Alan Shen’s website talks about his family’s history with the Chinese Communist party. Give it a read!

And here’s today’s music list:

It’s high time we updated the “DFL Dictionary” – which, as you read it, is clearly a product of a more innocent time.

When I do, one phrase I’m going to add is the “Urban Life Theme Park”.

To wit:

Urban Life Theme Park: (noun) A neighborhood, populated mostly by white middle-class “white “progressives” with Urban Progressive Privilege, mostly from the “laptop class” (non-profit, governmental, academic or petty professional) and their “fur babies” (but, signally, not the people who work at their restaurants, bars, coffee shops brunch places, pet spas and doggie daycares). Technically in the city for purposes of urban virtue-signaling (especially trying to one-up people from suburbs or rural areas), but economically and socially insulated from all but the most banal urban issues.

Example: this guy:

I can smell a 2025 edition of the DFL Dictionary brewing.

This came out on Tuesday:

So many responses:

• Please, Lord – let him file that case with the Roberts court.  I beg this of you.
• So let’s make sure we’ve got this straight – a mentally ill 13 year old in Minnesota is clearly competent to decide to chemically neuter themself, but an 18 year old who’s passed carry permit training and has a clean criminal record can’t defend their home and life?

Reason has been annihilated.

So, the housing permit numbers for the Twin Cities are in. 

And if putting people in houses is  your goal, they are…uh, not good:

Saint Paul:

And Minneapolis:

Was it rent control? Bidenomics?

Why choose?

So Kamala Harris is both an incumbent, and “fresh and new”.

This would seem to be an inconsistency and liability to normal candidates – who’d be getting questioned about this by a press that actually did its job.

But we don’t have that press:

Our actual press is more of a Praetorian Guard:

Kamala Harris is having it both ways as she hits the campaign trail after the Democratic National Convention, taking credit for parts of President Joe Biden’s record in rallies staged in front of Air Force Two while casting herself as a new leader who rails against “the politics of the past.”

In every presidential cycle candidates run on experience or freshness, but Harris so far appears to be successfully harmonizing two seemingly competing messages, much to the frustration of former President Donald Trump and his allies.

 

And, shucks, the AP isn’t going to do anything to change that, are they?

Governor Walz hasn’t done a single substantive interview with a “Journalist” that isn’t throwing him sloppy kisses (Esme Murphy, Jason DeRusha) since before the ’22 election.

But this?

And our erstwhile “fourth estate”, the ones who are supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable?

They’re yukking it up:

Not sure “peak Minnesota” means what Ms. Lopez thinks it means. 

Bill Glahn at the Center of the American Experiment tracked energy usage in MInnesota for one hot ugly day, this past Monday:

“Renewables” provide 8% of the energy.

Somehow, though, they’ll be ready to take the entire load (and all those mandated EVs) by 2040?

Reminds me of this classic discourse on solving difficult problems:

I’m going to guess the “miracle”, in this case, will be that everyone involved in setting the policy will be out of government and cashing fat non-profit or lobbying checks by the time energy becomes unaffordable to proles.

Once nice thing about being a conservative these days…

…is that all your “conspiracy theories” turn out to be true.

The Minnesota DFL Regime. 

They don’t talk with the press, unless they’ve been vetted as utterly innocuous (Esme Murphy, Jason DeRusha) or affirmatively friendly (Rochelle Olson).

No, the sum total of the regime’s “transparency” is this time of the summer, when you get video of them wandering about the State Fair in their “Just Plain Folks!” costumes, eating junk food on camera. 

I mean, I suppose it’s easier than answering actual questions…

This story by Fox9 is badly written, and there’s very little about the subject of the tweet.

But to the extent it’s true?  It’s exactly as predicted:

When government stops providing the order that justifies all those taxes, so they can raise families, run businesses, earn livings, they will take the task of providing that order into their own hands. 

And eventually, especially if the city takes the side of disorder, those people will be rough folks who don’t talk with cops or respect due process.

Hard to believe it’s been thirty years since Guy Harvey Baker – a Gulf War Marine veteran with, clearly, mental illness issues – killed officers Ron Ryan, Tim Jones, and a police dog named Laser (story from 2014).

The PiPress had a fairly good retrospective of the events – with one crucial omission:   

Ryan, 26, was checking on a man — Guy Harvey Baker — who was sleeping in a car in a parking lot at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood about 7 a.

He picked up a .38-caliber revolver from his lap and shot Ryan.

Scores of officers joined the search for Ryan’s killer. Jones had the day off, but he came in to help.

Laser picked up Baker’s trail about 10 a.m. on Conway Street, not far from Johnson Parkway.

Mara Gottfried’s story, ten years ago, was a good retelling.  But she leaves out how the police actually found Baker’s “trail” on Conway later that morning – and, in a way, the story of a man who is both the story’s unsung hero and third (human) victim.

Lyle Granlund – 48 years old, at the time – was having breakfast with his kids on the upper level of a three-plex he owned across from the parking lot.  One of his sons yelled that there’d been a shooting.  Granlund grabbed a handgun and loaded three rounds – all he could grab at the moment – and went to his window.  He saw officer Ryan on the ground, and saw Baker driving toward another woman, standing in the doorway of a nearby apartment building, apparently getting ready to rub out the only known witness to the shooting. 

Granlund – an expert marksman – pondered taking out Baker.  But he held up, worried that the Ramsey County attorney, the infamously anti-gun Tom Foley, would prosecute him.  So he opted to fire two shots through Baker’s back window, shattering it and leaving the rounds (intentionally) in Baker’s dashboard, to hopefully scare Baker off and mark the car for the police.  He saved his third round, in case Baker decided to come for him.  But no – Baker accelerated away from the scene of the Ryan shooting…

…and it was by the shattered window that the SPPD found Baker’s trail, a couple hours later, nearby on Conway Street.

I interviewed Granlund later that year, for the old Gun Owners Action League (a predecessor of GOCRA and MN Gun Owners Caucus) newsletter.  Granlund told me that while the SPPD remained officially mum about his contribution to that day’s search, more than one senior Saint Paul cop had come to his door in the following days, paying their respects to his effort to save their fellow officer.  A lieutenant left him his SPPD tie pin – a gesture that Granlund, in our interview, still found deeply touching.

I wrote about Granlund again, almost ten years ago, in a piece that includes a lot of useful background and  a link to a now-disappeared column by Ruben Rosario. 

 Granlund was right, of course; Foley did try to prosecute him.  Their attempt to get him for “reckless discharge” foundered when the police lab found Granlund’s two rounds exactly where he said they’d be in Baker’s car.  The Ramsey County Attorney’s office dropped its  attempt to prosecute Granlund only when the SPPD told Foley he’d get no cooperation from the police.  Someone listing himself as a retired SPPD cop tells the story in this thread. 

Oh yeah – and Granlund was denied a Minnesota carry permit; the SPPD that (quietly) regarded him as a hero also didn’t think he had any reason to need one. 

Gottfried picks up the story from 30 years ago today.

Baker heard the dog whining outside a fish house where he was hiding, saw Jones through the window and, through the side of the shack, shot the 36-year-old officer with the gun had stolen from Ryan. When Laser bit his leg, he shot the dog, too.

No prosecutor will ever issue an indictment, and no jury will ever hear the case – but in a very real if indirect way, Officer Jones was killed by official gun-control hysteria. 

The tragedy didn’t end that day.  When I spoke with Granlund, probably in September or October, he was clearly upset that he’d not been able to save Jones by killing Baker.  It went much deeper than that; Granlund spent the next ten years depressed about the episode.  He died in 2004 of a heart attack, at age 58, and is buried in the same cemetery as Officer Ryan. 

The lesson?  Let nobody tell you that an armed citizen can’t do immense good; one, and God only knows how many more, people are alive today because of Granlund’s action. 

And let no weasel government official get away with terrorizing the law-abiding citizen without a fight – preferably ending with a prosecutor sent to the unemployment line at the polls.

The families of the slain officers are the main focus of Gottfried’s story, of course.  I’ll urge prayers – or whatever your worldview does – for the families on what has to be a miserable anniversary.

This is an update of a piece that first appeared in SITD ten years ago today.

Look, it’s not like I need more reasons not to like Governor Walz. 

He’s fake.  He’s a product of the Democrat propaganda machine.  He’s a wannabe tyrant. 

But more personally?

Listen to this bit here:

I’ll cop to it – I spent a good chunk of my early years in the Twin Cities with a big chip on my shoulder; the city mice were often dicks to the country mice.  And though it’s been over thirty years, I’ve still got a short fuse on the subject. 

So I’m asking rather than declaring; is there a way to listen to that and not hear “you hicks gotta know your place?”

“Mitch, why are you so ambivalent about self-driving cars?”

Because I work with software engineers, and I know how screamingly unreliable and charmlessly quirky anything to do with software is until the technology has years or decades to mature?

Which is annoying enough when you’re trying to make a grocery list or listen to a song.  

Getting into a metal box and clipping along at 30-60MPH? 

Hard pass. 

It only took the Strib six, almost seven, months to get around to “correcting” their headline about Gov. and Mrs. Klink’s, uh, “misspeaking” about their infertility treatment:

When in doubt, distrusting the Strib is always appropriate.

George W. Bush’s Air Guard record.

Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

The Russian Collusion hoax.

The “Perfectly Fine People” hoax.

“White Supremacists started/did most of the rioting in Minneapolis!”

“Kids are coming to school hungry in Minnesota”.

And now this:

A PBS senior corresponent apologized Wednesday after falsely telling her audience thart former President Donald Trump tried to talk Israel out of a cease-fire amid its ongoing war in Gaza.

Judy Woodruff passed off blame for the blunder by “clarifying” that she based the flimsy scoop on outside reporting that she had read byefroe broadcasting from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago.

“The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the prime minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now, because it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign”, Woodruff told a PBS roundtable”. 

 

Woodruff posted a tweet “Clarifying” her regret that she’d been caught:

But it’s out there. Democrat tweeps are chanting it like it’s fact. The intellectual gerbils that make up the Democrat base are parroting merrily away.

Because, well perception is reality.  And who controls what people perceive, anyway? 

Could happen to anyone. 

Hey – wasn’t “misinformation” public enemy number one?

Berg’s Seventh Law is getting more and more inerrant.

This can’t be good news for Democrats:

I’m waiting for the inevitable ACLU lawsuit in response. 

I have a hard time describing the contempt this bit here makes me feel:

She left the windows open (presumably at the Governor’s mansion, safely dug in down on “old money” Summit Avenue, miles from the actual rioting) and “smelled the tires burning”, because it was a “touchstone to what was happening”. 

I smelled it a little closer up. 

It was less a “touchstone” than it was my neighborhood – the one I’ve invested a few decades in – getting looted and burned by DFL voters. 

Like all communists, Gwen Walz sees everything in theoretical terms.  She’s one of the ones who is literally in the dacha, now.  She can afford to. 

The rest of us?  Not so much.

SCENE:  On Broadway at Central, in Northeast Minneapolis.  It’s late fall; winter is clearly on the way.  Stray papers blow down the street, nearly deserted in, visibly chilly.  Outside the boarded up remains of what had been a breakfast place catering to “laptop-class” white progressive “new urbanites”, one of many boarded up stores on that once-lively stretch of street, a small group of people stand around a fire in a trash pail. 

The group includes Tyrese and TayShawnda GROVES, a 40-something black couple; Steven SPALSKI, a 31 year old white male with his girlfriend, 30 year old Summer BLEAKER; 58-year-old Cindy HARLESS; Juan and Marcella VEGA, both 50, with their 11 year old son Arturo; and 45 year old Thai NGUYEN..

A police car creeps down the rutted road, dodging potholes, the officer avoiding the gaze of the people around the fire. 

TYRESE GROVES:  (to Spalski):  So what did you used to do?

SPALSKI:  You mean…before the joy?

(The group laughs, mirthlessly)

SPALSKI:  I was a graphic designer for a startup that had just done its IPO. 

BLEAKER:  He was in line for a ton of stock options. 

MARCELLA VEGA:  What happened?

SPALSKI:  (sighing with a weight greater than his years):  All our customers went bankrupt. 

TAYSHAWNDA GROVES:  Same here.  We ran a little grocery store over North.  We were getting by…

TYRESE GROVES: …til the “anti-gouging price controls” hit.  

NGUYEN:  F***ing “anti-gouging act”

 (Several of the people spit onto the dirty sidewalk). 

GROVES (To Juan and Thai)  You?

JUAN VEGA:  I ran a little repair shop.   Couldn’t get parts anymore. 

NGUYEN:  Thai restaurant.  All our wholesalers went bust. 

TAYSHAWNDA GROVES:  Well, they took care of the “gouging”. 

(Bitter laughs ensue)

MARCELLA VEGA:  At least we had all that “joy”.

(General murmurs of disgust was the group warms their hands).

A Subaru, belching oil smoke, pulls up.  Two women – 27  year old Emily FRONTENAC and 48 year old Emily MONTPETIT-EMILY, roll down a window.  FRONTENAC’s hair shows little flecks of long-neglected blue dye at the end of long dirty-blond roots.  MONTPETIT-EMILY, a blocky-looking woman, stares ahead grimly.

FRONTENAC:  Hey – do you know the guy who’s selling the gluten-free eggs?

THAI:  I might.

JUAN VEGA:  Hey, just a minute ( points at the shirt MONTPETIT-EMILY is wearing,  which looks a little like this…

JUAN VEGA:  You’re one of the “pissed off women” who dragged Harris and Piglet over the line into the white house!

MONTPETIT-EMILY:  Er…uh…

SPALSKI:  You’re the ones that brought us all the “Joy”!

FRONTENAC:  Uh….

JUAN VEGA:  I had a good life before you “pissed off white progressive women” tanked the economy!

FRONTENAC:  We saved abortion rights…

HARLESS:  I can’t feed my grandkids abortion rights!

FRONTENAC:  But…

TAYSHAWNDA GROVES:  Hey, it’s a couple of the “pissed off women!”

JUAN VEGA:  You always knew better than everyone.

SPALSKI:  I had a life before you and your idiot president!

(Arturo Vega picks up a small rock and whips it at the Subary, dinging off the door)

FRONTENAC: Heyyy!

NGUYEN, HARLESS and TYRESE GROVES pick up handfuls of rocks and garbage and start pelting the car, which accelarates away as SPALSKI kicks at the back bumper. 

MARCELLA VEGA:  Feeling the joy yet, b***h*s?

JUAN VEGA sails a rock down the street, cracking the Subaru’s back window. 

TAYSHAWNDA GROVES:  I’ll show you pissed off women…

(General murmurs of asssent)

NGUYEN:  So what are you all having for dinner tonight?

BLEAKER:  Probably more joy. 

(MIrthless laughter).

SPALSKI:  Never gets old, does it?

And SCENE.

To: Senator Tina Smith
From:  Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re;  Democracy

Senator,

Yesterday you (via  your social  media intern) tweeted this:

“History” may mark those words, if it’s written by someone dumb enough to be a Tina Smith voter.

But – and saying for sake of argument that Donald Trump was in fact any way a threat to “democracy” between election day and Joe Biden’s coronation – the big story is our constitutional system worked.   It easily dealt with whatever “threat” Trump might have been. 

Your personality cultism is more appropriate for a Maoist dictatorship…

…but I suspect you know that, and are OK with it, since you will likely be one of the people in the dachas rather than the gulag, at least for a while.

But stop calling it democracy. 

That is all.

Governor Klink and other state officials are fond of trumpeting “studies” that seem to come out weekly, telling us Minnesota is doing just great.

Klink’s enforcer, Keith Ellison, did it the other day:

Figuring that this observation contradicts everything our lying eyes are gelling us about realiity around us, I figured I’d click through to read the actual study.

CNBC scored all 50 states on 128 metrics in 10 broad categories of competitiveness. Each category is weighted based on how frequently states use them as a selling point in economic development marketing materials. That way, our study ranks the states based on the attributes they use to sell themselves.

So, it weights the  quality of states’ sales pitches?

And apparently subjective weighting counts for a lot, since Minnesota came in fourth place for “quality of life” (measured how?) but 35th for “cost of doing business” and 24th for “economy”. 

It appears to be a measure of a state’s commitment to happy talk. 

Tim Walz loves him some Chinese Communism. 

Well, at the very least he loved it, back when he was teaching kids “social studies”:

There appears to be precious little evidence that he changed anything but  his surface decorations (during 12 years as a “moderate” while campaigning in the rural 1st CD). 

Dear “Democrat Governors Association”:

Perhaps this isn’t the image  of  “energy” you want to attribute to “the Midwest”:

A couple of obese politburo members with a penchant for authoritarian shenanigans?

Please see to this.

The Entire Midwest

When Governor Klink and the DFL legislative majority were making the case to squander the “surplus” [1], they put “cutting poverty by 30%” as one of their goals. 

So – how is poverty in Minnesota doing?

Well – we don’t know. 

Official poverty stats conveniently trail real time by a couple of years. 

Official poverty rates trail real time by a couple of years. In 2022, the official poverty rate in MN was 9.6% – up from 9.3% in 2021, and an even 9% in 2020.

So at some point – 2023? 2024? 2025? – the poverty rate needs to drop to 6.4% – a rate the state hasn’t seen in recent memory.

I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and guess the rate isn’t dropping to a historic low next year.  

Any action on that bet?

[1] Which, let’s not forget, wasn’t really a surplus

I’ve got a question for the hive mind of this blog.

Yesterday, Governor Klink made perhaps his most, to coin a term, “weird” attack on JD Vance:

Now, what he’s talking about is theWhich brings up the question – does the term “Runza” occur in Minnesota at all?

It’s apparently named after a chain of burger joints in Nebraska. 

And on that burger joint’s menu is a meat pie.

In North Dakota, it’d be called a Fleischkikla (German-Russian for the German Fleischküchle. In Northeast Minneapolis, it’s a Pierog. There are other names in other languages. They probably have a local term in Ohio that would flummox Klink

But in all my years in Minnesota – admittedly almost none of it in the First CD – I’ve never ever heard the term Runza. 

Am I missing something? 

Or is this literally the dumbest attempt at a dunk that Walz has ever tried?

The Strib’s Rochelle Olson is at the Democrat National Convention, and, uh…

…well…

I mean, I can’t possibly be the only one that notices, can I?