Attention: Secret Service

To: The Secret Service
From: Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant
Re: SOPs

Secret Service,

Am I remembering wrong, or wasn;t there a time when “threatening a current or former President” was worth investigating, if not actually chargable?

Just curious – Rick Wilson, NPR’s sole GOP source and former head of an organization that had a bit of a “predators in leadership” issue, was on Twitter the other day:

Call me naive and old fashioned, but this kind of thing seems like your turf.

That is all.

Open Letter To An Entire Generation, Maybe Two

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

Dear Millennials – and many of you in Gen Z,

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

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

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

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

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

So, why all the background?

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

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

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

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

You’ve been warned. .

That is all.

Open Letter To Minnetonka

To: Minnetonkoids Concerned about Crime
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: The Bed You Made

Concerned CItizens of Minnetonka

I get it. Nobody likes to be told “I told you so”. And scolding people for dumb decisions puts them on the defensive. Nobody likes having the consequences of their agency questioned and mocked.

So I’ll try not to, and simply say that there’s a learning moment going on, if you are ready to do the learning:

Some of you might just be figuring it out:

The local TV stations sent cameras to the meeting to capture the emotional reaction of white suburban Minnetonka residents to a crime that’s happened to black Minneapolis residents hundreds of times this year. As our recent report showed, black Minnesotans in 2021 were 9.5 times more likely than white Minnesotans to be victims of serious crime (murder, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, and rape).

The DFL-led legislature did create a new crime category for carjacking this year but stopped short of assigning any penalty to the crime, leaving that to the Sentencing Guidelines Commission, appointed by DFL Gov. Tim Walz. Thankfully, American Experiment supporters flooded the commission with emails demanding carjacking receive a felony-level sentence. Without that effort, the crime of carjacking would have been treated like the existing robbery offense.

 While I sympathize for the Minnetonka citizens who took to the microphone last night to express their outrage at the situation and call for strong accountability, it needs to be said: they voted overwhelmingly for the people who caused this lawlessness and continue to allow it on a daily basis.

Of course, if you don’t see the connection between your votes and what’s happening in your city, then you are, in fact, choosing decline, blight, decay and disorder. They follow. The relationship is causal.

That is all.

A Modest Proposal And A Sincere Invitation

To: Jana Shortal, KARE TV
CC: KARE TV
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Books

Ms. Shortal,

Yesterday, you tweeted this, about a controversy currently being manufactured (indeed, wose manufacture you appear to be closely involved in) in Carver County:

I know – it’s 2023, and even the most trivial parts of civic governance can and do get blown far out of proportion. My father was on a library board during a fracas over the book “A History of Pornography”; The Battle of the Somme didn’t have more-entrenched sides to the debate than that one. And this was in the late 1980s, in a small town, where there was both the spirit and imperative toward civic compromise.

Now, I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist. I think the adult wing of the library can and should have access to pretty much everything.

For adults.

Including Mein Kampf. Not sure if you’re advocating removing Mein Kampf from libraries. Having read it in English and German, I think every high school senior should be required to read it. It’s a bad book, even if you leave out the message – Hitler was a terrible writer – but people reading it won’t trivialize the term “Fascist” anymore. Which means half of Generation Z’s political vocabulary disappears overnight. Still, Ms. Shortal, if you want Mein Kampf removed, take it up with the library board. That’s how it’s done. And the Carver County library board pretty much agreed.

Now – as far as kids go?

Tell you what: KARE should have Ms. Shortal read Gender Queer, with the book’s illustrations, on the air.

“But Mitch – why not offer the NARN’s time slot?”

Because the book would violate FCC standards for broadcast. On radio, and on TV. For adult listeners.

KARE’s management won’t allow Ms. Shortal to read it on the air. Forget about the illustrations.

Sat what you will about FCC regulations – that’s a conversation I’d love to have. But if the FCC won’t let the book on the air, is it really something a city library should be providing to children without parental approval?

That, as always, is all.

Open Letter To The Mostly Peaceful Fireworks Kids Of Minneapolis

To: All You Kids Shooting Off Fireworks In Residential Neighborhoods
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: A Modest Proposal

I’m talking about you kids:

Now, we’ve got some people around the Twin Cities who’re chanting “relax – it’s just teenagers blowing of steam. It’s what teenagers do”.

I’ve noticed there’s about a 100% correlation between people who say that and people who wore masks along while walking down empty streets, and called the cops at the governor’s snitch line when they saw someone without a mask.

Speaking of which – here’s my proposal.

Shoot off all the fireworks you want – in the neighborhoods marked blue, below:

They’re the ones that voted “Yes” on defunding the police in 2021.

They’re the neighborhoods with an “In This House…” signs out front.

Please observe the following guidelines by color:

  • Brown, Tan, Olive: No fireworks.
  • Light blue: Firecrackers (individually or by the package)
  • Medium blue: Bottle rockets, up to and including screamers.
  • Dark blue: Everything you’ve got. Mortars, big Roman Candles, the works.

Deal?

That is all.

Presumably Tweeted From Canada

To: Ben and Jerry’s
From: Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant
Re: Performative Garment Rending Would Be A Great Flavor Name

Ben and Jerry,

You produce yet another product I’ve never bought, and being fairly strict keto, will not be buying any time soon, politics notwithstanding, so this note is of no real consequenes to either of us.

Sort of like the tweet below, in which you join the academic-nonprofit/industrial complex in its latest round of performative consequence-free virtue-signaling:

Then f***ing do it.

Liquidate your business. Give it back to the Abenaki tribe, the people who are indigenous to be area around Burlington, Vermont. All of it, down to the last dime.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenberg? Yep – back to Europe with you, where you can argue about who’s stolen what land dating back to the Romans and before, and be alarmed at how unconcerned anyone in Europe seems to be about the millennia of land-theft behind all the modern states.

After you move to Canada, of course. Which is also “stolen”, come to think of it…

Anyway – until you’ve done that, shut up. Seriously.

That is all.

Open Letter To MPR’s Jon Collins: Year 3

To: Jon Collins, Senior Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, MInnesota Public Radio
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Anniversary + Findings

Mr. Collins,

As with last year and 2021, I hope this day finds you well.

It was three years ago today you sent this out on your listener mailing list::

“South Minneapolis: I know this sounds crazy. But it’s 2020. And I’m working on story now about white supremacists coming to Minneapolis to foment race war under cover of the protests. I need your help, and your friends help. Please refer anyone with real, credible info (not rumor or speculation) or sources to me at (I’m gonna redact that)

What the heck – let’s give this a shot:

Now, I know MPR reporters don’t generally deign to respond to the peasantry – in fact, I know MPR News management specifically tells staff not to engage with the unwashed masses.

But I’m genuinely curious – did you find anything?

It’s not of idle interest to me.  Mine was one of the neighborhoods that got burned, looted and vandalized in May of 2020 (noting at the time that I saw a lot of “AmeriKKKa” and “Destroy the 1%” graffiti, but not a single swastika or “14 words” reference, I’m thinking the Twin Cities either got the most inept “white supremacists” in the history of bigotry, or they were the most ingenious – fiendishly tricking a whole city full of leftists into doing the job for them – the sort of fieldcraft that’d make a Mossad agent envious).     

While I am a very overt conservative (I went from Bob Collins’ Christmas Card list to…well, very much off of it during his unfortunate unpleasantness a few years ago), I also spent time covering radical groups of all stripes back when I was in the mainstream media.  

I ask because a not-so-cursory look through the last three years of your reporting doesn’t seem to show anything.  

And as I do every year on the anniversary of this event, I’d like to invite you on my show (Saturday, 1-3PM) to talk about your findings.   Because it’s everyone’s city. 

Thanks,

Mitch Berg
Host, WWTC-AM

 

Open Letter To Rep. Vang

To: Rep. Samantha Vang
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Gaslighting

Rep. Vang,

You wrote the “Social Credit” bill (you call it ‘Stop Hate’, but my title is more accurate) that I talked about on my show over the weekend.

You got a storm of criticism – almost all of it justified.

This was your response:

Well,no. That’s not what it does.

Y’see, the market for hate crime far, far outstrips the supply, notwithstanding the DFL’s “Reichstag Firing”. For example:

The mosque fires were set, not just by one guy, the the one criminal in Minneapolis dumb enough to actually commit a crime that Minneapolis’s city government still gives a sh*t about.

No – Rep. Vang’s bill will essentially collect statemens about “microagressions” reported by protected classes.

Bumper sticker they don’t like?

Something overheard in a cafe?

A Trump sign?

Nobody knows. The bill allows no scrutiny, no Data Practices requests, no accountability or transparency of any kind.

It is, in every respect, a “social credit” bill.

Which is a key part of the Communist system, Rep. Vang, that your parents and her people fled.

That is all.

I Take The Punches I Can’t Slip, And I Give ‘Em Right Back

To: Steve Van Zandt
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant and Longtime Fan
Re: I’ll Meet You Halfway

Steve,

Earlier this week, you got into a bit of a flap over this:

You removed the tweet, but followed up saying that you meant “exterminate at the ballot box”, although you delivered it with all the subtle grace of Sean Penn on a three day bender.

But hey, I’ll meet you halfway. Ask Sarah Palin what it’s like, having something that was meant one way passed off as something completely different. That’s politics.

And given the number of unstable, armed people on your side of the political aisle, perhaps you should moderate your tone a bit.

But while others focus on your original rhetoric, I’m going to roast you for this:

It’s one of an endless series of tweets in your feed where you refer to Republicans as some variant of stupid.

Some of us sure are.

But none of us ever put “Princess of Little Italy” on an otherwise perfect record.

Humility is in order.

That is all.

(CLOSED CIRCUIT: Comments to the effect of “Why do you listen to music from people who hate you” will be mocked and taunted. We’ve been through this).

The Message We’re Receiving

To: All you Normies
From: The Elites
Re: Die, For All We Care

Proles/knaves/fyrds,

Your life, property and family, mere peasant, are not of enough value that we, your elites, should allow you a $500 handgun to protect them.

However, ours – we elites – are of such value that dropping double the income of a typical American household is perfectly fine:

Luxury real estate agent Branden Williams said protection dogs have become so popular among his mega-wealthy clients in L.A. that he’s now in the market for one himself, especially after a neighbor was robbed at gunpoint in Beverly Hills. Williams has tasked the same broker his mom used to buy her protection dog, a German shepherd imported from Germany, with finding him a suitable animal this year.

“I will say they’re not cheap; the ones I’m looking at are between $60,000 and $100,000,” he said. “It’s a whole other level of training; we’re not talking about doggy day care here.”

Just so you know the hierarchy of the universe.

(BTW – kudos to Lisa Bender, who at least got the spirit of things right, advocating gun control while getting private security on the taxpayer’s dime. Well done, Ms. Bender) .

Regards,

Your Betters

Open Letter To Keith Olberman

To: Keith Olbermann

I see you’re back at it.

What is it about you morons who got you starts writing about grown men chasing balls around fields, that makes you all such dim bulbs about politics? Eddie Schultz, Mike McFeely, Jim Souhan, Bob Costas…

Anyway – go ahead. Declare “Economic Civil War“.

See how California does having to import all of its water from the rest of the country.

See how New York City and DC do, paying import prices for food.

What could possibly go wrong?

Open Letter To Hennepin County Subjects [1]

You voted for Mary Moriarty for Henco Attorney.

Granted, it was a closer race than one might have expected; the endorsed DFLer won by 20 points, rather than the expected 40-50.

Still, Henco spoke: they’re OK with carjackings, home invasions, random gunfire ripping through (black and brown people in North Minneapolis) houses, and criminals getting sprung over and over.

They made their choices. Now, they’ll be getting the consequences, good and hard:

Great job, voters. Enjoy the abortions.

[1] Yes, formally you’re still “citizens”. But honestly, “subjects” is a better term.

Open Letter To All Minnesota DFLers

To: Minnesota Democrats
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Fake Beliefs

DFLers,

A few points of information:

  • There is no “Swat Plan”. It was an off-the-cuff, tongue-in-cheek remark by Kim Crockett’s husband, at a Tea Party meeting, and of no more policy impact (or taste) than DFL staffers calling for “guillotines” for Republicans.
  • The Governor can not directly change MN abortion policy
  • Attorney General Ellison openly supported defunding cops.
  • A. Quarter. Billion. In. Fraud. So. Far. It’s going to be half a billion by the time they’re done.
  • MN, locked down, did no better in pandemic than our neighbors.
  • Nothing about Republicans or their ideology is remotely “fascist”, and we are less a threat to “democracy” than your beliefs are.

That is all.

As Long As We’re On The Subject

To: Governor Walz
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Priorities

Your Highness:

You wrote this on Twitter yesterday:

Let’s look at this past four years:

  • Crime wave, abetted by DFL policy
  • Riots, encouraged by your administratiion’s passive-aggressive bureaucratic gamesmanship with the National Guard
  • Collapse of respect for the rule of law, as a result of DFL policy
  • Educational outcomes for minorities, already terrible, collapsed
  • State divided between “essential” and “non-essential” workers – meaning dividing people
  • “Science” bastardized by your administration hiding the code for the “model” “predicting” tens of thousands of dead from Covid by July 2020, as a best case. That’s how how science is done,

To the extent Minnesota is doing well, it’s in spite of you.

Hope we’ve settled that.

That is all.

Open Letter To Rep. Craig

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.

Pauline Kael Syndrome

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.

Correction

To: Gavin Newsom, Governor, the Peoples Republic of California
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Fact

Governor Newsom,

You tweeted:

May be a Twitter screenshot of 9 people, people standing and text that says 'NevilleTheCat @FearTheFloof 13m Look who' now biologist... 1h Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom If men could get pregnant, this wouldn't even be a conversation. This decision isn't about strengthening families it's about extremism. It's about control. We will fight for the right to choose MAMME 100D 0:46 225.7K views 38'

I am reliably informed by people not only aligned with your party, but teaching in several of your state universities, that “men can get pregnant”.

That is all.

Remediation

To: Democrat Strategists
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Election results

Dear Dem Strategists:

How to rebuild? Here’s a thought:

And more riot talk. Lots more talk about riots.

Keep up the good work.

That is all.

Congratulations, Gavin Newsom

To: Gavin Newsom, Premier of California
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Congratulations

Governor Newsom,

In a state dominated 2:1 by registered voters from your party, you evaded being recalled by a 7:4 margin.

After outspending the initiative by 5:1, with the united efforts of an in-the-bag media and a full turnout of the national social nomenklatura, in a vote that still saw your support among Latinos erode still further.

Sleep tight, Democrats.

That is all.

From The BlueAnon Archives: The Phantom Menace

To: Jon Collins, Minnesota Public Radio News
From: Mitch Berg, Irasible Peasant, critic of BlueAnon
Re: It’s Been A Year

Mr. Collins,

Last year – literally, a year ago last Wednesday – you sent out a message to MPR’s mailing lists asking if anyone had seen “white supremacists” during the civil unrest of the previous weeks.

I know this sounds crazy. But it’s 2020. And I’m working on story now about white supremacists coming to Minneapolis to foment race war under cover of the protests. I need your help, and your friends help. Please refer anyone with real, credible info (not rumor or speculation) or sources to me at (I’m gonna redact that)

As we go on a year after that request, and a week after President Biden reiterated the nearly two decade old claim that “white supremacist terror” is the greatest danger facing this country, it’s. probably not unreasonable to ask if you found anything.

A not-entirely-casual search of MPR News’s archives indicates “no”.

Any chance we could get an update?

That is all.

(I sent Collins an email. Since have it on absolutely reliable sources the management at MPR News has told their staff not to engage with peasants, I’d be amazed if I got a response).

Note To High School And College Kids In The Audience

To: High School and College Kids in the audiene (or parents of same)
From: Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant
Re: A Tip From Future You

Dear Kids,

Study up, get into a Tier 1 law school, and get into medical malpractice law:

Your future self, sitting on the deck of your yacht, will thank your present self. And, by extension, me.

That is all.

Blue Fragility: Open Letter To Jonathan Chait

To: Johnathan “Chaitful” Chait
From: Mitch Berg – Red State Sleeper Agent
Re: This Little “Eliminationist Hatred” Problem You Have

Mr. Chait

We go way back, of course – and not in a good way. You have a bit of a history of being a horrible excuse for a human being. But you are a gift that keeps giving, for people like me, so for that I thank you, even if backhandedly.

This past week, you wrote an article in “New York Magazine” claiming that the Republican response to Covid is, in your terms, a “Death Cult”.

I won’t pullquote anything – the article is long, and never really improves over the title.

But I have two questions.

First, some background – here’s the listed Covid fatalities/million as of last Friday:

  • NY (D): 1,684
  • NJ (D): 1,790
  • US average: 474
  • FL (R): 319
  • MN (DFL): 291
  • TX (R): 241
  • ND (R): 135

So I’ve got two questions for you, Mr. Chait:

  1. Did you ever refer to Cuomo (or the governors of NJ/CT/MA) as running a “death cult?” I’ll confess, I’m an infrequent reader of yours. I only read you (or John Fugelsang) when you step on your d**k spectacularly – but I’d hate to be unfair.
  2. I wager you a shiny new quarter that as of November 3, 2020, TX and FL will be below half NY’s fatalities per million. Any action on that bet?

Thanks.

By the way – at the risk of sounding uncharitable, there are times that I think you are God’s karmic gift to me for never teasing the short-bus kids in elementary school. For this, I thank Him, and urge you to keep up the, uh, work, karmically speaking.

That is all.

Side Note: I’m making this the The George W. Bush Corollary To Berg’s Seventh Law – All of a Republican’s sins, imaginary or (for sake of argument) real, will be forgotten once the Republican can no longer hold office.