Author Archive

Heads You’re Racist, Tails You’re Destroying The Climate

Tuesday, June 13th, 2023

A friend of the blog emails, with an accompanying social media blurb from Saint Paul City councilwoman Mitra Jalali:

Our councilwoman- Yes, there is quite a bit of vacant parking, but that’s because the city and the owners of the property made the decision to not allow the business owners to repair, but rather evicted everyone so that the Major League Soccer team could have more parking. Remember?

Prior to that, the parking lots were rarely vacant because people came to the area to support those businesses. They came to the area by car, by bus, and by walking. Now, there really isn’t much for people outside of the neighborhood to drive into the Midway for- there are some good restaurants, but lots of places have good restaurants. Those who can drive will go to the suburbs for more choice, and thus cheaper, groceries and retail options. Complaining about parking lots that are owned by businesses are not exactly the words I would use to attract any type of business back to the area…

We know the riots expedited the decline of the Midway, but we also know that propaganda policies going back to Russ Stark and Chris Coleman also played a role in the decline of the Midway. If he were any more aware than Councilwoman Jalali, Eric Molho might realize that the anti-car, anti-parking, anti-business attitude of city leadership has led us to where we are now. https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2023/06/reflecting-on-one-minneapolis-two-realities-as-a-friend-plans-a-move-outside-the-city/ His editorial could have easily been written about Saint Paul as well.

And why are we concerned about the “intensity of heat” that these parking lots produce. If there were businesses there, and if there were people coming to the businesses, those lots would be wonderful to have. What is more concerning to the neighbors of the actual area is the constant congregation of people lying around getting sun strokes while passed out drunk there, or people doing drugs worse than drinking and of course the crime that comes with those activities. Amazing that Jalali was able to find an angle to photograph herself without those elements around her. Ignoring these elements of the current landscape is also not the way to attract investment into the area.

Molho ends his editorial with “We love celebrating our parks and bike lanes but appear clueless about public safety and thriving neighborhoods.” Perhaps that is some self reflection? Perhaps all at the city leadership area should recognize their cluelessness and actually talk to the businesses leaving and talk to the businesses who are staying/who want to stay and figure out what they need. I would guess the answers would be opposite everything people like Jalali and Molho want, and the only way we get back to a reasonable city with improved economics is if activists like Jalali and Molho are humble enough to listen and learn.

I suspect Jane Prince is the only person on the council who can spell, much less practice, humility and listening.

The Racket

Monday, June 12th, 2023

I’m not the world’s biggest Matt Walsh fan.

Not because of what he says. Mostly because he’s a podcaster whose podcast gets plopped onto radio with a little editing. It’s not necessarily great radio.

But radio purism aside, I watched “What is a Woman?” last week.

And the part that stuck with me, the part I didn’t already know?

Between hormones, surgery and other clinical charges, every single transition yields a total of $1.3 Million.

The return on investment has to be far better than Covid was.

With that in mind, I caught this the other day. It’s a thread – if you cllck into it, it should yield 5-6 related tweets:

“It’s a racket” would certainly explain a lot of the hamfisted way the DFL jammed the issue down this past session.

36 Years Ago Today

Monday, June 12th, 2023

This happened:

How do you explain this to someone under 40, who didn’t have to wonder if they were going to get vaporized if some colonel in some bunker somewhere had a bad day?

A County Of Cowards

Monday, June 12th, 2023

In 1993, when Jeff Snyder published his classic monograph A Nation of Cowards, one of the key takeaways was that until the people had the will (to say nothing of the means) to resist the tyranny of street crime, they were getting what they deserved.

This was after a few decades of New Yorkers being told…:

  • Carry an extra wallet to give to the muggers.
  • But make sure the spare wallet doesn’t have too little money, or the mugger may get angry and kiill you anyway
  • Leave your car window open so the thieves don’t just smash them to get what they want.

Eventually, even New Yorkers had enough, and elected the law-and-order Giuliani as mayor, and supported his crackdown on petty crime.

These days, the Minneapolis Police Department is telling us this:

So the question now becomes – are 2020s Minneapolitan more bovinely acquiescent than 1970s New Yorkers?

A Simple Proposition

Friday, June 9th, 2023

To: Calvin McDonald, CEO, Lululemon
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Business Stuff

Mr. McDonald,

Last week, a couple of employees at a Lululemon store were axed after they tried to react like a normal law-abiding human when someone robbed their store.

You defended this response:

Lululemon’s CEO stands by his decision to axe two employees who called the police while three masked men robbed a Georgia outpost, citing the company’s “zero-tolerance policy” for intervening with a robbery as reason for firing the workers.

“We have a zero-tolerance policy that we train our educators on around engaging during a theft,” Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald told CNBC during Friday’s “Squawk on the Street.”

“Educators” are what Lululemon calls its workers…

Ferguson said that once a robbery occurs, workers are instructed to “scan a QR code. And that’s that. We’ve been told not to put it in any notes, because that might scare other people. We’re not supposed to call the police, not really supposed to talk about it.”

However, McDonald said that the policy is in place “because we put the safety of our team, of our guest, front and center. It’s only merchandise,” he told CNBC.

Question : Since it’s “only merchandise”, why even charge for it?

That is all.

De-Evolution

Friday, June 9th, 2023

120 years ago, when you went into a general or dry goods or grocery store, you went to the counter, got hold of a clerk, and gave or related a list of what you wanted. That clerk would then run around the shelves in back and bring the order up front, ring it up, and send you on you way.

The bottleneck is obvious. Shopping speed is limited by the number and speed of the clerks available.

So a little over 100 years ago, when the chain now known as “A&P” rolled out a model where the customer could walk through the aisles and “pick” the order themselves, and get it rung up by dedicated cashiers when they were good ‘n ready, removing the bottleneck? It revolutionized shopping. The old fasioned “Warehouse PIcker” model pretty much disappeard.

Until now.

A new Walgreens concept being tested in Chjcago brings back the “General Store” model, with a thin veneer of technology to cover that 19th century smell:

In what was once a typical Walgreens, there are now just two short aisles of so-called “essentials” where “customers may shop for themselves.” If you want anything else—a bottle of booze, a deodorant brand deemed “non-essential”—you’ll need to order it at a kiosk and pick it up at the counter.

After undergoing a few weeks of construction, the store reopened on Tuesday. The pharmacy is in the back and to the left, equipped with a fancy new kiosk system of its own. An employee will teach you how to use it.

To the right, gated by anti-shoplifting devices to protect the inventory, two rows of low-rise shelves offer a very limited selection of those so-called “essentials.” Unlike the tall shelves you’re used to seeing in your neighborhood Walgreens, this store’s shelves are no more than five feet tall, giving everyone a clear look at what everyone else is up to…After placing your order, a plastic-framed sign next to the computer instructs, you should “relax while we shop for you.” When your order is ready, head to the pickup/FedEx/Western Union counter to claim your goods.

It’s because of crime, of course.

Democrat governance – dragging us back to the middle ages, a century and an industry at a time.

Not For Turning

Thursday, June 8th, 2023

If you’re a conservative in Minnesota, you’ve got friends moving elsewhere. I personally have friends, including some of the regulars here, who’ve moved or are planning to move to any of the less-insane states; the Dakotas, Tennessee, Texas, Republican northwest Wisconsin, and of course Florida – a state where expats from Minnesota are almost as big a cliche as New Yorkers.

Not me.

And not John Phelan of the Center of the American Experiment.

Phelan gives his three reasons. I agree with ’em all – and I’ve got one of my own to add:

I’m going to start at the end of the list:

Finally, and most importantly, Minnesota is still a wonderful place to live. Its scenery is beautiful, its weather varied (or challenging, depending on your view), and its people decent, none of which, of course, depends on high taxes. When you have something good it is worth fighting for even when you feel the odds are against you. Perhaps especially then.

I’m from North Dakota. The weather in southern Minnesota is like a 12 month vacation (at least since I got AC in my car and bedroom).

The larger point? I was here first.

Second, even while its economy splutters, crime rises, test scores fallthe lights go out, and residents flee in numbers not seen in at least three decades, Minnesota’s government is being lauded as an example by progressives around the country. NBC News, the Daily Beast, and the New York Times have all run pieces lately praising the state government and Gov. Walz in particular. It matters to the entire country that the sad truth about Minnesota gets out.

Because whether you live in Orono or Orlando, they are coming for you, like it or not. Might be next election cycle, it might be when your grandkids are married and having kids of their own, but they’re playiing the long game.

And here’s the big one (I’m adding emphasis):

First, the liberal grip on Minnesota is not as tight as it seems. In 2022, the DFL’s party unit took in nearly $24 million from all sources while the state Republican Party took in a paltry $1.3 million. Even so, and with the built-in advantage of a friendly media, the DFL took the state Senate by just one seat and that by just 321 votes. The DFL is governing like a party that just scored 60 percent of the vote, not because they did, but precisely because they didn’t, and they want to ram their agenda through before Minnesotans cotton on to what they’re up to.

Minnesota has eight congressional districts (for nine more years, anyway).

  • Two (4 and 5) will be hard blue until some future apocalypse makes everyone a conservative.
  • One (3) appears to have slid off the rais.
  • Two (6 and 7) will never vote DFL again.
  • Two (1 and 8) are getting redder by the year. If you’d told me 15 years ago I’d never say that about CD8, I’d have said you were nuts).
  • One (CD2) might be redeemable.

That’s 4-4 – and with the right candidate in the right year, 5-3.

Yes, the DFL balllot-harvesting machine gives the DFL a huge lift with the metro vote – but if the legislature stays in play, that gives us gridlock. Not the eternal blue nightmare. And given how many Republicans stayed home last year, and how close the GOP candidates came in the Attorney General and State Auditor races, despair is premature.

They can’t overturn Roe again, after all.

And the DFL knows it.

The DFL’s awareness of this weakness is evident, too, in its attack on democracy by making it practically impossible for third parties to get on the ballot in Minnesota. Not a single reporter asked a single legislator a single question about this.

Last week, President Obama tweeted, “If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota.” He is exactly right. Our state is about to move from the “fool around” to the “find out” stage of voting for ever higher taxes, ever higher government spending, and ever bigger government. Minnesota needs its conservatives now more than ever.

Which brings us to Reason #4. The fight is worth fighting.

My ancestry is half Viking and 1/4 lowland Scots white trash. We fight just to stay awake, ffs.

What the hell is there to do in this life but fight?

I was here first. I’m not going anywhere.

There Is No Target But Target

Thursday, June 8th, 2023

To: Target Corp
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporouis Peasant
Re: Your Descent Into Totalitarianism

Target,

I started boycotting you a couple weeks ago, over the whole “grooming little kids” thing.

Truth be told, it’s been pretty easy.

And it just got easier:

I’d be creeped out of a company required employees to be Christian conservatives – but nobody, not even the dreaded Chik-Fil-A, actually does that.

Forcing political compliance on employees?

Yet another reason Minnesota needs to suck it up and elect an actual Attorney General.

Oh, yeah – not spending a dime with you for the duration.

What is the duration? That’s up to you.

That is all.

UPDATE: A friend of the blog emails:

The only significant difference between working for Target and joining a cult is that Target doesn’t kill you if you try to leave (Yet)

I was thinking something more like the French Catholics chasing the Huguenots out of the country

With A Whimper

Wednesday, June 7th, 2023

I moved to Minneapolis in the fall of 1985.

It was a beautiful city – full of opportunity, while still being relatively affordable even by the cheaper standards of the 1980s.

And it had personality. Scenes like this were the norm in the Minneapolis of 1985-86:

I arrived at Lake of the Isles and strolled alongside the water. Soon, I was riding alongside [Calhoun] which had sailboats on the water and little kids playing on the beach. Up a small hill and I had arrived at Lake Harriet to meet my friend Patty. We walked around the lake, catching up, joined by people of all ages, races and activity levels. At one point, a huge turtle was crossing the ring road around the lake. A man got out of his car, covered the turtle with a blanket and eventually was able to scoop him up safely and deposit him at the water’s edge. Our small crowd of onlookers cheered. 

I rode home and marveled at the beauty of this place and how easy it was for me to gain access to all these treasures – the park, the museum, three lakes! The vast majority of my trip was on safe, dedicated bike lanes where I didn’t have to worry about traffic. What a gift.

In the summer of ’86, I was that guy, and I took that bike ride, and I saw those things.

But this isn’t my kids’ parents Minneapolis today, as this guy writes about it.

I’m not going to say “I’d never have dreamed of these sorts of scenes when I first moved here” – my faith in the social cohesion of left-wing cities is thinner than the social cohesion of left-wing cities – but hope sprang eternal, and until 2020 history obliged:

My friend is a free spirit and has talked occasionally about buying a hobby farm to commune with nature. He travels frequently, and his job would probably allow him to work almost anywhere. So it wouldn’t have been a shock if he told me he was making a big shift in his life.

When I asked where he was moving to, he told me he was looking at a small house in St. Paul (Highland Park)…

He told me the anxiety of the neighborhood was too much. The sirens are constant. People are racing their cars up and down the street at all hours of the night. He doesn’t feel safe. He said the last time he took the light rail downtown for work, more passengers were fiddling with their fentanyl than commuting to their jobs. He was angry the city was talking about rebuilding the Third Precinct police station and worried violence could easily erupt if that moved forward. 

And, surprising nobody:

All of this was shocking to me. My friend is a hardcore, super-liberal urbanite. 

So the lesson will go unlearned, by “friend”, or the writer: the difference between the Minneapolis of 1986 and the dystopic excrescence the writer is trying to enjoy today…:

As I drove home, I took Lake Street rather than the freeway. It was pretty rough. Still lots of empty storefronts. The Hiawatha station had hordes of people hanging out. I don’t think many of them were headed to trains. The liquor store felt like the center of the neighborhood. I drove by the open sore that is the abandoned Kmart. The ugly chain link fences did nothing to prevent several dozen people from milling about in small groups. Drugs? Living on the streets? Bored? Does it matter?

…is “people like them in absolute control”.

Better Late Than Never

Wednesday, June 7th, 2023

This is a great bit.

Wish there’d been a lot more like it three years ago.

Urban Progressive Privilege: This Is Today’s #MNDFL

Tuesday, June 6th, 2023

Briana Rose Lee is the chair of the Minneapolis DFL.

She tweeted this yesterday.

She spent the next couple hours defending her assertion to a mass of revulsion before, one presumes, Ken Martin cut off her Victory Gin.

Remember all the MNGOP leaders who partied ’til dawn when Paul Wellstone died?

No, you don’t. There were none.

Lee is 37. years old; she’d have been 2 when Ronaldus Magnus left office. She can have no impression what life was really like before Reagan ,so I take most of her opinion with a block of salt.

But I get the impression that Lee is one of those kids who, back in college, read The Gulag Archipelago and thought the NKVD were the good guys.

How dumb was the tweet? After doubling and tripling down that she was never going to do it, the tweet disappeared because it was dumb enough that even Ken Martin had to yank her leash:

But in a statement, DFL Chair Ken Martin said her tweet about Reagan did not “reflect the values of the DFL Party.”

“While there is nothing wrong with debating the policies and legacies of elected officials, mocking the passing of an American president is beyond the pale,” Martin said. “We expect better of leaders within our party, and we will continue holding ourselves to the high standard that Minnesotans deserve.”

Oh, yeah – Senator Jen McEwen, who actually is coming for your guns, agrees:

Gotta feel or Ken Martin: In the past couple years, he’s had to deal with:

  • His staffer calling Navy ships “Murder Boats”
  • A state representative candidate (who would to on to serve a term in the House) calling for the destruction of Hugo and the murder of its citizens
  • Another staffer calling for Republicans to be guillotined
  • Two cities destroyed by his voters
  • Another staffer trying to go all Sonny Corleone on…a friendly MinnPost reporter
  • Another comms staffer with a habit of tweeting like a sixth-grader who stole Mommy’s instagram password
  • This.

Turns out there’s some dissent within the DFL’s ranks – between the “The only good Republican is a Dead Republican” set and the “Don’t tell the Hoi-Polloi the whole truth” crowd (read the whole thread), which exposes the full depth of the DFL’s internal squabbling…:

…although don’t get too excited: Democrats, being basically intellectual herd animals, will all fall in line and obey orders come election time.

As Dennis Prager notes, conservatives think leftists are wrong. Leftists think conservatives are evil.

Discretion

Tuesday, June 6th, 2023

Western “woke” social imperialism apparently has its limits:

If one exhibits “pride” but nobody can hear it, does it exist?

Mojo Nixon Nailed It

Tuesday, June 6th, 2023

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I am endlessly informed by Liberals that the reason Black students do poorly in school is racism.  The teachers, the principals, the entire educational system is against them. If that’s so, then I must ask: why do we continue to employ racists in those positions?  Fire every one of them, hire new people who pledge to do better, and monitor the results.  If Black students do better, then Liberals were right.  If not, then the problem lies elsewhere and we can stop hearing about racism as the problem.

The wrongfully accused and ultimately fired teachers and administrators?  They can learn to code.

I am endlessly informed by Liberals that the reason Black defendants are over-represented in the justice system is racism. The cops, the prosecutors and judges, the entire legal system is against them.  If that’s so, then I must ask: why do we continue to employ racists in those positions?  Fire every one of them, hire new people who pledge to do better, and monitor the results. If Blacks do better, then Liberals were right.  If not, then the problem lies elsewhere and we can quit hearing about racism as the problem.

The wrongfully accused and ultimately fired cops, lawyers and judges?  They can learn to code.

We cannot continue to blame racists for society’s problems while we continue to harbor racists in their positions of power.  A wholesale makeover of society is required.

Maybe you’re thinking that’s too ambitious.  Maybe you’re thinking we should start small, a pilot project so to speak, to see how it goes.  I have a suggestion, lifted from Henry VI, Part 2:

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”

Joe Doakes No Longer in Como Park

If progs didn’t have racism/white supremacy/toxic masculinity to deflect to, they’d have to work.

Pronouns

Monday, June 5th, 2023

Minnesota is transferring his first transgender female to the Shakopee women’s prison.

But I’m not here to talk about the obvious issue.

No – there are two issues that go way beyond putting (deep breath) bio-men into women’s prisons.

Stay In Your Lane: Shakopee is referred to as a “women’s. prison”.

Is the MN Department of Corrections a bunch of biologists?

Do are they experts in what “women” are? Like this PhD?

Which leads us to another, inarguably more serious problem.

Pronouns Pronouns Pronouns: What’s in the world “Prison?”

The word “Son”.

Since we don’t know the genders of the incarcerated (indeed, the incarcerated themselves may not know at any given time), it’s time to change the name of the facility to “Shakopee Prixyn”.

(more…)

Live Imitates The Babylon Bee

Monday, June 5th, 2023

This piece – about “Allies” who joined forces to make money off of DEI by capitalizinging on someone else’s jape, and went on to eat each other – is almost too perfect to be parody.

I Heard It On The (Sunday) NARN

Sunday, June 4th, 2023

Here’s the John Phelan piece I talked about.

And here’s today’s song list:

Open Letter To MPR’s Jon Collins: Year 3

Friday, June 2nd, 2023

To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public Radio
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Anniversary + Findings

Mr. Collins,

As with last year and 2021, I hope this day finds you well.

It was three years ago today you sent this out on your listener mailing list::

“South Minneapolis: I know this sounds crazy. But it’s 2020. And I’m working on story now about white supremacists coming to Minneapolis to foment race war under cover of the protests. I need your help, and your friends help. Please refer anyone with real, credible info (not rumor or speculation) or sources to me at (I’m gonna redact that)

What the heck – let’s give this a shot:

Now, I know MPR reporters don’t generally deign to respond to the peasantry – in fact, I know MPR News management specifically tells staff not to engage with the unwashed masses.

But I’m genuinely curious – did you find anything?

It’s not of idle interest to me.  Mine was one of the neighborhoods that got burned, looted and vandalized in May of 2020 (noting at the time that I saw a lot of “AmeriKKKa” and “Destroy the 1%” graffiti, but not a single swastika or “14 words” reference, I’m thinking the Twin Cities either got the most inept “white supremacists” in the history of bigotry, or they were the most ingenious – fiendishly tricking a whole city full of leftists into doing the job for them – the sort of fieldcraft that’d make a Mossad agent envious).     

While I am a very overt conservative (I went from Bob Collins’ Christmas Card list to…well, very much off of it during his unfortunate unpleasantness a few years ago), I also spent time covering radical groups of all stripes back when I was in the mainstream media.  

I ask because a not-so-cursory look through the last three years of your reporting doesn’t seem to show anything.  

And as I do every year on the anniversary of this event, I’d like to invite you on my show (Saturday, 1-3PM) to talk about your findings.   Because it’s everyone’s city. 

Thanks,

Mitch Berg
Host, WWTC-AM

 

Urban Planning

Friday, June 2nd, 2023

SCENE: Minnesota DFL Executive Meeting.

KEN MARTIN (Chait of the MNDFL): Next order of business.

INGE “LUCKY” CARROLL (A former guidance counselor at a school for monomaniacs, Inge is Head Meme-Buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”). Our next plan is to start building safe spaces for hard drug use.

STACEY HINTON (Executive Director of “Keep All Racists Eternally Nonplussed”, a white progressive support group). Brilliant.

GRETEL STROMBERG ()Executive Director of “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”, Stromberg is married to both a woman and a male illegal immigrant) Here’s the news coverage:

KEN MARTIN: Great piece. Fawning and morally bankrupt without going too over the top.

STROMBERG: Like Esme Murphy. .

KEN MARTIN: Yep. Now, we’ll be building these “safe spaces” at places like Summit and Chatsworth, and Crocus Hill, and down amid the condos across from the Guthrie…

( Entire group sits silently, in disbelief, jaws literally dropping).

KEN MARTIN: Hah! You shoulda seen your faces. Nope, we’re building them among the proles.

(Various expressions of relief)

KEN MARTIN: So – between legal weed and shooting galleries, and the schools teaching the next generation to be ignorant, uncritical , compliant and distracted by contrived grievances, the next generation should be really solid DFL voters!~

Round of applause as the scene fades to black.

Everything’s Fine

Friday, June 2nd, 2023

The most active and on-top-of-it president ever…

…falls over while giving the commencement address at the USAF Academy.

Nothing to see here.

There Isn’t Much…

Thursday, June 1st, 2023

…about the way high school was when I was a kid that makes me sit up and say “damn, they had the right idea.”

But I do know that if some students had started a petition saying “we don’t want to have graduation at the Civic Center [the only building in town big enough to hold the graduation], so move it or we won’t attend”, the principal – Virgil Buchholtz, who’d been a Marine fighter pilot during World War II – would have settled that quickly and sharply.

Perhaps it’s not being a teenager. Perhaps it’s having raised teenagers. Perhaps it’s reading some history, and realizing how deeply stupid movements on the macro scale led by “youth” tend to be.

But I wish someone in the Chaska/Chanhassen school district had the same common sense that Mr. Buchholtz had when I read stories like this:

Next week, Eastern Carver County Schools plan to host graduation ceremonies for Chaska and Chanhassen high schools at Eden Prairie’s Grace Church. But this year families are pushing for a change in venue after Chaska High Schooler Eli Frost created a petition.

On the petition that now has 364 signatures, Frost wrote: “Grace Church has a long history of making derogatory, public statements against the LGBTQ+ community. Further, they do not support divorce even in situations of domestic violence. As a community of students and parents who represent a wide variety of marginalized identities, we must change this venue.”

Young Mr. Frost has gotten a lot of facts wrong – go ahead and follow the link to Grace Church’s response.

And I hope the Chaskahassen schools have a sudden attack of common sense in the next week.

Mitch Edits Hollywood For Accuracy

Thursday, June 1st, 2023

Before:

“Bill Hader perfectly illustrates the cultural left’s paranoid bigotry mixed with hysteria about “gun culture” with a single, dull-witted, cliche-clogged four minute scene from some streaming show I’ve never paid attention to.”

(CORRECTION: I guess it was just 30 seconds. Who knew?)

The Next Big Thing

Wednesday, May 31st, 2023

2022 was an upset and a good year at the polls for the DFL, largely on the strength of:

  • Hysteria about abortion, whipped up after the SCOTUS overturned Roe.
  • “Fully Funding Education” – a concept literally no DFLer could or would define.
  • …that’s about it.

In terms of divisive issues that turn out Democrats in droves, the big kahunas of recent years? They can’t re-overturn Roe, re-legalize pot, re-sanctify stalking and Munchausens Syndrome, re-legalize same sex marriage – and they got literally everything they asked for in education, so the schools should be “Fully Funded”, whatever that is.

So – let’s do some predicting.

What will the the next issue the DFL uses to try to panic their herds of ill-informed, uncritical, gullible, emotion-driven hysterical voter base to the polls?

Leave ’em in the comments.

I Love A Happy Ending

Wednesday, May 31st, 2023

Whackjob environmentalist protesters crash a Swedish TV dance show.

Robocam operator scores a two-fer:

Consider my week made.

Notes To Self Re 2023 Session: Part 1

Tuesday, May 30th, 2023

I made a series of notes to myself at the beginning of the session, re all the promises the DFL made in the wake of their “trifecta”

There were a lot of them.

Some of them won’t matter for a while, or won’t be measurable for quite some time. (Is the DFL really going to cut child poverty by 1/3 in the next year/)

But one can be tested today: “Did the DFL legalize Cannabis?”

And they did.

I’m a little surprised. While on the one hand a buzzed, stuporous electorate is a perfect DFL audience, I figured the issue was worth more to the DFL as a social wedge.

Of course, the law is full of gimmies to Big Pharma, and handouts to well-connected political insiders, and will benefit small producers not one iota. And as Colorado discovered, the taxes and regulation won’t actually affect the black market criminal sale:

Instead, in 2023, Colorado’s cannabis entrepreneurs face a perfect storm of problems: too much supply, not enough demand, plunging prices, heightened competition in other states, the allure of black market weed, a lack of cannabis tourism and more. That’s on top of the shaky economic forecast for the rest of the year, even though inflation is steadily slowing….Earlier this year, marijuana giant Curaleaf shuttered its operations in Colorado, along with California and Oregon. “We believe these states will represent opportunities in the future, but the current price compression caused by a lack of meaningful enforcement of the illicit market prevent us from generating an acceptable return on our investments,” CEO Matt Darin said.

There is ample evidence the DFL spent even less time thinking about unintended consequences than Colorado did:

Note to KARE: This might have been a good question during the session

The greatest effect is likely to get rid of the Marijuana parties that’ve sapped DFL votes in recent years.

There were so many promises. This’ll keep us busy for a while.

Pounce!

Tuesday, May 30th, 2023

Democrat have been trying to wedge hunters apart from other gun owners for decades.

And they’re not happy that its not working.

“Jilted”

Oddly, that’s not the word the Strib used when Klink refudiated his “A” rating with the NRA. I’d use “stabbed in the back”, personally.

Anyway – welcome to the party, deer hunters.

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