Shot in the Dark

Category: Social Justice!

  • The Future Of The DFL. If The MNGOP Is Very Lucky

    Hope Walz – a 25 year old reportedly working as some kind of social worker – on the Mamdani election: “The top 1% that exploit all of us down below?”   She’s been the child of a Congressional representative or governor since she was five years old, and has had every form of access, power and…

  • I Was Told There Would Be Pouncing

    While this is good – and expected – news, I feel a little cheated. Companies are ditching DEI because it’s bad for the bottom line; they can practice equality without flogging “equity”.  But notice how it’s framed: “under pressure from conservative activists”.  I mean, if you’re going to “blame” companies’ rediscovering economic and social sanity…

  • When A Plan Comes Together

    So, the housing permit numbers for the Twin Cities are in.  And if putting people in houses is  your goal, they are…uh, not good: Saint Paul: And Minneapolis: Was it rent control? Bidenomics? Why choose?

  • The Klink Administration In One Clip

    I have a hard time describing the contempt this bit here makes me feel: She left the windows open (presumably at the Governor’s mansion, safely dug in down on “old money” Summit Avenue, miles from the actual rioting) and “smelled the tires burning”, because it was a “touchstone to what was happening”.  I smelled it…

  • Among Tim Walz’s Many Tall Tales

    When Governor Klink and the DFL legislative majority were making the case to squander the “surplus” [1], they put “cutting poverty by 30%” as one of their goals.  So – how is poverty in Minnesota doing? Well – we don’t know.  Official poverty stats conveniently trail real time by a couple of years.  Official poverty…

  • Punching Laterally-To-Down

    To: Jason Chavez, Minneapolis DSA/DFL councilbeingFrom: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous PeasantRe: Punching Councilbeing Chavez, You tweeted this on Wednesday: Let’s talk about the term “uprising”. It usually connotes a group of subjugated, beaten-down people, “rising up” against their oppressors. Good examples of uprisings that fit some variant of that definition: Each of these uprisings have a…

  • Feeling So 1938

    History doesn’t repeat – but it rhymes. The world’s major powers are rattling their sabers as they spar in secondary theaters. The economies are in the hands of people who love to tinker with the levers and buttons of the Big State. And young intellectually over-stimulated but underendowed bobbleheads are romping and playing: Everything old…

  • Let’s Stir Up Another Republic-Threatening Hornets Nest: Part I

    I saw “The Fall of Minneapolis” again last week. Now, when I first mentioned seeing it a few months back, a few smart people whose opinions I never discount asked “is there anything new that the courts didn’t settle?” That brings up a couple of questions. In our society, we usually think that if a…

  • Compromise

    Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you. Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”. Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum. Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle…

  • If We Take An Originalist View…

    …of Berg’s Twentieth Law of Social Justice Warmongering (“All incidents of “hate speech” not captured on video (involving being delivered by someone proven not to be a ringer) shall be assumed to be hoaxes until proven otherwise”), it’s hard not to look at this story – “Klan literature” being handed out in a swing-y part…

  • Open Letter To Governors Abbot And DeSantis

    Governors, Seeing the hair pulling response of upper middle class leftist to actually have to pay the freight for their own policies on the border is, to put it frankly, utterly glorious: Put another way: Might I humbly suggest you send a couple of buses to: Merriam Park in Saint Paul Kenwood in Minneapolis City…

  • Renters Remorse

    A friend of the blog emails: These amendments wouldn’t have changed my vote, but I wonder if it would have even passed if rent control as defined through the council’s amendments had been on the ballot? Not likely, which is how it should have been in the first place – not passed. I ask, as…

  • Cranking The Screws

    If it seemed to you that the Administration and Dems jammed down the “Inflation Reduction Act” – an agglomeration of “Build Back Battered“ and “Green New Deal“ policies – really really hard? You were probably right. It’s because people are losing interest in “climate change“: mericans are less concerned now about how climate change might…

  • Antisocial Contract

    Serve: Volley: Here’s something that should be even less controversial: if you’re going into the job market with skills that nobody will pay you a living wage for, you’re not ready to “adult”.

  • Resetting The Reset

    Green, “sustainable” energy policies that make middle class live unsustainable. Transitioning from houses to apartments, from cars to mass transit. Moving from meat to vegetables, with maybe some insect thrown in as a treat. Hyperinflation, which serves mainly to make common savings and investment worthless, but does wonders for the wealth of the plutocrats, “futurists”…

  • And Just When I Wondered…

    …if modern Social Justice chic would or could exhibit the faintest hint of conscience… …it seems it can. Although it took an (ostensibly) Catholic university to do it, so…

  • Spoils

    The media yesterday expressed wonder that Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey had created a group of his “political critics“ serves a task force to “work“ on the cities crime problem. A reader emails describe that group as: …a veritable who’s who of those with their snout in the trough. With LA carpetbagger Nekima Levy at the…

  • Hard To Believe…

    …that a city run by Kim Norton, which has been becoming blue-er and blue-er over time, would play passive-aggressive bureaucratic pattycake games with the citizenry… …right? A group of parents, with a Twin Cities law firm, are asking for records related to the district’s adoption of Critical Race Theory. And how did that go over?…

  • Nativx

    I just started nioting the “Land Acknowledgment” – the laborious-yet-offhand “acknowledgment” that an event was being held on land once occupied by Natives – in the last couple of years, mostly among the sorts of Twin Cities “social justice” non-profits that exude self-righteousness like some people exude bad breath. It’s struck me as mawkish and…

  • A Nation Divided…

    The left is reacting to the Rittenhouse verdict with the calm, dispassionate, intellectual rigor one expects of “smart America“: But remember – mostly peaceful.

  • Word Salad With A Side Of Crocodile Tears

    Madame Vice President [1] on the Rittenhouse verdict: So – the woman for whom giggling about putting black men in jail for simple weed possession was pillow talk with Willie Brown, and who came out in favor of prosecutors hiding exculpatory evidence in death penalty cases, has been… …sorry. Couldn’t finish that with a straight…

  • Something Tells Me…

    …that Duke Ellington HIgh School in Georgetown, DC is going to regard this as a, er, tactical error; they’ve canceled a fundraiser involving one of their alums, Dave… …er, let me try that again… DAVE FREAKING CHAPPELLE … because transgender:: The students said they were uncomfortable supporting Chappelle because many of their classmates identify as…

  • Definitions

    SCENE: Mitch BERG is eating a skewer of souvlaki at a local greek joint when Avery LIBRELLE walks in. BERG tries to hide behind a menu, but LIBRELLE sees him, walks over. LIBRELLE: Merg! BERG: Oh, hey, Avery… LIBRELLE: You people are so paranoid! BERG: OK, I”ll bite. How, this time? LIBRELLE: They’re not teaching…

  • Unexpectedly

    I wasn’t living here in 1980. I’m not sure how Minneapolis’s Loony Left reacted to the “Solidarity“ protests in Poland – where the Polish “Solidarity“ trade union led a year of demonstrations against Poland’s communist government. The demonstrations – which newly elected President Ronald Reagan supported morally, symbolically and materially – were the beginning of…

  • Over The Target

    The Center for the American Experiment has had to reschedule a “Critical Race Theory“ event in Duluth. Due to threats. Three times: For the fourth time in a month, a Duluth venue was pressured into canceling the Raise Our Standards event put on by Center of the American Experiment. Within minutes of the announcement yesterday…