Sometime after 1900, a recent graduate of what would become the university of Minnesota school of pharmacy, Sven Hendrickson, who as a 15-year-old young man had moved by himself from Steigen, Norway to Minnesota to work on a farm , moved from Minneapolis to Dunseith, North Dakota. He set up a pharmacy, and along with his wife, Jeanette, an immigrant from Quebec, had four children, including a daughter, born on March 17, 1912, and inevitably named Patricia . The Hendricksons  moved around a bit, and wound up in Jamestown, a scrappy little railroad town about halfway between Fargo and Bismarck

Sometime after that, in about 1922, Oscar Berg, the son of Swedish immigrants, who had worked as a farmer and a street car conductor in st paul, moved to that same little town, Jamestown, to start a photography studio. He did it with the help of a couple of women from Northern Minnesota, who had made quite a career of getting people started in the photography business. A few years later, when the studio was successful enough for him to need to look  for an assistant, he reached out to those two women, who recommended their niece, who was working at a studio in Bovey Minnesota.

The niece, Beatrice Gresley, the daughter of a couple of Norwegian immigrants, took the job and moved there in about 1928. Sometime after that, in about 1932, Oscar and Beatrice got married. 

Somewhere around the time that Oscar and Beatrice were working away at the studio, Sven and Jeanette’s daughter Patricia decided to attend the little college on the North Hill of Jamestown . There, she would major in English, become homecoming  royalty, and meet a strapping young all American four letter athlete and chemistry major, Donald Hall, from Starkweather, North Dakota. They  would marry not long before Oscar and Beatrice had a baby, at the new hospital just down the hill from the college . That baby would be about five years old when Oscar died of a heart attack, leaving Beatrice to run the photography studio for the next couple of decades.  This was about the time that Sven moved to Wahpeton North Dakota to start a new pharmacy. 

Pat and Don would go on to live in Devils Lake, Grand Forks, Aberdeen, and, finally, Bismarck. They had three kids, the oldest of which , Jan, would go back to Jamestown to go to college, and meet Oscar and Beatrice‘s only son. They got married, and not long after that I came along. The son, Bruce, was a high school teacher – maybe the best high school teacher in the history of high school teachers – for about 40 years. And their daughter and I both went to that little college on the North Hill before we and our little brother moved to bigger places with more opportunities.

My parents split up a few years later, and my mother moved to Turkey for five years, but came back to Minot, built a dream house with her second husband (another Jamestown native who’d joined the Navy but kept a foot in the state) and lived there until they both died, in 2020 and 2022, respectively.

Oscar died in 1942.   Sven, in 1948.   Don and Pat moved to Arizona in the ’70s.   Beatrice passed away in 1980.

And last week, I moved my father from Jamestown to Billings, Montana, to be closer to my sister, her husband and her four kids, all of whom love doting on dad/grandpa. 
And so for the first time in about 120 years, there are no Bergs, or blood relatives of mine, in North Dakota. 

That’s a weird feeling. I lived there for 22 years, but they were the first 22, so my sense of place is still very rooted there.   I’ve become more of a homer in the past 20 years or so, as I see some of the virtues of the place I left behind 2/3 of a lifetime ago. 

What does Tim Walz fantasize about?

Well, not in a debate, he can’t. 

Suddenly, the DFL is stoked.  Nikki the Ninja is no longer the juiciest (alleged) crime story in the MN State Senate. 

For now, anyway.  Sen. Justin Eichhorn got arrested for soliciting a “16 year old girl” who turned out to be a police decoy.  

The Bloomington Police Department said Eichorn, 40, of Grand Rapids, solicited sex from a detective posing as a 17-year-old girl online. Eichorn and the detective arranged to meet near the 8300 block of Normandale Boulevard.

Eichorn was seen arriving in his pickup truck at the rendezvous point and was taken into custody just after 5:45 p.m., police said.

As of this publishing, Eichorn remained in the Bloomington Police Department’s custody awaiting transfer to the Hennepin County Jail. Formal charges have yet to be filed.

The DFL…well, they tried to have a field day with it. It didn’t end well:

So let’s recap: Republicans immediately demand their reprobate’s resignation. The DFL has been stalling on any meaningful action on Nicole “Nikki the Ninja” Mitchell for almost a year, now.

Which isn’t stopping them from try to deflect:

The DFLers are using this to deflect from their hypocrisy on Nikki the Ninja. The Repubulicans were clear, then and now: both both need to go. Stat.

KARE’s Jana Shortal, whose prospects of that MSNBC gig seems to be shrinking by the day, sounded off:

So apparently Democrats are going to take a break from burning Teslas to tell us “there’s no such thing as Trump Derangement”.  

Or maybe not:

Oh, DFL…

Notwithstanding the fact that Governor Walz was an imaging disaster during the past presidential campaign…

…there seems to be a convenient – dare I say, too convenient groundswell of social media support for him this past few days.

So with that in mind, it’s well and good to remember the real Tim Walz.

Today’s the anniversary of Minnesota’s Great Leap Backward.

Me? I was on my way home from the office, listening the governor on MPR as he announced the most draconian set of emergency powers in Minnesota history. On the way, I stopped at a Total Wine. The store has eight checkout lines, of which two are normally operating; I’ve never waited in a line longer than three deep, even then.

All eight registers were humming, stacked 6-7 people deep, and the store was packed. 

They needn’t have worried; big box liquor stores, and big box stores of all kinds, found themselves exempted from the Governor’s swerve into autocracy.  

But small businesses were forced to close – unless they were lucky enough to be Walz contributors – and were utterly gutted.

And schools remained closed for a year and a half – and children still haven’t recovered.

And while state government beggared the whole notion of “science”, it was fairly clear early on that the most dire predictions were going to fall flat.

So no. I’m not ready to make nice yet. 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I confidently predicted Trump would force a government shutdown to compel real cuts in spending, which is why he had the D0GE team hunting for a trillion dollars of fraud, waste and abuse.  But Trump supports a continuing resolution which increases defense spending by $6 billion, cuts other spending by $13 billion, and leaves the rest of the spending in place, financed by borrowed money.  

Shaving a lousy $7 billion off $7 trillion won’t balance the budget. We will still have a $2 Trillion dollar deficit and interest on the debt will still be more than we spend on defense.  This continuing resolution is like claiming to be dieting by eating one less french fry in your Happy Meal.  It’s worse than a joke. It’s an insult.  I’m insulted. 

My buddy claims I just don’t understand Trump’s strategy and the scope of everything he’s dealing with.  He wanted Congress to do a real budget before he was seated.  He wanted them to do the cuts under Biden.  But of course Congress simply kicked the can and made the problem come due a few weeks into Trump’s term.  

My buddy says Trump’s not giving up the fight, he’s merely pushing it out a few months while inflation tames; while the fraud and waste gets identified and publicized; while he gets the Hawaiian judges’ orders overturned; while he ends the money laundry in Ukraine; while he knocks some sense into Mexico and Canada; while he secures the border; while he gets the rest of his cabinet installed; while he claws back billions, if not trillions shoveled out the windows just before he took office ….

I sure hope he’s right.  Otherwise, it looks as if the Democrats and RINOs won this round, dragging us one step closer to the fiscal cliff.  Dang, and I was so hopeful.

Joe Doakes

 

Until someone has the guts to go after the big entitlement programs, it’s all performance.  The best case is that Trump curbs the chaos long enough for the economy to switch to “puree”, which might forestall but not prevent the inevitable reckoning. 

Can we get to that without getting to this?   Or will events and Democrats stall Trump long enough that a recession tanks Trump in the. mid-terms, and sparks a leftist backlash?

Have at it.

What could possibly go wrong?

Today’s music list:

Democrats lately have had a lot of fun hopping up and down on the fact that there are no 300 year-old people giving Social Security checks; it’s just a database problem.

As if learning that the fact that our government data is that sloppy is all that much more reassuring.

All of that, notwithstanding, I fully expect the Democrats to keep trying to focus on that, to deflect away from this

I’ve had a long-standing suspicion that Minnesota under Democrat rule has been a national prototype, not only for how progressive politics is done, but for how progressive loot the public treasury.I’ve had a long-standing suspicion that Minnesota under Democrat rule has been a national prototype, not only for how progressive politics is done, but for how progressive loot the public treasury.Is Minnesota the disease, or the symptom?

Not sure. Either way, he’s hoping the chemotherapy does something useful.

As we pointed out yesterday, governor Klink is apparently getting things set up to try to run for president

he must be serious; he wants to hold a “Townhall meeting”, which is something he hasn’t done in Minnesota since Jensen humiliated him far fast

At any rate, this is the tack he wants to take

Minnesota’s educational achievement rates have, of course, fallen behind Mississippi. 

Which confirms my thesis; even more than most Democrats, Walz counts on “his” voters being even dumber and less well-informed than most Democrats do.

Tim Walz appears to be doing more than exploring re a presidential run in 2028:

On the one hand – I’m not sure on what planet his national stock rose after his VP bid. He was an embarassment.

On the one hand – if he is delusional enough to think he’s got national legs after all that, maybe he’ll opt out of running for governor again?

Decisions.  Decisions. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

The auto-pen pardons look bad, but I’m certain they will be upheld.  It’s a matter of federal law but examples from Minnesota might be illustrative. 

A deed to convey real estate is not valid without the signature of the grantor.

A signature is any mark intended to authenticate an instrument.  Making your X on the deed is a “signature.”  The law does not discriminate against the illiterate.

And a signature may be made by the signer, or by rubber stamp bearing the signer’s name, or made by another at the direction of the signer.  The law does not discriminate against the handicapped.

Given the broadness of the concept in widely different areas of the law, I am confident the courts would have no trouble upholding everything Biden signed by autopen the same as if he personally signed every document.  

They have to – otherwise there’s no end to the chaos caused by acknowledging that he was mentally incompetent and somebody else was running the country.  Can’t admit that publicly even though everybody knows it. 

Joe Doakes

The fact that Biden’s actions were protected by the same measures that protect illiterates and incompetents somehow takes a little sting off.

…that the people who most need to read articles like this (I’m not going to pull-quote it; it deserves a quick read) will be the last to actually read it.

Of course, those who have been through the history of the various characters in this blog’s comment section know that while the tendency flowered under Trump, it didn’t start in 2015.

Namecalling during the 2024 Presidential election turned out not to be a “wonder weapon” for the left.

Turns out bullying, castigating and defaming people doesn’t win them over.  

It’s a lesson most people learn by middle school.

The Minnesota left still hasn’t learned it, oddly enough:

VanDassor, a Highland Park Middle School teacher, was first elected president of SPFE in 2021. Her union is a champion of left-wing causes, including “restorative practices,” which are a “model for a healthy, racially equitable school culture.”

In her statement, she said that SPFE members “will continue to do what we have always done: care for and educate ALL of our students. Feed them. Keep OUR schools safe for them. Teach them the full history of our country.”

VanDassor asserted that “fascist regimes” always begin by “targeting the most vulnerable populations and by making it a crime to tell the truth.”

Hmm. Making it a crime to tell the truth, you say? Huh.

I’m hoping they never learn.

If you live in House District 40B – northern Roseville and southern Shoreview – and you’ve seen enough of how the DFL acts when it’s got all the power it wants, get out and vote for Paul Wikstrom today. 

Drag your friends and family out to do it too. 

Got kids who live there?  They owe you.  Twist that arm.

Elderly relatives?   Get them to the polls.  

Wikstrom has raised more money in this race than some CD4 Congressional candidates have in recent races – so there’s support and interest.  This is at least in the running to be not a DFL walkover.  

Destroy the trifecta!

What’s the saying?  Oh, yeah.

Yes, we can.

(If “we” live in 40B). 

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.