Why, no, stupid peasants. Nobody is taking your guns.

I mean, nobody is taking your gas stoves.

Ooos. Nobody is going to convert all cars to electric.

Whoopsie. I mean nobody is going to surreptitiously convert the power grid to something that can’t sustain life in any place where the temperature gets below 40.

D’oh! I mean, nobody is…

…er, what’s nobody doing?

Oh, yeah. The bug thing. That’s what hobody ever said anything about.

Your bad.

Modern “progressivism” could pull off something that Hitler and Stalin themselves could only do via overt means at a time when it was very hard to move your capital around the world: make it possible to destroy dissenters financial lives.

It’s called “Debanking”:

And for all of Big Left’s yappng about “Fascism”, it is in fact the real thing

Borrowed with permission from a friend on social media:

When I moved to Minnesota in May 2010, I had just graduated college and taken a job offer in Edina. In the aftermath of the Great Recession jobs were scarce, especially in Milwaukee, and a young man trying to make it on his own had to be willing to uproot his life for greater opportunities.

I joined a local Christian urban mission and moved into a neighborhood filled with violence and poverty and beautiful people who God loves. I was enthralled by the vivid colors of Minneapolis, the hustle and bustle, the natural beauty of the city combined with over a century of human gardening that created a city of lakes and parks amidst neighborhoods and skyscrapers. I loved the breweries, the neighborhood pubs nestled between homes, the intimidating importance of people striding in the skyways, the spectacular events that brought everyone together like the Basilica block party, the way strangers would become neighbors when three feet of snow forced us all to work together to dig out city buses.

I told anyone who would listen that Minneapolis was my favorite city. That there was nowhere else I’d rather live. Especially compared to Milwaukee, it was difficult to make friends here – the old adage “if you want friends in Minnesota, go to kindergarten” was spot on. But I found some spectacular people who loved Jesus and wanted to see the city face its ignored injustices and thrive together. I wanted to spend the rest of my life here.

After dedicating my entire adult life to the city working in its worst neighborhoods to right its worst wrongs, 2020 came along and the air changed. When a governor illegally mandates you stay in your home, unable to even visit your parents next door while states like Florida are totally open, something about your trust in government breaks. When you realize your neighbors are going quietly along with this fundamental break from democracy, you look at them differently. They can’t be trusted either.

Somehow, the air tastes different. It smells different. It doesn’t refresh or enliven – it loses its life-giving potency.

When citizen journalists publish story after story of someone murdered by a violent criminal who prosecutors and judges had dead to rights but refused to imprison, the air changes.

When you realize that half of abortions in Minnesota are paid for by tax dollars and the state enables elective abortion until birth, the air changes.

When the legislature, with one vote majority, declares Christian parents abusive and threatens to take custody of their kids, the air feels downright poisonous. When the Star Tribune and KARE fail to even mention this in the news, it sinks on your chest like a weight that the fix is in.

After all that, things don’t feel the same. You don’t feel like you can enjoy even nature, the trees and lakes. Surely the leaves hold no responsibility for the great evil that has become Minnesota, but they become symbols, reminders of something dark.

Every breath you draw into your lungs feels tainted somehow. If you’ve ever inhaled a gas that stopped you halfway and forced you to cough instead, you know what I mean. You feel suffocated, every day. You yearn for true air, true breath, true freedom.

You shine your light in the darkness every day, but over time, you realize your batteries are fading, and the light is dimming. There is only so much darkness a human soul can take.

This morning I woke up in our new home in Tennessee. Finally, I breathed deep, and was reminded of the example of my ancestors whose strength and determination brought them across the sea to become a political bloc whose American power ultimately put so much pressure on the UK that it had to relent and, after 700 years of tyranny, restore freedom in Ireland.

—–

“But if at last our colours should be torn from Ireland’s heart

Her sons with shame and sorrow from the dear old isle would part

I’ve heard a whisper of a land that lies beyond the sea

Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom’s day

Oh Ireland, must we leave you, driven by a tyrant’s hand

And seek a mother’s blessing from a strange and distant land

Where the cruel cross of England shall never more be seen

And in that land we’ll live and die for the wearing of the green”

All reactions:

11

Oh, believe me – I understand the motivation.

I can’t imagine life without the fight – but I can imagine life elsewhere.

Forget balancing power between the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches. Democrats – including Kwesi Mfume, one of the most powerful people in Washington – have a view that’s more in line with the likes of…

…I dunno…

…Lavrentii Beria.

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 make two points:

1. I hate willy-nilly dictator references. Calling people “Hitler” or “Stalin” is lazy. The only thing I hate nearly as much is…
2. Dismissing legitimate claims of tyrannical behavior as if the claim itself, rather than the aptitude of the facts presented, is the joke.

Because it’s not like tyrannies generally drop in on society unannounced.

Tyranny, like cancer, has four stages. There is no stage five.

(Definition of terms: “Regime” is used in the original French sense of the term; it means the person, people or parties running the government).

I’d say the Walz administration is a solid stage 1.

Thoughts?

If you’re a conservative in Minnesota, you’ve got friends moving elsewhere. I personally have friends, including some of the regulars here, who’ve moved or are planning to move to any of the less-insane states; the Dakotas, Tennessee, Texas, Republican northwest Wisconsin, and of course Florida – a state where expats from Minnesota are almost as big a cliche as New Yorkers.

Not me.

And not John Phelan of the Center of the American Experiment.

Phelan gives his three reasons. I agree with ’em all – and I’ve got one of my own to add:

I’m going to start at the end of the list:

Finally, and most importantly, Minnesota is still a wonderful place to live. Its scenery is beautiful, its weather varied (or challenging, depending on your view), and its people decent, none of which, of course, depends on high taxes. When you have something good it is worth fighting for even when you feel the odds are against you. Perhaps especially then.

I’m from North Dakota. The weather in southern Minnesota is like a 12 month vacation (at least since I got AC in my car and bedroom).

The larger point? I was here first.

Second, even while its economy splutters, crime rises, test scores fall, the lights go out, and residents flee in numbers not seen in at least three decades, Minnesota’s government is being lauded as an example by progressives around the country. NBC News, the Daily Beast, and the New York Times have all run pieces lately praising the state government and Gov. Walz in particular. It matters to the entire country that the sad truth about Minnesota gets out.

Because whether you live in Orono or Orlando, they are coming for you, like it or not. Might be next election cycle, it might be when your grandkids are married and having kids of their own, but they’re playiing the long game.

And here’s the big one (I’m adding emphasis):

First, the liberal grip on Minnesota is not as tight as it seems. In 2022, the DFL’s party unit took in nearly $24 million from all sources while the state Republican Party took in a paltry $1.3 million. Even so, and with the built-in advantage of a friendly media, the DFL took the state Senate by just one seat and that by just 321 votes. The DFL is governing like a party that just scored 60 percent of the vote, not because they did, but precisely because they didn’t, and they want to ram their agenda through before Minnesotans cotton on to what they’re up to.

Minnesota has eight congressional districts (for nine more years, anyway).

• Two (4 and 5) will be hard blue until some future apocalypse makes everyone a conservative.
• One (3) appears to have slid off the rais.
• Two (6 and 7) will never vote DFL again.
• Two (1 and 8) are getting redder by the year. If you’d told me 15 years ago I’d never say that about CD8, I’d have said you were nuts).
• One (CD2) might be redeemable.

That’s 4-4 – and with the right candidate in the right year, 5-3.

Yes, the DFL balllot-harvesting machine gives the DFL a huge lift with the metro vote – but if the legislature stays in play, that gives us gridlock. Not the eternal blue nightmare. And given how many Republicans stayed home last year, and how close the GOP candidates came in the Attorney General and State Auditor races, despair is premature.

They can’t overturn Roe again, after all.

And the DFL knows it.

The DFL’s awareness of this weakness is evident, too, in its attack on democracy by making it practically impossible for third parties to get on the ballot in Minnesota. Not a single reporter asked a single legislator a single question about this.

Last week, President Obama tweeted, “If you need a reminder that elections have consequences, check out what’s happening in Minnesota.” He is exactly right. Our state is about to move from the “fool around” to the “find out” stage of voting for ever higher taxes, ever higher government spending, and ever bigger government. Minnesota needs its conservatives now more than ever.

Which brings us to Reason #4. The fight is worth fighting.

My ancestry is half Viking and 1/4 lowland Scots white trash. We fight just to stay awake, ffs.

What the hell is there to do in this life but fight?

I was here first. I’m not going anywhere.

SCENE: Minnesota DFL Executive Meeting.

KEN MARTIN (Chait of the MNDFL): Next order of business.

INGE “LUCKY” CARROLL (A former guidance counselor at a school for monomaniacs, Inge is Head Meme-Buffer at “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”). Our next plan is to start building safe spaces for hard drug use.

STACEY HINTON (Executive Director of “Keep All Racists Eternally Nonplussed”, a white progressive support group). Brilliant.

GRETEL STROMBERG ()Executive Director of “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”, Stromberg is married to both a woman and a male illegal immigrant) Here’s the news coverage:

KEN MARTIN: Great piece. Fawning and morally bankrupt without going too over the top.

STROMBERG: Like Esme Murphy. .

KEN MARTIN: Yep. Now, we’ll be building these “safe spaces” at places like Summit and Chatsworth, and Crocus Hill, and down amid the condos across from the Guthrie…

( Entire group sits silently, in disbelief, jaws literally dropping).

KEN MARTIN: Hah! You shoulda seen your faces. Nope, we’re building them among the proles.

(Various expressions of relief)

KEN MARTIN: So – between legal weed and shooting galleries, and the schools teaching the next generation to be ignorant, uncritical , compliant and distracted by contrived grievances, the next generation should be really solid DFL voters!~

Round of applause as the scene fades to black.

Never thought I”d see the day.

In one of the highlights of last week, all nine justices of the SCOTUS united across ideological lines to beat Hennepin County like a pimp beating one of his girls.

Geraldine Tyler owed a $15,000 tax debt on a one-bedroom Minneapolis condo; to pay the debt, Hennepin County sold her home for $40,000 — and kept the extra $25,000 beyond what was owed. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the opinion of the Court that the taxpayer must “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more,” effectively ending the practice of home equity theft.

How clear-cut was Henco’s abuse? This clear-cut (emphasis added):

Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a concurring opinion, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined, adding that the county’s action also violates the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause.

“Economic penalties imposed to deter willful noncompliance with the law are fines by any other name,” he wrote. “And the Constitution has something to say about them: They cannot be excessive.”

Any day that Henco gets clobbered is a wonderful one.

PJ O’Rourke said it best: progressives in power are like crack whores with a stolen Platinum Card.

They certainly had their party this session – and ended things with a budget-signing yesterday that had Leni Riefenstahl sending a chef’s kiss from the great beyond:

The social media blitz of endzone-happy dancing, featuring gigabytes of the DFL’s one real product, the smug selfie, was worth of Kim Jong Un’s minions.

But the hangover is coming.

The first lawsuit to try to tamp down the Trifecta’s power-sodden overrreach is on the books:

The DFL admitted publicly they were targeting Northwestern and Crown due to their religion – and they didn’t care.

And it ain’t the last lawsuit you can expect to see.

Throughout the media, it’s a universal truism: Smart people with personalities go into radio; people who get by on looks go into TV.

It’s conventionally-accepted wisdom throughout the world of mass communications.

I have exactly as much factual oomph saying that as former Channel 5 weatherperson and DFL senator Nicole Mitchell (DFL, what else, Woodbury) talking about the civil liberty law:

She’s referring to Schenck vs. United States – in which an anti-draft protester during World War One sued over having his civil rights trampled on by the Woodrow Wilson administration, often regarded as a toxically stupid decision, one which the SCOTUS reversed in defense of a Klansman’s right to free speech.

But you know what’s more toxic than that?

Let’s say, for purposes of argument, that society has the communal wisdom to abrogate rights “for the public good” without doing vastly more harm than good – again, just for purposes of argument.

Who defines “the common good?”

Traditionally, it was families, churches, and traditional social institutions that had stood the test of hundreds, sometimes thousands of years .

The DFL and Big Left have been tearing those institutions down, and replacing them with…

…themselves.

It’s as plain a statement as there is that the DFL wants your civil rights – all of them – to be political swag to be doled out as rewards, if at all.

With great fanfare, Minneapolis and Saint Paul raised their minimum wages to $15 an hour. 

And now, the Minneapolis Federal Reserve says the policy has done…well, exactly what every conservative said it would do:  

 Pay is up 1% among those with jobs – but 2% fewer are employed as a direct result of the policies, and that’s just scratching the surface (emphasis added):

Many economists have reached similar conclusions about minimum wage increases in the past. Still, the size of the impacts the researchers measured — by comparing Minneapolis and St. Paul to data culled from other Minnesota cities from 2017 through 2021 — were eye-popping, especially in low-wage industries.

Take Minneapolis’ retail sector, for example: The minimum wage increase led to 28% fewer retail jobs than researchers would’ve expected from a similar city during the same five-year period. By this comparison, Minneapolis also saw a 20% drop in hours worked and a 13% dip in aggregate worker earnings.

Across St. Paul’s restaurant industry, the city’s 2018 minimum wage hike was responsible for drying up nearly one-third of available jobs, the study found. In “limited-service” (fast food) restaurants, both hours and earnings fell by more than half after the increase took effect.

“Good, they’re mostly terrible jobs anyway” say the white progressives from the non-profit/government/industrial complex. They re literally spinning this as good news – or excuses for more programs.

It’s possible that Big Left isn’t pushing these minimum wages as a way to gut opportunity for entry level workers. But if it were, I’m at a loss for what they’d do differently.

To: Rep. Samantha Vang
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Gaslighting

Rep. Vang,

You wrote the “Social Credit” bill (you call it ‘Stop Hate’, but my title is more accurate) that I talked about on my show over the weekend.

You got a storm of criticism – almost all of it justified.

This was your response:

Well,no. That’s not what it does.

Y’see, the market for hate crime far, far outstrips the supply, notwithstanding the DFL’s “Reichstag Firing”. For example:

The mosque fires were set, not just by one guy, the the one criminal in Minneapolis dumb enough to actually commit a crime that Minneapolis’s city government still gives a sh*t about.

No – Rep. Vang’s bill will essentially collect statemens about “microagressions” reported by protected classes.

Bumper sticker they don’t like?

Something overheard in a cafe?

A Trump sign?

Nobody knows. The bill allows no scrutiny, no Data Practices requests, no accountability or transparency of any kind.

It is, in every respect, a “social credit” bill.

Which is a key part of the Communist system, Rep. Vang, that your parents and her people fled.

That is all.

There’s sure been a lot of aggressive rhetoric from the DFL, especially its “LGBTQ” caucus, for the past (checks watch) 24 hours or so.

Here’s Alicia Kozlowski, elected representative from Duluth and, as such, person witih a lifetime sinecure of living on the public dime ahead of her:

Wow. That sounds serious.

It’s certainly got Rep Kozlowski’s dudgeon up:

And then there was Rep Leigh Finke with, curioiusly, the exact same type of rhetoric:

Wow. Two marquee members of the LGBTQ caucus making “defiant” noises.

I wonder what’s up with that?

Oh:

A Republican lawmaker was verbally accosted by a Democratic colleague on the House floor Wednesday because she shared a tweet from the organization Gays Against Groomers, she told Alpha News.

Rep. Dawn Gillman, R-Dassel, retweeted a post regarding legislation that would have removed existing language in Minnesota law stipulating that pedophilia is not a protected sexual orientation.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, who confronted Gillman about the retweet. Gillman said she was “yelled at and intimidated” by Finke, who apparently shouted “no!” when a colleague suggested moving the conversation off the floor.

“My interaction on Wednesday evening with Rep. Finke left me shaken and fearing for my personal safety. Instead of coming to talk to me, I was yelled at and intimidated on the House Floor,” Gillman told Alpha News. She said that this type of behavior wouldn’t be tolerated in other workplaces.

The incident was corroborated by multiple representatives who were there. Gillman asked to be escorted to her car after session.

Finke reportedly upbraided [1] Gillman over circulating this article.

Several questions, here:

1. Is House HR going to get involved, or are they still chasing after Peter Callaghan?
2. Is House HR going to come after me for writing this?
3. If this story is accurate, it’d appear that the House Cisgender Caucus is the one that needs a mutual defense agreement.
4. I wonder if writing this is going to put me afoul of the DFL’s new Social Credit policy?

Speaking of Social Credit policy, I’ll be talking about that, the Giillman/Finke incident, and much. more on the show tomorrow. Tune on in.

The Strib finally hired a new editorial cartoonist to replace the worthless and unlamented Steve Sack.

It’s Mike Thompson.

And he’s brought a new sound to Minneapolis.

No, not the popping of the Glock full-auto conversion.

It’s the wailing and gnashing of entitled, plush-bottom, White progressive Minneapolis Yoo-hoos losing their spit over being lampooned by an editorial cartoonist.

They have no frame of reference. Modern MSM editorial cartoons have all the intellectual diversity of The Colbert Show or NPR.

So the calls for “canceling” Thompson have already started.

It’ll be interesting to see if Thompson is forced to repent of his sins.

A friend of the blog emails:

Reading this news report at Alpha News, I am struck by this question: Why don’t conservatives make common cause with the local Muslims?

They want good educations for their children, just like Moderates, Conservatives, and Christians do.

Muslims by and large are much more puritanical about these sorts of things and very specifically do not want infidels teaching this spiritually debasing poison to their daughters.

What if Senator Wesenberg and Rep Walter Hudson were to personally approach Imams in their district and statewide for their input on this issue. The Qur’an highlights the community of faith between followers of monotheistic religions (Jews, Christians and Muslims), and refers to them collectively as Ahl al-Kitab ‘People of the Book‘, a phrase that is used frequently in the Qur’an and Prophetic hadith. 

Maybe the fastest way to do this would be for the GOP to amend the education bill with a requirement that ALL MN schools, public, private, and charter be required to have these four books available for their students; “It’s Perfectly Normal,” “Sex is a Funny Word,” “It’s So Amazing,” and “It’s Not the Stork.”. I’ll bet that would shake some peaches out of the trees.

Better yet, someone tell Erin Maye Quade or Leigh Finke to push the amendment.

I bet they’d do it.

As to making common cause with Muslims, especially ones that aren’t tied at the hip to the DFL? The time is long overdue.

Every high school homeroom seemed to have that one guy – usually a little maladroit, introverted, not especially socially adept. The guy – it was always a guy – tried to cultivate the impression there was some sort of threatening undercurrent – unspecified after-dark activities, unnamed associates, vague hints that there might be some kind of hidden danger about him, so you’d better not push him too far.

We talked last week about Matt Roznowski – the House DFL Communications director who reported MInnPost reporter Peter Callaghan to House HR, notwithstanding the fact that Callaghan doesn’t work for the DFL .

Maybe Roznowski figures reporters actually do work for the DFL, It’s explain a lot.

Gotta wonder if Roznowski was that guy in high school. Current signs look pretty close.

It’s worth noting that the DFL doubled down to support their guy flexing on…a reporter for a publication supported by Big Leftymoney.

Oh yeah – their communications office apparently doesn’t like peasants criticizing them:

I need to keep reminding myself – drapes don’t have shoes.

BTW, Brian – Lech Wałęsa fought Communists. So yeah, it kinda fits.

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 of dreadful stuff.

But I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anything quite this stomach-pumpingly vacuous as this two year old episode of “Radiolab”, an NPR podcast [1] which combines an oppressive amount of cutesy sound editing with a programming lineup that captures all of the lows of “This American Life” with none of TAL’s occasional highs.

it’s a rebroadcast [2] from a couple of years ago, when the Covid pandemic had come and gone for most of America, but was still leaving the world a Camusian hellscape for the organically-fed fashionably angsty member of the Laptop Class that work for and listen to National Public Radio.

And in it, the plush-bottom yoohoos in the studio seem to be straining to make the case that 2020 and 2021 is a candidate to be horrible years in history, as compared to…

…536AD. When something, a bunch of volcanoes or comet dust or something blotted out much of the sunlight for years, causing a chain reaction of crop failures, famines, plagues (as hungry rats invaded granaries) and wars that led to the death of perhaps 20% of the people on the planet at the time.

But Covid’s pretty bad, too!

Here’s the neat (if nauseous) trick: Listen to it, and you can almost feel like you’re sitting in a “breakfast place” on Eat Street listening to a bunch of non-profiteers bitching about how lack of rent control is genocide.

NPR should really be funding itself.

It took a week for the story to get out – but somehow, it did.

A group of Mayor Carter’s staffers showed us what “One Minnesota” looks like when the new gentry cross paths with the proles:

“They just came in, they were obviously intoxicated,” recalls restaurant owner Jason Dorweiler.

He says a group of seven people came in asking for a table, while three men went to the restroom.

“They were very loud, we heard noises from inside the bathroom, outside while service was going on,” Dorweiler explains. “We kind of checked in on them. It appeared that they had urinated all over our floor, which is a bad sign, in addition to them coming in and just being annoying. They proceeded to sit down and were just being belligerent the whole time.”

Too tl:DR,and need a summary? Here you go:

Naturally, they tried to play the victim card after the fact:

A second police report, filed days later, shows Cruz Williams called police, saying she wanted to report an assault.

In the report she says ‘she was trying to de-escalate the situation’ — and that she told the manager she and her friends were going to leave.

No wonder the DFL is so keen on gun control. They’re afraid real. people may start protecting themselves from the DFL.

What says “One MInnesota” better than living in a million dollar lakeside mansion on the taxpayers dime?

As Minnesotans stagger through inflation, gas prices and an economy that is teetering on the brink of crisis, the state is putting $6 million into repairing the govenor’s mansion. The governor and his family will be parked in a lakeside house on Sunfish Lake, for $17,000 a month, for 18 months.

Why so posh?

We’re told it’s partly practical:

The state had a 17-point list of qualifications and indicated that the property would need to have security features, be relatively close to the Capitol and be open to “official ceremonial functions,” as is required by state law.

Now, I’m no expert, but I suspect the state’s got no shortage of suitable places for “official ceremonial functions”. We’ll come back to that.

And, we’re told, it’s partly security:

House Speaker Melissa Hortman, the top DFLer in the Minnesota Legislature, said she understands why space, security and neighborhood considerations make temporary lodging for the governor so expensive.

“When you have folks going to protest a governor at his house, you have the entire block of people who are there, not only the governor’s wife and children but the neighbors who didn’t necessarily sign up for this,” she said. “So, I’m not surprised that it’s an expensive proposition to house a governor in a secure location.”

As Hortman’s fellow DFLer Lisa Bender said, public safety is a privilege.

As someone whose house was on the edge of the DFL’s “room to destroy”, I think it’d be perfectly appropriate for the Walzes to get a place in the city, subject to the DFL’s capricious notion of law enforcement. Maybre someplace up at Plymouth and Sheridan.

Governor Klink responded with his usual grace and evenhandedness:

“I’m pretty agnostic, where I lay my head,” Walz said. “I certainly welcome if the legislators’ job is oversight. Go do it. It’s better than banning books. It’s better than demonizing kids. Go do that oversight. I accept whatever they find.”

Speaking of “doing the job” – Governor Klink has been making himself pretty scarce. He hasn’t responded by my repeated invitations – not even a curt “F*** Off” – but even the largely DFL-friendly Blois Olson:

Olson is being a bit of a pollyanna; their strategy is to stay within the bubble wrap; the Governor comes out of the mansion to do carefully stage-managed dog and pony shows like going to pizzerias and donut shops and the occasional train derailment, surrounded by his comms people and nice tame social media droogs, for some cheesecake photos, and then it’s back in isolation.

“Official ceremonial functions?” All the governor does is stuff his face while “Lieutenant Governor” Flanagan looks on, beaming like a proud mom.

They really do think they are royalty, don’t they?

I came across this tweet last week.

At first blush, I thought it was parody, and not especially good.

I moved from there to Assumption B – a chuckleheaded sophomore political science major from Austin, or Seattle, or maybe the University of Saint Thomas. It can be hard to tell parody from reality with them, sometimes.

That’s what I thought. Or, let’s be honest, that’s what I hoped. Parody, or young lefty dolt.

But no. Mr. Lee is a California state assemblyman, detailing the world he and most of Big Left hold out as their idea.

No mention of that social credit score you gotta pass to get into your “public bank account”. No mention of who’s going to be teaching at those “awesome public schools” or building, maintaining and operating that “green transit”, or even why either would exist if people get Universal Basic Income. No mention of how in a world without the generation of value and wealth, the “UBI” will pretty much inevitably devolve into ration tickets, to buy…what? Who’s doing the producing, the farming? Robotic cricket mills creating insect paste is about the only logical option.

The culture war is fought and lost or won in a million little nooks and crannies in our society.

The collective perception of historical ephemera that tumble-dries together to form “the public consciousness” is one of those collections of crannies.

And somewhere in that perception floats the collective dog’s breakfast of ideas and ideals that form the cultural idea of what is and was good, and what isn’t and wasn’t.

You ask most Americans “who was the worst president in American history”, you will get many answers. Conservatives and progressives may differ – Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush likely trend toward the top for both, respectively. There are some consensus picks; Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan and a few others.

But among the eternal parade of cultural skirmishes that could stand some winning, the left’s rewriting of history re Woodrow Wilson needs to be turned around and pointed back toward history’s lower colon, where it belongs.

A national consensus on hating Wilson is long overdue. It is the patriotic duty of every decent American. While conservatives have particular reasons to detest Wilson, and all his works, and all his empty promises, there is more than enough in his record for moderates, liberals, progressives, libertarians, and socialists to join us in this great and unifying cause.

The roll call of the worst presidents in American history includes some consensus top choices. James Buchanan and Franklin Pierce both contributed mightily to the nation’s slide into the Civil War, and Andrew Johnson did enduring harm to Reconstruction in the war’s aftermath. But all three of those men were repudiated by the end of their single term in office. They left no heirs who would acknowledge their influence, no fleet of academic hagiographers who could see themselves reflected in those presidencies.

Wilson, by contrast, served two full and consequential terms. He was the only Democrat re-elected to the job during the century between 1832 and 1936. He was lionized by liberals and progressives in academia and the media for most of the century after he left office in 1921. In my youth, and perhaps yours, Wilson was presented in history books as a tragic hero whom the unthinking American people didn’t deserve. He was often placed highly on academics’ rankings of the presidents. Princeton University named its school of international relations for him. Even in rescinding that honor in June 2020, the university’s press release declared: “Though scholars disagree about how to assess Wilson’s tenure as president of the United States, many rank him among the nation’s greatest leaders and credit him with visionary ideas that shaped the world for the better.”

Nah. Wilson was a human pile of flaming trash. He was a bad man who made the country and the world worse. His name should be an obscenity, his image an effigy. Hating him is a wholesome obligation of citizenship.

Let us count the ways:

• He institutionalized racism, segregation and eugenics just as America was slowly evolving out of each.
• He was the father of the modern administrative state – he brought academic contempt for The People to that bureaucracy, where it’s metastasized for a century now.
• With the income tax administered by that administrative state, he started the roll down the slippery slope from liberty to corporatist servitude.
• He started the notion of “the living Constiitution”.
• His “contirbutions” to foreigtj policy did more than most to facilitate the rise of Naziism, Fascism and Communism; his wartime regime was a catastrophe for civil liberties.
• He was the father of the “imperial presidency” – taking a slim win (41% of the vote, after Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote) and acting like it was a mandate.
• And he may have botched the Feds response to the Spanish Flu even worse than Biden and Trump’s Covid campaigns.

Read the whole thing if you can.

Whatever other missions I have in life,extinguishing any lingering ignorance about the loathsomeness of Woodrow Wilson is going on the list.

That wave of right-wing terror they’ve been warning us about for the past fifteen years is apparently nigh, and coming for Jacob Frey:

The progressive mayor of Minneapolis is fearing for his life since receiving an uptick in death threats…

Well, yeah. After giving free reign to leftists, including all but inviting “Anti”-Fa to attack Trump rallygoers, of course all those right-wing MAGA hat-clad goons are going to threaten a puling left mayor…

…from left-wing extremists, nearly three years after the unrest over the police-involved death of George Floyd…

.

Wait, what?

The wave of terror is coming from the left?

Why, yes – we’ve commented on this before.

To: Lieutenant Governor Flanagan,
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Glad You’ve Discovered Light Rail Crime!

Of all the people who’ve been beaten, robbed and murdered on Twin Cities light rail platforms, it’s good to know you’ve paid attention to one of them, finally:

But clearly, you do not ride the light rail. I suspect you hitch a ride to the office with the state patrol, just like the governor. I’m gonna guess you haven’t ridden a train since long before you became Lieutenant Governor.

Just a quick tip from someone who rode the Vomit Comet (aka “Green Line”) day and night for a year and a half; when you’re out there on that platform, late at night, in the city you and the DFL created, you are absolutely, completely alone. Nothing there but you and God. None of your ex post facto happy talk is of the faintest bit of protection against The DFL’s Minneapolis.

To my credit, I figured it would be a victim like this, that got you to finally pay attention to street crime.

Sort of.

That is all.

Senator Smith took to Twitter to shill for “ESG“ – rules that require businesses to make decisions based on “Environment, Social Credit, [woke corporate] Governance l”practices.in other words, replacing fiduciary responsibility with “woke“ “social justice“ (read: Marxist) values.

there are really only two possibilities:

• Smith really is this ignorant.
• She knows she can count on a majority of her voters being this ignorant.

Given the last few elections in Minnesota, #2 isn’t the dumbest strategery .

To: The Minneapolis City Council
From: Mitch Berg, Unruly Peasant
Re: Threats

Minneapolis City Council Members,

In this Channel 4 story, you are individually and as a body shocked, shocked, that “activists” are getting more angry, even borderline-violent, in their interactions with…the City Council.

In this case, it was over a vote re…it doesn’t matter that much, except it’s something moderately routine, except for the “activists” involved.

Anyway (with emphasis added by me):

After the failed vote, protestors began to shout and scream at councilmembers and approach the dais. The meeting had to go into recess and the protestors were removed before it continued.

During the shouting, an aide for Councilmember Michael Rainville says specific threats were made against Rainville’s family. Councilmember Emily Koski joined Rainville in filing a police report against the protestors.

“You can’t have democracy if you don’t allow the democratic process to happen and if you have someone that is fearful for their lives or that of their families because of a vote that they took, that is wrong,” said Mayor Jacob Frey.

Anyone but me remembering when Mayor McDreamy all but told the police to stand down in the face of threats to Trump supporters when they rallied at the Target Center?

Democracy didn’t matter so much then, I guess…

…but that’s a matter for another rant.

The answer comes from Economics 101 – a class no Minneapolis City Council person passed before the class (like the City Council) was taken over by the people from the Grievance Stuidies department; when you reward, or fail to provide negative consequences for, negative behavior that someone sees as benefitting them, you will get more of that behavior.

The Twin Cities “activist” class blocked freeways – and those who objected got the negative consequences.

They attacked Trump supporters at rallies – and were practically feted by the city.

Then, after they ran riot after the death of George Floyd, and the Mayor and Governor decided to follow Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s dubious example and give the mob “space to destroy” Baltimore, they threw the mob a bone; not just an entire (majority black, Latino and immigrant) neighborhood, but an entire police precinct, thinking the mob was some toddler that needed to work out his aggressions, and was shocked, shocked that they just kept going?

In confrontation after confrontation, the city o Minneapolis, and the Walz Administration, has shown those who were willing to resort to violence that not only would there be no consequences, but it would positively help them get their way.

You sowed the poo-storm. You are reaping the poo-storm.

Well, you’re starting to. You’re discovering that, in a Minneapolis (and Minnesota) run by the Grievance Studies department, expecting to be safe is a privilege.

Unexpectedly

That is all.