SCENE:   Mitch BERG is having an Old Fashioned at a bar in northern Wisconsin.  Engrossed in a conversation with the waitress, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has walked in, wearing a “MEAT IS MURDER” t-shirt.  

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Of, for…the second time this week, how ya doing…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.   It’s the guns, stupid. 

BERG. So I’ve got a question for you, Avery.   Whenever a spree killer can be tied, however tenuously, to the right, the media and people like you get veeeery serious about dissecting connections to “extreme” ideology.  Like Vance Boelter…

LIBRELLE:  Extreme pro-life MAGAt!

BERG:  …but when it’s someone like the Covenant or Annunciation shooters, whose manifestos were like Gen-Z leftist movie screenplays, full of hate for Christians, Jews, conservatives, Trump…

LIBRELLE:  It’s the guns and only the guns!   And how dare you blame all transgender people!

BERG:  Where did I mention transgender people?

LIBRELLE:  You did. 

BERG: (Turns to stenographer sitting at next stool) Please read back the converstation starting with “shut up”:

COURT REPORTER:  OK.  Starting from where Mist…er, Mizz…er…(looks to BERG with look of inciipient panic)

BERG:  Don’t worry. Just read. 

COURT REPORTER:  OK.  

LIBRELLE:  Extreme pro-life MAGAt!

BERG:  …but when it’s someone like the Covenant or Annunciation shooters, whose manifestos were like Gen-Z leftist movie screenplays, full of hate for Christians, Jews, conservatives, Trump…

LIBRELLE:  I could have sworn I heard you call for the deaths of all transgender people.   

BERG:  You’re thinking of Mayor Frey…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.  Why are you bringing a court reporter with you?

BERG:  Seems I need one lately. 

And SCENE.  

U of M professor, clad in a terror scarf, calls for “dismantling” the US:

I seek to dismantle the United States.  I hope you seek to dismantle the United States. And if that isn’t your politics…OK? (Hahahahahah). I speak as if everyone has this commitment.  And the thing is, you should have this commitment.  This is the goal…

As she prattles on for a while about “decolonization”, she should start by rejecting the money and job paid for by those “colonizers”.  

SCENE. It’s December, 1944.   Bastogne, Belgium.  The men of the 101st Airborne Division are surrounded, defending the vital road junction, as seven German divisions close in. 

Men of Company F, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment – just down the line from the famed “Easy Company”, not the same guys at all – are coming out of their foxholes after a German bombardment. 

PRIVATE JEB RANKIN (a farm boy from Alabama):  Hoooo-iiiie, that was something.  

TECH SERGEANT FOURTH CLASS ANDREW “ANDY” PILSNER (the platoon radioman):  I heard Lieutentant Ratchett in Third Platoon got blown up.  (The others shake their heads in that “glad it wasn’t me” manner). 

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS GUISEPPE “JOE” RANDAZZO (a former streetcar conductor from Southie in Boston):  Rattled my fillings.  

STAFF SERGEANT WILLIE BUXTON (a Montana rancher turned NCO, and the platoon sergeant):  Everyone OK? 

CORPORAL JAMES “JIMMY” STEVENS (a former rendering plant worker from Indiana):  Crissake.  Why do we do this.  

RANDAZZO (Sardonic):  To defend democracy.  

RANKIN (earnest):  To liberate Europe.  

SECOND LIEUTENANT LLOYD MOUNTEBANKE (A Yale Business School graduate who is the platoon leader):  That’s incorrect.  

RANDAZZO: Sir?

MOUNTEBANKE:  This is why we’re fighting:

RANKIN:  We’re sittin’ here thousands of miles from home, so…people can kill babies, sir?

RANDAZZO: Ma’Donn (crosses self). 

MOUNTEBANKE:  You heard the woman.   Carry on.  (Exits into the woods as suddenly as he appeared)

STEVENS: (Sotto Voce) That doesn’t seem right…

BUXTON:  OK, men, that’s enough jawing.   You heard the Lieutenant.  We’re fighting to kill babies. Now get some top cover on those foxholes.  

And SCENE

When Ilhan Omar says things like this:

…is she:

1. Telling a truth so broad that it is in effect a lie (white men are the second largest racial/gender group in the country; nearly all violence is intra-racial, and there are more of them to perpetrate and be victims, and hypothetically to become terrorisrts)
2. Lying (white men commit proportionally less violence against black men than vice versa)
3. Referring not to violence but to logic and honesty, in which case she’d best fear me?

Thoughts?

When Jim Smorada was teaching me how to write the news, he taught the same cliche every other journo student and cub reporter gets:  do the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story.

So I caught this yesterday:

And I thought – maybe it’s just the social media intern doing a terrible job of clubbing and burying the lede?

So I looked into the story proper:

Brooklyn Park Police said a crowd gathered for a cultural event had to be dispersed Saturday evening due to people trying to force their way into a stadium.

According to police, officers were working at Park Center Senior High on Brooklyn Boulevard, where a cultural event was taking place.

Police said a crowd had gathered outside the event, which then began to try and force their way into the school district’s facilities.

 

So let’s break it down:

Who:  A crowd, and “people”.  Who?  What people? 

What:  A “cultural event”.  What culture?  What event?

When: Saturday evening.  

Where:  Park Center High, in Brooklyn Park.   

Why: Uhh… 

How:  With…er, “force” apparently.   

And this is the Five – the  least PC-whipped of the local TV stations.  

(Hat tip to Bill Glahn, who had the same idea). 

Merely rejoice that he is gone.  

Colbert – the unctuous and desperately un-funny little man who replaced David Letterman and became the standard-bearer for the collapse of late-night TV – is leaving the air after this season.  

Oh no.  

Pass the beer nuts. 

Never watched the guy for more than a couple minutes live, and maybe a few clips – and when I did, I almost couldn’t tell if it was Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon or Seth Meyers or pretty much anyone on late night but Craig Ferguson – who was funny – and Greg Gutfeld, who is flensing the Big Three in late night.  

My interest is lessin the departure of…oh, look, I/ve already forgotten his name, and more in the way Big Left is trying to spin this. 

Elizabeth Warren:

And for a completely different perspective, here’s Pramila Jayapal:

And now for something completely different; Adam Schiff:

Anyway – I’m not so much going to ask why he’s gone.

I’m merely going to celebrate the fact that he is gone. 

Adios, un-funny man. You shall live forever in Dog Gone’s heart.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

What SHOULD a person do in that situation?  

 

 I’m curious to know what SITD readers think the result would be in Minneapolis versus Greater Minnesota?  Charges or no?

 

Joe Doakes

Joe asked for thoughts. 

Mine:   This is one case for which Mary Moriarty could be stirred from her stupor.  

Greater MN?   Depends on the county, but there’s a decent chance of actual justice. 

So, with the revelation last week that hiring managers and the MN Department of Human Services need to explicitly justify hiring white (presumably especially male) candidates for jobs, it’s not unreasonable to wonder – there must be some kind of deeply racist person driving these policies.  

Your reasonable question has been rewarded with an answer:

The tipster raised concerns about Phillips and claimed his social media page is “littered with racist comments about ‘white folk.’”

After reviewing a Facebook page under the name Vonnie Phillips — filled with the type of content described by the tipster and a video tagging a woman whose name matches Phillips’ wife in public records — Alpha News sent an inquiry to Phillips’ state email address.

In his response, Phillips confirmed the Facebook page was his and lashed out at Alpha News reporter Jenna Gloeb in a profanity-laced tirade defending his posts.

“Good luck,” he wrote. “My Facebook page is within the ‘protected concerted’ activity guidelines, therefore, do what you want; nowhere on my Facebook page lists my employer; and the person, the gutless, worthless coward that reported me, the hell with them, please tell them I said that fool.”

Ooof. Someone played that one wrong.

And played it, and played it…

The worst part, to me at least, isn’t Phillips’s statements or actions.  

It’s the culture of bureaucratic entitlement that allows bureaucrats to think that they’re OK acting like this on taxpayer time. 

A leftist murders two Jews in DC. Big Left staged riots in LA and (almost, again) Minneapolis.  

The mainstream media attacks…

…well, who do you think?

“White Supremacist” group membership dropped by an order of magnitude every generation over 100 years from millions in the 1920s to the single-digit thousands in 2016. 

But we’re to believe that, now, all of a sudden, it’s because they think they won?

Hope Walz – a 25 year old reportedly working as some kind of social worker – on the Mamdani election:

“The top 1% that exploit all of us down below?”  

She’s been the child of a Congressional representative or governor since she was five years old, and has had every form of access, power and privilege imaginable.  

Like Mamdani himself – not to mention most “revolutionaries” – she’s is a “One Percenter”.  

Now, if there’s a field that’s worse than teaching when it comes to requiring lots of paper credentials to advance, or hold a job, it’s social work -and Ms. Walz has decided that graduate school is a form of privilege and won’t be attending.

Which means she’s going to be going for a “job” in “public service”, doesn’t it?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Transgender people claim they just want to be accepted.  I can do that. But my idea of “accepted” is the way Colonel Potter treated Corporal Klinger on the television show M.A.S.H., more “tolerated” than “celebrated.”

 

You want to wear a dress? Fine, go right ahead.  But it doesn’t get you out of standing watch. It doesn’t get you into the nurse’s shower with Major Hoolahan. It doesn’t get you any special privileges at all.

 

Certain males Want to act like girls, but everyone knows they’re Not girls, so we aren’t willing to Treat them as girls.  Your transgender fantasy is your own.  I am not required to participate in your fantasy, not even with your choice of pronoun.

 

 Wear a dress if it makes you feel pretty. But you don’t get to shower with the girls or pitch on their softball team.  Being weird doesn’t make you special. It just makes you weird in a dress. 

 

If you have a problem with that attitude, well then, you have a problem. Don’t whine about it, deal with it.  As a real woman would. 

Normies: “Happy Flag Day”

Droogs: “ACK-shyu-ally, BeTSy RoSs diDn’t sEw TEh flAg, AnD hTe wh0L3 story is a mYth”.

Normies: “Right. Nations and cultures have mythologies that encapsulate parts of what their cultures are about. Not just the USA. ALL of them”.

Droogs: “iT Is tEH Lie!”

Normies: “In the same sense that Hercules, the Knights of the Round Table and the Great White Buffalo are myths; they may not be documentable history, but they pass vital parts of the culture on to future generations”.

Droogs: “iT tELLs uS tEH cUlTuRE is teH LIERR!”

Normies: “It tells future generations that a humble seamstress – someone who other cultures ignored – had a vital role in the spirit that founded this nation”.

Droogs: “…”

Normies: “Yes?”

Droogs: “U r tEh whItE SpReMEcYst!”

This past Tuesday, scads of feds – FBI, DHS, BATFE – raided eight different businesses around the Twin Cities, serving search warrants related to human trafficking.  

Seven of the raids went off without a hitch. 

But the eighth – at Lake and Bloomington, deep in the heart of white, progressive Minneapolis – was different.  The Feds rolled in in MRAPs and full battle rattle. 

And, in their own way, so did Minneapolis’s entire progressive power structure; the video is worth a watch:

Watching the woman at around 1:15 is enough to make me realize I sold Michael Savage short: progressivism certainly appears to be a manifestation of some kind of emotional trouble.

Around 3:00 minutes in, you can see the crowd – white, progressive, lots of tattoos and man-buns – starting to push and shove the feds.  It’s almost as if someone wants to institgate another riot.  

Around 7:00, the crowd starts to dump trash barrels on the street, apparently trying to keep the feds from leaving. Around 9:30, it gets even worse.

The mace comes out around 11:30. as the MRAPs leave the area.  

This was in defense of human traffickers. 

For all the sturm und drang, it doesn’t appear that anyone involved in attacking the feds or cops got arrested for obstructing justice. 

The reactions from DFLers were…predictable. 

Putative mayoral front-runner Omar Fateh:

Senator Fateh: under “no” circumstances?

Like , not even with active human trafficking?

Weird.

Councilman Chavez – who is the primary evidence not only of Berg’s 21st Law, but of the “Cano Corollary” to the 21st Law, named after the loony-left councilwoman he replaced because she was too moderate for the local DFL – sounded off. As usual:

Remember – this is against an investigation of human trafficking (not to mention drugs and latin gangs).

The Police Union responded:

It’s not like Jacob Frey – who, let’s not forget, was the “law and order’ alternative to Ray Dehn in 2017 – is going to be much better.  Minneapolis cops should have been hauling everyone who pushed the cops downtown.  It was pure incitement – and a sign of a department that gets no support from its prosecutor. 

Because they don’t:

Minneapolis is at a crossroads:  civilization, prosperity and sanity, vs. decay, anarchy and Lord of the Flies.   

It’s not news to anyone who’s been following the subject – education is in crisis.  

And the mainstream conservative response seems to be “let it burn!”   If you talk with a lot of mainstream conservatives, the kids should be heading straight out into apprenticeship programs and becoming electricians, HVAC techs, plumbers, truckers…

And I get it; the urge to chuck a mainstream education culture that has grown to hold most of “us” in contempt is tempting.  

But there’s a catch.  Someone’s gonna have to write the history books.  Someone’s gonna have to tell tomorrow’s cultural narrative what today’s cultural narrative was.   If politics is downstream of culture, and conservatives are doing the flooring and concrete finishing for the people that pass that information along, what do you think happens to culture in the future?

More of what is happeninbg tioday, that’s what.  

Which is what I thought when I read this piece by Joanne Jacobs, a Brit academic critic, about today’s woke fad of only teaching kids authors that are “relatable” to people today:

There is nothing compassionate about teaching an easier, more familiar, “culturally relevant” curriculum to disadvantaged children, writes Mark McCourt on EMaths, a British blog. It’s condescension.

Speaking the language of care, some argue that children in poverty “should be shielded from the rigour of canonical texts, or complex scientific ideas, or abstract mathematics, he writes. “That Shakespeare is beyond them. That Bach is meaningless to them. That the laws of thermodynamics belong to someone else’s world.”

School “is meant to offer new worlds,” writes McCourt. “It is meant to take the child by the hand and lead them to places they never knew existed, places beyond their post code, places they have every right to belong.”

Remember – “education” and schooling are very different things. 

And it seems to me if you want to make a society decline and collapse, you take away its imagination.  What could do that faster than focusing on the here and now?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Democrats and WLs (Woke Lite Republicans) insist there is no valid justification for separating boys and girls, so long as the boys mouth the magic word “transgender.”  Once the spell has been spoken, the laws of biology no longer apply.  The former “boy” is now a “girl” for all purposes including tampons in the locker room and competition in sports.

So why do we still have Title IX?  Why do we still have a 1972 federal law banning discrimination between the sexes if there is no difference between the sexes? We no longer have “separate but equal” facilities for Black and White (except then Blacks demand separate dorms and graduation ceremonies).  So why not amend Title IX to say that all education, all sports, are co-educational?

Everybody who plays basketball, plays by the same rules on the same teams.  The best players are Varsity, next best are Junior Varsity, then B-Squad, C-squad, and so on.  Teams will be based solely on skill and ability.  Yes, that might mean that Varsity is mostly Black boys, Junior Varsity is mostly White boys, the lesser ranks are mixed boys, girls and transgender students, but that doesn’t matter, right?  No difference between the sexes.

Think how much money we’d save by eliminating girl’s sports which could then be put toward something important, like another train nobody will ride or higher welfare benefits for illegal aliens.

Joe Doakes

Prediction:  high school sports will disappear in Blue areas.

Joe Doakes formerly of Como Park emails:

Hollywood keeps putting out Girl Boss movies with the lead role played by a good- looking female actress, like Angela Jolie as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider.

 

When are they going to make a Girl Boss movie with the lead role played by a transgender “female,” maybe Dylan Mulvaney of Bud Light fame?  

 

Why is Hollywood so full of haters? 

 

Joe Doakes

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

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

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

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

 

If it’s a day ending in “Y”…

Know the part that annoys this English major?

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

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

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

Oh. 

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

BIRKENSTOCK:  Merg!

BERG:  Oh, hey, Moon…

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

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

SCAT:  Yeah!  They votes for…

SCAT:  Hey!  You’re interrupting!

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

LEAKY: Zat vas anozzer interrrrhuption!

BIRKENSTOCK: How dare you!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCAT:  But…

BANNEREE:  Now!

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

And SCENE.

Keith Ellison is going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars defending the state against a Federal Title IX rule!

“In Minnesota, participation and eligibility of transgender student-athletes is determined by state law, through the Minnesota Human Rights Act and the Minnesota Constitution. The Minnesota State High School League, similar to other youth sports organizations, is subject to state anti-discrimination laws, which prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. Therefore, students in Minnesota are allowed to participate consistent with their gender identity. League Member Schools have done excellent work in respecting students and their individual situations as they determine their participation and eligibility within interscholastic sports.

Look – the DFL just discovered the 10th Amendment!

I am intermittently concerned that Big Left might eventually learn the lessons of this past election. 

And then I see things like this:

…and I’m at least a little less concerned about the mid-terms.

MN Rep. Leigh Finké (DFL-66A) apparently thinks that if hospitals can’t chemically neuter and surgically maim children, they shouldn’t offer care at all:

Nationwide, the Democrats failure to not look crazy harmed them immeasurably last November. 

I’m mildly gratified to see they’re not backing off one iota. 

SCENE:  MInnesota DFL headquarters.  Inga “Lucky” CARROLL (acting assistant chair of the DFL while on temporary leave from her day job as Head Meme-Buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Liberal Causes”), Secretary of State SIMON, House Minority Leader Melissa HORTMAN, progressive influencers Edmund DUCHEY, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, Gutterball GARY and Avery LIBRELLE, and Senate DFL Communications manager Evan Micah BRYAN are gathered in a conference room as undocumented domestics fetch beverages and change garbage bags.

CARROLL:   So – not much went right in this last Presidential cycle.  Orange HItler even got within four points in Minnesota (group looks angrily at a sheepish SIMON).   So – before we get to what we did wrong, let’s talk about what we did right.

HORTMAN:  Well, we called them “white supremacists” a lot.

CARROLL:  Good.

LIBRELLE:  Racists, every one of them!

BRYAN: Anti-LGBT!

DUCHEY:  Misogynist!

BIRKENSTOCK: And Fascists! (Murmurs of assent)

GARY:   Nazis! (Thrum of excitement)

CARROLL: So – Republicans are all racist sexist misogynist Nazi fascists.  So – did it work? 

BRYAN:  And, most importantly, do we continue using this as our primary, if not only, messaging going forward?

(Mixture of skepticism and assent from the group)

LIBRELLE:  Wait – this just came in from the national party.

(Video comes up on the screem)

BRYAN:  Hey, its Ken! (points at Ken MARTIN, chair of the MNDFL, currently running for chair of the Democrat National Committee)

CARROLL:  OK, so that’s a solid “Yes” on the “message going forward” thing.  Next order of business…

(Papers rustle)

And SCENE

They’re not at work. Oh, no no. no.

But they are doing this (language not remotely safe for work):

And yes, it’s directly linked to the DFL’s walkout; the person with the megaphone was acting in conjunction with a “rally” being thrown by Leigh Finke

Which went about as well as you could expect on a day when it around four degrees with a stiff breeze:

But then, the action was always going to be indoors, wasn’t it?

By the way, we’ve run into the person with the megaphone before.

If the MNGOP doesn’t run this on an endless loop for the next two. years, they deserve to lose.

Rep. Leigh Finke wanted to show “MAGA” who was boss. 

Here’s how it started:

Here’s how it looked ten minutes into the…er, meeting?:

To be fair, it was a brisk-ish day by southern MInnesota standards; 5 degrees and Minnesota-windy. 

But the optics just are not good, are they?

Finke might do better off just going back to work.

I have this annoying tendency to presume that people aren’t generallly trying to be as*holes.

So when this LA firefighter says (at :14) that she “might not be able to carry someone’s husband out of a fire” because he “got himself into the wrong place…”

…I’m going to presume she means someone in the middle of an actual pool of flame might be out of luck.

Now, the whole idea that people want someone who looks like they do to save them?  

(Sound of Mitch stifling an uncharitable juvenile snark)

And with that I have no more to say…