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

…the bigger a figure in the Civil Rights movement he used to be.

2020: San Francisco mayor London Breed pushes policies softer on crime, vagrancy and social decay than even her predecessors. She literally raised not a finger – at best – against the decriminalization of shoplifting less than $900 worth of merchandise, leading to the gutting of much San Francisco retail and roaming gangs of smash and grab flash mobs of looters.

2021: London Breed turns into “Dirty Harriett“.

Mark my words: Law Enforcement in San Francisco, under pfogressive leadership, will be about as subtle and libertarian as Ted Nugent leading a band of saracens…

…although I suspect it’ll have little effect on crime.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It snowed Friday night. Saturday morning I was running errands and was so excited to see a snowplow, I took a picture.

Then I remembered I don’t live in St Paul anymore. 
Joe Doakes

I live on a snow emergency route. I hear them go by in the night.

Almost like I live by a city council rep.

Neil Shah is running for the MNGOP nomination to run for Governor.

Kim Crockett is running for nomination to run for Secretary of State.

Here’s the Legislative Evaluation Assembly.

And here’s today’s playlist:

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If China moves on Taiwan and Russia moves on Ukraine, we should move on Cuba. Think of the money to be made selling beachfront property to condo developers like . . . Donald Trump.

Hey, as long as The Big Guy gets his 10%, what’s the problem?

Joe Doakes

hey, there’s an invasion that would make American leftists sit up and pay attention.

Let’s say you had a couple bumps at a bar – like, say, 8 to 12 of them. And then decided to drive home.

You were carrying a gun, and a car full of loose ammunition.

You drove down the freeway, until you didn’t – you swerved off the road, rolled your car, scattering ammunition all over the place. You had to be extricated, in no condition for a field sobriety test. When you finally took a whiz test at the hospital, you tested at a .13 BAC – 50% above the legal limit,and a level that indicates you were likely at a .17 during the accident itself.

And you’re a civilian.

Do you think the county attorney is going to let you plead out to fourth degree DUI?

I’m referring of course to Henco Sheriff Dave Hutchinson.

Or course. you wouldn’t. At the very least, the County Attorney would put you through a legal wringer, and make sure you settled with charges that involved serious time in jail.

So – is it just county employee mutual backscratching?

Maybe.

Now ask yourself – would Rich Stanek, the previous Sheriff and the last elected Republican of any kind in Henco, have gotten the same treatment?

Remember how the media covered his adult son’s behavior. before you answer that.

Oh, yeah – the media. The only media actually covering this story are the conservative alternative media here in MInnesota:

So perhaps we call it “DFL Privilege?”

Campaign Time: “Trump has no plan for Coronavirus!”

Not quite campaign time: “We have no plan for Coronavirus“.

A friend of the blog, from (this is an important to the story) Saint Paul, emails:

A couple who currently rents on my block are looking to move. Not that unusual. Renting isn’t typically a long term goal of professionals. They want to move out of the neighborhood versus buying in the neighborhood. Again, not unusual. People move up, have their dream home preferences.
They are like typical woke liberals with their various signs about being welcoming, #resist, etc. They proudly voted for rent control. They proudly give money, food to the homeless and believe the homeless belong on our lawns. We don’t agree on everything politics, but they are neighborly, so I shrug off the differences.
Until I had an interesting conversation. They are looking for elsewhere because it is too chaotic here. There are too many renters and more are moving in. There is too much change. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to get better.
OK. But, do they see how their votes made this happen? Of course not. 
I know I may be accused of being too optimistic here. But, maybe when people who voted for this move away, we’ll have more power to vote for things that will actually improve things again. 

As we’ve seen on policy after policy after policy, the left seems to think:

• There is no such thing as unintended consequences
• They’ll affect other people if they happen.

Many of them moved to Edina, Roseville and Bloomington about the time they had the epiphany – utterly unrelated to the inevitable effects of their policies, naturally – described above.

Weird.

I don’t always follow boycotts.

Part of it is that most of the companies I want to boycott over recent transgressions, I shopped shopping at years ago over previous ones.

Example: I stopped patronizing Pepsi, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut back in the ’90s, when they were donating big bank to gun control groups. Dick’s Sporting Goods became traef to me when they pulled “modern sporting rifles” from their shelves.

But for those who are new to the business of shopping with purpose, here’s at least the start of some holiday Naught and Nice lists.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

There is no proof that Ivermectin does anything for Covid. None at all. And when I say ‘none,’ I mean there is some, more than we’re prepared to admit, so we simply deny any proof exists.

That’s not proof, that’s just anecdotal gossipy rumor.

That’s not proof either. Everybody knows you can’t trust those dark-skinned savages to count correctly. It’s not as if they invented a new number or something.

Proof consists of a double-blind study performed by medical experts. Unless it’s the Pfizer vaccine being tested, then it would be unconscionable to deny half the patients the real medicine. In that case, give it to all and ignore the results.

This is SCIENCE. You must trust the SCIENCE. You’re not a SCIENCE denier, are you?

Joe Doakes

The biggest casualty of Covid – and of modern progressivism – is actual science.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is looking for a new heat gun at a hardware store when Kirk THUNT, used car salesman and chairman of The Arne Carlson Project, an anti-Trump organization based in Forest Lake, walks around the corner.

THUNT: Merg.

BERG: Er…hi ,Kirk…

THUNT: You routinely refuse to condemn Donald Trump for trying to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when he was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: I condemn, and condemned, the riot, the “storming” of the Capitol, and anyone who thought they could overtake the Constitutional process by force. All the talk about killing the Vice President is just baked wind; the Secret Service would have leveled anyone who tried. The electoral commission was alarmed – justifiably – but they finished their job. Democracy was never in danger, and everyone involved is in a world of legal hurt. The federal criminal justice system is doing what it does.

THUNT: The January 6 Commission just learned that Chief of Staff Meadows has text messages proving Trump was involved.

BERG: Maybe they do.

THUNT: Maybe? So you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: The commission is an investigation – of sorts. Findings are not a conclusion. I’m not going to pretend I know enough to draw a conclusion, even if my conclusion matters to anyone. Let the investigation run its course.

THUNT: Huh. Let it run its course? So you’re right there behind the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: Again, no. I am saying I believe the left has glommed onto it as a way of deflecting, eternally, away from their many very deliberate attempts to undercut out democracy, and the riots that they supported from 2015 to 2021.

THUNT: Deflection? So – you are a big fan of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: I’m pretty sure I said exactly the opposite, several times. My “crime” with you seems to be the fact that I haven’t wet myself with outrage over Trump, with regard to this episode or any other during his administration. I was a Trump non-fan back when you were watching The Apprentice. I’m intellectually honest about the things he did right and wrong, but if you’re looking for…

…on cue from me, you’ve got the wrong guy .

THUNT: So you dismiss concerns about the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: For the fourth time in 90 seconds – no. I do think Big Left uses January 6 the same way a certain European socialist leader used this episode. But we’ve got a whole new set of problems to deal with, as a nation and, frankly, as a Republican.

THUNT: So you don’t think the GOP is forever rendered toxic by its association with Trump, meaning you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when he was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: Er, Kirk? I’ve just explained that every single point you make is bulls**t. And yet every time you take a breath, you tell me I support the…what is it you say?

THUNT: You are a hypocritical supporter of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: And again, I am not.

THUNT: Denial means you are an enabler of the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: That’s false.

THUNT: Disagreement means you are a supporter the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: Once you got on the green, you only had to use your putter twice, right?

THUNT: Nonsensical responses mean you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

BERG: Look. The heat gun I’m looking for.

THUNT: Using heat guns means you support the attempt to overthrow the government and erase the Constitution on January 6, when Trump was complicit in sending mobs looking for the Vice President, and the Electoral Commission, and members of Congress, to try to kill them.

(But BERG has already left the room)

I remember the way my kids would be all giddy, giggly and happy, running down the stairs to check out the presents on Christmas morning.

It’s the closest thing I can think of to how “progressives” sound when a natural disaster hits a red state.

Also – remember “weather isn’t climate!” – but only until it happens in a state where the Senators don’t hitch themselves to Climate Change as a policy driver.

With that in mind – prayers for the people who wound up on the wrong end of a bunch of tornados in Kentucky over the weekend.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails about a story I’ve been wanting to touch on all week:

You know those “Good Guy with a gun” stories that Liberals scoff at as Sexist White Supremacists Compensating for Something?

This Edina woman isn’t scoffing.

If only there were some way society could assume responsibility for protecting the public from violent criminals, some group of armed public servants sworn to uphold the law so that private citizens don’t have to.

Joe Doakes

Of course, the “good guy with a gun“ angle got buried so deeply, it’s a good thing the fact didn’t need oxygen.

You’ll never get our opinion class to admit it, but it was the good guy with the gun that saved the situation.

Carjacking comes to Lynden Hills – the leafy, upper-upper-middle class part of Minneapolis that adjoins Edina.

Via KARE11:

Catch the bit starting at 1:23?

…but we have to address whatever the greater problems are…that have brought about such system unrest. So my biggest hope is that enough of a light gets shined on this that we all start working toward some real substantive change.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and presume, given the language and the “white guilt”-addled neighborhood, that she’s not talking about ending “catch and release” and “bail reform” for habitual violent offenders?

Stockholm Syndrome is the psychological phemenon of people becoming attached to their hostage-takers.

Minneapolis Syndrome is one step beyond – where you blame yourself for the fact that they attacked you in the first place.

Colorado’s Democrat governor has basically declared the pandemic – or at least, state government’s heavy-handed response to it – over.

Is it because they’re listening to the science, accepting that Covid is a highly mutable virus that will be with us pretty much forever (in forms that are more contagious and less lethal over time)?

Or is it because mid-terms are looking that bad in this very purple state?

The answer: either way, more of this.

…when Nobel Laureates were smart people.

No more.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails

You’re a cop. You’ve stopped a driver and have him standing on the side of the road because he’s got warrants for his arrest. He dives back into the car, presumably going for his gun. What do you do?

a. grab him from behind and wrestle with him. No, because he might still grab his gun and shoot you.
b. grab your expandable baton and smack him. No, because he’s diving into the car and there’s no room to swing the baton.
c. grab your pepper spray and Mace him. No, because inside the car, it’ll blind you, too.
d. grab your Taser and shock him. Maybe, depends on who else has hands on him that will also get shocked. What other options do you have?
e. grab your . . . .

. . . too late. He shot you. You’re dead and so’s your partner.

Intellectually, she intended to grab her Taser but instinctively, she grabbed her pistol. It’s a learned response. It’s what cops practice the most. Gun instructors say “train as you will fight” because that’s how your body will react in the half-second available. And cops train with guns because that’s ‘the gravest extreme,’ when the training matters most.

Officer Potter did not commit murder. This was a horrible accident but entirely foreseeable because the decision-action table is too long, too many variables to run through, and nobody can ‘train as you fight’ for all of them.

Joe Doakes

A roof on qualified immunity quite a bit – Justifiably so – but at its core, it is intended to protect people like police from excessive liability for exactly this sort of situation.

Unlike civilians, who are legally strongly discouraged from doing anything but running away from altercations, the police are expected to go toward the sound of trouble.

The pendulum likely need to swing back. I’m pretty sure this is a terrible case to enact that swing.

A relationship can survive anything, says Dennis Prager, except contempt.

And there is a lot of contempt in our society.

Mostly one-way:

Nearly a quarter of college students wouldn’t be friends with someone who voted for the other presidential candidate — with Democrats far more likely to dismiss people than Republicans — according to new Generation Lab/Axios polling.

And a disturbing number of leftists don’t want to hire or employ those people, either.

It’s the ugly, militant side of Urban Progressive Privillege: not only do people with UPP never need to recognize any different perspectives on life, they increasingly work to actively cleanse their echo chambers of any dissonance.

You could call it cultural cleansing:

The Democrats routinely call Republicans and their activists “culture warriors,” but when it comes to pushing the country in a particular direction away from where it currently is, it’s always the Democrats who have been at the forefront. On abortion, they have been pushing to open up the definition to make it as widely available and as routine as any other form of birth control. With social spending, they have moved to make it more and more available while lowering the requirements further and further, creating programs that are impossible to pay for.

On issues like education, they are tightening their control as much as possible and shutting families out, even going so far as to label concerned parents as “terrorists.”

Jussie Smolett was convicted of lying about being hate-crimed, three years ago, by a roaming band of Trump supporters. In downtown Chicago.

Most of the lefty commentators who proclaimed the case a damning indictment of American society were – “unexpectedly” – silent over the weekend.

And they may have been the smart ones.

Ja’Han Jones – a writer of sorts for MSNBC who is described as a “futurist and multimedia producer focused on culture and politics”, meaning pretty much someone who partied with the right people in college – warned conservatives about what we “should realize before they relish the Jussie Smollett verdict“.

Nonetheless, the strange, seemingly ever-changing details in the case have provided nearly three years’ worth of material for comedians and online commentators. Some of it has been quite funny, in fact. 

Of course, there’s not a lot of there in the piece, which concludes:

Even more comical, in my view, was the predictable conservative outrage over Smollett’s allegations. Conservatives took to social media in 2019 to express outrage over the dropped charges. How dare someone make such a heinous claim about followers of their dear leader, they screeched. Violent, masked white guys who shout Trump slogans and use chemical agents to attack victims? 

Many on the right shamed those of us who knew such a claim was totally plausible — and then the Jan. 6 insurrection happened.  

And that’s it!

Of course, Berg’s Seventh Law applies. I’m sure there were conservatives that, after a decade and a half of watching hoax after hoax, and retraction after retraction of narrative-based claims of hate crimes, indulged in a bit of schadenfreud at a verdict that, had it not been on a case tried in crazy-blue Chicago, was utterly predicable to anyone with two brain cells to rub together to get some sparks.

But Jones is projecting, of course; it was everyone on the left – not just hoi polloi in comment sections, but an unbroken phalanx of blue-checks – who were dancing and cavorting about the usual chanting points; gut-shot to white cis-hetero privilege that this “hate crime” represented, the spotlight it still showed on the hatred that, they’d tell us, still roils beneath the surface of every honky.

Berg’s Twentieth Law – assume widely-publicized “hate crimes” are hoaxes until proven otherwise, which I obeyed in every particular even before I watched Smollett’s “alibi” crumble like a donut fresh out of a microwave – gave way to Berg’s Seventh Law; when the left accuses you fellow conservatives of moral turpitude, it’s almost invariably projecting.

Smollett’s verdict brings me no joy; we have a society that actively enables this sort of narcissistic showmanship, and uses it to further tribalize a society that doesn’t need any more.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

A restaurant owner in Albert Lea has been convicted of violating Walz’ Executive Order to close. The judge gave her 90 days in jail.

A restaurant owner in Lynd (near Marshall) had her restaurant license yanked by the Minnesota Department of Health because she stayed open in defiance of Gov. Walz’ Executive Order to close.

Those of us who have worked with small-town restaurant owners know it’s a business with brutal working hours and razor-thin margins. They don’t get paid vacation. They don’t have capital reserves to weather a ‘temporary’ shutdown of ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ which dragged into months. The cooks and wait staff are typically local people of limited skills who depend on these jobs to survive. The banks typically force owners to pledge their homes as collateral for the business loan so if the business fails, they lose everything.

There is no scientific evidence that closing a small town restaurant but allowing larger restaurants (including casinos) to remain open, has any effect on public health. The Executive Order took away vested property rights with no rational basis. It’s unconstitutional.

Governor Walz stole these people’s livelihoods and robbed them of their future, for no reason.

Refused to obey an unconstitutional order to close, so their employees could feed their families? They ought to be given a medal.

Joe Doakes

You’ve got to break some eggs to make a kombucha.

Or something like that.

My question isn’t whether Sheriff Hutchinson drove impaired last weekend – though it seems likelyl.

It’s not why – cops are prone to drinking, and it’s been a rough couple years.

It’s not whether he drove in a county vehicle.

It’s not whether he got favorable treatment from the State Patrol – which didn’t post the details of his crash for nearly half a day (2.5 hours is the norm), or took a urine test rather than a more accurate. blood test when Hutchinson got to the hospital. Cops generally look out for cops. Of course the Patrol went easy on the Sheriff.

No. My question is this:

The Sheriff was said to have been partying at a resort full of sheriffs, at the State Sheriff’s Association meeting, at the Arrowwood Resort near Alexandria – a room full of people whose departments spend a lot of time, and earn a big part of their budgets, arresting, prosecuting and fining drunk drivers – very frequently, people with blood alcohol levels between .08 and .1, which in most people is barely perceptible intoxication, a lowering of the limit that was almost entirely done to allow more arrests and prosecutions of people pulled over for other offenses – tail-lights, expired tabs – after a beer or two. They run departments whose deputies have prosecuted DUI cases that have gotten many menaces off the road, it’s true – and also put a “DUI” on the recrods of nearly 10% of Minnesotans – a blotch that goes on to infringe their civil rights, their employment prospects, and their status in the community.

And yet, nobody in that resort full of sheriffs thought to tell Hutchinson “er, maybe you oughtta stay and have a couple cups of coffee, or bunk up at a Best Western for the night”, or anything of the sort.

No – off he went.

And, one presumes, off most of them went, as well, presumably after a bump or two themselves.

Nobody in that room full of people that have helped arrest and convict 10% of the entire state of DUI thought to pull Hutchinson aside?

…if modern Social Justice chic would or could exhibit the faintest hint of conscience…

…it seems it can.

Although it took an (ostensibly) Catholic university to do it, so…

The House DFL’s redistricting plan couldn’t be more obviously gerrymandered to support the DFL if they re-did CD 6, 7 and 4 to spell out “DFL” in precincts on the state map.

Rep. Jeremy Munson has what I think is the second-best proposal I’ve seen:

Now, I thin the best plan I’ve seen (with all due modesty) is my own: it’d re-do the map so the districts are like huge slices of pie, radiating out from the Metro across the state. I need to find an actual precinct map to try drawing this up…

Remember:

Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors…And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that [concern] comes from a place of privilege because for those of us for whom the system is working,

Minneapolis City Council PResident Lisa Bender, June, 2020

It appears Minneapolis has solved that particular “privilege”:

This sort of thing is unacceptable in North Minneapolis, in Frogtown, out on the Lower East Side or deep in the heart of Phillips.

But this isni’t in any of those places. This is in leafy, green, upper-middle-class, DFL-voting Nokomis. The heart of Mayor Frey’s power base. Just down the road, figuratively, from Lisa Bender’s privately-secured house.

The victim is speaking out:

Public Safety is a privilege – one that Lisa Bender enjoys with all the subtlety of Keith Moon at an open bar, at taxpayer’s expense, to the tune of well into six and heading toward seven figures, if last years spend rate has kept up.

This is the choice facing the entire state next year; more of this, or drawing a line on the cement and say “they shall not pass”.

And make no mistake, that is the whole choice; Mayor Frey is stuck with a city council that was bruised but not chastened by the electoral results last month. Governor Walz is a beard for the “Progressive” wing of the DFL (read: the DFL), the extremists who call all the shots in the DFL these days, without whom he will be an empty plus-size suit out of a job in 2023. That wing thinks the disorder is a good thing. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be running rampant in Minneapolis.

This is the choice.

PS: This is the situation in Minneapolis, with Mike Freeman – “liberal”, but not “progressive” – runs the Henco Attorney’s office, perfunctorily shoveling cases before “progressive” judges who’ll kick everyone back out on the street before their cell beds get warm.

Imagine what life’s gonna be like when Ryan Winkler is the Henco Prosecutor!