Barack Oba…er, Kamala Harris has picked Governor Klink to complete her ticket. The precedent was clear to anyone paying attention – Walz was governor because he’d made his deal with the devil.  

Part of the deal appeared to be “making Flanagan appear to be a co-governor”; her name appeared below Walz’s on most campaign literature – but was longer, and usually colored such that her name “popped” harder than Walz’s. 

You can hear the Twin Cities media going Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee all the way to Chicago. Those of us who live here and pay attention – a painfully small Venn diagram, as the 2022 election showed us – know that, as Scott Johnson says,  Walz “casts the pale shadow of a man incapable of embarrassment and presents as an example of life imitating art, in this case the advertising art that created Joe Isuzu:

For those of you in my audience who aren’t from MInnesota, let’s go through a little of Tim Walz’s political record.

Congress:  Walz spent six terms as a US House rep from the 1st District – the largely rural southern tier of counties, at the time.  He ran to the commonsensical center to defeat the very moderate Gil Gutknecht; like Colllin Peterson, Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad and Earl Pomeroy, he made moderate noises for his rural base.  He was a-rated by the NRA. 

And when Governor Dayton ran up to his term (and, likely, health) limit in 2018, Walz took that record – sans his NRA rating, which he dumped like it was a “3” when a “5” was batting her eyes at him:

Emerging As A Puppet: Tossing aside the NRA endorsement wasn’t enough to impress the DFL’s newly surgent “Progressive” wing, which pushed the overtly extreme Erin Murphy, backed with the equally gleeful extremist Erin Maye Quade at a convention where even Keith Ellison was too moderate (they endorsed fire-breathing socialist Matt Pelikan over the, I say again, too moderate Keith Ellison.

Not even picking Peggy Flanagan – literally the most extreme leftist in the Minnesota House at that time – was enough to slow the prog wave, although it was a start:

Of course, DFL chair Ken Martin knew the electorate wasn’t quite as demented as the DFL activist base – outside the metro, anyway – and put his foot down, He pulled his backroom deals, put the DFL’s money behind Walz/Flanagan, and dragged them over the line for a win in the 2018 DFL primary.

The precedent was clear to anyone paying attention – Walz was governor because he’d made his deal with the devil.  

Part of the deal appeared to be “making Flanagan appear to be a co-governor”; her name appeared below Walz’s on most campaign literature – but was longer, and usually colored such that her name “popped” harder than Walz’s. 

Unremarkable:  During those years, Walz’s most extreme urges were stymied by the GOP’s slim, often one-vote, majority in the Minnesota Senate.  Not that he didn’t try – but the worst instincts of his “progressive” regime got tempered by Paul Gazelka’s canny politicking – one might call it “rear guard action”, either in the military sense, or (to some) the “covering one’s ass” sense.  Take your pick. 

The Deluge:  And then came Covid.

Walz declared emergency power on Saint Patrick’s Day, 2020.   In an infamous press conference, he said Minnesota would have a bare minimum of 20,000 dead by July, if everything went perfectly – with 70,000 much more likely.  He seized emergency power, and shut down schools, churches, most businesses…

…but not big box stores, liquor stores, or “The World’s Largest Candy Store”, in Jordan, run by a major campaign contributor.   He declared broad swathes of Minnesota’s labor force “non-essential”.  He instituted a “snitch line”, which countless “Karens” used to report their neighbors for offenses against the Covid regime. 

He also repeated Andrew Cuomo’s catastrophic errors in handling long-term care of the elder;ly; the carnage in Minnesota’s nursing homes was epic, and inexcusable. 

But the death toll lagged his predictions – by about an order of magnitude.  And for a brief, weird moment, the media did the unthinkable – they asked questions . 

Including at a presser on May 11 – where a reporter asked if the Department of Health department would release the code for the model that had made the initial, alarming preductions .

And Walz’s spokesperson replied “No – because people might use it to get different results than we did”. 

Which, for those of us who passed ninth-grade science class, is the opposite of science. 

He held emergency power for seventeen months, for an emergency that in effect ended in the summer of 2020.

The Floyd Riots:  Walz’s performance during the George Floyd riots was perhaps more controversial – mostly notably when Mayor Frey of Minneapolis asked where the National Guard was, after 2-3 days of rioting, and the Governor, essentially, asked why the Mayor hadn’t put a cover sheet on his TPS report. 

Some in emergency management said he followed the plan (although the response was botched at many levels). 

Speaking as someone who lives in a neighborhood hit hard by the riots, I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now.   The Guard appeared in token numbers on the Friday after the riots came to Saint Paul – four days into the violence – and didn’t appear in numbers sufficient to tip the balance until Saturday. 

The Governor may have done his job – maybe.  But he did it to the absolute bureaucratic minimum standard.  The only two leaders in the whole affair were Chief Axtell, and then-president Trump, whose threat to send the 82nd Airborne may or may not have spurred actual action, but certainly seemed to, whether coincidentally or not.

The Flood:  And then came the 2022 elections.   

The DFL did what it does best – scare suburban women into thinking abortion (protected in the MN Constitution for years, now) was in imminent danger.   They rode that to seizing the “Trifecta” – control of both chambers of the Legislature. 

It was a close fight – Keith Ellison and Julie Blaha nearly lost.   1,000 votes would have swung the Senate to the GOP; about 4,000 more, the House.  Scott Jensen was a weak GOP candidate at the head of a decreasingly potent state GOP – but Walz only won by 8 percent. 

But the DFL governed like they’d had a California-style mandate.

And the results have been wretched.  I’ll just brain-dump them here:

• He and the DFL squandered a $19 billion surplus.  The “surplus” was structurally down to $2B as of the last forecast, but it’s going to be a deficit – right after the election.  The money went to buying votes (“Feeding kids!”) and frau/ /
• The Metro DFL is a fraud machine, funneling hundreds of millions of dollars through the HHS and Education Departments.  Faced with the news, Walz said “it’s not my job, man”.  
• Much of the surplus also went to “fully funding education”.  But school districts are still complaining about money, teachers are striking all over the place, and reading and math scores are still falling.  Graduation rates improved, briefly – when they state removed most standards. 
• While Minnesota’s population is said to be holding steady, it’s mostly because of immigration.  Minnesotans in their productive years, or with fungible capital, are leaving and taking their businesses and their money.
• College students and young people are leaving Minnesota.  That the reverse of the trend that obtained for decades before, when generations of young people – myself included – saw Minnesota as a destination. 
• While he prattles about “One Minnesota”, he has “sorted” Minnesotans pretty relentlessly. 
• He made MN a sanctuary State
• He pushed drivers licenses for illegals
• He drove making Minnesota a “trans refuge” – signing a law that mandated disregarding of child support decrees for children brought to the state by noncustodial parents to seek chemical and surgical neutering (alone among all causes).
• Crime in the metro is about double what it was ten years ago – and while it’s down a skosh from 2021, it’s waaaay ahead of pre-pandemic levels.

When they think they’re among friends, the left proudly recognizes Walz as one of their own. 

The Rule Of The Brittle:  Walz succeeded Mark Dayton – who was a fairly opaque governor, largely because his health was so atrocious his rarely went to the office (unreported by the state’s compliant media)

Walz is healthier – but far more opaque.  Other than the stage-managed pressers during Covid, his only real communication is via his very active Twitter feed, which provides a constant deluge of photos of him cavorting about the state, usually in his “regular Joe” costume of a seed cap and overstretched T-shirt.   State Fair time is usually high season – as he and his entourage waddle about the fair, sucking down corn dogs as the cameras roll. 

Which is probably a good thing – because he doesn’t handle questioning well.   And he appears to know it – the only debate in the 2022 cycle was on a feeble TV station in Rochester.  And Scott Jensen got under his skin – which isn’t hard to do.   He has a long record of losing his cool when people actually question him. 

So his handlers allow none of that. 

Speaking of questions:

Why Walz?   I think most national GOP strategists thought Josh Shapiro would be the prime choice.   Pennsylvania may be the swingiest of the swing states; some day it’s the hinge pin of this election. 

While Minnesota is a 50-50 state (four DFL and four GOP reps in Congress), the DFL turnout machine dominates state races against a MN GOP that makes the Vikings look like overachievers. 

if the state is in play then things are very bad for the Democrat indeed.  This doesn’t seem to track the situation. 

I’ll entertain thoughts in the comments. 

As part of the DFL’s “Most Secure Election System In The World (TM), the Minneapolis DFL held an early voting event over the weekend.

At the Midtown Global Market.

In the food court:

You should read the entire Twitter thread.  

And maybe it’s time to start picketing Steve Simon’s office…

Two observations.

First:  Is this:

…the cringiest photo you’ve seen since that collection of seventies family photos you got tricked into looking at?

Second:  She’s got no intention of leaving office, does she?

She’s got a plea deal in the work with some sympathetic prosecutor, she’ll plead down to “disorderly conduct” – really, no worse than Matt Wolgamott/Brion Curran/Dave Hutchinson/Julie Blaha driving drunk!  Maybe even less! – and ride the issue out, and stay in office, until she gets a sinecure at some state agency – like, the state sentencing board, just to add hilarious insult to injury. 

Any bets against?

It’s not so much that the Democrats assume you’re stupid.

It’s that…:

…they desperately need you to be stupid.

Not just a little stupid, either:

If America elects this clacque, it deserves to collapse.

Ron DeSantis has entered the chat:

Remember “Journo-list?”  The top-secret, hush-hush chat room for “journalists” from fifteen years ago? 

If you don’t remember, that’s OK, because:

a) This bit here summarizes and parodies it pretty aptly, and

b) There’s no need to remember, because it’s happening today, again.

This time, it’s about the term “weird”. 

Every Democrat and media (ptr) figure has suddenly started using it.

This is intended to go viral among the clubby environs of local blue-city media – in this case, the Star-Tribune’s – what’s a good adjective – pointless Jennifer Brooks, whose column about the issue…:

…shows us what happened to those people who were writing all those “FIX INDIGESTION WITH THIS ONE WEIRD [!!!] TRICK” copywriters from ten years ago.

Did I say “clubby”?

We’ll unpack that statement in another post.

This is, of course, a classic instance of Berg’s Seventh Law .  They’re calling Republicans “weird” to deflect away from their very, very weird – no, bizarre – presidential candidate, at the head of a party that believes a lot of things that go way beyond “weird”. 

Once you understand that…

I got this message the other day – presumably from the people who are frantically labeling “weird”:

“White Dudes for Harris”. 

I’m honestly torn.  Should I try to troll the “meeting”?   Probably won’t work – there are six digits of “attendees” in these zoom meetings. 

Or perhaps ignore completely?  Well, I’ve clearly not done that.

I guess that just leaves mockery.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is whacking weeds along his alley.  He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, who appears to be inspecting peoples recycling bins for inappropriate material. 

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Oh, shiiiiiure as I live and breathe, it’s Aver…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.   Republicans are the worst possible combination of Nazis, Fascists and slave-owning Confederate traitors!

BERG:  You don’t say.

LIBRELLE:  I do – and so does America’s best governor and fun uncle, Tim Walz!

BERG:  Huh.  So you’re saying a populist utopian movement that builds itself around a central mythology, that relentlessly sorts society into “in” and “out” groups, that co-opts or destroys the societal institutions to consolidate and uphold its power,that requires enemies either internal or external to divert attention away from the problems they cause, and tolerates, and even glorifies and fetishizes violence to intimidate and subdue opposition, is Fascist?

LIBRELLE:  Yep!

BERG:  Right.  And a “fascist” movement that obsesses over race to the point that it’s their fundamental motivation, screening mechanism and call to action resembles Naziism?

LIBRELLE:  Uh, yeah!

BERG:  Huh.  And a movement that exists within our Federalist system, but ignores or actively denigrates the parts of that system that inconveniences its pursuit of its political goals, and exists mainly to uphold the wealth and power of its key stakeholders, resembles the Confederacy?

LIBRELLE:  Er…yes.  And why do you put all the links in when you talk?  That’s just #weird. 

BERG:  So…sorting and denigration…

LIBRELLE:  (Plugs ears, runs away) Nananananana can’t hear you….

BERG:  (sotto voce) Oh, I think you can. 

And SCENE.

How it went, 16 days ago:

How it’s going:

So it seems there was a brief moment when DFLers thought actions had consequences. 

Oh, so brief.

Someone wanna explain how this isn’t a call to more violence?

To:  America
From:  Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant and American
Re:  Tim “Governor Klink” Walz

America,

Some of you – OK, most of you – may be getting your first introduction to Governor Tim Walz, as the noise machine frantically tries to position him as a viable VP candidate. 

“Small town regular Joe” is one of the costumes he puts on, complete with an ancient International Scout and an NRA cap…

…well, no.  He ditched the NRA cap when he had to power-suckup to the “progressive”/Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) wing of the party to beat back Erin Murphy and Erin Maye Quade in the primary in 2018.  He still puts on the costume on occasion – the DFL sends a social media intern with him for pictures at the lake, or driving the Scout, or having Peggy Flanagan feed him a corn dog. 

Anyway – if the news blitz is your first introduct5ion to Governor Klink, let’s go through some pros and cons of him and his administration.

Cons of Tim Walz

• Led the plundering of an $18B surplus, leaving the state with what will likely be at least a $2B deficit later this year.  Minimum.
• Turned a deaf ear to the most epic wave of corruption in Minnesota history, as DFL stakeholders from the DSA non-profit/industrial complex pillaged a bare minimum of a half billion dollars worth of funds “intended” to “feed hungry children” during the pandemic…
• …after having been equally incurious about at least $250M being piillaged by some of these same stakeholders from Health and Human Services budgets. 
• Like many governors, he assumed emergency powers in March 2020, when nobody knew muich about the pandemic.  He announced that, according to the model he’d gotten from the Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota faced upward of 70,000 deaths in the next four months – perhaps 20,000 as a best case scenario if the state shut down completely and submitted to draconian control of society.   By May, it was clear that the model was wrong – at which time the administration declared the model double-dog top secret, because in the words of an MDH staffer at one of his press conferences, “people might reach different conclusions”.  Y’know – try to reproduce results.  Like actual scientists, as opposed to propagandists, do. 
• He created castes of “essential workers” – which included grocery store workers (but only at “big box” stores), liquor stores, “the World’s Largest Candy Store” (run by a campaign contributor, as luck would have it),
• In particular, he instituted rules in nursing homes that created absolute carnage among seniors.  Minnesota had among the worst death rates in the nation among people in long term care – up there with New York City.  For this alone, I’ve got beef with the little fella – this happened right as my stepfather died and I needed to move my mom to Minnesota.  There was a six month delay – which caused plenty of other problems. 
• Notwithstanding that the “emergency” was effectively over in three months – six if you want to be cautious to the point of paranoia – he held onto “emergency powers” for well over a year and a half. 
• After the death of George Floyd, he publicly sided with Floyd, long before any facts were known about the incident.  Which contributed to the 2020 Riots. 
• During those 2020 riots, he followed his bureaucratically-defined role to an anal-retentive “T” – even publicly chiding Mayor Frey for not submitting a cover sheet on his TPS form when requesting the National Guard.  But he ceded the “bully pulpit” to the rioters and their symps in state government .  And to his daughter, who served as a source of intel for the rioters regarding police and Guard movements. 
• He also coddled lawlessness within government; when “protesters” tore down a statue of Christopher Columbus on the State Capitol Mall as his Capitol police looked on, he giggled until his belly jiggled like a bowl of jello. 
• He has actively contributed to the tribalizing of Minnesota politics. 
• On his watch, crime in Minnesota in general is up by at least 50% since he assumed office.
• On the other hand, capital is leaving the state.  Movers and shakers, entrepreneurs (other than coffee shops, which along with small political consultancies are the only for-profit businesses DFLers even pretend to understand), retirees – they’re leaving the state and taking their money with them.  Minnesota’s net wealth is down by billions. 
• Young people are also leaving Minnesota, reversing decades of Minnesota as a destination for young people just getting started on careers and life.  I was one of them, once.  If I were me, today, and not seeking a career in government or the non-profit/industrial complex, I wouldn’t do it again. 

Pros of Tim Walz

He spends a lot of money at the State Fair.

That pretty much it.

Last week, our intrepid news media were falling all over themselves trying to find Donald Trump’s medical records, to verify that he’d almost been shot in the head. 

Today? 

President?  What President?

If it happened in Belarus, Burundi, or Myanmar, Joe Biden’s blitzkrieg withdrawal from the presidential race would have inspired eye rolls. We jettisoned an incumbent president’s re-election campaign with all the pomp of an NFL practice squad transaction, announcing the move via a blip of a social media post. Only in America is anyone tempted to take such head-scratching events at face value.

You think you hate the media – but it’s still not enough.

Biden is out.

Harris is in. – and is the presumptive nominee…

…maybe.   We’ll know in three-ish weeks. 

So how does Trump react?

My humble opinion – there’s no need to react to any of them differently, at least as individuals. they all different faces of the same machine; the same back-room figures who animated our current occupant in terms of policy will be pulling the levers and wires behind Harris, Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer.

There was, and may remain,  about of speculation that Tim Walz could wind up on one of the potential VP short lists.

My fearless predication:  if Walz oozes onto a ticket, it’ll be terrible news for Democrats, not merely because Walz is a chameleon who turns into whatever he needs to turn into for expediency’s sake – that’s no different than Harris, Newsom, Whitmer of any of them. 

But there are two reasons to pick a Veep candidate:

• Shore up a key state, region or constituency:  That’s why Mike Pence, George HW Bush, not to mention Biden and Harris themselves, got their nods; to shore up the POTUS candidates support respectively among evangelicals, moderates, moderates and progressives.
• To serve as the President’s political enforcer/”Bad Cop”:  That was the purpose LBJ served for Kennedy, in terms of legislative support.  I think it’s why Trump picked Vance.

HarrisNewsomWhitmer need the former; current polling shows them weak in all sorts of important states.  Governors Josh Sharpiro (PA) and Andy Bashear (KY) could buoy a Democrat campaign’s chances in some key swing states.

What does Walz bring? 

Minnesota.

A state the Democrats consider theirs as a birthright. 

If the pick Governor Walz for Veep, that’s a sign the DNC is “breaking the glass”. 

No surprise that Joe Biden has ended his campaign. He’s been a fugitive from Madame Tussauds for a long time now and even when he was at the height of his powers, he was at best a 10-watt bulb. He has been a horrible buffoon and genuine menace to the body politic for a half century and his departure from the field is long overdue. I have long thought Bill Clinton was the most despicable person to occupy the Oval Office, but Biden provides strong competition for the title.

Kamala Harris is, at this point, the frontrunner for the Donks, but it remains to be seen if the powers that be on the port side are willing to let her be the nominee. Not sure they are. My guess is they would rather have a fresh face without the associated baggage to take on the Bad Orange Man. Who would that be? I can think of a few possibilities, in order of plausibility:

Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania

Roy Cooper, Governor of North Carolina

Andy Beshear, Governor of Kentucky

Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Michigan

Of that group, Whitmer likely has the highest profile, which is what makes her the least likely possibility. She’s got a definite air of Nurse Ratched about her and the only demographic that finds her appealing is human resources managers. Given his overall greasiness and demonstrably dismal performance, I don’t think Gavin Newsom is the one, nor do I see Pritzker of Illinois having a shot either. There are some delusional types (Betty McCollum, for example) who are touting Tim Jong Walz as a possible dark horse, but he’s a sputtering moron who would have no chance unless the entire Washington press corps morphs into Esme Murphy. And you can forget Skeletor Evers next door as well, as he has the charisma of lint.

I don’t doubt there will be any number of other adventures before we get to November; I would not be surprised if another assassination attempt is forthcoming, nor would I be surprised if the corrupt judge in the New York trial that saddled Trump with a bunch of “felonies” tries to put Trump in Rikers in the general population. Any other guesses? Place yer bets.

The party that thinks women dressing in the ketchup bottle costumes from Handmaid’s Tale is utterly profoundly meaningful and not a little bit mawkish or cloying or hyperdramatic…

…has suddenly developed scruples about costume accessories?

There are better people to comment on the ups and downs of JD Vance’s selection for Veep.

He’s got my paleocon friends riled up, and the left are certainly in a lather (which they’d have been no matter who Trump picked, so no matter).

But I’ll say this:

Vance is going to bludgeon Harris in a debate.

Is it just me, or is Joe Biden throwing everything he can find at the wall to see what buys votes?

First, its “national rent control”:

President Joe Biden is ready to propose a 5% cap on annual rent increases for tenants of major landlords as he tries to show he’s doing something about the high cost of housing, according to a person familiar with the plan.

The proposal, to be announced while the president visits Nevada on Tuesday, is being championed by Biden in the middle of a tense presidential campaign and a time when housing costs have been a major driver of overall inflation.

Because that did so much good for “affordable housing” in New York, San Francisco, Minneapolis and Saint Paul..

But that’s just retail Democrat pettifoggery.  Next, he goes big:

This is a play for the “ignorant low-information emotion-driven” voter bloc, which elections since 2000 show is between 48-52% of the electorate. 

The “rent control”, like his “student loan forgiveness”, is a violation of the Takings clause.  Expanding the court without a very solid congressional majority, merely a delusion.

…when the left comes to realize that it was a, er, tactical error to pick people like these as their public face:

But it sure hasn’t been this election cycle.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is trimming weeds while listening to “Office Ladies” on headphones.  He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has come up the sidewalk, looking for evidence of herbicide use.

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  (Oblivious)

LIBRELLE:  The so-called “assassination attempt” was pretty much a fake.

BERG:  (No response, as he continues to listen to his podcast)

LIBRELLE:  It looks like his ear was cut by a piece of glass!  What a drama queen!

BERG:  (Nothin’)

GUY RIDING PAST ON BIKE:  So what do you think it was that accelerated this supposed piece of glass to a speed capable of taking a chunk out of the President’s ear?

WOMAN WAITING AT BUS STOP ACROSS THE STREET:  Yeah!  Perhaps magic?

GUY TRIMMING HEDGES DOWN THE BLOCK:  Maybe the kids from Slytherin playing around with their wands again?

LADY IN  KITCHEN, LISTENING THROUGH WINDOW:  Maybe it was Umbrella Man?

BUS DRIVER (Picking up the woman across the street):  Couldn’t have possibly been a bullet aimed at the candidate’s head, could it?

LIBRELLE:  (Looks around, sheepishly slinks away as BERG continues along, undisturbed)

And SCENE

President Biden, in his remarkably dilatory and perfunctory statement about the murder of a Trump supporter and the attempt to murder his rival, called for “Unity”.

It was a chanting point that a lot of Democrats took a break for claiming Republicans were “threats to democracy” to gravely intone.

Let’s talk about it.

Back before they called online talk shows “podcasts”, I appeared on one. There was a panel of guests talking politics. There were online “phone callers”. It was sort of like a talk show, only without the radio.

The host introduced a caller. He identified himself as from Detroit. He had a very African-American accent; I say this to describe the sound, not to caricature the person.

He said “What this country needs is unity“.

Eventually, I asked the caller “So, let’s talk about this ‘unity’. True unity has to be consensual. That means everyone is going to compromise a little bit to achieve this ‘unity’. So tell me – what Republican principles are you willing to accept to achieve the ‘unity’ you’re talking about?”

“Oh”, he responded. “Republicans are BUUUUUL-shit”.

Democrat calls for “unity” seem about as perfunctory as someone who’s said the Lord’s Prayer so many times they’ve disconnected their brain from the act. Unity good. Disunity bad.

It’s empty. There is no effort behind it. It has no meaning.

As usual, Walter Hudson puts it better than most:

Until they give on something, it’s all just words.

And they don’t have to give on much. Like, “all that yapping about ‘threats to democracy’ and ‘literally Hitler’ and ‘this could be our last election’ was a little overheated. We’re all on the same team. Let’s have a solid American-style election, here”.

You’d be crazy to hold your breath, of course. Dennis Prager says “being a leftist means never needing to apologize”. It’ll never occur to them.

Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

Sometimes, it’s the metaphors that ring themselves into existence.

But in this rare, glorious moment…

…the best joke and metaphor about the Biden years has come to us.

Really, for all of progressive “liberalism”. The pier was built as a campaign gimmick to appeal to low information voters with little critical thinking skills and much emotional self-righteousness, ignoring the fact that Israel was already sending more food to Gaza than before October 7, and it was all being stolen.

But we have to dooooooooooooooooooo something…

From the “go figure” department:

I’m tempted so retort “WHAT? The party of Harry Sisson, Will Stancil, the Krassenstein Brothers, John Fugelsang, David Hogg? The party where Leah Finke is more jacked than any male DFL legislator or staffer?”

But I’ll hold back the “soy boi” references – because to say there are no masculine “progressive” men today ignores great examples like Judd Hoff and (allegedly) Jason Metsa.

Is it just me, or is this post from last Friday by President Biden’s social media intern a little extra ordinary?

I don’t recall a president ever feeling the need to tell the American people “BECAUSE I’M DADDY, SO DON’T MAKE STOP THIS CAR”.

Not even Nixon had to remind people he was still in charge, IIRC.

Governor Klink’s various vacations from the truth are adding up.

“I’m a proud gun owner!”

“One Minnesota!”

“Minnesota will suffer 74,000 dead in the next three months unless I assume emergency powers – which will lead to a best case of 20,000 dead by then. And no, I will not show you my math”.

“Every Minnesotan (in an income quintile most likely to vote for me) will get $1,000 of the surplus back!”

“We need to reward the frontline workers!”

“We’re feeding hungry kids”

“We’ve got the most trustworthy election system in the country”.

And now:

I wonder what they promised him?

Every Democrat, for the past 24 hours or so:

SCOTUS: You can’t just throw your rival in prison because you don’t like him.

DEMOCRATS: So you’re saying we can drop bombs on him?

SCOTUS: You really can’t even charge your rival with a crime because his presidency made you mad.

DEMOCRATS: Got it. So we can incinerate his house with him in it?

SCOTUS: The Constitution protects officials from being terrorized with lawfare for official actions they undertook while in office.

DEMOCRATS: Ah. Makes sense. So we can officially assassinate everyone we don’t like?

SCOTUS: Prosecuting a politician because you don’t like his politics would destroy our country, and we’re not going to allow it.

DEMOCRATS: Roger that. So what you’re saying is: we are officially allowed to eliminate Trump and the Supreme Court as long as we, like, say it’s official and stuff?

While I wish I could claim it, it’s actually Sean Davis’s bit.

And it’s been all over social media this past day or so.

At first blush, the question might seem to be “why do so many Democrat chanting heads have so much trouble with the phrase ‘”‘presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts that are within the ambit of their executive authority'”?

But of course it’s not. The “elite” among the chanting heads know perfectly well that the SCOTUS just made a fairly moderate decision, remanding the case back to the lower court to sort out what behavior is public and what is private.

But that interpretation – the correct one – is too pollyannaish.

The Democrats, now that they’re committed to running the senile, doddering Biden – need to come up with some way of dragging the corpse across the line.

Panicking people by claiming this ruling gives a president absolute power, in a cycle where the Democrats only campaign hook is “ORANGE MAN LITERALLY HITLER” is the purpose.

“BUT!”, Democrats respond, “this lays the groundwork for unquestioned power!”

George Washington was offered a crown and the ground floor in a hereditary aristocracy.

Abraham Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus.

Woodrow Wilson used the “Sedition Act” to imprison political foes.

FDR trampled the Constitution in pursuit of socializing swathes of the American economy, and unilaterally imprisoned innocent Japanese-American citizens.

FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ and Nixon to various degrees all used the FBI and CIA to spy on domestic opponents.

Obama used the military to extrajudicially murder an American citizen, used Federal law enforcement to try to discredit American gun stores and owners (leading to the death of an American border patrol agent and many Mexicans), sicced the IRS on the Tea Party, and used the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign.

And, oh yeah, Biden has set a politicized DOJ on his own political opponent – part of a pattern of corruption in the institutions that those institutions aren’t even being coy about.

The “roadmap” has always been there; the President already has unlimited power, if they want to use it – especially with the logarithmic growth in executive-branch power since the Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson administrations.

A president needs power to do the job to which they’ve been elected; deciding how much power, and keeping that power in check, has always been the job of a free people and its institutions.

The Democrats apparently believe Biden is the lesser of the various available evils:

Expect that the folks who want to be convinced will feel relief, even get a sugar high from Biden’s best moments. Biden supporters will be on an emotional rollercoaster. Until the roller coaster pulls back into the boarding station, it will appear that the campaign is moving fast along the track. 

Yes. It really will take a while for Biden’s poll numbers to show that his campaign cannot recover. And even more surprising, expect that many Democrats will commit to voting for him no matter what, even were he in a coma…[and speaking of which] The professional Democrats all know that this is a disaster, and all of us should, too. Short-term ups and downs mean nothing for one simple reason: no number of good moments or days will be able to hide the fact that the number of bad moments, hours, and days will only increase as time goes on. 

That is how dementia works. It is inexorable and an ugly process. 

My schadenfreud at the Dems being committed to a sinking ship is tempered by what should be human compassion. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Biden appears to be suffering from the early stages of some kind of dementia. I lost my Mom to Alzheimers two years ago, and it is a merciless, remorseless bitch. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone short of Kim Jong Un.

The bad – or worse – news? Expect the social gaslighting to become intolerable.

Indeed – we only needed to wait til mid-day yesterday for it to symphonically swell.

More on that mid-day today.

We were told that Joe Biden is so on top of things, he can type in different languages on different iPhones at the same time.

Remember this?

The most credible people ever – dare I say, our “best and brightest” – assured us that Joe Biden at 82 is like Chuck Norris at 40:

And then came Thursday night:

And it took about four hours for all of that “Joe Biden is a modern titan!” to vanish down the memory hole:

Bear in mind, that the Democrat establishment is panicked about their candidate’s electoral viability.

Not the fact that he’s the guy with “the football”.

Not the fact that America’s enemies, who’ve been feasting on America’s diminishing potency, have got to be looking at the fact that America is led by a senile man, his power-mad Edith Wilson-style wife, and a coterie of useless Ivy League political staffers and grifters, and seeing that the shelf date might just end in 2025, not 2029. And maybe planning accordingly:

U.S. military bases in Europe were put on a heightened state of alert over the weekend as installations urged vigilance among their members. At U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, the Army garrison on Sunday issued a communitywide alert that the force protection threat level was elevated to condition “Charlie” until further notice. Similar directives were sent to other bases in Germany, including the Army’s Rheinland-Pfalz and Ramstein Air Base, which together form the largest U.S. military community overseas. The Rheinland-Pfalz garrison alert includes Baumholder and outlying installations in Romania and Bulgaria. Aviano Air Base in Italy also rose its condition level to Charlie, and other installations in Italy introduced enhanced security measures. The Charlie threat level “applies when an incident occurs or intelligence is received indicating some form of terrorist action or targeting against personnel or facilities is likely,” according to the Army’s website.

Read more at: https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2024-06-30/us-military-bases-germany-terrorism-threat-14342506.html
Source – Stars and Stripes

I have a sneaking suspicion Iran and its proxies, and Red China and theirs, are seeing a six month opening to make hummus or kimchi while the sun shines on a world where the keepers of Pax Americana have taken an ice cream break.

Some are saying “I told you so”:

And they – we – are right, because that same media that ran interference and told us not to believe our lying eyes, is trying to gaslight us in the other direction:

So what options do they have?

Pulling the plug on Biden may not be as simple as just having him step aside, even if he releases the 99% of the convention delegates currently committed to him:

That brings us back to [Bill Maher’s proposal, in the post linked] of simply handing the nomination to the nearest white male while overlooking Biden’s current running mate, the black woman Biden selected to be the next in line. The center-Left part of the party might — might — go along with that idea out of desperation. The progressive Left, as Matthews astutely points out, would go into an utter meltdown. Harris’ allies don’t want to win by giving up any power at all. 

And in a real sense, they’d be correct to oppose it. Harris may not have been on the primary ballots this year, but Biden won 99% of the delegates with Harris explicitly remaining on the ticket. Newsom never even bothered to enter the race. If Biden pulls out, those delegates may be released in a legal sense, but Harris and her progressive allies have a very good argument that primary voters endorsed her as well as Biden. And you’d better believe that the same progressives that are conducting Occupy operations on college campuses and highways to support radical jihadi terrorists in Gaza will show up in much more force if Democrats pull a back-room switcheroo that leaves Harris without a seat when the music ends. 

And you’d better believe the center-Left knows it, too…having anointed her as capable of being One Heartbeat Away in not one but two presidential cycles now, Democrats can’t just toss her into the garbage now. How do they explain her being competent enough to be Biden’s backup but not to run in his place?

Long story short – the Dems may have no choice but to triple down on gaslighting the public. They can count on it working with 33% of the population, anyway.