Tag: Berg’s 10th Law
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Missing The Forest For The Dust
Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails: I notice a common theme running through Berg’s Third Law (disasters) and Mother Jones Corollary to the Tenth Law (vicious lies) and 18th Law of Media Latency (48 hour rule): the media rushes to lie about Conservatives, so thoughtful readers will wait for the dust to settle an…
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Corollary
Level-setting: Berg’s Laws are pretty much inviolable rules of human (largely political) behavior based on years of observation. And while Berg’s Seventh Law gets most of the action these days, Berg’s Tenth is getting a workout, too. Berg’s Tenth Law reads: Berg’s Tenth Law of Quantum Context: When a liberal says a conservative is “lying”,…
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Behold The New States Rights Standard-Bearer
I’ve got a bit of a dilemma here. In trying to address the claims made in h this piece from Ian Millhiser in “Think” “Progress”, on a federal-level proposal for national reciprocity for carry permits, I faced a gnarly dilemma: do I do a piece on “Think” “Progress”‘s efforts to cull selectively through facts to try…
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Begging The Answer
“Begging the Question” means “using your conclusion as evidence of your conclusion”. I’m sure classical logic doesn’t recognize the concept of “begging the answer” – using the status quo as a defense of the status quo. But this Dana Goldstein piece in Salon against Michele Bachmann and her fellow education reformers might just change all that. Michele…
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Boundary Issues
I get the impression there’s not much middle ground when it comes to John “Johnny Northside” Hoff. I didn’t entirely know that when I first wrote about his defamation trial last week. People either seem to support him for his crusading against mortgage fraudsters in North Minneapolis, or they detest him for being a showboating…
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Questions. Just Questions.
I always loved this bit from South Park: Dances With Smurfs Tags: SOUTH PARKmore… Oh, that Cartman. Spoofing people who “are just asking questions”. Funny funny stuff. ———- Apropos absolutely nothing; about two months ago, three months ago a group of 20-odd Somalis were busted for running a prostitution ring in Minneapolis. The ring allegedly…
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Chanting Points Memo: Overpowered By Innocuous
I have this friend; let’s call her “Lydia”. “Literal Lydia”, we called her in high school. She was a little anal-retentive. She sorted her sock drawer by thickness. She reportedly brushed her teeth before and after giving a talk in speech class. She pronounced the “g” in words like “Knowing” and “Sailing” and “Talking”;…
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Chanting Points Memo: Emmer’s “Big Lie”
Did Tom Emmer lie? No. But we’ll come back to that. We’ve got a bit of business to take care of first. ———- It’s time to inaugurate a new Berg’s Law. These laws of human and political behavior are based on decades of observing people and their behavior, and, as “laws”, have passed beyond mere…
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Rejected
The basketball program at Minneapolis Community and Technical College is on the chopping block. The program has grown from a run-of-the-mill junior college program into a national powerhouse among two-year colleges, under the leadership of coach Jay Pivec. He’s got plenty of experience turning obscure colleges into basketball powers; if memory serves, he came to…
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Words In Search Of Meaning
Let’s take a trip back through the history of Nick Coleman. In 2004, to impugn Governor Pawlenty’s budget-cutting platform, he paid a potemkin visit to an inner city school (one where my daughter had attended kindergarten) and bellowed “YOUR SCHOOLS ARE BURNING” – as if the academic and social failure, financial wastrelcy and generalized collapse…
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Enumerating Powers
Since the Heller decision last summer, pride of place as the second-most-misinterpreted and underenforced part of the Bill of Rights has devolved to the Tenth Amendment. That looks like it could change, with eleven states proposing laws that’d nullify federal trespasses onto powers reserved to the states – tresspasses that are part and parcel of…
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Cuts Down On Bills
Mail delivery stops in on a Chicago-area block deemed too dangerous by the Post Office: Dozens of mailboxes remain empty after the post office suspends service in one south suburban neighborhood…The U.S. Post Office seems to think that this is one of the most dangerous blocks in the country. People who live on it say…
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The Audacity of Authoritarianism
Good thing Chicago bans gun ownership by law-abiding civilians! Otherwise, goodness knows how bad this weekend of gang violence might have been! A violent and deadly weekend continues in Chicago. At least 12 people have been shot, two of them killed, since Saturday morning. This comes after at least 20 people were shot, four of…