I never read any of the Harry Potter books, but I had kids of an age where I wound up watching few of the movies.

So I’m familiar with the sport – or “sport” – of Quidditch. In the movies, it was a fantasy version of, for lack of a better description, polo played on witch brooms.

I wasn’t familiar enough with it to know there’s a professional league – presumably sans levitation. At least for now.

But like (it seems) all professional sports, “woke” has engulfed even this supremely artificial “sport”:

U.S. Quidditch and Major League Quidditch announced the name change on Tuesday as well as their own rebranding as U.S. Quadball and Major League Quadball. The groups announced their intention to find a new name for the sport in December, citing what they called anti-trans positions of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

In addition to distancing themselves from the author, organizers hope the name change will give the sport more opportunities to grow and not be inhibited by the trademark for “quidditch” being owned by Warner Bros.”Bringing full creative control of the name of our sport to the vibrant community of players and fans that has grown and sustained it will allow our organizations to take the next step,” MLQ co-commissioner Amanda Dallas said in a statement. “We are now able to pursue the kinds of opportunities that our community has dreamed about for years.”

So, the “sport” wants to distance itself…

…from the woman who created it, in her own mind, from whole cloth, as part of a bunch of fantasy novels about a teenage wizard?

Because she affirms biological reality?

UPDATE: I’d say “in an unrelated matter“, but it’s really not unrelated at all.

To: Rep. Angie Craig
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Your Superpowers

Rep. Craig,

The other day, you tweeted this:

Please tell us what ability you, a Congressional Rep and member of the Legislative Branch, have to influence the price of commodities, like gasoline?

Also – you’re aware that gas prices are falling because the market is reacting to the recession that your party is trying to tell us doesn’t exist, right?

That is all.

Most of the hard, empirical realizations I’ve had as a result of this blog started as satirical, sardonic or otherwise flippant remarks that turned out, to my amazement, to be true.

The canon of “Berg’s Law” is the closest I’ve got to a “famous” example.

Less flippant? My ever-more-frequent observation that Democrat politicians can tell “their” voters pretty much anything that suits them, because their base just doesn’t do critical thinking.

Case in point: the Administration apparently wants to borrow a page from Elizabeth Warren, and have the economy “identify” as healthy:

In 1984, the regime released the news that the chocolate rationwas being cut from 35 grams to 25 grams, by announcing that it was actually an increase from 20 grams. Maybe the people knew better, maybe they didn’t, maybe they just shunted the truth aside out of self-interest.

Not sure this is the same pathology – but I can’t think of a better one.

We’re being asked to watch out for signs our political, market and social leadership are thinking about threatening democracy.

In this case, by media historial Michael Beschloss:

OK. I’m on it. Let’s get started:

• Calls to abolish the electoral college, or otherwise make the government majoritarian – essentially voiding the contract that caused smaller-population states that put the “united” in “United States” in the first place.
• Answering calls to tie the Senate to the popular vote.
• Calls to to abolish the Supreme Court, “pack” it with people favorable to the current administration, or otherwise make it “follow public opinion”.

Let’s see to these, shall we?

Last week, after a brief campaign by the DFL‘s noise machine too spin remarks by GOP lieutenant governor candidate Matt Birk out of context, to local restaurants – the nook and Shamrocks, both owned by the same company – removed the “Matt Birk“ burger from their menus.

The petition reportedly got 176 signatures. And the restaurants caved.

I think it’s high time they realized that the vast majority in Minnesota does, in fact, stand for a free market of ideas, where everyone can and should be heard without having to worry about having their livelihoods clobbered by the mob.

The first step of pushing back? What the heck – a counterpetition. If they got 176 signatures? We are going to get 352.

There’s a pretty good chance this is going to be followed by a group of people who like burgers, and who tip well, going down to one of those restaurants just to make sure they’re getting the message.

Go ahead Dash sign up. And pass the link around to everyone who is sick and tired of cancel culture and doesn’t want to take anymore.

If you lelt them babble on long enough, they always prove you right:

By the way – newspaper editorial cartoonists take a test when they’re interviewing, measuring their knowledge of current events, history, and their understanding of the ins and outs of American society.

If they score over 50%, they get a job in the warehouse.

Under? Cartooning.

Steve Sack is gone – but stupid is eternal .

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A judge ruled some of Minnesota’s restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional under the Minnesota state constitution, which offers broader protection of privacy rights than the federal constitution in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision.

I have not read Judge Gillespie’s 140-page opinion. Submitted for your reading pleasure.

Joe Doakes

I’m waiting for the movie.

The MLB All-Star game this past Tuesday garnered a rating of 4.2 rating and 7.5 million viewers. Both numbers were record lows, though the game did handily win the night.

Last year MLB pulled the All-Star game out of Atlanta because the state of Georgia dared to exercise democratic oversight of its own election process. Certainly that drove some fans away, and I’m one of them. I’ve paid for MLB.TV for quite a few years, but this year I didn’t, and I won’t ever again, and I won’t watch another All-Star game, until MLB apologizes for its craven kowtowing to wokery.

But, baseball’s problems started long before that. An important catalyst in knocking baseball off its unique place in American culture was the 1994 strike. That strike began in August and wiped out the rest of the season and, most importantly, the postseason.

Before that strike, the ratings of the All-Star game from 1992-1994 were 14.9, 15.6 and 15.7. The year after the strike, in 1995, the rating was 13.9, and it has been steadily dropping ever since. Whether by design or not, the steroid era which followed the strike did bring back interest in baseball, as behemoths bashed home runs at a record pace. In 1998, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa battled to break one of baseball’s sacred records, the home run record of 61 set by Roger Maris in 1961. The rating of the All-Star game that year was 13.3, and that has never been exceeded since.

Since 2015, the rating of every All-Star game has been a new record low, except for 2019. The ratings of the World Series, too, have fallen in tandem.

There are a witches brew of reasons as to why baseball’s popularity isn’t what it once was. Younger people have a myriad of other entertainment options, and many more choices of sports to participate in when they’re younger. Pace of play doesn’t help baseball’s cause, nor does a decline in balls put into play.

While I never miss a Vikings game, and my favorite sports teams of all time were Larry Bird’s Celtics teams, baseball is my favorite. Each season is a saga. From the languid sun-drenched days of spring training, to cold spring games, through the height of summer, to the crisp fall postseason, the ebb and flow of teams in the standings is a story one can follow for months.

And if an increasingly woke corporate MLB drives away fans like me which it can’t afford to lose, what hope does it have?

To: Scott Jensen/Matt Birk

Please, please, please: if you happen to win the Governors race, promise to release the full, unredacted records from the state’s “Covid snitch line”

Because I want to find every single one of these backstabbing weasels.

People often would send in lists of “non-essential” businesses that remained open or weren’t strictly following masking requirements, according to files from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).

Another complaint reported on people for purchasing non-essential items at a convenience store in White Bear Lake. “Customers are coming and saying, ‘I’m bored and needed to get out of the house.’ They buy lottery tickets, a candy bar, a soda … those items are not ‘essential.’”

I was about to write“This might not be my better self speaking“.

But I think everybody’s better self wants a chunk out of these people, too.

Ohio Congresswoman Shontel Brown took a photo with the President at a Congressional picnic last week.

Pretty innocuous stuff

But look closely:

Now, the following is purely my conjecture – but notice Rep. Brown’s hand? Securely gripping the President’s hand?

Preventing it from wandering God only knows where else?

I’m going to start watching other women’s photos with President Brandon – because i’ll bet dollars to donuts the White House communications people are scrambling on ways of keeping the President’s hands off women, and his nose out of their hair.

One day, we’ll see a photo of Amy Klobuchar holding the President in a half nelson during a selfie.

Mark my worlds – this is one of those jokes that will turn out to be real, one day.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emailed in re the Indiana mall shooting, and the Good Guy with a Gun that ended it:

Holy crap! Nice shootin’, Tex.

Seriously.

OK, first things first: having to shoot someone in self-defense is the second-worst possible outcome to a very bad situation.

With that out of the way?

To elaborate on Joe – within fifteen seconds of the demented troglodyte [spree killers seek fame, so I won’t name him] starting a shooting spree where he killed three people, and clearly intended to kill as many people as possible, 22 year old good samaritan and good guy with a gun Elisha Dicker moved his girlfriend to safety, and then engaged the murderer, firing ten shots, hitting the would-be spree killer eight times.

At a range of 120 feet. With a handgun.

While under life-or-death stress.

That is incredibly impressive.

And just try to find the story in the mainstream media.

That, as usual, isn’t nearly as depressing as some of the other responses from leftyworld on social media:

• “If ‘good guys with a gun’ were of any use, they’d kill the bad guy before they killed ANYONE'”
• “Ack-shyu-ally, good samaritans are *only* non-violent. If he were a *real* good samaritan, he’d have only carried a first aid kit.”
• “Wouldn’t it be better if *nobody* had a gun?” (I try to ask them how they get the guns out of the hands of the Sapirmans of the world *first*. They never answer).
• “It’s still another person dead…”

Remember – their votes count as much as yours.

Depressing, huh?

The New York Times sounded off with an unctuous “Ack-shyu-ally”, saying good guys with guns ended about 3% of spree killings. That’s too low – but if you leave out shootings that happen where civilians aren’t allowed to have guns at all – schools, government buildings, bars in Florida, churches in Texas – and the fact that maybe 3-5% of the population actually carries even in permissive states, thats a pretty good percentage.

I’m looking forward to doing the analysis on that sometime soon, here.

The list of good guys with guns who’ve ended mass shootings is long, and full of the kind of people this brutally imperfect, evil-riven world needs more of. Dominic Rozier. Nick Meli. Jack Wilson, Stephen Willeford, Jeanna Assam. And now, Elisha Dicker.

The woke mob told the First Avenue “Jump!“.First Avenue replied “off what“?”

First Avenue buckled under the attack from the Woke Mob late in the day yesterday, and punted on the Dave Chapelle show:

The media coverage is, as always, shameful:

“The community”

Well, one community:

Looks like a raggedy little line of 24 White, Overschooled, Middle Class, Progressive White Activists (WOMPWAs), not a “community”.

Remember in the 1980s, when the left used to yuck it up over the purported censoriousness of

the “Parents Music Resource Council”, with the record labeling and other (in hindsight very mild) public moralizing?The left has become Tipper Gore.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gun registration will not be used to facilitate government confiscation of private firearms.

It will be leaked so everyone in the world knows who has a gun to steal, who to SWAT and who to Red Flag.

Joe Doakes

And in Minnesota, where Carrie permit records are not public information, the antis have already promised to use any red flag law to SWAT Second Amendment activists.

Ask not why we Second Amendment activists are so absolutist. Ask why anyone who cares about their civil liberties isn’t.

There was a “civil disobedience” action in DC yesterday.

For those who need a refresher: “civil disobedience” means breaking the law, and accepting the consequences of that action, to illustrate what one considers a wrong.

Rep Omar was among “several female members of Congress” “arrested” yesterday.

And when I say “arrested”, I mean…

Well, watch the video below. Representative Omar walks across the area in front of the cameras, hands seemingly cuffed behind her, until second :17 – the last second of the footage:

And then, when she’s out of frame…

She raises her right arm.

The “Handcuffs” weren’t even theatrical. They were nonexistant. She pretended to be cuffed when she walked across the PR equivalent of a red f****ng carpet.

Not much in the way of consequences, was it?

The social media uproar was such that even Omar’s semi-official PR flak, Esme Murphy, had to point it out:

Now – if we had some sort of institution in this country, perhaps with transmitters and printing presses, staffed by some self-styled monastic searchers for institutional fact and truth, someone might ask Omar how it is she managed to get “arrested” without ever getting handcuffed.

If only.

On the one hand, I try not to spend much money in MInneapolis. And riding the Vomit Comet, or taking my car, downtown isn’t something I do lightly anymore. Of course, I don’t like to reward First Avenue for their demented vaccine policies or having soaked up a bunch of transfers of taxpayer money to them during the pandemic.

And while some of the best memories of my life took place in that building, the staff and management don’t much care about that, or them.

On the other hand:

There’s a part of me that wants to reward them, in some small way, for packing the gear to offend the alphabet people, while in downtown Minneapolis.

Decisions, decisions.

To: Lieutenant Governor Flanagan
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: This…

Lieutant Governor Flanagan,

About this appearance, on a local, uh, livestream, I guess?

I have so many questions.

Baaaaaaaaaaahb: For starters: Does anyone really care how you dress? And by “anyone”, I don’t mean “Baaaaaaahb from FRIDley” – although we’ll come back to him, and to there. You’re a public figure. You’re going to get, uh, “Feedback”.

But you are one of the four most powerful people in MInnesota; you are arguably the most powerful Lieutenant Governor in recent Minnesota history, since the Governor only serves at the pleasure of the extreme “progressive” caucus you lead. Beyond that, yoiu’re a member of the political class, from a social echo chamber in you can do pretty much anything you want, without any consequences whatsoever (and, indeed, have done just that). You (and your family) have a lifetime sinecure, on the taxpayer’s dime. You could wear aluminum foil pants and a 2LiveCrew t-shirt, or pretty much anything but a MAGA cap, with complete impunity.

(Indeed – given that you’ve never, not once in your life, worked in the private sector, you are in the very rare position of never having had to obey any sort of conventional dress code, outside whatever rules the MN House of Representatives imposes – and if you had any problems about any rules you had to follow on that steppingstone to power, the record is silent).

So even if some (fictional?) “Baaaaaaaaaahb from FRIDley” dunks on your attire – so what?

Does it affect you, your life, your living, your power, in any way?

Because if not, it isn’t unreasonable to think you’re doing it to drum up some phony grievance, a bloody shirt of phony victimization for one of the most powerful, entitled people in Minnesota to wave about. .

Beyond that?

FRIDley?: I was struck by the contempt you clearly felt for Baaaaaaaaahb from Fridley. I was more struck by the laugn your audience shared with you about the reference.

You seem to feel a palpable contempt for people who aren’t like you and your neighbors in the leftist echo chamber, and to feed off the contempt you, plural, feel for them.

Why is that?

That is all.

Bystander in the St. Louis area shoots a serial violent armed robber:

A man who police say went on a “violent crime spree” at three gas stations was shot and killed by a customer armed with a gun, Missouri police say.

It happened around 3:20 a.m. on Saturday, July 16, in St. Charles, just outside St. Louis. The St. Charles Police Department said the 26-year-old robbery suspect, who is from St. Louis, died at a local hospital after being shot by a witness.

While I expected the knife wielding robber was “just getting his life together“, I’ve had no written confirmation.

All I know is, it’s been a good week for the good guys.

Prosecution exhibit A:

Initially I thought this was a joke.

Sadly, no.

There are times I miss the old website “Stuff White People Like“.- a satirical, often hilarious look at the foibles of generally upper middle class, educated, urban honkies. It became a best selling book, chronicling the gentle social satire of a much less divisive time – the George W. Bush administration.

Will come back to that.

Last week, after an hours long standoff that allegedly began, and continued, with random gun fire fired blindly through the walls into neighboring apartments, police snipers apparently killed Tekle Sundberg, aman who (let’s be solicitors) was apparently mentally ill, and (let’s be honest) had apparently been terrorizing the other residents of that apartment block for quite some time.

I’m not equipped to comment on the merits of the police action; while we have passed the statutory three day limit imposed by birds 18th law, The Twin Cities media just doesn’t do a good job of covering stories where facts and progressive narrative intersect. Like the Christine Rusczyk shooting, this is is going to be a long, ugly ride.

What I am equipped to comment on, though, is the behavior of perhaps the most loathsome group of people in society today – Woke, Overeducated, Middle-class Progressive White Activists. (Hereafter WOMPWAs).

And one of the things WOMPWAs like is standing around in groups of like-minded people, preaching to the infidels. Sometimes they are called protests, sometimes visuals – and, more accurately, group virtue signaling.

Which is what they were doing on Friday, until of Mr. Sundberg’s victims – Arabelle Foss-Scarabella, a single of mother of two who lived next-door to the late Mr. Sundberg – arrived on the scene:

“It’s not the time”, one of them progsplained a woman…

…who’d been protecting her kids from this:

There is plenty of evidence that Sundberg was deeply mentally ill.

There is even more evidence that WOMPWAS are equally mentally ill, in their own way.

The “MN Reformer” is yet another effort to start a news organization by progressive plutocrats with deep pockets – because after the Minnesota Monitor, the Minnesota Independent and MNPost, certainly the fourth time’s the charm.

They’ve actually done some decent reporting over the last year.

Emphasis on “in the last year” – when there wasn’t an election on the way.

But there is.

The Reformer ran an op-ed by Dr. Hannah Lichtsinn calling for the state medical authorities to revoke Dr. Scott Jensen’s medical license. Jensen is, by the way, the GOP candidate for Governor. He’s also been an out-front skeptic of our state’s hamfisted, tyrannical public health response.

Neither the op-ed, the Reformer’s bio-blurb about Dr. Lichtsinn, nor any of the Reformer’s social media traffic makes any mention of any political bent that she might have.

Anecdotally – and I’m the one with the anecdote, here – Dr. Lichtsinn has been pretty much the polar opposite of Jensen; on social media, she was a positively strident proponent of lockdowns, mandates of every kind, and draconian enforcement.

And the reason for that is, she’s every bit as much a Democrat activist with portfolio as she is a doctor:

It’d be fair to say that, when not playing nice and empirical in op-eds intended to be marketed to the unconvinced center, she’s a “groaningly strident” progressive

Apparently the Reformer didn’t think the reader needed to know that.

Which is why the Reformer – unlike the MN Monitor and the MN Independent before it – bothered with all that “decent reporting” last year; to put up a veneer of legitimacy around what was intended to be yet another DFL PR operation during the 2022 campaign season.

Berg‘s 18th law is still in effect – but initial reports indicate that an armed “Good Samaritan“ in Indiana killed a spree killer early in his attack:

The Greenwood Police Department confirmed Sunday that a lone shooter, believed to be an adult male, entered the food court of the mall around 6 p.m. with a rifle and several magazines of ammo. The suspect then shot into the mall, killing three people and injuring two more.

GPD also confirmed Sunday that the shooter was shot and killed by a Good Samaritan who was armed with a handgun. The man who shot the suspect, identified as a 22-year-old from Bartholomew County, had a legal gun permit and is fully cooperating with police.

I’m pretty sure Indiana is a constitutional carry state with no “legal gun permit” needed – but why quibble?

This is how mass spree shootings get stopped.

UPDATE: Aaaah, social media. Where people who can’t tell the difference between a firing pin and a bipod are suddenly experts on close quarter battle tactics and self-defense law.

Dick’s Sporting Good is sort of the Angela Merkel of big retail. They kowtow to the left, and have an unearned reputation for doing things well, but at the end of the day you can see literally every choice they ever made is wrong. They’ve tried to become a big-box REI.

They banned “modern sporting rifles” after Newtown – and again after (IIRC) Parkland (and have kept it going since then).

And, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, they signaled their progressive virtue to the world by planning to pay for employees abortions, as well as up to $4,000 in travel benefits to get to states that allow the procedure, if applicable.

Unmentioned: abortion is cheaper than childcare. Which Dick’s doesn’t help with in the least:

America First Legal (AFL) asked the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to open a civil-rights investigation into the company, alleging multiple violations of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on parental status…The legal group claimed that the retailer discriminated against mothers who decide not to terminate their pregnancy by not offering them an equivalent benefit. It called the project “wholly detached” from the company’s business of selling sporting goods and golf equipment, which in turn may “needlessly destroy shareholder value.”

“Subsidizing travel for an abortion, while denying an equivalent benefit to a mother welcoming a new baby, is perverse and unlawful. Using racial balancing and quotas in hiring and promotion, as the company claims that it does, has been illegal for decades. DICK’S management is an avatar for the rot and danger of corporate wokeness,” AFL Senior Counselor and Director of Oversight Reed D. Rubinstein said in a statement.

My problem: There are so many “woke” companies to boycott – but I have been avoiding all of them for other reasons for a long, long time. I wiped Dick’s off my shopping list in 2013, and it never got back.

What’s a guy to do?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Lots of flights cancelled. Mayor Pete says airlines need to get their act together. It’s the airlines fault.

Airlines say there’s a pilot shortage, goes back to the Colgan Air disaster when FAA raised pilot minimum hours to 1,500, which makes it harder for new pilots to get hired. Airlines want FAA to raise the mandatory retirement age again, to 67, so they can fly with the pilots they have while waiting for new pilots to be trained.

Pilots say it’s inflation eroding pay, crappy scheduling and the vaccine mandate. Lost a bunch of pilots because of it, can’t hire new ones because they won’t take the vaxx.

Bernie Saunders says Congress gave airlines a bailout during the Covid crisis the Democrats created, which makes the airlines beholden to Democrats for their existence, so now he wants to fine airlines $55,000 per passenger for cancelled flights to punish airlines for failing to find enough pilots who possess the required number of hours and also have the mandated vaccine.

Pile up enough restrictions and you can kill any industry.

I was planning to someday retire to Florida. Guess we’ll be driving there on the racist roads, assuming the Lesko Brandon administration doesn’t ban interstate travel. That and quartering soldiers in private homes are about the only Constitutional rights they haven’t violated yet.

Joe Doakes

America had it so good, through the Reagan/Gingrich boom of the 1990s.

Someone just had to screw it up.

Here’s the video of Arabella Foss-Yarbrough I was talking about:

By the wa – the term is “WOMPWAs” – Woke Overeducated Middle Class White Activists”.

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

Fern Smith is running for the MN House in HD52A.

Need more information on the 3M Open or on Estate Claim Services? There you go!

And here’s today’s music: