One of the moments that made me realize my old former friend known to all of you as “Dog Gone” had slipped the surly bonds of reason was their claim that gender reassignment surgery altered the patient’s biological makeup at the DNA level – that it changed gender-related chromosomes [1]

I told myself “nobody can possibly be this deluded”…

…even while knowing deep in my soul that there’s always someone more delusional out there.

And sure enough:

Part of me wants to say “someday we’ll look back on this whole period of Western history and shudder”. But I realize that’s optimistic.

[1] Side issue – if they did have surgery or medication that altered the human body’s entire chromosomal makeup, it occurs to me that curing cancer would be a pretty trivial matter, wouldn’t it?.

Football? Baseball? Hockey? Hoops? Soccer?

Nah.

But collecting memorabilia from a band whose career bell curve peaked during the Carter administraiton?

We are – or at least, one of us is – the champion!

Vern Simon received certification that his collection of KISS memorabilia has earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records

Today his collection reflects his loyalty to the original four members of his favorite band: Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss and Ace Frehley.

Vern’s collection also reflects KISS’ reputation as a prolific marketer, lending its name and the likenesses of its members to clocks, lunch boxes, and even a coffin. The latter is one of the few KISS items Vern does not own, though he does have a KISS coffin displayed on a poster.

“I want to be number one,” he said. “I’ve never been number one in anything.”

You have climbed to the mountaintop, Vern Simon. You are among the rarest species of Minnesotans – one with an actual championship.

…who the real victim in the Claudine Gay flap at Harvard (according to the university’s governing “Corportation”) actually is.

It’s Claudine Gay:

“And she’d have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for those darn meddling pouncing conservativesI”!

And while Gay is gone, let’s remember that it’s not for the reason she should have been tossed:

And that’s the real atrocity, here.

UPDATE: The “community” is speaking:

My question: Is the AP proverbially “saying the quiet part out loud” – is plagiarism the new norm among “elite academics”?

In a conversation with a couple of other conservative alternative media pluggers a few months ago, the question of where the trans argument goes from here popped up.

The consensus was that eventually, given the exceedingly experimental nature of the “treatments” involved, is that eventually the courts are going to settle this – making a lot of plaintiffs attorneys exceedingly wealthy.

Exhibit for the plaintiff provided – the initial tweet is included with the entire thread unrolled in text below (numerous attached references available in the Tweet thread):

To understand what PBs [puberty blockers] do to cognitive development and IQ, you first need to understand what IQ is, how it is constructed and how it’s measured. The following explanation is of one model of IQ. There are others. 

Definition: IQ is a property of the mind encompassing many related intellectual abilities, eg the capacities to reason; to plan, to solve problems; to think abstractly; to comprehend ideas; to use language; and to learn. 

Definition: When aggregated, these factors determine the individual’s ability to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with their environment. This is their IQ, or their level of cognitive functioning. The average IQ falls between 85 and 115. 

Types of IQ: Intelligence can be split into two subtypes: Crystalline (Gc) and Fluid (Gf). Gc (Crystalline IQ) is LEARNED or ACQUIRED knowledge: eg ‘When was the Magna Carta signed’?; ‘What is the name of the Earth’s satellite’? It is heavily dependent on education. 

Gc remains stable and/or increases over time as knowledge is gained. Gf (Fluid IQ) is related to novel problem solving, eg, how to put up an Ikea wardrobe, or how to plan a journey from say Cornwall to Aberdeen. Gf increases as the brain matures from childhood to adulthood. 

Because Gf measures NOVEL problem-solving it is largely independent of educational attainment. 

IQ is usually measured using the 3 Weschler scales:
WIPPSI young children (2-7); WISC children (6-16); and WAIS adults (16-91). There are between 10 and 15 subtests, aggregated to give the overall FULL SCALE IQ score (FSIQ). The test also yields separate Index scores. 

Impact of PBs: PBs are given when the brain is maturing, through the creation of neural connections and the laying down of fatty tissue (Myelination). PB’s interrupt this process. The following table shows the cognitive decline in a Brazillian child over 3 years on Lupron

Her FSIQ fell from 80 to 70. From Low Average to Borderline Learning Disabilities. Her performance also fell on EVERY Index score. This is unprecedented. It is really important to know that IQ is a very STABLE construct. It does not change significantly over the lifespan. 

Using the various Weschler scales, IQ should be roughly the same measured at ages 5, 25, 55 or 85. There will be some small changes (depending on external factors like fatigue, rapport, testing conditions, etc). These are accounted for by reporting the Confidence Interval 

But generally, IQ does NOT change significantly over the lifespan. Unless there is an ‘insult’ to the brain: eg head injury, infection ordisease etc, IQ absolutely SHOULD NOT be dropping by 10 points over 3 years!!!!! 

In 30 years of giving hundreds of IQ tests, I have only seen such a decline ONCE (a few weeks ago), in a man with severe Autism. Otherwise, a fall of this magnitude, without a head injury, tumour or other disease process, is simply unprecedented. 

This finding ALONE, in this single child, should have been enough to immediately halt ALL administration of PBs worldwide until more data was collected. In medical terms, this is almost as unusual and alarming as if her blood type or fingerprints had changed. 

But here’s more evidence: Below shows an average 7-point drop in IQ of 25 kids after 2 years on PBs. This rate of decline is consistent with the Brazilian finding. It’s not an ‘artefact’ of testing. Something very serious and dangerous is happening as a result of PBs.

This data is known. This information is out there, yet PBs are still being pushed as ‘Affirming’ and ‘lifesaving’ care for children. In reality, PBs are causing significant and possibly IRREVERSIBLE BRAIN DAMAGE. They are impacting both Gf and Gc. 

ALL children should routinely have their IQ tested at the beginning of ‘treatment’ and periodically whilst on PBs. But gender clinics are not collecting this data, so the true scale of the disaster in terms of the cognitive damage to children is not yet known. 

It’s possible these children’s IQs are CONTINUING TO FALL. A 10-point drop is the difference between getting a degree or not. A 20-point drop is the difference between living independently or staying at home with parents because you cannot manage life without help. 

This is a scandal of unprecedented and unimaginable proportions. But there’s also mounting evidence that X-sex hormones are also causing a decline in IQ in adults even AFTER the critical Myelination process is complete (age 25 to 30). I will do another thread on that. 

 Please Rx. Transgender ‘healthcare’ for children is a Crime Against Humanity. It MUST be stopped. By us. 

PBs do have a role: For a 4-year-old who starts menstruating, the risk of cognitive impairment is less than the psychological consequences of CPP. But they have absolutely NO place in ‘treating’ the psychological dysfunction of otherwise perfectly HEALTHY children. 

Somehow, shockingly, puberty is now seen as an illness which must be blocked. Regardless of the consequences to children. But PBs affect the ENTIRE body. Not just sexual development They don’t mysteriously and miraculously stop working above the shoulders! 

And, before I get all the usual, nonsensical pushback: I am a ‘real’ psychologist; I do have a DClinPsych; I am not, and have never claimed to be a medical doctor; I’m not a ‘crackpot’; my views are not outliers; every clinical psychologist knows the truth of this thread. 

Side question: so what do PBs do to the adult brain?

And in the case of adults – is transition a treatment for mental illness, or a symptom? Or self-medication?

Among the many laws that went into effect on Monday, Governor Klink was proud to announce this:

For starters: 68? Sweet Jesus, what is this, “Cool Hand Luke” sweat fetish pr0n?

Beyond that?

Mandatory temperatures (outside the obvious safety habitability rules, which already exist) combined with rent control = less housing.

Or does nobody study economics anymore?

You’re on a cruise ship. It hits an iceberg and sinks. You climb into a lifeboat with nine other people, and break out the oars.

One of the people starts rowing toward the cruise’s destination. They paid for it, dammit.

Another starts pulling toward Florida, because Florida would be cool.

A third starts rowing toward where they think the nearest land is.

#4 starts rowing toward their home, in Cleveland.

A fifth just starts pulling. She hasn’t gotten her cardio and she’s feeling stale.

Six? She just complains that #3 is “mansplaining”, and pulls in a random different direction.

#7 just sits and heckles the other rowers, dangling the oar cynically in the water.

An eighth person stars rowing toward the light of what might be a rescue ship.

Number nine just says “We’ve got to dooooo something” and just picks a random direction.

You? You pull in whatever direction the current is taking you.

After an hour, the boat has just been spinning about, the light has disappeared, and you’ve moved nowhere.

“Diversity” in and of itself isn’t a virtue. It’s only meaningful if everyone is pulling in more or less the same direction.

…that 45% of current university students will think that this…

…is a documentary.

What to do if you’re surrounded by a mob on the road?

Like most self-defense law, it’s a lot more complicated than you think.

While the lawyer is talking Washington State law (talk with a Minnesota defense attorney before assuming anything) they highlight the episode that happened in Minneapolis, by the Walker, a month or so ago.

Forewarned is forearmed.

…by this point that nobody who supports absurdly high minimum wages at a policy-making level can possibly actually believe that it’s about helping working people, can you?

“Experts” have gotten a bad name over the past couple years.

It’s a fun palate cleanser, once in a while, to see the real thing in action.

Ian “Gun Jesus” McCallum goes over the reports that Hamas is “manufacturing its own sniper rifles”.

The thumbnail is kind of a spoiler – but seeing how he got there is fascinating for technology geeks.

Back in high school, there were two radio stations in Jamestown. Up above White Drug was KEYJ, my station, a little 1,000 watt AM station whose boss, Bob Richardson, always made a point of hiring local kids and showing them how to do radio.

Across First Avenue, above the jewelry store, was KSJB and KSJM. KSJB was a 5,000 watt station at 600 kilocycles – which meant it covered six states and two Canadian provinces, and broadcast couintry music and lots and lots of farm market reports. It was a big station, and – at least when I was a kid – hired pretty serious air talent for the region. High school kids? Never.

KSJM, at 93.7 FM, was a little FM pop station. It was “automated”, which is the norm in radio stations today (most music radio uses computers to splice together commercials, music and “voice-tracked” dropins from “disk jockeys” who’ve never jockeyed a disk), but was not common back then, done with reel to reel tapes and carousels of cartridge machines and clunky analog computers. I rarely listened to KSJM when I was a kid – there were much better rock stations available, even in that part of North Dakota.

Also back in high school in Jamestown, everyone knew the Ebertz family. They’d gone to high school with my dad, who had in turn taught a generation of two of Ebertz kids and cousins. One of them ran a cafe that was an institution in Jamestown.

One day, sometime about my senior year of high school or freshman year of college, I heard that Pat Ebertz had finagled his way into doing some disk-jockeying on KSJM. It wasn’t much – a few hours on weekends – but it was a fun little burst of local radio. And as someone who’s done a lot of “do it yourself radio” over the years and today, the idea grabbed me.

I moved to the Twin Cities, and inadvertently slipped back into radio. And it was a few years later – probably 1991 – when I was at KDWB when the jock I was producing, “Michael Knight”, was on the phone with his old buddy, Pat Ebertz, from his old station, KNOX in Grand Forks. We talked for a bit – he’d stayed in the biz.

I was just about to leave it, actually – within a few weeks, I’d bail on KDWB, and not set foot in a radio station for another 11 years.

But Pat made the move to the Cities a few months later, latching on at KDWB, where he spent years as a producer and sidekick for Dave Ryan. Being music radio, fashions change and jobs come and go fast – but Pat had a long run at the 101.3. I heard he’d moved to Saint Cloud and was at the Top40 station there, and then recently that he’d latched on with Tom Barnard. We hadn’t talked in decades.

Someone sent me this yesterday:

My condolences to the whole Ebertz clan. From another radio do-it-yourselfer.

I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and say that either…

• Her husband is a shriveled little low-T millennial Twerp who agreed that he was in fact gay on Christmas morning, or…
• He’s on the market as of today.

For his sake, I’m going to cross my fingers and hope for “b”.

Among the “setter projects” that Americans established as we (yes) conquered the North American continent, along with representative democracy, were universities.

And I’m thinking that those are among the “settler projects”…

…that actually need to be dismantled.

Or at least, it’s time for an actual honest-to-god McCarthy-style purge of Universities.

Caught in passing from Rep. Murphy:

Cute. But it’s actually up to Democrats to show that Ukrainian aid is more important to them than closing the southern border of the US.

Glad we could settle that.

Ever noticed how it’s one, and only one, side of our political debate that gets to block freeways and run riot with impunity, or functionally close to it?

My favorite example – when the gang of droogs pulled over the statue of Christopher Columbus on the Minnesota state capitol mall in 2020, no arrests were made (even though it happened with a squad of Highway Patrol were standing right there). Eventually, one “ringleader” surrendered – and was “sentenced” to…

…teach children about the evils of Christopher Columbus.

Of course, no conservative who pulled down the statue of authoritarian socialist scumbag Floyd Olson would expect not to do serious jail time – because there are two justice systems in Minnesota. One for the far left and those they favor, and one for the rest of us.

Imagine Pro-Life Action MInistries trying to block a road? There’d be water cannon and attack dogs, and the media would be busy covering the new all-womens-sports bar as they carted the injured protesters off to jail.

But the favored classes?

And sympathizers with Big Left’s favorite fascists?

Why, it’s almost like they want regular schmucks to be afraid to go about their day, or poke their heads up where radar can see them.

More later this week.

Rabbi Schmuley relates this episode in Paris.

No, of course it’s not Paris. It’s New York. (Although if that giggle trollop girl is 11 years old, I’m 18.

But this is…Christmastime in the USA today.

UPDATE: Schmuley seems to bring them out of the woodwork:

I’ve probably written this before. And that’s OK.

I make a point of being – in modern parlance – “radically joyful” during the Christmas season.

Let me explain.

As I pointed out in memorializing my mom last year, her and my father gave us what I now know to be a priceless gift; a boring, mostly drama-less childhood. Christmases were always low-key, but – crazy as this may seem – they were *happy*.

I get it – there are people with all manner of trauma in their lives. Not everyone has great associations with the season. But there’s also a cynicism to modern life; a crowd that seems to think that whizzing on the idea of a *happy Christmas* is the thing to do.

I went through a stage in my life where I was around people whose primary emotion around Christmas was stress. The names, and for that matter the stages, aren’t that important, and I’m not judging, or even discussing, the motivations – the point being, Christmases exuded stress, panic, misery and tension.

I hated it.

And I had little kids at the time. And for what it was worth, I figured I was going to try to pass on some of the joy I still held onto.

And so, on some dark, tense, difficult Christmas long ago, I resolved that I was going to be happy, whatever it took. To “crap sunshine”, as one of my more charming mentors put it.

There was some psychology to it. I’d read a biography of photographer Robert Capa, which had included an old Hungarian saying – “the best way to become wealthy is to appear as if you already are”. And while I didn’t know it at the time, that’s true in a lot of things in life – “fake it til you make it” can be a very helpful principle. For everyone, in every situation? Of course not.

But it worked for me. The less counsel I took of the stress and tension, and the more I pushed “joy”, the less I needed to push, and the further into the back that stress and tension faded.

The best way to become happy is to act as if you already are.

Anyway – whatever Christmas is to you, and yours, I hope you have a happy and blessed one!

I saw Frank Capra’s “It’s A Wonderful Life” two years ago.

“Whaaaaat? You never saw…”

That’s what I freaking said. I somehow managed not to see the movie until Christmas-time, 2021.

I probably watched it 4-5 times that season, and a couple more last year and this.

But I wasn’t aware that there was another ending…:

Speaking of movies – it’s become clear in recent years that the only thing needed to call a film a “Chrismas Movie” is any intersection with Christmas of any kind, no matter how tangential.

So with that in mind, here is the list of the top 12 “Chrfistmas Movies”:

1. Die Hard
2. Alexander Nevsky
3. Lethal Weapon 1
4. Patton
5. Goodfellas
6. Full Metal Jacket
7. Carrie
8. Better Off Dead
9. Stalag 17
10. Rocky IV
11. The Rev
12. Trading Places.

But whatever you think is really a Christmas movie, I wish you and yours a happy one.

I recorded an “evergreen” Christmas Weekend broadcast. Merry Christmas!

Here’s the song list:

Let’s take a look back to last May.

I started this post at the end of the session, last May, amid the DFL was doing its endzone happy dance over having gotten their way on literally everything during the session,

Here’s Rep Long – who in normal times one would be tempted to call “one of Minneapolis’s more annoying legislators”, but “progressivism” has lapped him a few times on that count:

They sure loved to prattle on about “gridlock being over”, didn’t they?

The Strib cheered on the home team! Here was a rare photo from last year of Governor Walz not eating something:

And here, one of them rejoices that the trains will run on time.

Or something like that.

This tweet caught my eye last spring – someone had a clue what was going on.

Today, of course, the “surplus” (which wasn’t) is long gone. There’s going to be a deficit in the next biennium, even if the economy hangs on.

All as predicted.

A Look Ahead To The Ghost Of DFL Excuse-Making Future

Budget deficit of $2.5 Billion Plus?

I was a punk fan from the beginning. I may have been one of two people in Jamestown to have had a copy of the Sex PIstols first album. I don’t think my parents would have approved – but that was kinda the point, wasnt it?

I’ve been a fan of Pistols lead singer John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon – the Elvis Presley of punk rock as the leader of the Sex Pistols from 1975-1978 – since I was a teenager. And I’ve gotten to be more of a fan over the past 20-odd years, as he’s shown himself to be quite a political and social free thinker, breaking from the monolithic showbiz narrative on a *lot* of issues (albeit not all, but then, he’s John Lydon).

But…

…I was today years old when I learned that Lydon was married to the same woman for 44 years, withdrawing from much of public life for the past five years to take care of her while she was suffering from of Alzheimers before dying last month.

He also raised the children of his wife’s daughter (Ariane “Ari Up” Forster, also a punk icon) – the oldest two after Forster gave up trying to raise them (they’d essentially grown up wild, almost as art projects, and as teenagers couldn’t read, write or form complete sentences) and the youngest after Up died of cancer in 2010.

Now, if I could just run down the accuracy of that persistent rumor that Joe Strummer had become a bit of a Tory before he died, that’d be a perfect Christmas present.

In the book Red Storm Rising – Tom Clancy’s second novel, released around 1985, at the height of the Cold War, and tho only Clancy novel that didn’t focus on Jack Ryan, his family and his professional and social circle – the protagonist, obscure intelligence analyst John Toland, connects the dots among several events – a Chechen terrorist attack on an oil refinery, its attendant economic turmoil – and becomes concerned about a possible Soviet invasion.

The line that connects all the dots? The Soviet government releases an updated version of the 1938 film Aleksander Nevsky, Sergei Eisenstein’s historical drama about the eponymous Nevsky, getting the quarreling Russian nobility to shelve their differences and set about repelling a Teutonic invasion in the Middle Ages.

Am I butchering the plot worse than Nevsky butchering the hapless Germans? Perhaps. Here – watch for yourself:

Finer plot points notwithstanding, the movie is intensely nationalistic – which got the film shelved, and then un-shelved after Barbarossa and the invasion of the USSR.

The point – as John Toland put it in Red Storm Rising – was that whenever the Communists wanted to whip up a nationalistic frenzy against the West, they’d trot out Nevsky. Which was, indeed, the case in the book, as the USSR let slip the dogs and tanks and artillery of war, in what became one of the better, and final, fictional novels of World War 3.

So, Hollywood is doing a fictional “civil war” movie, featuring an A-list….

…well, B+-list cast, a big-name sci-fi director, an apparently significant budget…:

…and a fairly bizarre premise: that DC, New York and the Midatlantic states, Texas and Califonria will be allied against, I suspect, a bunch of of blockheaded rednecks and roobz from Florida and most of “flyover land”.

The movie is billed as science-fiction, but the sides drawn appear to be more fiction than science;

Little has been released about the plot, although speculation is running hot:

 The reasoning behind the seemingly bizarre alliance of Texas and California in the film points to the notion that the war isn’t over Democrat and Republican politics but more about Offerman’s corrupt three-term Presidency. The United States federal government has apparently disavowed its allegiance to the United States Constitution and is now held under the budding dictatorship of Offerman’s tyrannical President.

 The reasoning behind the seemingly bizarre alliance of Texas and California in the film points to the notion that the war isn’t over Democrat and Republican politics but more about Offerman’s corrupt three-term Presidency.ent.

So, maybe it’s not a Blue-Vs.-Red thing, as such.

But coming in the immediate aftermath of a state supreme court ruling that has just served as a Reichstag fire for those on both sides insisting that they are fighting intractable anti-democratic forces on both sides – a decision that has raised the temperature and lowered the signal-to noise ratio and increased the likelihood of a, let’s just call it “less than reasoned” response to any election result next year, is this really the media cue we want to be sending out?

“Depends on which “we” you’re talking about, doesn’t it, Mitch?”

Why, yes – it does.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is loading some garage junk into a truck. He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, whjo is walking up the alley writing down the addresses of homes without handicap parking spots.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Uh…

LIBRELLE: Christian Nationalists can’t handle freedom of religion! They’re having a cow and melting down over a Satan Club at a school!

BERG: Huh.

LIBRELLE: What do you have to say about that?

BERG: Other than “Satanism is a religion in exactly the same way as “The Onion” is, only even less funny? It exists only to mock faith. Well, to mock Christianity. It’s not a worldview. It’s a running adolescent jape.

LIBRELLE: You’re gonna crrrryyyyyyyyyyyy…

BERG: So, if a school had an “Amos and Andy” club, or a “Speedy Gonzales” club, or an “Apu” Club, or a “Boring Basketball” club, do you think Blacks, Latinos, Indian-Americans or women might take umbrage?

(But LIBRELLE is already skipping, literally, down the alley.

And SCENE>

I’m a little old-fashioned in a lot of ways. I guess part of it goes along with being a conservative. And/or a Christian. And/or a decent human being.

Which is why seeing the current statistics about the beliefs of the younger Gen-Zs seem so very catastrophic to me.

Huge percentages of people from the late teens through late 20s:

• Have no idea who Hitler was
• Don’t know what the Holocaust was, and have no idea that there was a concerted attempt to rid the world of Jews, which was about 70% successful in Europe.
• Think removing Israel from the map is just fine.
• Believe that October 7 was an Israeli “blue on blue” or false flag, or just faked.

It’s to them that I commend this Israeli documentary about the massacre at the Nova dance party – drawn entirely from footrage from partygoers and the terrorists themselves.

It’s all in Hebrew and Arabic – but it’s easy enough, and utterly terrifying, to figure out for yourself what’s going on anyway, as the film spirals from ecstasy-soaked rave through “Iron Domes” bursting in the distance, to swarms of goons with AKs and RPGs murdering and grenading civilians, fleeing and hiding for their lives.

And in my unguarded moments tempted to tell actual humans to force their acquaintances who believe it’s all a conspiracy to watch it. Jamming it down their throats if necessary. With a stick and a hammer, if needed.

But that’d be uncivil, wouldn’t it?

Almost as uncivil as hoping the IDF strangles the last Hamas terrorist with his own entrails.

PS: you can have my gun when you pry it from my cold head hand.

PPS: Palestinian Arabic is an extraordinarily ugly sounding language.

If you aren’t running on this…

…for the love of all that is holy, please tell me why?