Once nice thing about being a conservative these days…
…is that all your “conspiracy theories” turn out to be true.
Once nice thing about being a conservative these days…
…is that all your “conspiracy theories” turn out to be true.
Tim Walz loves him some Chinese Communism.
Well, at the very least he loved it, back when he was teaching kids “social studies”:
There appears to be precious little evidence that he changed anything but his surface decorations (during 12 years as a “moderate” while campaigning in the rural 1st CD).
When Governor Klink and the DFL legislative majority were making the case to squander the “surplus” [1], they put “cutting poverty by 30%” as one of their goals.
So – how is poverty in Minnesota doing?
Well – we don’t know.
Official poverty stats conveniently trail real time by a couple of years.
Official poverty rates trail real time by a couple of years. In 2022, the official poverty rate in MN was 9.6% – up from 9.3% in 2021, and an even 9% in 2020.
So at some point – 2023? 2024? 2025? – the poverty rate needs to drop to 6.4% – a rate the state hasn’t seen in recent memory.
I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and guess the rate isn’t dropping to a historic low next year.
Any action on that bet?
[1] Which, let’s not forget, wasn’t really a surplus
SCENE: A small postwar “starter” home in New Hope, Minnesota. It is about 10PM. Josh McGILL, 35 year old estimator and sometimes technician for a family HVAC business, and Cassie McGILL, 33 and an office manager for a real estate firm, have finally gotten their kids to bed for the evening. They are working on the bills as the evening news plays on the TV in the background.
JOSH: Well, if we just had $100 more, the budget would be balanced.
CASSIE: But Junior is going to need new skates for hockey soon.
JOSH: Ugh. I don’t know that I’m going to be able to get a lot over overtime.
CASSIE: And then there’s the elephant in the room – this house is just too small for three kids.
JOSH: The way mortgage rates are going, we can’t afford to move.
CASSIE: And with food up 30%, gas and heating up…
JOSH: …don’t forget taxes on everything going up…
CASSIE: …that too – I don’t know how we make that work.
JOSH: And with our commercial customers dropping like flies, we are going to wind up laying people off at this rate.
CASSIE: (sighs heavily). We’re still paying for that catalytic converter that got stolen. What are we going to do?
(The TV mysteriously gets louder, and Kamala HARRIS and Tim WALZ dart their eyes to CASSIE and JOSH, through the screen)
HARRIS: Feel joy!
JOSH: DId you say something Cassie?
CASSIE: It’s…the TV.
HARRIS:
WALZ: Do it for One Minnesota!
CASSIE: Oh, Madame Vice President and Governor Walz. Hi. It’s just that things are kinda…stressful…
(The sound of Beyonce’s song “Freedom” turns up, and HARRIS and WALZ start dancing)
JOSH: It’s kinda like, prices have gone up way, way faster than our incomes, and business is slowing, and interest rates for my business are crazy, and whatever savings we have are getting bled out, and our kids school just isn’t doing the job, and…
(The music stops abruptly. HARRIS and WALZ’s eletronic gazes fix upon the McGills)
WALZ: Perhaps you weren’t listening.
HARRIS: Don’t be weird ,Josh and Cassie. Feel joy! Because joy is what you should feel if you don’t want to be the weird person who isn’t feeling joy.
JOSH: Er, that’s great, but it doesn’t…
HARRIS: (Scowling). I said feel joy. .
WALZ: Now. For One Minnesota.
HARRIS: And One America, not weird America, a joyful America, unburdened by the weight of what has been.
(And just as suddenly as they appeared, they are gone, as KARE 11 shows TikTok videos of the Saint Paul City Council dancing.)
CASSIE: What was that?
JOSH: I have no idea.
And SCENE.
…that amazes me about this “interview” with the loathsome Senator Smith…:
…is that Acosta actually called her on her lie.
My expectations of the media have fallen that low.
On the other hand, Esme Murphy wouldn’t have done even that.
The Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum is a non-partisan, private museum located inside Camp Ripley, up near Baxter.
It published a book referencing MInnesotans’ involvement in twenty years of the Global War on Terror.
It includes Governor Walz’s comments at a 9/11 address the the Capitol.
I’ve screenshot this quote from those remarks:
Let’s forget for a moment that Bagram is in Afghanistan; people flub things when speaking in public. Let’s just let that slide for the moment.
He said “he was in the Guard – and one night, he stood on a ramp at Bagram”.
Was this yet another cutesy turn of phrase – “I said I was in the Guard, and that I was at a Ramp Ceremony; I didn’t literally say my Guard service and this ceremony intersected, you weird Repubulican”.
But it sure does look like he’s saying he was in the Guard in…er, someplace in action, doesn’t it.
So, Governor and Veep Candidate Walz supports censorship of “misinformation” (which is defined by his sycophants in the media) and “hate speech”, which is defined by…him.
I’m gonna guess this gets called “hateful misinformation”.
One heartbeat away from the presidency, if America doesn’t wise up this fall.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is whacking weeds along his alley. He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, who appears to be inspecting peoples recycling bins for inappropriate material.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Oh, shiiiiiure as I live and breathe, it’s Aver…
LIBRELLE: Shut up. Republicans are the worst possible combination of Nazis, Fascists and slave-owning Confederate traitors!
BERG: You don’t say.
LIBRELLE: I do – and so does America’s best governor and fun uncle, Tim Walz!
BERG: Huh. So you’re saying a populist utopian movement that builds itself around a central mythology, that relentlessly sorts society into “in” and “out” groups, that co-opts or destroys the societal institutions to consolidate and uphold its power,that requires enemies either internal or external to divert attention away from the problems they cause, and tolerates, and even glorifies and fetishizes violence to intimidate and subdue opposition, is Fascist?
LIBRELLE: Yep!
BERG: Right. And a “fascist” movement that obsesses over race to the point that it’s their fundamental motivation, screening mechanism and call to action resembles Naziism?
LIBRELLE: Uh, yeah!
BERG: Huh. And a movement that exists within our Federalist system, but ignores or actively denigrates the parts of that system that inconveniences its pursuit of its political goals, and exists mainly to uphold the wealth and power of its key stakeholders, resembles the Confederacy?
LIBRELLE: Er…yes. And why do you put all the links in when you talk? That’s just #weird.
BERG: So…sorting and denigration…
LIBRELLE: (Plugs ears, runs away) Nananananana can’t hear you….
BERG: (sotto voce) Oh, I think you can.
And SCENE.
To: America
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant and American
Re: Tim “Governor Klink” Walz
America,
Some of you – OK, most of you – may be getting your first introduction to Governor Tim Walz, as the noise machine frantically tries to position him as a viable VP candidate.
“Small town regular Joe” is one of the costumes he puts on, complete with an ancient International Scout and an NRA cap…
…well, no. He ditched the NRA cap when he had to power-suckup to the “progressive”/Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) wing of the party to beat back Erin Murphy and Erin Maye Quade in the primary in 2018. He still puts on the costume on occasion – the DFL sends a social media intern with him for pictures at the lake, or driving the Scout, or having Peggy Flanagan feed him a corn dog.
Anyway – if the news blitz is your first introduct5ion to Governor Klink, let’s go through some pros and cons of him and his administration.
Cons of Tim Walz
Pros of Tim Walz
He spends a lot of money at the State Fair.
That pretty much it.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is trimming weeds while listening to “Office Ladies” on headphones. He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has come up the sidewalk, looking for evidence of herbicide use.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: (Oblivious)
LIBRELLE: The so-called “assassination attempt” was pretty much a fake.
BERG: (No response, as he continues to listen to his podcast)
LIBRELLE: It looks like his ear was cut by a piece of glass! What a drama queen!
BERG: (Nothin’)
GUY RIDING PAST ON BIKE: So what do you think it was that accelerated this supposed piece of glass to a speed capable of taking a chunk out of the President’s ear?
WOMAN WAITING AT BUS STOP ACROSS THE STREET: Yeah! Perhaps magic?
GUY TRIMMING HEDGES DOWN THE BLOCK: Maybe the kids from Slytherin playing around with their wands again?
LADY IN KITCHEN, LISTENING THROUGH WINDOW: Maybe it was Umbrella Man?
BUS DRIVER (Picking up the woman across the street): Couldn’t have possibly been a bullet aimed at the candidate’s head, could it?
LIBRELLE: (Looks around, sheepishly slinks away as BERG continues along, undisturbed)
And SCENE
President Biden, in his remarkably dilatory and perfunctory statement about the murder of a Trump supporter and the attempt to murder his rival, called for “Unity”.
It was a chanting point that a lot of Democrats took a break for claiming Republicans were “threats to democracy” to gravely intone.
Let’s talk about it.
Back before they called online talk shows “podcasts”, I appeared on one. There was a panel of guests talking politics. There were online “phone callers”. It was sort of like a talk show, only without the radio.
The host introduced a caller. He identified himself as from Detroit. He had a very African-American accent; I say this to describe the sound, not to caricature the person.
He said “What this country needs is unity“.
Eventually, I asked the caller “So, let’s talk about this ‘unity’. True unity has to be consensual. That means everyone is going to compromise a little bit to achieve this ‘unity’. So tell me – what Republican principles are you willing to accept to achieve the ‘unity’ you’re talking about?”
“Oh”, he responded. “Republicans are BUUUUUL-shit”.
Democrat calls for “unity” seem about as perfunctory as someone who’s said the Lord’s Prayer so many times they’ve disconnected their brain from the act. Unity good. Disunity bad.
It’s empty. There is no effort behind it. It has no meaning.
As usual, Walter Hudson puts it better than most:
Until they give on something, it’s all just words.
And they don’t have to give on much. Like, “all that yapping about ‘threats to democracy’ and ‘literally Hitler’ and ‘this could be our last election’ was a little overheated. We’re all on the same team. Let’s have a solid American-style election, here”.
You’d be crazy to hold your breath, of course. Dennis Prager says “being a leftist means never needing to apologize”. It’ll never occur to them.
Snopes finally admits something conservative media has been saying for seven years and change:
Not sure what it was that prompted them to cough up the truth.
Perhaps because, at least among the opinion-making class, the damage is done and irrecoverable; in this case, “Journalist” Christopher Ingraham of the MN Reformer:
He’s one of the “gatekeepers”, doncha know.
To: Hypothetical Attorney General (Federal or State)
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Opportunity
Mr./Ms. Hypothetical Future Attorney General,
Looking at this:
…and this:
I’ve got to ask – what’s it going to take to get the MNDFL into a RICO investigation?
If they’re not racketeering, I’m not sure who is.
That is all.
The Strib’s editorial cartoonist accidentally took a chunk out of DFL policy.
And that could not be tolerated:
That’s right – Grove apologizes to the DFL for his paper telling the truth.
Heads will no doubt roll.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is waiting at a local bar for a small debate society. He’s reading the menu, and doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has entered the bar, carrying a protest sign reading “Debate Is White Supremacy”. BERG doesn’t notice LIBRELLE – but LIBRELLE notices him.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Ah, sssshhhhiiut the front door, it’s Ave…
LIBRELLE: Shut up. The verdict against Hunter Biden shows that we do not have a two-tiered justice system! Nobody is above the law!
BERG: Sure.
LIBRELLE: Hah. I thought you’d say…(stops) Er, what?
BERG: If you ignore the fact that the Department of Justice made a concerted effort to slow-walk the tax evasion and corruption allegations so that the statutes of limitations expired, especially on the allegations that could have led investigators to “the Big Guy”? Yeah. Perfectly just.
LIBRELLE: (Uneasily) Er…right. Right?
BERG: As far as you know, yes.
LIBRELLE: Whew. I thought so. (Walks away, waving sign and trying to disrupt the debate)
And SCENE
This needs to be said.
Dennis Prager says “everything the left touches, it destroys”. The language is one of those things, and the left’s been actively working on it for decades.
The left has made so many words meaningless:
And, in this campaign, “Democracy” – which has come to mean “everything the Democrat party wants”.
Modern progressivism is a social chameleon; it turns itself, and its history, into whatever it needs to to accomplish its ends.
Modern media, for the most part, are oblivious, if not downright supportive.
But there are exceptions.
David Mikics at “Arts and Letters” reviews Nellie Bowles’ Morning After the Revolution, a brief history of modern American progressivism’s contortions since the death of George Floyd.
The latest litmus test goal for progressives, erasing Israel from the map, will prove to be no more achievable than eradicating whiteness. But the movement has never been about actual results, only the public display of righteous intentions. Lately the righteousness has been serving evil ends, but few leftists are willing to admit this. Instead, they say that students demanding justice is a noble thing, whether or not what they are demanding is actually just; or that there really aren’t many extremists; or that they oppose genocide in Gaza, whether or not a genocide is actually happening, and while ignoring the actual genocidal rhetoric and actions of Hamas; or mostly, that you should be denouncing Trump instead.
Michelle Goldberg, in her Times op-ed about Bowles’ new book, wistfully yearned for the return of the “progressive urgency that marked the Trump presidency.” Except, the urgency is still there—not this time smashing the windows of minority business owners, saying that math is racist, or championing the right to shoot up in public, but applauding the murder of Jews, past and future. Putting progressive urgency in the past tense is a way of closing the book on that past while at the same time erasing what progressives are saying and doing in the present, in order to avoid any moral or practical responsibility for a political program that has clearly gone off the rails.
Progressivism’s moral bankruptcy is hard to overlook. Unless, of course, you write for The New York Times, in which case your strategy is to pretend that the left extremism of the past few years either didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. Luckily, we have Nellie Bowles to show us otherwise.
The whole thing is worth a read.
Block a freeway? Burn down a neighborhood? Jack a car, rob a store, shoot up on a train, b**w a john on a bus, attack someone on a train platform?
Mary Moriarty’s got your back.
Exercise your first amendent right to demonstrate for Mary Moriarty’s enemies, whoever they are, wherever you are?
You’re a threat to democracy:
Mary Moriarty is the real authoritarian – or “fascist”, as the kids are calling ’em these days.
UPDATE: Here’s Londregan’s attorney, Chris Madel’s response.
And let me tell you…
…it may be the best press conference I’ve seen since Norman Schwartzkopf’s wartime pressers. More drop-mic moments than a “Freddie Mercury” night at a karaoke bar.
Wish we could get this guy to run for Senator or Governor, if he’s GOP.
To: Alvin Bragg,
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: You Did It!
I’ve never been coy about the fact that I’ve never cared about Donald Trump – or at least his dominant public persona. I don’t care for what his erratic and impulsive nature cost the GOP in 2018 and 2020.
Something I like far less than Trump? Debasing the justice system to harass poltiical opponents and try to rig elections.
Alvin Bragg’s goal may not have been to create someone who’s going to do whatever he can to push Trump over the top this fall.
If it were, I’m not sure what he’d have done differently.
January 6 was a riot – and the foundations of our representative republic were never in danger, any more than during Watergate or the Civil War.
The Trump trial – activities that according to the judge related to no crime, over charges that the FEC said weren’t crimes back when they were within the statute of limitations – is a direct assault on one of the things that tenuously separates America from the barbarians.
So far.
Congrats, Dems. You did it. You dragged me, kicking and screaming, into supporting Trump .
Let’s make America a constitutional republic with the rule of laws, not men, again.
Former representative Ryan Winkler has led us down a twisty, turny path with some surprises over his legislative and extra-legislative careers.
He’s swerved from the ridiculous to the, well, occasionally admirable, and back, and forth and back and forth, and backandforth…
And, well…:
Denying the industralized murder of 11 million people,
versus
Legitimate questions and doubts about everything government told us about Covid from the very beginning – remembering that many of the “conspiracy theories” of 2020/2021 turned out to be true: natural immunity works, and for longer than the vaccines; fomite spread didn’t happen; lockdowns were useless at best; the Great Barrington Declaration was right (the vaccines should have been targeted at the elderly and vulnerable), researchers lied even about the intended effects of vaccines or that “Zero Covid” was ever possible, masks made little to no difference, and there’s a pretty significant chance the virus did start as a result of Frankenvirus research in China.
Holocaust denial is a social pathology. Pandemic “denial”, at four years remove, is neither pathological nor especially denying any fact.
Someone needs to take a deep breath.
Brazil is going through an exaggerated version of the US’s current gyrations; between a “right wing” leader who, the expert class told us, “is going to destroy democracy“, to a left-wing oligarch who is actually destroying democracy in the name of “saving democracy”.
In particular, they – and their American, Democrat party (and American big-media allies) are trying to crush free speech, to, er…
…uh…
…”save” it.
Michael Shellenberger is on the front lines. Expand the tweet to read the whole thing:
Berg’s Seventh Law in action; the party that is (or was) the first to bleat about McCarthyism, is the McCarthyist party:
“Mr. Shellenberger,” [Rep. Kamlager-Dove, D-CA] said to me yes or no? Is it true that you have repeatedly published false information that defamed public figures who are dedicated to combating disinformation?”…
Long story short:
Remember this when NPR yaps about their “disinformation” efforts.
In the wake of three episodes of pro-Palestine protesters burning themselves to death, the sixties – the radical-chic version – called to tell the left of the 2020s to dial back the crazy:
I mean, if “interests of power” = weeding out the most insane elements of the crowd that also wants to self-immolate Western Civilization, she may have a point.
On the other hand, it’s a teeeeeny little step from this to “not immolating other ‘serves the interests of power'”.
The worst part about last week’s news about long-time National Public Radio (NPR) editor Uri Berliner’s tell all about the network’s, uh, systemic bias toward the left isn’t the bias itself (and if you haven’t read Berliner’s entire article, you should). We all knew that; it was obvious on issue after issue:
It’s not that the network has lied about it for decades; as recently as a couple years ago, Ira Glass and Bob Garfield dismissed the allegations, saying “multiple studies” proved it was untrue – conveniently without showing the “studies” for serious examination.
It’s not that they went full-bore “woke”:
Race and identity became paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace. Journalists were required to ask everyone we interviewed their race, gender, and ethnicity (among other questions), and had to enter it in a centralized tracking system. We were given unconscious bias training sessions. A growing DEI staff offered regular meetings imploring us to “start talking about race.” Monthly dialogues were offered for “women of color” and “men of color.” Nonbinary people of color were included, too.
These initiatives, bolstered by a $1 million grant from the NPR Foundation, came from management, from the top down. Crucially, they were in sync culturally with what was happening at the grassroots—among producers, reporters, and other staffers. Most visible was a burgeoning number of employee resource (or affinity) groups based on identity.
It’s not even that NPR actively denies they have a problem – “my weaknesses are actually my strengths”, as Michael Scott put it in a similar situation – and septupled down, suspending Berliner for doing business against the family and hiring a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who reads like a Babylon Bee caricature of a Prius-driving “In This House” sign-wielding upper-middle-class credentialist Karen.
(Naturally, the real crime is “pouncing” on Maher)
As great a service as Berliner has given the world of journalism, the biggest problem isn’t even that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Berliner’s observations about NPR appear to apply, to one degree or another, at every mainstream media newsroom, particularly here in the Twin Cities. All four local TV news stations, to say nothing of the Strib, are reliable DFL mouthpieces. While some reporters are modestly diligent about getting a variety of points of view, that appears to be much less a priority than it used to be..
In particular, Minnesota Public Radio seems to have abandoned their long-time drive for, if not “balance”, at least trying to include more perspectives. Not so long ago, NPR reporters would reach out to the state’s opposition – not just in the legislature, but opposition advocacy groups for their groups points of view on issues. When the DFL would float one of their gun control bills, for example, you’d hear Bryan Strawser or Rob Doar along with the usual suspects from Everytown or “Protect” MN.
When was the last time you heard any of that?
And while I try not to conflate Human Resources with news, it can’t possible escape notice that while MPR is famously hostile to hiring anyone to the right of Paul Wellstone, and is an actively hostile workplace to any that might leak through, they hired a meteorologist who’d gotten whacked for rhetoric too extreme for KARE, had a political reporter who dated and eventually married the state’s sitting ultraprogressive Lieutenant Governor, and another newsroom figure who we are assured no-way no-how frothed with hatred for conservatives and all they stood for before he retired.
No. The worst thing is, all of this systemic bias not only guts the media’s ability to do it’s most important job – holding government accountable – but eradicates any real reason to trust the media to do that job. It erodes the trust among people and institutions that a society needs to make “democracy” work.
And the worst part still? Either they are too cloistered in their class bubble to see the problem, or they think their class’s interests are what society actually needs.
The fact that NPR has become “Religious Radio” for the secular faith of the modern left hasn’t been even a serious debate outside prog journo circles in over a decade.
The perception that the rest of the media is the same thing in a lower-gloss format? That’s the part that needs to sink in.
In California, fast-food restaurants must now pay $20/hour. Newsom has celebrated this as a major achievement.
But Newsom’s restaurant group can, and does, hire people for much, much less.
PlumpJack Cafe in Olympic Valley – which is among a group of eateries owned by a company Newsom founded in 1992 – is hiring a part-time busser who “will aim to assist the food server … to ensure guest satisfaction during all aspects of the dining experience,” according to a ZipRecruiter posting.
The job listing states the salary for the busser is $16 an hour plus tips.
But a food service worker would make more working at a McDonald’s than at the high-end restaurant and bar thanks to the new $20 fast food minimum wage that went into effect Monday.
Fast food restaurants under Newsom’s law includes any place without table-side service that has more than 60 locations around the country – which seems pretty oddly specific, targeting McDonalds and skipping Chilis…
…or the PlumpJack group, where you can get a steak for $90 with tax and tip.
Some animals are more equal than others…
To: DOJ/DHS/FBI/Deep State
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: McCarthy Called, He Wants His Scare Back
Feds,
Just a quick detour into music history:
OK – with that out of the way:
I mean, I‘ve been predicting this since 2009 – not that it was a huge reach.
Anyway, Ms. Federal Agent, it’s b-E-r-G. Not “U”. I’ve never actually met a Burg. And yes, that dress makes your ass look fat.
That is all.