SCENE: The set of a tony TV talk show; black background, two chairs, end table with two glasses of water. Mitch BERG is interviewing George ORWELL, back from the great beyond.

BERG: Mr. Orwell, one of your great quotes from 1984 was “He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the past, controls the present”.

ORWELL: Quite.

BERG: So when you see today’s American Left saying things like this – a woman who specifically called for shutting down schools, even as the science piled up that children and their teachers were safer from a public health perspective in school than at home, that most of Europe recognized this well over a year ago, and that fought hard to stay shut down long after most of society had re-opened, but then went out in public to say…:

ORWELL: Oh, I see things like that, and so much more, and I say to myself “George, you were such an impish young pollyanna back in 1948”.

And SCENE

The Minneapolis Police have problems.

It’s been the most open secret in the world for as long as I’ve lived in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis cops leaning on black and minority drivers, being more willing to take off the gloves when operating in black neighborhoods – this was news in the mid-80s. It’s like most police departments – a few bad apples among a lot of good cops – only seemingly moreso.

Minneapolis has problems.

If you didn’t see it three years ago, you should have noticed it in the past two years. They had a city council president who said in as many words that expecting law and order came from a place of “privilege” (a privilege she was happy to enjoy with $1K a day in taxpayer-funded private security, of course), and a council that backed that up with policy, to the point whereJacob Freaking Frey looks like a law and order conservative (whenever there’s not a crisis, anyway).

It’s a city that seriously believes the answer to crime is to transfer more taxpayer money to “community” “non-profits” – the same people who’ve been profiting from the status quo, and code for “the DFL’s political farm team”. (It’s the same answer they have for education, economic development, and pretty much everything else).

The Minnesota DFL has a problem.

Polling for mid-terms is abysmal – potentially catastrophic. Early signs are they could lose the House of Representatives and fall further behind in the Senate; it’s even hypothetically possible the hapless MNGOP could finally get a governor.

The economy shows every sign of starting to slow down (at best) – something the media will try to spin until after a new, GOP-controlled Congress and Legislature take over, but for now, things seem to be getting away from ’em.

But…

The DFL controls the state bureaucracy.

The report that was issued by the MN Department of Human Rights – which is like one of those non-profits we mentioned above, only part of the executive branch – earlier this week could have been issued at any time in the past 35 years. It should have been issued at any time in the past 35 years; you don’t have to be a black community activist to notice the MPD has issues. If the DFLers who created the Human Rights department, and who have always staffed it, had needed to issue it at any point in the past 35 years, they would have.

But they didn’t need to issue it then. It might be excessively cynical to say a city full of people angry about their police suited them, per se – but it wasn’t against their interest.

But now? As Democrats nationwide are being weighed down (justifiably!) by their performance on law and order issues – now the MNDoHR comes out with a report on the MPD?

Right around the time the DFL statewide needs to deflect the “conversation” about crime away to…anything but six decades of failed DFL rule?

• DFL-caused problem (problems, really – crime in Minneapolis is the DFL’s baby, and the DFL has controlled the MPD for three generations).
• DFL-controlled bureaucracy.
• Report that tries to shift blame for crime away from the DFL, which has controlled literally all the factors leading to the problem since Eisenhower was President.

Seeing a pattern, here?

Minneapolis extremists and the DFL – pardon the redundancy – are going to start portraying themselves as the victims of this past couple of years:

Note to Minneapolis progressives: whatever the Minneapolis Police Department’s problems, your “progressive” council members were not the ones being “victimized”.

Erin Murphy – who was too extreme even for DFL Primary voters, after being endorsed for Governor four years ago – apparently held off on giving Twitter the ol’ heave-ho long enough to dump this bit of brilliance onto the world:

Saint Paul’s gullible and illiterate voters – many of whom vote for Murphy – believe city government has the legal prerogative to tell landlords what they can charge for their property. Checking and balancing that overreach is the same as trying to nullify an election (for sake of argument) by force.

It’s not just metro demigogues like Murphy:

So someday when a referendum in a western state bans abortion, Murphy and Port won’t support litigation?

Because it’d be “overturning an election”?

Asking for voter ID is the next step toward a government run by the KKK.

Unless you’re actually a DFLer.

Then…:

To be a delegate at DFL State convention, you need:

Photo ID, proof of vaccination, and qa negative test result?

The DFL does know that Black men are the least-vaccinated population in Minnesota, right?

It’s almost as if they’re trying to…

…keep black men from participating?

Mid-2010s. Democrats chatter up a storm about Kansas, whose conservative governor and legislature lowered taxes without cutting spending, leading to all sorts of financial issues. Democrats (pointedly ignoring the success of many conservative states that held lines on both taxes and spending with superlative results) railed on Kansas as a sign that conservative governance couldn’t work.

2022: Democrats cut taxes for short-term gain, ignoring spending.

From the “Democrats can say anything they want, because they know their voters just don’t think very critcally” department.

Angie Craig is telling people that she gets most of her donations from small donors:

Well, duh.

And if you have 100 donors, and 99 of them donate $1 piece, and Michael Bloomberg donates $10 million, then 99% of your donors are “small” – and you’ve got $10,000,099!

Which pretty much describes the dishonesty of the DFL’s “we’re running on money from the little guy!” claim:

Looking forward to talking with Tyler Kistner, who was endorsed unopposed to run against her again at the CD2 convention a while back.

During his 2018 campaign, Governor Klink used the slogan “One Minnesota”.

To those of us who study history, that caused a mirthless chuckile; German historians finished the slogan out: “One People, One Minnesota, One Leader”.

And those of us who remember history were right; when politicians yap about “unity” and “One” anything, it’s about making everyone equally miserable and straitened, not happy and prosperous.

Case in point: Minnetonka is being OneMInnesota’ed.

The bad news? Reality may be worse.

I had Representative, and with any luck at all, next year, Senator Eric Lucero, on my show last weekend.

He talked about “ESG” – short for “Environmental Social Governance”, which is basically the plan, well underway, to impose “social credit” scores on businesses. These will inevitably trickle down to citizens.

The conversation should scare the crap out of you.

You don’t need conspiracy theories anymore. This is the real thing.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is standing in line at Kramarczuk’s Deli in Northeast Minneapolis, checking his email on his phone as he waits for an order. Distracted, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE walking in the door.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Aaaaah, sssssschto Novovo, Aver…

LIBRELLE: Why are you here?

BERG: I’ve been coming here for 30-plus years.

LIBRELLE: What? You support the right of a beleaguered people who are surrounded on three sides by an authoritarian regime who has tried to murder them all in the past, who’ve launched yet another campaign of terror, and is carrying on a plucky campaign of resistance against overwhelming odds, tapping immense civil spirit to fight back against an authoritarian invader who vows genocide against them?

BERG: You’re referring to Israel?

LIBRELLE: (Mouth flaps open like a trout)

CLERK: (To BERG). Order up. (Puts wrapped sausage on counter. Turns to LIBRELLE). Er, your order sir…er, ma…(Looks at BERG, in a visible panic. BERG shrugs.)

LIBRELLE: (Mouth continues to flap)

BERG: Have a great day.

(BERG walks out. And SCENE).

Years and years ago, on a NARN broadcast at the “Back to the Fifties’ car show at the Fairgrounds, James Lileks made a point that summed up why “progressivism” is so noxious to so many people; there would, and could, never be an electric equivalent of the 1965 Ford Mustang.

Progressivism isn’t about muscle, happiness, abundance. It’s about shared misery – spreading it, virtue-signaling it (and, if you’re one of the “Big Guys”, quietly and flagrantly avoiding it). It’s no accident that it’s the “progressives” that are still wearing masks as they walk their dogs, alone, down empty streets.

The problem is, poor societies don’t solve problems. It takes prosperity to innovate. Leftists never get that.

Not everyone on the left believes in the virtue of wallowing in privation for “the common good”. Ruy Texeira – author, TED talker and public radio regular guest, who describes himself as a committed liberal – writes an excellent piece in the National Review about all the things the Democrats are getting wrong. It’s a longish and excellent read (and might require a subscription, i dunno)…

…and makes a similar point; Democrat disdain for prosperity (among the proles, at least – nobody’s coming for Zuckerberg’s spare yacht) is hurting them among the normies,

Energy is a big fault line:

Closely related to Democrats’ relative indifference to economic growth is their lack of optimism that a rapid advance and application of technology can produce an abundant future. More common is fear that a dystopian future might await us thanks to AI and other technologies. This is odd, given that almost everything ordinary people like about the modern world, including relatively high living standards, is traceable to technological advances and the knowledge embedded in them. From smartphones, flat-screen TVs, and the Internet to air and auto travel to central heating and air-conditioning to the medical devices and drugs that cure disease and extend life to electric lights and the mundane flush toilet, technology has dramatically transformed people’s lives for the better. It is difficult to argue that the average person today is not far, far better off than her counterpart in the past. “The good old days were old but not good,” as the Northwestern University economic historian Joel Mokyr puts it.

Doesn’t the Left want to make people happy? One has to wonder. They show more interest in figuring out what people should stop doing and consuming than in figuring out how people can have more to do and consume. They rarely discuss the idea of abundance, except to disparage it.

Texeira may never do lunch on Nob Hill again, but it’s worth a read.

So over the weekend, DFL representative Kelly Morrison, and other DFLers, ran a loooong series of tweets from her district (SD45, the far west ‘burbs) endorsing convention on Saturday.

Looks like a typical bunch of urban DFLers; masked up like bank robbers:

I mean, their healthcare decision, their business. I don’t tell them what to do, and they don’t tell me…

…oh, Right.

But then we move on. Her staff was certainly with the program…

…as was her (presumably) husband or significant other…

(I mean, I have no idea who he is, or about Ms. Morrison’s personal life).

But wait – apparently you go to the other corner of the building, and – apparently, the Russians have invaded, because Covid has vanished – or at least, the masks:

And then – people with masks shunted to the back of the shot?

And then, posing cheek-to-cheek with Congressman Phillips, with their masks scientifically dangling from the ears – perhaps waiting for word of Russian invasion?

Good thing the #science is so settled…

Suwana Kirkland, DFL-anointed candidate to replace Dave “The Drunk Driver” Hutchinson, is running in a moldy blue country. She doesn’t have to worry about Real Americans votes.

So if she’s caught on camera snuggling with gun-grabbers at DFL caucuses, no biggie for her.

You just shouldn’t expect much new from the HCSO.

Well, less drunk driving.

Probably.

CORRECTION. I’m informed the woman in the HCSO uniform is Duwanna Witt. Not being a Henco resident, I’m not nearly as up on the candidates as I should be.

I regret the error.

Let’s start with a little music:

The facts we hate
We’ll never meet
Walking down the road
Everybody yelling, “Hurry up, hurry up!”
But I’m waiting for you
I must go slow
I must not think bad thoughts
When is this world coming to?

Can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s tough avoiding bad thoughts these days. The larger question isn’t having bad thoughts, but whether you can express them. John Hayward, a/k/a Doc Zero, notices something important — the calls are coming from inside the house:

There is a part of the conservative sphere that has always felt populism is the ultimate sin, only the Left should be allowed to fight culture wars, and genuine conservative grassroots movements should be immediately run down with rhetorical lawn mowers.

There are different reasons why some conservatives gravitate to this way of thinking. Some are paid grifters. Some live deep inside the left-wing information sphere and inherit its prejudices, such as the notion cultural combat is toxic for conservatives but OK for lefties.

It’s always about the rice bowls. But there’s more:

For these timid elements of conservatism, the worst offense of the Right is questioning the motives of the Left. Nothing makes them spring into action against other conservatives faster than insinuations of bad faith or sinister motives against the Left.

Bad faith has been a growth industry on the port side since, I dunno, Rousseau maybe. It’s certainly not a recent development. Continuing on:

Run through the list of top issues: if you want border security, you must be a xenophobe. If you oppose abortion, you must be a blind religious fanatic or misogynist. If you want smaller government, you’re cruel and greedy. Question global warming? You’re a tool of Big Oil.

We are rat bastards, aren’t we? I must not think bad thoughts. But there’s more:

But as soon as any head of steam builds among grassroots conservatives for questioning the motives of the Left on similar grounds, the timid conservatives leap into action. Tut tut! That language is out of bounds! How dare you imply Lefty’s agenda is deliberately destructive!

They’ll tell you it’s paranoia and slander to talk about the destructive agenda of the Left even as hyperventilating lefties are busy laying out their agenda with hundreds of social media videos and vowing to destroy anyone who gets in their way.

I believe Mel Brooks had a number in Blazing Saddles about this, calling it the French Mistake. In modern parlance, that would be David French. But we’re not done:

Too much of the conservative commentariat is exactly that: commentators. They were comfortable remarking on the passing scene, not changing it. “Activism” was a dirty word, something the OTHER guys did. Tossing harmless Nerf footballs of theory around op-ed pages was good enough.

Change is hard and things are pretty cozy in the covens along the Potomac. And most of all, dudes wearing tricorner MAGA hats are not our kind, dear. We must not think bad thoughts. I’ve pulled a lot out of Hayward’s thread, but there’s even more. You should read it in full. But while his cri de coeur is compelling, it is clear our betters remain in their sinecures. And we’ll come back to that topic in the coming days.

Months after being exposed as a Federal “shake and bake” operation, the DOJ’s prosecution of the “kidnapping” case against Gretchen Whitmer ended in complete ignominy:

Exactly 18 months to the day, Birge’s prosecutors suffered a humiliating defeat in a Grand Rapids courtroom after a jury acquitted two of the men and deadlocked on the guilt of two others. (Two defendants pleaded guilty and testified for the government during the three-week trial). Despite endless resources and favorable rulings by the judge overseeing the case, the government failed to secure a single conviction in what the Justice Department considered one of its largest domestic terror investigations ever.

Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta, after a year and a half in prison, went home to their families on Friday night; Adam Fox, the alleged ringleader, and Barry Croft, Jr. remain incarcerated while Birge’s office prepares to retry the men—a fool’s errand, as they didn’t know each other prior to the FBI’s involvement in the faux plot and live almost 1,000 miles apart. (Croft resides in Delaware.) It’s a desperate attempt to save face, regardless of the lives and the principles of justice at stake.

Not only were jurors unpersuaded by Birge’s prosecutors, the jury instead seemed to believe defense attorneys’ arguments that their clients were entrapped by the FBI. At least a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants, working out of numerous FBI field offices across the eastern half of the country and at the direction of supervising agents, concocted and funded the sting operation. Dan Chappel, the main informant compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for “bringing people together,” as his FBI handler ordered him, took the stand to explain his role. But his testimony was lackluster and ultimately did not convince the jury the men were guilty.

So, let’s review the facts as we know them today. The “attempt”

• Was a federal “shake and bake” – a setup driven by FBI agents and informants.
• It was released precisely in time to affect the 2020 election, where Whitmer’s mortal enemy,, Trump, was a candidate.l

How is this not election interference – which, we are reliably informed, is a threat to the very fiber of democracy, when it’s “Republican” yahoos trampling through the Capitol?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

We’re told Lesko Brandon got more votes than Barack Obama. A friend asks where’s the show of support?

“We used to see Obama bumper stickers everywhere, that sun rising over the fields symbol. Drive the back roads out-state and you’ll still see Trump signs. I even saw a Wellstone bumper sticker in Mac-Groveland the other day (no, the driver was not a late-middle-aged white woman with resting bitch face and an ELCA haircut – her daughter was driving). So where are all the Biden/Harris bumper stickers? Did Biden voters scrub them off in shame?”

My guess is Biden voters ran out and bought new cars after the election, using their new-found prosperity under the Lesko Brandon administration. What other explanation could there be?

Joe Doakes

To be honest,I don’t recall ever seeing a whole lot of them, even during the campaign.

My non-satirical answer is, Donald Trump broke enough moderate brains to push Branden over the top. People are having their “morning after” moment – like all such moments, a day late and a dollar short.

“Every once in a while, a politician slips up and tells the truth“

“Lieutenant“ Governor Flanagan did that Monday on Twitter:

She’s right. After three generations of actively creating dependence on government, they have… created dependence on government.

It’s a feature, not a bug. To the DFL, anyway.

…in re his wife’s alleged prompting him to support the January 6 rioters, as viewed by his wife’s text, could be fairly described as ten dollars worth of hype wrapped around a quarter’s worth of evidence.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

As my mind wanders, it links unrelated ideas.  For example: 

How deadly is Covid?  How many people died OF Covid, WITH Covid, or merely DURING the Covid pandemic?  It makes a huge difference but the media glosses over the distinction all the time.

Similarly, Miami Beach declared a Spring Break curfew because of a shooting, and a Wal-Mart got trashed by “Spring Break Youths.”  Except there is a striking lack of logo sportswear in the videos.  Are we certain these are UCLA students who brought their pistols to town for a shootout during Spring Break?  Are we certain those Walmart yutes are students from Harvard and Yale?  Could they be locals causing trouble DURING Spring Break? It makes a difference but the media glosses right over it.  

Blaming the wrong people leads to punishing the wrong people.   How can we make good decisions if the media gives us bad information? And that links to Ukraine, and gun control, and FBI racial crime statistics, and inflation, and . . . .

Joe Doakes

If people can’t trust the institutions that make self-government sustainable, what do they think the inevitable end result is?

Could we at least call this what it really is – bribing you, with your own money?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Check me on this – are you seeing what I’m seeing

Joe Doakes

…somebody tells you what a genius and go in miracle was, or how she was the “leader of the free world in pro for four years, just mention this.

They’re Iran’s combination of the Saudi religious police, the KGB and the Green Berets.

They were behind the Marine Barracks and US Embassy bombings in Lebanon in the ’80s, which killed hundreds of Americans.

They are known to be directly responsible for killing 600 American service people in Iraq.

They’ve been directly tied to destabilizing most of the governments in the Middle East and Africa, not that many of them need a lot of help in that regard.

They brougth Lebanon and Syria to their knees.

They’ve been waging a horrific war in Yemen.

They are behind most of the attacks against Israel for the past 30 years, and are HAMAS’s main sponsor.

So of course the Brandon administration wants to destigmatize them:

According to Barak Ravid, reporting for Axios, three Israeli officials and two American sources have told him that the Biden administration is considering removing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the terror blacklist if Iran issues a public commitment to de-escalate its activities in the region.

Look at the bright side; it’ll free up CIA and FBI resources to go after the real terrorists, like the Heritage Foundation and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When central planners dictate what Must be sold, what May be sold, and what Must Not be sold, entire industries are forced to retool the factories and establish new supply lines to comply with the latest dictate, regardless of whether it makes economic sense. And when dictates change, chaos ensues until industry catches up. This is entirely predictable but for some reason, always entirely unforeseen.

Think about the scramble to find bottled water and toilet paper when the lock down was announced. Remember why the lock down was extended – not enough ventilators – and why Covid death numbers are ridiculously inflated – not enough test kits to identify Covid so hospitals were told to count every death from respiratory distress as Covid – and now look at stockpile of ventilators nobody needs and thestockpile of vaccine that nobody wants. The dictates forced industry to scramble and now it’s all wasted.

For everyone but a small percentage of the public, President Trump was right: Covid is just a bad flu. The existence of the virus was not a hoax; using the virus to terrorize the public was the hoax. And it distorted the economy in ways we’re still trying to understand. Not just a stolen presidential election, we knew that right away. But how many people lost jobs that still haven’t come back? How many businesses were closed and still haven’t reopened. How much was invested in developing product lines that suddenly are no longer needed?

The slogan of the day changes as people catch onto the old one, but the scam is always the same. In order to transform society from a messy, buyer beware, capitalist system into a sensible, orderly, communist system, there must be an intervening period when citizens are taught the new way of thinking so they fit into the new society. It’s like taking a puppy to the dog park or a toddler to kindergarten so they can be ‘socialized’ to learn the rules of acceptable behavior. And there must be someone to set the rules, of course, lest the new world order degenerate into chaos from an overabundance of freedom.

Except nobody in the world can ever be smart enough to understand all the factors that go into a prosperous economy nor can they understand all the implications of a dictated change to the economy. The invisible hand continues to rule as long as people can figure out a way to let it. The only solution is to kill off enough citizens that the few remaining survivors are those who enthusiastically embrace the new order. And that takes a lot of killing, as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao can attest. Lesko Brandon hasn’t started killing his own citizens directly, yet, but he’s on the same path as his intellectual guides. And that’s not a good thing.

Joe Doakes

People say Biden is nothing but a second term for Barack Obama. I disagree. Obama was a third term for Woodrow Wilson; Biden is the fourth.

Report apparently leaked last week shows – to the surprise of nobody – that the City of Minneapolis just was n ot ready for the George Floyd riots – or much of anything else:

An independent audit of Minneapolis’ handling of protests and riots following the police murder of George Floyd found city leaders and police ignored emergency plans in place, instead making decisions on the fly, according to Council Member Robin Wonsley Worlobah, who saw a draft report.

One line in the report Wonsley Worlobah pointed to reads: “We learned that MPD does not adhere to the principles of the ICS (incident command system) but rather addresses emergencies and crises with an ad hoc command structure.”

Of course, the fact that Minneapolis wasn’t ready was on display worldwide, almost two years ago – including the fact that Minneapolis’s administration had no idea how to ask a passive-aggressive governor how to get the National Guard onto the streets.

I’ll take a moment to air this tweet, by “Dr.” Katie Knuth, 2021 Minneapolis mayoral also-ran and..

…well, we’ll delve back into her resume in a moment.

The administration has “no clue about basic emergency operations”?

Now, it seems that at one point the CIty of Minneapolis had a full-time bureaucrat, a “resiliency director”, whose vague and unaccountable brief would seem to the untrained eye to cover things like “making the city resilient”.

Now, I’m just an untrained, unlettered peasant, but one might think it’d be part of a “resiliency director’s” brief to make the city…resilient?

So who was city’s first “resiliency director”, two scant years before the riots?

Oh.