Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Let’s Go Brandon is having a terrible first-year-in-office: virus rampaging, economy collapsing, domestic terrorist parenting, shortages looming. He claims he’s the victim of bad luck: he inherited all these problems from the Trump administration. What if Brandon is right?

The problem of backed-up container ships is blamed on everything from California environmental regulations (only special low-emission trucks allowed in the port) to sloth (laid-off employees staying home on unemployment instead of returning to work). None of those causes sprang into being during the Brandon Administration.

Lies about the Covid virus created widespread public fear which gave Democrats an excuse to change election procedures to ‘fortify’ the election. Fear of the Covid virus gave Democrat politicians an excuse to place their entire states under house arrest, ban religious worship, prohibit political assembly. Customers’ fear of the Covid virus gives employers motivation to impose employee vaccination mandates, mask requirements, and social-distance rules. The Covid virus panic did not begin during the Brandon Administration.

Parents standing up for their children has been going on for decades. The trans-gender movement and Critical Race Theory gave it a big push. The father yelling at the school board for covering up his daughter being raped in the Girls Bathroom by a young man wearing a skirt got all parents branded as domestic terrorists subject to investigation by the FBI. But the trans-movement and CRT didn’t start under the Brandon Administration.

President Trump may have been the most conservative President since Andrew Jackson, better than Ronald Reagan, but even Ronaldus Magnus had to choose his battles. The problems facing the nation today may have begun under earlier administrations and festered under Trump as he fought with Russia, China and Congress only to explode under Brandon. He might be right about that.

But it doesn’t excuse him. Hold-over problems and surprises happen all to everyone (9/11 happened nine months into Junior Bush’s term). Nobody forced Brandon to leave behind Americans in the retreat from Afghanistan. Nobody forced him to decimate the workforce through vaccine mandates. Nobody forced Brandon to embrace stagflation as economic policy. Nobody forced him to leave the borders open. The Brandon Administration could deal with angry parents by telling the Attorney General to sit down and shut up, by telling local school boards to remember who they serve. Brandon could deal with a labor shortage by demanding Congress make working more profitable than couch-surfing. Brandon could deal with the ship backlog by telling Mother Pete to find a solution or find a new job.

Or he could have another pudding cup and take a nap. Brandon inherited all these problems, they’re not his fault, why not let Kamala deal with them in her First Term?

Joe Doakes

Sure.

Unless “not dealing with the problems“ is, actually, the agenda…

Newsweek calls it an “attack”.

I think it’s more of a “pounce”.

About this time seven years ago, I was writing the series of blog posts that eventually become my book Trulbert.

The book described a fictional breakdown of society after a financial cataclysm. I did it as satire because, honestly, it seemed like a more effective approach to the subject; Kurt Schlichter is going to put his kids through medical school with the proceeds from his fiction about a second Civil War, and he’s far from alone. And sometime humor is the best journalism.

Which isn’t to say Trulbert was “the best journalism”, but sometimes the indirect approach is the best one.

I’ve pondered doing a follow-up.

And I’m having a really, really hard time getting to “satirical” again. And I think it ties into the G.K. Chesterton quote – “when everything is absurd, satire is impossible”.

The Brandon Administration, and the times it rules over, are impossible to satirize.

I’m trying to figure out the angle for the next book.

A children’s story?

A musical?

I got nothing.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This article explains every Shot in the Dark post by The E-Collective, and all of Governor Walz’ Covid speeches, and everything said by every White House Spokesbeing, and . . .

Joe Doakes

He’s right, you know.

Scene: it is 2020. The scene fades up in a DNC/Biden campaign office, in the middle of the 2020 presidential race.

A group of democratic party operatives is sitting in a crowded, messy campaign office, with video screens silently relaying the news all around them.

Operative 2: “OK, we are clear on this; rebuilding the economy from this pandemic is going to be a huge issue.“

Operative 1 (the campaign Manager): “That is why the “American Phoenix“ program, the presidents plan for what he will do about the economy after he’s elected, will be so important“.

Operative 3: “So we’ve gone over with the president exactly how he supposed to message this plan?”

Operative 4: “We’ve been rehearsing it every waking hour”

(Operatives 2-4 chuckle)

Intern: (Walks into the room, holding a TV remote, looking nervous) “Sir? Senator Biden is on television right now…)”

Operative 1: “Right? He’s supposed to be, isn’t he“ (Other operatives vigorously nod)

Intern: (points remote at television monitor, clicks a button) “I think you need to see this, sir…”

Candidate Biden (on video) “… my Build Back Better plan will put Americans back to work…“

(All of the operatives blanche)

Operative 4: “what the…“

Operative 1: “How the hell did he get from American Phoenix to… what did he say?“

Operative 2: “build… Better… I have no idea.“

Operative 3: “What?“ Operative 1: “Well, I’ll be; he actually was too senile to remember “American Phoenix“.

Operative 2: “so what do we do?“

Operative 1: “Well, he’s sort of made the decision for us. American phoenix is now… Better… Build now? What was it?

Operative 3: “back build…“

Operative 4: “I have no idea“.

Intern: (Silently rewinds the video)

(And SCENE)

Philippe Cunningham, Minneapolis’s first transgender black city Council woman, says that even though she has spoken, and voted for, defunding the police, she doesn’t actually support defunding the police.

Or… Something like that?

Phillipe Cunningham is the first black, gay, female-to-male transgender person to become a council member in the city. Last year, Cunningham appeared alongside eight other council members at a protest in Powderhorn Park. The centerpiece of this demonstration was a stage that prominently featured the words “DEFUND POLICE” in bold, all capital letters.

Although Cunningham voted late last year to remove $8 million of funding from the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD), she said she doesn’t actually want to defund the police and was “deceived” into standing on the defund police stage.

Apparently Cunningham was dealing with a pretty incredible con man (con person?), who deceived her into saying an awful lot of things that she never really believed:

“It is possible for us to keep our own community safe,” Cunningham said. “In north Minneapolis as the buildings were being broken and burned by white supremacists and extremists, MPD was nowhere to be found … so we had to come together ourselves in order to protect our community.”

Cunningham also praised the people “who threw the first bricks at police officers at Stonewall,” calling on the crowd to “honor our elders.”

Apparently the ne’er-do-wells have moved on from the “Nigerian prince“ scam, and done it in a big way.

Be careful out there.

…that if I voted for Republicans, it’d usher in a hellscape of misery and deprivation.

And they were right.

The wealthiest society in history, at the greatest time in history to be a human, is being told by the Handmaidens of the Elite to get ready for, in effect, rationing.

Remember this.

Let’s go, Brandon.

Perhaps you’ve heard – it’s been in all the headlines; a shooting in a Saint Paul bar left one dead and 14 injured.

It took place in one of the many bars along West Seventh that suffered horribly with the shutdown of all events at the XCel Center, Ordway and the Science Museum, and the concertgoers and hockey fans and general tourists that used to crowd the area on a beautiful evening.

And the crowd that replaced them, when they could open at all, was a little…edgier? More likelly to cause problems? Bars in the area, and up on Cathedral Hill, had a much different atmosphere. Charged. Jumpy. Ready to blow.

And at the Truick Park – across from Cossetta, where the Seven Corners Hardware store used to be – things finally blew up.

Now, most of the politicians in Saint Paul – a city controlled by the DFL for over 60 years, and where county prosecutors have all but given up, well, prosecuting, had the good common sense to shut the hell up.

Not Carlos Marianil, the DFLer who “represents” the neighborhood.

But the three perps that where arrested all had lengthy felony records – so they wouldn’t have taken any background checks, whether “Universal”, or for that matter ‘intelligent and meaningful”, or not.

And who would have entered a “Red Flag” order on them?

Rep. Mariani’s next statement wasn’t especially intelligent – but it was meaningful, albeit in a sinister way:

So here’s the message; if you start a business in Saint Paul, after the state tried to kill you off with the hamfisted lockdown, and the Karens that make up the majority in your neighborhood decide to keep hiding in their basements and not go to bars and hockey games and shows at the Ordway, and you have to take whatever clientele you can to stay afloat, and problems erupt, your government will try to stuff you under the bus.

But! If you see that the clientele might have the potential to cause problems, and they’re not conveniently politically neutral (like people wearing motorcycle “club” paraphernalia)? Well, then the locals in and out of government will stuff you, on the other hand, under the bus: when the late, great “Bar Louie” chain tried to see to its own security, in exactly the way Mariani demands, the Karens from the Non-Profit/Industrial Complex were waiting to stomp on that as well. If it walks like a gang member and talks like a gang member, apparently you’re a racist.

So to take Mariani, and both city councils and both county prosecutors at their words:

1. if you try to pre-empt trouble, you’re racist.
2. If you make the the best of things and the crowd causes problems, they’ll throw you under the bus.
3. The county attorneys won’t touch the petty criminals, and even the not so petty ones can’t seem to get put in jail no matter how they try.
4. And if you say that that you expect the government to which you pay taxes to see to public safety? That’s your privilege talking.

Starting a business here sounds like. a great bet, doesn’t it?

Fearless Prediction: The media will start running even more “thjink” pieces on how it’s “Racist” to demand law and order.

Chicago / Cook County prosecutors are declining to charge gang members for homicides – partly because witnesses are terrified to speak out…

….and partly because they, to quote a line that hardly ever works for rapists, “consented” (I’ve added emphasis):

While she wouldn’t specify what other evidence prosecutors needed to file charges, the police report acknowledged that victims of the shootout weren’t cooperating with investigators.

But the report also framed the state’s attorney’s office’s decision to decline charges in a different light: “Mutual combatants was cited as the reason for the rejection.” Mutual combat is a legal term used to define a fight or struggle that two parties willingly engage in.

This should revolutionize self-defense cases: “Your honor, the decedent voluntarily entered my client’s house. My client voluntarily shot him”.

Well, that’d be too simple, wouldn’t it?

Caught this on social media over the weekend:

Sort of the opposite of the “Free State Project” – the “idea” would be to export Manbuns from slave states to free states to tip the Senate.

And part of me would love to see 85,000 Manbuns trying to move to North Dakota. To survive in North Dakota.

And who on earth came up with these numbers?

In practical terms, it means 85,000 Manbuns – about 12% of the entire state’s current population – jamming into Fargo, since much as I’d love to imagine these effete hamsters moving to Fort Berthold or Scranton or WIllison or Dunseith, they did specify “work from home” Californians. You want broadband, you gotta go to Fargo, Grand Forks, Bismark or Minot. Which would increase the combined population of those four cities by 30%, pronto, making each of them more expensive than San Francisco. And you can wander any of those cities for the rest of your life looking for Avocado Toast, and find nothing.

It’d be even more pronounced in Alaska, and especially Wyoming, where an influx of 75,000 useless club drones would increase the entire state’s population by nearly 20%, and make its breoadband-enabled metro areas, Cheyenne and Casper, look like Del Rio Texas.

And Montana?

In practice, those 60,000 ofay fops would land in Missoula, the closest thing any of those states have to a San Francisco, blowing that city up.

And then? Winter.

Oh, good Lord. I hope you try, Manbun. I pray for your safety and your sanity in the middle of a North Dakota winter in an electric car. But I hope you try.

Is there anything re Covid that Florida’s governor can’t affect?

And I bet the Texas Abortion Law has something to do with it too.

I’d bank on it.

Crosstabs from the California recall vote include some potentially troublesome news for Democrats:

Now, it’s entirely possible that Newsome’s patrician behavior during a lockdown that disproportionally affected Latinos is partly, even largely, the cause.

But we know a couple of things:

• Latinos become much more conservative after a generation or two in the US
• They tend to be more hawkish than Whites on the subject of border enforcement (but, notably, not deportation)

Did the Newsome recall, and the largely Democrat-led pandemic response that has disproportionally impacted Latino society, accelerate this trend?

Well, if I have anything to say about it…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If you are the elite law enforcement agency in the world but you are always holding back, waiting for the giant break to roll up the entire network and capture the ringleader, you not only fail to achieve the grand objective, you allow people to suffer as you sit idle.

Has the FBI had ANY victories since they shot John Dillinger? Any at all?

Joe Doakes

Well, there’s always that whole “wave of right wing terror, Coming along any day now, honest!” thing that has made them indispensable to the Democrats…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If you are the elite law enforcement agency in the world but you are always holding back, waiting for the giant break to roll up the entire network and capture the ringleader, you not only fail to achieve the grand objective, you allow people to suffer as you sit idle.

Has the FBI had ANY victories since they shot John Dillinger? Any at all?

Joe Doakes

Well, there’s always that whole “wave of right wing terror, Coming along any day now, honest!” thing that has made them indispensable to the Democrats…

…don’t get cocky.

But a Democrat who’s in power and isn’t overreaching like a crack whore with a stolen Obsidian Card probably isn’t much of a Democrat.

And it just may cost them.

According to the associated press, the Covid pandemic has tied a “grim milestones“: The death toll is even with that of the 1918 Spanish influenza:

The delta-fueled surge in new infections may have peaked, but U.S. deaths still are running at over 1,900 a day on average, the highest level since early March, and the country’s overall toll stood at close to 674,000 as of Monday morning, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, though the real number is believed to be higher.

Of course, if you are remotely numerate, you know the lede that got buried – in this case, down in paragraph seven:

The 1918-19 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 675,000 Americans in a U.S. population one-third the size of what it is today. It struck down 50 million victims globally at a time when the world had one-quarter as many people as it does now. Global deaths from COVID-19 now stand at more than 4.6 million.

But watching social media this past few days, it’s pretty clear – they’re not aiming the story at people with math or critical thinking skills.

To: Megan McCain
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreperous Peasant
Re: Let Me Try To Count Us

Megs,

To answer your question: me, and just about everyone reading this blog, for starters.

That is all.

Watching the footage from the border – with 15,000 people flooding a Texas town of 30,000 – I saw the media was on the job about the “humanitarian crisis“ along the Rio Grande.

Well, two years ago, anyway.

To be fair, that was about the last time “progressives“ cared about it, either.

Turns out the couturier who created AOC‘s “Taxi The Rich“ dress from the Met Gala last week, and whom Ocasio-Cortez hailed as a “fellow woman of color“ who had endured the de rigeur persecution that AOC seems to see around every corner, is:

• is a tax dodger,
• has left her workers withholding taxes unpaid
• has been dodging Workmen’s Compensation claims
• and hires scads of unpaid interns, which is funny and ironic for those who remember AOC and Ilhan Omar jeering “Experience Doesn’t Pay the Bills, Yo” when pimping for an absurdly high minimum wage.

Note to self:

• Move to Vegas
• Start a bookmaking establishment focusing on wagers on politicians’ behavior.

Not that anyone would take “AOC’s coutourier is hypocrite” as a bet.

Senator Melisa Lopez Franzen took what some called a “brave” stance in going after the perps in a sexual harassment scandal at the MN STate Capitol earlier this year.

A Senate staffer, Cynthia Callais, reported being harassed by a Legislative staff manager who happened to be related to Senator Jason Isaacson, a prominent DFLer.

The fracas led to the resignation of Susan Kent from her Senate Minority Leader role, and her announcement she wasn’t going to run again – potentially opening a seat for a GOP challenger, but that’s another story.

So Lopez Franzen just got elected to Kent’s old position.

And look who’s BFFs:

It’s not about justice, for women or anyone else. It’s about power – personal, and partisan.

To: Gavin Newsom, Premier of California
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Congratulations

Governor Newsom,

In a state dominated 2:1 by registered voters from your party, you evaded being recalled by a 7:4 margin.

After outspending the initiative by 5:1, with the united efforts of an in-the-bag media and a full turnout of the national social nomenklatura, in a vote that still saw your support among Latinos erode still further.

Sleep tight, Democrats.

That is all.

Remember – some animals are more equal than others.

My favorite part – the rows of black and latino service staff, swathed in masks, in the background behind the photos of all those “courageous” unmasked socialites.

The “attack” on Jussie Smollett was a reflection of everything wrong about Trump’s Amerikkka, until it almost inevitably turned out to be a hoax. Then it disappeared.

The attack on Larry Elder by a “woman” (we weren’t given any actual pronouns to use, so I’m not positive about that) in a gorilla mask – a bit of Jim Crow-era racism dating back to the systematic dehumanization of black people in the 1920s through 1960s – is…

…well, if you’re a Democrat leader, nothing at all.

Berg’s Eighth Law of DIversity states “”American progressivism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder.

There’s a reason it’s called Berg’s Law, and not Berg’s suggestion.

I don’t know if Larry Elder is going to win next week’s recall election against Gavin Newsom.

But Big Left certainly seems to think he’s got enough of a shot to pull out the big, stupid, racist guns…

…and the small, stupid, racist guns.

(No literal guns, yet – but let’s say a prayer for Elder anyway).

If you’re thinking referring to a black man as a “white supremacist” cheapens the term – well, Big Left is devaluing the term itself; since it seems Latinos in California, who’ve been the buttresses of the Democrat majority in the state for the past couple decades, are very underwhelmed with Newsom.

It’s going to be an insane five days. And not in a good way.