Tag Archives: Tide Pod Evita

Orwell Was A Pollyanna

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Ben Shapiro challenged prog flavor of the month Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez to a debate – something she’s never had in her “political career”.

Now, there’s no requirement that a pol debate anyone, ever – even their opponents for office, much less pundits.   Of course, it can be used against you – not that it matters in a one-party town like Ocasio-Cortez’ district.

And there are so many ways to decline a debate request like this:

  • “Sorry – I’m getting ready for a general election (coronation?), and I’m too busy”.
  • “Debating you will be of no consequence to serving (koff koff) my constituents and my district.  Why would either of us waste our time?”
  • “I’ve got drapes to measure that evening”
  • “I gotta wash my hair”.
  • Or the old reliable “<silence>”.

That’s not what Ocasio-Cortez did, though:

Asking for a debate is “like catcalling” – sexist, intrusive, unwanted, arrogant.

A response that is, itself, sexist and arrogant, and a sign of a mind that can think on no other plane than the politics of identity and outrage.

Congratuations, New York.  You got another winner here.  (Not that Minnesota has anything to brag about, since the equally risible Alondra Cano  Alondra Cano, Ray Dehn and Keith Ellison remain in office).

SIDE NOTE:   Remember when the same people who are raving about Ocasio-Cortez today were calling Sarah Palin  an ignorant dumbass?

This is the sound of “the bar” in freefall.

If You Think Movies Are Expensive Now, Wait Until They’re Free

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MoviePass is a particularly dimwitted startup – it sells, basically, transit cards to movies, in theaters, allowing people admittance to n movies per month, which in the age of Netflix and Hulu seems a bit like selling season tickets to Jesse Ventura’s old Indoor Football league.

As one might expect, the company – which seems a throwback to the sort of startups that glutted the market and popular culture during the DotBomb era, before 9/11 – is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

Which has led to one of the most brilliant – dare I say, Onion-like – bits of satire I’ve ever read:

We should let the privately owned MoviePass die, so a nationalized, public MoviePass can live.

Read the whole hilarious thing.

I’m already picturing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Amy Klobuchar or Maxine Waters or Ilhan Omar solemnly testifying before Congress about the moral imperative for the Federal Government…

…to transfer tax dollars to Hollywood.

Brilliant, brilliant satire.

UPDATE:   It just occured to me – what if the writer wasn’t being satirical?

 

 

A Preponderance Of Evidence

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New York’s new $15 minimum wage and mandatory leave benefits – dutifully parroted by Minneapolis and Saint Paul – are already having…

…well, exactly the effect conservatives predicted:

In explaining his decision to close following 28 years of high-volume business, owner Charles Milite told the New York Post, “The times have changed in our industry. The rents are very high and now the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees.”

Milite employs about 150 people at his breakfast, lunch, and dinner operation, which also puts him over the Affordable Care Act’s costly mandate that establishments with 50 or more employees provide health insurance.

The Coffee Shop is part of The Gotham City Restaurant Group, which also owns Flats Fix, the former employer of socialist darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The 28-year-old Democratic congressional candidate recently told The New York Times that many of her fellow restaurant workers were uninsured, inspiring her to run for office.

And the inevitable end result?

Eventually, minimum wage laws and other prohibitive regulations will cause the world-renowned restaurant life in cities like New York, DC, and San Francisco to cease to exist. The staff skill levels will drop, the number of servers and bartenders will never be enough, and the only survivors will be fast-casual chains with low overhead and deep pockets.

New York’s new look will be vacant storefronts between an occasional Pret-a-Manger or the public restroom formerly known as Starbucks. But don’t worry. That charming, downtown studio apartment will still run about $5,000 per month for the privilege of proximity to all that culture.

Minneapolis and Saint Paul’s efforts to be little New Yorks will no doubt pay off – in all the wrong ways.

 

It’s Almost, But Not Quite, A Berg’s Law

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It probably doesn’t qualify as a “Berg’s Law” because it may not be absolute and universal – but for the most part, if you scratch the surface of an American “Democratic Socialist”, you’ll find a rich kid with daddy issues.

So, it seems, with current socialist wunderkind Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Last week’s big primary winner in a Congressional district that includes parts of the Bronx and Queens highlighted the 29 year old “community organizer”, who will likely be going to Congress, and her “Jenny from the Block” story.  Listening to her before the election, I caught myself humming “It’s A Hard Knock Life” more than a few times.

So was it baked wind?

What do you think?  Remember – it’s almost a Berg’s Law:

Around the age of five, Alexandria’s architect father Sergio Ocasio moved the family from the “planned community” of Parkchester in the Bronx to a home in Yorktown Heights, a wealthy suburb in Westchester County. The New York Times describes her childhood home as “a modest two-bedroom house on a quiet street.” In a 1999 profile of the area, when Ocasio-Cortez would have been ten years old, the Times lauded Yorktown Heights’ “diversity of housing in a scenic setting” – complete with two golf courses.

Westchester County – which the Washington Post, in a glowing profile on Ocasio-Cortez, describes as only “middle class” – ranks #8 in the nation for the counties with the “highest average incomes among the wealthiest one percent of residents.” According to the Economic Policy Institute, the county’s average annual income of the top one percent is a staggering $4,326,049.

Yorktown Heights, specifically, offers a sharp contrast from Bronx living. According to USA.com, the town’s population is 81 percent white, and median household income is $96,413 – nearly double the average for both New York state and the nation, according to data from 2010-2014.

I interviewed for a job in Westchester County thirty years ago; the program director basically told me there was no way I could live in the area on what they could payme (here was the story).

Not that there’s anything wrong with doing well; but not only didn’t Ocasio-Cortez earn it, she wants to make it harder for others to do it.

(Even as she, beyond a doubt, gets ready to make a couple million in honoraria from liberals with deep pockets over the next few years, much like the Bern she no doubt felt).

Open Letter To Tim Walz

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To:  Represenative Tim Walz
From:  Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant
Re:  Sell Sell Sell

Rep. Walz,

You’re running in a primary this fall against a dog’s breakfast of people who, notwithstanding your attempt to re-paint yourself as a “progressive”, are far, far to your left.

To your credit, you’ve taken that “re-painting” pretty seriously:

Rep. Walz, burning whatever cred he may have had with gun owners by french-kissing “Moms Want Action” in 2016.

But your fellow DFLers prefer their “Democratic Socialism” neat.  No ice.

And apparently, with a little communist chaser.

For years, I’ve heard my Democrat friends chanting “Ronald Reagan wouldn’t get endorsed by today’s GOP” – with the premise being Reagan was “too centrist” for today’s GOP . It’s a perfectly plausible claim, if you have no idea about the history of the GOP; go and google “A Time For Choosing”, the full hour-long speech, if you need proof; it’d fit in at any Tea Party meeting in the past decade. If anything, Reagan would still scare the DC establishment; George Will was deeply unhappy with Reagan’s performance, and we know what George has been up to lately.

So no – Reagan would *not* have trouble in today’s GOP, or at least the part of the party that swept the elections in 2010 and 2014.

But Paul Wellstone and Hubert Humphrey would get laughed out of today’s Democratic Party. Of that, there can be no doubt.

That is all.