Tonight’s the anniversary of my first. night ever “soloing” on the radio. I’d been at KEYJ, learning the job a couple of weeks; I’d worked a couple of shifts with DIck Ingstad over my shoulder making sure I knew what I was doing.

And tonight, I was on my own, working the evening shift.

The following Saturday, I’d switch to my regular shift – Saturday mornings from sign on (in the studio at 5AM, start broadcasting at 5:55AM, on the air to 3PM).

But I needed to get through this evening first.

KEYJ’s control board.

And for whatever reason, I remember the first three records I played.

First up – this pretty obscure Art Garfunkel solo effort.

I guarantee you, the only reason I remember this song at all is the fact that it was the first song I ever played on the air.

Then? Cliff Richard’s last Top 40 single:

Which, I”ll be honest, I still kinda enjoy.

And then came Dan Peek – former member of America, who’d turned into a solo, Christian artist:

It occurs to me, I may be the only person who remembers any of them.

We’ve known it in Minnesota for a while.  But the rest of the nation needs to know. 

Governor Walz has a tenuous relationship with the truth on topic after topic.

I want to put together the ultimate compendium of Tim Walz’s lies. And I need your help .

If you can recall an episode about which the Governor lied, drop it in the comments.  If you’ve got a link to “the receipts”, so much the better.  

I want this to be a resource for everyone who needs to prompt everyone to remember – or learn for the first time – what a, er, creative fella the Governor is. 

Pass the word. 

“Life is full of ironies – if you’re stupid”
 — P.J. O’Rourke

So I’ll be a little stupid.  This was the DFL Monday night:

The party that gave us MNSure, MNLARS, and the entire parade of MN IT hits…

…is heckling the grownups about software glitches.

These are the people calling Republicans “weird”.   In this case, the Democrat party’s leading public intellect, James Carville. 

Here’s his measured, Socratic response to Fox’s Jesse Waters’ attacks on Tim Walz:

Has anyone told him that is, er, suggestion is actually what “trans men” are supposed to do?

He might not do lunch on K Street again…

Long ago, there were a couple of regular-ish commenters who felt the need to reinforce their claims by invoking information “from neighbors” living nearby them, who just happened to be world-class experts on the subject – but couldn’t be named, because they didn’t want to get pelted with questions from people from a blog. So we’d just have to take their word for it. 

It’s easier than looking up data to support your case, and it sounds more credible than just saying “in my opinion, yadda yadda”. 

It comes, I think, from being either being insecure in one’s own capability to hold up their end of the argument, or a need to stretch six square feet of factual tablecloth to over ten square feet of table. 

Governor Walz has been having a week of it.  We talked yesterday about his episode butting his time in the MN Guard up against a trip to Afghanistan he took as a congressman, without adding that little change of context in there. 

But it goes on:

Like Walz, I grew up on the Great Plains.

There are plenty of terms for “a blue-collar or ag-class person from a physically and/or socially isolated place”.

That term is never “Hillbilly”.   That term doesn’t occur organically on the Plains.   It comes via the media (“Beverly…”, “…Elegy”, dozens of country songs), or from the occasional transplant. 

But not organically. 

Walz is trying to appeal to the blue-collar white guy vote with which Harris is incredibly weak, and doing it with all the grace of an Australian break-dancer. 

…that amazes me about this “interview” with the loathsome Senator Smith…:

…is that Acosta actually called her on her lie. 

My expectations of the media have fallen that low.

On the other hand, Esme Murphy wouldn’t have done even that.

Looking at the various lines of approach in the Democrat campaign this time around:

“You’re weird!“

“You’re terrified of Walz’s manly masculinity!!!

“What, do you want children to starve? You must want children to starve!”

The Democrat campaign is being run by middle-school mean girls.

SCENE:   A small postwar “starter” home in New Hope, Minnesota.  It is about 10PM.  Josh McGILL, 35 year old estimator and sometimes technician for a family HVAC business, and Cassie McGILL, 33 and an office manager for a real estate firm, have finally gotten their kids to bed for the evening.  They are working on the bills as the evening news plays on the TV in the background.

JOSH:  Well, if we just had $100 more, the budget would be balanced.

CASSIE:  But Junior is going to need new skates for hockey soon.

JOSH:  Ugh.   I don’t know that I’m going to be able to get a lot over overtime.

CASSIE:  And then there’s the elephant in the room – this house is just too small for three kids. 

JOSH:  The way mortgage rates are going, we can’t afford to move.

CASSIE:  And with food up 30%, gas and heating up…

JOSH:  …don’t forget taxes on everything going up…

CASSIE:  …that too – I don’t know how we make that work. 

JOSH:  And with our commercial customers dropping like flies, we are going to wind up laying people off at this rate. 

CASSIE:  (sighs heavily). We’re still paying for that catalytic converter that got stolen.  What are we going to do?

(The TV mysteriously gets louder, and Kamala HARRIS and Tim WALZ dart their eyes to CASSIE and JOSH, through the screen)

HARRIS:  Feel joy!

JOSH:  DId you say something Cassie?

CASSIE:  It’s…the TV. 

HARRIS: 

WALZ:  Do it for One Minnesota!

CASSIE:  Oh, Madame Vice President and Governor Walz.  Hi.  It’s just that things are kinda…stressful…

(The sound of Beyonce’s song “Freedom” turns up, and HARRIS and WALZ start dancing)

JOSH:  It’s kinda like, prices have gone up way, way faster than our incomes, and business is slowing, and interest rates for my business are crazy, and whatever savings we have are getting bled out, and our kids school just isn’t doing the job, and…

(The music stops abruptly.  HARRIS and WALZ’s eletronic gazes fix upon the McGills)

WALZ:  Perhaps you weren’t listening.

HARRIS:  Don’t be weird ,Josh and Cassie.  Feel joy!  Because joy is what you should feel if you don’t want to be the weird person who isn’t feeling joy.

JOSH:  Er, that’s great, but it doesn’t…

HARRIS:  (Scowling). I said feel joy. . 

WALZ:  Now.  For One Minnesota.

HARRIS:  And One America, not weird America, a joyful America, unburdened by the weight of what has been.  

(And just as suddenly as they appeared, they are gone, as KARE 11 shows TikTok videos of the Saint Paul City Council dancing.)

CASSIE:  What was that?

JOSH:  I have no idea.

And SCENE.

Calling Republicans “weird”, and demanding “Joy”, is about as substantive a policy discusion as you’re going to get from a 2024 Democrat. 

As Richard Fernandez reminded us in 2016, it’s largely Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert’s fault:

The process went something like this: Someone said something on Fox News that mainstream liberalism didn’t like; Stewart and/or Colbert aired a sustained critique of the idea and the thinking behind it; liberal internet publications hailed it as the greatest rhetorical victory since Darrow argued for Scopes; liberals’ Facebook feeds full of liberal friends filled up with clips of the takedown. No one learned anything, no one engaged with an idea, and nothing outside of a very specific set of ideas was given any real credence. As Emmet Rensin so perfectly put it:

Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy. … Over 20 years, an industry arose to cater to the smug style … and culminated for a time in The Daily Show, a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that is opponents were, before anything else, stupid.

As Rensin deftly discerns, this sort of intellectual elitism is probably part of the reason that the Democratic Party went from getting 66 percent of the manual laborer vote in 1948 to outpolling the GOP by just 2 points in 2012. It’s the inevitable consequence of eight years of reducing George W. Bush and all of his supporters to dumbass hicks, and choosing to denigrate the poor and uneducated (if only they read The Atlantic!), rather than doing real outreach to them. But as Christopher Hitchens learned on Bill Maher’s show, people don’t want to consider that possibility:

I – and many smarter than I – have been observing for well over a decade that the Democrat party’s messaging seems to be aimed exclusively at people who might have an MA or PhD, but left their critical thinking skills at graduation.

The Minnesota Military and Veterans Museum is a non-partisan, private museum located inside Camp Ripley, up near Baxter.

It published a book referencing MInnesotans’ involvement in twenty years of the Global War on Terror. 

It includes Governor Walz’s comments at a 9/11 address the the Capitol.

I’ve screenshot this quote from those remarks:

Let’s forget for a moment that Bagram is in Afghanistan; people flub things when speaking in public. Let’s just let that slide for the moment.

He said “he was in the Guard – and one night, he stood on a ramp at Bagram”.  

Was this yet another cutesy turn of phrase – “I said I was in the Guard, and that I was at a Ramp Ceremony; I didn’t literally say my Guard service and this ceremony intersected, you weird Repubulican”.

But it sure does look like he’s saying he was in the Guard in…er, someplace in action, doesn’t it.

Ilhan Omar won er primary against Don Samuels last night.

And boy, was she a class act afterwards:

So, if you’re a Don Samuels supporters in MInneapolis – a moderate, or just someone who’s sick of crime – I’ll invite you to take a look at Dalia Al Aqidi. 

She’s smart,  She’s sane.  She’s never called anyone’s voters “nazis” unless she was describing German voters in 1932. 

What do you have to lose?

UPDATE:  When you look at the world through the lens of Berg’s Seventh Law, it starts to make sense:

Maybe she was just deflecting away from the DFL’s support of actual Nazis in advance…

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is boxed in in at a stoplight.  Avery LIBRELLE rides up in between cars on a recumbent e-bike.  BERG ponders getting away over the sidewalk, but figures it’s not quite worth it.

BERG: (dejectedly, resigned to the inevitable). Hey, Aver…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up, Merg. Republicans like you are slandering a good man who served honorably for 24 years in the Minnesota National Guard. 

BERG:  So you dispute…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up!  There is no overriding or exception to the honor that must be bestowed on people who serve .

BERG:  Unless it’s George W Bush.

LIBRELLE:  He was a silver-spooned coward!

BERG:  Right.   (Checks traffic.  No joy).  So, to recap, Governor Walz served…

LIBRELLE:  …with impeccable honor.  For 24 years. 

BERG:  Right. Now – you do realize it’s not me saying this. 

LIBRELLE:  It’s a bunch of political hacks!

BERG:  It’s his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kolb:

And it’s his battalion’s chaplain, Captain Bjertness:

The chaplain of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s field artillery regiment said there is no excuse for the Democratic VP pick to have abandoned his National Guard unit before a critical deployment — not even running for Congress.

“In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told The Post.

Bjertness, 61, was the chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, of which Walz was command sergeant major before retiring in 2005, two months before the unit deployed to Iraq. Walz has said he did so to run for Congress, and he was elected the next year.

And it’s the guy who replaced him as the Command Sergeant Major at the virtual last minute before they went overseas.

“He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘Screw you’ to the United States. That’s not who I would pick to run for vice president,” Thomas Behrends, one of the retired officials who signed the letter, told the New York Post on Tuesday.

They have between them, if I’m doing my math correctly, a bare minimum of 55 years of honorable service among them.

Does that not make their point of view not merely dispositive, but above reproach? 

By your logic?

LIBRELLE:  (Looks around, quietly rides away).  

BERG:  Recumbents look stupid…

And SCENE

I was “yesterday years old”, as the kids say, when I learned about this:

Truly we live in a time of miracles; there is now a pro-skyrocketing debt, pro-foreign-policy collapse, pro-Middle East war, pro-weaponization of the institutions against political opposition, pro-censorship, pro foreign policy of “losing slowly”, pro packing the SCOTUS, pro-crime, pro firearm confiscation, pro collapse of education, anti-federalism, pro redefinition of bedrock societal institutions, anti free speech, pro-rule-by-executive-decree, pro-open border, anti-sovereignty, pro-untrammeled bureaucracy, pro-socialism wing of the GOP.

We truly live in a time of wonder.

I mean, for those of you for whom “Duck Hunters for Gun Safety” isn’t enough.

UPDATE:  I see Michael appropriated Reagan’s “A Time For Choosing” title. 

Among the choices Reagan put forth in his speech, Michael chose the wrong one. 

The wrong choice 60 years ago, the wrong choice now, the wrong choice always.

I didn’t know this until this morning-  but Governor Klink still has a House of Representatives twitter account.  

It’s in effect a zombie account, but it’s out there.  

And as of this 0445 this morning, it’s still “mis-speaking” for the Governor: 

It’s all right there – for the time being, at least.  

If he “misspoke”, he’s been doing it for a very long time.  

Judd Hoff is the DFL endorsed candidate running against Mary Franson in HD12B, the Alexandria area. 

He’s also a convicted felon, having threatened someone with a machete and served prison time. 

He’s also made a public display of stalking Rep. Franson, even moving in across the street from her to carry out his mania…

…against his opponent. 

And now:

Alexandria cops reportedly found hundreds of lawn signs – one supposes Franson signs – in his garage. 

Remember – they are the party calling Republicans “weird”.

Wonder if Mike McFeely will be contributing to Hoff’s defense fund?

Harris, unburdened by what is, has a plan to deal the border.

Or so we’re told:

Thing is, she is in power now.  She and “President” Biden could do all of this today.

How, “unburdened by the facts that have been” are Democrat voters?

Doug Willetts is running for the MN House in HD52B. 

And here’s today’s song list:

SCENE:   Mitch Berg is waiting for a coffee order before going on a road trip when Evan SCHMEISSER-JUNG, political scientist, walks into the room. 

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:  Merg!

BERG: Oh, hey, Evan.  Long time no…

SCHMEISSER-JUNG: Shut up!   Did you see the results of the Twins game last night?

BERG: Yeah, the bullpen kinda let us down…

SCHMEISSER-JUNG: Why are you melting down over the Twins?

BERG:  Er, I’m not sure I follow…

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:  I just mentioned the Twins game, and you started melting down over it.  It’s just a baseball game. 

BERG:  Oh, great.  This again.  

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:   What again?

BERG:   Describing a perfectly emotionally neutral response – usually but not always in writing – as “Melting Down”. It’s a strawman and a deflection – trying to force me to defend a non-existent emotional state rather than arguing the actual point.  It’s illogical, and kinda rhetorically abusive. 

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:  So you’re angry.

BERG: Huh?

SCHMEISSER-JUNG: You’re roiling  with anger!

BERG: Aaaaand more of the same.

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:  Does this make you maaaaad?

BERG: No.

SCHMEISSER-JUNG: Tell the truth.

BERG: OK, the truth: no, and try to find a new subject. 

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:  Speaking of straw men, why do you always transfer political subjects to fake people like Avery Librelle?

LIBRELLE: (sitting at a high-top table drinking free water and using the wi-fi). Beg pardon?

BERG:  See?  Not so much a fake person as a satirical invention.  Because sometimes satire illuminates the truth better than just butting my head into it.

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:  So you’re both melting down.  

BERG: (Audibly sighs, turns back toward the front, waiting to order, as LIBRELLE looks on, puzzled )

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:  More melting down.

(BERG orders a large dark roast with heavy cream.  LIBRELLE goes back to playing Wordle) .

SCHMEISSER-JUNG:  Feel the rage.

BERG:  Exits stage R

And SCENE

There are so many dismal statistics to frame Tim Walz’s reign here in Minnesota. 

But this one is among the most damning:

Minnesota is #45 among states comparing in and out migration. 

For every six people that move to Minnesota, ten are leaving. 

Florida?  For every 10 that leave, 27 immigrate.   Texas gets 15 new Texas for every 10 that leave. 

South Dakota is cleaning Minnesota’s clock. 

This is Tim Walz’s doing

Now that Tim Walz is enjoying the first of his fifteen minutes, it’s high time we revisit some of his greatest hits.

Here’s Gwen Walz – who seems more and more like a Jill Biden character lately, and that’s not a good thig – talking about her, uh, odd perspective on the 2020 riots:

As someone who didn’t need to leave any windows open to smell the smoke – it came from three blocks away – I want to make sure this clip sees a nice, wide audience. 

If you’ve stuck with things long enough to read this, you know the blog is having technical issues. 

We’re working on it 

So, Governor and Veep Candidate Walz supports censorship of “misinformation” (which is defined by his sycophants in the media) and “hate speech”, which is defined by…him.

I’m gonna guess this gets called “hateful misinformation”.

One heartbeat away from the presidency, if America doesn’t wise up this fall.

Can someone ask Cori Bush if I can get some blue cheese dressing with the word salad?

That’s two “Squad” members out in two months. 

Wonder if that occurred to Kamala Harris before picking honorary “squad” member Tim Walz for Veep?

When Rolling Stone occasionally bothers to write about music, it can actually be…

…readable.

For example, this article, making and supporting the case that Creedence Clearwater Revival is the biggest thing in pop music today:  

I mean, it’s not wrong:

CCR are the most awesomely bizarre case of a classic band that’s bigger than ever right now, without anyone really noticing. But their greatest-hits collection Chronicle is riding high on the Billboard 200 every week, always somewhere in the thirties or forties. It’s currently Number 39, right ahead of the new Ariana Grande album. It’s higher than anything by the Beatles or the Stones or Zeppelin or Queen. It’s crazy because there’s no star power involved, no cult of personality, no Freddie Mercury, no Stevie/Lindsey, no backstory or drama or charisma, no biopic or TV placement, and God knows no sex appeal. Just four anonymous flannel dudes and a bunch of perfect guitar songs about rivers.

Of all the “classic rockers who stay famous forever” stories, this is the one where there’s nothing but the songs. Of all the fans who bought/streamed/whatevered Chronicle this week, I doubt half could give the leader’s name, or tell you a thing about him. But only a hardcore fan could name the other three. Anyone who can tell Stu Cook from Doug Clifford probably is Stu Cook or Doug Clifford. You couldn’t pick any of these dudes out of a police lineup. There’s no hero worship, no narrative, no stars. There’s no love story, no death story. Only the songs.

For the record, I can tell the difference between Clifford and Cook.  Most of the time. 

The “why” is the interesting part:

But ironically, there’s plenty of dramatic lore in the Creedence story, if anyone knew or cared. There’s two brothers hating each other — after big brother Tom Fogerty quit the band, they never reconciled before his death. John was one of the very few rock stars to get drafted in the Vietnam era — he did his time in the Army, waiting out a year of misery, then returned to fight his way back into the Bay Area bar-band scene. None of his peers had a struggle like that to boast about, but it was a cred card he refused to play, even when he was protesting the war in “Fortunate Son.” There’s even the hilarious lawsuit after his 1985 solo hit “The Old Man Down the Road” — it sounded so much like Creedence, his ex-label took him to court, making him the only rock star ever to get sued for plagiarizing himself. He had to take the witness stand with a guitar, to show the jury why his songs sounded like John Fogerty. During cross-examination, he snapped, “What am I supposed to do, get an inoculation?”

Great stories — but only hardcore fans know them, because Fogerty had zero knack for talking about himself. Since the band broke up, he’s never stopped railing at his ex-bandmates, stewing over business injustices he never had much luck convincing anyone else to care about. His 2015 memoir is a barely-readable pity party. Even in their heyday, the group’s interviews were nothing but drab complaints about not getting taken seriously enough. As Cook groused to Rolling Stone, “People know about our music but they don’t know about our heads.”

I haven’t said “worth a read” about something in Rolling Stone in a long, long time.  And it’ll probably be a while before I do it again. 

But here you go.

Rochester DFLer Kim Hicks reports her home has been vandalized:

Representatives for Hicks confirmed with FOX 9 that on Aug. 3, political signs in her yard, plus the siding on her home and a shed on her property were all vandalized by the masked intruders.

“My family was a victim of racist vandalism at our home this weekend. It has been a difficult two days, but then our community showed up,” Rep. Hicks said as part of a statement. “My family felt so much love and support from our friends, neighbors, and even strangers who came to lend a hand.”

If true, then lets hope the masked (?) men are caught and prosecuted.

Now, just so we remember – Berg’s 20th Law reads:

All incidents of “hate speech” not captured on video (involving being delivered by someone proven not to be a ringer) shall be assumed to be hoaxes until proven otherwise.

 There’ve been so many blown-up hoaxes in Minnesota – especially, curiously, southern Minnesota – in recent years that you’d think even DFLers would realize it’s a bad idea. 

You’d also think they’d have known that breaking and entering and confessing to the crime on camera, or stalking your political opponents while having been convicted of attacking someone with a machete, or driving drunk with piles of edibles with loose ammunition for your service revolver strewn about your vehicle were all bad ideas, too.

Again – here’s hoping the vandals are caught.  The victim is a DFLer, so it could actually happen.