Q: “But Mitch – why do you say science “journalism“ is a spiraling vortex of ignorance, credulity and stupidity?“
A: Oh, no reason in particular“
Bonus question: how will intersectional theory affect the thesis? Especially if you look at it post-structurally?
Millennial parents, themselves raised by insipid helicopter parents, are reproducing.
Minneapolis Police Chief tells residents to prepare to be robbed, to hand over cars, wallets and cell phones, to obey criminals.
Wonder if lack of law enforcement will affect the rape situation around the U of M? Outstate parents still thinking of sending their daughters to college in Minneapolis might want to reconsider.
Speaking of reconsidering . . . do Minneapolis crime victims have any thoughts on reviving Stand Your Ground legislation?Joe Doakes
It’s been a little depressing, reading the number of Powderhorn Park residents on some of the neighborhood social media who think that they deserve what they’ve got coming to them.
And when you think about it, they’re right, although not for the reasons they think. They think their “privilege” makes them justifiable targets.
Call it schadenfreud, but I say it’s “60 years of voting DFL as if it’s the only option you have”.
But there are a few that are getting the message.
The Democrats are proposing Kamala Harris as the next President (after, let’s be honest, Creepy Joe’s inevitable resignation or removal).
It’s not like I’m in any danger of voting for any Democrat, ever – that shouldn’t be a surprise.
But I wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris if she were a fiscal conservative free-marketeering Second Amendendment advocate (which she has never been and will never be).
Let’s just cut to the chase: there is no circle of hell cold enough for prosecutor with Harris’s dubious relationship with honesty, ethics and morality.
She’s not ethically fit to be President – even in the post-Bill-and-Hillary Clinton sense of the term. Or even the post-Trump sense, if you’re wired that way.
She’s not morally fit to be mulch.
Minneapolis businesses destroyed when the City failed – no, abnegated, competely – at its responsibility to deliver the public safety and order that taxpayers expect…
Light leaving “moral” today won’t reach Minneapolis’s city goverment until long after Mayor McDreamy’s great-grandchildren are collecting social security.
All the people working from home because of the Democrats’ Covid-19 response think they are essential. No, their jobs were declared essential to prevent widespread unrest, but the individuals performing the function are not essential. They are largely interchangeable personnel units.
If a job can be done from my basement in Como Park, it could be done from a warehouse in Bombay, India. Think about this Summer as a giant dry run for outsourcing your job.
The Luddites were right, in the end.Joe Doakes
That’s true in all too many cases – although there are quite a few jobs where that has historically worked out very badly, mine (fingers crossed) among ’em.
But is this something that’s being harnessed to pave the way for “Universal Basic Income”? Which is another term for “Universal Dependence on Government”?
“Peaceful protesters” in Portland attack an elderly woman with paint, berate her in front of a threatening crowd.
So by my count, that’s a couple of dozen swarthy, sweaty “Anti”-Fa thugs, as well as the castrati man-buns that travel with ’em, teaming up on an elderly woman. Probably the only way to make it a fair fight.
Reminds me of this:
In the thirties, Brownshirts, Hitler Youth and (as in the pic above) German cops rode roughshod over older, less physically-adroit Jews, humiliating them in public for sport…
…before moving on to nastier plans.
There is going to be a backlash.
I’m fairly sure Big Left is counting on it, in fact.
A little background: I support capital punishment for every reason but one – the inevitability, whether through accident or deliberate prosecutorial malfeasance, of executing innocent people. It’s already happened at least once, and at least 14 executions in the last since the death penalty was rebuilding a 19 7600s of people have been released directly from death row, their convictions “beyond a reasonable doubt“ vacated, very frequently because of prosecutorial misconduct.
That’s a sign, if you think about it, somethings very, very wrong with capital punishment.
Kamala Harris is one of those things that is very, very wrong.
I have a little personal background with a case of a man wrongly convicted in a grisly rape and murder case,
He spent those 22 years on death row because a prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence that would have led to his acquittal in the initial trial.
There is no circle in hell cold enough for a prosecutor who withholds exculpatory evidence in any case – least of all a death penalty case.
Kamala Harris has a long history of playing fast and loose with ethics rules, including gundecking exculpatory evidence in capital cases.
People like that aren’t fit to be president of the United States.
People like that aren’t fit to be mulch, morally speaking.
Democrats and the media hyped Covid as the deadliest plague ever. Citizens panicked. Hand sanitizer flew off the shelves. Foreign companies rushed to fill the demand. Now, FDA warns us not to use some of those products because they’re contaminated.
Even more suffering to lay at the feet of Democrats trying to make life in America worse, so people will vote President Trump out of office, to make it stop.
Joe Doakes
I’m just mortified at all that prime beer and spirit production being diverted to sanitation products.
In the late 1980s, Gallup took a poll about race relations among African-Americans. About a third said racism had an effect on their lives.
Thirty years later – during the regime of the nation’s first African-American president – that percentage had doubled.
The graph over the past 20 years or so looks like this:
Note the beginning of the slide – the middle of an election where the Democrats needed to pull out all the stops to counter the Tea Party and general dissatisfaction with the collapse of the healthcare system.
Unexpected?
Hardly. It was by design.
Graph depicts the prevalence of the terms “Race” and “Racism” in our “elite’ media’s narrative:
Why, it’s almost as if the “elite” media needed to create a crisis for the “elite” political class not to waste.
Remember – “race conflict” is merely a delivery system for “class conflict”.
Is Rob Reiner really so stupid that he believes Gettysburg is a “monumente to white supremacy“?
Or is he merely counting on progressive voters all being that stupid?
It’s a tossup in my book.
Dozens of businesses are expecting to leave downtown Minneapolis.
A new survey by the Downtown Council shows 45 business owners say they are considering leaving downtown – citing the lack of people working or socializing downtown – and the idea that the police department could be dismantled.
Though they won’t say which businesses are considering pulling out of downtown, the council says one of the businesses employs 600 people.
That could mean a lot of empty spaces.
On the up side, I suppose “moving” implies some intent to survive.
Wonder how many downtown businesses have closed for good without making it onto any surveys?
This is the kind of analysis the jury is likely to hear in the Floyd case, which is why I’ve been saying all along that it’s going to be a tough case to win.
Not saying this guy is correct, or that the jury will find his analysis persuasive, but this column shows why serving on the jury is not as simple as watching the video before voting to convict. The defense gets a turn, too.
Joe Doakes
Attorney friends tell me Earl Gray is the real deal, defense-wise.
In other words, buckle in and pray for an April blizzard.
Minneapolis launches the next phase of the PR battle over the destruction of East Lake Street:
Of course, the story soft-pedals Mayor McDreamy’s pandering to the mob – reported here on Thursday, May 27, long before the rest of the media got to it – that Mayor Frey had ordered the Third Precinct to be essentially abandoned.
An over-his head mayor and a bunch of gauzy idealist staffers more suited to hosting grand openings for bike lanes than leading a city in crisis.
A passive-aggressive governor reverting back to his gym teacher background (“you didn’t specify the ages and MOSes of the requested guardsmen, or their deployments down to squad level! Do another cruncher, Frey!”).
You’re in great hands, Minnesota.
It’s been percolating about “prog” social media lately – the notion that Trump, should he lose the election, wouldn’t relinquish office.
Never mind how, or whether it’s remotely plausible. All that is necessary for the left-wing noise machine is to get the chatters chattering.
But as to “why would they be spreading such palpable poppycock?”
If you’re a regular reader, you know Berg’s Seventh Law.
And if you know Berg’s Seventh Law, you already have your answer.
It’s easy to “joke” – especially living as a Republican in places like Saint Paul – that “Mike Judge’s cult classic Idiocracy isn’t a comedy, it’s a documentary”.
And for exactly the reason Judge lampooned…
So why are we supposedly getting dumber?
Previous research has found that women of higher intelligence are having fewer children, meaning women of lower intelligence are driving population growth, according to the study.
Over time, experts say, that would affect the average IQ of a population.
…or “lampooned”, as the case may be.
It’s only funny if you don’t look at the world around you.
First Amendment of the Constitution protects the fundamental right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.
60 days of rioting, burning down buildings, destroying property, is not what the Framers contemplated. Those are not peaceful protests so they’re not covered by the First Amendment. They are Insurrection, which must be put down to preserve civil order.Portland needs to announce that we’ve had our little fun, but we’re done now. Starting tonight, anybody suspected of Riot will be shot on sight. Then shoot a few people, “a whiff of the grape,” to encourage the others.
The time-out from reality is over. We are going back to constitutional republic.
Joe Doakes
The government of Portland – like that of Minneapolis, except apparently the Charter Commission – is so dependent on the (politically connected parents and aunts and uncles of the) mob in the streets, they wouldn’t dare raise a finger to them.
Here’s where to find out more about the effort to recall Governor Klink.
Er…Walz. Governor Walz. My bad.
Also – Doug Willetts is running for MN Senate in SD51 – the greater Eagan area.
Can you imagine the tone if the two “idealistic young lawyers” in this story had worn MAGA hats?
I’m sure those young lawyers will do just fine pleading “moment of madness’ in court.
Mr. Spoor (a prog lawyer who has the most wonderfully occoponymous name, if you speak any Dutch at all) says that young people are prone to doing stupid things (true), and that we should have some forgiveness in our hearts. Throwing a firebomb shouldn’t rate 35 years in federal prison.
But forgiveness without atonement is meaningless – and I wager a shiny new quarter that the overentitled, over-schooled, under-educated wannabe Che Guevaras in this story feel no remorse whatsoever.
Regret over being caught? Sure.
Remorse? That’s for plebes.
The Czech Republic is debating implementing a constitutional guarantee in line with our second amendment:
A few years ago, the amendment passed through the lower house of the Czech parliament but was stopped in the upper house. The proposed language read as so: “The right to defend one’s own life or the life of another person with a weapon is guaranteed under the conditions laid down by law.”null
Since then, the center-right Civic Democratic Party has won a majority in the Czech Senate. And this week, the Czech government unexpectedly announced it would endorse the plan to add the language. The amendment now needs a 60 percent supermajority in both chambers to become — somewhat appropriately — only the second amendment to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.
Former president of the Czech Police — and the most vocal champion of the bill — Martin Červíček, says that it’s meant to counter the “disarmament tendencies” of the European Union. Which sounds like a worthwhile cause.
Powerline has a column on President Trump’s decision to revoke President Obama’s rule on AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing). The Left claims the decision is racist. It’s not.
President Obama wanted to force racial integration in nice neighborhoods, which white people in nice neighborhoods don’t oppose. Nobody is trying to block blacks from buying homes in Woodbury or Wayzata, for example. People in nice neighborhoods oppose forced class integration, because of the behavioral differences between classes
Florence King, a writer from the South, explained how Southern ladies distinguish classes:
If you live in a run-down little house with a beat-up car in the front yard but the car runs, you’re ordinary.
If you live in a run-down little house with a beat-up car in the front yard but the car doesn’t run, you’re common.
If you live in a run-down little house with pieces of a car in the front yard, you’re trash.
That’s why people in nice neighborhoods oppose AFFH. It has nothing to do with race. We don’t want trash – of any race – moving into the neighborhoods we worked so hard to reach.
Joe Doakes
But remember – all “racial conflict” is really class conflict being re-painted with “race” to make it socially acceptable on the left.
Stopped at the liquor store on the way home. As I was walking to the store, a car pulled into the handicap spot.
Beater car, young black male driver, young black woman passenger. Came in behind me wearing a bandana. No signs of handicap. No sticker on the car. No handicap license plate.I had to actually grit my teeth not to say something. I know, could have been a white man, Asian man, any young man ignoring the rules and parking in the wrong spot. But it exacerbated The Stereotype of a young black man who thinks he’s above the rules because of his race. That, or is too stupid to follow the rules.
Either way, he’s a threat to orderly Society. People who don’t follow the rules, starting with little ones and working on up, undermine the foundation of civilization.
So I shot him.
Joe Doakes
#SatireOnSoManyLevels
Betcha Sally Jo Sorenson has a field day with this one. (Is Sally Jo still a thing? I have no idea).
“Any argument that begins with a dictionary definition of the argument’s key term can be disregarded without further thought”
— Mitch Berg, “Berg’s Law”
From Brittanica:
Satire, artistic form, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, parody, caricature, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to inspire social reform.
Satire Is The New News
I’m old enough to remember a lot of things that would amaze people who weren’t born before I became an adult.
And when TVs had antennae, and were the centerpieces of one’s living room.
I remember when phones had cords, and phones without cords had a range of feet, not miles, and cell phones without cords were symbols of wealth and status that marked you as a junk bond king, a hip hop mogul or an oil sheikh. Also when “junk bond kings” existed, hip hop wasn’t a business of moguls, and oil sheiks were the bad guys, before they were the good guys, before they became the bad guys again.
And perhaps most jarringly, I remember when satire wasn’t more accurate at relating the goings-on in the world around its than the “journalism” of the day.
Those days are long behind us.
Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself
My name is Mitch Berg. My personal story is of little importance – but I’ll cruise through it quickly here, since it’ll help explain where some of the material comes from,
I was born, grew up, started a career in radio,and went to high school and college in Jamestown, North Dakota. In that order.
After graduating from college, I moved to the Twin Cities, seeking a career as a rock singer. I accidentally got back into radio, and worked as a producer and, for a spectacular year, a talk show host; my promise was so apparent, management put me on the air from 2-4AM Monday mornings. And I fell in love with it; the electric crackle of the air in the studio, the feeling that I was riding on the pulse of the nation – or at least the part of the nation that was awake at 3AM Monday morning – and, most of all, having a voice. For a glorious year or so, I could speak, and thousands – dozens? I don’t know – would hear me.
I figured I’d make it my career.
Most of the staff got laid off.
I knocked around a bunch of jobs – freelance news reporting, voice over artist, mover and, finally, night club DJ – a job also known as “bottoming out in life”.
About that time, I got married. ‘
I had two kids.
I changed careers – first into writing instruction manuals for terrible software, then into designing better software.
I got divorced.
By this point, it had been well over a decade since I felt I had a “voice”, at least outside my house.
Technology was about to change that.
That brings us up to 2002.
I Wanna Make Some History
In the winter of 2002, I was working at a rapidly-failing Dotcom startup. I was bored. I was underutilized – I could only look for a better job so many hours a day. I was a fairly new single parent, and stress notwithstanding, I was bored stiff
I read an article in Time magazine – back when it was still printed on paper, and also had more readers than Cracked.com – about a new trend, “blogging”.
The blog has been sort of passé lately, surpassed by the slick visuals, instant gratification and intellectual junk food found on social media.
But back then – having hit me right about the time I was starting to keenly feel the lack of a “voice” – it hit me like a bag of cliché about high-impact events in your life.
I started my blog, Shot In The Dark (Shotinthedark.info) that evening, right after I got the kids to bed. I’ve been writing it five days a week since then.
This happened during the frenetic year and a half between the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq.
Which led to my first, initially satirical, observation.
75 years ago today the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
It was dropped by a B29 Superfortress – a plane that was literally built in parallel with the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb, and cost as much to bring into service and was in many ways more difficult to get built than the bomb itself.
As troubled by development problems and cost overruns as most other procurement projects today – early versions had an alarming tendency for engine fires to melt the wing spar, causing wings to break off and the plane to go into an uncontrollable spiral – but carried into action on a wave of wartime emergency money, the Army Air Force brass were seriously worried that the Superfortress would be ready to do the job.
Worried enough to come up with an alternate plan, with the only other plane in the world that could have carried the two early, huge atomic bombs.
Here’s the story.
By the way – if you’re a history geek, “Mark Felton Productions” is a treasure trove of the sort of history you just don’t get in most history books – the kind of off-the-beaten-path stories First Ringer and me focused on in our “World War 2 – Fact and Myth” series, way back when. It’s very much worth a watch.
Mayor Frey is going public with his complaints that Governor Walz stonewalled him on sending the National Guard.
Walz’s response shows Frey was right…
…and that Walz – aka “Governor Klink” – still has a little bit of that high school gym teacher in him, passive-aggressively torturing the wimpy kid.
Or perhaps, in this case, Dwight Schrute:
Either way, the former NCO seems to have a pretty terrible opinion of the Guard:
So…note to future mayors: When you go to Governor Klink to ask for the guard:
Got that?
Now, let’s not for a moment pretend this public “squabble” between Mayor McDreamy and Governor Klink is anything but a public charade designed to give both the Mayor and the Governor political cover.
All I can say is, you’re in great hands, Minnesota.
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