…but I get the impression someone is sliding ever so slowly back toward conservatorship.

Big Left will flip the tables, declare that Trump’s push to develop a vaccine was a huge mistake.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her departure from office on Wednesday (US time).

Socialists and eggheads golf-clapped the end of her regime, filled with some of the most draconian and ill-advised Covid responses in the world, atop years of socialist knob-jiggling. .

I know, the video below is a fake. I don’t care. It reflects my feelings exactly.

Why is she leaving?

I don’t care. For right now, it’s sufficient that she is leaving.

Hamline University – my neighbor here in the MIdway, a university with almost as much hamfisted woke cred as Saint Thomas and Macalester, recently fired an art professor for showing an artistic representation of Mohammed.

Here’s a quick rundown:

López Prater, an adjunct professor, showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class-causing an uproar back in October. Since, many Muslims viewing visual representations of the prophet are prohibited, some thought the professor’s actions as highly “Islamaphobic”. Take a look:

Despite a “trigger warning”, it appears the student was triggered when Dr. López Prater, showed the classroom a medieval depiction of Muhammad, an “incident of hate and discrimination“, apparently. Hell, even the university’s associate vice president of inclusive excellence (AVPIE) found it to be “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic“.

It sent the message for all to hear: “triggered students are more important than academic, or really all, freedom.”

The story got some national play – which couldn’t have helped the struggling little university.

Of course, Hamline’s concern for diversity of academic opinion, or for that matter the less fashionable consitutional rights, is just as dismal.

But let’s stick with today’s controversy. Hamline is trying to back-track. Ellen Watters, chair of Hamline’s board of trustees, wrote:

In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed…It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students — care does not ‘supersede’ academic freedom, the two coexist.

But it may be too late. Lopez Prater has filed suit:

The lawsuit filed on behalf of López Prate states the professor suffered loss of income from her adjunct position, emotional distress and damage to her professional reputation and job prospects.

David Redden, a lawyer for Dr. López Prater, says the university’s change of heart on the “islamaphobia” accusations does not change the lawsuit and that he, and his client, will pursue legal action against the university.

And other academics have risen to the defense…

…of their fellow academic.

So the good news is, even some academics have reached a point where they won’t spontaneously erupt into a Maoist struggle session on command. Provided it’s their freedom at stake.

It’s a tiny, tiny start.

Children can decide they are any gender or orientation they want…

…but adults can not, and indeed must not be allowed to.

DFL representative Sandra Feist, from the moldy blue suburbs of Henco, speaking on behalf of a bill that would, uh…

…put tampons in boys restrooms in Minnesota schools:

Remember – there is no such thing as “woke culture“, peasants!

While not a single tampon in will be used to deal with a “period” in a bio-boy, I do predict this will lead to a golden age of practical jokes played with tampons.

BTW, the Moe Howard estate called. There will be a cease and desist coming from their lawyers about that hairdo.

SCENE: Mitch BERG Is shopping for a new stove at the appliance store. Focusing on spec sheets, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, who makes a beeline for BERG.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, whyyyyyhi, there, Avery. What’s…

LIBRELLE: Shut up. The paranoia of you wingnuts is hilarious. Now you’re saying “big bad gummint” is coming for your gas stoves.

BERG: Yeah – I hard NPR saying that, last week.

It’s the latest tempest in a teapot on the internet and in Washington politics – what some have dubbed StoveGate. That is the idea of banning natural gas cooking stoves. The controversy started with a remark from Richard Trumka, a commissioner on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, last month before a consumer advocacy group. He cited health studies about gas stoves.

LIBRELLE: Exactly. Nobody’s coming for your gas stove.

BERG: But they’ve been talking about wanting to ban them for years.

LIBRELLE: (Theatrical sigh). OK, Merg. Are they coming for your gas stove right now?

BERG: You people do this with everything. With CRT in schools…

LIBRELLE: Are they literally teaching your kids a law-school level sociology class, right this second?

BERG: …and bespoke gender…

LIBRELLE: Are they booking your kid for gender reassignment surgery right this second as we speak?

BERG: …or socialism…

LIBRELLE? Are they nationalizing your busienss right now?

BERG: Or gun control.

LIBRELLE: Is there a SWAT team beating down your door, not your neighbor’s door but your front door, looking for your guns right this second?

BERG: …then you call us hysterical.

LIBRELLE: Heeeyyyyy! Hysterical is anti-feminist, and implies that insanity is a feminine trait.

BERG: (Seeing a golden opportunity) Am I telling a woman she’s hysterical right this second?

LIBRELLE: Why, as a matter of fact…

(Gas oven lights off with an exaggerated roar. LIBRELLE walks away by the time the sound dies down).

BERG (to clerk). Did you catch that?

CLERK: I was wondering myself.

BERG: Guess we’ll never know.

And SCENE.

I don’t know who this guy is.

I don’t know where he teaches.

I’m sure he’s in a boatload of legal and professional trouble for beating the stuffing out of that gabbling little prick.

But I’d love to find out. And if theres a legal defense fund, he should have his people call my people.

https://twitter.com/FightHaven/status/1614985827314028545

No single book has shaped not just my understanding of modern history, but my own journey from adolescent leftist to conservative more than Modern Times, Paul Johnson’s epic history of the world from 1918 to about 1980 (and, in a revised edition, through the 1990s.

It wouldn’t be a great exaggeration to say that Johnson was the most important modern historian, thinker and writer in my life – not least because he, in starting out on the left before seeing the light and becoming a libertarian-conservative, more or less as I was doing at the time. He went from being an editor at the New Statesman to an adviser to Margaret Thatcher and leading public intellectual of the right, bringing his intellectual and historical gravitas with him.

And few books explain the debt modern society pays to a brief period in history, from 1815 to the mid-1840s, when self-educated men laid the groundwork for most of what makes modern society modern (from the steam engine and electric communication to the popular vote and pants) than Johnson’s Birth of the Modern .

And on, and on. through dozens of books. I still have 40 to go.

Johnson passed away last week at 94.

Modern Times shaped a generation and more of people who had studied history as interpreted by the Left. His explanation of the Great Depression drew greatly on the works of libertarian economists and provided a strong antidote to the conventional wisdom that FDR has saved capitalism from itself…A culture that produced Paul Johnson and others like him explains why British literary writing and journalism, on the whole, is so much better than most of what is produced in America. As Stephen Glover of Britain’s Daily Mail explains: “Even readers who thought they might disagree with him looked forward to his next offering. He never penned a dull sentence or had a dull thought.”

This blog, in its own way, started out as my little way of trying to repay my debt to Johnson .

He’d certainly be canceled with extreme prejudice, were he in his prime today.

I pity the poor schlubs at the Babylon Bee and The Onion.

How hard must it be to actually satirize the modern left?

Speaking of which – this was in the MN House:

While gender may be a, uh, “social construct”, so is insanity.

DNA, however, is not.

Hunter Biden paid $50K a month to rent a house he claimed he owned:

Hunter Biden claimed he paid $49,910 a month to live at President Joe Biden’s Delaware residence where classified documents were discovered, a document shows.

The file, labeled “background screening test,” shows Hunter Biden lived in the president’s Wilmington, Delaware, residence between March 2017 and February 2018. Hunter Biden also claimed to “own” the property, according to the document.

The document was originally discovered on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, according to the Washington Examiner, and was reshared on Twitter by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine.

Of course it’s money laundering. It won’t be confirmed until long after Biden has left office, but STFU. This is a payment to the Big Guy.

My only question: how will Big Leftymedia limber up for the logical and factual gymnastics they need to do to bury this?

“Woke” culture piddles on most of what Martin Luther King stood for.

Which is, alone, a great reason to post the original version of this, one of his greatest speeches, today:

The goal of the Soros-funded district attorney is to make people distrust the system – by punishing the law-abiding and coddling the depraved – to the point where they demand a dictator to keep them safe.

We warned Hennepin County that that was Mary Moriarty’s goal.

The Good News: The tl:DR version of the story found in Alpha News’s tweet isn’t a great summary of the case.

The Bad News: the actual facts are even worse:

Her campaign was opposed by 32 senior Hennepin County prosecutors, including Catherine McEnroe, who is now under investigation by the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, according to the Star Tribune.

McEnroe was leading the prosecution of 35-year-old Marco Tulio Rivera Enamorado, who was charged with one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He allegedly raped his 14-year-old cousin when he was invited from Honduras to come live with her family in the summer of 2019.

McEnroe is accused of fabricating the contents of a note that was passed to her by a victim advocate during Enamorado’s trial Jan. 6.

So – so far, what we have is a prosecutor who went on record opposing Moriarty (bad career move) lying to a judge (bad legal move). Hard to tell, to a layman, if this is incompetence, revenge, or both.

But it gets worse; rather than take the hit and go forward with a different prosecutor in this rape case, Moriarty dismissed the chargfes:

A source with knowledge of the situation said there was no reason for the case to be dismissed, especially since two other prosecutors offered to take over the case.

“The conduct of the county attorney trying the case had nothing to do with the substance of the actual trial,” the source said. “That attorney absolutely could have continued on with the case. If there was concern about her candor to the court, then a supervisor could have acted as co-counsel to ensure the court that there would be truthfulness.”

Moriarty said her priority from the beginning was “trying to see if we could continue to prosecute this case, whether now or later after a mistrial might be declared.”

So Enamorado is free, can never be tried for the case again, and Mike Freeman is looking better and better.

You voted for this, Hennepin County.

The Bad News: The DFL ran on abortion last fall, and won,.

The Worse News: They’re making hay with that “Mandate”, working to remove protections in Minnesota law for infants actually born alive:

The “Born Alive Infants Protection Act” was passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 2015. It states that abortion survivors should be fully recognized as human persons and provided with medical care to preserve their lives.

Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, wants to repeal these protections because they are an “insult” to doctors, she said during a House Health Committee meeting Thursday.

Her bill would also repeal restrictions on the use of public funds for abortion and a requirement that aborted babies be “disposed” of in a “dignified and sanitary” manner.

So not only can DFL doctors murder babies on their way out of the birth canal, they can dump the bodies wherever they want to. Hey, that’s progress.

The Good News, Maybe: After this session, there won’t be a whole lot more abortion for the DFL to run on.

The Worse News: I expect the DFL to run on legalizing murder of children up to age 13. Unless they’re transgender.

…many conservatives feel about Kevin McCarthy, this is just glorious:

Seeing “Duke Nuke ‘Em” cashiered from everything requiring a security clearance is the perfect ending to the week.

Just a warning, progs; get walked around a hotel room on a dog leash by a Chinese spy? There might be consequences. Yes, even for a Democrat.

A: What, are you new here? Berg’s Seventh Law is universal and unyielding.

They do it to draw attention from their own support for terrorism.

Glad I could settle that.

Last February 9, in response to the shooting of Amir Locke, schools around the Twin Cities let their students walk out of school “in protest”.

Let’s be clear – these protests are about as spontaneous and organic as a Nuremberg Rally. The “student activists” who “plan” these walkouts are puppets. Muppets, really.

But I digress.

Amid all the hysteria over school shootings, one facts that gets lost is that schools are generally, statistically, the safest place for kids to be, there days, especially in places like North Minneapoli.

As Minneapolis discovered.

One of their students, DeShaun Hill – a football player and honor student – was shot while walking home.

A court has ruled that this was negligent, and awarded Hiill’s family $500K. I’ve added emphasis:

North High principal Mauri Friestleben was put on leave by the Minneapolis School District for her decision to let students walk out of class Feb. 9 to attend a sit-in at Minneapolis City Hall to protest the police shooting of Amir Locke. Friestleben was later allowed to return to her position.

Hill family attorney William Walker maintains Friestlben’s decision ultimately led to Deshaun’s death. 

“If that principal had not released these children over the instruction of the district… D. Hill would be alive today,” Walker told KARE 11 during a phone interview Tuesday, just hours before the vote. “They (Hill’s family) are devastated… You can talk to a mother who cries every day. D Hill Jr. was loved by everybody. He was the hope for this family.”

Walker said particularly disturbing is the fact that North families and caregivers were not informed about the decision to let students leave early, saying the Hills would have picked Deshaun up at school rather than let him walk home or to a public bus.  

The alleged killer – an apparent psychopath with a 12 year long criminal record – allegedly shot Hill for bumping into him on the street.

So, to sum up:

• Keep kids in school: $0
• Release them out onto the street, unsupervised, without telling families? $500,000
• Remaining at the leading edge of the social justice fashion curve: Priceless.

Over my years of teaching myself to play guitar in an era before the Internet and Youtube, I aped the styles of an awful lot of guitar players: Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, Keith Richard, Mark Knofler, Mike Campbell, Hendrix…

…but there were a few that I could never even think about copying. The fingers on my left hand just didn’t move fast enough to copy Eddie Van Halen or Nils Lofgren. The fingers on my right hand didn’t move fast enough to do Richard Thompson very well.

And I could never figure Jeff Beck out at all.

Beck – who played in the Yardbirds after Eric Clapton and efore Jimmy Page, before going solo – died yesterday at 78, of bacterial meningitis.

And once I started watching music on video, and saw that he picked with right thumb, only? That added insult to envy.

And yes, he is very difficult to imitate:

A very bad couple of years for music fans continue.

I graze a bit on NPR, mostly to find material. Let’s just say it’s a “target rich environment”.

The network has a couple of shows – chock full of vaguely-black sounding accents and topics, slathered over the same progressivized-for-your-protection content they provide the other 162 hours a week, shows like “It’s Been a Minute” and “The Takeaway”, that seem to try to address, not so much the “black” audience, but NPR’s huge, relentlessly white progressive audience, apparently to make them feel, if not “more authentic”, at least a little less guilty.

But I’m here to bring the guilt back.

In recent months, I’ve heard 2-3 shows on the relentlessly woke networks – interviewing the stars of the movie “The Woman King”, an “afrocentric feminist” story about a sub-Saharan kingdom’s unit of female warriors.

The movie – and the gushy, smarmy, self-congratulatory interviews – gabble and prate on and on about female power and empowerment and inspiration and enough word salad to unstop a cement colon.

What doesn’t get mentioned? The real life “warrior women’s” main military and economic justification; procuring slaves to sell. They were a revenue-generation tool for the Dahomey monarchy.

Go ahead. Tell me where the slavery talk is. I’ll wait.

National Review’s Armond White – one of modern media’s most intellectually consistent and rigorous film critics, and incidentally a black man – was not amused:

Historical fraudulence is a problem, but the reasons behind it are what cause alarm. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood and screenwriters Dana Stevens and Maria Bello gainsay Dahomey’s role in the slave trade, trivializing the complications of that original sin. Instead, they offer another Millennial gender-flip, conceived to further sexual confusion via racial frustration and feminist anger.

This approach cannot be taken seriously because, like Black Panther and The Lion King, The Woman King is juvenile. The film’s comic-book premise treats black audiences like children. That adolescent kick over hair-pulling catfights is extended into an almost laughable, pseudo-political history lesson pitting women against men…Thus, she gives us Dahomey as Wakanda, a made-up history for uninformed viewers who feel so “unseen” that they can be robbed and conned again.

But let’s not bury the lede here.

NPR, and Hollywood.

Erasing Slavery.

It’d be so cool if NPR engaged with the proles. I’ve got so many questions.

…were wrong.

It was CNN.

Doy.

I swear, it’s not the Babylon Bee:

I’ll spell it out for DFLers:

California might arguably be freer when it comes to some social behaviors, but in most areas—starting and operating a business, pursuing work, building housing, educating our kids free from government control—it is unquestionably among the nation’s least-free states.

Our tax rates are so high that Californians mainly are free to work longer hours to pay for a modicum of mostly shoddy services. Keeping the money one earns is in some ways the ultimate freedom issue. Is Newsom unaware that our population is declining—as people flee our sunny clime and magnificent scenery for Godforsaken places such as Nevada and Oklahoma?

Newsom demonstrates what PJ O’Rourke said: to Republicans, freedom means freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, keeping and bearing arms; to Democrats, it’s the right to wave your private parts around in public.

Of course, if the actual goal is to debase the language – to make “freedom” a synonym for “the stifling reassurance of government control” – then Newsom probably is on the right track.

And Tim Walz is doing a fine job of emulating him.

A friend of the blog emails:

With this most recent snowstorm, there has been lots of discussion about snow removal. Reasonable people look at the streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and say no wonder people are moving to suburbs-the cities are just incompetent.

Leftist urbanists look at the state of the streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and giggle saying ha ha car drivers. We hate you and get out of our city so we can drive it all ourselves.

The really clueless look at the condition of the streets of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and say, hey! Let’s charge people even more so we can mess up sidewalks (alleys in the case of Saint Paul) the same way we mess up the streets. You people don’t really need to be anywhere for the winter anyway, right? Just let us take good care of you.

Everything from cradle to grave is an opportunity to transfer money and power from people to the institutions of big left.

Once you internalize that, you understand the goals of the DFL.

Last week, an armed robber at a Taqueria in Houston, Texas got tuned up by a guy with a gun.

I desperately want to call him a “good guy with a gun“. pinky swear, I do. An armed robber f**ked around, and he found out.

Warning: not for the faint of heart. Somebody dies in this video.

Remember; to claim self-defense (and win a trial, if it comes to that), you have to show five things:

You are innocent (or not the aggressor)

You reasonably fear, death are great bodily harm

That threat is immediate.

you use only the force needed to end that threat.

It’s Texas, so there is no duty to retreat

My two cents worth:

• The first four shots are perfectly good
• Shots five through eight might be explainable, by a decent lawyer.
• Shot number nine? Looks like an execution. AYou’re going to need a very good lawyer indeed.
• Leaving the scene afterwards? Could be problematic.

This show – two self defense lawyers discussing the case – is two of the better hours. I’ve seen on the subject. It’s well worth a watch.

It’s a cautionary episode, indeed.

I have no investment in comic books. I don’t want to generalize this, but I really don’t recall anyone in my social circle – or anyone I knew at all, really – reading them after about age 12.

So in the “epic battle“ between DC and Marvel, I vote “present“. If I care to vote at all.

Which I don’t.

Watching the descent of Hollywood into endless reboots of DC and Marvel properties is not the most depressing aspect of watching western culture today. But it’s not far from the bottom of the barrel, to be honest.

I’m not saying, I want the comic book industry to kill itself off.

But if I did, I’d want to see a lot of stories like this:

The “gay Superman“ gimmick a couple years ago was one thing; at least he still looked like Superman.

The anorexic superman played by “transgender man“?

Well, isn’t that just so 21st-century.

UPDATE: I’m told I’ve fallen for a joke tweet.

Then it’s a pretty brilliant joke, since the premise is exactly that plausible, in Hollywood, these days.

On Friday morning, someone tried to jack a van in the Phillips Neighborhood.

The would-be victim tackled the suspect and held him til the cops arrived.

Point of order: in a Minneapolis where Mary Moriarty is the district attorney, is the suspect…:

• The vanjacker, or
• the guy who tackled the vanjackier?

With Mary Moriarty in office as Henco “prosecutor”, one must not assume.