On the weekend before the big debate with JD Vance, Tim Walz reminds everone that he’s a thin-skinned petulant little man:

For the first time in my politics-watching career, I’m excited to go to a vice-presidentai debate. 

Governor Walz takes us back to the glory days of “Separate but Equal”:

But of course there’s a reason for this:

Libraries have got to be woke, you see:

Nicole Cooke, a professor of library and information science at the University of South Carolina, is booked as a keynote speaker for the event, according to an agenda obtained by the DCNF.

Cooke has argued that it is “tantamount to malpractice” to allow students to enter the workforce without first being educated on diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice. In 2017, she received a grant to study “racial microaggressions in libraries,” according to a press release.

The professor has a long history of giving presentations on the importance of racial justice and diversity when managing libraries, according to her personal website. In 2020, she created an “anti-racism resources for all ages” project which includes a number of materials intended to introduce children to the topic.

 

One of the goals is to make libraries “more inclusive”. One would think inviting all those bigoted (checks notes) librarians would be pretty vital, if that’s the goal.

Wouldn’t one?

Paul Gazelka’s book Lifting the Veil is available right here.

Today’s music list:

Governor Walz, with Alex Soros.

Check the body language:

Looks like he’s ready to fetch a ball.

Every day is an opportunity for some new kind of social services fraud.

Medicare?  Food? Childcare? 

Old hat!

Now it’s “Autism treatment centers“:

“I and other former employees witnessed some neglect regarding clients’ education needs and self-care. The clients’ goals aren’t being run by the behavioral therapist there,” she told DHS, which administers Minnesota’s version of Medicaid, known here as Medical Assistance, a federal-state health plan for poor and disabled people.

Smart Therapy did not respond to a request for comment. 

The state is investigating 15 autism providers, has already withheld payments to providers and forwarded five to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Although the identities of the centers are unknown, an immigrant autism provider complained that DHS discriminates against minority providers.

The autism investigation comes close on the heels of the Feeding Our Future scandal, which is believed to be the biggest pandemic relief fraud in the nation and has underscored state government’s failure to stop program fraud in recent years. 

 

Autism centers are – this beggars the imagination – not licensed in Minnesota, a state that requires a license to braid hair.  But unlike hair braiding (as far as I know), there’s a ton of government money going into “Autism Treatment” and, well, we know how that ends up in Tim Walz’s Minnesota, don’t we?

This is why I wonder how much prosecuting Kamala Harris did while she was in, and then leading, the San Francisco District Attorney’s office.

The first rule of armed self-defense, especially in a “blue” city, is you never talk about armed self-defense.

A particularly zealous DA – like Harris – could use a statement like Harris’s as evidence that one was looking to kill someone; if one were involved in an incident, the DA could use a statement like that to try to impeach the idea that you were an “unwilling participant” in the incident.  Which is enough to turn a righteous self-defense shooting into a term in prison, if you get the wrong jury. 

So let’s say I have my doubts.

IT appears our Vice President and possible future President has a dog in the fight:

Semi-side issue: I’m a little amazed at the number of Democrats who’ll chant with a straight face “the Democrats don’t support open borders!”.

I’ve said it many times in this space – going back to 1986, I’ve never liked Donald Trump’s public persona.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to vote for him in 2016 – I wrote in Scott Walker. 

And while Trump turned out to be a fine president on a policy level, I thought his behavior in the last few months of his presidency gave him a lot of baggage the GOP didn’t need – which was borne out in the 2022 cycle, and is certainly complicating this one.  His personality cult has, shall we say, underdelivered I was on Team DeSantis before there was a Team DeSantis, and I’m already on his 2028 team.

But with all my ambivalence about Trump, the prospect of a Harris/Walz administration makes the notion of voting for a third party, a write-in or, heaven forfend, Harris herself impels me to do my darnedest to convince people, like I convince myself, to hold my nose and vote for Trump.

Because Harris is that much worse. 

How?

How can I count the ways. 

She Is The Incumbent:  The mess we’re in right now has her autograph on it.

She’s been the sitting Vice President for almost four years. Harris, not to mention Biden, have proudly proclaimed she was the “last person in the room” when decisions about the economy, not to mention the disastrous exit from Afghanistan, were made. She was the “border czar” (Czaritsa?) during an era when eight digits worth of people crossed illegally into the country and stayed, the cartels took de facto control over the southern border, and over 300,000 unaccompanied minors disappeared from the ICE’s radar.

She’s been part of the brain trust that emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine, Iran to invade Israel by proxy, ruinous spending, the porous border, the collapse in Afghanistan and the side-tracking of the peace process in the Middle East, and the hyper-acceleration of Trump’s own ill-advised spending..

She’s Incoherent:  The whole “Joy!” and “Brat Vibes!” memes sprang up as a way to spin attention away from her supremely annoying verbal crutch of breaking into cackling whenever she gets nervous.

She can’t explain anything.  Off the teleprompter, she sounds like a stream of lawn signs and bumper stickers; like an AI campaign slogan generator that needs some more work. 

And all of that is presuming she’s not an alcoholic, prone to working drunk during the day. 

She is hiding.   Behind all the “joy” and “brat vibes”, she’s clearly running out the clock, dodging interviews, committing to nothing, putting up vague bland hints at policy online,

She’s Dishonest:  For all the nine years of palaver about Trump’s facility with the half-truth, Harris spent three solid years lying about President Biden’s health – repeatedly exclaiming the President was stronger and more with it than Jackie Chan in his thirties – until time came to defenstrate him. 

And she’s lying about him now – keeping him in office so the American voter doesn’t see her in office via that 25th Amendment, riding herd on the policies she spent four years helping to drive. 

These two things can not be true at the same time. 

And let’s talk about her magical floating accents.  Her prominent black supporters say she’s “code switching”, something we’re told every black person ostensibly does.  They’re wrong – every human who jumps between linguistic subgroups does it; white academics who grow up in the Mississippi Delta go from goober-chaw brogue back to standard English pretty routinely.  AOC slips back and forth between “Alli from the block” and her regular brand of shrill as needed.  My original accent doesn’t sound like the guy you hear on the radio, and doesn’t usually come out until I’ve been in North Dakota for a bit.   So “code switching” is real. 

But when you’re changing into the accent of a place and culture where you never lived – like Harris pasting on a Latina accent in Hispanic areas – it’s not code-switching. It’s pandering. It’s being a minstrel.

It kind of insults our intelligence.

She’s A Terrible Manager:  Harris ran one of the worst credible presidential campaigns in history in 2019 – jumping from front-runner to donesville before she could garner a single primary vote.

She’s never run a significant compaign very well. She’s never run a tough race; the one race she’s ever run against a Republican, for Attorney General in California, she almost lost, and her only other competitive races have been against Democrats – and in the case of the 2020 primaries, she’s been a disaster.  WIthout the media running active interference for her, she’s a hapless wreck.

And when she is in office?  Leaving aside her many political failures (until below, anyway), she’s a terrible executive, who’s had over 93% turnover in her office as Vice President.  Which, by my count, is worse than Orange Hitler’s turnover rate.

She’s Got A Record Of Failure.  Look at literally everything she’s “been in charge” of:

She was the “border czar” – and the border is a disaster. 

She was sent on a mission to Ukraine on the eve of the war.  The joy and brat vibes had barely subsided at Hostomel Airport when the missiles started flying. 

She was made the titular head of America’s space program – and NASA is, improbably, in worse shape now than ever. 

Joe Biden sidelined her from most of the “duties” a Vice President usually has, because she’s just not competent.  She is only running for President because Pelosi and Schumer realized the senescent Biden would leave a lot of money on the sidelines.

No World Leader Respects Her:   As Border Czar, she has allowed biggest invasion of US history.  If you’re Putin or Xi, you don’t have to guess what her affect as President will be, even if you leave out the cackling and the vapidity; she played an important role in helping turn San Francisco, and California, into the basket cases they are today.

Her alleged “toughness” as a prosecutor may be a chanting point. 

There’s a reason Ukraine launched its hail mary offensive at Kursk, and why Israel is swarming the net with Hezb’allah; they see a possibility of a Harris presidency, and realize that four more years of vacillation, coddling Iran, and being the adenoidal little guy on the shetland pony rather than the knight on the huge horse is not going to end well for them.

She’s Radical.  In 2019 – the one time in her career she’s had to systematically lay out a vision of a nation with her at the helm – she campaigned to the left of Bernie Sanders.

• Banning fracking
• Eliminating gas cars by 2030
• Decriminalizing border crossings
• Exalting sanctuary cities (she sued to prevent the Feds from cracking down on the ones we had back then)
• Mandatory gun buybacks by executive order
• Taxing unrealized capital gains
• Price controls
• Rent control
• Reparations
• Undercutting law enforcement (she pimped for the MInnesota Freedom Fund)
• Abortion til birth
• Federal funding of gender transition, including for illegal aliens. 

And while she’s painstakingly avoided answering questions about any of these in this campaign, rarely going beyond “Oh, no I di-unt” when asked about her flips and flops, she’s also chanted that her principles haven’t changed. 

Which ones? 

She Is The Actual Threat To Democracy:  The most terrifying thing about a Harris/Walz regime is that it would seek to redefine the deal between people, the states, and the federal government, and the separation of powers defined for each in the Constitution.

To the extent that they deign to talk about policies, they actively promote:

• Killing off the filibuster, specifically to jam down “codifying Roe“
• Ramming through the packing of the Supreme Court and, perhaps worse, bringing it under control of the Executive Branch with term limits and “ethics” guidelines enforced by…the executive branch.
• Changing voting rules, and federalizing control of elections to enable and promote ballot harvesting and, shall we say, emphasizing access over security
• Jam down making DC and Puerto Rico into states, adding four Democrat senators. 
• Packing the Supreme Court, changing voting rules, ballot harvesting, adding new states to stack the Senate.  
• Continue Biden’s abuse of executive orders.  Remember – Harris enthusiastically signed on to Biden’s use of OSHA to to cram down vaccine mandates on 80 million Americans, cashiering thousands of people from the military, and trying to circumvent the limits on the exectutive branch to try to transfer student loan debt to the taxpayers. Actively promotes censorship.
• Harris and Walz will be disasters for the First Amendment; both favor censorship of “misinformation” – as defined by them.  Both enthusiastically colluded with Big Tech to censor dissent about Covid, vaccinations, and every issue in the 2020 and 2022 elections that was inconvenient to the left.  Walz created a thoughtcrime database. 
• Harris and Walz’s antipathy toward the Second Amendment is a matter of record.  While both claim to be gun owners – in Walz’s case, usually while in full Elmer Fudd costume – they also seek to make the Amendment meaningless at its original intent, defending The People against tyranny. 

While the suspense may not be killing you, I sometimes find it clarifying, for me if not others, to list the cons (and, in this case hypothetically, pros).

It was 1980. Thomas Sowell – one of the greatest economic and political minds of the the past century – was being considered for a role in the Reagan White House.

Which provoked a, er, predictable response.

Which prompted Sowell to give the only response it deserved:

And it’s the same response needed next time some smug white progressive calls you a “Nazi” or “Fascist” for being a conservative.

Or, for that matter, when some sm

Few things have made me cringe quite as hard as “White Dudes for Harris” – the bunch of man-buns, ex-celebs, non-profit staffers and other walking caricatures that showed up on a struggle session on Zoom over the summer…

…to a fairly universal “ick”.

Why ,yes – I thought the whole thing was cloying and patronizing.

How cloying and patronizing?  You know when Tim Walz puts on his Elmer Fudd costume and grabs his entourage of photographers and social media dinks and waddles around the fair taking pictures of himself eating donuts and hugging piglets? 

 That cloying and patronizing.

But “they” were just getting started:

“Every time you go online, it’s the same story – the people who are paying me to read this script telling people like me that I suck. Well, if you vote for Kamala Harris, because reasons we’ll give you someday, maybe, then maybe you and I don’t suck”.

Whoever wrote this has never met an actual male of any race.

I’m trying to imagine the depths of Kamala Harris’s, er, nuance when it comes to civil liberties.  Perhaps…:

“It’s a false choice to say you support free speech, or censorship. I am in favor of the First Amendment, and I support a disinformation ban, licensing the press, and Governor Walz’s thoughtcrime database, like when I was born into the middle class!”

Or maybe…:

“It’s a false choice say say you are either for or against the Fourth Amendment. I support the 4th Amendment – and I think cops shouldn’t have to ask for search warrants before tossing your house and car, unburdened by what has been.”

Hmmm. How about…:

“It’s wrong to say you either support or oppose the 5th Amendment. I support the 5th Amendment – but it makes life easier for our First Responders in the County Attorneys office if we presume people guilty until proven innocent, abolish juries and defense counsel”

Oh, was there even a need to guess?

Her principles are, in fact, as convenient as her ethics.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is looking for arrowroot flour at a local co-op.  Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, a twenty-something graduate of Saint Olaf, and of Camp Wellstone. Moonbeam works as a telemarketer for “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”, steps around the endcamp.

BIRKENSTOCK: Merg.

BERG:  Hey, Moonbeam. 

BIRKENSTOCK:  So Drumpf really stepped in it this time.

BERG: (With mock concern, tempered with a bit of fatigue). What?  Again?

BIRKENSTOCK: (Oblivious).  Yep.  Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala!

BERG:  You don’t say.  I mean, that was pretty much a foregone conclusion long ago. 

BIRKENSTOCK:  Yeah, but here’s the best part:  He insulted her!

BERG: Oooh. Bad. Really really bad.

BIRKENSTOCK:  This probably ends the race.

BERG: Well, it ends something, anyway:

Only 6% said it made them more likely to vote Harris, while 13% said it made them less likely to—though ABC News noted that those who responded negatively to the question were “overwhelmingly Trump supporters” (Forbes has reached out to ABC News and Ipsos for more data).

But the poll found Swift’s endorsement didn’t even help Harris much in the expected key demographic: Just 8% of women under 30 said they were more likely to support Harris, 13% said they were less likely and 78% said it made no difference.

 

BIRKENSTOCK. So why insult her and risk all those votes?

BERG:  Not sure it affected any votes that weren’t going to go to Harris anyway. 

BIRKENSTOCK:  Hah!  Young women are fierce and independent and…and…I just can’t…

BERG:  Shake it off.

 And SCENE

Last week, we talked about Gene Pelowski (DFL, HD26B) about his reservations about the DFL’s trifecta.

Now, retired GOP Senate leader (in both the majority and minority) Paul Gazelka is publishing a book about Tim Walz.

And it‘s not a flattering look (emphasis added):

During his time leading the Minnesota Senate, Gazelka had a front row seat to observe Gov. Walz’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 riots that occurred in Minneapolis, and many other facets of Walz’s time in office. As such, Gazelka has written a book documenting the “daily battles” he fought with Gov. Walz.

“Now that Governor Walz has been elevated to the national ticket, I believe I have a duty to inform the nation’s voters about Walz’s failed leadership record,” the former majority leader said in a statement. “For that reason, I moved up the release of my book that chronicles Walz’s missteps handling the pandemic, freezing under pressure during the George Floyd riots, mishandling the state budget and more.”

This oughtta be good.

Why yes, I will be interviewing the Senator on my show. Saturday, 2PM.

Hope you can tune in.

Find out more about Protect The Vote.

Also, find out more about absentee and early voting here and here.

And of course, here’s today’s music list:

Gene Pelowski – one of the few DFL house members in a relatively rural area, from HD26A, which is the very southeast corner of Minnesota – is retiring from office.

And he’s having second thoughts about the DFL’s trifecta:

On the one hand, I applaud, and approve. 

On the other – where was all this independence over the past two legislative sessions?

I get it – the DFL had a four vote majority, so being a single dissident would have no effect other than getting him mau-maued by his own caucus. 

One hopes the GOP can pick this distsrict up.

They warned me if I voted for Donald Trump, democracy would be in danger.

And they were right:

It’s the things they say when they are among friends that really illuminate.

Seen on Twitter:

If someone on the Trump campaign doesn’t turn this into a bumper sticker, it deserves to lose.

But it brought me back to something I talked about on the air the other day.

Hear me out.

The Minnesota Model

See how Kamala Harris has been campaigning?

• Evading all questioning
• Avoiding policy discussions
• Being as vague and gauzy as possible about the bits of policy they do talk about
• Slopping the public trough with an endless diet of soft-focus social media
• Letting the opposition research staff and media (pardon the redundancy) do the hard work?

Look familiar?

If you live in Minnesota, it should.  The Democrats have been trial-running this strategy since at least 2018. 

Do you remember Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan ever talking about policy?

Other than soft-focus platitudes about “fully funding education”, “reducing poverty 30%”, “sending kids to school with full bellies” (puke), “One Minnesota!”, and even abortion policy?

The only record the Walz/Flanagan regime will leave to historians is the endless river of social media posts, dripping with platitudes and set-piece photos of Walz in his “regular guy” costume doing “regular guy” stuff, holding piglets and hugging kids and getting fed Pronto Pups by the Lieutenant Governor. 

Ditto Angie Craig, whose only public persona is the biennial off-road rally she throws in that stupid black Jeep. 

If you’re looking at Harris/Walz’s national campaign and not feeling deja vu, I’d love to know why. 

If Trump manages to win, and the DFL takes some setbacks, maybe the “Minnesota Model” of campaigning – evade questioning (or count on the media not bothering to ask them), slop the trough with an endless diet of gauzy social media holding piglets and being “brat” – will start reachind the end of its fifteen minutes.

Here’s some Kamala Harris “Brat Vibes” from her time as San Francisco DA:

Just because you have a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn’t mean we’re not going to walk into that home and check to see if you’re being responsible…

If you don’t find “ignoring the Fourth Amendment” absolutely disqualifying, I’m almost afraid to ask what you’ll let government get away with.

Berg’s 20th Law of Social Justice Warmongering reads as follows:

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

Look – these laws, and the concept of “Berg’s Laws” themselves, were always intended to be tongue in cheek.

I didn’t expect them to be invariable truths.

And yet they very much seem to be. 

When I heard about the “flood of threats” descending on Springfield Ohio, I figured “Berg’s 20th Law is in effect”.

Was I right?

What do you think?

I don’t know my own strength.

The DFL and Media (should almost be one word, shouldn’t it) are howling about allegations of domestic abuse against a GOP legislator, six weeks before the election:

In 2008, Dotseth was arrested and charged with misdemeanor domestic assault and he later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct. In a sworn affidavit by his ex-wife when filing for divorce, she detailed years of alleged abuse, according to the newspaper, including that he allegedly kicked and choked her in one incident and in another, pinned her against a wall.

Anyone but me getting deja vu, here?

I’ll help you out – 2006, during Keith Ellison’s first run for Congress, when the Strib put out a hatchet piece against GOP congresisonal candidate Alan Fine, dredging up domestic abuse allegations from his first marriage, but never managed to add a few things to the story: there were no convictions, Fine got custody of their son, and the wife went on to get arrested later on for…domestic abuse.

I’ll wager a shiny new quarter the allegations were brought up by an ex-spouse and her sleazebag lawyer to try to put a thumb on the scales during a nasty divorce – which is far from unprecedented, and in fact likely accounts for a huge percentage of domestic abuse allegationws.  Husbands and fathers are guilty until proven innocent, at least as far as the media and political class are concerned – as we saw with Fine. And it’s why the story is coming out today.  

I say nobody should even talk about leaving a race until Keith Ellison comes clean about his own, much better-documented history, not to mention Nicole MItchell leaving office and Judd Hoff leaves his legislative race. 

My two cents: This story means one or both of two things:

• The race for the state legislature is closer than the DFL is letting on. .
• Some oppo researcher, somewhere, is about to drop a big domestic abuse allegation against a DFLer. 

Any action on that bet?

Look – it’s not like there’s any reason at all, ever, that I’d vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.   I am not better off than I was four years ago, and likely either are you. 

But in addition to the whole “communist” thing, she appears to have been exactly the kind of soulless bureacratic bean-counter and image-polisher that I excoriated here. 

Kamala learned well from her Marxist parents; you gotta break some coconuts to make an omelet unburdened by the brat that has been. 

Or something like that. 

During Covid, I spent a lot of time driving between Minnesota and North Dakota.

And I listened to both governors’ press conferences, back when those were a daily or weekly thing – in one case, back to back, Walz and Burgum.  And the contrast could not have been more stark: listening to Walz felt like I was back in elementary school, with a history teacher who was really more of a football coach talking, slowly, like he thought you were as dumb as one of the jocks on his offensive line.  Burgum, on the other hand, sounded like he knew he was addressing not just adults, but people he had to treat with some basic adult respect.

And after seeing this…

…it’s all starting to make sense to me.

Side note:  a joint press conference with Kamala Harris and Gwen Walz would drive the suicide rate into double digits.

While this appears to be pure fluff on the surface…

Minnesota Governor and 2024 Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz has built a reputation as a bit of a foodie, or maybe just someone who enjoys food of varying qualities. After all, he’s not always eating the most refined foods — he’s declared his love for diet Mountain Dew, corn dogs, and Minneapolis’ signature cheese-filled burger,the Juicy Lucy. He’s even won the Minnesota Congressional Delegation Hotdish Off multiple years for his truly Midwestern tater tot casserole. This love of deliciously decadent foods definitely gives him points for relatability, while his universal free lunch program for Minnesota kids poises him as an executive who believes everyone (especially children) has the right to eat regardless of income.
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At the end of August 2024, the display of Governor Walz’s gastronomic delights continued as he was shown on his YouTube channel ordering a mint chocolate chip shake at Cook Out in North Carolina. Led by North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, this was Walz’s first trip to the southern fast food chain. When asked what he thought of the shake, he replied, “It’s really good.” Maybe not the most glowing review, but he did appear to enjoy it, at least. (“Oh, my god,” he said in delight as he continued eating.)

…it it is no less incisive than the rest of the MSM coverage Governor Klink has gotten so far.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is shopping at the Roseville Cub.  The one on Larpenteur, not the one at Har Mar.   He rounds the end-cap in the condiment aisle, and sees Avery LIBRELLE, Cat SCAT and Gutterball GARY.  Before he can backtrack, they notice him.

SCAT:  Hey, Merg.

BERG:  Uh…

GARY. We need to talk about voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

LIBRELLE:  Yes.  It’s time for a conversation. 

BERG:  A “conversation”.

SCAT:  Yes. 

BERG. OK.  But it’ll be a short “conversation”.   Harris and Walz are communists.  They’ll wreck the economy, trash civil liberties, throw the borders open thus crushing working Americans incomes, and give dictators from Putin to Xi to Khamenei free reign, while presiding over a “Lose Slowly” policy not only for the country, but for all of western civilization.

LIBRELLE:  Huh.

GARY:  OK.   You’ll need to change your mind, or this conversation will get “hard”.

(The three look menacingly at BERG).

BERG:  (Breaks out laughing, snorts in derision, walks away).

SCAT:  I think we got to him.

LIBRELLE:  Same.

And SCENE.

Another assassination attempt on Trump yesterday. 

Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI said “appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, just nine weeks after the Republican presidential nominee survived another attempt on his life. The former president said he was safe and well, and authorities held a man in custody.

U.S. Secret Service agents stationed a few holes up from where Trump was playing noticed the muzzle of an AK-style rifle sticking through the shrubbery that lines the course, roughly 400 yards away.

 

Looks like eight years of “denormalizing Trump” is bearing fruit.