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Defector Up All Night

They Defunded The Ponies

Mounted police officers remove the riot gear from their police horse outside the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, MN, site of the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty Images

City councilors are some of our most straightforwardly American politicians, capable of breathtaking feats of narcissism and corruption, often actively at war with their own constituents, and willing to jump through any hoop as long as the real-estate lobbies and cops tell them to. The relatively low status of the office does nothing to blunt anyone's kookier tendencies, and in fact, it makes them funnier. Someone as stupid as Tito Ortiz makes sense as a city councilor.

Anyway, I learned about Minneapolis city council member LaTrisha Vetaw today because she pulled off a hell of a performance at a meeting Tuesday night when she tearily read into the record the names of nine police horses who had recently lost their jobs. A quick search yields three other Vetaw facts: she refused to put on the same T-shirt as every other person in the crowd at a Timberwolves playoff game last year; AIPAC wanted her to run against Ilhan Omar; and she had a meltdown this past January when she yelled at fellow city councilors and activists about how horrible unhoused people are.

The seven charged seconds after she says, "Those are the horses," in an extremely stern tone, and various people in attendance fail to hold in their guffaws? Those seconds are perfect.

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