Check out the column, the reveal is at the end. Seriously he is one of my favorite writers on the internet. He's not as gritty as Royko, but he still reminds me of him:

http://lileks.com/bleats/archive/20/0620/060220.html

Sunday was calm and normal, except for all the ways in which it certainly wasn’t at all.


I went to Home Depot with the Giant Swede.


Hadn’t seen him since this all started. The last time we did this was early March, and he kidded me for buying a 24-roll bale of Scotts TP. WELL LAUGH-A WHILE YOU CAN, MONKEY BOY.


Remember early March?


But this was the last day in May, a lovely blue day, and we needed stuff. Grass seed, some drill bits. He needed some drill bits as well - actually, he needed a drill. And more. Someone broke into his garage and stole the entirety of his not-inconsiderable power tool collection. Who? Oh, no idea. Someone useless. Someone with a hard story, no doubt. Depraved on account he’s deprived, Offisuh Krupke. But it’s just property - you want to deprive someone of their liberty for that?


After we finished our purchases we went outside to the hotdog cart. There’s always a hot dog cart in the summer. There’s this guy, and he has a cart, and he sells hot dogs. That’s it. Nothing better. I referred to it as “the annual appearance of the Francis Dolarhyde Cafe,” which made the Giant Swede laugh, even though it wasn’t quite accurate. Years ago when we would stop off at Lunds on a Sunday provisioning trip, there’d be a guy outside cooking up meats or veggies to promote the wares inside, and he was a dead ringer for the serial killer in “Manhunter,” right down to the blank affect. Hence the name. A decade later, the reference stands; that’s what friends are for.


We bought our hot dogs and sat on a ledge on the side of the store in the sunshine and ate them, and I’ve never tasted anything better.


Hate to say it but we were, oh, I don’t know, five feet apart.


Went back to Jasperwood, and we had cigars and conversation. Wife joined us. The Oak Island Water Feature splashed in the corner of the yard - and yes! I got it back up! A little late, or not, I don’t know. And I don’t care. The familiar quiet pacifying sound.


After he left I got to work on some chores wife had set me to do - everyone in the family was now fully engaged in dealing with the underbrush and expired bushes on the part of the territory that’s mostly ignored, because it seems to be self-policing. Not a lot of visual interest, but it’s still nice. Two tall trees, a hill, ornamental shrubs. Wife wanted me to dig out a dead bush’s root system, and oy that was work. I started to hate the root ball, the more if fought OH YOU WANT SOME OF THIS? I’LL GIVE YOU SOME OF THIS. Got out the saw, everything.


“What’s that?” Daughter asked, and pointed. Down the block the neighbors had assembled in the Triangle, and were listening to someone speak. She went down to investigate. I returned to the root ball, clippings its thick cords that burrows into the earth. It would take 30 minutes to remove it, working in close quarters between the fence and other spiky bushes - imagine changing clothes, while drunk, with six people pointing swords at you. I was almost pleased when one branch drew blood on my forearm: oh it’s on now, man. It is so on.


Daughter returned. The neighborhood watch organization was handing out tips and advice for the coming night, since we’d been warned there might be miscreants about in the residential neighborhood. Makes sense - why wouldn’t they move into the residential areas to set fires? Isn’t this the objective? That whole afflict-the-comfortable thing.


I got the root ball out and held it aloft like the 2001 Monkey who slew a foe with a weapon for the first time. Then I fixed the side security light so it would be on all night, and went to take a nap.


It was slated for 36 minutes, according to my timer, and lasted 15 minutes. Forgot to hit Do Not Disturb. Text from friend on the West Coast reporting on their new civil unrest. Went downstairs to flip on the coffee maker to ensure evening productivity, and Daughter braced me as I came down the stairs: A TANKER TRUCK RAN INTO THE CROWD OF PROTESTORS ON 35W


Huh? First thought, honestly, was “stand on a highway, do not be surprised if the end result is less than salutary,” but they’d blocked off the highway to allow the protest. BUT I had seen tweets in mid-late-afternoon about the haphazard shutdown off the roads; there’d been mistakes, and traffic was getting through. I thought, well, Occam’s Razor, driver was lost or confused, I know that patch of road, you come around a corner and you’re not expecting, you know, PEOPLE on the highway.

The tweets said the driver BARRELED INTO THE CROWD. We find the video. There was no barreling. Looks to me like he stopped without hitting anyone. He was removed from the cab, and social justice was administered. After all, the people standing on the freeway had the reasonable expectation that they would not be run over, since the authorities - you know, the murderous totalitarian state under which they groan - had blocked off the roads and was present to ensure their safety while they expressed their opinions.
Later, a tweet:
Hello, who’s this guy? Some Russian Bot? The underscore makes you suspicious:
Nope, DFL House Majority Leader.
Later deleted, but hey, has to be true in the meta sense.

Hamburgers on the grill for dinner. Delicious. Curfew falls, the womenfolk sit down to watch the news as it unfolds, I sit outside to listen.
It’s dead silent. No planes, but that’s been the case for a while. Now and then I go out of the backyard and shine the high-beam flashlight in all directions, just looking.
Okay, mood shift. Ad and then the usual Tuesday business.
This is relevant:
https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horow...gn=tw-theblaze

OP-ED JUNE 02, 2020
Horowitz: Trucker attacked by mob on I-35 was delivering fuel to black-owned business
Unbridled anarchy




It was an indelible image, etched in my young brain, that I wished I had not seen. Watching the nightly news with my parents on April 29, 1992, I, along with millions of others, witnessed Reginald Denny being dragged out of his truck at a Los Angeles intersection and beaten in an unspeakable manner in retaliation for the Rodney King beating. I never thought I'd see something like that again outside a place like the Middle East, but here we are again, staring down the barrel of unbridled anarchy.


Are fundamental rights so contorted that rioters now have the right to block streets and freeways too, demand that anyone stop for them, and then beat them out of their cars? And then the innocent drivers are the ones who get in trouble, not the murderous mobs?


Evidently, motorists are going to need a new app that shows them where riots are taking place. Otherwise, if police have not already blocked off the street, they could be confronted with a choice between continuing to move and potentially running over the people obstinately blocking their way, or stop and wait for the rioters to drag them out of the cars and hope they leave a heart still beating.

Bogdan Vechirko was just back from delivering fuel from his tanker truck when he was suddenly confronted by a huge violent mob blocking the bridge on I-35 west, the major interstate out of Minneapolis. Who would ever have thought police would stand back and allow rioters to block a freeway? Yet as the chaotic event played out on Sunday, people initially thought this was a man on a murderous rampage to kill the saintly "protesters." He actually wound up stopping to avoid hitting people, even though he was unaware of what was going on, and was dragged out of his truck and beaten. Then he was arrested by Hennepin County police. To my knowledge, nobody who beat him was arrested.

Video at site, politician posts damning tweet toward driver





A black business owner named Lonnie tweeted out the following on Sunday afternoon, which shed light on what really happened:

At site



The name of this business owner is Lonnie McQuirten of 36 Lyn Refuel Station in Minneapolis. He recently testified before a state senate committee on delaying property taxes during coronavirus.

Here is the description of the situation according to John Harrington, the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety.


"We do have some info that he was speeding," explained Harrington. "We do have some info that he saw the crowd and initially he panicked and he just kept barreling forward.


"Then he saw a young woman on a bike fall down in front of him and he slammed on the brakes. And he slid until the vehicle stopped."


It turns out the barricades were not yet up to block people from going westbound onto that bridge, and the driver was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His only crime was driving too fast on what he thought was an empty highway.


"We know that the driver of the tanker truck was on the freeway already. He was on 94 already and he turned onto 35 before we got barricades or trucks there to block off his access to 35. This was his second run of the day. He was running empty, there was no fuel in that tanker truck," said Harrington.


Is this what is confronting ordinary Americans now? Because one policeman killed a man who happened to be black, that now allows anyone to block freeways and beat motorists?


According to local media, "Gov. Tim Walz said the driver, 35-year-old Bogdan Vechirko, "feels incredibly lucky that he did not kill someone," adding that even though he was assaulted after stopping the 18-wheeler he "is really lucky Minnesota showed some of their better angels and he did not get killed."


Wow, thanks for showing such grace. A world upside down when people are free to riot on freeways and you forfeit your life if you are unaware of the riot, while those breaking the law have the right to kill you, unless of course they show "better angels" and only beat you. This is the worldview of people like Governor Walz.


This is a growing trend happening everywhere. We've seen a female shop owner savagely beaten in Rochester, New York, another business owner in Dallas nearly killed after a gruesome beating, and another one in Columbia, South Carolina, knocked unconscious. Why do these people have the right to block roads and even highways, and how are innocent people supposed to know where they are going to attack next before police have a chance to block off the roads, rather than shut down the illegal riot altogether?


Vechirko was lucky that he was not severely beaten, but other business owners and innocent bystanders have not been so lucky. The grisly images of rioters surrounding motorists and breaking into the cars must spur our government into action. Has self-defense now been outlawed as well to please the media gods of racial politics?




Obviously, we don't want people purposely trying to run over the rioters, but are we going to flip the script of criminal and victim – right to move freely vs. nonexistent "right" to riot – on its head and force innocent motorists into gruesome beatdowns?


A trucker in Tulsa who didn't want to suffer this fate drove past a "checkpoint" set up by rioters blocking I-244 and was questioned by police after two rioters were injured when he sped off. He was released because he did nothing wrong but save his own life. The media is making rioters out to be the victims and the trucker out to be a murderer.


Here is the way the Tulsa World described the incident:


The crowd let a car driven by a black female pass through and the pickup attempted to follow the car. Protesters blocked the driver's path, and the man then placed a handgun on his dashboard, Simons said. That angered protesters, who began throwing water bottles at the vehicle.


The driver then accelerated through the crowd, said Simons, who was standing near the vehicle when it happened.


"It was fast enough that I felt like I had to run," Simons said. "Everybody felt like they had to run. People scattered."


How dare he try to fight back? Doesn't he know he was told to stop by the new road patrol? He didn't have the right color of skin, evidently, like the motorist in front of him, and should have taken his beating like a man!


As of now, nobody has been charged in Minneapolis for beating Vechirko, and Vechirko himself appears to still be in custody, although that might be for his protection, which in itself is very disquieting.


This is truly a sorry and dangerous state of affairs. Rather than making individuals responsible for their actions, we are coddling criminals because of the race of one victim of a bad cop. That bad cop has now been charged with murder in a very swift indictment. Now it's time for justice against the rioters who have beaten, killed, looted, vandalized, and obstructed our free movement.