The 1980s was the golden age of teensploitation movies; the Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink, Saint Elmo’s Fire, Risky Business, Weird Science, and many, many less memorable ones.

For me, maybe two of them have held up over time; Better Off Dead and Adventures in Babysitting.

And now, 34 years later, Elisabeth Shue talks about the making of the movie.

Your turn, John Cusack.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Senator Elizabeth Warren supports court-packing. That’s really embarrassing for a Harvard law professor. Even a night-school wonder like me, knows better.

The problem with the Supreme Court is not that it’s too small. The court is too large now, to get things done expeditiously and correctly: too many egos to sooth, too many agendas to accommodate, too many compromises requiring hair-splitting decisions.

The problem is not that the court is full of justices eager to overturn precedent. If a case was wrongly decided, it should be overturned in the interest of justice.

The problem is not that the court veers away from widely held public opinion. Pandering to public opinion is Congress’ job. And it’s mostly on volatile social issues where the Court has caused the worst problems.

The problem is Marbury v. Madison, a case decided fewer than 20 years after the Constitution was adopted. That’s the case in which the Supreme Court gave itself the power to throw out legislation the Court felt was incompatible with the Constitution. The court’s power-grab flatly contradicts the entire premise of a “enumerated powers” Constitution. That decision set up the Court to make historically and horrifically bad law: Dred Scott (struck down the Missouri Compromise which allowed slavery to spread to more states), Plessy v. Fergussn (upheld racial segregation); Korematsu (upheld concentration camps for American citizens); Roe v. Wade (upheld abortion on demand); Obergefell v. Hodges (struck down gay marriage laws nationwide).

Adding more justices to a run-away court won’t rein it in from ruling on social issues. A constitutional amendment is required. And if that doesn’t curb their enthusiasm, perhaps removal from office? A Harvard law professor should understand that.

Joe Doakes

There is limited evidence that Warren understands anything but getting and holding power.

Sheriff Dave Hutchinson, to Fox9’s Mary McGuire:

Well, let’s get that reflected in statute, pronto! Everyone does it!

(Maybe he meant “everyone at the Sheriff’s Association meeting? We’ll never know – all cameras were reportedly barred. What happens near Alexandria stays near Alexandria).

And when they do, and a Henco sheriff’s deputy pulls them over and they come in with a .17 (which was what the .13 from his urine test likely was at the time of the accident), they don’t get a whiffleball home booking with not one second spent in a jail cell.

And if a Minnesotan with a carry permit is busted with over .04, they’re at very serious risk of losing their carry permit.

What happens to cops who lose their right to carry?

I’d love to ask the sheriff this question. I’m gonna guess I don’t get any chance to.

By the way – I’ll be talking with Rebecca Brannon on the show this Saturday about this story, including the blowback she’s gotten from local cops.

Five journalistic profiles in courage.

Where “courage” = not very couragfeous

Watching Minnesota media step up to serve as a loyal PR firm for Keith Ellison, Dave Hutchinson, Ilhan Omar and Ryan Winker, it’s easy to see they’re learning from the greats.

This nation has two choices, if we’re to remain a nation (or, potentially, a viable society).

One of them – by far the most radical and traumatic – is secession; from individual states, and maybe from the US itself.

(And no – that wasn’t “settled in 1865” any more than it was settled in 1776. It’s only “illegal” when the secedees have the will to bring the secessionists to heel).

Big media is noting one, fairly welll established, such movement, in greater Oregon:

In the summer of 2015, a chimney sweep in Elgin, Oregon, redrew the map of the American West. “Imagine for a moment Idaho’s western border stretching to the Pacific Ocean,” Grant Darrow wrote in a letter to the editor of his local paper. Rural Oregon, he insisted, should break its ties with the urbanites of Portland and liberals of Salem, and join Idaho. “The political diversity in this state is becoming unpalatable,” he argued. “Rural Oregonians in general and Eastern Oregonians in particular are growing increasingly dismayed by the manner in which Oregon’s Legislature and Oregon’s urban dwellers have marginalized their values, demonized their lifestyle, villainized their resource-based livelihoods, and classified them as second-class citizens at best.”

…

In the half decade or so since Darrow’s diatribe, a simple and outlandish idea, percolating in rural Oregon since the 1960s—what if we were just Idaho?—has grown into a grassroots secession movement. Last month, Harney County, in the high desert of eastern Oregon, became the state’s eighth to pass a nonbinding ballot measure supporting Darrow’s proposal. Move Oregon’s Border signs now dot the region’s empty highways, and Mike McCarter, a retired agricultural nurseryman and gun-club owner who runs a group pushing for the boundary reshuffle, travels the state in a bright-red trucker hat bearing the slogan. “We don’t care to move, because we’re tied to our land here,” he told me recently. “So why not just allow us to be governed by another state?” He mentioned a supporter so certain that her property will become part of Idaho that she already flies its state flag on her lawn. “We’re going to be Idaho,” she told him.

The movement has passed in nearly every county in which it’s gone to the ballot. As the article points out, it seems unlikely the Idaho legislature will accept the new border (which would drive Idaho’s western border to the Pacific – much less Oregon’s California-lite legislature full of unicorn-chasing feebs.

Let’s see – urban lotus-eaters, out of touch with and imposing their dystopian vision on the rest of the state, from a riot-torn city full of people who love central planning? Sounds familiar.

The second option – getting serious about Federalism, checks and balances, and enumerated, divided power, again – would be hypothetically simpler. And, sometimes, I think it would lead just as quickly to mass secession, as Big Left decided to hit the exits.

In the early days of the pandemic, an MIT scientist did what Americans have always done best; turned their ingenuity to solve a problem, fast, well and cheap.

She developed a fast, inexpensive Covid test – in an amasingly short time:

Within a few weeks, Bosch and her colleagues had a test that would detect coronavirus in 15 minutes and produce a red line on a little chemical strip. The factory where they were planning to make tests for dengue fever could quickly retool to produce at least 100,000 COVID-19 tests per week, she said, priced at less than $10 apiece, or cheaper at a higher scale

And then the FDA got involved:

In the months that followed, Bosch responded to repeated requests from FDA reviewers for data and studies. When the agency finally put out guidance that summer about the performance over-the-counter home tests needed to meet, officials required that such tests be nearly as sensitive as the lab tests used to definitively determine whether a patient has COVID-19.

That standard proved difficult to meet. Rapid tests are usually sensitive enough to detect viral antigens when someone has enough of them to be able to spread the disease. Such tests are not as good at picking up cases in either earlier or later stages of infection, when viral loads are lower.

Bosch’s tests missed the FDA’s high bar. It wasn’t until the spring of 2021 that much larger companies were able to design similar tests — relatively inexpensive, over-the-counter rapid tests — that the agency found acceptable.

“You could have antigen tests saving lives since the beginning of the pandemic,” said Bosch, sitting in her lab at MIT. “That’s the sad story.”

Sometimes it feels a little simplistic, chanting “government is what holds us back“, like some knee-jerk reductionist libertarian yahoo.

But it’s not really wrong.

Yesterday’s announcement about my escalating impatience with threadjackers might seem to fall hard on a small segment of this blog’s comment section. That perception is accurate – but appropriate.

Still, I’m nothing if not fair.

Here’s one for all the Democrats in the audience.

Please defend Brandon.

It’s your thread. Go to it.

…that Covid provides a disturbing proportion of our society with a reason to wake up in the morning; “enforcing the misery” gives their lives whatever meaning it has.

Which brings us to this:

First, kudos to the guy, who learned the important lesson: when a woman, no matter how wrong, no matter how impaired, no matter how depraved, attacks you, don’t hit back; your best bet is to hope for enough bruising (or, nowadays with video everywhere, clear video) to make your case in court.

Which I hope the guy does – winning everything this vile shrew owns or will ever own.

Back on point: as the emergency winds down, expect more of this, as Karens, bereft of their purpose and. meaning, lash out.

And – given that most “wars of religion” are really wars over other longstanding fault lines that happen to have a veneer of religious difference slapped on, what other fault lines will the pandemic adhere to?

We’ve got race, class, region, economics…?

Rebecca Brannon may be the best reporter in the Twin Cities.

Not “journalist” – reporter. Someone who goes out and gets the who, what, when, where, why and how of a story. Comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, as Nick Coleman used to say (but never do).

Speaking of saying but never doing reporting? The Twin Cities mainstream media is doing its usual job; serving as a PR firm for DFL officials:

This is “journalism” with all the heft of a Beanie Baby. Wonder if that interview came with a hot towel?

Brannon, on the other hand, is afflicting the politically comfortable, and someone doesn’t seem to like it:

Trying to intimidate reporters?

Why, isn’t that what authoritarian states do? What’s the term – we heard it all the time during the Trump administration, from reporters big and small…

“Chilling Effect on reporting and transparency?” (Whatever did happen to that term, anyway)?

Aren’t there groups of “journalists” dedicated to keeping the press free? Like the “Society of Professional Journalists of Minnesota?”

Oof. Not a whole lot.

Read Brannon’s whole thread, by the way.

In almost two decades of running this blog, I have tried to keep a hands-off approach to the comment section. I do this because I believe the answer to bad speech is more better speech. This blog has one of the smartest comment sections anywhere, so I feel little need to intervene with stupid comments – you all are more than capable of handling that.

I can count the number of people I’ve actually banned from the comment section on one hand. The last was six years ago, and it was in large part due to constant threadjacking [1].

Anyway – we’re gonna try something new.

Threadjack Policy

If you look up on the top menu, there’s a “Contact me / Report Threadjacking” item. It’s actually been there for years, but didn’t really work very well.

I fixed it over the weekend.

Anyway – if you want to complain about a threadjack, leave a note there. Please include the link or title for the post, and explain what you think the threadjack was.

My decisions will be, of course, final. I’ll do my best to explain my rationale in the related comment section, but that’s not a promise.

People who continue to jack threads? There’ll be consequences.

People who abuse the reporting process? Well, you’re all adults. I don’t think I need to get redundant, here.

[1]. Although in the case of Dog Gone, it was even more due to the fact that she took an unconscionable liberty with the fact that she knew my family, socially, decades ago, and decided to go full bore stupid.

Never go full bore stupid.

It seems the relentless watchdogs of government in the Twin Cities media are at loggerheads with the government over the Hutchinson case:

You might say that I’m a dreamer – but I remember news media that’d take government to court to get to the bottom of a story like this.

Provided they’re not a DFLer, I guess.

UPDATE: It gets worse. More at noon.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Liberals claim Minnesota hospitals are being overwhelmed with Covid patients.  I have questions about that.

This Minnesota Department of Health chart says we only have about 1,000 total ICU beds in the state.  What happened to the 3,000 Governor Walz said we had available on 72 hours’ notice, when he extended the lockdown last Spring?  That same chart shows we almost always have 1,000 ICU beds in use and presently only 366 of the ICU beds are being used by Covid patients.  Who’s using all the other ICU beds and if we need more ICU beds, why don’t we ramp up more ICU beds to handle all the patients?

Curiously, look at the map of Minnesota located below the chart.  It shows “Staffed ICU beds.”  Why “Staffed” and not just “Beds?”  Because “ICU bed” isn’t a physical thing.  The bed itself has no therapeutic properties.  “ICU bed” is a billing code that entitles the hospital to higher reimbursement because the patient in an ICU bed is being attended by staff qualified to monitor the patient using special equipment such as a heart monitor or ventilator.  That’s why we can set up ICU beds in tents or on a ship – it’s not about the beds, it’s about the staff and ancillary equipment. 

The chart says “Staffed” because you can’t bill it as an “ICU Bed” if you don’t have enough staff.  And why aren’t there enough staff?  What happened to all the caregivers?  Burnout?  Generous unemployment benefits? 

Ask it quietly: vaccine mandates?  But don’t expect an answer.  Liberals don’t want to talk about that.

Joe Doakes

When you have to be a lawyer to decipher the law, that’s annoying.

When you have to be a lawyer to decipher the news, that’s a bureaucracy run amok.

I’ve always tried to keep a fairly hands off approach to my comment section.

I mean, it took me five years of escalating warnings to ditch the, in retrospect, utterly useless Dog Gone. That’s how hands off I try to keep things.

I’ve always figured that anyone who is still reading blogs is probably at least nominally an adult.

In recent weeks, unfortunately, that has yet again proving to be the case.

So I’m going to take this moment of Christmas cheer to pass the word; in the new year, I will be curb-stomping thread jacking without mercy.

More details to come.

Merry Christmas, and I’ve had enough.

It’s been a busy month, and I am fried to a fine sheen.So I believe I am going to take the rest of this week, and weekend, off from riding.

(UPDATE: And, of course, from writing).

I hope you all have a happy, blessed Christmas season, and I will see you all again on Monday!

A friend of the blog emails:

The Waukesha parade killer?

The MSP Terminal 2 brawlers?

The Miami high rise collapse?

Americans left in Afghanistan?

Alec Baldwin gun accident on the movie set?

And the list goes on…

Does the media have the short attention span or is it us?

(Redacted)

Not to mention Andrew Cuomo’s concurrent slaughter of senior citizens and sex crimes, Ilhan Omar’s marriage to her brother and her spouses gravy train from her campaign funds, Umbrella Man, Jacob Frey siccing “Anti”-Fa on Trump supporters, Keith Ellison’s domestic abuse allegations, hundreds of millions of dollars defrauded from Minnesota health and human services on the DFL‘s watch, Mark Dayton‘s disappearance from the office for months at a time…

Yeah, it’s got to be us citizens.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Senator Elizabeth Warren supports court-packing.  That’s really embarrassing for a Harvard law professor.  Even a night-school wonder like me, knows better. 

The problem with the Supreme Court is not that it’s too small. The court is too large now, to get things done expeditiously and correctly: too many egos to sooth, too many agendas to accommodate, too many compromises requiring hair-splitting decisions.

The problem is not that the court is full of justices eager to overturn precedent.  If a case was wrongly decided, it should be overturned in the interest of justice.    

The problem is not that the court veers away from widely held public opinion.  Pandering to public opinion is Congress’ job.  And it’s mostly on volatile social issues where the Court has caused the worst problems.

The problem is Marbury v. Madison, a case decided fewer than 20 years after the Constitution was adopted.  That’s the case in which the Supreme Court gave itself the power to throw out legislation the Court felt was incompatible with the Constitution.  The court’s power-grab flatly contradicts the entire premise of a “enumerated powers” Constitution.  That decision set up the Court to make historically and horrifically bad law:  Dred Scott (struck down the Missouri Compromise which allowed slavery to spread to more states), Plessy v. Fergussn (upheld racial segregation); Korematsu (upheld concentration camps for American citizens); Roe v. Wade (upheld abortion on demand); Obergefell v. Hodges (struck down gay marriage laws nationwide).   

Adding more justices to a run-away court won’t rein it in from ruling on social issues.  A constitutional amendment is required.  And if that doesn’t curb their enthusiasm, perhaps removal from office?  A Harvard law professor should understand that.  

Joe Doakes

Bring on the mid-terms.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is paying his tab at a Korean restaurant. As his card is running, Avery LIBRELLE walks in. Waiting for his card, BERG desperately tries to make himself as small as possible. But it doesn’t work.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, shiiiiiiiiitake mushrooms made the perfect kimchi for the Galbi, and how the hey, Avery…

LIBRELLE: You had Covid?

BERG: Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah, I did. The original version.

LIBRELLE: So you were a negligent person who allowed yourself to get sick, endangering everyone around you.

BERG: So you think people who catch Covid bear some culplability…

LIBRELLE: It shows they don’t care about the poeple around them, and have depraved indifference to the suffering of those around you.

BERG: You haven’t heard, have you?

LIBRELLE: Nonsense. Probably. What?

BERG: The news.

LIBRELLE: What news?

BERG: Governor Klink…er, Walz, and most of his family, have tested positive for Covid.

LIBRELLE: …

BERG: And that’s after having all the vaccines and boosters, and apparently being able to go through hard-to-get tests like they are a bunch of gang-bangers burning through ammo.

LIBRELLE: …

BERG: So – what do you have to say?

LIBRELLE: The Governor is contributing to herd immunity, and is a hero.

BERG: Just like me.

LIBRELLE: Er…

BERG: Merry Christmas, Avery.

LIBRELLE: Hey, that’s triggering!

(But BERG is already out the door)

And SCENE

“Fake it ’til you make it”.

It’s a glib little saying – and it’s governed so much of my life, it’s hard to even express it. So much of what I am, I am because I basically decided I wanted to *be* that thing, and acted like it until it worked. (See also: this blog, the NARN, my career).

And that’s a good thing.

And it’s never a bigger deal than this time of year.

I make no bones about the fact that I had a childhood Beaver Cleaver would have envied. I had a pretty intact family, no major dysfunctions – I have no complaints. The Christmas holiday was always a joyful memory; family, food, tradition…love. I wish everyone were as lucky.

Then came adult life.

Without going into a whole lot of details, when my kids were little, there were certain stressors in life that made the holidays…complex. Anxious, stressful, parlous, sometimes outright tests of emotional and physical endurance.

And I resolved to push the happiness, the *cheer*, almost to an absurd extent – because I was hanging on to that shred of joy, happiness and family by my fingernails. And in its own way, it – “Faking” ample joy for Christmas – worked.

I can’t speak for my kids – they’re adults, with their own lives and tradtions of their own, now – but the holidays as a general rule *aren’t* white-knuckle anxiety rides. They are good, not just because I *will them* to not be bad, but because the attitude seems to help give me the mental headspace to focus on the holiday rather than all the angst – and to actually enjoy this time of year.

This flies in the face of the modern obsession with “being authentic” to how one feels – a trait with some upsides, but a solipsistic overtone that boils down to “it’s better to be ‘real’ than to be happy”. Thing is, while one can not create one’s own reality, one can change one’s perception of and reaction to that reality; sometimes, the best way to do that is to just do it.

And modern society goes cynical about the holidays on the drop of a pin. I’ve related in the past my disgust for media (principally NPR) pounding a drumbeat of cynical, post-modern, anxious misery about the holidays – the stress, the anxiety, having to put up with all those *relatives* who act, and see the world, differently than you…

Modern society and its obsessions can get stuffed.

I hope you all have a joyful, meaningful holiday – whatever that means to you.

Minneapolis is, as of yesterday, at 93 homicides for 2021 so far.

The record, during the Murderapolis years, was either 95 or 97, depending on your source.

Context? Sure.

In 2016 there were 82 unjustified homicides…

…in the entire state of Minnesota. 30 of them were in Minneapolis.

Whenever the DFL used to win elections by lopsided margins, they’d drunkenly chant “We own this city!”

Yep, chuckleheads. You sure do.

Rep. John Thompson shreds the DFL and mainstream media’s hypocrisy in re Sheriff Hutchinson.

And he’s not wrong:

And there’s still a week to go…

“But Mitch – why are you an Originalist? Don’t think mankind has evolved in the past 240-odd years?”

Sure – backward.

Case in point: an op-ed in the Boston Glob over the weekend, advocating a rewrite of the first two Amendments of the Constitution. The piece, by one Mary Anne Franks, identified by the Glob as “Distinguished Scholar Chair at the University of Miami School of Law and the author of “The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech“, opens as follows:

As legal texts go, neither of the two amendments is a model of clarity or precision. More important, both are deeply flawed in their respective conceptualizations of some of the most important rights of a democratic society: the freedom of expression and religion and the right of self-defense.

Well – she’s not wrong per se.

Sanford Levinson’s seminal Yale Law Review article, “The Embarassing Second Amendent” – an article that led, circuitously but certainly over the course of two decades to the Heller and McDonald decisions, makes the same point; the language of the Second Amendment is a wee bit anachronistic, although its legal, historical and textual roots are crystal clear to any point of view not addled by 60 years of activist, revisionist jurisprudence largely tied to risible overextension of the Miller decision.

It’s about there that the good points end. I’ll give Franks points for honesty, at least; her op-ed encapsulates the modern Left’s notion that rights are bestowed by a benevolent government, not endowed us by our creator.

It’s a notion that is, in fact, worth going to war over; ideally, a war of words, if we can keep it that way.

Re the First Amendment:

Every person has the right to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and petition of the government for redress of grievances, consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility for abuses. All conflicts of such rights shall be resolved in accordance with the principle of equality and dignity of all persons.

Both the freedom of religion and the freedom from religion shall be respected by the government. The government may not single out any religion for interference or endorsement, nor may it force any person to accept or adhere to any religious belief or practice.

Perhaps it’s a sign of social perspicacity that Franks feels the need to enshrine the concept that rights – which are, by definition, “consistent with the rights of others to the same and subject to responsibility of abuses” – apply to everyone, or that they shall “be respected by the government”.

But I don’t even want to think about how the Federal judiciary would torture the meaning of “the princinple of equality and dignity of all persons”, after a few decades of abuse by today’s “woke” blue legal academy.

And the Second?:

All people have the right to bodily autonomy consistent with the right of other people to the same, including the right to defend themselves against unlawful force and the right of self-determination in reproductive matters. The government shall take reasonable measures to protect the health and safety of the public as a whole.

The inalienable right to defend one’s self, family, property, community and freedom – to preserve the “bodily autonomy” not of people as individuals (subject to government’s “reasonable measures”, naturally) would become a carrier germ for abortion.

I’ll await Professor Franks’s attempt to get a majority of Congress and the legislatures and governors of 37 states to jam this down.

(My rewrite of the 2nd Amendment, by the way? It’s simple: drop the dependent clause, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the preservation of a free state”. Cut it down to “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. Simple, elegant, and exactly the opposite of Professor Franks’s intent, which is all I really care about).

…and the universe delivered.

Russia’s hockey team goes on the ice wearing Soviet throwback uniforms.

And were promptly beaten by…

…Finland.

By the way – in what way is wearing Soviet retro-wear any different from swastikas and Totenköpfe?

BTW, Finnish for “Do you believe in miracles?” is “Ustokko ihmeisiin?”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In Medieval times, the monks in the monastery received offerings freely given by church-goers and the monks distributed that money to the poor, called alms.  Naturally, the smell of free money brought hordes with their hands out.  Monasteries invented a new job title – Almoner – for the guy who decided which poor got the money.  With limited funds to distribute but unlimited demand for funds, the Almoner was charged with separating the Deserving Poor from the Undeserving Poor.

In modern times, we’ve lost that distinction.  We’ve mostly replaced charity with welfare given regardless of worthiness, effort, or responsibility.  “Make bad choices, get free money” provides no incentive to repent, to change, to grow in wisdom and maturity to become a self-sufficient and productive member of society.

The Salvation Army is a religion formed 150 years ago in the back streets of London to minister to the wretched poor.  Its motto is “Blood and Fire,” recalling the Blood of Christ and the Fire of the Holy Spirit.  They’re always one of the first on-scene after a natural disaster, bring comfort to those who have lost everything.  I’m not a member of their church but for years, I’ve made a point of donating at the red kettles to the point that I won’t shop Target during the holy days because Target banned the Salvation Army whereas Wal-Mart welcomed them. 

But this year, the Salvation Army is struggling.  They’ve insulted their donor base.  The big-shots forgot my donation was not payment on a debt I owed to them, my donation was a gift freely given.  There aren’t as many people ringing bells outside stores and I’m not as eager to give money to an outfit that preaches woke liberalism instead of traditional Christianity.  The leadership blames the misunderstanding on a statement by its Social Justice Committee which right-wing media have blown out of context. I ask: “Why does a Christian religion so fundamental its motto is “Blood and Fire” even HAVE a Social Justice Committee?”  They’ve lost their way.  They forgot their core mission, their reason for existing, the reason people give them money.

Disband the committee, renew your organizational focus on saving souls and alleviating suffering, and the donors will come back.  Leave social justice to the politicians. 

Joe Doakes

I interviewed a Salvation Army rep on my show a few weeks ago. He, like a lot of rank and file in the Army, pointed out that the Army is not partisan, and has to deal with social issues as they come to them; that being said, a lot of rank and file in the Salvation Army were un-thrilled by the way the natonal HQ handled things.

I still support the Salvation Army, and I hope. you do as well.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is trying out an ethiopian restaurant. Avery LIBRELLE, wearing two masks and a face shield, walks in, and notices BERG before he can hide his face behind a menu.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, fuuuu…get about finding better Ethiopian food than…

LIBRELLE: All Republicans are at fault for supporting the overthrow of the Constitution! January 6 proves it!

BERG: Look – it’s not only possible to believe that Trump, Powell and Giuliani’s lies about the 2020 election got a certain faction of people lathered up with some really stupid ideas, and it was a grave offense – in some ways, moreso than the left’s “mostly peaceful” riots of the previous year, if only because of what they rebelled against, and the. incredible inadvisability of “revolutionary” action that isn’t carried out for the absolutely most solid of motives, and that the Democrats need to continue waving the bloody shirt to deflect the nation from the problems that they created, and to fight the battle for the GOP’s identity without taking counsel of the Demcorats deflections and gaslighting, all at the same time.

And continuing to try to tar every Repubican with it is the lowest form of social gaslighting.

LIBRELLE: Hah. You’re the only gaslighter, whatever you actually say, because you don’t really know what you thjink, but I know what Republicans really think, deep down in their cold little hearts. You are a gaslighter, even if you don’t. know or believe it.

BERG: Huh.

LIBRELLE: If you weren’t a gaslighter, you wouldn’t need to make up fake conversations that didn’t really happen!

BERG: Riiiiiiiight

LIBRELLE: Anyway – Trump’s going to go to jail!

BERG: Probably not. Anyway – Trump’s not the president, and the GOP needs to figure out its way forward. Which is, of course, why Big Left is gaslighting Republicans – it’s what domestic abusers do.

But I can see why Democrats keep turning every possible conversation back to January 6. Then, you don’t have to talk about inflation, the national debt, the crime, homelessnes and blight waves sweeping Blue cities, the supply chain, the incoherence of the Administration’s Covid policy, the collapse of the immigration system, the Democrat debacle in Virginia, a mid-term that shows promise to be a wave election, the fact that the top of your ticket is a senile man and a woman who most Americans wouldn’t trust to fill out a bowling scorecard, Latino voters deserting the Democrats by the biggest numbers since 2000, and the most Afro-Americans since 1960, parents deserting and rebelling against “woke” school boards…

LIBRELLE: (Plugs ears, turns and runs) Januaryi 6! January 6! Rethuglicon white supremacist Nazis! January 6…! (Runs out door)

WAITER: Er, what was his…er, her…er, what was the problem?

BERG: Gas, I suspect.

WAITER: I hope…it gets help.

BERG: Don’t we all.

WAITER: Hey – isn’t this one of those “made up conversations“? What is it called in English?

BERG: Satire?

WAITER: What a wonderful invention. What a wonderful country.

BERG: I know, right? Could I see a menu?

WAITER: Certainly…

And SCENE