…I provide this as a public service.
In Case You Don’t Already Loathe Lena Dunham Enough…
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Category Archives: Stupid
What’s Fourscore And Seven Years?
Via social media, from my friend “Midway Murph”:
MITCH: Institutional Social Media people can’t possibly get any dumber.
INSTITUTIONAL SOCIAL MEDIA PEOPLE: Hold my beer.
Because Katy Perry Doesn’t Do That Much Politics, Really
I try to be civil. I truly do.
But John Fugelsang is the one person on this entire planet that saves Samantha Bee from the title of “Most Vapid Pundit On Planet Earth”.
Seriously – Fugelsang, whose qualifications as a public intellectual seem to begin and end at “hairdo”, has already earned himself a Berg’s Law, and just keeps getting worse.
To which one responds “Only in America can you be pro-gun-control, pro-“campaign finance reform”, turn a blind eye to intellectual censorship and oppression on campus (and, increasingly, elsewhere), pretend “Antifa” is no big deal, oppose school vouchers and homeschooling, propose or support “Climate Nuremberg Tribunals” for scientific skeptics, and still call your self “pro-choice” with one cerebral lobe tied behind one’s back to make it fair.
The Religion Of Environmentalism And Health Insurance (UPDATE: Ooops)
The fact that Ben Carson got mocked in the media, while Maxine Waters isn’t considered a national laughinstock, will be prime evidence when we finally have Nuremberg-style tribunals about media bias:
And yet she’s taken seriously.
UPDATE: Ooops. Parody account.
I plead “long day at Grand Old Day”.
To be fair, the measure of great satire is that it could be the real thing…
It’s Only A Matter Of Time
Sweden’s analogue to the WaPo is calling for cars to be banned to prevent terror attacks.
Cars and other vehicles “have turned into deadly weapons”, and should be banished from cities to stop attacks like the one in Stockholm from happening in future, according to Aftonbladet editorialist Eva Franchell.
Crackdowns on immigration or extremist ideology are not the way forward when it comes to terror prevention, according to the veteran journalist, writing after Friday’s terror attack in Stockholm left four people dead.Instead, it is cars — which she calls “effective murder machines” — that Franchell says “must simply be removed from city centres and places where people gather, if people are to be protected in future”.
Vehicles are “easy to steal, and so nothing has been able to stop their advance”, writes Ms. Franchell.
Precisely. If you get rid of the cars, then they’ll have no weapons.
Just like banning selective fire AK-series assault rifles prevented the massacres at Bataclan, Brussels, and Charlie Hebdo.
But it‘s just the Swedes, right?
Well, yeah. But the way American leftists genuflect to our idiot Scandinavian cousins, it’s only a matter of time before some Bernie Brah suggests the same thing.
I Need To Ask Amy Klobuchar…
…whether roads in America actually collapse.
PS: It’s Tim Pawlenty’s fault!
While I Didn’t Vote For Trump…
….every so often I read something that shows me exactly why so many people did.
Prediction
This will actually happen about the same time Rosie O’Donnell moves to Canada.
Stuck On Stupid
Sally “I Went To Harvard” Kohn believes “most recently-defeated presidential candidate” is on the presidential order of succession.
Actually, the headline is misleading – Kohn believes that a successful impeachment leads to a special election.
Which is, if anything, even dumber.
Which is as good a nickname for Kohn as any.
Unforeseen Consequences, Foreseen
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
How can anyone not foresee the obvious consequences of this policy:
Migrants will stay in Germany if they can prove neo-Nazi violence
Berlin’s interior minister Andrea Geisel ([pictured) said Berlin is looking into the legal possibilities of the exemption after nearby Brandenburg opted for the scheme which offers protection to witnesses.
First, there will be a tenfold increase in the number of asylum seekers falsely claiming to have been beaten up by Neo-Nazis in order to claim permanent residence; and
Second, Neo-Nazis now know that beatings aren’t sufficient to make asylum seekers leave, so they’ll escalate to killing.
How stupid are these bureaucrats?
Joe Doakes
“How stupid are these bureaucrats?”
Knowing Joe, I know it’s a rhetorical question.
American Civilization Is Doomed, Part MCCCLVI
The good news: the World Series drew, by modern standards, an avalanche of viewers. While more people watched the last really really great Game 7 that I saw (1991, Twins vs. Braves), more people watched TV back then. It was an irresistable draw; two “cursed” teams meeting, and having one of the more enjoyable World Series I can remember.
And no Yankees.
Downside: in a culture where short-attention-span games are replacing sports in the public consciousness, it goes without saying that a lot of people who really don’t get baseball were really watching it for the first time.
Which leads to…culture shock.
This photo caused a tempest in the teapot of vacuity that is Twitter:
The sign says “K K K” – which you know, if you grew up keeping baseball scorecards, means three strikeouts.
Right?
Bring on the tempest:
Among many others.
And people wonder why we have a choice between a racketeer and a blowhard for President this year.
Terms Of The Left’s Intellectual Bankruptcy
The Second Amendment shouldn’t cover self-defense, says a typical “progressive”, because it violates the accused’s right to a trial.
The main problem with the notion of self-defense is it imposes on justice, for everyone has the right for a fair trial. Therefore, using a firearm to defend oneself is not legal because if the attacker is killed, he or she is devoid of his or her rights.
Which I’m sure will be important, after you are DEAD.
The American left – where the right to a trial is more important than the right to live (presuming you’ve been born at all).
Democrats: I Implore You…
…to introduce this as a bill in the legislature. Any legislature.
If you’re in the Minnesota legislature, I’ll donate to your campaign.
I truly, truly implore you.
Vide The Intellectual Giants Of The American Media
I caught some of Morning Joe from my hotel room before I left for the airport. The caption for one discussion was “Were They Radicalized?” I keep seeing stories asking this question as if it’s some great mystery we may never get to the bottom of. The media and the Democratic party are working very, very, hard to pound the wet clay of San Bernardino into a story about runaway gun violence in America.
Just curious: What discrete piece of info are we waiting for to get a definitive answer to that question? Because I thought it might be the thousands of rounds of ammo, the remote-control-car-bombs, the decision to abandon their six-month-old daughter, the contacts with terror suspects and, oh yeah, the murder of 14 people. But hey, that’s just me.
I used to think PJ O’Rourke was being hyperbolic when he said J-school students were the ones too dumb to get into Education.
Muggeridge’s Law is in full effect, obviously.
Still, amid the japing about our dimbulb journalistic “elite”, there’s a serious issue. The people are being actively disinformed:
Right now the media and the Democratic party are working very, very, hard to pound the wet clay of San Bernardino into a story about runaway gun violence in America. Bogus stats about there being a mass shooting on average once a day streak across the media firmament like so much St. Elmo’s Fire. The fact that gun violence has been in a decades-long decline doesn’t count for much. Poor Charlie Cooke is running around like the last artillery officer on a 19th-century British warship, trying to return fire from each cannon station.
Cook is doing his usual great job. But he’s far from alone on the, er, gun deck.
You Had One Freaking Job
From the beginning of the planning for the useless monument to the “wisdom” of our sitting government that the Met Council is pleased to call the Green Line, I accepted a few things as givens.
I accepted that the traffic, never pleasant on University Avenue, was going to turn into a Sisyphean ordeal.
I accepted that businesses more than a block or two from the stops, and businesses that depended on people making impulsive left turns for roughly half of their business, were going to have trouble. Didn’t like it, but what are you gonna do?
I accepted that the parts of University Avenue that weren’t gentrified into ridiculousness would become even more blighted than they were.
I even accepted that the entire thing was a mammoth exercise in picking winners and losers – the stores, constituents and ethnic groups that were more favored by the city came out better than those that were not. It was a great thing for DFL-voting fans of “high density” living along the corridor – white, middle class, middle-aged, professional. It was an OK thing for people who owned, or could obtain, or could afford to continue, businesses within easy and convenient walking distance of the stops.
All I asked – well, not all I asked, but the big favor to which I supplicated the demons of urban “progress” – was, whatever else you eff up, at least leave the Russian Tea House alone.
The Russian Tea House, a little hole in the wall at University at Fairview that sells the best piroshki, vareniki, borscht and other Russian goodies anywhere in town, is taking it in the shorts, naturally; the train from hell, which has blocked off all left turns that used to lead to the little restaurant, has slashed traffic to the store so badly, they’re down to one day a week:
“The first day they started ripping things out, a quarter of my customers went away. For the three years, I shut down for the whole summer,” he said. “All during construction, business was really bad. Now that the Green Line is open, there are no left hand turns, no parking in the street. The regular busses still stop, and if you’re behind the busses, you stop every block. We’re next to Wendy’s and their business is down 25 percent.”
“We’re opened only on Fridays now because during the week, no one comes. We’re two and a half blocks from a station. No one comes off the light rail to come here. No one will want to walk from there in the winter.”
The stupid is rolling over StPaul in waves.
Dumb And Dumber
Dumb: a couple of Iowa men, visiting Boston for the “World Pokémon Championships”, post a threat to social media, and are busted in notoriously anti-gun Boston with a car full of firearms and ammunition.
Dumber: the Boston police’s response:
Boston Police characterized the take down of the Pokemon subjects as a win for counter-terrorism.
Questions about the episode were referred to assistant chiefs Dwight Schrute and Cliff Clavin.
Roland The Brainless Would-Be Gunner
To: Roland Windsor, Dementee
From: Mitch Berg, uppity present
Re: Advice
Mr. Windsor:
You, a former staffer for Jimmy Carter, recently wrote:
“Republicans and conservatives are the enemy. They are expendable. They will be targets in the Revolution when it comes” writes Roland Windsor Vincent, in a recent post on his blog, Army Of The Revolution.
The face of incontinent fear.
The entry, entitled “Protect Animals And The Environment. Shoot Republicans“, centers around animal rights and how “active Republican and conservatives voters are enabling the Animal Holocaust” and “If we were to start shooting Republicans, we would likely not harm a single friend of animals or the environment.”
Oh, I know you’re a pathetic, probably mentally ill old man, raving at the demons you see around you and racking up a long list of Berg’s Seventh Law violations on the way. But on the left, you have all sorts of fans, so while you’re a side show, the rest of the circus clowns in your crowd are just a little too easily impressed by that kind of talk.
But anyway – make your first shot count, you muzzy-headed, walrus-faced disgrace to humanity. You won’t get a second.
That is all.
Posted
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Ordered a couple of magazines for my Combat Commander. Didn’t like them, wanted to return. My usual shipper is the UPS Store on Lexington but no, their franchise agreement says they can’t ship guns or gun parts which they interpret broadly to protect their franchise. Fair enough, they gave me directions to the UPS hub in Minneapolis where I found this sign.
Guy at the counter confirmed they can ship magazines – even loaded ones, if I declare it – but no, I can’t carry my pistol on my belt while I drop off the gun parts I’m returning. He was perfectly nice about it, that’s just the company policy. The logic of higher management escapes me.
Joe Doakes
It reminds me of all the companies I’ve worked for that put “Workplace Violence Policy” chapters in their employee manuals. The “policy” invariably involves forbidding guns on company property – which, perforce, means barring the law-abiding from defending themselves against, well, workplace violence.
Attention, MPR’s “Poligraph”
There’s A Reason They Called Bobby Heenan “The Brain”
Over the last year, former Gov. Jesse Ventura went to court against the estate of the late Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, claiming – successfully, in court – that Kyle’s statements about him defamed him in the eyes of veterans. Especially SEALs, of which Ventura is a former member.
And then Ventura, rose to fame pretending to throw people around a ring, said (emphasis added)?:
“A hero must be honorable, must have honor. And you can’t have honor if you’re a liar. There is no honor in lying,” Ventura told The Associated Press from his winter home in Baja California, Mexico. He also noted that the movie isn’t playing there.
Ventura also dismissed the movie as propaganda because it conveys the false idea that Iraq had something to do with the 9/11 attacks. “It’s as authentic as ‘Dirty Harry,’” he said, referring to fictional movie series starring Clint Eastwood, the director of “American Sniper”
or perhaps it’s as authentic as professional wrestling.
So Ventura just spent $1 million trying to rebuild his reputation among veterans – and then he says this?
Who’s he going to sue now?
Insert Narrative Here
To the more deranged parts of the American left, everything is evidence for their narrative.
For example – whether temperatures rise or fall, it’s all evidence of man-made global warming.
And a couple of New York police get killed by an apparently deranged man angered, according to his social media postings, by the Brown and Garner killings?
Why naturally – it’s the guns’ fault.
No, really – there’s a crisis not to be wasted here, for the Left. To Big Left, this is yet another chance to warm over gun control.
As if more laws would have saved those two cops.
Open Letter To Michelle Obama
To: Michelle Obama, FLOTUS
From: Mitch Berg, Commoner
Re: Shelves
I – 6’5″ white guy – get asked by short people between three and five times a year to help someone get something off of the top shelf at Target, Walmart, or any other grocery store.
Heretofore, I’ve always been happy to oblige.
You’ve taken the scales for my eyes. Please give me a civil rights department contact; clearly, litigation is in order.
That is all.
If I Were The Dean At Harvard Law School
To: Students of Harvard Law School
From: Mitch Berg, Angry Dean
Re: Test Schedules
Dear Most Annoying Students in the World,
Starting at 8AM Monday morning, please line up in the front hall of the administration building in alphabetical order. You will all be issued refund checks. Because clearly we at HarvLaw have failed you as an institution.
The evidence – you all know that term, right? – is right here:
Those Harvard students have produced an open letter, in which they demand that their examinations be delayed. “Like many across the country,” its authors claim, students “are traumatized” and “visibly distressed” — to the extent that there is now a “palpable anguish looming over campus.”
I hope I’m long dead before I have people from big law firms writing me, chocking back their outrage at his institution for turning out such a vacuous pack of hamsters and calling them not only “lawyers”, but “Harvard Law School Grads”.
The “national crisis” that has been provoked by the cases of Garner and Brown, they argue, has left them with no choice but to “stand for justice rather than sit and prepare for exams.” And, like their brethren at Columbia, they contend that their “being asked to prepare for and take our exams in this moment” amounts to their “being asked to perform incredible acts of disassociation” — requests, which taken together, have led them “to question our place in this school community and the legal community at large.”
I can’t wait to see you vacuous children of boundless class privilege try that on a client in the real world; claim the violence inherent in the system makes it impossible for you to come into the office and work on your cases. But at least you won’t “question your place in the legal community at large”, because by that point you’ll be transferring to the “fast food community”.
Justifiably so.
The bottom line? That students must be given “the opportunity to reschedule their exams in good faith and at their own discretion.”
And in good faith, I, your dean, will allow you and your faith and discretion to move your exams to any time another law school will let you, provided you get admitted.
Pick up your checks. You haven’t failed. I have.
That is all.
Maybe Dog Whistles Just Jumped The Shark
Well, if I have anything to say about it, they have.
Because this particular episode may be the most parity worthy bit of leftist prattle I’ve ever seen.
Darius Rucker – African-American country western singer and onetime member of “Hootie and the Blowfish” – saying the seasonal classic “White Christmas” on NBC broadcast last night.
In the reaction was the kind of thing you do found in parody, 15 short, yet much smarter, years ago.
What was it that PJ O’Rourke said? “Life is full of irony, when you’re stupid”?
The DFL Embraces Evil With A Big French Kiss
The DFL has a long, filthy history of dropping hit pieces in the closing hours of campaigns that would make people who care about petty annoyances like “right and wrong” and ‘truth” puke up their skulls. Classic example – this piece from 2010, which tried to whip up ingorant anti-Arab sentiment against King Banaian – who happens to be of Armenian descent.
But the people who do Democrat “Farmer” Labor Party hit pieces don’t bother with right and wrong. Their ends justify their means.
I cited this piece, dropped against Stacey Stout in House District 43B, on the show over the weekend. I called it “Evil”.
It is.
Here’s the front:
Uh oh. An abusive guy (are there any other kind in the DFL’s world? Other than Pajama Boy, I mean?)
And here’s the back:
This ad proves that the DFL is counting on finding a plurality of incurious cretins. And in 43A, it apparently worked.
Let’s go through this point by point:
Stout, like most people who don’t see “people with swastika armbands” as a government model to emulate, opposed a DFL proposal to take guns away from people accused, as opposed to convicted, of domestic abuse.
The “Gun Show Loophole” is a fraud; every gun show I’m aware of requires an NICS background check, and require a police-issued “Permits to Purchase” to buy a gun. The bill the DFL refers to would have required people to transfer all firearms via a Federal Firearms Licensed dealer. That means if you’re handing a gun down to your kid, or lending a shotgun to your friend for duck season. This does nothing but raise the price of firearms (FFLs don’t work for free) and create a paper trail for every gun – the same trail that police departments in Connecticut and New York are trying to use to confiscate firearms.
As to her opposing a background check for “assault weapons?” That was a proposal that would have added a second, utterly redundant background check for buying such weapons.
Stout made the right call in all three cases – if “following the law and the Constitution” is what you care about, which for the Democrat party it is not.
Taking those stances, in favor of the law-abiding citizens’ civil liberties, and turning them into “support for rape and domestic abuse?”
If you’re a DFL official, you might want to steer clear of me today.
And if you voted for Peter Fischer over this ad? Sorry for all the two-syllable words.