To: All of Congress
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant with kids, grandkids
Re: Your (pl) Cowardice

Political Weasel Class (Democrat and GOP)

So I’ll start with the low-hanging rotten fruit: Eric Swalwell continues to pay dividends on China’s investment:

We’re headed toward a $50 Trillion debt. Already our debt service costs more than defense, and will soon start to suck money way from it. No matter – soon it will outstrip Social Security and Medicare.

No system can survive this. This is Venezuela-level irresonsibility.

And none of you Democrats, and precious few Republicans, are taking this seriously.

Swalwell is a cartoon – but no better than most of you, when you get right down to it.

Someone’s gotta be the first to tackle this thing, because it’s definitely going to tackle us.

That is all.

Jamaal Bowman, perhaps the dumbest member of a dumb “Squad”, is on his way to his non-profit reward:

Progressive Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., suffered a primary defeat Tuesday to a moderate challenger who was backed by pro-Israel groups, NBC News projected, following a bitter and expensive race that exposed the party’s divisions over the war in Gaza.

The race between Bowman and Westchester County Executive George Latimer in New York’s 16th District drew more ad spending — $25 million, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact — than any other House primary in history. Nearly $15 million of that spending came from the United Democracy Project, a super PAC linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobby, which backed Latimer.

With 84% of the vote in as of Wednesday morning, Latimer led Bowman by a wide margin, 58.4% to 41.6%.

Don’t get too excited – Bowman “represents” (for now) a very Jewish district. His approach to the Gaza war may have been the most tone deaf in history.

Still, it’s good to see him gone.

Joe Doakes, once from Como Park, emails:

We all know that Minnesota is run by the DFL; has been, for years.  Legislative session just ended.  What critical problems did the DFL solve?

Drug dealer licensing.  Put zoning above environment.   Raise rates for Uber/Lyft rides.  Increase penalties for gun crimes which DFL county attorneys will decline to prosecute.  State takeover of rural ambulance service but only 10% of the funding funding to run it.  Ticket prices (House File 1989, apparently a reference to Taylor Swift, which shows you the level of silliness).  Deadbeats over doctors.  ATV trails. Raise the price of broadband.  

I also heard from Ramsey County management.  They got $1 million for Union Depot; more money to subsidize homelessness, justice-impacted residents re-entering the community; digital literacy resources; an anaerobic digester to convert organic food waste into renewable natural gas; support services for youth suspected of juvenile offenses or delinquent acts; and packaging waste (reuse, recycling and composting).

But nothing for problems like this one, which is arguably one of the most important jobs we collectively hire government to do, since we can’t do it alone.

Nobody can say they haven’t made their priorities clear…

Snopes finally admits something conservative media has been saying for seven years and change:

Not sure what it was that prompted them to cough up the truth.

Perhaps because, at least among the opinion-making class, the damage is done and irrecoverable; in this case, “Journalist” Christopher Ingraham of the MN Reformer:

He’s one of the “gatekeepers”, doncha know.

To: Hypothetical Attorney General (Federal or State)
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Opportunity

Mr./Ms. Hypothetical Future Attorney General,

Looking at this:

…and this:

I’ve got to ask – what’s it going to take to get the MNDFL into a RICO investigation?

If they’re not racketeering, I’m not sure who is.

That is all.

Governor Klink, Melissa Hortman and the Urban DFL clacque squandered a $19 billion surplus paying off the DFL’s special interests, and all we got was a broken dam.

Unexpectedly? No. Not a bit. The century-old Rapidan Dam on the Blue Earth River – a tributary to the Minnesota, and eventually the Mississippi – has been a problem for a long time.

And everyone who gave a, er, damn knew it:

In 2021, a study was conducted that identified two feasible solutions for the dam’s state of disrepair: repair or remove the dam. Both options have significant costs, and each has its opportunities, trade-offs, and timeframes. The purpose of the Future of Rapidan Dam project is to identify the community’s needs and concerns and use their input on the options to help the County make the best decision for all impacted by the Dam’s future.

You can’t buy any urban non-profit allegiances with a dam. You sure can’t carry a dam in a suitcase to Kenya.

It’s bad.

If there’s a better way of depicting the results of the DFL’s priorities, I’m open to suggestions.

A friend of the blog emails:

If you recall, back in 2020 there were similar reporting coming out about Trump picking up ground in the black community around this same time, and then we suddenly had race riots and George Floyd within a week of those reports coming out.

Are we going to have to gear up for another black community getting burned to the ground to put them back on the proverbial Democratic Party plantation?

Riot? Maybe.

All I know is, Democrat gaslighting of Black Communities is going to shift into hyperdrive.

Not sure if the Trump campaign should send this g…

…er, this…

…uh, this person a check for producing perhaps the perfect Trump campaign ad?

Woke influencer lists all of the "terrifying" things that Trump will do if he wins and accidentally made him the most epic campaign ad ever.
pic.twitter.com/scx10wqRLt

— Mahatma Gandhi (Parody) (@GandhiAOC) June 10, 2024

This, uh, person may have done a better job of convincing me than Charlie Kirk, Sebastian Gorka and Laura Loomer combined.

Check out Bill Glahn’s reporting on Feeding Our Future.

Today’s music list:

The Strib’s editorial cartoonist accidentally took a chunk out of DFL policy.

And that could not be tolerated:

That’s right – Grove apologizes to the DFL for his paper telling the truth.

Heads will no doubt roll.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is waiting at a local bar for a small debate society. He’s reading the menu, and doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has entered the bar, carrying a protest sign reading “Debate Is White Supremacy”. BERG doesn’t notice LIBRELLE – but LIBRELLE notices him.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Ah, sssshhhhiiut the front door, it’s Ave…

LIBRELLE: Shut up. The verdict against Hunter Biden shows that we do not have a two-tiered justice system! Nobody is above the law!

BERG: Sure.

LIBRELLE: Hah. I thought you’d say…(stops) Er, what?

BERG: If you ignore the fact that the Department of Justice made a concerted effort to slow-walk the tax evasion and corruption allegations so that the statutes of limitations expired, especially on the allegations that could have led investigators to “the Big Guy”? Yeah. Perfectly just.

LIBRELLE: (Uneasily) Er…right. Right?

BERG: As far as you know, yes.

LIBRELLE: Whew. I thought so. (Walks away, waving sign and trying to disrupt the debate)

And SCENE

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I suggest a contest for readers to give new slogans to the Republican party

Trump or Biden, handcuffs or Depends. You decide.

Trump or Biden, mean tweets or elder abuse. You decide.

Want to kill your baby?  Vote Democrat.

Democrat dilemma, taxes or groceries?

 Have you been discriminated against? You may be entitled to compensation.  Unless you’re White. Then you’re just a hater. Vote Democrat. 

Cast your votes in the comments

This needs to be said.

Dennis Prager says “everything the left touches, it destroys”. The language is one of those things, and the left’s been actively working on it for decades.

The left has made so many words meaningless:

• (Toxic) masculinity
• Fascism
• Treason
• Racism (and its meaningless analogue, “anti-racism”.
• White Supremacy

And, in this campaign, “Democracy” – which has come to mean “everything the Democrat party wants”.

We’re assured that President Biden is the most on-top-of-it president in history.

This was him, getting ready to attend yesterday’s D-Day ceremony in Normandy:

Looks like he could’ve jumped out of a Higgins boat then and there!

And this was him later:

And right after that:

To be fair, I don’t think the President was the only one filling a pants. I have a hunch Taiwanese citizens, and maybe the leaders of Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Estonia, might need a change right about now.

Just to make sure we’re clear on this? Here’s a President not crapping his literal pants and figurative bed:

Mean tweets are not looking so bad.

Modern progressivism is a social chameleon; it turns itself, and its history, into whatever it needs to to accomplish its ends.

Modern media, for the most part, are oblivious, if not downright supportive.

But there are exceptions.

David Mikics at “Arts and Letters” reviews Nellie Bowles’ Morning After the Revolution, a brief history of modern American progressivism’s contortions since the death of George Floyd.

The latest litmus test goal for progressives, erasing Israel from the map, will prove to be no more achievable than eradicating whiteness. But the movement has never been about actual results, only the public display of righteous intentions. Lately the righteousness has been serving evil ends, but few leftists are willing to admit this. Instead, they say that students demanding justice is a noble thing, whether or not what they are demanding is actually just; or that there really aren’t many extremists; or that they oppose genocide in Gaza, whether or not a genocide is actually happening, and while ignoring the actual genocidal rhetoric and actions of Hamas; or mostly, that you should be denouncing Trump instead.

Michelle Goldberg, in her Times op-ed about Bowles’ new book, wistfully yearned for the return of the “progressive urgency that marked the Trump presidency.” Except, the urgency is still there—not this time smashing the windows of minority business owners, saying that math is racist, or championing the right to shoot up in public, but applauding the murder of Jews, past and future. Putting progressive urgency in the past tense is a way of closing the book on that past while at the same time erasing what progressives are saying and doing in the present, in order to avoid any moral or practical responsibility for a political program that has clearly gone off the rails.

Progressivism’s moral bankruptcy is hard to overlook. Unless, of course, you write for The New York Times, in which case your strategy is to pretend that the left extremism of the past few years either didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. Luckily, we have Nellie Bowles to show us otherwise.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Block a freeway? Burn down a neighborhood? Jack a car, rob a store, shoot up on a train, b**w a john on a bus, attack someone on a train platform?

Mary Moriarty’s got your back.

Exercise your first amendent right to demonstrate for Mary Moriarty’s enemies, whoever they are, wherever you are?

You’re a threat to democracy:

Mary Moriarty is the real authoritarian – or “fascist”, as the kids are calling ’em these days.

UPDATE: Here’s Londregan’s attorney, Chris Madel’s response.

And let me tell you…

…it may be the best press conference I’ve seen since Norman Schwartzkopf’s wartime pressers. More drop-mic moments than a “Freddie Mercury” night at a karaoke bar.

Wish we could get this guy to run for Senator or Governor, if he’s GOP.

It has become an iron clad fact that the only actual “reporting” going on in Twin Cities media is from the “alternative” media.

And while I riff on the “MN Reformer” – which is paid for by leftists with deep pockets – I’ll include them as well.

“Bags of Cash” allegedly offered to “Feeding Our Future” juror:

But…why?

Scott Johnson at Powerline is in the courtroom:

According to [leader prosecutor Joe] Thompson, the juror called 911 and the Spring Lake Park Police have taken custody of the cash — [update: the amount is $120,000]. It will be retrieved by the FBI.

Much more to come.

As we watch the back an forth between dismal demographic news and media pollyannaism in Minneapolis, it’s worth looking at other cities that are having similar post-pandemic problems.

Which is most of Blue Urban America, to be honest – there aren’t many cities outside Florida, Texas, the Carolinas and Tennessee doing well these days – but Boston is a particularly interesting case.

Boston has one advantage – a media where someone, in this case Jon Keller of Boston Magazine – will actually do serious, sober, balanced reporting on the issue, a job that normally falls to Alphanews and the Center of the American Experiment here in the Twin Cities.

Boston had the advantage of not having had a bunch of riots at the height of the pandemic. It has the overcompensating disadvantage of being ruled by a mayor who may be worse than Minneapolis’s mayor and council (so far) put together:

Disaster movies involving skyscrapers are part of America’s cultural canon—and while the situation here isn’t quite as dire as the terrorist attack on the swanky Nakatomi Plaza in the classic Christmas movie Die Hard, neither does there seem to be much hope of a Bruce Willis–style miracle rescue by our elected leaders. After scoffing at the warnings, Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration stunned property owners this spring by proposing the one idea few outside of City Hall seem to think has even a chance of fixing the problem: a tax hike on the beleaguered commercial holdings themselves (which would likely get passed on to tenants, forcing them to downsize their office footprint or flee). It’s a move arguably more intended to curry favor with voters in the upcoming election than keep Boston safe from the doom loop. Coming on top of a string of initiatives deeply unpopular with real estate owners, including an attempt to restore rent control and adopting a surtax on property sales worth more than $2 million, the tensions between Wu and local developers have never been higher.

At the same time, other immediate options for averting catastrophe seem either politically unpalatable or unlikely. Extracting more money from relatively undertaxed residential properties? A politically toxic non-starter in an election year for the mayor, who has said, “I cannot have that happen.” Seeking relief from the state? Given the traditional strain between urban and suburban priorities, good luck with that. And while officials are exploring ideas to deal with the ever-increasing office-building vacancy rate, such as converting empty offices into desperately needed housing, the economic viability of that solution is somewhere between questionable and laughable.

The parallels are seductive – and perhaps a little misleading. And the whole article is worth a read.

But if you read about Mayor Wu’s approach to the collapse of downtown Boston’s commercial real estate market and the hole it leaves in the city’s budget and think “the beatings will continue until morale improves”, you and I think just a little alike.

Oh, yeah – Chicago, too.

To: Alvin Bragg,
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: You Did It!

I’ve never been coy about the fact that I’ve never cared about Donald Trump – or at least his dominant public persona. I don’t care for what his erratic and impulsive nature cost the GOP in 2018 and 2020.

Something I like far less than Trump? Debasing the justice system to harass poltiical opponents and try to rig elections.

Alvin Bragg’s goal may not have been to create someone who’s going to do whatever he can to push Trump over the top this fall.

If it were, I’m not sure what he’d have done differently.

January 6 was a riot – and the foundations of our representative republic were never in danger, any more than during Watergate or the Civil War.

The Trump trial – activities that according to the judge related to no crime, over charges that the FEC said weren’t crimes back when they were within the statute of limitations – is a direct assault on one of the things that tenuously separates America from the barbarians.

So far.

Congrats, Dems. You did it. You dragged me, kicking and screaming, into supporting Trump .

Let’s make America a constitutional republic with the rule of laws, not men, again.

You get no prize for having figured out how this was going to develop.

Ken Martin demands the resignation of accused ninja burglar, constitutional law genius and state Senator Nicole Mitchell…:

…after she served her purpose in hanging onto the “trifecta” and helping jam down the DFL’s demented spending and social engineering spree.

Why yes, I’ll be bringing this up again between now and November.

If the Democrat party’s messaging machine were targeted at people who did critical thinking, I’d have a little sympathy for them.

They’d have to navigate a pretty tight logical hairpin turn.

To wit: they’d have to supervise the gaslighting of the people to believe the “experts” and not their lying eyes about the economy:

…and that workers have more buying power than they did five years ago…

…while simultaneously making them believe that public employee unions are doing less well:

As schools across the country struggle to find teachers to hire, more governors are pushing for pay increases, bonuses and other perks for the beleaguered profession.

Meanwhile, teacher salaries have fallen further and further behind those of their college-educated peers in other fields.

Remember – I said “if they had to convince people who could think critically”.

They don’t.

Steady as she goes.

During the 2022 campaign and the 2023 legislative session, in the immediate wake of burning through a $19B surplus, that the DFL claimed that the spending binge would “Reduce Poverty by 30%”.

The sessions ended a year ago yesterday.

So how’s that going?

Well, apparently we won’t know for another couple of years. The MN Department of Health’s poverty numbers end in 2022 – when they were rising.

According to some sources generally aligned with the left, poverty was steady to up; to others, it was rising…

…as of the end of 2022.

But since the spending orgy?

No idea.

All I know is, the DFL has been incredibly quiet about the subject for this past year.

There appears to be an 18-24 month lag getting poverty numbers to the public.

Huh.

So they spent $19B, and raised the budget 40%, to “eradicate” something…

…that they couldn’t test until well after this fall’s election?

Weird.

Former representative Ryan Winkler has led us down a twisty, turny path with some surprises over his legislative and extra-legislative careers.

He’s swerved from the ridiculous to the, well, occasionally admirable, and back, and forth and back and forth, and backandforth…

And, well…:

Denying the industralized murder of 11 million people,

versus

Legitimate questions and doubts about everything government told us about Covid from the very beginning – remembering that many of the “conspiracy theories” of 2020/2021 turned out to be true: natural immunity works, and for longer than the vaccines; fomite spread didn’t happen; lockdowns were useless at best; the Great Barrington Declaration was right (the vaccines should have been targeted at the elderly and vulnerable), researchers lied even about the intended effects of vaccines or that “Zero Covid” was ever possible, masks made little to no difference, and there’s a pretty significant chance the virus did start as a result of Frankenvirus research in China.

Holocaust denial is a social pathology. Pandemic “denial”, at four years remove, is neither pathological nor especially denying any fact.

Someone needs to take a deep breath.

Notice how many Democrats and media people (ptr) are gaslighting working Americans about the economy lately?

The Dow Jones and the level of GDP is nice and all, but inflation is rising faster than buying power, and is going to get worse before it gets better, if it gets better.

To: DFL Parents
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Your Kids

DFL comms guy Ryan Faircloth [1] had himself a chuckle in the lobby of the GOP convention last Friday:

The sign, naturally, is a just a tad tongue-in-cheek.

But the MNDFL – the party of “comedians” who aren’t funny and people with no sense of humor, to sa nothing of the party of Judd Hoff and Nicole Mitchell – forgot about Judd Hoff, Nicole Mitchell and “Anti”-Fa long enough to post this:

Now, let’s focus on the sign.

DFLer parents: how about teaching your kids that hitting people with skateboards and shooting golf balls and frozen water bottles from slingshots isn’t actually political speech?

That is all.

[1] CORRECTION: Ryan Faircloth appears to be a reporter for the Strib, not a DFL comms guy.

We regret the error.