As if telling the least stable people in our society that the President and his supporters are part of a crowd that our grandparents spent the best years of their lives killing eighty years ago, the incentives for leftists to commit violence against their enemies just keep piling up. 

Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

A brewery owner in Minocqua, Wisconsin promised free beer on the day President Trump dies but alas, another failed assassination attempt. No free beer today.

Now every Democrat in the nation and half the RINOs in Congress are hoping:

Wel, that is the point of incentive structures, after all.

Trump adding his name to the “Kennedy Center” is causing the usual screaming and incontinence. 

And it doesn’t need to be this way.  

So in the interest of comity, I propose another name change:

The Mary Jo Kopechne Center.  

I think we can all go forward now.  

Four things can be true at the same time.

We will come back to that. 

————-

Some of you may remember Bill Gleason, esteemed professor or chemistry at the Minnesota medical school. Starting in about 2007, for probably the next 7 to 10 years, he tweeted about me between 20 and 150 times a day, seven days a week. For literally years.  He left a few comments here before I blocked him, too.

Many of you remember – he started a blog about me, mostly involving insane rambling about, well, things he thought I was doing. 

He once started passing word around that I had had a DWI. Democrat bloggers back in 2012 were a lumpen unimaginative bunch, so a whole lot of them repeated it. Turns out he’d read one of those spam “public records” websites, where you can pretty much type in any name and it will say “so and so has a DWI – send us $20 and will send you what we’ve got.“. I actually had a pretty solid defamation case against him – but those involve a $20,000 retainer and no guarantee of a payoff even if you win. 

Anyway, eventually, Prof. Gleason died. Turns out his fixation on me wasn’t the only manifestation of mental illness. 

I wrote my condolences to the family, and left it at that. I was a decent human being. He wasn’t – but by that point those who needed to know, knew, and for the rest it didn’t really matter. 

—————

So – four things can be true.

First: Rob Reiner was a pretty brilliant guy. A Few Good Men and This is Spinal Tap are two of my favorite movies ever. And almost nobody deserves to get murdered, certainly never by one’s own child.

Second: President Trump’s statement on Truth Social about Reiner’s passing was fairly tacky and tasteless. But it’s not like it sprang from the middle of nowhere, because…

Third: it is a fact that Reiner spent the last 10 years of his life pretty much railing nonstop about not just the President, but Republicans in general. It was some pretty seriously demented twaddle. Like, Alex Jones calling him and saying “Rob, bubbie, dial back the crazy a slosh”. I ended up muting the guy on Twitter years ago,, because the signal to noise ratio was pretty much nonexistent. 

The fourth? I don’t feel any need to participate in some performative critical ticket punching. The president was tacky, and if Reiner had been a conservative this past decade, he would have been written off as a conspiracy fruitcake.  My condolences to his family, the film world and his fans. Of whom I was one, when he wasn’t running his fool mouth on Twitter.

Hope I’ve settled that for good.

Among Reagan’s greatest strengths was a pretty maniacal sense of focus on what mattered.  Peabrains like Matt Walsh mutter “what did Reagan ever do for the pro-life movement”, ignorant that Reagan was dealing with a Democrat House for his first six years in office; he only had so much political capital, and he spent what he had (beyond the bully pulpit) on his two big priorities; rebuilding the economy and destroying Communism.   

With that in mind Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Trump has too many irons in the fire, he needs to focus.

 Ukraine is a lost cause, stop trying to be peacemaker, let Russia win.

Hamas is a lost cause, stop trying to be peacemaker, let Israel win.

 Everything Trump did by executive order, his successor can undo by executive order.  He needs to start kicking Congress to pass legislation to codify his changes.  He’s got maybe one year before they start running for re-election and then nothing will get done. 

Focus. 

Joe Doakes

I don’t disagree (on most of it, anyway).   

But let’s be honest – Trump does most of. his own unfocusing.  

I’ve been generally more impressed with him this term – fewer pointless squabbles with staff, more focus on getting things done – but he provides plenty of his own distractions. 

Joe Doakes, ex-Como Parker, emails:

Had the in-laws over for dinner. Things were going fine until my brother-in-law had to tell me all about Trump remodeling the Lincoln bathroom, how excessive it is. Not the East Wing ballroom, a different project that I had never heard of. 

Trump really does live rent-free in Liberals’ heads. Wonder if it’s lonesome in there, wandering around in all that empty space?

Joe Doakes 

 

Oh, empty is one thing it’s not.   Lots and lots of ’em wandering around in that space.  

My question:  what will they replace it with in 2029?

I suspect we all know the answer to that.  

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

D0GE identified $100 billion in fraud, waste and inefficiency

The recession bill cut $9 billion.

 

What happened to the rest?

 

Joe Doakes, ready for more winning

“Less losing” was good for starters.

But yes.  More, faster. 

December 6, 1941: “A modern war would inevitably turn into a trench quagmire like the First World War”

June 24, 1950: “The next war will be, at best, a mobile industrial clash of titans, and likeliy end with mutual nuclear annihilation”

March 7, 1965: “This war is going to be a conventional war to contain Communist aggression”

August 1, 1990: “This war is going to devolve into a quagmire that will destroy a generation and enervate a nation”

October 3, 1993: “American technological power and training will enable us to walk all over these primitive tribesmen, and restore order just the way we did in Kuwait”

October 18, 2001: “As we discovered in Mogadishu, the Islamist terrorist’s willingness to die will make any war between us an endless quagmore

March 19, 2003: “American technological prowess and our experience liberating Afghanistan in record time will enable us to prevail against the Iraqi Army, Republican Guard and Fedayeen in short order.

June 22, 2025: “Iran will inevitably be another Iraq”.

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.

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, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Scott Johnson from Powerline has a column explaining why Trump’s tariffs are calculated incorrectly and are therefore too high.  He gives a formula from some academics showing that the inelasticity of trade was improperly factored into setting our new rates.

Missing the point, Scott.  The point is foreign governments have been taking advantage of our generosity for years and it’s time to fix that. Yes, we’re a party to GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) but renegotiations have been stalled for decades – too many rice bowls at stake – so Trump’s unilateral new tariffs are a way to break the stalemate.

 

The specifics of Trump’s tariffs don’t matter, 10% on penguins or 90% on Vietnam, these numbers are just the opening round of negotiation.  It’s like the guy selling sombreros on the beach in Mazatlan, or the guy selling rugs in the souk in Marrakech.  His opening offer is ridiculous because you are expected to bargain with him. That’s the accepted practice in that culture.  So, too, in every real estate deal, which is where Trump learned his lessons.  You always set the listing price high to give yourself room to negotiate down.  And now we’re seeing it’s also true in setting foreign trade policy, as more than four dozen countries have already lined up to renegotiate their trade policy with us.

 

Scott’s column is so typical for RINOs. The other side can state any lie and it’s accepted at face value while our facts are scrutinized and debated endlessly, with the result that the opposition’s policies get enacted but ours get nibbled to death by ducks quacking around our ankles.  With friends like that . . . . . . .

 

Joe Doakes

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is pondering the tragedy that is his backyard garden when Avery LIBRELLE, riding a recumbent bike, rides up the alley, unbeknownst to BERG.

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Ohhhhhh fuuuuun seeing you Avery…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.  Robert F Kennedy is making Americans sick. There’s a huge measles outbreak.

BERG:  Huh.  And that’s RFK’s fault?

LIBRELLE:  Absolutely.  He’s anti-Vaxx.

BERG: Whereas an enlightened country like, say, Canada won’t have any trouble with that kind of thing.

LIBRELLE:  Of course not. They’re enlightened and progressive!

BERG:  Huh.

LIBRELLE: Wait – is this another one of those things where you…

(BERG opens a link on his iPad):

Surely they must do better than the United States at controlling communicable diseases, right?

Yeah, well, not so much. Quite the opposite, actually.

While the numbers are inherently unreliable to some extent, we can get a rough estimate of the relative risk of somebody getting Measles here vs in Canada. Both have advanced healthcare systems that collect a lot of data, and both have active media environments that love to focus on scary stuff like spreading diseases.

Want to know the relative risk? Americans contract Measles at a rate of 1.1 per million more or less, while Canadians have a rate of 12.2 per million.

Canadians are more than 11 times more likely to get the disease than people in the United States. And they don’t have any mean, nasty conspiracy theorists like RFK Jr. to spread conspiracy theories. The English, a similar society to both Canada and the United States, has a rate 5 1/2 times the US. France and Germany have rates similar to ours, if a tiny bit higher at the moment.

LIBRELLE:  Dammit! Why do you always do that?

BERG:  (Not very interested) Do what?

LIBRELLE:  Shoot down everything I say, and make me look like some kind of idiot?

BERG:  It’s a blessing and a curse.

And SCENE

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

I notice a common theme running through Berg’s Third Law (disasters) and Mother Jones Corollary to the Tenth Law (vicious lies) and 18th Law of Media Latency (48 hour rule): the media rushes to lie about Conservatives, so thoughtful readers will wait for the dust to settle an the truth to be revealed.

I wonder if a similar principle should apply to President Trump?

He proposes a course of action, the media loses its mind, Democrats and RINOs panic, the feared apocalypse does not occur. It happens over and over. He wants fair trade with Canada; Canada threatens to punish every American; tariffs are proposed; media, Democrats and RINOs panic; Canada backs down. If everybody had waited a week or two before setting their hair on fire, it all would have blown over.

Generally takes longer than 48 hours so how about a two week rule?

Joe Doakes

The committee is taking it under advisement. 

I’ll admit it – two months of DOGE has made me a little inured to stories about outlandish things that the Federal Government spends our money on.  

Promoting DEI in Serbia?   Transgender comic books in Peru?  Yaaawn.   Get back to me when you’ve got something interesting.  

So when I heard that there was a fracas about funding universities in Australia, a part of me thought of course there is.   Why would we not be funding universities in Oz?”

What I didn’t figure on was that there would be so much of it the risk of losing it would cause a national emergency down under.  The Trump administration is asking seven Australian universities, not to do without all that American aid money, but to justify the aid money they are getting, in terms of American nationional interest.  According to the Guardian:

The Trump administration told Australian university researchers a push to promote administration priorities and avoid “DEI, woke gender ideology and the green new deal” was behind a “temporary pause” of funding, according to a memo seen by Guardian Australia.

University sector sources say the US has severed research funding at six universities – Monash University, Australian National University (ANU) and the University of Melbourne, University of Sydney, University of New South Wales and University of Western Australia – since Donald Trump came to power, including some as early as January. ANU is the first university to publicly acknowledged it.

Which is, according to Sky News, an urgent enough matter that Australian PM Tony Albanese is being urged to drop everything and get on the case:

A memo sent by the US office of managament and budget to an Australian university project on January 27 and retrieved by The Guardian, declared financial assistance for the researchers was a waste of taxpayer money and explained federal spending priority would go towards “the will of the American people”.

“Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again,” the memo said.

“The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”

The cuts would leave a $600M hole in Australian research budgets. 

And if you guessed some Ozzie academics would refer to Americans wantintg American money to serve American interests as “foreign interference” – well, you’ve been paying attention this past four years (and you know that public unions are pretty much the same around the world):

“The Federal Government must push back on the Trump administration’s blatant foreign interference in our independent research in the strongest possible terms.” – Alison Barnes, NTEU National President

Read the full media release here 👉 https://t.co/vUg4if1lJw@AlisonBarnes25 pic.twitter.com/rGDB2mUIlY

— NTEU (@NTEUnion) March 13, 2025

The National Tertiary Education Union’s (NTEU) national president Alison Barnes slammed the missive, and said the Albanese government had to “guarantee Australian researchers would be protected.” “The federal government must push back on the Trump administration’s blatant foreign interference in our independent research in the strongest possible terms,” she said.

Not to mix my metaphors, but “the first three weeks of a new diet are the. hard part” seems appropriate under the circumstances.  

What does Tim Walz fantasize about?

Well, not in a debate, he can’t. 

…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.

It’s become a bit of an easy trope on the right:

1. Star with “You think you hate the media?”
2. Add some bit of loathsome leftymedia depravity
3. Button it up with “You really don’t hate them enough”.

It’s a progression with no end; every day brings new loathsomeness.  It’s entirely possible it’s a barrel with no bottom to scrape.

But Nicole Wallace has to be getting close to that metaphorical nadir:

So let’s break it down:  Wallace:

• Condescendingly snarks about a kid with brain cancer, in order to
• spread the fiction that “right wing terror is the real danger facing the US”- a horse they’ve been trying to flog into a slow trot for sixteen years, now. 

So maybe you can hate Big Leftymedia more than you do.   But beyond this, doesn’t it all kind of blur together?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Why is Trump in such a frantic rush to issue executive orders, fire employees, deport people, surrender Ukraine to Russia?  Is he out of his mind?

No, he’s out of time.  Congress’ most recent continuing budget resolution runs out March 14th. Trump has three more weeks to set the stage for the budget showdown. He knows every Democrat will vote against spending cuts to balance income against outgo. He knows at least some Republicans will join them.  He needs to act fast to get public support on his side so he can stand up to Congress and say,  “No more.”

Elon Musk and his team of auditors continue to find examples of fraud and waste that piss off normal people. Why are we paying for stupid stuff like that?  The judges who refuse to let the auditors do their job and who halt layoffs, piss off normal people. Why are you leaving the thieves in charge of the checkbook?  The politicians screaming about deporting illegal alien criminals piss off normal people.  Why are you putting scum ahead of citizens?  Why not put Americans first?

And it’s working.  Trump has extraordinary approval numbers. He is going to need that public support when he tells Congress, “No more,” and when he tells Ukraine, “No more,” and when he tells rogue federal employees (including some judges), “No more.”  

It’s all coming to a head in a few weeks. The media will scream. Democrats will scream.  Europeans politicians, Catholic bishops, liberal judges, and Hollywood celebrities will scream. Let them. Elections have consequences. It’s our turn now. 

Get ready.  

Joe Doakes

More tomorrow.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

A federal government shutdown is coming in three weeks.  Democrats and the media will have a meltdown and will try to frighten the public, claiming the sky is falling and we are all going to die. Get ready for it. The shutdown will be tough but it is neecessary.  

The federal budget is … unknown. We don’t have a budget. We haven’t had an actual budget where expenditures are debated and prioritized since 2019, when Trump was last in office. Every year of the Biden administration, Congress simply spent money without caring what it was spent on or how much was spent.  The money runs out March 14.

The federal government spends about $6 Trillion but only takes in about $4 Trillion so it borrows the other $2 Trillion. That’s the deficit – the amount we are short – $2,000,000,000,000. That is how much fraud and waste Elon Musk is hoping to cut, just to get income and outgo to break even.  That’s how much Democrats (and, to be fair, some RINOs, too) are trying to protect.

Come March, Trump must either cave in to Congress and continue to let them have a blank check, or he must stand up to Congress and refuse to sign more blank checks. If he refuses and Congress does not come up with a budget acceptable to him, the government shuts down until an acceptable deal is made.

Trump is a deal maker but he is not a quitter.  The showdown is coming and the shutdown is his only leverage.  Get ready for it.  

Joe Doakes

 

Part III coming up tomorrow. 

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

We should start warning people now to expect bad news so they’re not upset and disheartened when it comes

We’ve known for years that Biden was senile but everybody in the establishment, administration and media lied to us to hide it.   We know they tried to blame the price of eggs on Trump when they are the ones who killed all the chickens. We know they are liars. Keep that in mind.

Every quarter the Biden administration triumphantly released figures showing the Biden economy was growing and there were record numbers of new hires.  And every quarter they would quietly release a few revisions and corrections which showed that there were practically no hires and if you discount the lies, the economy was in a recession heading for depression.

 It’s going to get worse. Economists talk about gross domestic product as a measure of success of the economy but one of the numbers in the formula to calculate GDP is government spending. Take out the 2 trillion dollars of fraud and waste that Elon Musk’s team has identified and the problem will be obvious. We’re definitely in a recession and have been for years, probably a depression. 

 Get ready for headlines screaming Trump depression, Trump ruins economy, worst economy in years.  No, it’s an honest look at the economy.  And now that we have the real figures, we can start making changes necessary to fix it. 

Get ready.  It’s coming.

Joe Doakes

 

Two more parts to come.  I’ll save my comments for after Part III.

…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?

MInnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon apparently shares a platitude writer with Tim Walz:

Same person? Different? hard to say – but they share a certain – uh…

…factual incoherence?

It must be a tough time to be Erin Maye Quade – Senator from Apple Valley, and Big Left’s attack poodle in the Senate.

In the past couple of years, she’s voted for a thoughtcrime data base, and openly fantasized about using government power to keep parents from teaching their kids about abstinence…

…and about “Eminent Domaining” and bulldozing the crisis pregnancy centers try to keep people out of the Planned Parenthood clinics that spend so much on her campaigns and will presumably be her post-politics career.

Because suddenly, she’d discovered that big powerful government can be scary, when you’re not at the controls.

Even if you have to conjure those threats out of thin air:

Further evidence of Berg’s Seventh Law; QAnon was a fantasy, but BlueAnon is very, very real. 

Yesterday, I was trying to remember – how long has it been since the inauguration?   Was it three weeks, or four?

Nope.  Two weeks. 

Seemed so much longer than that. 

The last time I watched a Presidential inauguration live on TV was when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated.  I was in junior high, and they wheeled a TV into our history classroom. 

I missed Reagan’s (twice), Bush I, Clinton (twice), Dubya (twice), Trump’s first, and Obama (all three times). 

I may break my streak today.   Partly to see history.  Partly because I’ve become an accidental, skeptical Trump supporter.  Partly because, let’s be honest, I suspect some lefty is going to try something stupid.

And I don’t mean just this guy:

Speaking of danger:  remember when George W Bush took office?   And the departing Clinton staffers, in a fit of juvenility, pried the “W” keys off of all the computer keyboards in the west wing?

Biden’s pardons, and some of his other efforts to stymie Trump from the great political beyond, are like that – only actually damaging, as opposed to juvenile and spiteful.

So much so that even the elder statesman of “Never-Trump” is sounding off:

Side note:  “Incandescently stupid” is going into my quick-reference lexicon.

SCENE. Avery LIBRELLE is wandering the aisles at Barnes and Noble in Maplewood, when h…er, sh…er, Avery notices Mitch BERG poring over the German book aisle.  LIBRELLE pounces. 

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG:  Uh, Schoiße…, er, I mean, hey Avery…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.   Why is Trump obsessed with taking over Canada, Greenland and Panama?

BERG:  What do you mean?

LIBRELLE:  I’ll turn it over to the world’s most courageous person to explain:

BERG:  Oh, yeah.  That.  Well, for starters, did you catch McBride’s last quote…

LIBRELLE:  Miss McBride’s quote.

BERG:  Representative McBride’s quote…:  “If this president is serious about an America first agenda, he should be focused on domestic economic issues, not some weird obsession with invading Greenland or Panama”

LIBRELLE:  Yeah.  So?

BERG:   So the Representative is talking about “Putting America First”, even if only sarcastically. 

LIBRELLE:  Cheap shot!

BERG:  Uh, right.  But tell me – what’s the latest news about Pete Hegseth?

LIBRELLE:  Who?

BERG:  Kash Patel?   RFK Junior?

LIBRELLE:   What did they have to do with invading Greenland. 

BERG:  Huh.  RIght.  I think it’s on The View right now.

LIBRELLE:  Oooh!  The View!  (Abruptly turns and scampers eagerly away).

BERG:  Huh.   Where what that trick when I needed it?

And SCENE