To: The Minnesota Republican Party
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Stragegery

Republicans,

Wanna cause a stampede of voters outside the 494/694 loop?

Make this person – Rep. Sandy Feist – the face of the MNDFL.

Her and her pet billl (I’ve added emphasis):

The Minnesota Legislature is considering a bill that would require all public and charter schools to make menstrual products available in school bathrooms, including boys’ bathrooms.

The bill, House File 44, would make it so “A school district or charter school must provide students access to menstrual products at no charge. The products must be available in restrooms used by students in grades 4 to 12.” …

“There are a lot of schools that are moving towards gender-neutral bathrooms, and if we add ‘female,’ we might become obsolete very quickly,” Feist said. 

“Second, not all students who menstruate are female,” Feist continued. “We need to make sure all students have access to these products. There are obviously less non-female menstruating students and therefore their usage will be much lower. That was actually calculated into the cost of this.”

Business output is down 9%. Investment is cratering.

And Sandra Feist’s priority is giving middle-school boys lots of materials for practical jokes.

Sincerely,

That is all.

…that the Venn diagram of people who were dumping on Lauren Boebert’s drunken (and let’s be honest, tacky and ill-advised) make-out last summer…

…and people who are excusing, celebrating and even…uh…

…celebrating a couple of Democrat aides filming gay porn in the US Senate is a circle.

I can’t help but wonder – when he said “I would never disrespect my workplace” – what does he think doing the nasty in the nation’s upper deliberative chamber is? And what would “respect” look like?

Chaser: At least one rumor says Maese-Czeropski’s, uh, film set was Amy Klobuchar’s desk.

Watch out for flying binders!

I wonder if the members of the DFL “coalition”…

…will start to put together for themselves how much of that “alliance” is built on social gaslighting and browbeating by their white, pronouned, “progressive” overseers. (and, naturally, their “leaders” bellying up to the trough for their graft paymetns)?

As predicted by yours truly about this time a year ago, the DFL squandered a $18B “surplus” [1]

The DFL is contratulating itself that it still has a surplus of a couple billion dollars – which is a little like jumping from the top of the IDS building, opening your eyes and seeing the 20th floor, and thinking “Hey, I’m at the 20th floor, I guess I’m OK”.

The DFL has spent the state into debt.

Minnesota passed a humungous budget in the last session. To make that possible, they drew from other funds well outside of general funds, such as special revenue funds and money from the federal government.

For Health and Human Services spending, for example, lawmakers loosened eligibility and working requirements for cash assistance programs. The cost of these changes — which is about $50 million — is currently being funded by federal TANF dollars until the 2027 fiscal year.

And it’s actually much worse than that:

Once the state starts paying for these with state dollars in 2028, spending will go up. And if current events are any indication, the cost of these new changes will likely have blown past $50 million by then.

Additionally, lawmakers also allocated over $2 billion in extra funding to Medicaid. Until 2027, over half of the money will come from the Health Care Access Fund (HCAF) — a special revenue fund that has historically been used for MinnesotaCare. If at any point in the future, HCAF cannot sustain this new Medicaid spending, it will have to be shifted to the general fund.

And, go figure – the economically-illiterate DFL have killed a bunch of the golden geese (aka ripe suck citizens) that usually pay for DFL gigantism:

For one, Minnesota heavily relies on income taxation. But our income tax system is highly progressive. So, the state disproportionately relies on a small portion of the state’s high-earning individuals, which is in itself a problem.

Unfortunately, this problem was made worse last session, when lawmakers passed targeted “tax cuts” that have eliminated or reduced income tax liability for select taxpayers, such as social security income recipients and low-income parents with children. This has narrowed the individual income tax base even further.

And let’s not forget that high-income earners have already been fleeing Minnesota and going to low-tax states like Florida.

The recent changes to the tax system do not just narrow the income tax base, however. According to MCFE, these targeted tax cuts and tax redesigns have substituted less volatile sources of income tax revenue — such as salaries and social security — with the most volatile sources — such as corporate income — putting the state further in a precarious position.

I”m not in on the DFL’s planning, but I suspect it involves reliance on two things:

• Hoping the Biden Administration convincing the Fed to keep interest rates low (through the election, anyway) convinces enough gullible voters that the ecomony is just great, and
• Sending out an endless diet (as it were) of photos of Peggy Flanagan feeding Tim Walz donuts and corn dogs.

After all, that [2] is what got them through 2022.

[1] Which was a bit of a mirage, to be honest – made up of limited-time Federal stimulus money and taxation of economic activity spurred by other government-stimulated spending.

[2] Well, and that whole Roe V.Wade thing, of course.

I was reliably informed that the DFL’s spending spree was going to “reduce poverty by 30%”, and that “Bidenomics” was a new golden age.

And yet…:

Apparently the (checks scorecard) Mainstream Media are now spreading Russian disinformation.

Wonder why Big Left’s noise machine was so quick to try to gundeck The Fall of Minneapolis?

Because they’re smart enough to see that it coud change some minds.

In this case, the minds of academic Glenn Loury and the NYTimes’s John McWhorter – both of whom formerly bought Big Left’s story on the events of May 2020.

And both of whom re-evaluated things pretty radically:

Haven’t seen it yet? Make up your own mind.

This fellow – a Doctor of Intersectional Grievance Studies – is sure nuff gonna show his neighbors what’s what:

Where to start:

• Since Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to “be enrolled”, they were pretty much the opposite of “Undocumented”.
• He apparently thinks there’s a significant faction of “southern” Christians who believe Jesus was a European caucasian and that the Holy Land is in Alabama.
• The good Doctor of Intersectional Grievance Studies apparently missed the memo that, if you’re a Christian, Christ came to save everyone regardless of race or much of everything else.

Having spent at least eight years getting a PhD in Intersectional Grievance Studies, it’s understandable he’s not clear on the nuts and bolts of Christian theology – and, being an academic in a field built on fomenting social nastiness, that he’d post a sign and a Tweet so deeply steeped in toxic condescension.

It’s forgivable.

CORRECTION: I’m sorry, I read that wrong. Hef’s not a Doctor of Intersectional Grievance Studies, but rather a PhD in some variety of Theology. He also describes himself as a “Pastor”.

I’m gonna go out on a short, sturdy limb and guess that either he’s the “pastor” of a very sparsely-attended Episcopal parish, or that he’s more of a professor these days.

I’m going to commend you to this particular episode of Ben Shapiro, from a couple weeks ago.

He’s talking about the Republican Candidate debates – comparing the debates Republicans deserve with the one the nation needs.

The one we deserve? Well, the donnybrook between DeSantis and Newsome was a great one. In another time and place, it might have been a classic, like Reagan/Mondale.

But it was just another chapter in this nation’s formerly biennial and now permanent ritual of the tribes ceremonially throwing rhetorical (for now) bricks at each other, immune to any reason the other side may be throwing back.

The debate we need, on the other hand?

It’s a bit of a cartoon – whenever you suggest that maybe it’s time to discuss, even think about, how this nation approaches the subject of perhaps having a “National Divorce”, leftists immediately chant “That was settled in 1865!”.

The only response to that that matters is “Well, no – it was settled in 1776”.

We’ll come back to them.

From the center right, the response is probably more rational, and definitely more frustrating: “we have to preserve the union”.

Why?

If the union’s moral and political compass decays to the point where “the union” has completely trampled on the Constitution, the RIghts of Man and the whole notion of Government being a free association of equals, what is the point?

Put another way – what is more important: The nation’s founding principles, or its political union.

I’ll take founding principles, and ditch the parts of the country that disagree, every time.

There are those on all sides who shy away from the topic, saying any national breakup will inevitably look more like Bosnia or Kosovo or Belfast than some Trulbert-like organic readjustment.

Again – why? If one had asked a typical political thinker in Europe in 1770 what would happen if a people threw off the monarchy and established a constitutional Republic, what do you suppose they’d have predicted?

Chaos. At best.

And given the moral and intellectual midgets who set the standards for our culture, the idea of the “peaceful divorce” just might be harder than it needs to be.

But as Dennis Prager correctly notes, America was less divided in 1861 than it is today. I believe a renewed commitment to federalism is the only hope to maintain a nation.

And a renewed commitment to federalism would require a huge bounce-back resurgence in Federalists in politics. We’re out there – but we’re nowhere near power, even in the GOP.

So our culture is rolling the dice. And the best way to assure that any future, uh, “civic readjustment” is absolutely a bloody debacle is to shame the conversation into the shadows, were only the crazies and the extremists will own, and consider, and be ready, for the split when and if it finally happens.

I’m no expert, but it looks to me that keeping the southern border open is more important to the Biden administration than either Ukraine or Israel.

Again – no expert. But those seem like strange priorities for the American executive branch.

The Governor of Oklahoma has abolished the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office at all state institutions of higher education:

Let’s roll this snowball.

One the current tropes among the populist right is that “college is useless, and you should send your kids to learn a trade”.

There’s a truck loaded with cinder blocks full of truth in there – for many 18 year olds, a year or two spent learning how to weld, be an electrician or mechanic or tool and die maker would be a much faster path to self-reliance than four years at college racking up debts while learning little or nothing that one needs to succeed in the world.

Now, let’s be clear, here – I don’t think college needs to be a longer more expensive trade school; there can be value to learning a “liberal art”, something traditionally intended to teach one to think rather than strictly to design, build or fix something…

…provided that that that education actually teaches how to think.

We’ll come back to that.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, my father was a great teacher. He taught. high school speech, writing and literature, and college-level education classes. He was one of the two best teachers I ever had. He also used to agree, at least hypothetically, with the likes of Mike Rowe – the ideal education, he said, was spending a few months or years learning a trade, and then going on to some other course of more abstract study after one could pay the bills.

This, of course, may have been a little idealistic projection from a man who, on good day, knew which end of a screwdriver to hit the nail with. He was and remains a brilliant teacher – and one of the least handy people I’ve ever met, myself included.

When I was in high school. and college, I had not the slightest interest in going to trade school – not out of any sense of college being “above it all” or “better” – I was every bit as peripatetic back then as I am today, and if could have squeezed in learning how to machine metal or be an electrician, I would have.

But to my Dad’s point, I also figured I already had a trade; I’d started in radio when I was 15, and had learned a lot. I figured my fallback would be working at some station, somewhere. It wasn’t the dumbest idea, at a time when radio was a tough but viable way to make a living. It’s not advice I’d give a kid today, but that was then.

With the “trade” part figured out? I sought a life living in my head; I majored in English and minored in History and German. I also majored in Computer Science almost long enough to get the minor, but I hated it, and didn’t touch a computer for seven years after I graduated – but that’s another story. And for me, at least, the promise of a “liberal arts” education was fulfilled; I learned how to think, and when the opportunity to jam a bunch of different facets from my background together into a new career fell into my path, I was able to jump on it.

Of course, I’m not sure colleges today teach critical thinking the way Dr. Blake did.

But I come here not to wallow in nostalgia, but to weaponize it.

While I don’t disagree in the least with my Dad, or Mike Rowe, I also think this is a lousy time for conservatives who are so inclined to completely abandon the academy, if only because it’s people from Harvard and Penn and MIT who will write the histories and the textbooks and play an inordinate role in defining our culture…

…and if you see the people who are driving our system toward collapse and calamity today, that should be pretty terrifying. Because just as Califonria-style government followed Californians who fled to Colorado, a society run by the products of our crypto-Maoist university system – the judges, politicians and culture-definers of tomorrow – will follow you into your shop van or plumbing business.

Big Left has been ‘marching through the institutions” for over fifty years; they’re not going to be set back to square one by a season of scrutiny. But it’s an opportunity. And the future of a free society demands that some young conservatives, and the older ones that still control some levers of power (if only their checkbooks) take a shot at that tackle, before the current wave of barbarism completely rewrites the definition of “freedom” for a few more generations.

There was a time when I might have asked what a metro school board, like for example Edina, might have done if a bunch of students wandered around the halls bellowing:\

“Uptown
Downtown
We Just Want Our Lebensraum

Or:

We don’t need ethnic pollution
Bring us the Final Solution!

But it occurs to me…:

…it may be the wrong quesiton these days.

20% of young people believe, to one extent or another, that the Holocaust was a “myth”.

That sounds bad – and it is, but probably not for the reasons that jump out at you.

As Ilya Somin at Volokh points out, part of it is an artifact of the survey question: While 8% of Americans between 18 and 29 “strongly agree” that the Holocaust is just a scary story, 12% indicated they “tended to agree” that it was a myth – which, Somin points out, could many anything from strong doubts down to nit-picking the numbers.

He also points out something that might be even worse: some kids doubts may be due to ignorance:

A second relevant ambiguity is that the question doesn’t distinguish between people who know what the term “Holocaust” refers to and those who don’t. The latter may seem implausible. Who doesn’t know what “Holocaust” means. But much evidence shows widespread public ignorance of basic facts of history, science, politics, and even the basic structure of government. A majority of Americans can’t name the three branches of government, don’t know when the Civil War happened, and support mandatory labeling of food containing DNA (the latter probably because they don’t understand what DNA). And most surveys of political and historical knowledge find that it is inversely correlated with age; that is, younger people tend to know less than older ones. The latter phenomenon isn’t confined to the present generation of young people. Survey researchers found the same thing with previous generations when they were young.

“People in general are ignorant, and young people generally more so” is a pretty common, simple and accurate observation.

The real problem isn’t just ignorance of the Holocaust, so much as complete ignorance of all of Big State’s atrocities over the past century – the Great Leap Forward, the Gulag and the Holocaust:

The point here is not to suggest that ignorance about the Holocaust is unimportant, or that the Great Leap Forward and other similar communist atrocities were necessarily worse than the Holocaust…. I lost several relatives in the Holocaust myself, and have no desire to somehow downgrade its importance.

Rather, the point is that ignorance about the Holocaust is part of a broader pattern. Any solution to the problem probably cannot focus on the Holocaust alone, but must consider the broader issue of historical and political ignorance, as well. For reasons elaborated in my book, Democracy and Political Ignorance, increasing public knowledge of politics and history is likely to prove a much tougher challenge than some imagine it to be. In the meantime, public ignorance about the Holocaust, communist mass murders, and other historical events makes it more likely that we will fail to learn the lessons of these tragic events, and thus be at greater risk of repeating them.

Our society has had a couple of generations of not having to fight against nature or other humans for its very existence. I suspect that that fact alone has caused a degrading of the nation’s aggregate intelligence.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking to his parked car after a political event in downtown Saint Paul. As he walks past a near-empty office building, MyLyssa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, steps out.

SILBERMAN: Merg!

BERG: Er, hey, Mylys…

SILBERMAN: In recent years, you’ve pounced on Demcorats for saying “tut, tut, nobody’s coming for your guns…”

BERG: ….and pointing the reams of legislation that shows that they are, but that that’s not good enough unless there’s actually a cop beating down your door.

SILBERMAN: Uh…

BERG: If the cops are busting down one’s neighbor’s door, I should shut up because they’re not storming my house yet. Point being, the progressive line on all outrages against freedom is “If it’s not happening to you right this second, no matter how imminent, then it’s not a threat”.

SILBERMAN: Don’t you think that’s a bit unfair?

BERG: You tell me:

SILBERMAN: Not sure I get your point…

BERG: Yeah, I don’t imagine you do.

AND SCENE

As I’ve been noting for about eight years on this blog, I’m intensely ambivalent about Donald Triump.

His personality roils with traits I personally don’t care for.

But something about all the prosperity, peace and border security is looking good.

“Oh, Merg, so you just want someone who’ll make the trains run on time, yuk yuk”

Peace and security are legitimate jobs of a national government. Prosperity is the opposite of the “Fascist” dynamic you’re yukking about. And Trump at his wackiest didn’t approach the level of authoritarianism of any of Baraclk Obama’s three terms in office.

I’m on Team DeSantis [1],but if it came down to Biden, Harris or Newsom against Trump, I’d probably hold my nose and vote Trump.

The worst thing about Trump is that he, like Obama before him, is the center of a personality cult. And with Trump, soooooo many of the cultists are just so deeply dim:

Loomer – charitably described as “insane” – cites a piece on by David Greenberg, a Rutgers historian who’s never been mistaken for someone who’d throw a life ring to a conservative who fell overboard.

Bill Clinton infamously threw some of his more extreme supporters under the bus in his long forgotten”Sista Soulja” moment (in the the long-forgotten Sista Soulja”). Trump’s never gonna have a “Crazy Laura” moment.

If he did, I might have to hold my nose a little less hard.

[1] And yeah, I think in a just world Doug Burgum would be on the short list, but we don’t live in a just world.

You know those photos that amusement parks snap as you come down to the end of a log flume or roller coaster?

They catch the rider at a moment when they’ve just been waaay up high, and are in the process of falling waaaaay down, into the water (for the log flume) or back to the end of the ride.

If your only frame of reference isd the photo, you have no idea that seconds later, the riders and their “log” are plowing up a plume of water. But seeing as the tracks head inexorably downward, you know where it’s going.

I have to suspect when a DFLer gets those photos, the response is “You’re not in the water right this second…

According to last week’s budget forecast, MInnesota’s DSA-led DFL has led Minnesota from a nearly $18 Billion surplus to…

…well, the snapshot released last week caught the state’s budget at a $2.4B surplus – but, like that log flume photo, it’s that high because that’s when the snapshot was taken on the way down:

Higher estimates in health and human services and education raise total spending in FY 2024-2027, resulting in a negative structural balance in the next biennium.

That “negative structural balance” could be up over $2 Billion. And that’s provided the economy doesn’t really tank.

Who has two thumbs, predicted this, and is currently typing this post? This guy.

Compare and contrast with Iowa:

Iowa led the “tax-cutting wave” in 2022, with the most comprehensive and aggressive tax reform in the United States. This will gradually replace the nine-bracket, progressive income tax with a flat tax, bringing the top rate, which was close to 9 percent, down to a flat 3.9 percent by 2026. Not only will Iowa have eliminated the progressive income tax, it will also have reduced the top tax rate by almost 60 percent.

Iowa’s corporate tax rate, once the highest in the nation at 12 percent, is also being cut: Starting in January 2024, the corporate tax rate will be 7.1 percent, and the rate will continue to be lowered until it reaches a flat 5.5 percent.

Critics of Iowa’s fiscal reforms warn against alleged “economic recklessness.” Mike Owen, deputy director of Common Good Iowa, a progressive think tank, told the Economist that “a crash is coming” and that programs such as education and health care will suffer as a result.

This doesn’t add up. Thanks to fiscal prudence, Iowa’s budget is in strong shape. For the last few years, Iowa’s budget has been in surplus, ending fiscal year 2023 with a $1.83 billion surplus, which was $86.3 million higher than originally estimated. The fiscal year 2024 surplus is projected to be $2.12 billion, rising to $2.99 billion in the fiscal year 2025.

Common Good, like the rest of the non-profit/industrial complex, is getting less official graft out of the state.

No such problem in Minnesota.

Yet.

Here’s the link to the Salvation Army. They need volunteers this time of year, in addition to all the financial needs.

And here’s today’s music:

SCENE. Mitch BERG is leaving a small cafe. Avery LIBRELLE is walking in. BERG is too tired to care and doesn’t try to evade or escape the encounter.

LIBRELLE: Mer…

BERG: Cut to the f***ing chase, Avery.

LIBRELLE: In “One MInnesota! (TM) “, we are all prospering in a future where we boldly stride forward together.

BERG: Can I have some blue cheese dressing for that word salad?

LIBRELLE: You just hate progress.

BERG: Nah. I hate decay and decline. Here’s an example. The entire Grand Palace center, which used to be the heart of a vibrant neighborhood back before “vibrant” meant “graffiti and panhandlers”, is empty with demise of the Pottery barn.

LIBRELLE: And you’re blaming the DFL?

BERG: Who else has defined the business climate in Saint Paul?

LIBRELLE: The wider state economy, duh.

BERG: Which, according to Governors Flanagan and Klinki, is…

LIBRELLE: Going gangbusters for One MInnesota! (TM)

BERG: So Saint Paul’s main commercial strip is languishing because the state’s economy is…too good?

LIBRELLE: Yes. It’s the GOP’s fault.

BERG: A party that has no power in Saint Paul is responsible for a business climate that isn’t really failing…?

LIBRELLE: Yes. That’s why.

BERG: Huh. Maybe if Saint Paul were to identify as a prosperous city, that’ll help.

LIBRELLE: Oh! The city does identify as a prosperous city! And if. you disagree, you’re a MAGA white supremacist1

BERG: Oh, clearly.

And SCENE

Woman defends herself from a “mostly peaceful” attacker:

As someone pointed out in the comments, it’s grimly funny that she had her gun ready to go, but had to dig for her phone.

Today is the 82nd anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

For those who observe.

As I often have over this past few decades, I call out the fact that the first shots at Pearl Harbor were fired by a crew of Navy Reservists from Saint Paul, who’d been mobilized earlier in the year as part of Roosevelt’s build-up to the war everyone knew was coming.

The ship – which was built during World War 1, was thoroughly obsolte, and had been pressed back into service to fill the gaps until new ships could be built – was converted into a fast transport in 1942.

The men of that crew are all gone, now – Alan Sanford, the last survivor, died in 2015. And the Ward itself didn’t survive the war – it was lost in action off the Philippines, three years to the day after it fired the first shot of the war, on December 7 1944.. The Ward was hit by a Kamikaze and crippled.

In a bit of historical poetry almost too unbelievable to be in a Hollywood script, after the ship was abandoned, the ship was sunk by gunfire from another destroyer, the USS O’Brien, who’s commander, WIlliam Outerbridge, had been the Ward’s CO at Pearl Harbor. (And, just because I’m a geek for this kind of thing, I’ll note that O’Brien was built just down the waterfront from this ship, which I wrote about a while back).

But while Sanford, his shipmates and the Ward ˆitself are long gone, the gun they crewed lives on…

…on the State Capitol grounds, acquired from some naval armory decades ago.

Wonder what pretense the Walz administration will use for removing it?

“Go to NPR for hard-hitting journalism”, they said.

So I did [1].

And this is the hard hitting bit of reporting I got back

[1] OK, so I didn’t. A friend of the blog sent this to me. Call it “theater of the mind”.

“The Twin Cities are victim of Greater Minnesota!”

It’s a weird approach to messaging.

But the DFL’s noise machine is apparently betting long on it.

A common refrain from Minnesota Republicans goes something like this: Rural communities are overtaxed, underfunded and ignored by legislators. Greater Minnesota sends their tax dollars to the Twin Cities, where metro residents benefit from government programs…It’s a sweeping argument that plays into the state’s often bitterly divided partisan and geographic politics, which have become deeply intertwined during the past decade, with Republicans dominating greater Minnesota while the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party has locked down the metro. It also simplifies a complicated web of tax and revenue distributions — and it’s factually untrue. 

This is an extension of Paul Krugman’s ludicrious claim from 15-odd years ago that “blue” states “send more revenue” to “red” states than the other way around.

To the extent that its true, it’s because:

• Much federal spending is huge-ticket items – farm bills, interstate highwatys, military bases – dropped into sparsely-populated states. A Minuteman III squadron in a bunch of farmers fields in northwest North Dakota may consumer hundreds of millions of dollars a year, but almost none of it goes into local pockets.
• Costs of living and incomes are higher in urban, “blue” areas. Wait – don’t Democrats support “progressive taxation”?

But for whatever reason, DFLers are hammering on this “issue” this week. The DFL’s “taxation expert” Aisha Gomez:

We talked about this in 2010: big-ticket “public good infrastructure costs the same in Greater Minnesota (basically) as in the metro; a school or water treatment plant or road in a town of 4,000 doesn’t cost 1% as much as a school in MInneapolis (400,000). Those costs are spread across a smaller population – meaning higher per capita consumption.

Gomez could point that out.

Or she could demigogue the – for lack of a better term – “issue” and try to use it to wedge the Blue cities and Red state even further.

Why? No idea.

But if I were forced to bet on this, I’d spot a couple bucks that:

• The next financial forecast isn’t nearly as rosy as the last couple
• The DFL is pre-emptively trying to demigogue the issue to stoke their base’s sense of victimhood and tribal rage.
• That sense of rage is a good bit of “preparing the PR battlefield” for an election in a decaying economy where the SCOTUS can’t overturn Roe again.

Action on that bet?

“Flag experts” – there are people out there who call themselves that – step in to grade the new Minnesota state flag proposals:

So what about the actual experts? In interviews, flag experts and graphic designers generally praised the six choices. Vexillologists — yes, there’s a word for people who study flags — said Minnesota’s finalists mostly follow the guidelines of flag design.

Ted Kaye, secretary of the North American Vexillological Association, said he thinks the six finalists are a “good start.” But he also suggested one or more changes to each. A common critique was that the flags are “trying to do too much” and should be simplified in order to be distinguishable from a distance.

“All of these designs have a great flag in them trying to get out,” Kaye said. “They all need work, but that’s OK.”

“They all need work”

Give up hope. You have entered the world of the “Graphic Designer”.

Don’t get me wrong – I have good friends, colleagues and family who are graphic and visual designers. It’s a talent I do not have. I’m in UX, but not one of the visual-design-y UXers (no, they are not the same thing).

And if you turn a group of average graphic designers (not the very good ones in my social circle) loose on a project, they can and will spend two years picking out the “right” color palette.

So the GOP may get to repeal this nonsense after all (provided they win some House races).

Blue City governments apparently think banning matches will prevent fire.

No, it hasn’t quite gotten that stupid ytet. But give ’em time.

Banning guns (in the hands of the law-abiding citiizen, at least) is a pretty common…conceit? Deflection? Fig leaf? Anyway – the notion that barring law-abiding citizens from using legal things to do things they weren’t going to do in the first place will affect crime (positively) is the sort of thing you have to believe to be a modern Democrat.

But that sound you hear?

It’s the bottom of the intellectual barrel being scraped.

Philadephia bans ski masks in some public places.

Because crime:

“The City of Philadelphia has been under siege with individuals who use ski masks to commit crimes. It’s caught onto not just young people, but young adults who have made this a particular thing to do,” Phillips told CNN. “The Philadelphia Police Department can’t tell who’s a criminal and not a criminal, which makes it difficult for crimes to be solved in Philadelphia.”

Sarah Peterson, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, told CNN, “The administration will review the legislation, and in the meantime looks forward to our ongoing work with City Council on the urgent matter of ensuring public safety.”

The Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in people wearing various face coverings including ski masks, “complicated policing” because mask mandates made it easier for criminals to conceal their identities, Philadelphia Police Department Deputy Commissioner Francis Healy said during a committee hearing in November.

Philadelphia has a crime problem.

Too many ski masks? Could be.

Could also be all the depraved leftists:

Place your bets.