Reporter from the Star-Tribune questions Minneapolis Police Department assistant chief Katie Blackwell about the dozens of MPD cops who swore out affadavits that she perjured herself about Maximum Restraint Technique (MRT) during the Chauvin trial:

Just kidding.  It was Liz Collin, from Alpha.   A conservative news organization, which does most of the actual “journalism” in this town.

The list of stories the MSM won’t touch until shamed into it by local conservative media, or naitonal/international media, or both, just keeps getting longer. 

In fact, it deserves a list of its own. 

Stay tuned. 

One of the more satisfying stories of this past year was watching the accelerating decay of the mainstream media’s influence over society.

And this was one of my favorite examples:

Watching the orwellian “Joy” campaign get pelted with rhetorical rocks and garbage by the commoners was one of the greatest, er, joys I’ve had, at least politically, in recent years.

Am I the only one that heard about Taylor Lorenz’s “Joy” at the murder of Brian Thompson…

…and thought “that certainly puts a new spin on the Harris campaign’s theme?”

• Freedom is slavery?
• 2+2=5?
• Murder is joy?

One “joy” I try to deny myself is excessive schadenfreud. Pinky swear.

But I’ll confess, I feel quite a bit of it seeing Lorenz’s sociopathic level of self-unawareness splashed about the place:

Less schadenfreud, Mitch.  Less schadenfreud. 

Paul Krugman is leaving the NYTimes. 

Podhoretz sums up my thoughts on the matter.

I can’t speak for Krugman’s career as an economist – I wish King Banaian was still blogging, and hopefully he’ll talk about this in his show one of these days. 

As for me? Fact-checking Krugman – the guy who said the Internet was a passing fad – has been a fairy steady pastime on this blog for a long, long time.

So while his retirement leaves me with one less source of material, [1], it is enough for today to rejoice in the fact that for a moment, America will be incrementally less dumb by omission.

[1] Although the Cano Corollary to Berg’s 21st Law warns us to not celebrate too hard: ” “blue” never gets “lighter” or less “progressive”.  There is only one electoral direction – more “progressive”. While written about elections, the New York Times would seem to be germane.

NPR’s token Aztlani, Maria Hinojosa, yelling “SLAY, QUEEN GIRLBOSS!” as Mexico’s socialist female president briefly flexed on Trump’s border plans:

How it’s going:

Yep. The whole world witnessed it:

It’s always the food photos with Governor Klink.

Only this time it’s not Pronto Pups:

Huh. For the past two years, we’ve been told Minnesota’s economy is boooooooming.

Now that a Republican is president-elect, the GOP will own Congress, and the DFL trifecta is dead…well, you see how this works.

So let’s translate this from MSM to English: “Governor who claimed MN economy was booming and promised to “reduce poverty 30%” by squandering a $19B surplus, now trying to get ahead of zooming poverty by spending >1% of what DFL constituents defrauded in “Feeding our Future”.

I’m pondering renewing my subscription to Daily Wire.  

On the one hand, they’ve got good news coverage. 

On the other, the “membership” user experience needs work. 

So as part of my analysis process, I present:

Mitch Ranks the Daily Wire Podcasts.

Podcasts are rated in terms of

• Overall quality (subjective, judged by me), and
• Standard deviations from the mean likely with any given episode.  For those who don’t wrangle much with statistics (and I realize much of my audience does), standard deviations are a measure of consistency of statistics.  Example:  a sample of several ratings within 70% would have a very small standard deviation; a “90%” leaking in there would have a very large standard deviation.
  

OK.  Let’s get started (subscribe to the Daily Mitch for the…oh, wait.  I don’t do that. Yet). 

Ben Shapiro:

• Rating: 92%.
• Standard Deviation: 3%

Shapiro is just about always super solid. He rarely deviates from a very solid mean; his show on October 8 2023 was two standard deviations above (99%), and his review of “Barbie” was an extremely rare 20 standard deviations below.

Andrew Klavan

• Rating: NA
• Standard Deviation: NA

I can not work up the interest to listen to Klavan.  Maybe I should.  

Someday.  Promise. 

Probably.

Matt Walsh:

• Rating: 65%.
• Standard Deviation: 20%

The problem with Matt Walsh is, when he’s hot, he’s amazing (hence the high standard deviation). The problem with Matt Walsh is that when he really wants to make a point, and has a point to make, he makes the point in such a way as to make the point he has to make. As in, makes the point – the one he set out to make. And then makes that point – and makes the point again. Seriously – I once counted him re-making the same assertion ten times in 90 seconds.

Michael Knowles:

• Rating: 73%.
• Standard Deviation: 2%

Knowles is always Knowles. And by that, I mean he’s a 34 year old guy who lectures people about “growing old gracefully”.  He’s a very strident Roman Catholic who relates have been an atheist at Yale (all good), but goes on to live out the ecclesiastical version of the old saying “the most annoying New Yorkers are the ones that were born in Albany”;  he couldn’t exude “recent RomCat Convert” any harder if he did the show in Latin and squirted incense through the speakers.  But his insights about politics, especially the intersection of culture an politics, are almost always spot-on. 

He’s docked five points for constantly use of the term “weird sex stuff”, like he’s the world’s oldest awkward eight-grade boy. Seriously, taking a drink when Knowles says “Weird Sex Stuff” could be a more toxic drinking game than “Hundred Beer Club”. He gets three points back for getting “Barbie” very right for the same reasons I did.

Daily Wire Backstage

• Rating:  40%
• Standard Deviation: 15

Like The View, if it were done by frat bros with whom I largely agree. 

Liek this “legal note” – aka “bit of emergency ass-covering from the legal department” – that Sunny Hostin was forced to read on The View lest Matt Gaetz sue them for slander.

The pain was visible.

And glorious. 

And I don’t think they’re done.

To:  Brian Stelter, CNN
From:  MItch Berg, obstreporous peasant
Re:   Brendan Carr

Mr. Stelter,

You tweeted this about Brendan Carr, President-Elect Trump’s pick to head the FCC:

Just curious – what is it you think Carr is wrong about?

That is all.

New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi gets put on leave for having a “relationship” with RFJ Junior.

In the meantime, Lori Sturdevant, Rochelle Olson, Keri Miller and Esme Murphy have spent the decades (five of them in Sturdevant’s case) all-but-literally sending mash notes to three generations of DFL candidates – and bupkes.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is walking to a GOP fundraiser in one of the Twin Cities.  He walks around a corner and almost slams into a distracted Avery LIBRELLE.

BERG:  Er, excuse me…oh, hi, Aver…

LIBRELLE: Shut up Merg.  Drumpf did a completely fake staged appearance at that McDonalds!

BERG:  Huh.  A politician doing a staged, fake appearance for purely political reasons?

LIBRELLE:  Yes and…hey, the world is going cloudy.  What’s up?

BERG:  It’s called a flashback.

LIBRELLE: Ooooh….Weird.

LIBRELLE: It’s making me dizzy.

BERG:  Uh, I don’t think that’s what’s doing it.  Anyway, just a couple more.

BERG: So you were saying…

(But LIBRELLLE appears to have passed out).

BERG:  Huh.

And SCENE.

I met Cenk Uyghur – host of “Young Turds” – once upon a time. 

Now, I’m a pretty polite guy.  And I had bigger things going on than having to waste time on the guy. 

So even though my first impression of the guy was pretty awful, it never occurred to me to uncork on him quite like this:

But I’m glad Hassan did.

UPDATE:  I’m told his show is called “Young Turks”.  I regret the error. 

FROM THE. HISTORY FILE: This clip from Election Night 2016 will never not make me smile:

Martha Raddatz, on behalf of all media/Democrats (pardon the redundancy) re Venezuelan gangs: “Hey, it’s a big country. Let’s keep things in perspective!

Also Martha Raddatz, on behalf of all media/Democrats (pardon the redundancy) if five self-identified Boogaloo Boys are seen hiking in the woods somewhere in northwest Georgia: “Lets examine this wave of white supremacist terror threatening our social fabric”

Also also Martha Raddatz, on behalf of all media/Democrats (pardon the redundancy) if a group of Venezuelans, criminal or otherwise, moved into her neighborhood: “Hello, Servicemaster? I need an exterminator…”

“Grassroots”:   When a candidate who has never earned a primary vote, and only run one seriously contested election in her life, gets installed by the troika of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama after defenestrating the current President for being unfit to run a campaign (although apparently not to be President of the United States). 

Example:

Hope this resolves any confusion.

Shot: Democrats act like there’s an exception in the First Amendment for “misinformation”, a term so broad literally nobody can define it (emphasis added):

Did someone send out a memo? Or has the shock of encountering the wild variety of views visible on Elon Musk’s X just been too much for grandees used to moving in circles where the acceptable boundaries of disagreement are narrowly drawn? When John Kerry recently spoke of “dislike of and anguish over social media,” he was presumably referring to how he and like-minded others (among them, it turned out, another failed presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton) reacted as they watched the wrong sort of ideas openly discussed on major online platforms.

For his part, Kerry was talking about climate “misinformation,” a word that, in the hands of those who manipulate its meaning, can encompass not only a misstatement of fact but also, all too frequently, nothing more than the expression of a heterodox point of view. Such fine distinctions, we suspect, are of little interest to Kerry. Instead, he bemoaned the way that people no longer turn to “the referees we used to have” to determine what’s true, but — the horror — “self-select where they go for their news, for their information.”

 

Chaser: The “Referees” we once had to tune into for information are, not misinforming, but actively disinforming us:

After Rathergate, and seeing Lesley Stahl humiliated while covering for Hunter Biden in 2020, you’d think CBS might learn, mightn’t you?

Of course not.

Chalk it up to a self-referential information feedback loop, but when Democrats started yapping about “misinformation”, I’d have bet a roll of quarters something like this was in the offing.

Can Kamala Harris ride “Vibes” and “Rizz” all the way to the White House?

Pessimistic as I am about the collective intelligence of half our population, I’m not always optimistic.

But Jim Geraghty has his doubts:

The Harris campaign’s entire theory of the case is wrong. Reminding people about what they couldn’t stand about Trump and emphasizing “joy” and “vibes” is not sufficient to close the deal with an electorate. It completely misreads the mood of the voters, who have been coping with runaway inflation and a high cost of living for most of the past four years, who have a growing sense that no one is in charge at the border, who worry about a genuine post-Covid rise in crime, and who see an international scene beset by invasions, terrorism, and massacres, all presided over by a doddering old man who was hidden from the public by a staff that took Edith Wilson as a role model.

This past weekend, Peggy Noonan asked the question the Harris brain trust should have asked: Is this the right moment in American life to proclaim a new politics of “joy”? “Do you want to feel joyful?” is the wrong question; almost all of us would prefer to be happier. The question is: Do you look around at the state of the United States and the world today — and the performance of this administration for the past four years — and feel like joy is the appropriate response?

 

My semi-related theory:  Democrats have been using Minnesota as a testbed for their approach in campaigning; running for high office on pure social media happy-vibing and platitudes, abetted by a mostly-in-the-tank media, worked well for Walz and Flanagan (and Dayton before them).

Why wouldn’t it work for Harris?

The answer – the fact that a few reporters, and “reporters”, didn’t get the message:  Harris could screw up scrambled eggs:

(As noted on yesterday’s Three Martini Lunch podcast, let’s just take a moment to savor the irony that Sunny Hostin asked Harris the question that did so much damage.)

Much more in the next couple of weeks.

The DFL and Media (should almost be one word, shouldn’t it) are howling about allegations of domestic abuse against a GOP legislator, six weeks before the election:

In 2008, Dotseth was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic assault and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct. In a sworn affidavit by his ex-wife when filing for divorce, she detailed years of alleged abuse, according to the newspaper, including that he allegedly kicked and choked her in one incident and in another, pinned her against a wall.

Anyone but me getting deja vu, here?

I’ll help you out – 2006, during Keith Ellison’s first run for Congress, when the Strib put out a hatchet piece against GOP congresisonal candidate Alan Fine, dredging up domestic abuse allegations from his first marriage, but never managed to add a few things to the story: there were no convictions, Fine got custody of their son, and the wife went on to get arrested later on for…domestic abuse.

I’ll wager a shiny new quarter the allegations were brought up by an ex-spouse and her sleazebag lawyer to try to put a thumb on the scales during a nasty divorce – which is far from unprecedented, and in fact likely accounts for a huge percentage of domestic abuse allegationws.  Husbands and fathers are guilty until proven innocent, at least as far as the media and political class are concerned – as we saw with Fine. And it’s why the story is coming out today.  

I say nobody should even talk about leaving a race until Keith Ellison comes clean about his own, much better-documented history, not to mention Nicole MItchell leaving office and Judd Hoff leaves his legislative race. 

My two cents: This story means one or both of two things:

• The race for the state legislature is closer than the DFL is letting on. .
• Some oppo researcher, somewhere, is about to drop a big domestic abuse allegation against a DFLer. 

Any action on that bet?

While this appears to be pure fluff on the surface…

Minnesota Governor and 2024 Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz has built a reputation as a bit of a foodie, or maybe just someone who enjoys food of varying qualities. After all, he’s not always eating the most refined foods — he’s declared his love for diet Mountain Dew, corn dogs, and Minneapolis’ signature cheese-filled burger,the Juicy Lucy. He’s even won the Minnesota Congressional Delegation Hotdish Off multiple years for his truly Midwestern tater tot casserole. This love of deliciously decadent foods definitely gives him points for relatability, while his universal free lunch program for Minnesota kids poises him as an executive who believes everyone (especially children) has the right to eat regardless of income.
Advertisement

At the end of August 2024, the display of Governor Walz’s gastronomic delights continued as he was shown on his YouTube channel ordering a mint chocolate chip shake at Cook Out in North Carolina. Led by North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, this was Walz’s first trip to the southern fast food chain. When asked what he thought of the shake, he replied, “It’s really good.” Maybe not the most glowing review, but he did appear to enjoy it, at least. (“Oh, my god,” he said in delight as he continued eating.)

…it it is no less incisive than the rest of the MSM coverage Governor Klink has gotten so far.

Amongf the Kamala Harris lies that ABC at the debates was the idea that “crime is down”:

It means you have a functioning BS detector. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which measures Americans interactions with crimes not reported to the cops, unlike the FBI report Muir was flogging.

And it’s not good:

Overall, the NCVS indicate that in 2023, the rate of nonfatal violent victimization in the United States was 22.5 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older, which was similar to the 2022 rate of 23.5 violent victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older. Violent victimization includes rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault.

Ironically, the NCVS had lower numbers for violent victimizations for 2020 and 2021, despite the widespread perception that crime got significantly worse during the pandemic. In 2018 the figure was 23.8, in 2019 it was 21, it was 16.4 in 2020 — remember, lots of people were stuck at home, and fewer people on the street means less street crime — and in 2021 it was 16.5.

 

And a look at the Minneapolis crime dashboard, counting only crimes reported to the cops, is also a little instructive: as of today,

• homicide, larceny and robbery are up from last year
• Assault and sex offenses are up above the 3 year average (and that counts 2021, one of the worst years on record)
• Vandalism and domestic assault are up over both last year and the average. 

One of the things that always drew me to blogging was the notion of having a voice to shoot back (figuratively) at Big Media’s stultifying echo chamber. 

I had no idea, 22 years on, that we’d be this busy at it.

Minneapolis has a crime problem. 

Even some Democrat-voting locals appear to be on the ragged brink of figuring it out:

Nothing is being done about it?

Balderdash!

Minneapolis DFL leaders are posting photos of people biking, and sunsets!

Who are you going to believe?  Your lying eyes?

SCENE:   Governor Walz’s command post van, parked out back of the Minnesota State Fair.  Governor WALZ enters, dressed in his “regular Joe” costume, trailed by Lieutenant Governor FLANAGAN, sans turquoise earrings.  Trailing after in the entourage are the Governor’s press secretary, Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, and Lt. Gov. Flanagan’s press aide Cat SCAT.   WALZ’s face is red, causing his eyebrows to stand out like little white flares on a dark night.  Several other staffers, as well as FLANAGAN’s husband, former MPR political reporter and NPR’s MyLyssa SILBERMAN, reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, and Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN, a writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, and Lac Qui Parle County Dairy Princess in 1987, and voted “most likely to end up as a freelance political writer” by her sorority at U of M Morris in 1992.

WALZ:  What the hell was that?

FLANAGAN:  Weren’t they tooooold of the policy?

BIRKENSTOCK:  It was on the handout (SCAT produces the handout); “The state fair is only about food and baby animals“. 

WALZ:   Then what the hell was this?

BIRKENSTOCK: It was all that out of town media.

WALZ:  Well, what can we do about them? 

SILBERMAN:  What do you mean, “do”?

WALZ:  Can we get rid of them until they know the rules?  I mean, just look at this:

WALZ: I mean, what happened to the reporters who knows the rules? Peggy, what did you do with that guy from Public Minnesota Radio?

FLANAGAN:  Dated and married him? (WEBER gushes).

WALZ:  Can one of you date and marry that woman?

(BIRKENSTOCK and SCAT trade nervous glances)

BIRKENSTOCK:  Uhhhhh…

WALZ:  Look – the Minnesota media knows their place.  What’s it gonna take to get these national people to follow the rules?

SILBERMAN:  I probably shouldn’t be talking here, but playing games with access usually does the trick.

BIRKENSTOCK:  I know, we gotta get in control of that.

TORSTENGAARDSEN:  Or – and this may seem a little radical – you could answer policy questions from the press…

(Everyone in the room looks at TORSTENGAARDSEN as if she’s farted in church)

WALZ:  Get her the hell out of here.

(Security guards and Secret Service pass TORSTENGAARDSEN out of the van like it’s a mosh pit in 1992). 

WALZ:  OK.  Serious discussion here.  National media.  What the hell?  Think, people…

And SCENE

Governor Walz hasn’t done a single substantive interview with a “Journalist” that isn’t throwing him sloppy kisses (Esme Murphy, Jason DeRusha) since before the ’22 election.

But this?

And our erstwhile “fourth estate”, the ones who are supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?

They’re yukking it up:

Not sure “peak Minnesota” means what Ms. Lopez thinks it means. 

It only took the Strib six, almost seven, months to get around to “correcting” their headline about Gov. and Mrs. Klink’s, uh, “misspeaking” about their infertility treatment:

When in doubt, distrusting the Strib is always appropriate.

George W. Bush’s Air Guard record.

Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

The Russian Collusion hoax.

The “Perfectly Fine People” hoax.

“White Supremacists started/did most of the rioting in Minneapolis!”

“Kids are coming to school hungry in Minnesota”.

And now this:

A PBS senior corresponent apologized Wednesday after falsely telling her audience thart former President Donald Trump tried to talk Israel out of a cease-fire amid its ongoing war in Gaza.

Judy Woodruff passed off blame for the blunder by “clarifying” that she based the flimsy scoop on outside reporting that she had read byefroe broadcasting from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago.

“The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the prime minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now, because it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign”, Woodruff told a PBS roundtable”. 

 

Woodruff posted a tweet “Clarifying” her regret that she’d been caught:

But it’s out there. Democrat tweeps are chanting it like it’s fact. The intellectual gerbils that make up the Democrat base are parroting merrily away.

Because, well perception is reality.  And who controls what people perceive, anyway? 

Could happen to anyone. 

Hey – wasn’t “misinformation” public enemy number one?

Berg’s Seventh Law is getting more and more inerrant.

…that amazes me about this “interview” with the loathsome Senator Smith…:

…is that Acosta actually called her on her lie. 

My expectations of the media have fallen that low.

On the other hand, Esme Murphy wouldn’t have done even that.