Joe Doakes, once but no longer of Como Park, emails:

Suppose you are playing a game and your opponent cheats. You point it out and he denies it. You insist you saw him cheat and he admits doing the act but claims that wasn’t cheating.  When you show him the rule book, he asserts those rules don’t apply to him. You insist he follow the rules and he declares you are a fascist so he’s justified in murdering you to win the game.

 

What should you do?

 

If you refuse to play, he will win by default.

 

If you continue to play by the rules, he will win by cheating.

 

 Somehow you must convince him to play by the rules. Game Theory suggests the best way to do that is tit-for-tat. When he cheats, you cheat and offer to quit cheating when he quits cheating. When he cheats harder, you cheat harder and repeat the offer.

 

 Yes, that means stooping to his level. It means betraying your principles because cheating is not who you are.  Game theory is not about morals, it is about tactics. It is not about salvation, it is about winning.

 

 Eventually one of two things will happen:  he will quit cheating and the game will be played by the rules; or the game will end,  probably in violence.

 

 The theory applies to the simplest games and to the most complex. Life is the most complex game of all. Conservatives have been playing by the rules but the Left is cheating. 

 

What should we do?  

 

Joe Doakes

I suppose “amicable-if-possible divorce” isn’t an option?

I can’t pretend this is a comprehensive list.  I don’t think humanity can measure this level of stupidity. 

But I gotta try. 

I’ll save the worst for last. 

Well, gosh, “Kalvan”, I think the difference might be that literally the entire state of Minnesota including the entire GOP closed ranks around the families’ survivors, and the GOP repudiated everything to do with the guy when it turned out that even though he was nuts, he was a nut who spouted some right wing chanting points. That, and the fact not a single significant person said “Well, political murder is baaaaaaaad, but when you jam down abortion mandates and kid-transing and gun control you gotta expect some blowback…”

Can you see the difference, “Kalvan”?

I keep asking progs who parrot this to tell me – what evil things did Kirk say?

And I’ve gotten a few back – every one of which was ripped completely out of context, context which is available out there.  

I don’t love the whole “get people fired” thing, personally.

But forget for a moment that progs have been going after conservatives’ jobs (also shooting them) for years. It’s not the government “censoring” people. And maybe, just maybe, “it’s good someone I disagree with died” is an “opinion” that deserves some opprobrium.

And in the responses to that one:

Make you first shot count, Sparky.

Is the point that “pageant winners are promiscuous?”

And the mangling of the whole doctrine of “submitting”

Is this a Richard Carlbom burner account?

Now, most of the above are dolts, rage farmers and Don Lemon.

But these? These (read the whole thread) are elected DFLers:

Make sure you scroll down to check out Ilhan Omar’s contribution, on Mehdi Hassan’s podcast.

And Richard Carlbom, executive director of the MN DFL:

So “Hey, Fascist, Catch” was an ingenious hipfake.  Got it.  

It’s been a depressing week for observing humanity.  

Apparently having an open, honest debate with people who disagree with you rates a death sentence.   

Even some Democrats realize things have gone too far:

As this is written, the shooter is still apparently at large.

But who knew – when the leaders of a party full of mentally unstable people chant that their opponents are “Nazis” and “Fascists”, people my grandfathers’ generation spent the best years of their lives killing and trying not to be killed by, that someone in that mass of unstable weirdos would take it seriously?

And the giggly, tingly, school-girly response by so many Democrats, including prominent ones, to Luigi Mangione should be a bigger warning; their inventory of nutbars who think homicide is OK is nowhere near exhausted.

And no, it’s not a “both sides do it” thing. 

The nation needs the same level of commitment to rooting out left wing terrorism today that we put into eradicating the Klan 60 years ago, or the mob in the ’80s.  

We won’t get it, but we’ll need it.  

The one silver lining?  The Democrats’ ill-gotten right to throw out “January 6!” like a badly-trained parrot is forever null and void. 

I don’t wish anyone trouble with their jobs.  

And that includes the poor saps who work at the Strib’s printing plant. 

Well, worked.  Or will have worked…:

I mean, the schnooks in the plant don’t set the editorial policy.  They’re not the ones painting Ilhan Omar’s toenails in the boardroom, or telling Rochelle Olson what hit pieces to write.  

So I’m sorry about the jobs, guys ‘n gals. 

But if it’s another step on the Strib’s road to extinction?  That’s a silver lining.  

The paper will be printed in Iowa – presumably the day before it reaches the newsstands (or wherever you get paper papers these days – I dunno).  

Next stop Mississippi.  

Anyway – turns out the late Nick Coleman may have been right about something.  I wasn’t rooting for the demise of the Strib back when he was accusing us bloggers of doing that. 

But I sure am now.  

Yeah, I hate it too.  

I’ll be changing the template again soon.  I don’t like it.  

Stay tuned.  

Piglet wants to have a special session to try to jam down the DFL’s pet gun bans.  

Even the DFL knows it’s doomed:

They never had the votes; the House is tied, and would depend on at least one GOP “compromising” with the DFL, and not a single Republican in either chamber has made a final vote against gun rights in over 25 years.  

In the meantime, the Senate – which is tied today, and even with the one vote majority the DFL will likely retain after the special election to replace Nicole “the Catburglar” Mitchell, there are 3-4 “moderate” DFLers in very purple districts – Afton, the Arrowhead, Moorhead – who are clearly not thrilled about their prospects if they get saddled with a Metrocrat gun grab proposal.  

Some might remember 2002, when every “moderate” outstate DFLer who’d voted against carry permit reform got crushed, flipping the House to the GOP and paving the way for “Shall Issue” permitting and making Tim Pawlenty’s first term a lot more pleasant. 

So – if the votes aren’t there, why do it?

Remember – Richard Carlbom runs the DFL.   He’s the guy who took a bunch of chanting points and turned it into a social media logrolling and gaslighting campaign that not only got gay marriage passed (which may have been inevitable anyway) but took down the Voter ID amendment, which I’m pretty convinced we’re paying for today.  

I expect this “special session” is mostly an attempt to get a bumper crop of video to wrench out of context to play for the gullible uninformed voter that is the DFL’s stock in trade.  

That, and fundraising. Lots of fundraising. 

SCENE:  The basement studio of AM1280 The Patriot.  Mitch BERG is hosting his weekend talk show.    Unbelievably, across the table is Richard CARLBOM, chair of the MInnesota DFL party.  Why did he agree to an interview?  Search me. G-MONEY, the producer, is through the glass window in the control room, adjusting levels.

BERG:  So Mr. Carlbom – you’re advocating a “special session on guns”.  Since the House is tied and at least some outstate DFLs are going to be very uncomfortable trying to jam down gun bans, this would seem to be more of a DFL fundraiser than a special session.  Your thoughts?

CARLBOM:  F)ck that cynical sh1t…

(G-MONEY, the producer, frantically hits the dump button).  

BERG:  Er, you can’t talk like that on the radio.k 

CARLBOM:  Talk like what?

BERG:  You can’s swear on the radio. 

CARLBOM:  I didn’t.   I’m just talking like all the real Democratic men. 

BERG: OK.  So – special session or fundraiser?

CARLBOM:  Well, one f)cking thing you conservative a$$h0l3s miss is…

(G-MONEY frantically smashes the dump button again)

BERG:  Y’see, you did it again?

CARLBOM:  Did what?

BERG:  Swore on the radio.  That’s a no-no. 

CARLBOM:  It’s just the f)cking way all of us m0th3rf__ing authentic big-d1ck Democrat p1ss working f3lch men Cl3v3l4nd St34m3r men are f3lch d1rty s4nch3z w4d (G-MONEY hammers the dump button; steam starts pouring from the delay box). 

BERG:  You’ve been a political flack your entire career.  (Looks up at the call board). We’ve got an anonymous caller on the line – Ken from DC, you’re live and on the air…

CALLER:  Mr. Carlbom, has anyone ever told you that you look like a slightly younger Herman Göring? 

CARLBOM:  Ken?  Ken Martin?  Is that you?  

(But the line has gone dead). 

And SCENE

So, it’s been quite a year.  

Around inauguration time, I had a job that I really enjoyed, with a few side hustles – a band, my show, and this blog (not that I’ve made any money from it in a long time – partly by choice).  

In February, I got laid off.  As part of my scrambling to keep my bills covered, I signed on at Hot Air – where I write 3-5 posts a week, and make a little money.  

Then came July.  I started the month unemployed – and ended with a day job (details not needed) and another longer-term bet with a startup.   Plus another band (more info to come later).  

So I’m cranking out 12 hours a day – and generally loving it.  But it’s taken time away from the time I’d normally spend tinkering with the blog (which hasn’t been much in a while). 

“So Merg – why not go over to Substack?”  

I might.  There’s a part of me that can’t imagine anyone paying anything to read what I write, but who knows?  It’d certainly cut down on the maintenance woes that are increasingly dogging WordPress.  

A 23 year old habit, rapidly pushing 24, is hard to change.  And let’s be honest, I’m kind of a stubborn guy.  

But yeah, this fall when we get our first cold rainy non-outdoor weekend I may just pull the trigger.  

I’m not saying this is going to win any elections by itself. 

But you might pick up a lot of votes with a sustained, continuous effort to show Minnesotans…

…just who MNDFL chair Richard Carlbom really is. 

I mean, what Minnesotans won’t love the fact that their dominant party is led by a Hermann Göring lookalike with the rhetorical chops of an eighth-grader with a concussion?

I’ve been running this blog under its old design template for (checks watch) 16 years, now.  Not just the visual design (more in a bit) but the code that runs the whole thing in the background.  I’ve been patching it and updating it for literally a decade and a half – longer than most blogs last in any way shape or form – but the wheels were slowly coming off.  

I couldn’t schedule posts, for starters – which in theory shouldn’t be a huge inconvenience now that I’m not carefully following traffic patterns, like I was in the 2000s.  

But I’m very much driven by two diametrically competing forces – 23 years of habits (writing something just about every morning, and having the stuff appear when I want it to) and serendipity (wanting to write whenever and however I want to, and have it appear, again, exactly when I want to).  

Anyway – I’m hoping that updating the template to something that was built after the George W Bush administation will fix some of the technical bugs.  

As to the visual design bugs – oy.  I’d forgotten how much of that is involved in spooling up a WordPress blog.  I’ll be working on ’em as I go, here.  Enjoy the incongruence while it lasts!

Joe Doakes, no longer of Como Park, emails:

Governor Walz plans a special session of the legislature to help Democrat fundraising efforts.  

 

He doesn’t say it that way, of course.  He says it’s to pass gun control legislation in the wake of the most recent shooting. Knowing Republicans are unlikely to agree, Democrats plan to continue using the atrocity to dun their supporters for donations. 

 

“If nobody had guns, nobody would get shot.” Sounds simple, right?  But its First Order Thinking. It’s simple alright, too simple.  It ignores human nature.  

 

Second Order Thinking asks: “Take away ask the guns and what will Bad Guys do? Sit quietly painting landscapes?  Bake cookies, write music, go sailing?” No. 

 

Google “knife attack.” The Bad Guys will not sit quietly, they will substitute a different tool to do their evil, like the mass stabber at the Michigan Walmart. But this time, there will be no armed citizen to stop them.  

 

Take away knives and Bad Guys will use clubs.  Take away clubs and Bad Guys will use the very stones themselves, as Cain slew Able. 

 

The problem is not the guns, knives, sticks, or stones.  The problem is the Bad Guys. And Democrats have no intention of solving that problem.  

 

It’s too profitable. 

 

Joe Doakes 

Until we control human nature, weapon “control” will always fail. 

And trying to control human nature has led to imponderably greater evils than we’ve seen.  

Focus on the Family’s counseling site:  www.focusonthefamily.org/tragedy

Or call 855-771-HELP for a call back from a counselor.  

And here’s today’s music list:

SCENE:   Mitch BERG is having an Old Fashioned at a bar in northern Wisconsin.  Engrossed in a conversation with the waitress, he doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has walked in, wearing a “MEAT IS MURDER” t-shirt.  

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Of, for…the second time this week, how ya doing…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.   It’s the guns, stupid. 

BERG. So I’ve got a question for you, Avery.   Whenever a spree killer can be tied, however tenuously, to the right, the media and people like you get veeeery serious about dissecting connections to “extreme” ideology.  Like Vance Boelter…

LIBRELLE:  Extreme pro-life MAGAt!

BERG:  …but when it’s someone like the Covenant or Annunciation shooters, whose manifestos were like Gen-Z leftist movie screenplays, full of hate for Christians, Jews, conservatives, Trump…

LIBRELLE:  It’s the guns and only the guns!   And how dare you blame all transgender people!

BERG:  Where did I mention transgender people?

LIBRELLE:  You did. 

BERG: (Turns to stenographer sitting at next stool) Please read back the converstation starting with “shut up”:

COURT REPORTER:  OK.  Starting from where Mist…er, Mizz…er…(looks to BERG with look of inciipient panic)

BERG:  Don’t worry. Just read. 

COURT REPORTER:  OK.  

LIBRELLE:  Extreme pro-life MAGAt!

BERG:  …but when it’s someone like the Covenant or Annunciation shooters, whose manifestos were like Gen-Z leftist movie screenplays, full of hate for Christians, Jews, conservatives, Trump…

LIBRELLE:  I could have sworn I heard you call for the deaths of all transgender people.   

BERG:  You’re thinking of Mayor Frey…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.  Why are you bringing a court reporter with you?

BERG:  Seems I need one lately. 

And SCENE.  

SCENE:  MItch BERG is ordering an omelette at a local diner.  Too late, he notices Avery LIBRELLE entering the building.  There is no graceful exit. 

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Er, hello, Av…

LIBRELLE:  Shut up.  The shooting in Minneapolis yesterday proved that “thoughts and prayers” aren’t enough.  They were literally praying…

BERG:  So it’s time to doooooooooooo something?

LIBRELLE:  Why the tone of mockery?  I’m serious.  It’s time to…well, it’s time for action!

BERG:  Any action?

LIBRELLE: Anything that works!

BERG:   Great.  So the state’s “red flag law” didn’t work, because for some reason nobody called the authorities about an apparently transgender person saying crazy things. 

LIBRELLE:  Heyyyyyy

BERG:  And to ban guns you’ll have to repeal the Second Amendment…

LIBRELLE:  Which we can dooooooo!

BERG:  You can’t.  You’ll need 2/3 of Congress – you might get 35%, once.  And if for sake of argument you do, then yo’ll need 38 states.  You might get 10, one time.   So that’s not happening.  

LIBRELLE:  OK, wise guy, what do you have?

BERG:  Something that been 100% effective so far in preventing school shootings. 

LIBRELLE:  Oooh,  Go for it. I’m all ears.  

BERG:  It’s a policy used in 1,000 school districts nationwide.  And in 25 years, there’ve been zero shootings at any of them, during school hours, on school property.  

LIBRELLE: Let me guess- religious and home schools?

BERG:  I said districts.  Public. schools.   

LIBRELLE:  OK. So far so good. . 

BERG:  Not a single child harmed.  That’s what we’re going for, right?

LIBRELLE:  Right.   Must be some really progressive policy!

BERG:  They’ve rejected the “gun free zone” label.   They allow staff to carry their own firearms.  Some of them require training, others don’t’, but the point is, anyone thinking about shooting up a school has to reckon with the fact that any teacher, any principal, any janitor, any lunch lady can end them.  

LIBRELLE:  That’s horrible!

BERG:  Why?

LIBRELLE:  More guns ocn’t fix the problem. 

BERG:  First – it’s not “more guns”.  It’s the possibility of any gun.  And if “no school shootings” is your goal, then that seems to have hit the spot, doesn’t it?

LIBRELLE:  That…just…

BERG:  VIolates your sense of moral aesthetics?   

But steam is coming out of Librelle’s ears.  

And Scene.  

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

 

Joe Doakes

Some of the basic functionality behind the scenes of this blog is starting to break down. 

Part of it, I think, is that I haven’t updated the WordPress template since…uh, 2011.  

Hey, it’s not like I don’t have enough to do, is it? 

Anyway – expect some disruption, probably this weekend.  

Well, that post-assassination round of Kumbaya didn’t last long, did it?

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Why fly deportees to Africa?  Is Trump trying to provoke a constitutional crisis?

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/05/stephen-miller-goes-biden-judge-who-ordered-plane/

My understanding is that the animals being deported are so vicious that their own countries won’t take them.  They’re being sent to the only place that will accept them.  Yes, it’s a Third-World shithole. What’s your point?

I’m wondering why the country-of-origin issue isn’t being addressed more forcefully.  If any nation refuses to take their own scum back then the immediate finding by the President should be then NOBODY from that country is allowed to enter or remain here.  Refuse entry to everyone, including diplomatic staff.  Throw all them all out.  Don’t think you can dump your problems on us.  

And maybe take it one step farther:  “The criminals being deported are so vicious that their country of origin won’t take them back.  It’s unfair to American taxpayers to feed and house them forever.  But we recognize the courts have said these criminals must be given due process.  Therefore, we intend to give them a free lawyer and a fair trial after which they will be given a first-class hanging.  If any nation objects to the death penalty and wants to take them, let me know and we’ll pay the freight to ship them to you. Be aware that if you let them go and we catch them again, they will be summarily executed and the cost will be recovered from you in the form of higher tariffs.”

That ought to put the cat among the pigeons.

Joe Doakes

Seems like too much fuss.   

Don’t want your citizen back?   Seems to be that’s what parachutes and C130s are for.  

“Oh, gosh.  You got ’em back anyway”.  

And yes, not taking your own criminals back is a solid case for raising tariffs. 

Berg’s 21st Law is about to get its sternest test.  

More in a moment. 

Who knew there was something too extreme for Richard Carlbom?

The longtime DFL strategist, the guy behind getting gay marriage ensconced in the Minnesota Constitution, replaced Ken Martin as chair of the MNDFL after Ken Martin moved on to a star-studded reign at the DNC.  

And his first crisis is something that he’s gonna need another gay marriage or abortion tempest-in-teapot to fix:  the DSA, rotting out his party from the roots. 

The party just nixed Omar Fateh’s endorsement for Minneapolis Mayor:

 

DFL Party Chairman Richard Carlborn says the decision to remove the mayoral endorsement comes after a review of the challenges found “substantial failures” in the DFL convention’s voting process, and “acknowledgment that a mayoral candidate was errantly eliminated from contention.”

The CRBC findings after the review show that the voting system for endorsement produced a very inaccurate count of the first, undercounted by 176 votes. 

The findings also state that the entire Ward 5 credentials books were lost by the Minneapolis DFL, causing delegates to have to re-establish delegate status. Additionally, the master check-in sheet at registration was not properly secured.

Huh. So – corruption all the way down…

…according to the DFL?

This is the sort of battle we’ve seen pretty much every major cycle in the DFL:  the crazy activists pick crazier candidates (remember when Keith Ellison was the rational moderate against Matt Pelikan in 2018?) and the state party steps in and jams down the person they want.  

So is the state party strong enough to upend the city party?

U of M professor, clad in a terror scarf, calls for “dismantling” the US:

I seek to dismantle the United States.  I hope you seek to dismantle the United States. And if that isn’t your politics…OK? (Hahahahahah). I speak as if everyone has this commitment.  And the thing is, you should have this commitment.  This is the goal…

As she prattles on for a while about “decolonization”, she should start by rejecting the money and job paid for by those “colonizers”.  

Can a civil society survive when society spends more time and effort protecting criminals than the law-abiding citizen?

The Mayor of Boston just made her, and presumably her city’s, priorities pretty visible:

Now, you might say it costs nobody anything – the victims are alive, the attacker dead. Expressing (misplaced) sympathy isn’t going to kill him again, or endanger the victims. Is it?

I see your logic, and raise you Mary Moriarty (open and expand the thread):

But here’s the money quote:

A source familiar with the case told us that charges were declined by Mary Moriarty’s office because the victim was able to fight back.

Got that?

If you defend yourself, that’s all the justice you need.  (How much do you want to bet the intended victim only evaded assault charges because he was a teenager?)

We are getting to the point where the lesson is the one people in all low-trust societies eventually get to; it’s better to handle “Justice” by yourself.  To do the job, to not talk to the police – even enforce the practice – and make offender examples on your own.  

I’d ask “is this what you want”, but this is  the DFL we’re talking about. 

The smartest woman in the world, decided to sound off about crime in the District of Columbia:

we’re starting to see this, along with “a little bit of crime is one of the things you put up with to live in a major city” – the kind of gaslighting rationalization used by the class that ran New York City before Rudy Giuliani took over.

it’s really very Orwellian: convincing an entire population that crime = normality, and seeking normality is the aberration.

and you’re seeing plenty of this from the Minneapolis booster crowds, in between their videos of crowds of people at street fares and families riding around the placid lakes far from the centers of crime; here you go, I’m a Republican tough guy from Maple Grove with your F350; here’s crime-ridden Minneapolis”, as if two things cannot only be possible, but be possible around the corner from each other.

I pity the next Democrat moron, who tries any of this with me.

Back during blogging’s glory days between about 2004 and 2011, people new to the medium used to ask me what it took to write a successful blog.  

I told them “stick to a schedule”.  Didn’t matter if it was two pieces a day, or once a week, or twice a month – but pick a schedule and stick to it.  

And I’ve largely done that for the past 23 years.  

But you might have noticed – output’s been a little light this past few months.  

Part of it has been priorities.  I got laid off from my day job in February.  Which, given that I approach job-hunting with maniacal intensity, meant rather less time for writing than normal; when I’m on the beach, I start grinding out resumes pretty much as soon as I have my coffee. 

And then, as I noted last March, I fortuitously wound up getting picked up at HotAir.com, writing with my old friends Ed Morrissey and David Strom.   I get paid for what I write there.  Not a ton, and certainly not enough to pay my bills – and it’s a slightly different kind of blogging than what I do here.  But it’s a nice side hustle.  

To go with my other side hustles – the NARN and my band. 

Which made for a spring and summer of cranking out stuff for Hot Air, band gigs, and above all cranking out resumes.  416 of them in 19 weeks.  

Given a choice between feast and famine, I’ll take the feast.  I landed a day job about a month back.  A contracting job, limited to 40 hours a week.  The bills are paid and then some.  

And then I connected with a startup which eats up a chunk of my spare time during evenings and weekends.  

So, commitment-wise I’ve been trying to stretch two pounds of sausage casing to cover five pounds of sausage.  

Oh, yeah – and I’m coming down with a summer cold.  

Shot in the Dark isn’t going anywhere.  That habit I told everyone to develop back in the first paragraph still barks at me every morning at 5AM, just as it did int 2003.   It’s been a constant thing for me for what feels like a lifetime.   It’s also my show prep – and God and Salem willing, the NARN isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.  We’ve got a country to save.  

Anyway – output’s not going to stay down.  And I’ve got a project or two that might just rear their heads in the near future, after I’ve gotten over the whole “going from unemployed to overemployed” thing. 

But pardon a brief slowdown while I take some zinc and maybe try to get six hours of sleep tonight.  

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

You know you’re sitting in the cheap seats when . . . .  

 

My question – what’s he looking at?  And where’s his buddy for the other one?  Bathroom break?  Went for a Coke and a hot dog?  

 

Joe Doakes

Perhaps placing bets on the Millers game…

George Will has deserved plenty of flak over the past 40 years or so.  

And he’s caught some for this interview here.  

And I think the flakkers got it wrong:

I think what he’s saying here is “let New York voters FA, so the whole nation can FO”.  

I mean, it’s going to happen anyway.