Shot in the Dark

Category: 2020 Riots

  • Open Letter To MPR’s Jon Collins: Year 5

    To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public RadioFrom: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous PeasantRe: 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…

  • Domino

    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 Usual Suspects

    After almost five years, the City of Minneapolis “plans” to “do” “something” with the former Speedway in “George Floyd Square”. I’m adding emphaiss to the quote below for a reason: The City of Minneapolis has received four applications to redevelop The People’s Way, which was formerly a Speedway gas station at the corner of 38th…

  • Redux

    So – AlphaNews and Liz Collin released Minneapolis has Fallen a little over a year ago. One of the signal scenes in the movie happened when Assistant Chief Blackwell testified that the “Maximal Restraint Technique” – which a series of current and former MPD officers testified was part of MPD traininig, and which Chauvin’s mother…

  • The DFL Playbook

    2. Keep on letting it stew. Let the “steam” build: 3. Go “I’m shocked, shocked that there’s a crime problem! 4. “Ride to the rescue” with a meaningless band-aid that doesn’t come close to addressing the cultural crisis you, yourselves, fomented: Of course I’m not the first or only one to notice this: Apparently “chaos”…

  • I Heard It On The NARN

    Paul Gazelka’s book Lifting the Veil is available right here. Today’s music list:

  • Gwen Antoinette

    Now that Tim Walz is enjoying the first of his fifteen minutes, it’s high time we revisit some of his greatest hits. Here’s Gwen Walz – who seems more and more like a Jill Biden character lately, and that’s not a good thig – talking about her, uh, odd perspective on the 2020 riots: As…

  • 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…

  • Open Letter To MPR’s Jon Collins: Year 4

    To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public RadioFrom: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous PeasantRe: 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…

  • 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…

  • I Read Deena Winter In The “Minnesota Reformer” So You Don’t Have To

    Earlier this week, the Minnesota Reformer – a news outlet financed by “progressive” plutocrats iwth deep pockets – did its review of AlphaNews’s “Minneapolis Has Fallen”. The claims – well, I’ll let the tweet do the talking for the piece, entitled “I Watched Minneapolis Has Fallen So You Don’t Have To”. Let’s go briefly through…

  • Converts

    Wonder why Big Left’s noise machine was so quick to try to gundeck The Fall of Minneapolis? Because they’re smart enough to see that it coud change some minds. In this case, the minds of academic Glenn Loury and the NYTimes’s John McWhorter – both of whom formerly bought Big Left’s story on the events…

  • Actual Journalism

    Since the entire media will try to suppress it – here’s “The Fall of Minneapolis”, by Liz Collin and the Alphanews crew: Watch it. Pass it along. I won’t give you any spoilers – you already know that Mayor Frey was a hapless stooge at best, a theatrical ninny at worst. Chief Arradondo lied through…

  • The Fix

    A “high trust” society – the kind of society where you can leave your doors unlocked, or at least not keep all your property under constant surveillance at the very least – depends on trusting your neighbors, and the institutions by which we govern ourselves. When that trust is broken, society becomes “low trust” –…

  • Open Letter To MPR’s Jon Collins: Year 3

    To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public RadioFrom: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous PeasantRe: Anniversary + Findings Mr. Collins, As with last year and 2021, I hope this day finds you well. It was three years ago today you sent this out on your listener mailing list:: “South Minneapolis: I know this…

  • Three Years Ago Today…

    …as the George Floyd riots gathered steam, this blog (thanks to a source with deep connections among Henco first responders) scooped the entire rest of the Twin Cities media on the Third Precinct story.

  • Our Depraved Media

    So, businesses are opening in a building that got re-opened after…uh, some unfortunate events, apparently: “The 2020 fires”? A bad streak of accidents? Spontaneous combustion? Flaming rocks from the sky? In a city full of media that bellows “off what?” when the DFL says “jump”, KARE11 has lapped the field at going “woke”.

  • Signs “Crime” Is Polling Badly

    Shot: Kamala Harris denies supporting the MN Freedom Fund, a group that opposes cash bail by bailing out “indigent” often-violent offenders, with occasional disastrous results… …after gleefully supporting it two years ago: “He who controls the past, controls the future. He who controls the present, controls the past”. Chaser: Ellison runs away from the “Defund”…

  • Connected

    A friend of the blog emails: Certain people in the media know who [Umbrella Man] is and won’t reveal it. Do you think he’s connected or related to a well known DFL elected official or donor? It’s starting to look that way. If Big Leftymedia felt that the identity could impugn the GOP before an election,…

  • Never Forget

    Since it’s state fair time Dash the time when at least some people in Minnesota start paying attention to the upcoming elections – let’s make sure we remember: when minutes counted, Governor Klink took days to respond to the collapse of law and order in Minneapolis. The media is going to focus on cheery stories…

  • Destructive Destruction

    The CVS store that has served for the past few decades as one of the anchors of the MIdway’s “main street”, at Snelling and University (but for seven months after the George Floyd riots, of course, where it stood boarded up, a monument to the perfidy of the metro DFL) is closing in a couple…

  • “Captain Obvious? Your Promotion To Admiral Came Through”

    Study shows that “racial justice” protests that include “Anti”-Fa are at least 18 times more likely to end up in violence than protests where they didn’t show up. And no, the same does not hold true for “right wing“ groups: They continued on to question whether the right-wing groups were the real source of the…

  • Maybe He’ll Give Up Umbrella Man!

    10 year sentence – a downward departure from sentencing guidelines by nearly half – in the burning of a Minneapolis pawn shop during the George Floyd riots: Black Lives Matter rioter Montez Terriel Lee Jr., of Rochester, New York, was sentenced Friday to 120 months in federal prison for his role in burning down a…

  • Gurgitation On Cue

    SCENE: Mitch BERG is looking for a new heat gun at a hardware store when Kirk THUNT, used car salesman and chairman of The Arne Carlson Project, an anti-Trump organization based in Forest Lake, walks around the corner. THUNT: Merg. BERG: Er…hi ,Kirk… THUNT: You routinely refuse to condemn Donald Trump for trying to overthrow…

  • Travesty

    Joe Doakes from Como Park emails You’re a cop. You’ve stopped a driver and have him standing on the side of the road because he’s got warrants for his arrest. He dives back into the car, presumably going for his gun. What do you do? a. grab him from behind and wrestle with him. No,…