authorities to anticipate or prepare for such an onslaught.

“There are simply more of them than us,” he said.

Where has he been? It was time for political philosophy, Walz style:

“A compact that we go by in civilized society is that you have to have social buy-in,” which rioters do not acknowledge, he said. He said law enforcement has had to focus on protecting large institutions such as the Federal Reserve and power plants, acknowledging that that emphasis has come at the expense of small businesses, many of them family- and minority-owned, that have gone up on flames or been gutted by looters.

Again, where has he been? Having thrown him under the bus at his first press conference yesterday, Walz has been mending relations with Minneapolis boy mayor Jacob Frey. Frey also turned in an appearance at the overnight press conference:

An emotional Frey added, “Minneapolis, I know you are reeling. … We as a city are so much more than this. We as a city can be so much better.”

Once again, Frey made an impassioned plea for an end to the violence, saying that it was only hurting residents, not “getting back” at the police. “If you have a friend or a family member that is out there right now, call them and tell them to come home,” he pleaded. “It is not safe. It is not right.”

Yammer yammer yammer blah blah blah.

Here is a hint of last night’s toll in the heart of Minneapolis:

After midnight, as helicopters drummed above Minneapolis and smoke blanketed the shellshocked city, major fires were reported near the Minneapolis Police Department’s Fifth Precinct headquarters at Nicollet Avenue and 31st Street, including one at the U.S. post office on Nicollet, a Wells Fargo Bank, a Stop-and-Go and at a Shell gas station on Park Avenue and Lake Street. There was concern that accelerants at the gas station could explode, and onlookers scattered and ducked. Fire officials said they could not get to many sites without security.

It is apparent from the overnight press conference that intelligence has revealed the presence of out of state terrorists making credible threats against critical infrastructure. Shots are being fired at Guard soldiers. On top of the economic devastation wrought by Governor Walz’s statewide shutdown orders, we now have incredible physical damage to businesses and buildings throughout the Twin Cities.

Governor Walz has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. We need a leader with the savvy and fortitude to win the war in which we are engaged.

UPDATE: Video of the wee hours press conference earlier this morning is below.