Speaking Of Shots In The Dark: Welcome To the New Design!
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Flexibility
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Global temperatures falling because El Nino ended? Well, THAT can’t be right. It’s completely contrary to the consensus of opinion in the scientific community. Time to make a few “adjustments” to the readings. Joe Doakes Good politicized science, like good writing, is all in the rewriting.
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The Majority Minority
What happens when you, much like a colonial power of the 1800s, build an entire political strategy out of harnessing minorities against the majority? Specifically, when you do as the Democrat party – especially Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 campaign did, making the crux of the campaign about identity politics? You will get a response…
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Brakes On Magic-Thinking Gravy Train
The Midway in Saint Paul – at least, the part between Selby and Thomas – could use a break. After the “Green Line” strangled dozens of local businesses and ate up most of the parking that the street’s businesses depended on, the city looks ready to inflict a soccer stadium on the neighborhood. But it…
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What’s The Matter With Paul Krugman?
I’m not a member of the “White Working Class”. I worked pretty hard to not be part of it, earlier in my life. For better or worse, I’m a service-economy guy. Paul Krugman new yhork times. Democrats have to figure out why the white working class just voted overwhelmingly against its own economic interests, not pretend that…
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Three Centuries
This is the sort of statistical oddity that I obsess over. In the entire world – eight billion people – there is one person alive known to have been born in the 19th century. And she turns 117 today: Born November 29, 1899, [Emma Morano] is the world’s oldest living person and the secret to her…
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Change In The Weather
This past three weeks has been fascinating; I’ve watched a whole lot of people I’d considered fairly rational, sensible people completely losing their grip on reality. I could talk – “joke”, sure, what the heck – about how people on the political left frequently seem groaningly ignorant about history, but that’s a separate subject for another…
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The Gun-Grabbing Ghouls
Shannon Watts, the national head of Moms Want Action – the group of criminal-protection “activists” that serve as the shrill, hectoring front for Michael Bloomberg’s billions – had something to say about yesterday’s episode at Ohio State: It was, of course, a car and knife attack.
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A Gap
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: High taxation chases another business away. Too bad. Vehicle sharing is a wonderful way to reduce greenhouse gasses and thereby save the planet. Luckily, driving business out of St. Paul will not reduce revenue which, of course, is the most important thing. Joe Doakes They’ll always find a way…
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Holiday Season Open Letter To Minnesota / National Public Radio
To: National Public Radio (cc: Minnesota Public Radio) From: Mitch Berg; not really a pollyanna Re: The Season For The Wheezin’ Dear various PRs, Last Thursday was Thanksgiving. And like every week after every Thanksgiving, I know what that means, especially vis-a-vis Public Radio programming. To listen to your broadcasts, we are on the precipice of a…
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Wag The Pigs
You want a lot of publicity for very very very little effort? Put on a white pointy robe and yell “Make America Great Again!” David Harsanyi points out what a lot of us on the right already know: the “Alt-Right” is to 2016 what the “Vast Rightwing Conspiracy” was to 1995, and the “War on Women” was…
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Alert The Nobel Committee
Our knowledge of the universe keeps expanding. Every year we make discoveries about the world and universe around us that make the Nobel Prize breakthroughs of previous years seem like nursery rhymes. Every new wave of discoveries pushes out the frontiers of human knowledge to levels that would leave the greatest thinkers of days gone by…
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False Equivalence
I was listening to some archival coverage from NPR over the weekend, from May of 1945, about the death of Adolf Hitler. I was kind of surprised: “On the one hand, he directly ordered the death of 11 million Jewish, gay, Roma, Sinti and Slavic civilians in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and launched a…
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Stardom
Speaking for myself, I’m not going to participate in the left’s jabbering about “the Alt-Right” – which is to this cycle what “Vast Rightwing Conspiracy” was to 1996, and “War on Women” was to 2012; a mass smear attempting to tie the entire American “right” to the most noxious people who can possibly be linked…
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So Let Me See If I Got This Straight
Democrat operatives, November 7, 2016: “Our electoral system is rock solid, there is no election fraud, the results we get are impeccable, and failing to accept its results is paranoia and maybe treason. Democrat operatives, November 26, 2016: “We can not accept the results of the election in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, because our election system is…
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Cuba Libre – Someday
Fidel Castro is dead – but the dictatorship lives on. For now. Over at Bablublog – the foremost Cubablog for the past 13 years, now – Humberto Fontova notes a couple of the facts that the worst of our repulsive media, especially NPR, can’t quite: In the above process he converted a highly-civilized nation with a…
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I Heard It On The NARN
Today’s ♫ NARN music playlist.
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NARN Changes Everything
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! Today on the show: The Obama Legacy – and why it’s possible bad news for Republicans. “Fake News” Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is normally heard on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays…
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What A Difference Eight Years Makes
November, 2008: Many conservatives, yours truly included, were disappointed at the election of Barack Obama, an unqualified junior senator and “community organizer”, to the presidency. Not surprised, at least in my case, but disappointed. (Our disappointment was amply justified, but that’s a separate, upcoming post). In the interest of civility, Obama supporters responded with their primary form…
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Nice City You Got Here. It’d Be A Shame If It Was To…Break Or Something
City of Minneapolis offers to deal with the gang problem… …by creating a protection racket, and inviting the mobsters to it. Although, to be fair, it’s a program that tries to deal with criminals, rather than going after the law-abiding citizens. That, at least, is a step forward for Minneapolis.
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Devils Of Our Nature
I hate to indulige in schadenfreude. Part of it is because I’m a pretty emphathetic guy. I put myself in others’ shoes pretty easily. Part of it is that while I don’t believe in karma, I do believe what goes around comes around. However, hearing about the psychic trauma some “blue-staters” are feeling over this past weeks, I’m…
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Fringe-y
SCENE: Mitch BERG is shoveling his sidewalk. As he’s shoveling to the east, Avery LIBRELLE, out for a walk, comes up from the west and catches BERG by surprise. LIBRELLE: Hey, Merg! BERG: Uh…hi, Avery. What’s… LIBRELLE: Drumpf is appointing racist white supremacists from the Alt-Right to his cabinet! BERG: Avery, I have a…
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Bulls, China Shops
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: In the olden days, people recognized differences. Sunday morning, you wore one set of clothes, went to a specific place and behaved in a specific manner. Monday morning, you wore different clothes, went to a different place, and behaved in a different manner. And dinner, you changed into yet…
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Let Me Set You Straight, Snowflake
In the Strib (where else), one John Paul Scott – who is described as a “writer in Rochester”, which must be a little akin to being a farmer in Manhattan – wrote a long, gassy ode to expunging Trump supporters from your lives. I sent an e-mail to an in-law, telling him that his genial…
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Just Take The Picture / Bake The Cake / Do The Flowers / Sew The Dress
Dress maker does the thing that got Christian bakers / florists / photographers in trouble; exercises her right of free association: “As one who celebrates and strives for diversity, individual freedom and respect for all lifestyles, I will not participate in dressing or associating in any way with the next First Lady,” Sophie Theallet wrote…
Got any book recommendations?