Author Archives: Mitch Berg

Denormalizing

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Remember December 1, 2016?

Maybe not.

But if you don’t, I consider it my mission to make sure that date lives on – dare I say, in infamy.

It was the date that reps from the New York Times and Washington Post newsrooms went on the air and told the nation…

…well, the tiny, self-selecting part of the nation that listens to NPR on the weekend – that it was time for the news media to stop playing by the rules that they always told the nation they played by, the whole “telling people the facts and let them draw their own concusions” thing, and started using their power to “de-normalize” President Trump.

And almost four years later, here we are:

Not Martin Van Buren, the most genuinely corrupt president in history.

Not James Buchanan, the inept buffoon who all but sent out engraved invitations to the Civil War.

Not Woodrow Wilson, the Princeton dean who lied about keeping the nation out of war, did more than any other single person to federalize and weaponize Jim Crow and empower the Klan, and launch the bureaucratic state that’s eating the nation alive today.

No. Trump. A coarse populist buffoon who has, nonetheless, pretty much done what he said he’d do (start bringing troops home, revive the economy after the slowest recovery since the Depression, nominate conservative SCOTUS justices), a few nobody expected (roll the ball farther toward peace in the middle east than any president, defeated ISIS), and brought the extreme delusional madness of the left fully out in the open, where (if America is wise) it can be stomped on hard, God willing…

…oh. I get it now.

Not The <I>Babylon Bee</I>

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Talking about Hunter Biden’s addiction is mean to addicts.

Do you know what’s really mean to addicts?

Enabling them

Giving a separate justice system to the powerful.

(Notice how NPR “fact checked” the assertion that Biden was kicked out of the Navy? he got an “administrative discharge” – as if he’d have gotten that had he been a kid from Oklahoma…)

Using them as a misapplied political point.

That’s mean to addicts.

Biden Ad – Part 1

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I saw an ad on television. Donald Trump only cares about the stock market. He gave tax cuts to the rich. Joe Biden will fix all that.

Stock market – fat cats – rich people. Yeah, screw ’em. Not like it’ll affect my family at all. Go for it, Joe!

Well, except for that IRA that I had from private practice. And my kid’s 401k. My wife’s Deferred Compensation and Health Care Savings Accounts. Those are all invested in the stock market. And they’re not insured like bank accounts so if the market tanks, they lose everything.

Not me. I’m a government employee. We have defined benefit pensions through Minnesota State Retirement, Public Employees Retirement, or Teacher’s Retirement, all of which are administered by the State of Minnesota and prudently invested in . . . the stock market. Which Biden’s going to tank to punish the rich.

Oh, crap.

Joe Doakes

It’s gotten to the point where you hope Biden’s ads are just chanting points to con the gullible.

No There, There

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The question remains: with 85% of downtown workers not working downtown, and at least 10,000 of them never coming back, how much is this article about skyway businesses sodtpedaling the reality?

Steve Cramer, the president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, says only 15% of the typical workforce population works downtown right now.

Several businesses in the Skyway are closed at least temporarily due to COVID-19. Cramer couldn’t specify how many.

“We probably will see a few less of those establishments when things kind of bounce back, but when things bounce back, that will create new opportunities for growth so we’re looking for that hopeful day as well,” Cramer said.

In theory, yes – if Governor clink ever “allows“ things to go back to normal, it’s hypothetically true that all those empty skyway store fronts will provide a world of opportunity for the next round of merchants.

Provided, of course, that people come back – that working from home doesn’t gut the commercial real estate market – and that the public safety situation downtown doesn’t keep businesses away

Blue Fragility – State Of The States

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The pandemic is beginning its eighth month – and the lockdown is well into seven months of devastation America’s economy, mental health and well-being.

And you’re starting to see Big Left hopping up in down with glee – the case numbers are starting to move upward in “Red” America, justifying their almost onanistic, millenialistic desire to see the infidels pay for their impudence.

But how’s it really going out there?

I took the stats from Worldometers as of October 13th, and broke them down across a few different statistical groupings:

GroupingCovid fatalities per capita as of 10/13, 2020
National average666
“Blue” state average713
Red State average362
“Purple” state average (“red” states with major, usually Democrat-controlled, metro areas)569
States with > 10 milllion population704
States with > 20 million population863
States with <1 million population (all “colors”)354 (307 if you leave out hard-blue Rhode Island)

The Redneck Bloodbath just isn’t happening.

Mere Miles From The Statue Of Liberty

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New York law enforcement looking for Jews trying to sneak in a little forbidden prayer:

There are times I think secession is too mild-mannered. It might be time to expel some states from the US, and offer their citizens asylum.

When Making Your Plans For This Evening

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Busy night tonight. Here’s what’s going on.

Jason Lewis – Second Amendment Virtual Town Hall. I’ll be MC-ing a virtual town hall with US Senate candidate Jason Lewis at 6PM tonight. You can register for it here.

Every election is important for Second Amendment supporters. But this one is particularly fraught. On the one hand, support for gun rights was growing, perhaps virally, even before the Blue City Plague and the Democrat Riots. The number of undecideds, newbies and leftists who’ve strapped up in the past seven months should change

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Debate – After that, join Brad Carlson, the staff of AlphaNews, and me on AM1280 at 8PM for an hour of talk about the latest in MInnesota and national campaign talk, in what has been an amazingly turbulent week.

It’s a good day to be an extrovert!

Blue Fragility: It Never Ends

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This is not the Babylon Bee.

“Alternate reality”.

New York still has a per capita death toll triple the national average. New York City’s economy – off Wall Street, anyway – is in the tank. It’s school system is saved from being a shambles only by having been a shambles before the epidemic. Fredo Cuomo and Ratzo DiBlasio spent the last six months playing out petty intra-party political squabbles as New Yorkers died in box lots.

Progressives do, indeed, exist in an “alternate reality”.

Question

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Record number of women and minorities seeking concealed carry permits.

When Harris gets elected and her first Executive Order bans all guns, will the New York Times headline read, “Women and Minorities Hardest Hit”?

Joe Doakes

Should Harris/Biden win, and the Senate flip, and given the left’s predilection to overreaching when they get power, I suspect the first mid-term is going to get pretty sporty for any Democrats outside major metro areas.

I suspect that’s why Big Left has been trying to beat down the NRA, frankly. Not that that’ll help ’em much.

The Inmates

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Don’t let the title – or the fact that it’s in the generally unforgiveable Slate, for that matter – put you off from reading this piece, “The Store That Called the Cops on George Floyd “.

This piece captures not only the history of CUP Foods, the South Minneapolis bodega whose employee called 911 on George Floyd last Memorial Day, a Palestinian immigrant family that’s worked a couple of generations of butts off to succeed in a “transitioning” neighborhood through a couple of waves of blight.

More than that, it captures the successive waves of fervid racism (Black on Arab, Black on European, Arab and Black on European), community spirit, delusion, and the unlikely trifecta of community spirit infused with delusion and racism:

Toussaint Morrison, a Black Lives Matter organizer in Minneapolis, said he doesn’t actually see any problem with CUP Foods reopening. But he doesn’t necessarily think anyone should shop there…On CUP Foods reopening, he said, “I say get a Black-owned corner store near there, and say shop here. We’ll beat all of their prices. Even if we lose money, whatever.” The point, he said, is to keep Black money in the Black community: “Whether they open or not, it’s on us as a community to not buy their shit. It’s that simple.”

So – far from dismissing it because of a “woke” copy-editor’s inelegant titling, or its laughable origins (Slate, for flock’s sake), I urge you to read it as a guide to everything that’s going to slowly strangle Minneapolis.

And to maybe hang onto it as a time capsule showing future generatons how “community” became impossible.

Swirling

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When Conservatives say American culture is swirling the bowl, this is
what they mean.

The statement of facts given by the Court of Appeals:

***

The Minnesota Vixens were a women’s tackle-football team.  From 2012
through 2017, they were part of the Independent Women’s Football
League.  Christina Ginther applied to play but was told she could not
join the team because league policy requires that all players be “born
female.”  Ginther is a transgender woman.

***

The issue in the case is a technical point about whether the team
tendered a claim to the league to pay for the lawyers to defend it. 
Ignore that, doesn’t matter.  The important part is the Minnesota Human
Rights Act protects the rights of a man dressed up as a woman to sue a
woman’s organization for refusing to allow him to play tackle football
against women.

Swirling.

Joe Doakes

Swirling notwitstanding, I can’t wait until a transgender female tries to break into roller derby – which is in my observation an activity packed to the gills with virtue-signaling enthusiastic progressives.

The court case would be more fun than the skating.

Orwell Was A Pollyanna, Part CVII

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Presidents nominating, and Senates confirming, SCOTUS seats via the the process defined in the Constitution is “packing”

Repealing a working-class tax cut won’t increase taxes on the working class.

Nobody’s coming for your guns.

“Anti”-Fa doesn’t exist.

High density cities, with all their accoutrements (mass transit, densely-packed infranstructure) are more sustainable, livable.

The protests are mostly peaceful.

A decade and a half of demonizing police and running a catch-and-release judicial system, combined with open threats to defund or abolish the police, have no effect on crime rates, silly peasants:

The problem isn’t that the Minneapolis Student Council and the president of its Sustainability Club are lying to the people.

The problem is that they know the people who vote for them are too uncritical, complacent, dependent or stupid to know any better.

So far, it seems like a winning strategy.

Politically, I mean.

If Government Won’t Keep Order…

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…then people will do it for themselves. That is not always a good thing.

Last week, Minneapolis was briefly roiled at the story of three black teenagers who died when their car rolled during a police chase.

The roiling muted a bit when it got out that the teens who were just on the brink of getting their lives together had just beaten the dritt out of a 72 year old woman to steal her car.

Pictures capture the marks left on a 72-year-old woman’s face after she was the victim of a carjacking in north Minneapolis.

It’s an experience Schlee says has also left a mark on her aunt’s overall well being.

“They punched her and knocked her to the ground to get her purse. They took off in their car, got halfway down the alley, realized they had the keys to her car backed up and she was standing up by now they got back out, hopped in her car,” said Schlee. 

Schlee says her aunt’s car is the one Minneapolis police were chasing through north Minneapolis early Monday morning, with three teenagers inside.

All three teenagers in the car died when they lost control and crashed. Schlee says her aunt had been in the area near Dowling Ave. N, taking care of a relative’s cat.  

The story didn’t get much coverage, but it did at least same some of the usual outrage hustlers into shutting up for once.

For now.

This is DFL rule in MInneapolis. Or anywhere, really.

Riddle

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Who’s got two thumbs, and is the only person in the world who can’t call Donald Trump’s Twitter feed “an ill-advised mass of ready/fire/aim malaprops?”

Why, that’d be Representative Ryan Winkler, if he were pointing two thumbs at himself:

50-90% of Covid patients are asymptomatic. For many others – myself included – it felt like the chest cold I get nearly every spring; if it weren’t for a strange rash on my hand, I wouldn’t have even gotten an antibody test, much less a serology test.

So – now Ryan Winkler is Covid-shaming. Seems he knows as much about epidemiology as he does black history.

This is today’s DFL.

Once Bitten

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A majority of Americans are not only worried about violence after the election – they’re doing something about it:

When asked about just what sort of violence they expected to see, those polled responded with “riots,” “looting,” “burning” as some of their predictions. “Trashing of cities” was another response.

The YouGov poll was completed between October 1 – 2, 2020 and used 1,503 respondents.

It followed another poll released October 1 that found 61 percent of Americans agree with the concern the U.S. could be on the verge of another Civil War.

Additionally, 52 percent of consumers have also stockpiled food or essential goods in anticipation of social unrest tied to a resurgence of coronavirus in the coming months and/ or the election.

Unmentioned – they’re also gunning up numbers that crush all previous records.

This could be good news for conservatism in the long run; genuinely self-reliant people tend not to vote “progressive”.

Provided the GOP doesn’t screw it up…

…oh.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

Due To Covid

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I used to drive to work, half-an-hour each way.  I listened to Sirius XM
in the car.  They sent me a renewal reminder: $160 for another year.

I called and told them to let it lapse.  I work at home, I don’t listen
to the car radio.  Oh, but they can offer me a promotional rate.  And
expand my package to let me listen on-line.  And . . .

No.  If you hadn’t tried to gouge me, maybe I’d have let it renew.  But
teaser rates and short-term promotions won’t lure me back; they only
serve to prove you could have offered me a better deal earlier, but
chose not to.

I suspect there will be a raft of business failures in the next year or
two, prompted by similar experiences.

Joe Doakes

I’ve got my own beeves with Sirius’ way of doing business. A company whose technology is that expensive and whose service is nonetheless that expendable needs to be a lot smarter than Sirius is.

MEDIA CLICHÉ ALERT

Especially in these uncertain times.

I had to do it once.

Tipping Point

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Jen at Redhead Ranting, by way of a visit to her her family’s area in a local cemetary, notes a reminder of a crime that had a disproportionate impact on law and order in the Twin Cities a generation ago:

Not far from my grandparents are the markers of the graves of the 5 Coppage children who died in a fire ordered by a rival gang member of their older brother in 1994.

The deaths were horrible. Few in the community were left untouched by the 1994 tragedy. The cops, as they always do with brutal crimes involving children, took it personally and declared war on the gang, building a federal drug case that led to the convictions of about 22 gang members in 1998. (full article)

This happened at about the apex of of the “Murderapolis” years, and I think it’s fair to say it marked a tipping point in law enforcement in Minnesota. People demanded that government do its one unambiguously legitimate job – preserve order, the job that makes living in close conjunction with other people, and the commerce, society and community that result, possible.

What followed was a period of relative (!) order and tranquility – or so it seems in retrospect. Minnesota became, up until this past spring, the safest state in the union that had a major metropolitan area; the Twin Cities, especially Saint Paul, were for all their faults quite a safe metro area.

The stats are up this year – but perceptions about crime aren’t about stats, especially when “rational critical thought” is near the bottom of the priority list.

But eventually, people will demand order. They’ll either get it from government, or they’ll get it themselves (that’s the romantic notion a lot of people have – and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was occasionally one of them) or they’ll get it from whatever “strongman”, be it a street gang or a mob racket or a “vigilante militia” that offers enough of it in exchange for what they take to make it worth it, or worth it enough.

Here’s hoping sane heads prevail.

Body Count

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A “security guard” with lefty sympathies allegedly killed a pro-police protester, in Denver over the weekend.

The video is disturbing:

The “guard” – who apparently lacked a security guard license – was contracting through Pinkerton Security, one of the big rentacop jobbers, to Denver’s NBC affiliate.

The Denver Police quickly leapt to Big Left’s defense, disclaiming any “Anti”-Fa or BLM links…:

…although crowdsourcing showed quite the opposite – Dolloff appeared to have left-of-center sympathies. More on that will come out in the near future, I suspect (although you won’t get any of it in the mainstream media). Unconfirmed reports after a bit of social-media sleuthing indicate…:

Which, if proven by a county prosecutor (assuming Denver’s left-leaning administration allows a serious prosecution), could all be used as evidence that Dolloff was a “willing participant”.

Whatever Dolloff’s sympathies, Big Left was certainly clear on its feelings about the death of :

Be careful out there.

Strategery

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I/m farirly convinced – amost to the point of making up a new Berg’s Law – that the Democrat messaging strategy is as follows:

  • Assume that Democrat voters (as opposed to participants in their political class) are low-information voters who don’t really think all that critically
  • Message accordingly.

Exhibit NZA-212949993-6:

Well, no – doing the job one is elected to do, after winning the election, while not fundamentally changing the institution, is not “packing the court”.

But Democrats – up to and including Biden and Harris at the debats – seem to be counting on Democrat voters not knowing this.

HowPoll tests got a bad name – deservedly so – during the Jim Crow era. And it’s kind of a shame, because more and more, I think some sort of test indicating at least a minimal knowledge of the parts of our government, to say nothing of knowing what they do and why they check and balance each other, would be a very good thing.