You’re a security guy. 

You’re securing a public figure – part of an administration brings out the crazy in the crazies, and who has herself gotten plenty of “admiration” from the “Professor Bill” set. She completely meets the criteria set down in Berg’s 8th Law.

You’re securing her in a crowded room full of people you have to keep your eye on.  

Suddenly, someone comes in the room, bellowing DO YOU KNOW WHO I AAAAAAAM?

You do not know who he is.  He looks like pretty much 100,000 other people within a 10 mile radius.   

But he just won’t shut up.  

So, with visions of John Thompson and Butler PA and Rand Paul in mind, you do your freaking job. 

And this is what you get:

The entire left – no, the entire left – is up in a snit about it. 

I mean, who does he think he is?  Someone trying to go to church in 2020?

Waymo moves all of its self-driving cabs out to the suburbs of Los Angeles:

It may be the most 2025 photo of all time. 

If you were involved in any way in the 2020 riots in Minneapolis, even as a spectator, you know there was little organic and nothing spontaneous about them.  

With that in mind, I urge you to read this entire thread about the LA riots:

Babies getting tear-gassed?   

They’re just eggs for the greater omelette:

The MO points to “leftist NGOs with deep pockets”.

Who, how deep and how did they get so deep?

DataRepubliican (yes, another “X” thread) has more:

The major one appears to be “CHIRLA” (“Coalition for Humane Immigration Rights”). And yes, course you and I are paying for it:

And, oh yeah. don’t forget the leftist billionaires:

I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and guess that Big Left’s A-team was too busy planning in Los Angeles to turn last week’s fracas in Minneapolis into the riots some clearly so deperately wanted.

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

Seven of the raids went off without a hitch. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was in defense of human traffickers. 

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

The reactions from DFLers were…predictable. 

Putative mayoral front-runner Omar Fateh:

Senator Fateh: under “no” circumstances?

Like , not even with active human trafficking?

Weird.

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

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

The Police Union responded:

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

Because they don’t:

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

To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public Radio
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Anniversary + Findings

Mr. Collins,

As I have every year since 2021, I hope this day finds you well.

It was four years ago yesterday you sent this out on your listener mailing list::

“South Minneapolis: I know this sounds crazy. But it’s 2020. And I’m working on story now about white supremacists coming to Minneapolis to foment race war under cover of the protests. I need your help, and your friends help. Please refer anyone with real, credible info (not rumor or speculation) or sources to me at (I’m gonna redact that)

What the heck – let’s give this a shot:

Now, I know MPR reporters don’t generally deign to respond to the peasantry – in fact, I know MPR News management specifically tells staff not to engage with the unwashed masses.

But for the fourth June in a row, I’m genuinely curious – did you find anything?

It’s not of idle interest to me.  Mine was one of the neighborhoods that got burned, looted and vandalized in May of 2020 (noting at the time that I saw a lot of “AmeriKKKa” and “Destroy the 1%” graffiti, but not a single swastika or “14 words” reference, I’m thinking the Twin Cities either got the most inept “white supremacists” in the history of bigotry, or they were the most ingenious – fiendishly tricking a whole city full of leftists into doing the job for them – the sort of fieldcraft that’d make a Mossad agent envious).     

While I am a very overt conservative (I went from Bob Collins’ Christmas Card list to…well, very much off of it during his unfortunate unpleasantness a few years ago), I also spent time covering radical groups of all stripes back when I was in the mainstream media.  

I ask because a not-so-cursory look through the last three years of your reporting doesn’t seem to show anything.  

And as I do every year on the anniversary of this event, I’d like to invite you on my show (Saturday, 1-3PM) to talk about your findings.   Because it’s everyone’s city. 

Thanks,

Mitch Berg
Host, WWTC-AM

A group of federal law enforcement agents – FBI, DHS – apparently served a warrant for drug trafficking and money laundering on a restaurant at Lake and Bloomington in South Minneapolis yesterday. 

And it’s almost – I say, almost – like Twin Cities Big Left is trying to coax a riot out of the situation:

I mean, a riot over ICE, or whoever, would certainly divert attention away from the collapsing schools, the crime, the downtown that is disintegrating and leaving a gaping maw of taxes that will wind up being made up by an increasingly beleaguered middle class, a dysfunctional city government and a state government run by a bunch wastrels that squandered a $18 Billion surplus, wouldn’t it?

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Why fly deportees to Africa?  Is Trump trying to provoke a constitutional crisis?

My understanding is that the animals being deported are so vicious that their own countries won’t take them.  They’re being sent to the only place that will accept them.  Yes, it’s a Third-World shithole. What’s your point?

I’m wondering why the country-of-origin issue isn’t being addressed more forcefully.  If any nation refuses to take their own scum back then the immediate finding by the President should be then NOBODY from that country is allowed to enter or remain here.  Refuse entry to everyone, including diplomatic staff.  Throw all them all out.  Don’t think you can dump your problems on us.  

And maybe take it one step farther:  “The criminals being deported are so vicious that their country of origin won’t take them back.  It’s unfair to American taxpayers to feed and house them forever.  But we recognize the courts have said these criminals must be given due process.  Therefore, we intend to give them a free lawyer and a fair trial after which they will be given a first-class hanging.  If any nation objects to the death penalty and wants to take them, let me know and we’ll pay the freight to ship them to you. Be aware that if you let them go and we catch them again, they will be summarily executed and the cost will be recovered from you in the form of higher tariffs.”

That ought to put the cat among the pigeons.

Joe Doakes

That “summary execution” thing will set a lot of district judges injunction printers abuzz. 

But I suspect it’d get the message across.

Compare and Contrast:

The number of people in “white supremacist” groups dropped by an order of magnitude every generation from 1916 to 2016, from millions down into the single digit thousands. 

News media:  “Meh”.

Today:

News media: “It’s because they think they won“. 

No matter how much you hate the media, it’s not enough.

He’s gonna run for Governor again:

Of course, the little gnome will spend the next 18 months dodging debates.  But his Veep bid last year, and his newfound rise to national prominence, have given people a whole lot more material. 

As has the governor himself:

The little gnome never gets tired of “Nazi” references, does he?

I bet he does not see (badda boom) the problem with this…

Joe Doakes, formally of Como Park, emails:

I recently took a full flight from Fort Myers to Minneapolis with children crying and puppies whimpering. The only thing different from a converted South American school bus is the rooster.

 

 The puppy is not angry, it is frightened. I so wanted to confront the woman: “Why do you have a frightened puppy on this airplane?  Because it’s your comfort animal?  Really? It comforts you to terrify puppies?  What kind of monster are you?”

 

Joe Doakes

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

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

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

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

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

Joe Doakes

Prediction:  high school sports will disappear in Blue areas.

Minneapolis deputy police chief Katie Blackwell’s defamation suit was thrown out, and she’s been ordered to pay back part of Liz Collin’s legal fees:

This may be the biggest backfire I’ve seen in a defamation suit – and the subject is by no means academic to me.

In a move that finally brings truth to the matter, Blackwell also signed a written declaration, stating:

“I, Katie Blackwell, acknowledge, agree, and affirm that everything in the Honorable Edward T. Wahl’s Order Regarding Special Motion for Expedited Relief Under Minn. Stat. § 554.09 and for Fees and Costs Under Minn. Stat. § 554.16 dated April 8, 2025 is accurate, true, and correct.”

So, despite her initial claims, Blackwell has now affirmed that all of Judge Wahl’s findings are “accurate, true, and correct.”

So this brings up all sorts of questions about Blackwell’s testimony in the Chauvin trial – including her assertions that the restraint technique Chauvin used on Floyd, which appeared to have been straight out of the department’s training manual as affirmed by several Minneapolis cops interviewed in Collin’s movie, was no-how, no-way, ever part of the MPD’s training canon. 

Read the whole article.  And buckle up.  This next year or two is going be a doozie in Minnesota courts. 

Democrats, Two Weeks Ago:   “No government official is a king!”

Democrats today:  “What?  You can’t arrest a judge!   Judges can’t break the law!”

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Liberals keep saying “due process” as if it’s a magic phrase like “abracadabra.”  Tim Walz’ idiot daughter uses it, claiming Trump would have denied Jesus Christ due process in order to deport Him.  The implication is that if Jesus had received due process, He would not have died on the Cros

 

According to the Bible, Jesus Christ DID receive due process.  He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane on Thursday evening, was convicted after a trial before the local magistrate (Herod) on Friday, lost His appeal to higher authority (Pilate), and had His sentence of capital punishment promptly executed by crucifixion on Calvary.  He elected to represent Himself at trial and did not contest the charges.  “Due process” didn’t save Him. It wasn’t supposed to.  That wasn’t the point of His death.

 

And due process won’t save illegal aliens from deportation.  Any illegal alien who admits to being a member of the MS-13 gang will be deported.  Any illegal aliens who denies being a member of the MS-13 gang is still in the country illegally and therefore will be deported.  Reciting the magic phrase “due process” won’t alter the outcome for them any more than it did for Jesus.

 

Joe Doakes

 To paraphrase my late crim-def attorney, “‘Due Process’ isn’t a synonym for a jury trial, or even justice.  It means ‘the process in the statute and case law'”. 

A “red flag” process, with its ex parte hearings and lopsided standards of evidence are a travesty – but they are “due process”. 

Visa holders sign an agreement acknowledging that they can be deported without ceremony for violating the terms and conditions of their visa.  That is the “due process”.  

I’ve never been to a Holiday Inn Express, but even I know this.

Entire Twin Cities media and left (ptr) last week:  “A graduate student, one of America’s best and brightest, was snatched away in the middle of the night by ICE for exercising free speech!  They could come come for any of us, citizen or not!”

Waiting period specified in statute passes:

Not sure it ever fails. 

Which is why we call ’em “laws”. 

Honestly, with some of these lefty s**tpost farms, I’m not sure why I bother fact-checking anything.  They don’t care, and they bank on their audience not caring as well. 

But there’s always the off chance that I’ll catch someone who hasn’t checked all of their brain in at the lefty claim check, who is looking for an honest answer to a stupid question.

To wit:

So let’s get this straight:  in the past 60 years, the United States has spent $22 Trillion dollars – more than the annual gross domestic product of China, or about 3/4 of a year’s GDP of the USA – to “eradicate poverty” and its effects. 

But, on top of all that spending (which is ongoing, and has accelerated well ahead of inflation), taking a small tax onto the small number of billionaires is what it’ll ackshyually take to fix the problem?

Huh.

We’ve been so close, all along!

OK.  Now let it sink in.  

Then press flush. 

I’ll allow that it’s possible that between David and I, Minnesota might get a little over-covered here at Hot Air.  

But I’ve got a theory:  national Democrats are trying out a lot of their national strategies and tactics in Minnesota; conservatives following Minnesota politics got a fair amount of deja vu during the ’24 presidential campaign, and that was even before Tim Walz got the (inexplicable but providential) nod to run for VP.   The accession of Minnesota DFL chair Ken Martin to the head of the DNC supports the theory.  So hear me out. 

The DFL in Minnesota has a bit of a crime problem:  their one vote majority in the State Senate (until Senator Eichorn is expelled for his arrest) hangs in the person of Sen. Nicole Mitchell, who is accused of multiple counts of burglary; the Walz administration is mired in a persistent series of non-profit fraud scandals, one of their elected representatives was tossed from office when it was revealed he didn’t live in his district (with the full knowledge of the DFL’s former Speaker of the House), and there’s the usual assortment of DUIs, not to mention the DFL taking the “20%” side of a lot of 80-20 issues (“stand your ground”, boys in girls sports, and so on).  

The response appears to be…

…slander all Republicans.  

State Senator Erin Maye Quade is a long-time progressive activist – think of her as a home-grown AOC.  Her terms as a state representative and state Senator from the south Twin Cities suburb of Apple Valley were interrupted by a brief run for Lieutenant Governer, along with current Minnesota Senate majority leader Erin Murphy – who, significantly standing next to Maye Quade outside the Senate chamber as she said (read the thread, via Tom Hauser at KSTP-TV):

She said this with the Majority Leader standing right there.  You can see it. 

That’s about as close as you can get to declaring all Republicans potential sex criminals in advance, just to save the trouble.  

So I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and predict that Democrats nationwide are going to embark on a colossal campaign of name-calling.  

Have at it.

What could possibly go wrong?

…that the people who most need to read articles like this (I’m not going to pull-quote it; it deserves a quick read) will be the last to actually read it.

Of course, those who have been through the history of the various characters in this blog’s comment section know that while the tendency flowered under Trump, it didn’t start in 2015.

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

BIRKENSTOCK:  Merg!

BERG:  Oh, hey, Moon…

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

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

SCAT:  Yeah!  They votes for…

SCAT:  Hey!  You’re interrupting!

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

LEAKY: Zat vas anozzer interrrrhuption!

BIRKENSTOCK: How dare you!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCAT:  But…

BANNEREE:  Now!

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

And SCENE.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I’ve been saying the American government should put Americans first and only after all of our problems are solved, consider taking care of people in other nations.  After watching the Zelensky blow-up in the Oval Office, I’ve concluded I was wrong.  The American government should take care of Americans. Period.

The American government should never give war guarantees to other nations.  That promotes “moral hazard” by making Europeans think they can act irresponsibly because America will step in to defend them.  It’s the classic little brother picking a fight knowing big brother is right around the corner. Zelensky demanded war guarantees in the form of American troops to fight Russian troops on Ukrainian soil.  Trump – to his credit – was smart enough not to give in.  Hell, the only reason there was a White House ceremony at all, was so Trump could claim he wasn’t “giving” Ukraine aid for free, he was getting mineral rights in return, similar to our deals in the Middle East (we have troops stationed in Saudi Arabia to defend the royal family from enemies in Iran and uprising by their own people; in exchange, we get access to their oil, literally a blood-for-oil deal-with-the-devil made 100 years ago).

Now that the minerals deal has blown up, Trump has the perfect opportunity to walk away from defending Ukraine in specific and Europe in general.  Withdraw from NATO, let Europe sort out its own problems, we have enough of our own.   And not just Europe.  About that Saudi deal – do we still need it?  Are the terms still fair to us?  I’d like DOGE to take a look at all similar arrangements, worldwide.

More than military aid, the American government should never give financial aid to other nations.  Money is “fungible,” meaning the funds the foreign government would have spent taking care of its own people can now be shifted to buying a new Rolls Royce for the dictator.   That’s not fair to Americans. Other nations’ own governments should take care of them.   If their governments are unable to take care of their people, that’s what charity is for.  Americans are the most generous, most giving people in the world, but we want to know that our charity is doing good, not simply lining pockets.

Getting government out of the war guarantee and charity businesses would not only save a ton of money, it is the first step in restoring constitutional government.  Zelensky handed Trump the perfect opportunity and Elon Musk’s team is the perfect tool.  Now is our chance.

Joe Doakes

 

I see value to alliances…

…that act with integrity, themselves, and are first and foremost in America’s best interests.

I think a NATO that acts with integrity – like, maintaining its capability to defend itself – is in America’s interest. 

The NATO we have today?  Not so much.

An alliance with Poland, Finland and the Baltic states?  Places that care about upholding Western civilization against enemies military and social, and back it up not only with spending and hardware but national attitude?  Logistics notwithstanding, that would, or could,  work.

When I started this blog, 23 years ago this month, I had a few assumptions about politics:

• Minneapolis was as crazy as it was ever going to get
• If you told me CD8 would ever vote Republican, I’d have said you were certifiable
• Big media – from the Strib and MPR to the NYTimes and WaPo – were on a sluice-track to being Pravda, and nothing was going to change that. 

I was wrong about all of them – including at least part of that third bullet: Jeff Bezos, whose Washington Post has for the past 15 years considered Jennifer Rubin “conservative”, frankly shocked me just a tad. Read the whole thing.

Am I cynical enough to wonder what the “but” is?  Hell yeah.  If Jennifer Rubin was “conservative”, maybe Robert Reich is “pro free market” and Fareed Zakaria is a “personal liberty” guy.  Who knows?

But conservative-ish populism seems to be gaining ground in our culture -and maybe, just maybe, dragging some institutions with it. 

More later in the week. 

This sums up the moment we’re in as well as anything I’ve seen. 

Worth a watch.

…don’t you dare claim there’s intrinsic bias in Twin Cities media:

So many ways to word that:  “uphold federal immigraiton law”, “stop abuse of the healthcare system”, “drop non-qualified non-citizens from taxpayer-funded healthcare”, among others.

But they just have to imply malice.  

You think you hate the media enough?  You…well, you know where this goes, right?

Dunking on the MNDFL’s social media intern isn’t “punching down”.  It’s “squishing something with my foot”. 

But this one tells us a lot about the DFL. 

The intern is looking at something in the GOP platform:

Forget for a moment that they deflected from the GOP’s correct assertion that the DFL calls post-partum care “anti-abortion” – the crisis pregnancy center may be as noir of a béte to the MNDFL as Trump himself.

But look at the bit the intern highlighted:   it’ll show you how depraved the DFL is. The highlighted bit in the GOP platform asserts that *fathers should have rights* as well as obligations”.  

The DFL’s position is that not just the fetus, but the father, is just a clump of cells.  

Every time I think I hate the DFL enough, I find out I’m not even close.