SCENE. Avery LIBRELLE is wandering the aisles at Barnes and Noble in Maplewood, when h…er, sh…er, Avery notices Mitch BERG poring over the German book aisle.  LIBRELLE pounces. 

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG:  Uh, Schoiße…, er, I mean, hey Avery…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.   Why is Trump obsessed with taking over Canada, Greenland and Panama?

BERG:  What do you mean?

LIBRELLE:  I’ll turn it over to the world’s most courageous person to explain:

BERG:  Oh, yeah.  That.  Well, for starters, did you catch McBride’s last quote…

LIBRELLE:  Miss McBride’s quote.

BERG:  Representative McBride’s quote…:  “If this president is serious about an America first agenda, he should be focused on domestic economic issues, not some weird obsession with invading Greenland or Panama”

LIBRELLE:  Yeah.  So?

BERG:   So the Representative is talking about “Putting America First”, even if only sarcastically. 

LIBRELLE:  Cheap shot!

BERG:  Uh, right.  But tell me – what’s the latest news about Pete Hegseth?

LIBRELLE:  Who?

BERG:  Kash Patel?   RFK Junior?

LIBRELLE:   What did they have to do with invading Greenland. 

BERG:  Huh.  RIght.  I think it’s on The View right now.

LIBRELLE:  Oooh!  The View!  (Abruptly turns and scampers eagerly away).

BERG:  Huh.   Where what that trick when I needed it?

And SCENE

Stipulated: the DFL is Minnesota’s abusive spouse. I

It’s in the phase of spousal abuse where the first round of resistance has led to an amping-up of the gaslighting and projection:

That, and their messaging can not be intended to influence anyone but the stupid, the ill-informed and the uncritical, can it?

“Losing the popular vote for the house?”  There is no “popular vote for the house”.  There 134 district elections – nothing more.  

And in one of those districts, neither the state DFL, nor the HD40B committee, nor the voters did their due diligence to find that their candidate was lying about living in the district.  

The DFL wants to use their “mistake” to deny representation to half the state.   

“Minnesotans voted for a tied house?”  No – but if you want to look at it that way, half of Minnesota voted for a GOP House.  And just under half of the state voted for a DFL House.  And one district voted for a liar, either with the connivance or via the incompetence of the state DFL.  

Why not “Share power”?

To paraphrase the great political sage Tim Walz, “when you have political capital, you use it”

The giggly fratboys of the DFL said that two years ago.  Today, the line has apparently changed to “we dont’ have any capital, and if you don’t lend us some ’til payday, we’re going to throw a tantrum”. 

And we may not be done:

Mohamed Jama, a potential top contender in a crowded special election to represent the safely Democratic district in northeast Minneapolis and Cedar-Riverside, likely does not meet the residency requirements according to state voter data.

Sonia Neculescu, a former DFL House candidate and resident of the district, filed a challenge to his candidacy with the state Supreme Court on Monday alleging Jama registered to vote on Election Day in neighboring Senate District 63 in November.

Under state law, candidates must live in the district they’re running to represent for at least six months prior to the election.

Jama did not immediately return a voicemail seeking comment.

 

Abby Wolters is running in 60B on the GOP side, after winning 30% of the vote at the U of M last November.  She could use your support. 

Merry January 6!

It’s one of modern progressivism’s high holy days – along with Roemas, May Day and Feast of the Entitlements. 

Have a blessed January 6!

They got caught cheating in the HD40B election

And the DFL is contrite about it.

Just kidding.  They’re going to go on strike until we thank them for cheating:

Because that’s the battle – the battle against “pouncing” – that matters. 

This tantrum is going to be epic.

In the past week or two, we’ve seen:

• The HD54A recount in Shakopee, which showed DFLer Brad Tabke winning by 14 votes, with 30 ballots turning up missing, it seems they’ve found a significant number of duplicate votes. Any guesses who they voted for?
• In the HD40B, Curtis Johnson’s election was erased. The DFL is trying to jam down a special election, even though state statute says the seat needs to be vacant – which is won’t be until January 14, when the new legislature gets sworn in. It’s still Jamie Becker-Finn’s seat. (Note to Rep. Becker-Finn: drapes don’t have shoes).
• In SD 50, where former Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic died, Governor Klink jammed down a special election on January 14 – including a one day filing window, on New Years Eve. For a seat the DFL considers their property, they have to try to squeeze out any competition.

In the 1960s, when Democrat-run states in the deep south were found to have gamed the election rules to keep minorities from the polls, the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations stepped in and put most southern states under consent decrees, requiring them to report to the Department of Justice to ensure their elections were fair and unbiased.

Maybe it’s time for Trump’s DOJ to do the same in Minnesota.

Here’s Abby Wolters website. She’s running in the special primary on January 14, and the special election on January 28, for control of the Minnesota Senate. To find out more about Minneapolis BPOU politics, hit up Shawn Holster – email chair@mplsgop.org.

And here’s today’s music list:

After six years in office, four of them plagued with massive scandals including the largest Covid-aid scandal in the US, in absolute numbers (forget about per-capita), Governor Walz is swinging into action!

For those unfamiliar with government – say, who never watched “Schoolhouse Rock” as children – the Governor is in charge of the executive branch of state government.

Which means it’s his job to enforce the laws of the state, along with the rest of the executive branch. It’s literally one of duties, defined in the state’s Constitution.   He’s supposed to be aided by the Attorney General, who is the state’s lawyer, and the State Auditor, ostensibly the state’s bookkeeper.  Walz, Keith Ellison and Julie Blaha already have not only the power, but the duty to be dealing with the fraud that happened on their watch.

And fraud is already illegal.   There is literally a law for that, as evidence by the fact that the Department of Justice is currently prosecuting Minnesota fraud cases. 

The only need for a “legislative package” is to try to deflect some responsibility for the feeding frenzy of this past four years to the newly (and temporarily) GOP-controlled House of Representatives, and evade his and the MNDFL’s culpablity for the four years the Governor spent taking selfies eating Pronto Pups and standing by liked a hog that’d been smacked on the head with a hammer as his voters looted and pillaged a billion dollars or more from the state treasury.

The media will try to help him with this evasion.

And if the “conservative media” in this state ever had a mission in life, making sure they can’t enable that evasion is it. 

As we careen toward a special election in a likely-illegal-but-what-are-ya-gonna-do-about-it-huh two weeks in Senate District 60, it’s worth taking a moment to remember this bit of actual reporting from almost exactly a year ago:

And to ask yet again – if the DFL runs roughshod over due electoral process in their own party, why do we believe they do any better in the city they proudly say they own?

I detest the term “Yacht Rock”.

No.  Detest.

I never could quite articulate why – it was one of those definitions I figured I’d get around to someday when I had a moment. 

Fortunately, Rick Beato did it for me:

Like Beato, the term is hereby and henceforth expunged from my life.

So – what were the five most important stories of 2024, according to that most dispositive of sources, yours truly?

Glad you asked.  Here goes:

5. I, Knucklehead – Recently, we learned that Harris’s insiders knew she never had much of a lead or chance. But that wasn’t what we saw, or even inferred from the data we saw out here in the wild. Even some fairly reliably intelligent conservative pundits were prepared for the worst as of 7PM CT on November 5.

So I was driving up to North Dakota last summer, worried that Harris was going to pick Josh Shapiro as her Veep nominee.  The conventional wisdom was that the road to the White House led through Pennsylvania, and that Shapiro would deliver it, and likely make Trump’s path to victory a lot longer and more convoluted. 

I was driving home from the same trip when I got the news that Giggles had picked Tim “Piglet” Walz as her running mate.  And I let out a huge sigh of relief, and maybe a gleeful cheer or two, as I careened down I94, my mood having brightened about 145 degrees.

His debate performance against JD Vance was a revelation to some – but almost an anticlimax to me.  I knew from the moment I got the news that Vance would mop the rest-room floor with Walz.  He didn’t disappoint. 

4. He Killed Medicare – It wasn’t just Joe Biden that collapsed in the infamous June debate with Trump. It was the entire campaign of gaslighting that the Democrats and media were trying to run.

And I was about to add my usual “pardon the redundancy” after that last sentence, but I think that everyone with eyes to see and the interest in using them caught it. While the bloom was off the mainstream media’s rose long ago, this past year took a heat gun to whatever was left of that shabby wallpaper.

3. The Big Stick – The Mossad attack on Hezbollah’s leadership via remote controlled boobytrapped pagers and radios was a brilliant kick-off to what appears to have been a slow but definite end-game to Israel’s year-long campaign to crush the Iranian proxies who’ve sworn to Israel’s destruction this past three generations.

It’s all the more important when you remember that it happened when the American election was still very much up in the air, at least outwardly. The Israelis were making hummus while the sun shone, unsure what the status of their alliance with the US would be after January 20. Of course, after the Trump victory, Israel emasculated Iran’s entire air defense network, leaving them basically helpless before any retaliation for any future aggresssions, rebooting much of the math in Middle Eastern politics.

2. “Fight, Fight, Fight” – The leaks about Harris’s real internal polling notwithstanding, the first assassination attempt against Trump was, I think, the point where it started to feel like Trump had more than just an election to win; it was more of a rendezvous with destiny.

I know – I hate being that dramatic without cause. But I think it may actually have been appropriate in that case. It started to feel like it had to happen. There was a change in the campaign’s momentum and, really, a change in Trump.  He seemed a lot more focused, not only as his ear healed, but through the rest of his campaign.   The Twitter-firebomb-throwing Trump of 2015-2020 wasn’t gone, per se – but he seemed much more on task.  Calmer? 

And as much as the Harris campaign tried to co-opt the term “Joy”, it started to feel like there was some sort of je ne sais quoi to the Trump effort – not “joy”, but “purpose”?  “Sense of mission?”

It felt a lot more intense and immediate after that. 

And #1. – Red Green Shoots – It was the year you saw conservative media and “influencers” (much as I hate the term) start to hit their stride. The cultural right hit its “Battle of Midway” moment in myriad battles for the culture:

• Research undercutting “Trans” ideology and medicine started to take on a critical mass.
• Young people, Latino men, married women, and increasing numbers of black men voted for Trump
• There are signs that GenZ is tiring of the meaninglessness of the left’s modern culture.
• Hollywood’s “woke-ism” is taking flak, with cultural resistance to the PC-ing of tentpole projects like Star Wars and Snow White and Netflix’s ongoing woke-y decay reaching, if not critical mass, at least notable, sustainable velocity. 

Feel free to sound off in the comments. What the heck.

Minneapolis boosters have been chanting, non-stop, that “crime is down in MInneapolis”.

Seems everyone got the memo but the criminals:

And it wasn’t just homicides – a quick look at the Minneapolis crime dashboard (before they rolled the data over for the new year) showed:

• 3 more non-justified homicides (Minneapolis’ dashboard lumps justified police and civilian shootings together, and there was one more justifiable homicide last year than in 2023).
• Robberies up 10% in past year.
• Vandalism up 14% in year, 31% in three years.
• Assault has been steadily rising over past three years.

And the categories that *are* dropping are doing it very slowly.

One of the more satisfying stories of this past year was watching the accelerating decay of the mainstream media’s influence over society.

And this was one of my favorite examples:

Watching the orwellian “Joy” campaign get pelted with rhetorical rocks and garbage by the commoners was one of the greatest, er, joys I’ve had, at least politically, in recent years.

The below is an update of a piece I first wrote almost five years ago. It was at that moment about the time when people – smart people, anyway – were starting to realize that Covid wasn’t the new Bubonic Plague, that the sky was not falling, and that whatever “model” Governor Klink was reading that was predicting 70,000 deaths in Minnesota alone by mid-July of 2020, and 20,000 dead as a best case if they shut the state down completely, was perhaps…wrong.

I was looking at the gutting of civil and religious freedom that Minnesotans had countenanced – perhaps more or less voluntarily in March,

Next week, Big Left will go through what’s become an annual orgy of celebrating what’s become their secular holiday, January 6.

Governor Klink took a break from his regimen of selfies of him being fed donuts by Co-Governor Flanagan to have his social media intern blurt this out:

The DFL, likewise:

So – a 2.5. years after Governor Klink reluctantly gave up his “emergency powers”, and two months after his risible run for Vice President, and after four years of Joe Biden serving as the doddering mouthpiece for Barack Obama’s third term as the greatest stealth authoritarian since Woodrow Wilson, let’s take stock of the state of “democracy”, in Minnesota and nationwide.

One of the obligations of a free people – and especially of a free people that wants to stay that way – is to push back when government overreaches. Not just in emergencies (although that was the initial subject of the original post), but always, on every facet of liberty. Conservatism holds that order and liberty exist in a constant state of tension; without order (or health) prosperity is impossible; without health, freedom is academic (subsistence farmers don’t have time to petition for redress of grievances); without freedom, order is onerous and, let’s be honest, prosperity is most likely concentrated among those keeping the order.

Three years ago, I said that Government power is like a handgun – sometimes, a necessary tool in extreme circumstances, under terms that are as strictly circumscribed as any rule on justifiable use of lethal force. And like any necessary tool, free people need to make sure that the newbie isn’t sweeping people at the firing range with her hand on the trigger, and that government isn’t getting drunk and profligate with its use, or abuse of power.

Of course, four years later, it’s clear that the Biden and Walz regimes great government power less like a handgun on the nightstand, and more like a Reaper drone, orbiting loudly above everything, ready to strike arbitrarily and without a whole lot of reason or respect for the niceties of constitutional law.

Just as Governor Piglet’s administration used Covid as a pretext for seizing unprecedented arbitrary power, Democrats nationwide are waving “January 6” around like a bloody shirt, to try to justify their ravaging of the spirit and letter of AMerican democracy.

So lets list the outrages. Let me know what I’ve missed; I intend for this list to live on as long as needed:

Life and Liberty

• The emergence of the crypto-Maoist “Democratic Socialists of America” as the most powerful bloc in the Democrat party nationwide, and even moreso of the DFL – as both parties arrogate more power, wealth (transferred from taxpayers)
• The multi-pronged bringing to heel of the education system, from pre-school through the post-doctoral level, is “the long game” in attacking not just liberty, but the entire underpinning of Western Civilization. Creating a generation of ignorant droogs who think “freedom” is just material satiety is both a key goal of those who’d gut the American experiment and, seemingly, a long way toward being accomplished.

The Pursuit of Prosperity

Here, the DFL’s disdain for business and private property rears its head, above and beyond any actual response to the epidemic.

• The DFL “Trifecta” burned through nearly $18 Billion worth of “surplus”, every dime of which came from a taxpayer of some kind or another. That’s nearly $3,000 for every man, woman and child in Minnesota – nearly $12,000 for a typical family of four. In one year. And they raised taxes enough to cover that and a whole lot more. And given that the state is inevitably falling into deficit while the Democrats control the Legislature, it’s going to get much worse. That money would, in fact, be better employed by the people.
• As Governor Klink established during Covid, the right to transact business is clearly subject to arbitrary, and in some cases seemingly capricious, interference. Small businesses are shut down (as big ones, and business with more, better lobbyists remain open), in many cases without regard to the business’ actual susceptibility to the virus (lawn services? nd smoke shops aren’t. It’s best that your vices not be politically unfashionable.
• Looking a back at the concept of “Essential” and “Non-Essential” workers – designations determined almost entirely via the political expediency of the designations, and their importance to the lifestyle of the “Laptop class” workers who make up the political class – feels like staring into the soul of Orwell’s universe, even three years later.
• The government started by barring all evictions and foreclosures, and halting student loan payments. The Twin Cities governments have moved on to rent control – furthering the road to gutting the affordable rental market, and completely foreclosing the existence of the small landlords that used to provide most of the metro’s “affordable housing” – while the Biden regime tried to unilaterally wipe out personal obligations to private student loan lenders.

Government Transparency

• The DFL created a “Hate Speech Registry”. What’s in it? What’s it for? How do we see what, and who, is in it? For what purposes will it be used? The registry’s supporters couldn’t and wouldn’t answer questions. They just jammed it down.
• The Governor’s “Covid Snitch Line” showed us not only the DFL’s ability for setting up a Stasi-like network of informants, but how much they genuinely enjoy it.
• School boards around the state are gradually, and sometimes not so gradually, being turned into rubber-stamps for district administrators and the state department of Education.
• For years, people complained, legitimately, that most of the legislature’s big decisions were made by the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, operating behind closed doors. That was intolerable and stupid when there were opposing parties involved in those negotiations. Now that they’re all with the same party? While elections have consequences, this is pure authoritarianism.
• Covid-era restrictions on meetings have morphed, post-pandemic, into a glib disregard for state open meeting laws, which serve more as suggestions these days.

First Amendment

• The collaboration of Big Government, Big Tech, Big Media and the Big Left’s non-profit/industrial complex completely gutted free speech in time for the 2020 election. The vituperation of their response to Elon Musk buying Twitter tips the hand; the Axis of Authority really, really wants “free speech” to be more about crappy art than actually holding government accountable.
• And as Big Left endlessly drones on about the “Threat” of “endemic white supremacist terrorism” that we’ve been told for 15 years is everywhere, honest, one of these days now – the threat of being swatted, of crowds of professional protesters and rioters making your free exercise of too much inconvenient speech potentially dangerous is always there. The March 4, 2017 “Anti”-Fa attack on a Republican gathering at the MN Capitol rotunda (and the fact that Ramsey County’s “criminal justice” system did everything but take the “protesters” out for dinner to apologize for the inconvenience of being arrested) was a warning; shut up, or you just might get cut up. Democrats and the DFL are very aware of this, because that malevolent mass of wannabe thugs are their children, nephews, classmates.

Second Amendment

• While the Second Amendment community remains strong, and with the departure of Wayne LaPierre may get some of its teeth re-sharpened at the national level, the attacks on the law-abiding gun owner in Blue jurisdictions are increasing, unconscionable, and not consistent with “protecting democracy”. More below.

Fourth Amendment

• The surveillance state has gotten steadily worse.
• The presence of anonymous “snitch lines” – and especially “hate crime” lines, may not have led to any Fourth Amendment perversions of probable cause yet – but don’t bet against it.
• “Red Flag” laws have largely trashed the Fourth Amendment (more below).

Fifth Amendment

• With the courts pretty much closed your right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury is pretty much toast for the duration.
• Let’s not forget how the state gutted the justice system – including the rights of defendants to speedy drials, to face their accusers, and of their attorneys to effectively prepare cases – under the pretext of “public emergency restrictions”.

Privacy

• Among the many other depredations of Minnesota’s “red flag” law – “Mental Health” professionals are in fact now deputized to participate in the abuse of those laws. I’d say “consider the unintended consequences”, but I don’t think there’s anything “unintended” about them.
• Government used your cell data to track the effectiveness of social distancing. Think that genie’s going back in the bottle?

When Democrats refer to Republicans as “fascists”, it’s a Berg’s Seventh Law case. .

I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Anderson Cooper’s New Years Eve broadcasts from Times Square since Kathy Griffin was still an A-lister – or, maybe, starting her descent toward the Z-list.

But perhaps the biggest story of this past year, along with and tied to Trump’s re-election, is the change in the culture over the past few months.

Suddenly, it’s…well, not “safe”, per se, to attack our narratives’ sacred cattle. But people are starting to play around with the idea.

Which brings us to Whitney Cummings – a comedian about whom I’ve never felt any compulsion to comment at all [1].

Can anyone imagine a comic, other than Dave Chapelle or Ricky Gervains, riffing on mainstream TV like this, even a year ago?

The good news is, it feels like the cultural pendulum is swinging.

The other news, neither good nor bad but definitely worth paying attention to:  these swings need to be solidified.  Talk about Trump ushering in permanent change is only not premature if we make it stick. 

[1] That’s not entirely true. Cummings briefly had a TV series, “Whitney“. I saw about ten minutes of it, and it was pretty dreadful, but somehow it eked out two seasons.

Anyway – Ed Morrissey walked into the studio and said “I just heard, Whitney’s dead”. I responded. “Thank God. It’s about time”.

Ed looked at me, a little horrified.  “The TV show?”, I asked?

“No.  Whitney Houston.”

Earlier today we talked about the change in leads, and maybe fortunes, in the Minnesota House, thrown into chaos by the DFL’s hubris in Distict 40A.

Today, let’s look at the Senate.

The Senate wasn’t up for election this year – so they held on to the same one-vote lead they’ve had for the past two years – by the solitary dint of Nicole “The Ninja” Mitchell not leaving office after her arrest for burglary at the end of the last session.

And it’s no surprise – the DFL would ignore Ted Bundy if he was their whole lead, especially given the DFL’s losses in the House.

But then Senator Dziedzic died, last week.

Which leaves the Senate tied at 33-33, as long as Mitchell remains in office.

Mitchell will get forced out once her vote no longer matters, of course – and the DFL will likely win both special elections, barring a very unlikely swerve in either district.  And Governor Klink will be able to veto anything a temporary majority in both chambers sends to his desk. 

But this opportunity, such as it is, must not go to waste. 

So, last week was a big week. A good one, by Minnesota Republican standards. For the DFL, less so.

Both chambers of of the Minnesota legislature flipped to “tied” last week – one by via human tragedy, and one by hubris and stupidity.

Let’s talk stupidity and hubris first.

The House

As we noted last week, the election in House District 40B got thrown out by a Ramco Judge – DFLer Julian Castro – because the DFL winner, Curtis Johnson, hadn’t lived in the district the required six months.

Naturally, it took his GOP opponent and his supporters to dig up the information that went to trial – God knows the media isn’t going to do it. But the locals did prevail. Johnson is out.

Which, including the still-disputed 54A race, leaves the GOP one vote ahead as the session looms. Which means a GOP speaker of the House – a much better speedbump on DFL control than the “shared power” arrangement people were talking about last week.

Or it will, if the DFL can’t figure out a way to juke the rules in their favor. Which is exactly what they’re going to try to do.

On Friday, Johnson A DFL state representative-elect said Friday he will not appeal a judge’s ruling that he is ineligible to hold the office because he did not meet residency requirements for the district.

On Friday, Johnson announced he was opening the way to a special election to fill the 40B seat by “resigning“:

A DFL state representative-elect said Friday he will not appeal a judge’s ruling that he is ineligible to hold the office because he did not meet residency requirements for the district.

In a letter to Gov. Tim Walz, Curtis Johnson said he has “made the difficult decision not to accept my seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives and to resign from the Office of State Representative effective immediately and irrevocably.”

Which is great – except the couldn’t resign. He was never in the office – it’s still Becker-Finn’s seat, and Johnson’s election was voided by the court.

Pretty Vacant

And the word “vacancy” has a statutory definition:

Which didn’t stop Governor Walz from declaring a special election on January 24.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but Johnson’s not the incumbent – Becker-Finn is.

So trying to jam down a special election is against the law:

But there is no vacancy, so (as I, and I suspect Mr. Hansen, and presumptive-Speaker Demuth) see it), the governor doesn’t get to call the special election until 22 days after Johnson isn’t sworn in, on January 14, the first day of session.

So with the House tied at 67-67 after the election, and the 54A seat in Shakopee still in court, this gives the GOP a 67-66 lead in the House, and the potential of picking up the 54A (and refusing to seat Brad Tabke until the issue is resolved in court).

I say it’s time for some intransigence.

Let’s talk about the Senate later today. 

Remember the movie “Miracle”? One of the last great Disney movies?

For a lot of us, the opening credits were intensely evocative:

These credits were as concisely effective a history of the 1970s, especially the Carter Administration, as I’ve seen.

I was 13 when Jimmy Carter took office, and 17 when he left.

I’m not going to pretend that I was an especially well-informed teenager about politics.  More well-read than most of my classmates?  Perhaps, but even then high schools didn’t spend a ton of time on political philosophy, for better or worse. 

But it’d be fair to say I leaned toward whatever passed for the left as a teenager.  My parents were both Democrats – Dad was a union guy, Mom had muted hippie tendencies – so it was the water in which I swam.  Jimmy Carter was “the good guy” in my house.  Not that Ford was the “bad guy”, necessarily – but the white hat/black hat dynamic of the two parties was kinda understood.  

Or at least I understood them that way, and certainly saw politics that way.  In 1980, I went to “Boy’s State”, a weeklong mock government program put on by the American Legion.  Somehow, I got elected state party chairman.  I wrote a platform that would have made Bernie Sanders gush with pride.   I think I knew then what Ken Martin and Governor Klink know now – satisfying peoples surface desires gets you votes. And it did – we swept the statewide offices. 

That fall, I wasn’t old enough to vote.   I certainly wasn’t voting for Reagan.

But I wasn’t going to vote for Carter, either.

While I was not yet an especially well-read or -informed person, I could read the room around me.   A few years before Boys State, I’d listened to Jimmy Carter’s infamous “Malaise Speech”.

And I started to get angry.   The message to me – probably 14 or 15 at the time – was “my generation got ours, but sorry, you young ‘uns, you’re gonna have to suck it up and deal with less”. 

And it kinda infuriated me.  And unlike a lot of things that pissed me off as a cranky teenager, it still does. 

There were a lot of things that started me toward pulling the lever for Ronald Reagan in 1984, and becoming a conservative talk show host in 1986.  

The Malaise speech, and the economic, moral and social malaise that had in fact swept the nation.

The foreign policy impotence that allowed Iran to hold Americans hostage with impunity (or, given the post-Vietnam atrophy of the US military leading to the failure of the rescue mission, even worse than impunity)

Meeting Vietnamese and Polish refugees – and, in fact, watching the Poles’ fight for freedom unfolding in real time.

Reading – at the urging of my English major advisor – Dostoëvskii, Tolstoy, Paul Johnson, PJ O’Rourke, Buckley and all the many other writers who were able to break through my adolescent inertia and show me the corrosive futility of statist utopianism and the power of freedom.

And seeing America find it’s feet – first slowly…

And then picking up speed:

And then definitively. For a decade or so, anyway.

All of those episodes were either direct result of Jimmy Carter’s America, or repudiations of it.

There’s a part of me that wants to study Carter and his supremely checkered legacy in more depth than the above (which is about as deeply as I’ve actually gone, ever).  He’s a fascinating mass of contradictions. 

He was considered a knee-jerk liberal by the standards of the time – but smarting from the humiliation of the hostage crisis, the Annapolis grad and 10-year Submarine officer actually started the military modernization that Reagan continued and accelerated. 

He took over the presidency at one of its peacetime low points – and kept things at a depressing, dare I say “malaise-ridden” plateau.  

He was broadly considered a “good man” – the past 40-odd years have been an endless series of Habitat for Humanity photo ops for Carter.  But he also spent much of the past 44 years trying to impart moral equivalence on some of the world’s worst dictators. 

For my part?  He’s no longer the worst president of my lifetime; all three Obama terms were much worse, for the nation and the world. 

There are signs – tiny sparks, really – that the generation burbling up through high school and universities today are as sick of this nation’s post-Obama moral confusion and malaise as I was of the post-sixties, post-Watergate, post-Vietnam jumble of miseries.   If I can do anything to foster that, I’ll consider it a mission. 

RIP, Jimmy Carter.

Former Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic passed away last Friday after a protracted battle with cancer.  She was 62.

“Senator Kari Dziedzic was a passionate legislator, a respected leader, and a trusted colleague and friend. She will be remembered for her integrity and her compassion for Minnesotans, something that we all saw as she continued to serve even as she battled cancer,” said Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, an East Grand Forks Republican. “I’m deeply saddened at her passing and am praying for her family and friends as we all mourn this loss.”

She was the daughter of former City Councilmember Walt Dziedzic, who may have been the last genuine union moderate in Minneapolis politics.

Prayers and condolences to the Senator’s family. 

Her passing, along with other recent events, put the DFL in a bit of a bind – but I won’t pollute an obit with that. 

Vivek Ramaswamy ruffled a whole lot of feathers over this past weekend with his comments about the culture of South Asian immigrants.

Stipulated in advance – there is a lot of abuse of H1B visas, to provide a relatively cheap and, by modern standards, just a little indentured labor force. That may need some fixing.

But when you start comparing second-generation Indian immigrants?

He’s not really wrong.

You should open and read the entire tweet – but I’m going to pull this quote:

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers…[Families should emphasize] movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.

That drew some, er, sporty responses from what media calls “MAGA”. No doubt you’ve heard ’em.

But if you leave aside the abuse of H1B visas, and the pretty spotty record of outsourcing engineering and software development to India (whose engineering culture is often well-credentialed but stiff, hierarchical and frequently more focused on legalistic i-dotting and t-crossing than results), he’s not wrong.

This guy – one of the less-useless voices in academia – puts it well (and again, you’d do well to read the entire tweet):

But again, I’ll pull the quote:

An entertaining aspect of the past few days’ race war is that the elite Asian/Indian immigrant critique of middle-class white American scholastic culture (“You guys are lazy af, and focus totally on playing football and getting laid”) is IDENTICAL to the middle-class white American critique of Black and Mexican scholastic culture.

As a political scientist, there’s an important point here: bigotry doesn’t just go in one direction. For most people, the more forward-caste person – the bastard ahead of them in society – will always be a ruthless, stiff, amoral, dead inside, thieving, SOB who is a trash lover. But, the more poor and rural person? A dumb, inbred, animalistic, backward, criminal, low-IQ, ridge-runner.

And it should hardly bother “MAGA” too much to notice that Ramaswamy agrees with them – modern American academic culture in general would have to stand on tiptoes to get to “mediocrity”, and that pathology is even leaking into the once-sacrosanct “STEM” fields.

But it’s not just academic culture.

Immigrants, as Reilly notes, have always had to kick it up a notch to get to “even” in America.  Indians – like Chinese, Koreans, VIetnamese, Philipinos, and before them Italilans, Jews, Germans and all the others, all the way back – have done it exceptionally well. 

The concentration of Indians in technology (and, this past few years, politics) should be taken as a challenge – to our education system, sure, but to our family culture as well.  

Democrats, 2020-November 2024:  “We need to vote to save Democracy!   Remember January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  January 6!  

Democrats today:

Anyone wanna place odds on an inauguration day riot?

SCENE:   Former Governor Mark DAYTON’s house, on Lake Minnetonka [1].  

He’s sitting in his bathrobe and slippers by a roaring fire, reading the Strib. His wife , Ana ORKE-DAYTON, enters the room.

ORKE-DAYTON:  I’m taking a stack of credit cards and taking the Porsche to the Galleria.

DAYTON:   Mpfmbfh. 

ORKE-DAYTON leaves, as DAYTON’s eye alights on a news item:

U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, has missed votes in Congress and has been “having some dementia issues late in the year,” her son told The Dallas Morning News. Granger, 81, last cast a vote on the morning of July 24…The congresswoman now resides in a Fort Worth senior living facility called Tradition Senior Living. There are two locations on the same property, but Brandon Granger confirmed it is not the memory care facility, as some media outlets have reported. Granger said his mother is staying in the independent living facility to be around other seniors.

DAYTON: (Thinking to self) Huh. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on pretending to be in office?

And SCENE

[1] I have no idea where he lives. It’s gotta be Minnetonka, right?

A Ramsey County judge has tossed out the election of DFLer Curtis Johnson:

Ramsey County District Judge Leonardo Castro issued an order granting an election challenge against Curtis Johnson, determining he didn’t live in the Roseville area district he sought to represent for the time required in state law. 

Johnson’s Republican challenger, Paul Wikstrom, sought the ruling after he and supporters gathered surveillance video and photos that aimed to show Johnson did not reside in the apartment he claimed to inhabit during the campaign.

The Minnesota Constitution spells out that a candidate must live in the state for one year prior to the election and in the district they hope to represent for six months ahead of the election.

 

This gives the MNGOP a one-vote lead in the House. The “trifecta” was dead even with 67-67 tie – tie votes are defeated.

But this means the Speaker will be a Republican, not some jury-rigged power-sharing arrangement.

I strongly urge the GOP to do to the DFL what John Bonham did to hotel rooms. 

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

The head of the NCAA says it’s “debatable” whether male athletes have a physical advantage over females.

I propose a scientific experiment to end the debate.   Take the top 50 male athletes in every NCAA sport and play them against the top 50 females.  Run a “Best of the Best” tournament with brackets, just like any other tournament.  See who winds up on top.  

Where there are different rules for men’s versus women’s sports, we play from the women’s tees, throw the women’s shot putt, etc.  Referees and judges will be equally split, men and women, to ensure fairness.

Biological men. Biological women.  No trans people allowed.  This competition is not a social studies project to pamper sensitive feelings, it is a scientific inquiry to determine whether biology plays a determinative role in sports.  Therefore, people with unusual medical conditions such as Imane Kehlif who has Swyer Syndrome, will be excluded, as they are outliers who will skew the results. 

The sports where guys win the tournament prove trannies cannot compete against girls because their male biology gives them an unfair advantage.

The sports where girls win are the sports where trannies can compete against them, since they won’t have an unfair physical advantage.    

And once we’ve established that by SCIENCE, it can never be questioned again.  After all, you trust the Science, don’t you?  You’re not a Science Denier, are you?  

Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park

 

 

That’d be cool – but it’s kinda been done.

You’re Tim Walz.

You just called half of your state “Nazis” and “Fascists”. 

How do you try to make up for that?

The same way you always did:

The same way he’s done everything; an endless ooze of food selfies, social media strawmen and intellectual Cream of Wheat.

Giggles isn’t paying her staff.

But sure, she could have fixed the economy. 

Let them eat brat vibes.