I first codified Berg’s Seventh Law – progressives are always projecting their motives and actions onto conservatives – nearly twenty years ago.  It may be the thing for which I and this blog are best known outside Minnesota. 

And there’s a reason for that.  It’s universal.

We’ve seen it in different ways in different eras in the evolution of Big Left.  But the most grating started sixteen years ago, when the Obama administration could be said to have started on its path of racial division and plate throwing by starting the claim that our society was awaiting a wave of right wing/”white supremacist” terror that “would dwarf 9/11”.  

Of course, since then left-wing terror has dominated the coercion landscape by (charitably) a couple orders of magnitude – even when Big Left begs for evidence of right wing terror they can’t find it, while it just keeps coming to us.

Case in point: while falsely calling Elon Musk a “Nazi”…

…they act exactly like brownshirts.

Or at least yap about it on social media:

Gotta destroy the public square to save it, apparently.

…then governor Piglet and the DFL are lying about self-defense reform. 

To recap:  In Minnesota, if you’re outside your house, to use lethal force in self-defense you must:

• Reasonbly and immediately fear getting killed or maimed
• Not be the aggressor
• Use only the force needed to end the threat
• Make a reasonable effort to retreat (remember – doesn’t apply at home).  

House File 13 – a “Stand your Ground” bill – would remove only the last bullet. 

And any smart person knows that.

But smart people aren’t the DFL’s niche:

BTW, the “Stand your Ground” bill was defeated on a straight party-line tie in the House last week. 

That means votes are on record. 

The last time the House DFL voted straight-line against a gun-rights bill that lost a floor vote was 2002, when “Shall Issue” permit reform was barely defeated. 

The GOP went on to win every single one of those outstate DFL seats; every outstate DFLer that voted against gun rights lost that fall.  And with a GOP House and Governor (and a few iron Range DFL senators voting “yes”), Shall Issue passed the following session.

Keep that anger going. 

It can not be the only issue that the GOP rides on (and it won’t be), and the MN Gun Owners Caucus must not be the only functional, focused group working conservative causes (and I don’t think it will be).

This this can be, and must be, a potent part of the right’s approach in this next election.

The Boston Glob, which led the way in demanding absolute mindless compliance during the Covid regime, is – five years later – asking the tough questions, doncha know:

The costs of the shutdowns were enormous: trillions of dollars in deficit spending to stave off economic ruin; massive learning loss, concentrated among the least advantaged children; the special pain of leaving loved ones to die alone in dreary nursing homes and emergency rooms; a further cleaving of our already divided society.

And despite all the sacrifice, the United States still had a much higher death rate than other wealthy nations.

At a critical moment, American science abandoned its most fundamental tenets. It forsook inquiry, it muzzled debate.

And American democracy did no better. Reasonable skepticism was cast as tinfoil-hat conspiracy mongering. Twitter and Facebook and YouTube were purged of heresy.

For Macedo and Lee, the story is clear: The pandemic was a monumental test of the American system — and the system failed

 

You could say “better late than never”.   That may be true.  

But as one of the unwashed, unfavored masses who still managed to figure the eventual truth out bright and early, and paid a price for it, I’m still not ready to make nice. There’s gotta be a “truth and reconciliation” commission of some sort.

Even if it’s only here. 

…and called this number six to 12 months ago?

Do you even need to ask?

From 18B a head to 6B behind in two years.

Attaway, DFL.

But could it really have “been worser”?   

Because there’s no real chance the states ruling DFL clacque are going to do anything useful about it. 

Not to say they won’t do something…predictable:

Now, are there plenty of Minnesota voters stupid enough to believe that DFL spending under Biden spun the state’s budget wheel $24 Billion Dollars in the wrong direction in two years?

Well, they’re sure hoping so.

Of course, it’s not just Howard – who’s replaced Smith as the dumbest voice in the legislature:

It was 21 years ago today that the Northern Alliance Radio Network launched. 

Most of you remember the backstory – because a whole lot of you were there for it.  I was in the middle of a very difficult year employment-wise, I took the lessons of “Spanky and Our Gang” to heart, and I went to a bunch of local bloggers and said “Hey, gang, let’s put on a show”.

They replied “Sure – get us on a station”.

So I went in to AM1280 – and sure enough, they did. 

The cast and the presentation has changed a lot over the years:  what started as a three hour cavalcade of blog stars (John Hinderaker, Scott Johnson, Brian “Saint Paul” Ward, Chad the Elder, JB Doubltess, King Banaian and Ed Morrissey) gradually morphed into two two-hour programs (HInderaker/Warc/Chad and Ed/King/Me), and then three of them (King joined MIchael Brodkorb for four years).  

Gradually, people left for other priorities – and others (Brad Carlson, Jack Tomczak) joined.  We’re four fairly conventional one-guy programs today, and I’m just fine with that. 

As far as highlights?  Hard to even count them all.

• Having a front row seat to watching Hinderaker and Johnson defenestrate Dan Rather
• Interviewing our first guest, 21 years ago – Pete Hegseth, today Trump’s SECDEF
• Half an hour with Michelle Malkin
• Interviewing Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and a who’s who of elected Republicans
• At the 2010 victory party, having Michelle Bachmann get off the stage with Fox News and swoop past the Twin Cities media to come over to the NARN table on Radio Row.
• My broadcast from home the Saturday after the riots, when the Midway still smelled like smoke. 

`And although I’ve been doing the show for 21 years now, I am if anything more thankful and grateful now than I ever was; if there was ever a time when not having some kind of platform would have driven me up a tree, this is it.  

Anyway – thanks to everyone who’s ever been involved:

• Four generations of station managfement – John Hunt, Ron Stone, Nick Anderson and now Mike Murphy
• Five generations of operations guys – Patric Campion, Nick Novak, Lee Michaels and John “The Consigliere” Berg
• Too many board operators – the ones doing the real work – to remember them all.  The ones that did it long enough to make an impression:  the late greatJoe Hanson, Jon Osburn, Matt Reynolds, Irina Malanina Howell, Meghan Fatale, Terminator N, Tommy the H-Bomb Huynh, and Gabe “G=Money” Anderson. 

And of course, the whole audience.  Which is still out there, and still suprrises me every so often by telling me how much is means to them that the show is chugging right along.  

Thanks!

Another day, another DFL policy to turn black and white into a rainbow of grays:

(Center of the American Experiment) — Starting this fall for the 2025-26 school year, Minnesota’s public schools will be required to teach third graders how to use non-binary gender pronouns in writing sentences.

The Minnesota Department of Education’s new K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) standards and benchmarks were adopted in 2023 and are scheduled for full implementation at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year. Reviewed and revised on a 10-year cycle, Minnesota’s ELA standards and benchmarks are organized into three strands: 1) reading, 2) writing, and 3) listening, speaking, viewing, and exchanging ideas.

Under the writing strand, a third-grade benchmark requires students to “use nouns (collective and irregular plural), verbs, frequently used adjectives and adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and pronouns (including reflexive pronouns and male, female and non-binary gender pronouns) [emphasis added] in simple and compound sentences authentically in writing.” (3.2.1.3)

 

If it’s a day ending in “Y”…

Know the part that annoys this English major?

There was a time – like, in the past decade – when referring to someone whose gender you didn’t know, or where the gender was immaterial to the discussion, as “they”.   In common usage, it was a perfectly acceptable third-person pronoun – a “Neutral” one, for those of us who speak gendered European languages like German, French or Spanish.  

Now it’s a poiltical and social statement – for both sides. 

It’s almost like they’re trying to make human communication impossible, or reduce language down to the bare minimum needed to express compliance.  Almost like the quacking of ducks…

Oh. 

It’s become a bit of an easy trope on the right:

1. Star with “You think you hate the media?”
2. Add some bit of loathsome leftymedia depravity
3. Button it up with “You really don’t hate them enough”.

It’s a progression with no end; every day brings new loathsomeness.  It’s entirely possible it’s a barrel with no bottom to scrape.

But Nicole Wallace has to be getting close to that metaphorical nadir:

So let’s break it down:  Wallace:

• Condescendingly snarks about a kid with brain cancer, in order to
• spread the fiction that “right wing terror is the real danger facing the US”- a horse they’ve been trying to flog into a slow trot for sixteen years, now. 

So maybe you can hate Big Leftymedia more than you do.   But beyond this, doesn’t it all kind of blur together?

SCENE:   Mitch BERG is checking out after a meal at an Indian restaurant in the north ‘burbs.  Hostess Elora BANNERJEE is running BERG’s card, as he notices Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, Cat SCAT and LEAKEY the Beagel climbing out of an Uber.  BERG frantically drums his fingers, waiting for the card-reader to approve the transaction – which it does, just as the three progressive activists walk through the door.

BIRKENSTOCK:  Merg!

BERG:  Oh, hey, Moon…

BIRKENSTOCK:  Shut up.   The MNGOP just voted to for bullying!

BERG:  You mean, for a bigger, stronger person being able to use their size and power to exert their will over others?

SCAT:  Yeah!  They votes for…

SCAT:  Hey!  You’re interrupting!

BIRKENSTOCK:   That was rude! How dare you use size and volume to yell over someone who’s…

LEAKY: Zat vas anozzer interrrrhuption!

BIRKENSTOCK: How dare you!

BERG:  OK, so glad to see you disavow people interrupting other…

BIRKENSTOCK:  Shut up.   So while you Republicans were pushing a bill that legalized bullying…

BERG (stifling a yawn, badly) by stopping the erasure of women in their own sports by men who’ve in many cases not even begun the years-long process of hormonal transition, which never actually completely erases mens’ physical advantages…

BIRKENSTOCK: SHUT UP!  What were you doing to fix the economy?]

BERG:  I bet this is the point where you drop some kind of tweet from the DFL’s social media intern…ope, there you go…

BERG: So the party that squandered a $19B surplus, hiked taxes, blew up the budget, raised fees on everything from tabs to parking, and shrugged their shoulders and said there’s nothing they can do about an acceptable level of fraud and corruption, and participated in the ruinously inflationary spending binge of the past four years, has done exactly what to “make life more affordable?”

(The three look back and forth.  SCAT produces a bullhorn from a capacious MPR tote bag).

BANNERJEE:  (Pulling a bottle of mace from under the desk) Oh, no you don’t.  Put that thing away. 

SCAT:  But…

BANNEREE:  Now!

(The three sheepishly comply as BERG makes his escape).

And SCENE.

As I noted the other day, I support an independent Ukraine.

But there’s an elephant in the proverbial room that is the European continent – and it makes sense, historically, that it falls to a Pole to point it out:

Not only does Western Europe outnumber Russia by almost the same margin by which Russia outnumbers Ukraine – but the combined NATO/EU economies are roughly eight times the size of Russia’s.   

That is literally every single factor that they need in place to deter Russia back behind its borders and learning some manners…

…if they decide to muster any of that economic power and, more importantly, social will do do it. 

Which, outside of Poland, the Baltics, Czechia and (socially) Hungary, I just don’t see, barring some AfD/UKIP revolution in coming years.

I’ve told the story – Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” speech affected me as a teenager, immensely.   It didn’t “make me a conservative” all by itself – but it did start me wondering.   The straitened, blighted perversion of the American Dream that Carter seemed to be inflicting on my generation grated on me -and helped start the boulder rolling downhill that led by my voting for Ronald Reagan in 1984.  

Rumors are leaking out into the broader culture – younger Americans, the long-awaiting “Gen Z”, are very different than the millennials. 

More sincere. Less cynical.  Less likely to see “Daria” as a role model.

More faithful?

Maybe. Just maybe.

From 2007 to 2019, the number of people who say they identify as “Christian” decreased from 78% to 63%. It has fluctuated between 64% and 62% since then. Pew explains that “for the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%.”

My theory: the version of life, the universe and everything that Big Left has been pushing for the past couple generations – materialist, temporal, shallow as a coat of makeup – leaves a vacuum in the human soul – and maybe, just maybe, the younger generation is rebelling against that soullessness. 

True?  Wishful thinking?  Maybe a little of both. 

An opening of truth to be pushed wider?  Absolutely.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I’ve been saying the American government should put Americans first and only after all of our problems are solved, consider taking care of people in other nations.  After watching the Zelensky blow-up in the Oval Office, I’ve concluded I was wrong.  The American government should take care of Americans. Period.

The American government should never give war guarantees to other nations.  That promotes “moral hazard” by making Europeans think they can act irresponsibly because America will step in to defend them.  It’s the classic little brother picking a fight knowing big brother is right around the corner. Zelensky demanded war guarantees in the form of American troops to fight Russian troops on Ukrainian soil.  Trump – to his credit – was smart enough not to give in.  Hell, the only reason there was a White House ceremony at all, was so Trump could claim he wasn’t “giving” Ukraine aid for free, he was getting mineral rights in return, similar to our deals in the Middle East (we have troops stationed in Saudi Arabia to defend the royal family from enemies in Iran and uprising by their own people; in exchange, we get access to their oil, literally a blood-for-oil deal-with-the-devil made 100 years ago).

Now that the minerals deal has blown up, Trump has the perfect opportunity to walk away from defending Ukraine in specific and Europe in general.  Withdraw from NATO, let Europe sort out its own problems, we have enough of our own.   And not just Europe.  About that Saudi deal – do we still need it?  Are the terms still fair to us?  I’d like DOGE to take a look at all similar arrangements, worldwide.

More than military aid, the American government should never give financial aid to other nations.  Money is “fungible,” meaning the funds the foreign government would have spent taking care of its own people can now be shifted to buying a new Rolls Royce for the dictator.   That’s not fair to Americans. Other nations’ own governments should take care of them.   If their governments are unable to take care of their people, that’s what charity is for.  Americans are the most generous, most giving people in the world, but we want to know that our charity is doing good, not simply lining pockets.

Getting government out of the war guarantee and charity businesses would not only save a ton of money, it is the first step in restoring constitutional government.  Zelensky handed Trump the perfect opportunity and Elon Musk’s team is the perfect tool.  Now is our chance.

Joe Doakes

 

I see value to alliances…

…that act with integrity, themselves, and are first and foremost in America’s best interests.

I think a NATO that acts with integrity – like, maintaining its capability to defend itself – is in America’s interest. 

The NATO we have today?  Not so much.

An alliance with Poland, Finland and the Baltic states?  Places that care about upholding Western civilization against enemies military and social, and back it up not only with spending and hardware but national attitude?  Logistics notwithstanding, that would, or could,  work.

On the one hand, I supported a free and independent Ukraine back when the same people sporting Ukrainian flags on their social media profiles were confidently declaiming that the USSR was here to stay and that Walter Duranty deserved his Pulitzer. 

On the other hand, the war in Ukraine has devolved into a World War 1 style trench-war stalemate, with advances in artillery and other technology (drones instead of machine guns, in this case) making the slashing mobile warfare of the recent past (horses then, tanks now) difficult to suicidal.  Ukraine isn’t going to reconquer Crimea or Donbas, anymore than Mexico is going to re-take Arizona.   While I support Ukraine, I’m not sure how many Ukrainians and Russians need to die, or how much western material has to get poured into the meat grinder, to continually reinforce that fact. 

On the other other hand, in the wake of last week’s “fiasco” – which part of me still thinks was 50-100% staged – it’s good that Europe is talking about picking up more slack.  Hopefullly they’ll re-shore some of the defense manufacturing capacity they’ve outsourced. 

On the other, other other hand?   Ukraine is going to depend on the UK and France for its long-term safety? 

Poland would like a word with them. 

When I started this blog, 23 years ago this month, I had a few assumptions about politics:

• Minneapolis was as crazy as it was ever going to get
• If you told me CD8 would ever vote Republican, I’d have said you were certifiable
• Big media – from the Strib and MPR to the NYTimes and WaPo – were on a sluice-track to being Pravda, and nothing was going to change that. 

I was wrong about all of them – including at least part of that third bullet: Jeff Bezos, whose Washington Post has for the past 15 years considered Jennifer Rubin “conservative”, frankly shocked me just a tad. Read the whole thing.

Am I cynical enough to wonder what the “but” is?  Hell yeah.  If Jennifer Rubin was “conservative”, maybe Robert Reich is “pro free market” and Fareed Zakaria is a “personal liberty” guy.  Who knows?

But conservative-ish populism seems to be gaining ground in our culture -and maybe, just maybe, dragging some institutions with it. 

More later in the week. 

It was a lousy weekend in the world of music – one of what promises to be years of them, for fans of music that came out 40-60 years ago. 

Joey Molland passed away over the weekend.   He was the last surviving member of Badfinger – protegés of the Beatles, and one of the most glorious pop groups of the seventies.

Also one of the most snake-bitten, tragedy-wise:  after relocating from Swansea, Wales to London, they attracted the attention of George Harrison and Paul McCartney.  They signed Badfinger as the first clients of their new “Apple” musical label. Over the next 5-6 years, Badfinger released some of the best music ever, for my money. 

It’s hard to pick a favorite.  This one is one of the most perfect guitar parts of all time (contributed originally by George Harrison):

One of the best hooks ever? Sure – lip-synched here in all it’s seventies-licious glory:

Want something that’s just transcendant?  Gotcha (piano courtesy Leon Russell):

As Iris Dement said, nothing good ever lasts.  The band’s lead singer Pete Ham committed suicide 50 years ago,  at the peak of the band’s influence. Bass player and singer  Tom Evans, wracked with grief, followed suit 10 years to the day later.

The two survivors – Joey Molland and drummer Mike Gibbins- moved to the Twin Cities, and were based out of deep Haven for most of the last 40 years, were they carried on with a revived version of the band until drummer Mike Gibbins died (checks notes) 20 years ago.

Joey Molland has been carrying the banner since then. He’s stayed in the Twin Cities, running various versions of rebooted “Badfinger” revivals ever since. 

Molland passed away last Friday, after suffering from unspecified, but very serious health problems for the last three months or so.

This has been a particular kick in the head, to be honest. I met Molland (and Gibbins), back in 1986, when I booked him on the old “Don Vogel Show“. . I’ve always tried not to act like an obnoxious fanboy around musicians I admire – but it was not easy with Molland

David Johannson:  Arguably from the opposite extreme from Molland, David Johannson. started out as one of the prime movers of the American punk and new wave scenes in the ’70s.,  As leader of the New York Dolls, he (and the Ramones and the Dead Boys) were the bands that the soon-to-be future punks in the UK, the Pistols and the Clash, were listening to when they were figuring their way out of the pub rock ghetto. 

Unlike his more nihilistic counterparts both in the New York Dolls (Johnny Thunders) and elsewhere in the scene (Stiv Bators), Johansen became a musical omnivore – digging through basic three-chord post-punk rock and roll (including this personal favorite):

…and taking some definitive tours through the roots of that genre…

If you’re not a punk rock junkie, you may only know Johansen from his flukey side-hustle in the late ’80s, “Buster Poindexter” – which yielded the biggest hit of his career, a song he later called “bane of my life”:

Johansen died on Saturday of complications from the brain cancer he’s had for the past four years or so.

Ooof.  That was a rough weekend. 

To:  Smooth-brained DFL Social Media Smurfs
From:  Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: When Did You Stop Beating…

SBDFLSMS,

As we watch Governor Piglet – who staged a lockdown, seized 18 months of emergency power for a 3 month emergency, started a snitch line and a “badthink” database and has spent seven years relentlessly dividing Minnesotans under the slogan “One People, One State, One Minnesota [1] – flail around at having called half of his state’s people “Nazis” and “Fascists”, I urge you to take a moment for introspection about some basic logic and, yes, morality.

To wit:

And this person, a DFL thought-leader:

Here’s the thing; the burden of proof is on you to prove someone is a “Nazi” or “fascist”, with some sort of evidence.  It is not on your target – we’re not “victims” – to prove they are not. 

Otherwise, you’re just a mud-slinging coward. 

That is all. 

[1] OK, that wasn’t literally the slogan.  But nobody who studied European totalitarianism in the 20th century didn’t think that when they first heard the slogan “One Minnesota”.  I guarantee it. 

The Piglet isn’t running for Senate:

That leaves the field with:

• Lt. Governor Flanagan, the one-time extremist who has drifted toward the center-left, at least as compared to
• Ilhan Omar and
• Leigh Finke.
• Al Franken is also riumored to be thinking about wanting to go back to DC.  
• Angie Crag, who just keeps barely portraying herself as “moderate” in defending her always vulnerable House seat. 

The DFL’s big advantage is their chair has far more power to shape the election field than the GOP chair does.  I suspect the wrangling before, during and after the DFL convention will reflect the wishes of whomever is the MNDFL’s sitting char.   If it were still Ken Martin, I’d suspect a lot of push behind Rep. Craig – I can’t see that the other three contenders aren’t going to have problems outside 494/694.  Franken’s a wild card – but he’s also 73.  

There are mainstream (i.e. less overtly Maoist) DFLers who say they think Craig may have an inside shot.   Which would open up CD2, which has been vulnerable ever since Jason Lewis left the seat – provided the CD2 GOP can coalesce around a viable candidate, rather

As to Walz running for a third term?   That’s gotta be a big lift – but with seemingly every other contender for statewide office in the ring for Senate, it’s hard to see who in the DFL would oppose him, as the field looks now – or which of them would do better in a Governor race. 

The wildest card of all, of course, would be vintage DFL:  Senator Smith resigns early, Walz appoints either himself or whichever candidate has the current favor of the DFL (himself or Craig, I’d suspect), potentially leaving that choice and Lt. Gov. Flanagan as incumbents next year.  

At any rate – the opportunity is there for the MNGOP, if they can tame the circuilar firing squad for one lousy cycle. 

And the size of that “if” seems to defy physics. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, snuck one in after the putative (ahem) finale yesterday:

When I claim Trump must shut down the government to force Congress to slash spending because the United States is bankrupt, I get angry push-back.  

We can’t be bankrupt! That’s ridiculous.  This is the greatest nation in history.  How can we be bankrupt?  

How can you tell if someone is bankrupt?  One classic test is being unable to meet obligations they come due. That certainly is the USA.  We have to borrow more every minute to keep paying the bills. The hole never stops getting deeper.  Look at The National Debt Clock website.  Another class test is whether the person’s debts exceed their assets.  Ours certainly do. 

But we have all the gold in Fort Knox and all the national parks and stuff!   That’s worth a ton of money!  

Yes. But we owe a ton and whole lot more.  Look, 147 million ounces of gold in Fort Knox at the current price of $3,000 per ounce gives us $450 Billion worth of gold (billion with a B).  But the national debt is $37 Trillion (trillion with a T).  All the gold in Fort Knox won’t cover two percent of our national debt.  And that’s if the gold is all there at stated purity (what, you never heard of debasement, clipping or plugging? Look them up. Wouldn’t be the first time United States money was debased by our own government. Silver dollars began as pure silver but were reduced to half in the 1830s and after 1964, contain no silver at all.  The fact Trump was concerned enough to ask for a look at the gold reserve concerns me, but the fact nobody was allowed to weigh a bar or melt one one down to assay its purity sends my paranoia into overdrive.  You think Biden wouldn’t countenance stealing from it so long as he got 10% for the Big Guy?)

Yes, but Fort Knox isn’t the only gold!  We have other gold, and gold rights, and gold leases and options, none of which has been audited but Biden assured us it was there.  8,000 METRIC TONS of gold.  That’s $775 Billion worth of gold! And we have other assets, too, like Yellowstone and the White House!

If all that gold is there, sure, that’ll cover nearly 3% of the national debt.  As for all the land the federal government owns and mineral rights and navy bases, how do you determine the market value of the White House and who are you going to sell it to?  China?  Do you really want to go there?

That’s why Trump sicced Elon on finding fraud and waste, so they could drum up public support to slash the budget, so they could force Congress to stop digging the hole deeper and maybe, if we get really, really lucky, force Congress to start paying down the debt before the creditors come knocking and the United States is compelled to publicly admit we are bankrupt.  Because when that happens, nobody has money in the bank, nobody gets paid, nobody’s 401k is worth a damn, nobody gets Social Security, nobody gets welfare, nobody can fix it. 

It’s not too late.  Demand that your Congress-critter get with Trump’s program.  Before it IS too late. 

Joe Doakes

 

Passing the “big beautiful bill” earlier this week was a start. 

To:  Mayor Melvin Carter, Saint Paul
From:  Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant and Human ATM
Re:  Election Denier?

Mayor,

You said this yesterday:

Quick point of order, yerroner – the rest of us pay taxes, too.  Lots and lots of them.

And we won the election.  In an electoral-college landslide, in fact. 

Aren’t you glad the Senate still has a filibuster?

That is all.

Joe Doakes formerly of Como Park emails:

We know there’s a battle coming.  Congress’s funding resolution runs out March 14.  If Trump and Congress don’t reach a deal on a new budget, the government shuts down with all the angst and drama we recall from earlier battles, with all the political risks that have made some Republicans unwilling to fight the battle again.  So in the upcoming fight over the budget, what’s our view, the Conservative view?

Personally, I’d like to see something akin to Constitutional government. Article I, Section 8 enumerates the powers given to Congress.  Go read it. It’s worth remembering that those are the ONLY powers the Founders wanted Congress to have.  To get back to that, we’d have to cut about 80% of the federal government.  I concede that’s not realistic in today’s political climate. 

What is realistic?  How about living within our means?  How about balancing income and outgo, revenue and expenditures, same as every family and small business must do?  What would it take to get there? 

We would have to cut about 2 Trillion dollars of annual spending. Is that possible?

First, let’s remember the last budget was 2019 when Trump was in office.  Starting in 2020, Congress ramped up spending to cover the extraordinary costs of fighting a world-ending epidemic of Covid.  Leaving aside the possibility  that Covid was merely an excuse to promote absentee ballots to steal the election, the spending never stopped.  Every year since 2020, Congress passed a continuing resolution which keeps spending the same amount of money as before, plus a little extra for inflation, including the emergency money for Covid and lately, money for Ukraine to the tune of a third-of-a-trillion dollars.  Surely some of that can go.

Second, let’s remember that Congress gives money to agencies to promote vague policy objectives like “safe food” or “transportation.”  What, specifically, the agency does with that money is up to the bureaucrats.  That’s why we get drag queen shows on military bases. Surely some of that can go. 

Third, let’s remember that every bureaucrat knows the first rule of budgeting is “spend it or lose it.”  They will hide behind a “hostage puppy” to protect the rest of their funding (so named for the famous National Lampoon cover). They will insist that if we cut the funding for drag queens, the puppy will die, the child in Ethiopia will starve, the meat will not be inspected, the Washington Monument will be closed, and Grandma will have to eat dog food to survive. We have heard it all before, surely they can’t expect us to fall for it again?

So what do we do?  First, we don’t fall for the  hostage puppy, we stand firm. If bureaucrats would rather let the Ethiopian kid starve than give up their drag queen shows, on their heads be it.  Second, we empower someone to look through agency budgets to cut out silliness to focus on core functions.  Musk’s team is doing that now but it ought to be a full time job for somebody. Third, we insist on real cuts now, not gimmicks like “out year” reductions 10 years down the road.  And most importantly, we get tough – we harden our hearts – so we can ride out the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the rending of garments, the accusations of every -ism imaginable. 

Why this fight?  Why now?  Because we’re nearly at the end of the road. We’re short about $2 Trillion a year which we borrowed to get by, but that’s been going on for so long we now owe $36 Trillion dollars which is more than the entire Gross Domestic Product of $26 Trillion. Do you realize what that means?  It means we owe more on the national debt than the value of all the goods and services produced in the entire nation.  

We pay more for interest on the national debt than the entire defense budget.  

By every reasonable measure, the United States is bankrupt.

It comes down to surgical cuts now or default on our debts later and then everything collapses into complete anarchy.  Choose wisely.  And demand that your elected representatives do the same. 

Joe Doakes

 

One of the upshots of Americans (induced) economic illiteracy is that if they’ve gotten any education in economics at all, it’s been in Keynesianism. As such, they think the natural, effective response to an economic downturn is to pour taxpayer money into the situation.

Which merely stretches out the natural recovery, as it did in 1933, and in 2008. 

In an economy with healthy fundamentals, a sharp downturn in a free market serves to kill off a whole lot of bad ideas – unsustainable dotcoms in 2001, subprime mortgages in 2008, and probably a whole lot of bubble-like irrational exuberance over AI today.   

Now – are we as a society smart enough to know this?   The fact that the Obama regime went back to subsidizing subprime mortgages after the ’08 recession (which their policies dragged out for years) indicates “probably not”. 

Reading and math scores in Minnesota schools are lagging behind those of smug Minnesotans’ eternal punching bag, Mississippi.  

This should fix that:

Starting this fall for the 2025-26 school year, Minnesota’s public schools will be required to teach third graders how to use non-binary gender pronouns in writing sentences.

The Minnesota Department of Education’s new K-12 English Language Arts (ELA) standards and benchmarks were adopted in 2023 and are scheduled for full implementation at the beginning of the 2025-26 school year. Reviewed and revised on a 10-year cycle, Minnesota’s ELA standards and benchmarks are organized into three strands: 1) reading, 2) writing, and 3) listening, speaking, viewing, and exchanging ideas.

That’ll fix things.

I’m old enough to remember when Rolling Stone was vividly counter-culture.

But only barely .

Read this piece on Amy Klobuchar.

Pressed for a message to viewers, the Democratic senator cited her own disenfranchised feelings since the inauguration, saying it’s important, “To not give up, to not look down [and] to not end up in The Container Store like I did for three weekends in a row cause I decided I wanted to bring order to my life.”

Klobuchar added that one interaction in particular at The Container Store made her feel less alone in her frustrations. “This constituent comes up and says, ‘I know why you’re here,’ the senator reccounted. “It’s cause you feel like everything’s out of control and you’re trying to control it.”

Klobuchar told a similar story in a recent podcast interview with The Daily Beast. As the publication notes, the four-term senator “was on the hunt for baskets to organize her coffee and tea collection—and, in retrospect, the broader sense of satisfaction that comes with things being the way they’re supposed to be.”

 

Am I the only one who thinks is reads like an ad for the Container store woven not-all-that-cleverly into a piece on Klobuchar’s (checks notes) stunnng courageous boss-lady journey over the past month?

Does she need to moisturize, with all the tongue-baths she gets from BIg Media?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Why is Trump in such a frantic rush to issue executive orders, fire employees, deport people, surrender Ukraine to Russia?  Is he out of his mind?

No, he’s out of time.  Congress’ most recent continuing budget resolution runs out March 14th. Trump has three more weeks to set the stage for the budget showdown. He knows every Democrat will vote against spending cuts to balance income against outgo. He knows at least some Republicans will join them.  He needs to act fast to get public support on his side so he can stand up to Congress and say,  “No more.”

Elon Musk and his team of auditors continue to find examples of fraud and waste that piss off normal people. Why are we paying for stupid stuff like that?  The judges who refuse to let the auditors do their job and who halt layoffs, piss off normal people. Why are you leaving the thieves in charge of the checkbook?  The politicians screaming about deporting illegal alien criminals piss off normal people.  Why are you putting scum ahead of citizens?  Why not put Americans first?

And it’s working.  Trump has extraordinary approval numbers. He is going to need that public support when he tells Congress, “No more,” and when he tells Ukraine, “No more,” and when he tells rogue federal employees (including some judges), “No more.”  

It’s all coming to a head in a few weeks. The media will scream. Democrats will scream.  Europeans politicians, Catholic bishops, liberal judges, and Hollywood celebrities will scream. Let them. Elections have consequences. It’s our turn now. 

Get ready.  

Joe Doakes

More tomorrow.

There’s a move afoot to kill off the Northstar Commuter Rail line…

Well, no. There’s a move to finish the job that a misbegotten concept, government bloat and Covid started:

In 2023, it cost taxpayers over $11.5 million to operate, but the line only generated about $325,000 in fare revenue, according to a new study. 

As ridership has dwindled, the Northstar line’s future has become uncertain.  

Before the pandemic, the service carried between 2,200 and 3,000 riders on weekdays. However, during the pandemic, ridership plummeted by nearly 98%, dropping to just 60 weekday riders in April 2020. Today, the line still struggles to attract passengers, with only a couple hundred people using the service.

 

The funny – as in “weird”, not “ha ha” for the most part – thing is, commuter rail was the kind of rail service that should have had some shot at making sense; they use (or are supposed to use)  existing right of way, can use fairly minimal stations, and don’t have to tear up streets or utilities like the light rail lines through the city, and can be designed and purposed to address actual transportation needs across larger metropolitan areas.  

And yet they botched it.

And the bureaucracy’s defense – “practice makes perfect”?  Well…

Let’s see:

• The Blue Line (2005) went in without much of a hitch (provided you leave out the 30+ year delay between the clearing of the right of way and the actual building of the line)
• The Northstar (2009) had all kinds of bureaucratic and legal glitches over right-of-way, and of course the customary over-engineering.   Its problems are noted herein.
• The Green LIne (2014) went 50% over budget, and was a huge waste even at that; “light rail” is designed to be hypothetically efficient with stops every mile, so it can run at 50-60MPH over clear rights of way.  Trolleys are designed to go stop to stop down crowded streets.   The Met Council decided to make a stupid compromise – run a big train down a crowded street; sort of like.using a Corvette to pull a beer wagon.  
• The Southwest Light Rail is way over double budget and several years behind schedule, with little sign of being ready much before the end of the decade.

So I don’t think practice is doing is much good. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

A federal government shutdown is coming in three weeks.  Democrats and the media will have a meltdown and will try to frighten the public, claiming the sky is falling and we are all going to die. Get ready for it. The shutdown will be tough but it is neecessary.  

The federal budget is … unknown. We don’t have a budget. We haven’t had an actual budget where expenditures are debated and prioritized since 2019, when Trump was last in office. Every year of the Biden administration, Congress simply spent money without caring what it was spent on or how much was spent.  The money runs out March 14.

The federal government spends about $6 Trillion but only takes in about $4 Trillion so it borrows the other $2 Trillion. That’s the deficit – the amount we are short – $2,000,000,000,000. That is how much fraud and waste Elon Musk is hoping to cut, just to get income and outgo to break even.  That’s how much Democrats (and, to be fair, some RINOs, too) are trying to protect.

Come March, Trump must either cave in to Congress and continue to let them have a blank check, or he must stand up to Congress and refuse to sign more blank checks. If he refuses and Congress does not come up with a budget acceptable to him, the government shuts down until an acceptable deal is made.

Trump is a deal maker but he is not a quitter.  The showdown is coming and the shutdown is his only leverage.  Get ready for it.  

Joe Doakes

 

Part III coming up tomorrow. 

This sums up the moment we’re in as well as anything I’ve seen. 

Worth a watch.