Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Still working from home (two weeks to flatten the curve, you know). Can’t log in today. My “remote authentication certificate” is not recognized.

Called the Computer Support phone number. Recorded message says they’re experiencing a problem with remote login software but will send updated information to affected users by email.

I am – literally – living in a Dilbert cartoon.

Joe Doakes

Dilbert has been running since 1989.

If it took you until 2022 to realize this, you’ve had a very good run indeed.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

As I was putting out the cat this morning, the little girl from upstairs walked by. She was crying. I asked her what was wrong. “Someone stole my bike, I’m looking for it.” I told her I’d keep an eye out and wished her luck.

Yes, I could have lectured her on the evils of society, how she should have assumed everyone is a thief and locked it up, how we have new neighbors so no doubt they stole it just to wreck it because that’s how Those People are. I could have offered to buy her a different bike, a even better bike. But she’s a 2nd Grader. She doesn’t care about any of that. She doesn’t want a different bike, she wants her own bike back.

I know how she feels. I feel the same about America. The Left keeps trying to take it away so they can wreck it. They claim they will replace it with a different America, an even better America, but I don’t want a different America. I want my own America back. The fear it may be lost forever makes me feel like crying, too.

Joe Doakes

In my book “Trulbert“, the question on the surface was “what if society had to stay over“.

Implicit in that, sometimes, was “what if we could start society over“.

Because these days I’m feeling…

… not so much like that second grade girl.

More like the 18-year-old who got his bike stolen, and spent the summer roaming the city, looking for an excuse to pound the thief flat with a hammer.

SIGAR (the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) was established in 2008 to serve as an oversight body. It conducts audits of reconstruction projects and its mission is to look for waste and fraud.

In the wake of the collapse of the Afghan government last year, SIGAR was asked by Congress to look into the causes of the rapid collapse and today it issued an interim report. The text of the report is here.

Here is a summary of the conclusions.

SIGAR found that the single most important factor in the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021 was the U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021. Due to the ANDSF’s dependency on U.S. military forces, these events destroyed ANDSF morale. The ANDSF had long relied on the U.S. military’s presence to protect against large-scale ANDSF losses, and Afghan troops saw the United States as a means of holding their government accountable for paying their salaries. The U.S.-Taliban agreement made it clear that this was no longer the case, resulting in a sense of abandonment within the ANDSF and the Afghan population. The agreement set in motion a series of events crucial to understanding the ANDSF’s collapse.

The report identifies “six factors that accelerated the ANDSF’s collapse in August 2021.”

1) U.S. decision to withdraw military forces and contractors from Afghanistan through signing the U.S.-Taliban agreement in February 2020 under the Trump administration, followed by President Biden’s withdrawal announcement in April 2021
2) the change in the U.S. military’s level of support to the ANDSF
3) the ANDSF never achieving self-sustainment
4) Afghan President Ashraf Ghani frequently changing ANDSF leaders and appointing loyalists
5) Afghan government’s failing to take responsibility for Afghan security through an implementation of a national security strategy
6) the Taliban’s military campaign effectively exploiting ANDSF weaknesses

In addition, the report identifies “nine factors that explain why, after 20 years and nearly $90 billion in U.S. security assistance, the ANDSF was ill-prepared to sustain security following a U.S. withdrawal”.

1) no country or agency had complete ownership of the ANDSF development mission,
2) the length of the U.S. commitment was disconnected from the reality of the time required to build an entire security sector
3) the U.S. created long-term dependencies that would require significant time to overcome, such as providing the ANDSF with advanced equipment they could not sustain and leaving them out of the equipping process
4) the U.S. military, driven by political deadlines, struggled to balance winning battles with letting the ANDSF gain experience by fighting on their own
5) U.S. metrics created to measure the development of the ANDSF were unable to effectively measure ANDSF capabilities
6) Afghan corruption harmed ANDSF capabilities and readiness
7) U.S. control of the battlespace and of key governance systems restricted Afghan ownership of important military and governance systems
8) U.S. and Afghan governments failed to develop a police force effective at providing justice
9) advisors were often ill-trained and inexperienced for their mission, and personnel rotations impeded institutional memory

SIGAR has been issuing quarterly reports and “lessons learned” reports as part of its mission. Last August, SIGAR issued one of these “lessons learned” reports, the text is here, and this is from the executive summary.

The U.S. government has now spent 20 years and $145 billion trying to rebuild Afghanistan, its security forces, civilian government institutions, economy, and civil society. The Department of Defense (DOD) has also spent $837 billion on warfighting, during which 2,443 American troops and 1,144 allied troops have been killed and 20,666 U.S. troops injured. Afghans, meanwhile, have faced an even greater toll. At least 66,000 Afghan troops have been killed. More than 48,000 Afghan civilians have been killed, and at least 75,000 have been injured since 2001—both likely significant underestimations.

What, really, do we have to show for all that blood and treasure? Will anyone be held accountable, even if it’s only at the ballot box? If the American people don’t have the fortitude to hold their leaders accountable, we shouldn’t hold out hope that said leaders will hold themselves accountable.

It’s not something I think about that much, but I do from time to time — why do Classic Rock stations sound the same, year after year? I wrote about this on my moribund blog a number of years ago and, based on recent listening to market-dominant KQRS, this list of faves hasn’t changed a bit:

In thinking about this list, a few things are worth noting:

• The majority of the songs on this list are written in a minor key. If rock and roll is supposed to be uplifting, this group of songs isn’t it.
• Of the bands listed here, the happiest band appears to be ZZ Top, who made their name initially as a bare-bones Texas blues trio, until they made their fortune hawking classic cars and leggy models. Make of that what you will.
• Think back to any of the years listed here. Would you have had any interest in listening to songs that were recorded as long ago from that moment as these songs are from today? I didn’t hear much of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys or the Andrews Sisters in 1983, for example, nor do I recall seeking such things out. In fact, I’m more likely to seek out Bob Wills today than most of the songs listed here, right or wrong.
• In my youth I was reliably informed that rock and roll was supposed to be about rebellious youth and revolution. While their politics were dodgy at best, the Clash was right about this much — you grow up and you calm down; you start wearing blue and brown. And so has the music of our youth.

Gil Scott-Heron, who doesn’t get much airplay these days, argued back then that the revolution will not be televised. But rest assured it will be monetized.

Erin Preese is gonna show the gun rights movement what for:

All right. Let’s get taken on!

I’m just going to head out to her Twitter account…:

Like an amazing number of leftist candidates, she seems to have availed herself of some mass blocking service/list. I’ve never even interacted with her…

…and I’m already cast forth from her echo chamber.

So we’ve established this: “taking on the gun lobby“ means “parenting chanting points into the echo chamber“.

I occasionally listen to public radio – not “in spite of” the fact that they have turned into the public relations arm, not just of “today’s left”, but of the “progressive” upper middle class. It reflects their angsts; I imagine a drinking game involving taking a shot whenever there’s a mention of Covid, January 6, climate change and white supremacy being very short and very chemically lethal.

It reflects their conceits; the traditional “NPR Voice”, the ofay upper-middle-class accent of the Oberlin poli-sci graduate, is being supplanted by very audibly African-American and, how shall we say this, accents of males with alternate lifestyles – the sort of stuff things that upper-middle-class white progressives demand from their entertainment.

And it reflects their ignorance, over and over, in so many ways.

One that I caught yesterday while driving across the Northern Plains, on the syndicated “New Yorker Radio Hour” – an episode which has not yet gotten onto the website – involved a woman, a reporter if memory serves, saying with what sounded like a straight face:

China has changed so much in recent years – economically, and socially.

And yet, the political system just doesn’t seem to change…

Huh.

You’re saying a communist kleptocracy, which knows fiull well that the only alternative to being in power in a Communist dictatorship is a bullet in the back of the head, a system that is more similar to the Mafia than anything else we know of, doesn’t “change with the times?”

I often – very, very often – say that Democrats can say pretty much anything they want to their audience, since they – whether they dropped out of high school, or have a PhD in Women’s Studies – are so universally gullible and ignorant.

Sometimes I feel like I’m speaking too broadly.

Then, I hear things like this, and I get back on track.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis on Twitter: “Out of 27 women that were accidentally pregnant during the vacc program. Outcome: 23 spontaneous abortions. 2 premature with neonatal death. 1 spontaneous abortion with neonatal death. 1 living baby Pfizer doc 5.3.6 page 12 “Safe and effective”” / Twitter”

How is it misleading to cite actual numbers from the original source?

Perhaps they use “misleading” to mean “leading people away from The Narrative,” which would be true but not the normal usage.

Silver lining: women won’t need coat hangers after Roe is overturned. Just vaxx your troubles away.

Joe Doakes

There’s always a silver lining, isn’t there?

While American power abroad slowly erodes, it’s good to know our society is girding its loins to fight the true enemy.

Three students at a Wisconsin middle school are facing allegations of sexual harassment under Title IX after they repeatedly refused to use “they/them” pronouns when addressing a fellow student.

Attorneys for the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty demanded that the Kiel Area School District stop the Title IX investigation into the three male students at Kiel Middle School.

“The complaint against these boys, and the District’s ongoing investigation, are wholly inappropriate and should be immediately dismissed,” the institute wrote in a letter to administrators. “The mere use of biologically correct pronouns not only does not constitute sexual harassment under Title IX or the District’s own policy, it is also speech protected by the First Amendment.”

The letter from the WILL is here.

We represent the families of three eighth grade boys (and the boys themselves) who the District recently charged with sexual harassment under Title IX for “mispronouning.” The District’s position appears to be that using what the District calls “incorrect pronouns” “after being informed that a student’s preferred pronouns were ‘they/them’’’ automatically constitutes punishable sexual harassment under Title IX.

The complaint against these boys, and the District’s ongoing investigation, are wholly inappropriate and should be immediately dismissed. The mere use of biologically correct pronouns not only does not constitute sexual harassment under Title IX or the District’s own policy, it is also speech protected by the First Amendment. The District has also violated Title IX procedures and its own policy in its handling of the complaint. The District should promptly end the investigation, dismiss the complaints, and remove them from each of the boys’ records.

“Mispronouning” is also not sexual harassment under Title IX because gender identity is not included within the definition of sex within Title IX. In fact, the Department of Education is currently attempting to amend Title IX to add it. And none of the “other conduct” described in the statement from the music teacher (which the families of the boys eventually received with the Title IX complaint) comes remotely close to sexual harassment. The statement even acknowledges that the whole class “expressed frustration with remembering pronouns.”

It’s hard to have a society when half the country wants to take a chainsaw to it.

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission was established to “review the national security implications of trade and economic ties between the United States and the People’s Republic of China”.

Last week they held a day-long hearing with eleven witnesses on “China’s Activities and Influence in South and Central Asia.” Topics included China’s Interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, China’s Reach in Central Asia, China’s Influence in Continental South Asia, and Competing Visions for the Indian Ocean.

As part of the latter, Christopher K. Colley outlined China’s naval goals, especially as they apply to the Indian Ocean, saying “the American navy is the driving force behind China’s security concerns in the IOR.” Written testimony is here.

The greatest structural change in the Chinese navy in terms of strategy and tactics is the transformation of a navy based on regional defense and access denial, to a force that is firmly inline with power projection and blue water capabilities. Such an evolution is a conscience decision by the top levels of the Chinese government to build a navy that has the ability to project sustained and meaningful power to locations thousands of miles from Chinese home ports. This transformation is one of the most critical developments in the security architecture of the Twenty-First Century.

Last week, before a full committee hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, Adm Gilday, Chief of Naval Operation, spoke about the growing strength of China’s navy. Written testimony is here.

Over the past two decades, the PRC has built a comprehensive sea-denial, anti-access system of sophisticated sensors and long-range precision weapons. Backed by a robust industrial base and the largest shipbuilding infrastructure in the world, the PRC has extensively modernized its military and tripled the size of the People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN). It is also building next-generation strategic missile submarines, erecting hundreds of new missile silos, and growing its cyber and space capabilities.

Under the cover of this anti-access umbrella, the PRC has embraced the use of “gray zone” activities to turn incremental gains into long-term strategic advantages. Using a multi-layered fleet of naval ships, maritime militia, and coast guard, the PRC is undermining international norms by staking illegal maritime claims, militarizing geographic features in the South and East China Seas, and intimidating its neighbors regarding offshore resources. Additionally, the PRC is extending its global reach with its Belt and Road Initiative—leveraging predatory lending practices, aggressive mercantilism backed, and hard military power—to access critical maritime terrain, ports, and waterways.

Given China’s increased strength, Adm Gilday also tried to explain why the US Navy planned to scrap nine warships, some less than three years old.

“I refuse to put an additional dollar against a system that would not be able to track a high-end submarine in today’s environment,” Gilday told the committee. He said the main reason for the early retirement was that the anti-submarine warfare system on the ships “did not work out technically.” The decommissioning of the ships would save the Navy approximately $391 million, according to the service’s proposed FY23 budget. But that recoups only a fraction of the cost of the nine littoral combat ships, which totaled about $3.2 billion.

The arcs of Chinese and US naval strengths are heading in the wrong directions. As Conrad Crane writes about here, America’s ability to fight a major conflict, let alone two at the same time, for the first time in a long time can be questioned. Part of Russia’s strategic mistake in going into Ukraine is it revealed how weak Russia’s military really is. How long before someone decides to test how strong the US is these days?

For the handful of Australian troops on watch at the Finschhafen District military headquarters in Morobe, New Guinea, January 5th, 1919 seemed to be as nondescript as the multitude of days, weeks, months and even years before it.  The region, formerly part of the provinces of German New Guinea, hadn’t seen meaningful combat in more than four years since Australian troops invaded and occupied the colony, driving out the Germans in some of the earliest combat of the Great War.  The brief campaign had been Australia’s first independent military action and had kept region out of the hands out of British or Japanese interests.

The sight greeting the Australians seemed more appropriate for 1914 than 1919 – a column of fully armed New Guinean native German troops, with a resplendently dressed Major in his pressed and cleaned field dress uniform – marching down the streets of Morobe, directly towards the headquarters.  Upon arriving at the front door, the German Major drew his sword and presented it to the Australian commanding officer.  Major Hermann Detzner and the last of his men would surrender – bringing to an end the longest, strangest quasi-guerilla campaign of the First World War.

Hermann Detzner – after the war.  His celebrity would be his undoing

Had Otto von Bismarck had his way, no German soldier would have set foot in New Guinea – or anywhere outside of Europe, for that matter.  The man nicknamed “the Iron Chancellor” for his mastery of 19th Century realpolitik had little time for the expensive vanity projects that were often the result of colonial expansion.  Overseas colonies required vast expenditures of resources without any guarantee of profit and could only further entangle Berlin in the foreign policies of France or Britain, all plainly without the naval might to secure such holdings.  In short – Bismarck sought to avoid precisely most of the military and foreign policy missteps that Germany ended up making in the 1880/90s.  But the allure of powerful financial interests, coupled with domestic political considerations (colonial policies sold well at the ballot box), pushed the Chancellor to embrace the establishment of private colonial ventures.  It would only be a matter of time before private German interests became part of the national interest and forced Germany to send engineers, laborers and finally soldiers overseas. Read the rest of this entry »

So what happens to the “Lime” scooters – The popular electric scooter rentalsthat used to see around Saint Paul?

When you remember that st paul is “Chicago on the Mississippi“, the answer pretty much sorts itself out:

Among the details, Lime will pay the city a trip fee of 10 cents per trip for every trip that begins or ends within the city. Those fees are paid to St. Paul on a monthly basis.

In addition to regular trip fees, Lime will pay a “park impact fee” of 20 cents per scooter for all trips that begin or end on city parkland. The city will also be reimbursed for staff time spent relocating or removing scooters from prohibited locations, at the rate of $35 per scooter, as well as a $20-per-day storage rate at the city’s Dale Street Public Works facility.

Everything in St. Paul must transfer money from the productive parts – the few that are left – to the government.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Story outline for my next novel:

Biden is declared unfit, removed from office two days into his third year, Kamala takes over just in time to serve out the remainder of Biden’s term and two full terms of her own

President Kamala (PK) orders US troops overseas to fight brush wars and orders private cars and home air conditioners in the US banned, because Climate Change

During the hot summer, riots break out in major US cities

PK invites the UN to send peacekeepers to maintain order in US cities

Un demands PK disarm the people to keep the peacekeepers safe from the people they’re keeping safe

Language barrier, cultural differences, resentment for past US wars: peacekeepers open fire on citizens, some of whom return fire (looking at you, Blade)

PK declares martial law, orders peacekeepers to round up those deplorable fly-over state residents bitterly clinging to their guns and Bibles, sends them to concentration camps ‘for their own good’

Deplorable people refuse to go, engage in guerilla war against peacekeepers, shortages of toilet paper, bottled water and SPAM, cities burning

PK blames Trump

Congress impeaches Trump again

Hey, this could be a decent Sci Fi story, if we added some aliens. Maybe they’re observing from the Moon saying, “What were they thinking, electing her?” before flying away to look for intelligent life on other planets

Joe Doakes

”Trulbert” is seeming less and less like satire these days.

The Star Tribune continues to earn its keep as the DFL‘s “unpaid “ PR machine:

For those of you who weren’t paying attention to the GOP convention last weekend – it hardly needs to be said, but nothing of the sort of happened.

A move to disaffiliate with the “Log Cabin Republicans” (to be fair, led by someone who has never been a fan of the notion of LGBTQ Republicans) wrapped up in a procedural motion to vote on the affiliation of each and every affiliate with the party (there are quite a few) led to the clock literally running out on the State Central Committee meeting on Thursday. For the evening, it left the affiliates unattached, and their delegates not credentialed to be seated in the convention.

The body of the convention itself reversed that action on Friday.

This squabble – largely led by a representative from the first congressional district – mirrors in large part a similar fracas a few years ago, when a group of Central committee representatives and convention delegates tried to introduce rules that would bar Muslims from holding Republican Party positions.representatives and convention delegates tried to introduce rules that would bar Muslims from holding Republican Party positions.

It’s the position of this blog that, whatever your personal beliefs about homosexuality and/or Islam, that there is very little that is more aggressively American than “coming out“ as a Republican. Not even buying a house in Burnsville, with a literal freaking picket fence surrounding your front yard.

Indeed, in many of the communities served by these affiliates – Somali, Latino‘s, African-Americans, mong and LGBTQ Dash “coming out“ as a Republican carries an affirmative social risk these are not people to be pushed away; they are frequently the toughest, most resilient Republicans there are.

People may disagree. Let’s disagree.

But let’s also focus on the things we do agree on; for example, the Star Tribune are a bunch of partisan hacks..

And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres

-This Is My Father’s World, hymn

Music is mathematical. You hear it instantly when a talented musician opens their mouth to sing, or when they play their instrument. Our brains recognize the consonance when notes are played within the same key. That is because the frequencies of notes in the scale form integer ratios.

Octaves are a 2:1 ratio, thirds are 3:2, fourths are 4:3 and so forth. These combinations of notes are pleasing to the ear.

Integer ratios don’t occur by chance in random noise. We instinctively respond to the intent behind the notes, the intelligence that deliberately put the notes together in that order.

Our brains are wired to look for patterns, though. Even when we hear seemingly random noise, such as these radio emissions from around Jupiter, we can’t help but go looking for those integer ratios and the notes behind them.

But, while Nature may not play the same notes that Bach knew, integers have a surprising way of popping up in nature, if we know where to look.

The Fibonacci Sequence appears often where a swirl is present, such as in the pattern of a snail’s shell, or spiral galaxies, or arrangement of seeds in a plant.

Integers are also found in something called orbital resonance. This is where two satellites have orbital periods that form integer relationships. For instance, the Earth and Moon have a 1:1 relationship. The Moon spins once on its axis for every trip around the Earth. (This is why one side of the Moon always faces the Earth.) Pluto and Neptune have a 2:3 relationship. Heading back to Jupiter, the moons Ganymede, Europa and Io have a 1:2:4 relationship. It’s not exactly magic, it just turns out that these are gravitationally stable orbits.

The heavens sang again last night. It was quite a performance, though, perhaps not surprisingly, not a random one. The interval between successive lunar eclipses can be 1, 5 or 6 lunar months. The music of the spheres indeed. Bravo to the Composer.

I’ve had some Republican friends express dismay about the timing of the Dobbs decision at the Supreme Court. They fear is going to turn out a biblical wave of “progressive“ voters.

Not without justification, they recall the debacle of the gay marriage amendment in Minnesota in 2012, which splattered with enough force to take out the voter ID proposal.

Of course, that vote coincided with Barack Obama‘s reelection bid; progressives turned out for that, as well.

As for today?

The media will do their darndest to convince voters that everything is hunky-dory by this fall.

How gullible will they be? We’ll see what a difference five months can make.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Pollsters predict this Fall will be devastating for the Democrat Party, maybe an extinction event. Republicans will win handily.

I don’t want Republicans to win. “Republicans” include Liz Cheney, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney – Republicans in name only.

I want Conservatives to win. I’ve seen nothing in the polling to indicate a conservative landslide.

Replacing Democrats with RINOs is not victory.

Joe Doakes

Joe hints toward a point I’ve been pondering writing about for a while, now; the republican party today is painfully similar to the one we had 50 years ago; different from the Democrats in just enough ways to fight over every couple years, but not in terms of policy substance, really, anymore.

In the 1960s through the mid-1970s, a conservative insurgency rooted in the principles William F Buckley enshrined in the Sharon Declaration

They gradually took over the GOP – over the cold, dead, figurative bodies of the Rockefellers and Nixons and other moderates, basically Democrats with better suits, that had held sway since the 1930s. It started with Barry Goldwater, peaked with Ronald Reagan, and spread out into national policy via the 1994 Gingrich landslide.

We need another one of those. Stat.

The real wave of terror is going to be all those white right-wingers.

Someday.

One of these days.

Any time, now.

Honest.

In the meantime, though, we’ve just got the regular left-wing terrorists in the Twin Cities:

Or at least some Macalester poli-sci majors apprenticing with Big Left. By the way – the guy with the Molotov Cocktail in the pic is black – but I’ll wager a shiny new quarter that everyone behind this leaflet is whiter than me, and comes from a family with an income well into six figures.

Remember – if the people to whom we pay taxes don’t provide law and order, people will provide it for themselves.

And it ain’t gonna be pretty.

F#&*k around and find out, indeed.

Anyone but me notice the number of “progressives” that positively celebrated the Ukrainian government giving out selective-fire AKMs to literally everyone who showed up in the parking lot to get one? Including left-of-center members of the Ukrainian Parliament, who were positively lauded for excercising (what NPR would never, ever refer to as) their God-given right to defend their lives, their families, their community and their freedom itself?

Note to fellow amateurs: the Javelin or NLAW missile, or even the Molotov Cocktail, are only useful against the tank if you can get your people into position to shoot, or drop, them on the enemy. And that takes the lowly rifle.

An analysis – amateur, but factually solid – on the role of “irregulars”, the type of people the late and unlamented “Dog Gone” used to refer to as “fat white guys with guns”, on the war in Ukraine.

It’s long, but it’s worth a watch.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In the olden days, when gold and silver were currency, there was only so much metal so there could only be so much money. The government couldn’t create more money out of thin air, it had to tax citizens to obtain the money to run the government.

Lesko Brandon reminds us Milton Friedman no longer rules the world. The government can create as much money as it wants, simply by adding ones and zeros to bank accounts.

Fine. But then why am I paying taxes?

Joe Doakes

To show everyone who’s boss?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In the olden days, almost nobody could read the Bible but they could
listen to the preacher draw lessons from Bible stories. Stained glass
church windows helped illiterate people remember the lessons from the
stories.

Modern churches have stained glass windows like this one from a
magazine. The designer says the colors represent liturgical seasons in
the Christian calendar (Christmas is red, Lent is purple, Advent is
green, God is the bright white center of all, etc.). Okay, if you say so.

I don’t like abstract art (I see no meaning in a mess).  I don’t like
jazz music – I can never find “the line” to follow the melody.  I don’t
like blank verse poetry:  if it doesn’t rhyme, don’t waste my time.

Wikipedia says: Philistines favor forms of art that have a cheap and
easy appeal.  Yep, that’s me and pretty much everybody in Christendom up
until about 100 years ago, when ‘artists’ stopped making art to be
enjoyed by adults and started making ‘art’ for their own
self-indulgence.   And they call US pig-ignorant savages?  I don’t think
so.  Time for a new renaissance in the art world.

Joe Doakes (but you can call me Phil)

I try – pinky swear – to see people as people, and not to be constantly petty and venal. We as people aren’d defined by our externalities – our jobs, politics, whatever – any more than we are by our social, ethnic or class identity.

Even less, in the great scheme of things, are they defined by the ways in which I, Mitch Berg, disagree with them.

With that out of the way?

Steve Sack is retiring from the Star Tribune.

I’m not going to say Sack is the worst editorial cartoonist in the business. It’s entirely possible there’s someone more facile, less informed, more generally blinkered by their agenda.

But among the ones I’m familiar with? I’ve almost never been a fan.

I’ll be honest – I came not to praise him, but to bury him.

Clearly, Sack’s “view of the world” is the one most DFLers are issued at graduation, and Sack’s work was more “birdcage” than fridge material. Truth be told, I often considered buying a bird specifically for Sack’s work.

And mine wasn’t the only opinion; I’m told Sack won a Pulitzer or two, which at one point not too long ago wasn’t purely self-parodic.

Anyway, Mr. Sack; all the best in your future endeavors – something I say knowing that anyone the Strib hires these days is going to make us miss your “glory days” in comparison.

The real danger to our society is “right wing terror”.

As the gone-but-not-forgotten, perma-blocked Dog Gone used to say, the danger is a wave or conservative violence that will “dwarf 9/11”.

While we wait,and wait, and wait, we saw this from a “journalist” for “Rewire News Group” re the firebombing in Madison we talked about earlier this week:

I’ve heard people on both sides of this issue say that abortion would be the spark for the next hot civil war in this country.

I disagree. The left’s response to being forced to share power, via shared powers, checks and balances and due process, with those they hate is going to be what the civil war is about.

Abortion will be one of the issues that will exercise the shared powers, checks, balances and process against which Big Left will revolt.

Government is the things we do together, stupidly and incompetenty.

Case in point – the formula shortage.

Which is – you guessed it – the fault of big government.

SCENE: Long after dark, in a ratty but not necessarily malevolent commercial and office district, in an unnamed “blue” city. A Hyundai crossover pulls up to the curb, in front of a relatively pristine, whitewashed brick wall on the side of a church.

Stacey HINTON, Executive Director of “Keep All Racists Eternally Nonplussed”, a white progressive support group, steps out of the vehicle. She furtively looks around, pulls a can of spray paint out of a bag, and starts to spray paint something on the white wall.

Gradually, it resolves into:

“If abortion isn’t safe, either are you”.

HINTON hurriedly climbs back into the Hyundai, and drives away.

Minutes pass.

Another car – a 1990 Dodge Ram – pulls up to the same spot. After a moment, Mitch BERG climbs out, and reads the graffiti. He shakes his head, mildly disgusted.

He looks around and, improbably and incredibly, notes a “Planned Parenthood” clinic which, oddly enough, is right across the parking lot from the now-vandalized church. It has a pristine, if dingy, yellow wall facing the parking lot. BERG saunters across the lot, checks his six, and pulls a can of spray paint from his cargo pocket. Slowly and vaguely legibly, he sprays the wall.

“If you threaten me and mine with political violence, finding an abortion is going to be the least of your problems”.

BERG walks back to his truck, and drives away.

And SCENE.