Back when I was working in bars, I was working at this toilet bar in North Saint Paul. It was a boring Friday night in the middle of summer. Once of the bouncers left early, leaving the bar with one bouncer – a big guy with a curly perm that was trying to get into professional wrestling.

The other bouncer apparently went out to the parking lot and hoovered up a line of bad Bolivian Marching Powder, maybe spiked with PCP – because he came back into the bar, started bellowing at the room, and then throwing punches. He smacked the bartender, cutting his lip and knocking out a tooth or two. He also tangled with a couple of customers. throwing tables and chairs and bottles all over the place.

The rampage went on for a while. Five minutes? Ten? I’m not sure.

But the entire time, as the coked up loony was on his rampage, the Wrestler guy bouncer stood and bellowed “You want a piece of me? HEY! Do you want a piece of me?” over and over, like he was filming an interstitial bit for a pro wrestling tournament.

Nothing at all useful, mind you. Just bellowing ” You want a piece of me? Yeah, you! You want a piece of me“, as the guy trashed the bar and a few of its employees and patrons.

I wonder if that wannabe-wrestler isn’t working as a consultant for the GOP these days.

Conservative groups have been very susceptible to the siren song of tough, unyielding talk combined with poo-poohing actually affecting policy. One example particularly near and dear to my heart – “Minnesota Gun Right”, a group that’s not from Minnesota and will never affect gun rights, but does make a lot of tough-talking videos.

Democrats are phenomenally vulnerable nationwide – married to exploding debt, economic stagnation, genocide against Israel and “woke” decay.

And far too much of the GOP, appears to be heading to the election focused not only on talking the talk and ignoring the walk, but saying “the walk” is stuff “Establishment RINOs” do.

Ben Shapiro talked about this in the first couple of segments of his podcast a few days ago:

To much of the GOP, politics is a (picking adjective carefully) vicious cycle:

• “The swamp” needs to be drained.
• But the swamp has rigged the system to prevent us from draining it.
• “The Swamp” is the product of policy – which, like any policy in a democracy, can be changed, provided you win enough elections to push policy in the direction you want.
• But getting elected to office, and having to do the inevitable horse-trading and make the inevitable compromises that come with actually having to make policy in a divided government makes you “the swamp” (see: Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy). Indeed, talking in terms of “Moving the Needle”, as opposed to “draining the swamp” or otherwise “burning it dall down”, is itself considered being “part of the establishment”.
• But bellowing against the Swamp feels good (and is good for fundraising). Because…repeat from the top.

Conservatives used to be able to play the long game – indeed, conservatism used to be about society’s long game. The Left sought their immediate gratification.

Maybe it’s the most toxic possible result of the collapse of the societal attention span – “conservatism”, or at least the GOP, has become the party of emotion.

…coming Monday.

“But Mitch – why are you so intransigent a Second Amendment advocate?”

Glad you asked.

Growing up left of center as I did, the first real inkling I had that gun control was a stupid idea was reading about the Holocaust, and realizing that armed people don’t get shoved into boxcars.

And seeing the same story – modern Nazis trying to murder modern Jews – is a refresher.

Like this story, of three good guys with guns:

Seeing what’s going on in streets of the West today isn’t anything to make you feel like this sort of thing isn’t possible in the US.

Last month, as eighty years ago, the difference between death and at least a chance at life was having a gun.

From.

My.

Cold.

Dead.

Hand.

To: Millennials, And Maybe Some Zeepers
From”. Mitch Berg, Obstreperous Peasant, Millie Parent And Generational Agnostic
Re: Stop Digging

Dear Millennials – and many of you in Gen Z,

It’s not like I don’t understand the anger.

When I was in high school and college, the “Baby Boom” was barely entering its prime years. The oldest ones were in their mid-thirties. And they were sucking all the air out of the room. The world didn’t always talk about demographics, but when they did, they talked about the Baby Boomers, their shenanigans, their ways and customs and music and culture. They were the first generation in human history to not only have a “youth culture”, but to see their “youth culture” become society’s dominant social, artistic, media and eventually political culture.

And of course, the “Boomers” were having all the fun, earning all the money, getting all the cool jobs and thoroughly enjoying the soceital conversation being all about their demographic Long March.

As someone from the generation after them – whose only memory of the Beatles was hearing on the radio they’d broke up, for whom Vietnam and the Summer of Love were already history by the time I was old enough to learn about them, and who was keenly aware that I was going to be competing against an awful lot of them – I was already sick of hearing about them.

Not sick of them – per se. Just sick of all the constant overweening hyper focus on them, and the realization I’d be competing with them and their social publicity juggernaut for the rest of my life.

So, why all the background?

Because, Millennials? You are on track to be vastly more hated by your progeny than the Baby Boom.

And you Zoomers have plenty of time to do even worse.

You think the Baby Boom got entitled to having society rebuild itself around their needs, passions, dysfunctions and mistakes?

Millennials are no less entitled – and tack on a layer of manic hypersensitivity and victorian censoriousness, not instead of, but on top of all that entitlement. And where the (stereotyped versin of the) Baby Boom obsessed on and define themselves by their material achievements and accomplishments, the Millennial stereotype is people suffocating everything around them with their maladies; no crowd of Fort Lauderdale yentas complaining about their rheumatism compares to an office full of millennials with their lactoses and glutens and dysthymias and celiacs and I’m feeling depressed just writing about it. And the whipsawing of Baby Boom politics – from hippies to Reagan voters – was a lot more interesting than the mushy gullible center-leftism that had you all voting for Obama – a decision we’ll be paying for for a generation.

You’ve been warned. .

That is all.

Lest anyone doubted that Big Left today is Marxist to its foetid roots, we now join a white, uppser-middle class white progressive member of the Saint Louis Park School Board pulling intersectional rank on….

…Muslim parents objecting to porn in elementary schools:

That’s the thing about intersectionalism; while more virtue attaches to people the farther they go out on the intersectional tree (the transgender Afro-Muslim handicapped lesbian is the peak), the actual executive authroity is supposed to remain toward the center, with the white “prog” women.

The Cano Corollary to Berg’s 21st Law is a new addition to the canon – and like all the Berg’s Laws, it is an observation that started as satire.

To wit:

In Blue city electoral politics, “blue” never gets “lighter” or less “progressive”.  There is only one electoral direction – more “progressive”.

It’s named for the former Minneapolis 9th Ward council woman, dotty dimbulb and “third world feminist” (a term almost as grimly hilarious as “queer for Palestine”) who, in retrospect,not only seems moderate, but likely would have a hard time getting nominated for office in MInneapolis, due to being “too centrist”.

It was in full effect in Minnneapolis and Saint Paul last night, Democratic Socialist-endorsed DFLers Aisha Chughtai and Aurin Chowdhury swept to wins. Depending on the machjinations of Ranked Choice Voting, it appears Soren Stevenson – another DFLer with DSA endorsement – might eke out a win over council president Andrea Jenkins – the leftist transgender black woman who, not so long ago, seemed like the left edge of the Overton Window, and may as well be Jesse Helms today.

I’ll point out that not only did I predict this after 2021, but so did Big Left; after the “Defund” question went town to humiliating defeat, Big Left swore they weren’t going to let that happen again. The DSA – which is now well within the left edge of the Overton WIndow – started pumping money and resources and lots and lots of noise into the race the week after the 2021 election.

Expect everything in Minneapolis to get worse, coarser, less civil, uglier and more stupid – until 2-4 years out, when a group comes along, refers to the DSA as “centrist” and the mainstsream DFL as “Republicans”. I wouldn’t rule out an overt Communist party, to the extent there’s actually a meaningful distinction anymore.

Saint Paul? Well, call it a split: DSA-endorsed Hwa Jeong Kim appears to have won in Ward 5; the DSA’s Pa Der Vant appears to have lost – but narrowly – in Ward 7.

The 1% sales tax hike to pay for the things the city was already supposed to be paying for with its ridiculous taxes, and perhaps to try to compensate for the gutting of the city’s retail sector? It passed overwhelmingly. There was never any action on that bet. The most regressive tax there is just got increased on a city full of people who are less able to pay it every day (thanks, “Bidenomics”).

School board? Garbage in, garbage out.

The closest thing I have to good news in the Cities proper? In my ward, Ward 4, people expressed their dissatisfaction with the “choices” – the unknown Bob Bushard and incumbent Mitra “Chasing Intersectional Perfection” Jalali by submitting about as many write-in votes than the rest of the city put together.

Other news that might, depending on what happens, be good? Duluth turned out Emily “Turbo-Karen” Larson for explicitly more moderate DFLer Roger Reinert. Will he be able to moderate the Duluth City Council – about whose results I know nothing. While you can’t judge a book by its cover, the winners last night all have names that scream “Progressive Karen” to me. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong. .

Action on that bet? Step right up.

The incredibly aptly named Representative Debbie Dingell lectures us on semantics:

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free“ means different things to different people in different times!“, says the font of wisdom, in rising to the defense of the loathsome modern Nazi Rashida Tlaib.

And she’s right, in a sense.

The phrase “the final solution” can mean a lot of different things; it can be the formula that gets rid of your Creeping Charlie, or solves your credit card debt. So, too, can the German phrase “Arbeit Macht Frei”, or “work will set you free” which, set free of other context, seems straight out of Horatio Alger

Except.

Except when you’re talking about people who wanted, or want, to remove Jews, from some corner of the world.

Then, they mean exactly one thing, and one thing only. And anyone who pretends otherwise is being disingenuous, precious, a useful, idiot, or lying like a sack of garbage.

And if Dingell is capable of being anything, it might very well be all four.

This is this sort of thing that should send Americans to be barricades. This is ample reason to block freeways (in DC and Silicon Valley and Saint Paul’s Government Canyon anyway). This is a reason to break out tar and feathers and lots and lots of harsh tweets.

It’s a thread. Click through in Twitter.

Not that this is news – but here’s one of a wallet full of money quotes:

-EIP [Election Integrity Partnership – Ed.]“stakeholders” (including the federal gov’t) would submit misinformation reports

-EIP would “analyze” the report and find similar content across platforms

-EIP would submit the report to Big Tech, often with a recommendation on how to censor

If you’d told me 15 years ago that voting for candidates attitudes about censorship, lockdowns, mandates and enforcing top-down social cohesion would be as important as stances on spending, immigration, healthcare and foreign policy, I’d have shaken my head and wondered “what else are they going to tell me – CD8 will someday be Republican?”

Whatever opposition I’ve had to deportation of illegal immigrants is waning fast:

I’ll work my ass off for the first Presidential candidate to promise to deport aliens who are actively hostile to everything this country stands for.

I said “actively”.

And if the people in this mob are citizens? Deport whatever immigration official or politician OKed their naturalization.

Or at least tar and feather them.

I wish more American – especially Minnesota DFL – politicians could speak with the moral clarity that German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck does:

While allowing that the Germans have a tighter definition of free speech than we do – when you let the depraved speak out loud, you can see what they’re doing in a way you can’t in Europe, and I vastly prefer the American way – this would still be considered pretty daring in the US.

And he’s a Green.o. Talking like a classical liberal, on this issue at least.

This is apposed to the avatar of modern left-liberal left-center-leftism, President Obama…

…who is right at the top of the short list for worst president ever, with Woodrow Wilson, and far and away the worst of my lifetime.

When Germans out-do Amercan pols on this subject, it’s time for some electoral bells to be rung.

(Links bogarted from Powerline).

Today’s music list:

“The Devil’s greatest achievement was convincing the world he didn’t exist”
— “Keyser Söze”, The Usual Suspects

One of the greatest achievements of the modern Big Left is convincing the world, and itself, that the Nazi movement of the 1920s and 1930s was, like today’s “American” “Nazi” party, a movement of ignorant blue-collar and no-collar losers.

It was in fact a youth movement, led by academics and artists. Besides Hitler himself, most of the cabinet that ran Germany from 1933 to 1945, much of the party’s senior leadership were writers, playwrights, journalists, painters and academics.

Same as the Communists before them.

And same as today’s Big Left. This is Judith Butler,

And if you wonder if today’s Big Left is bigger and more powerful? You’re not alone.

SCENE: It’s September 1, 1939. In the command post of the Republic of Poland Armed Forces. Poland’s Minister of War, Jozef BECK, and the Marshal of the Polish Military chief Marshal Edward SMYGŁY-RYDZ, General Szymon NOWACKI of the Armored Force,, are at the center of a gaggle of staff officers, poring over a wall full of maps showing a dire situation.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: The Germans have cut off Gdańsk, have broken through west of Krakow, and are threatening to cut off the Poznan Army.

GENERAL NOWACKI: Marshal, we’ve got the Seventh Armored Brigade in reserve. They could hit the breakthrough from the flank.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: We’ll need the Sixth Corps to support them on the left.

STAFF COLONEL: They’re in OK position for that.

Corporal Filip PRZYBYL, the headquarters Administrative assistant, enters the command post and salutes.

PRZYBYL: Marshal, the MInister of Social Justice has arrived .

(The officers groan)

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: Show him in.

(Social Justice Minister Evgeny LYBRZELSZ enters the room and doffs his French-style top hat)

LYBRZELSZ: Marshal Smygły-Rydz? I’m told you’re planning a counterattack against the Germans.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: Well..yeah, The Niemcy attack threatens Poland’s very existence.

NOWACkI: If they break past Poznan, there is no obstacle between them and Warsaw.

LYBRZELSZ: We can’t launch the attack.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: (Stops short, dumbfounded) What now?

LYBRZELSZ: There is no humanitarian corridor for German civilians.

(As an air raid siren goes off in the background, the officers stand, agog).

NOWACKI: What on earth are you talking about?

LYBRZELSZ: Attacking the Germans when there’s no allowances for humanitarian aid to German civilians is immoral.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: This is a literal threat to our existence, by a nation that’s completely mobilized for war.

LYBRZELSZ: So you are committing genocide against Germans.

Entire room falls silent. The sound of bombs in the distance swells.

SMYGŁY-RYDZ: So, see to the destruction of Poland, then

LYBRZELSZ: What are you, a bigot?

And SCENE

Big Feminism – in this case, the always-puerile Jessica Valenti – is going after Idaho with the same nuanced grace as a Rashida Tlaib press conference.

They’re attacking over Idaho’s first prosecution in an “abortion trafficking” case:

Unmentioned (but for community notes) – the woman was impregnated by a rapist. The accused rapist and his mother allegedly kidnapped the pregnant woman and drove her to Idaho to destroy the evidence.

If they’d only driven to Minnesota…

SCENE: Mitch Berg is dumping flashings from pick up truck at the county yard waste site. Bill Gunkel, former Republican who is now chairmain of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”, pulls up next to him, towing a trailer full of leaves.

GUNKEL Merg!

BERG: Hey..

GUNKEL: Shut up. You eternal war people have really stepped in it with Ukraine.

BERG: Not sure I’ve actually stated an opinion about…

GUNKEL: You know that the Ukrainians are Nazis, right?

BERG: There are some peolple who identify as Nazis, that’s true. In a country of forty million people that was brutalized by the Commuists within living memory, you’re going to find people who equate “Nazi” with “anti-communist”.

GUNKEL: So you’re OK sending money to Nazis?

BERG: Not sure that I said anything of the sort…

GUNKEL: You’re OK supporting Nazis, at all?

BERG: Let’s accept the fact there is a small minority of Nazi symps in Ukrainian society.

GUNKEL: OK…?

BERG: How do you suppose it compares with the number of Stalinists in Russian society?

GUNKEL: Who?

BERG. Stalinists. Symps of Josef Stalin, most murderous dictator in European history.

GUNKEL: Never heard of him.

BERG: Huh.

GUNKEL: But was he a Nazi?

BERG: Uh…no…

GUNKEL: So – Ukraine, Nazis.

BERG: Right.

And SCENE

The GOP controlled US House did its job – passing aid to Israel along with a proposal to slash the funding bounty the IRS picked up during the pandemic.

Ryan Winkler did his job – pimping for Mother Government:

When it was pointed out that hampering the IRS and supporting the IDF were both blows for freedom against tyranny, and that criticizing government is a constitutional right and obligation, while stifling that right is the actual “extreme” view, Winkler…

….well, he Wilnkered:

Where to start?

Once you reject the straw man (no, not “All” laws. Just the stupid an tyrannical ones, by your indulgent leave), just because a law was “validly (sic) enacted” doesn’t make it good.

Jim Crow laws were “valid” – enacted by due process by an elected government. So,, in a sense, were the Nuremberg Laws – the Nazi Party took power until the color of German law.

And I’d ask WInkler if he’d be so sanguine if the IRS was sandbagging the Democrat Socialists of America rather than the Tea Party, but that – either that bit of oppression, or WInkler giving a straight answer to a question, both – are about as likely as Ray Charles getting a called third strike on Kirby Puckett.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is cleaning out his garden boxes. Busy hauling stalks to the truck, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, patrolling the alley, looking for over-filled recycling bins to report to the city.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Hey, Avery…

LIBRELLE: Shut up. The GOP’s new Speaker of the House is anti-science. I have proof!

BERG: Huh. So since the Speaker’s job has nothing to do with developing theories, formulating hypotheses, designing and conducting experiments and documenting results, much less trying to figure out how the universe “really” formed, what difference does it make?

LIBRELLE: Who wants our leaders to believe fairy tales?

BERG: Let’s ignore for a moment that theology, like mathematics, logic, physics, even history, are different ways of analyzing different evidence about the universe. Let’s say that you have a brain tumor, and you need brain surgery, or you’re going to die, but quick. So you go to the world’s leading brain surgeon – the one person who can save your life. So far so good?

LIBRELLE: OK…?

BERG: That person has got to be a person of impeccable scientific credentials, right?

LIBRELLE: Of course.

BERG: So you meet that surgeon, and he explains his record – overwhelmingly successful – and his technique, his reasoning, and his plan. And everything sounds right. So far, so good?

LIBRELLE: Right…?

BERG: Then he tells you he believes the universe is 6,000 years old and was created in six days by an imnipotent God.

LIBRELLE: Oh, I’d cancel the surgery instantly!

BERG: Why?

LIBRELLE: He clearly doesn’t believe in science! But why are you wasting time with a hypothetical example?

BERG: Nothing hypothetical about it.

LIBRELLE: When I know more about science than the world’s leading brain surgeon…

BERG: Your degree was in what?

LIBRELLE: Grievance studies with a minor in Sociology!

BERG: Right. Hey, look (points down the alley) I think the Gruenbergs mixed green glass in their clear glass…

LIBRELLE: (Looks down the alley. BERG makes his escape. LIBRELLE doesn’t notice, heading down the alley and getting his…er, her…er, a smart phone camera ready to go…).

And SCENE.

I asked a question last week that no Twin Cities “journalist” can seem to being themselves to ask: if food shelves are running short, what could the half billion dollars embezzled by DFL-affiliated non-profiteers have done to help things?

Now, I was in the middle of a brutal week of work last week, so I missed a few other questions that were, in hindsight, begging to be asked:

• The DFL tells us, relentlessly, that Minnesota’s economy is just humming along. So – why is demand for food shelves do high?
• The Biden Administration tells us “Bidenomics” has the nation’s economic blender set to “puree”. So all of us who are seeing evidence like this to the contrary – are we just believing our lying eyes?
• If we’re providing “free” breakfast and lunch to every PreK-12 student in the state, that should take an immense burden off the state’s food shelf system. But it seems it’s not.
• And the biggest, best question of all – In a state clogged with entitled, preening people with little tin “journalist” badges, why is a schnook blogger and talk show host from Saint Paul the only person asking these questions?

If the people of Minnesota were to start asking these questions for themselves, this would be a very different place.

Professor Galloway: I hear what you’re saying.

I do.

And on behalf of all the small businesses strangled by your mistake, all the parents who watched their kids slowly go crazy and stupid, and felt their personal, social and business relationships fraying and breaking?

I reject it.

Forgiveness without atonement is meaningless.

Try again.

Find out more her about the American Veterans Memorial Park, hopefully in Cannon Falls.

We’re told that Twin Cities food banks are having trouble keeping up wth demand:

Just curious if any Twin CIties “Jounalists” might have asked if perhaps the half billion dollars stolen from food aid programs by DFL/DSA-linked non-profits, and spent on cars, homes and other graft goodies, often in East Africa, might have helped with the situation.

… is worth dozens of words.

In this case, the beginning of Matt Taibbi’s smack down of Amy Klobuchar and her authoritarian proposal to censor Substack and Reddit

But I will let Taibbi put it in his own words:

Remember – according to the Democrats, you and I are the ones who are killing democracy.

I’ve seen a bit of a resurcence of the traditional 20-something paranoia about “the draft” that pops up whenever the world seems turbulent.

Example:

But this post isn’t about Selective Service.

We’ll come back to that.

Minnesota’s “Peace” creep community isn’t any smarter than it’s ever been

My first response: Our GenZ “activist community” has gone from “Punch a Nazi’ to unquestioningly supporting a literal fascist government that obsesses over race and advocates and practices the annihilation of the Jews.

You’ve come a long way, Zeepers!

But let’s go back to the top of this post, with the other Zoomers fretting about the draft.

The draft – being flooded with and responsible for paying, training and managing hordes of unwilling recruits who’ll spend a year or two as mediocre to poor soldiers – is the last thing our military wants.

I’d always assumed – mostly correctly – that that was for doctrinal reasons; willing soldiers are better, more trainable, more capable soldiers.

But looking at the caliber of the demographic pool, at the top and especially in the second videos above, I can think of a other reason…

Zach Metzger is a candidate for Minneapolis CIty Council.

This was him after the riot on Sunday:

He’s running for City Council.

To my amazement, he didn’t win endorsement in the uppeer-middle-class “urban life” theme. park that is the 13th Ward…

…but five’ll get you ten that if he moves to an open seat in Marcy Holmes, Powderhorn, the West Bank or Longfellow, his political career will get rolling for real.

Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.

Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.

Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.

Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”

It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“

You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”

And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”

Who’s right?

You?

The guy with the bat?

Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?

If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?

Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.