Luigi Mangione has been “questioned” in the murder of Brian Thompson.

“They also recovered clothing, including a mask consistent with those worn by our wanted individual,” Tisch said. “Also recovered was a fraudulent New Jersey ID matching the ID our suspect used to check into his New York City hostel before the shooting incident.”

Citing a law enforcement official, The Associated Press reported that along with the gun, authorities also found a silencer, fake IDs and writings that appeared to be critical of the health insurance industry, according to the law enforcement official.

The NYPD is sending detectives to Pennsylvania to question the person taken into custody.

His name only sounds like a character in Goodfellas:

Mangione was valedictorian of the Class of 2016 at the Gilman School, and he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. His family owns Turf Valley and Hayfields Country Club, NBC News confirmed.

This one goes out to all the social media detectives who solemnly swore he had to be a professional assassin, who was using a “Welrod” (a purpose-built silenced assassins firearm built for the CIA or MI5 or some such), and that he was just too L3Et to ever get caught.

If he’s the suspect, natch.

While we don’t know a lot more than that at the moment, I’m going to make a few fearless preditions:

• Like most radicals, he’s a little upper middle class prick who got radicalized at school.
• He’ll be lionized as a folk hero on the left.

Daniel Penny acquitted on the last of his charges:

Penny was cleared of criminally negligent homicide in Neely’s death. A more serious manslaughter charge was dismissed earlier in deliberations because the jury deadlocked on that count.

I suspect there’s a critical mass of New Yorkers of all races who’ve had enough of the crime wave engulfing the city – much as they seemed to be during the Bernhard Goetz episode, 40 years ago, the last time NYC was mired in Democrat-coddled criminality

Of course, this time not everyone agrees who the good guys and bad guys are:

Barack Obama’s legacy is a gift that will keep on giving for a generation, at best.

Paul Krugman is leaving the NYTimes. 

Podhoretz sums up my thoughts on the matter.

I can’t speak for Krugman’s career as an economist – I wish King Banaian was still blogging, and hopefully he’ll talk about this in his show one of these days. 

As for me? Fact-checking Krugman – the guy who said the Internet was a passing fad – has been a fairy steady pastime on this blog for a long, long time.

So while his retirement leaves me with one less source of material, [1], it is enough for today to rejoice in the fact that for a moment, America will be incrementally less dumb by omission.

[1] Although the Cano Corollary to Berg’s 21st Law warns us to not celebrate too hard: ” “blue” never gets “lighter” or less “progressive”.  There is only one electoral direction – more “progressive”. While written about elections, the New York Times would seem to be germane.

Social media has helped create a generation of amoral monsters:

And a special note to Millennials and Zs who yap about the crimes of “Boomers”: You are well on your way to being worse, and more hated, than they ever were.

“But Mitch”, you may ask, ” how can you tell the writer is a Millie or Zoomer?”

Please. It’s a Millie or Zoomer.

Nathan Seabrook talked about the Brian Thompson murder, and security in general. Here’s his company.

And here’s today’s song list:

They warned us that if we voted Republican, extremists would roam the streets murdering their enemies, as their fellow extremist droogs rejoiced.

And they were right.

The meme has traveled about that UHG denies claims at double the national average. That may be true, and that may be utterly without context, and neither I nor the gerbils posting the memes know one way or the other.

Of course, most of the people rejoicing (not exaggerating) Thompson’s murder do it by way of saying it’s high time we adopt “single payer” government healthcare.

Of course, if they think a UHG denial causes problems, wait’ll they get a load of the “cost cutting” measures single-payer systems are moving into.

The big that confuses me so much about this story – the DFL jamming down a $10K appropriation to help one of their colleagues settle an issue with her “day job” outside politics – isn’t that the DFL is basically pickpocketing taxpayers to help one of their own with a private matter. (Emphasis added):

This all started when Rep. Bianca Virnig of Eagan was elected to the House as a Democrat in a special election and sworn in last January serving a district in the Eagan-Mendota Heights area. Her new position as a state lawmaker created a conflict with her employer, Brightworks, a non-profit established by the Minnesota Legislature in 1976 to provide services to public schools and school districts, according to its website.

“When she returned to her employment her employer dramatically cut back her hours and her pay based on her new job she held as a part-time state legislator,” Rep. Jamie Long, DFL Majority Leader, said at a House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday. “Since this was related to her work as a Minnesota representative we are proposing we pay for those legal costs.”

No, after years of DFL corruption eating up hundreds of millions of dollars, seeing something in five digits almost feels like watching “The Andy Griffith Show”.

The part that fairy astounds me is that, after getting elected to the legislature, either Rep. Virnig or “Brightworks” had a problem with the arrangement.

The DFL set up the non-profit/industrial complex specifically to serve as a farm team and lobbyist ranch for their regime.  A potential politician starts working with one of the state’s maze of public unions, pseudo-parties or poiltical/social non-profits, spends a few years making contacts and learning who buried the political bodies, and then run for office, already fully groomed as a DFL candidate – who goes on to do their mentor group’s bidding, and eventually to lobby for them and/or groups like them when and if they leave office

So the corruption doesn’t confuse me. The fact that either Virnig or Brightworks had a problem with each other does.

I’ve been doing this blog for a long time – 23 years in February. 

It’s still a part of my day every morning – I’m usually up doing some kind of writing or another,  before 6AM every weekday.  And it’s the bulk of my radio show prep.   And it’s also kind of a quick reference for the past 23 years of my various goings-on.  

That makes me sound like a creature of habit.   I guess it  is a habit of mine – the gnawing urge to get something down, profound or pathetic, wakes up with me every day. 

But notwithstanding that, I’m a fundamentally restless person.   I’d like to keep doing what I do – only better. 

Now, this old WordPress site is getting a little long in the tooth.   The “template” on which it runs is almost 15 years old.  Things are breaking – and I have a hunch, given WordPress’s fundamentally chaotic nature (like I should talk) that upgrading would be…sporty. 

And I have some new ideas for content in mind – blog writing, yes, but there’s at least one other book project, maybe two, in mind (not to mention an update and print edition of Trulbert).    And I have some other content ideas rattling around in my head that could finally come to fruition over the winter.  

And I’m starting to think a different platform might be useful – one with a little more flexibility, and the ability to make a little money off these ventures baked in. 

Not that I’m going to charge for the blog – what’d be the point?  But some of the other ideas might have the opportunity to put a little money in the pot. 

I don’t qualify for OnlyFans, and I’d rather gargle razor blades than use Medium. 

So I’m pondering moving the blog to Substack. 

I’m leery of the idea, of course – I remember all the bloggers who moved to Facebook and Twitter, and regretted it shortly.   I’d keep shotinthedark.info for…something.  Special projects?

But Substack is arguably a better, better-connected platform for both exposure and money, even if I don’t make the blog pay-per-view.  Which I won’t. 

It’s winter.  A time for huge projects, after all!

Not sure its directly related to the Trump election – but if there is a cultural realignment going on below our society’s electoral surface, this new ad from Apple is a sign of it.

For the past couple of decades, the only acceptable way to present fathers – of any race, of late – is as incompetent boobs who are married to improbably gorgeous and capable women.

And what this said about America is…not good.  Advertisers get paid to read the zeitgeist correctly.  And for most of this past several decades, that zeitgeist, as apparent to advertisers of products directed at women, was “Men are to social and personal life what waxy yellow buildup is to your kitchen floor”.  The notable differences were in products aimed at men – mostly beer and home improvement stores, which treated men as, well, potential customers.

A few years ago, I ran a home-made study of TV ads, measuring the percentage of ad characters by their role in the ad:

• Protagonists/customers/”everyperson” characters
• Buffoons/Comic Relief
• Antagonists
• “Experts”

Not sure I even need to tell you what the gender and ethnic breakdown was. 

The problems is, of course, that these are the messages by which our society socializes children.   Is it any wonder GenZ boys are checking out of social engagement?

And that they voted disproportionally for Trump?

Hoping this is a sign that the ad industry is seeing that cultural swing too.

In 2022, I predicted $17.6B “surplus” would disappear under DFL rule.   

I’m not wrong on the inevitable end result. Just the timing:

Revenue dropping. Spending ballooning. And the productive class “going Galt” and moving to Texas, Florda or Tennessee.

Things didn’t get quite as bad quite as fast as I thought – but it’s really just teasing us.

PS: Whoah. I spoke too soon – but boy, was I correct:

So I’d figured $2-3 Billion. $5B plus?

Oh, the hits do not quit:

Great job, #MNDFL

As I noted the other day when an NPR reporter tried to go all “Boss Lady” on President-elect Trump, the President had a snappy comeback:

According to Victor Davis Hanson, Mexican president Sheinbaum walked the idea of compromise back a notch:

But given long-standing, de facto Mexican policy to rely on and profit from an open U.S. border, it was not long afterwards that Sheinbaum claimed she had not been so accommodating.

Or, as she now put it of the Trump conversation, “I give you the certainty that we would never—and we would be incapable of it—propose that we would close the border.” And of course, she is right: Mexico never would wish for a secure U.S. border, although it is wrong that she is incapable of guaranteeing one should she choose to do so.

What, then, is going on?

Hanson goes on to explain what, indeed, is going on. Turns out the open border is in fact a key element of Mexican foreign and domestic policy:

While in office, former President Obrador often said strange things. Two of the most pugnacious were his high-five boast that some 40 million of his own citizens had fled Mexico to cross the border: “Just imagine. There are 40 million Mexicans in the United States—40 million who were born here in Mexico, who are the children of people who were born in Mexico.” (Obrador never explained why his own citizens would willingly flee their own country to a nation habitually caricatured in the Mexican press as racist and exploitive.)

Obrador also periodically delighted in interfering in US elections by urging Mexican expatriates in the U.S. to vote against all Republicans, presumably because they seemed at times to threaten to kill the Mexican golden goose of illegal immigration.

Indeed, in 2023, Obrador urged American Hispanics to never vote for Ron DeSantis’s presidential primary campaign—an irony given Mexico’s chronic complaint of Yanqui interference in Latin American politics.

Obrador believed, as many presidents before him no doubt concurred, that the 40 million expatriates and Mexican-American children, if they were distant from Mexico long enough, would romanticize the country, and so, like most immigrants, become a powerful lobbying force on Mexico’s behalf.

…

And it is also increasingly likely that Mexican-Americans will be more prone to vote for border security than open borders—again further proof that their self-interest as patriotic Americans trumps Mexico’s cynical attempts to use them as political pawns. If those trends continue, the American Left and the Mexican government may well lobby for a secure border, in fear they are only augmenting a growing MAGA constituency.

But it’s possible this past year has seen not just a sea change among Anglo voters, but among those millions of migrants:

But, given the huge numbers of human trafficking, the chaos, the drugs, the violence, and the financial costs of supporting millions, an open border is increasingly seen by Americans as not to their advantage—as we saw in the recent Trump victory. That reality, not the rhetoric of Mexican presidents, will govern all future negotiations—a truth that President Sheinbaum should digest before she sounds off about a border that she knows her country has done so much to deliberately destroy—and to America’s detriment.

If Trump and the GOP don’t follow through on this momentum, they all deserve to get washed out of office.

I consider Dennis Prager, if not a friend in the classic sense, at least a good acquaintance.

Most decent people wish him all the best in his apparently extended recovery.  If your worldview calls for prayers, they’re being welcomed.

I specified “decent” people because…

…well…

Lakeville schools’ response was predictable enough:

Alpha News contacted District 196 for a response, and Communications Director Janet Swiecichowski provided the following statement:

“District 196 is aware of the post. The employee’s post does not reflect the values or opinions of the district. The district is reviewing the matter, but we cannot comment on personnel matters.”

Now, I’m not one of those people who tries to destroy the lives of disagreeable, venal people.  I don’t want her getting fired – partly because that’s kinda bitchy, and partly because there’s some moral symmetry to the social consequences that should follow this sort of tantrum. 

I love dishing up those consequences, personally. 

The DFL, 20-odd months ago:

Unless they’re Hunter Biden (starting just before “The Big Guy” started getting his cut from Burisma, and ending midnight Sunday).

Or Nicole Mitchell.

Or Judd Hoff.

Or Julie Blaha.

Or a whole lot of “Feeding our Future”, Childcare or Medicare fraudsters. 

Other than them, nobody’s above the law.

And Keith Ellison.  And probably Ilhan Omar. 

OK.  Now nobody’s above the law. 

Oh, Hillary Clinton!

OK. Now nobody is…

So the President has pardoned his son for crimes…

…that we were reliably informed, by NPR no less, were all nothing but Russian hoaxes.

It’s hard to tell if Biden’s timing is the a doddering old guy thrashing about at random, or a massive “FU” to the outgoing regime that pushed him under the bus, just as the whole “drain the swamp” movement is getting started.

Two “transgender women” were assaulted in downtown Minneapolis.

No, really.  At 5th and Hennepin.  

No, they weren’t (apparently) going out looking for Subway. But the story is…

..well, I’ll let the Cheerleaders on Four pick up the story:

The incident happened Nov. 10 at Hennepin Avenue and Fifth Street in downtown Minneapolis. It’s where community members gathered for a rally Sunday afternoon, one week since the attack. 

Amber Muhm, a community leader with Trans Movement for Liberation, said the two trans women were attacked by a group of men at the light rail station after one of the men used transphobic slurs.

“No one came to help them. In fact, they said people were cheering the attackers on while they were getting beaten,” Muhm said.

She said the attack left one of them with a broken nose. Minneapolis police confirmed they are investigating the incident, but as of Sunday night, no one has been arrested. 

 

So – 5th and Hennepin, you say?

One of the busiest rail stops in the city? 

With a crowd of cheering onlookers – presumably on the surveillance cameras that are all over the place down there?

Not saying Berg’s 20th Law is the governing statute here, but…

To hear her partisans call it, Kamala Harris ran an amazing campaign – she just didn’t have the time to actually do interviews!

Harris was consistently criticized for shying away from substantive public interviews and appearances, enhancing a public image many associated with inauthenticity and empty spouts of “word salad.”

“Real people heard in some way that we were not going to have interviews, which was both not true and also so counter to any kind of standard that was put on Trump that I think that was a problem,” Jen O’Malley Dillon said on the liberal podcast Pod Save America. “And then, on top of that, we would do an interview, and . . . the questions were small and process-y.”

The interviewers didn’t ask the right questions?

Forget for a moment that most of the media she faced bent over backwards to make her look good – that’s HER job as someone who’s, you know, campaigning.   To control the conversation!

If she couldn’t drive the discussion with Dana Bash or Bill Whitaker, what was she going to do with Putin, Xi or the Mullahs?

“I think back and think we should have signaled more of our strategy early on about podcasts and who we were trying to reach, but we had a limited amount of time to reach the people we were trying to reach, and we were trying to go to them,” the campaign’s chairwoman lamented…“Being up against a narrative that we weren’t doing anything or we were afraid to have interviews is completely bullsh**,” Dillon claimed.

“We’da done more, if we’d only had the time!”

Problem is, Harris had all kinds of time. She was too busy trying not to talk:

I’m pretty sure Harris could have cobbled something together inside a month.