During the 2022 campaign and the 2023 legislative session, in the immediate wake of burning through a $19B surplus, that the DFL claimed that the spending binge would “Reduce Poverty by 30%”.

The sessions ended a year ago yesterday.

So how’s that going?

Well, apparently we won’t know for another couple of years. The MN Department of Health’s poverty numbers end in 2022 – when they were rising.

According to some sources generally aligned with the left, poverty was steady to up; to others, it was rising…

…as of the end of 2022.

But since the spending orgy?

No idea.

All I know is, the DFL has been incredibly quiet about the subject for this past year.

There appears to be an 18-24 month lag getting poverty numbers to the public.

Huh.

So they spent $19B, and raised the budget 40%, to “eradicate” something…

…that they couldn’t test until well after this fall’s election?

Weird.

Thanks as always to Brad for letting me sit in!

TC Pearson was here on behalf of “Defend the Guard” and “Bring the Troops Home”. His podcast is The Black Robe Regiment.

And here’s the music for today’s show:

Wanna piss off Erin Maye Quade? Donate to Pre-Born today!

Catch up with AK Kamara here.

And today’s song list:

Former representative Ryan Winkler has led us down a twisty, turny path with some surprises over his legislative and extra-legislative careers.

He’s swerved from the ridiculous to the, well, occasionally admirable, and back, and forth and back and forth, and backandforth…

And, well…:

Denying the industralized murder of 11 million people,

versus

Legitimate questions and doubts about everything government told us about Covid from the very beginning – remembering that many of the “conspiracy theories” of 2020/2021 turned out to be true: natural immunity works, and for longer than the vaccines; fomite spread didn’t happen; lockdowns were useless at best; the Great Barrington Declaration was right (the vaccines should have been targeted at the elderly and vulnerable), researchers lied even about the intended effects of vaccines or that “Zero Covid” was ever possible, masks made little to no difference, and there’s a pretty significant chance the virus did start as a result of Frankenvirus research in China.

Holocaust denial is a social pathology. Pandemic “denial”, at four years remove, is neither pathological nor especially denying any fact.

Someone needs to take a deep breath.

Notice how many Democrats and media people (ptr) are gaslighting working Americans about the economy lately?

The Dow Jones and the level of GDP is nice and all, but inflation is rising faster than buying power, and is going to get worse before it gets better, if it gets better.

The state legislature wrapped up on Sunday. Behind their moral leaders – an accused felon and a not-very-closeted authoritarian – they enacted one of the more shameful spectacles anyone has ever seen in the Minnesota state legislature:

The process – and all inconvenient parliamentary procedure – was ignored, as the DFL jammed down a 2,800 page omnibus bill that the DFL had crammed together at the literal last minute, dropping a printed copy on the floor with a half hour remaining (as the online version “unexpectedly” went down).

Representative Engen put it well:

“We did what we had to do”.

How are people not seeing this is every bit as destructive as “January 6?”

So – they continued squashing freedom and the economy.

But the accomplishments!

In the past two sessions, they squandered $19B in surpluses, jacked up taxes, set up a speech database and gun registration, turned on a firehose of funding for the fraud-prone non-profit/industrial complex, and trashed the rideshare market, among many other sins.

But hey. Junk fees.

What’s next session? Banning “shrinkflation” in potato chips?

Leftists, 2020: “Punch a Nazi!”

Leftists, 2024, being thwarted in their protests in support of actual modern-day Nazis [1]:

“Heeeeeeey! No fair punching!”

[1] In the “fascist dictatorship founded on racial obsession, focused on murdering Jews” sense of the term, rather than the “I’m a leftist and I don’t whatever it is” sense.

Holy crap.

US aid being supplied to Gaza via the potato’s “pier from nowhere…”

…is being looted.

Unexpectedly!

…people like this…:

…get angsty about American flags on beaches because, two generations ago, they were the ones shooting down at them from the cliffs.

MITCH: Go Timberwolves!

CRITIC: But hey, Mitch – since when do you care about pro sports?

MITCH: Outside the Bears, Cubs and Twins?

CRITIC: Right. Since when?

MITCH: Since never. Don’t usually care. But I DO care about having fun, and being in a place where one of the teams is doing well is kinda a blast, even if you don’t care that much about the sport. See also the NDSU Bison.

CRITIC: But you haven’t been a loyal Timberwolves fan!

MITCH: Yep.

CRITIC: That makes you a fair weather fan!

MITCH: Dang skippy it does. Why waste time on losers?

CRITIC: But you’re a Bears fan.

MITCH: Yep. And they’re going to the Super Bowl this year. Or next, if that doesn’t work out. The weather is *always* fair, here.

CRITIC: But doesn’t this violate Berg’s Fourth Law?

MITCH: Close. But here’s the statutory technicality: I’m not saying “they’re gonna win!”. I’m being hopeful but pessimistic. So we’re good.

CRITIC: That don’t make no sense

MITCH: Shut up cheer. Sheesh.

Joe Doakes, no longer from Como Park, emails:

Seems that Cracker Barrel is in financial trouble after inviting restaurant patrons to celebrate Gay Pride.  Go to https://ace.mu.nu/ and scroll down to “The Morning Rant: Cracker Barrel Went Woke and Now It’s Going Broke” for a nice recap. 

Sometimes I wonder if every big company is working from the same “How to Destroy Your Business” cheat sheet, but that cynically paints with too broad a brush.  It’s not “every big company” but “every company that ought to know its customers better.”  This isn’t a woke failing, it’s a management failing.  Figure out what the customers want, figure out how much they’ll pay for it, figure out how to sell them what they want at the price they’re willing to pay, then get rich doing it.  It’s been the business model of civilization for thousands of years.  How hard is it to understand?

I could see Target deciding to go woke.  They’ve been on the cutting edge of liberal silliness forever.  They were leaders in the trans bathroom issue.  They refuse to sell spark plugs because gas lawn mowers kill Mother Nature.  For them to put penis shorts in girls’ clothes should have made perfect sense, given the liberal woke crowd they’re marking to.  It only blew up because they failed to understand that Woodbury Soccer Moms are all in for gay rights and saving the planet when the issue is theoretical but some of them become Mama Bear protecting her little girl cubs when the issue is personal.  “Woke” is fine until their own daughter is at risk of being raped by the trannie in the girls’ bathroom at school, or shot by the vibrant kid who be jus bout to turn his life t’roun, or beat up by the diversity princess because the daughter didn’t respeck her.  Then, old fashioned law-and-order values are in hot demand.  Not enough to sustain a serious boycott to cause serious damage to the brand, but enough to be noticed.  Okay, that’s Target.

 Cracker Barrel, on the other hand, should know better.  Their customers are Southern church-goers and senior citizens.  It’s the Denny’s crowd, one economic step up from the Waffle House rabble.  They’re willing to tolerate queers and trannies but they’re not the least bit interested in celebrating them.  If you’re going queer, we’re going elsewhere, same as the Bud Light drinkers.

 Personally, I’m waiting for Remington to announce its new Rainbow Pride Rifle to completely finish off the brand forever.  Can’t be long now, can it? 

Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park

Personally, the problem is that so many of these brands we’re avoiding are ones I haven’t patronized in forever.

Cracker Barrel? In the ’90s – when my budget made a trip to CB a treat for special occasions – it was an event. A destination. The biscuits alone were something I looked forward to.

The last time I ate at a CB – maybe 2017? – it was like eating at a Perkins that’d given up. Them going “woke” was a market anticlimax for me.

Minneapolis is increasingly run by showy, shrill, demogogic “Democrats Socialists of America” radicals intent on rebuilding the city in their image.

Saint Paul, as long as I can recall but even moreso in the past 15 years has been run by an informal assembly of white NIMBYs from the various Parks (Highland, Merriam, Irvine, Saint Anthony) and Crocus Hill. They mostly bring ideals from the sixties and money from the fifties to the 2020s.

I’ve long joked about them – but darned if they aren’t generally just a tad less oppressive

I said “a tad”.

I did mention they are NIMBYs, right? These are the people who shut down the “Back to the Fifties” hot rod cruise on Snelling and University, because while they want all the amenities of living in a major city, they also want it to as quiet and placid as an Iowa pasture. They jammed down the city’s “Tony Soprano”-style trash collection system because they – who don’t apparently need to leave home much – got tired of hearing different trucks going through their alleys and down their streets every week. Given a choice between every other possible option willing to redevelop the old Snelling Bus Barn, they wanted a soccer stadium, and got…a soccer stadium (surrounded by a vast vacant field).

Crime – while significantly lower than Minneapolis, then and now – is a serious problem.

There’s a perception among some who don’t live here that people, especially business owners, are either OK with that, or helpless to fight it. Neither is true. For example, one property owner along University Avenue has taken to playing classical music, outdoors, on loudspeakers. It’s a measure that actually has an effect on crime where it’s been tried.

Which, for the NIMBYs, isn’t good enough, as a friend of the blog points out:

The Hamline Midway Facebook page was lit up with hyperbolic comments about the classical music coming from some parking lot, “it startled my cats!’ “it’s not good for the birds” “we have young kids” “those businesses are so rude”-

Turns out the decibel level was only 70. About as loud as a vacuum cleaner.

Did sound travel a bit with the wind, the air of the particular night? Possibly. Were the NIMBY neighbors likely piling on the hate and hyperbole because of who was playing the music and why? Most definitely.

No word yet on how many sleepless nights these very same neighbors have when some crazed homeless person is screaming through the night, or some gang banger is ghetto blasting the stereo, or any of the many other normally heard sounds way above 70 dbs in Hamline Midway. No, if anyone would be as hysteric over those noises, there’d be a slew of anger bestowed on that person. The rage would find its way to the poor soul’s boss and the person would be fired because who wants and angry mob screaming “fire the bigot” showing up at any business?

The path between dotty but well-connected Merriam Park biddies (aged 30-90) and policy in Saint Paul is short, paved better than any Saint Paul street, and has no bike lanes or speed bumps.

To: DFL Parents
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Your Kids

DFL comms guy Ryan Faircloth [1] had himself a chuckle in the lobby of the GOP convention last Friday:

The sign, naturally, is a just a tad tongue-in-cheek.

But the MNDFL – the party of “comedians” who aren’t funny and people with no sense of humor, to sa nothing of the party of Judd Hoff and Nicole Mitchell – forgot about Judd Hoff, Nicole Mitchell and “Anti”-Fa long enough to post this:

Now, let’s focus on the sign.

DFLer parents: how about teaching your kids that hitting people with skateboards and shooting golf balls and frozen water bottles from slingshots isn’t actually political speech?

That is all.

[1] CORRECTION: Ryan Faircloth appears to be a reporter for the Strib, not a DFL comms guy.

We regret the error.

To get in touch with the Minneapolis GOP BPOU, go here, or email at info@mplsgop.org.

And here’s today’s music list:

Among Big Left’s great crimes against history is the complete devaluation they have achieved against the term “Fascist”. To much of the parts of society that routinely use the word, it now means “anyone not on board with today’s left’s narrative”.

No, really:

And Big Left knows what it’s doing, since the other options have also been hijacked. Call someone a Nazi, and you’re overwrought. Call someone a Communist, and people start jabbering about the Red Scare.

“Authoritarian” works, but it doesn’t have quite the same emotional impact – and Big Left has been diluting that one by associating it with Trump – a demonstrably less authoritarian president than Obama or The Potato.

So given the options, what does one call a political figure or party that:

• Their ends justify their means – including the use of government force to secure compliance
• Tries to co-opt the institutions of society to further their political ends, starting with government and schools and ending with the family itself?
• Aggressively “sorts” society into “good guys” and, especially, “others” to use as scapegoats and deflections from one’s own actions – up to and including creating an official version of “reality” that may or may not have much in common with the real thing.

Let’s take a thoroughly educational look at a politician who seems to check off all the boxes for…well, the “A” word. And maybe some definitions of the “F” word.

The Real Authority

Maye Quade is a fully-fledged creation of leftist institutions – and pays obeisance to them:

But she certainly has no love lost for society’s actual institutions.

Like parenthood.

She wants to nullify parents trying to teach their children morality and ethics, so her side doesn’t have to work quite so hard to uproot them. j

This is, of course, on top of her very casual relationship with telling the truth if it’s not in her political interest.

Might Makes Right

Maye Quade may not actually have the executive power to sicc government and its monopoly in the use of force on her political (and finanncial?) enemies.

But she sure thinks about it:

“I would love to eminent domain all 98 of these crisis pregnancy centers and turn them into affordable housing for people who do have children,” said Sen. Maye Quade. “I would love to turn them into food banks and diaper banks and formula banks. Like, these are things that actually support people having children when they decide they would like to have children, and everything that crisis pregnancy centers are doing is not that. None of it is that.”

Aggressively Sorting

Maye Quade has a staffer who’s got a bit of a “virulent anti-Semite” vibe.

This is, of course, shocking in that the aide is more antisemitic than Maye Quade’s own equivocating weasel-word-larded antisemitism:

Your tax dollars are paying for this.

It should go without saying Senator Maye Quade, like all leftists, is more aggressively yet casually racist about “othering” apostates – in this case, Senator Tim Scott, a Republican and African-American:

…which is a perfect invocation of Berg’s 11th Law.

And, like every good gaslighting abusive partner, it’s all really your fault:

Hard to miss the fact that the “consequences” in her “culture” are entirely one-sided. But that’s the nature of the abusive gaslighter. But then, I did mention creating an alternate, “official” reality, didn’t I?

No, really – an actual alternate reality…

…deviance from which is considered heresy.

I mean, a Republican with a similiar record of shilling for naked authority, advocating the co-option of instutions and relentlessly cutting out “others” to use as enemies would be called an “authoritarian” at the very least.

And yet it’s Senator Maye Quade that walks the walk

The deficit bomb is ticking away.

Illegal immigration is crushing working-class incomes.

But we get the representation we deserve, apparently:

It took me a couple of beats to realize it wasn’t the “Congress” scene from “Idiocracy”.

Have to wonder what the suffragettes would think.

Heather “Lawnmower Barbie” Edelson, beat Marisa Simonetti, 54-45.

In other words: A woman with near 100% name recognition, especially among people who come out for special elections, beat someone nobody had heard of three weeks before the election.

By nine points.

In a district Keith Ellison won by 20, and Governor Klink by 30:

There’ll be another round in November.

While the district is a little less “blue” than most of Hennepin County, this can’t be great news for the DFL headed into the fall

Hamline University in Saint Paul is an exquisitely expensive instution that seems to be not quite as prestigious as Saint Thomas, and always a couple of degrees behind Macalester in terms of the impeccability of their leftist orientation.

But they aren’t to be left behind.

Here’s their “pro-Palestine” neo-Brownshirt “encampment”, as a rainy night ended this morning.

So maybe we’ll have Hamline kids puking on their own lawns for a change this weekend.

Joe Doakes, no longer of Como Park, emails:

We all know how Minnesota Nice works.  Someone invites you to dinner, she’s serving Italian Spaghetti.  Everyone in Minnesota knows there’s an unspoken understanding that “Italian Spaghetti” is hamburger, onion, and Ragu from a jar ladled over Creamette spaghetti noodles sprinkled with Kraft Grated Parmesan from the green can.  If you get there and the recipe is anything else, Minnesota Nice requires you to Try A Bite To Be Polite and when asked, say something bland like: “Oh, it certainly was Interesting.  I’d never have thought of adding raisins, wherever did you get the idea?”  Under no circumstances may you demand: “Why the hell are there raisins in it?” as that may offend the hostess which she will immediately tell everyone in town and you’ll never hear the end of it.

Ah, for the good old days when the only lie we had to acquiesce in, was that the meal was edible.  Now we need to pretend to believe whatever mental illness anyone else at the party asserts.  That guy claims he is a pregnant woman so he’s about to go on pregnancy leave from work.  Isn’t that wonderful?  “Well, it certainly is interesting.  However did you discover your new gender identity?”  That woman is so emotionally unstable that she needs to bring a comfort animal everywhere she goes and the airline won’t allow her alligator on the airplane, can you believe the outrage?  “Well, that certainly is interesting.  Wherever did you get one?”

Which makes me wonder: what if we . . . didn’t?  What if we didn’t pretend?  What if we responded truthfully: “I don’t like raisins in my spaghetti sauce; in fact, I never heard of anybody who did,” and let the hostess be offended.  What if we told the guy: “That’s silly, you’re a man, you can’t get pregnant and besides, Monty Python did it better in Life of Brian.”  What if we told the airline woman: “If you’re so crazy you need an alligator to avoid hysterics, I don’t want you OR your alligator on my flight.”

Liberals claim to favor free speech but what they mean is you are free to agree with them.  You can agree in word or song, music, poetry, or interpretive dance.  But you can’t disagree because they hate that.  They say: “Hate speech is not free speech,” but what they mean is: “Your opinion offends me.”  Yeah, so?  What if the First Amendment guarantees a Right to Offend?  What if stix-and-stones is essential to the smooth functioning of an honest society and the Heckler’s Veto is the Devil’s Work tearing it down?  

If you’ve got a problem with my opinions, well then, You’ve got a problem.  I don’t have a problem.  I’m comfortable with my opinions and I’m entitled to express them in law-abiding manner.  You are not entitled to suppress them through unlawful behavior, not by yourself and not by proxy.  Students on campus, take note.

It’s one thing if polite manners suggest we should not needlessly offend.  It’s quite another to criminalize offensive speech, to doxx and de-platform and de-monetize it, and quite the worst thing when government is doing it to political opponents, by phony lawsuit or by pressuring social media.  Making the most-easily-offended-person the focal point of an entire society is a recipe for societal collapse into anarchy.  We’re well on our way.

Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park

Its hard to see this as anything but The Swamp killing freedom with a thousand petty little passive-aggressive cuts.

Count the number of jump cuts in this 14 second long video:

Not cuts to B-Roll. Not special effects. Not pans or zooming.

This is the audio equivalent of one of those ransom notes pieced together from letters cut from magazines. (Kids, ask your parents)

The good news: Minnesota’s new paid family leave law will cost 25% more than originally budgeted:

Minnesota’s new paid family and medical leave program will launch in 2026 with a 25% higher payroll tax than originally anticipated when the bill was passed last session, an assistant commissioner with the Department of Employment and Economic Development told lawmakers on Monday. 

Because DEED has been given legislative authority to raise the tax, the agency can do so without requiring a new law. 

“Wait, Mitch – I thought you said that was the good news?”

I did.

The bad news? The program doesn’t start until 2026. Like the Southwest LIght Rail and every other DFL spending boondoggle, this program is going to get more expensive before anyone ends up using it.

To: Canada
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporo<i>u</i>s Peasant
Re: Fires

Canada,

The haze in the air tells us it’s gonna be a big fire season.

May I propose the following:

1. Burn all you want
2. While you’re at it, burn Ottawa first.

That is all.

Mad props to this bloke:

Tangentially related: anyone unironically wearing a “Guy Fawkes” mask should be a legitimate target for tasing or thrown rubbish.

Mostly for leftists, naturally. But even if I agree with you, wearing one of those gawdawful masks knocks your credibility back by two orders of magnitude. .

At the beginning of this session, I’d have figured the DFL trifecta would get some portion of their gun grab agenda jammed down. Maybe not outright bans on semi-automatic firearms, or repeal of pre-emption – but most of the smart money said “safe storage” and “lost and stolen reporting” was going to get jammed down no matter what.

And yet here we are with a week to go, and there’s only one bill still on the table – the stupid binary trigger ban:

And this next week could be – and needs to be – a red zone stand for the ages:

Your phone calls matter. Grant Hauschild – DFL Senator from Tom Bakk’s old district – bailed on the “safe storage” bill, negating Nicole “The Ninja” Mitchell’s vote. It was a close call.

By the way – note that it’s the Gun Owners Caucus doing the work. Not “Minnesota Gun Rights”. If you’re not a member, you need to be. Get on it

Get on your phone. Kill the bills.

If you live in District Six in Hennepin County – this area here…:

…you need to get out and vote Marisa Simonetti for Hennepin County Commission in the special election being held today.

She’s an unknown conservative who ran in the runoff three weeks ago, spent about $700, and got 33% of the vote with no name recognition, running against Mary Moriarty’s spouse and at least one candidate who spent $70K to try to build name recognition, in a runoff. That took her to the final round, today:

Her opponent is Heather Edelson – a sitting Legislator whose sole “accomplishment” was writing a bill that would have banned gas powered lawn mowers in the state. “Lawncare Barbie” has name recognition – and literally nothing else.

Simonetti’s a dark horse – but given the tiny turnout in these special elections for county races, anything is possible.

So:

• If you live in the area in the map above – basically all of Henco south of 394 and west of 169 – get to the polls. Bring your family. Extort your kids. Whatever it takes.
• If you don’t live in this district, make sure any family you do have in the area turn out and vote for Simonetti.

This would really shock the world.

So let’s do it