Category: Favorites!
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Declaring The Causes That Impel Us, 2025 Edition
The below is an update of a piece I first wrote almost five years ago. It was at that moment about the time when people – smart people, anyway – were starting to realize that Covid wasn’t the new Bubonic Plague, that the sky was not falling, and that whatever “model” Governor Klink was reading…
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Declaring The Causes That Impel Us, 2024 Edition
The below is an update of a piece I first wrote almost four years ago. It was at that moment about the time when people – smart people, anyway – were starting to realize that Covid wasn’t the new Bubonic Plague, that the sky was not falling, and that whatever “model” Governor Klink was reading…
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Tiers Of Tyranny
Earlier this week, the Facebook page of the Scott County GOP compared Governor Walz and the DFL’s legislative majority to to Hitler and Stalin. Silly Republicans. Only Democrats get to make specious, scabrous, historically-void comparisons to dictators. Now, as someone who studies history – especially the history of tyranny – very seriously, I’d like to…
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Urban Progressive Privilege: Our Vacuous Overlords
I’ve listened to a lot of vapid, trite radio in my life. Janeane Garofalo’s attempt at a talk show. Most any “audio essay” by David Sedaris. Just about every local show on AM950, from Nick Coleman and Wendy Wilde and Two Putt Tommy and Steve Timmer through Bart McNeil or whatever his name is. Lots…
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Kind Of A Drag
Let’s talk about drag shows. Not the current hot-button politics of the whole genre today. Just the “art form” itself. I don’t care for them. No, not because it involves men cross-dressing. Guys wearing dresses and wigs to play a role? Mitch, please. All the female parts in Shakespeare’s day were played by cross-dressing men.…
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When The Breakdown Hit At Midnight There Was Nothing Left To Say
Backstreets magazine, which has been covering all things Springsteen and setting the standard for high-music fanzines since 1980, is going out for a ride and not coming back. Like so much in modern music, it’s Ticketmaster’s fault: If you read the editorial Backstreets published last summer in the aftermath of the U.S. ticket sales, you…
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I Saw The World Change In The Blink Of An Eye
It finally happened; I’m at an age when I get to spend time correcting younger people about the misconceptions some older people are giving them about “my” time. Maybe it’s just me – but I’ve been noting a little surge of questions – and revisionist answers – about the 1980s, lately. I’ll stick with the…
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Carry On Wayward Renegade, All Along The Watchtower
It’s not something I think about that much, but I do from time to time — why do Classic Rock stations sound the same, year after year? I wrote about this on my moribund blog a number of years ago and, based on recent listening to market-dominant KQRS, this list of faves hasn’t changed a…
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Critical Marksmanship Theory
SCENE: The year is 2028. Mitch BERG has just been sworn in as governor of Minnesota, via a series of happenstances too bizarre to go into. He is speaking to a press conference. BERG: As the first phase of my plan, as promised, I’m directing the state Department of Education to begin mandatory instruction in…
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Delp and Goudreau
This is a CD I’ve been meaning to get around to for a long time, and finally checked off that box. It features two members of Boston, Brad Delp and Barry Goudreau. It was recorded in Goudreau’s home studio and released in 2003. The cover and reverse photos were taken on the beach near Goudreau’s…
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Expertise
SCENE: Mitch BERG is having a glass of wine at the bar in Whole Foods in Saint Paujl, after a day of vigorous shopping. Lost in the reverie, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has walked in. LIBRELLE: Merg! BERG: Oh, shhhhhuuuure enough, it’s Avery. Long time no see. What’s u.. LIBRELLE: Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji…
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The First Of Many Wavings Of The Bloody Shirt
I don’t disagree with any of the particulars of the National Review’s editorial about January 6: There is no defense for what the mob did that day. None. The people have a right to form loud, angry crowds to petition and protest their government. They need not do so in ways that are pleasant or…
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What’s Swedish For Omertá?
When people can’t trust the “Justice” system, they create their own. From Irish cops to legends of The Godfather and Goodfellas and The Sopranos to the various warlords and cartels of Central America (and what is a cartel but a warlord with a product people want to buy?), the long legacy of people, even in…
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I Think I Figured It Out
An allegory in three acts: Act 1 SCENE: An elementary school classroom.BULLY is sitting at the desk next to KID. A half dozen pencils lie strewn about the floor around KID’s desk. BULLY: Throws a pencil at KID. KID looks annoyed, but shakes it off. BULLY: (Sotto Voce) Hey, kid! (KID looks over as BULLY…
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Urban Progressive Privilege: In Which I Defend A Cake-Eating Private School
Around the time of the Chauvin verdict, and in the wake of the Brooklyn Center shooting, a group of students at posh Creti\-Derham Hall – a private Catholic school in Saint Paul – held a walkout. Now, that’s fine. It’s a foreign concept to me, of course – in my day, at my high school,…
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Breaking News: Retreat
According to a very reliable source, a Minneapolis police officer reports that all Minneapolis police have been moved out of the Third Precinct to the Fourth, and told to “sit tight, do nothing”. And the police are – according to my source’s source – “pissed”.
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Declaring The Causes That Impel Us
We’re into month two of the “State of Emergency” in Minnesota. Let’s stipulate in advance – government does have emergency powers, and should have them, at least as a broad concept. One of government’s few genuinely legitimate roles is to exert its power to react to things that are beyond the power of the individual,…
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Crowd Psychology
Imagine this: It’s the middle of June, 1940. Germany has just conquered all of Europe. The British have just withdrawn their army from the continent, in a miraculous evacuation that was the only redeeming note in a catastrophic defeat. The army had left virtually all of its equipment – just about everything heavier than a…
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Little Straw Men
A few weeks ago, I saw the new film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott “Little Women“. I’m told there are seven different versions on film out there – I’ve only seen parts of the 1933 version with Katherine Hepburn, and of course the 1994 version with Winona Ryder (of which the less said, the better).…
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Hollywood Polishes The Cannonball
Some stories shouldn’t need Hollywood to go all, well, Hollywood on them to make them riveting utterly compelling. But they do it anyway. And it’s almost always a massive drag. It’s not a new phenomenon; The Battle of the Bulge was utterly atrocious, seemingly feeling the need to dumb World War 2 down to a…
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One Place That Ain’t Looking Through Me
About a decade back, I heard an interview on All Things Considered with Sarfraz Manzoor, who’d just come out with his book Greetings from Bury Park – his memoir about growing up as a British-Pakistani in Luton, in the Midlands, and getting immersed in Bruce Springsteen’s music. And I think I sat in the garage…
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One Day In The Star/Tribunes “Morgue”
SCENE: It’s the “Morgue” at the Star-Tribune’s “Morgue” – a room full of file cabinets, deep underground, where no light has penetrated since the Kennedy administration. The door opens, and the MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES STORY, wherein mismanagement under two DFL administrations led to hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud, including credible allegations…
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Amateur Hour At Parkland
School shootings have been front-page bait for nearly 30 years. It’s been nearly two decades since Columbine. Nearly ten since Virginia Tech. And yet official America has learned nearly nothing, and contents itself with waving childrens’ bloody shirts to try to disarm people who didn’t, and never do, do the shooting in the first place.…
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Why I’m A Second Amendment Voter
I detest litmus tests. I always have. They’ve always struck me as a way to avoid needing to think too hard about things, especially politics; as a way to avoid having to deal with the nuances that are inevitable with a realistic appreciation of the world around you. But over the last year years, Second…