Shot in the Dark

Speaking Of Shots In The Dark: Welcome To the New Design!

  • I Heard It On The NARN

    I recorded an “evergreen” Christmas Weekend broadcast. Merry Christmas! Here’s the song list:

  • A Christmas-Time Visit To The Ghost Of Democrat Victory-Dancing Past

    Let’s take a look back to last May. I started this post at the end of the session, last May, amid the DFL was doing its endzone happy dance over having gotten their way on literally everything during the session, Here’s Rep Long – who in normal times one would be tempted to call “one…

  • The Hallmark Movie I’d Like To See Over The Holidays

    I was a punk fan from the beginning. I may have been one of two people in Jamestown to have had a copy of the Sex PIstols first album. I don’t think my parents would have approved – but that was kinda the point, wasnt it? I’ve been a fan of Pistols lead singer John…

  • Life Imitates Pulp Art

    In the book Red Storm Rising – Tom Clancy’s second novel, released around 1985, at the height of the Cold War, and tho only Clancy novel that didn’t focus on Jack Ryan, his family and his professional and social circle – the protagonist, obscure intelligence analyst John Toland, connects the dots among several events –…

  • Mirthy

    SCENE: Mitch BERG is loading some garage junk into a truck. He doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE, whjo is walking up the alley writing down the addresses of homes without handicap parking spots. LIBRELLE: Merg! BERG: Uh… LIBRELLE: Christian Nationalists can’t handle freedom of religion! They’re having a cow and melting down over a Satan Club…

  • Massacre

    I’m a little old-fashioned in a lot of ways. I guess part of it goes along with being a conservative. And/or a Christian. And/or a decent human being. Which is why seeing the current statistics about the beliefs of the younger Gen-Zs seem so very catastrophic to me. Huge percentages of people from the late…

  • Open Letter To Every Republican Candidate, Everywhere

    If you aren’t running on this… …for the love of all that is holy, please tell me why?

  • Open Letter To The MNGOP

    To: The Minnesota Republican PartyFrom: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous PeasantRe: Stragegery Republicans, Wanna cause a stampede of voters outside the 494/694 loop? Make this person – Rep. Sandy Feist – the face of the MNDFL. Her and her pet billl (I’ve added emphasis): The Minnesota Legislature is considering a bill that would require all public and charter schools…

  • I’ve Noticed

    …that the Venn diagram of people who were dumping on Lauren Boebert’s drunken (and let’s be honest, tacky and ill-advised) make-out last summer… …and people who are excusing, celebrating and even…uh… …celebrating a couple of Democrat aides filming gay porn in the US Senate is a circle. I can’t help but wonder – when he…

  • Inconvenient

    I wonder if the members of the DFL “coalition”… …will start to put together for themselves how much of that “alliance” is built on social gaslighting and browbeating by their white, pronouned, “progressive” overseers. (and, naturally, their “leaders” bellying up to the trough for their graft paymetns)?

  • Free Fall

    As predicted by yours truly about this time a year ago, the DFL squandered a $18B “surplus” [1] The DFL is contratulating itself that it still has a surplus of a couple billion dollars – which is a little like jumping from the top of the IDS building, opening your eyes and seeing the 20th…

  • There Must Be Some Mistake

    I was reliably informed that the DFL’s spending spree was going to “reduce poverty by 30%”, and that “Bidenomics” was a new golden age. And yet…: Apparently the (checks scorecard) Mainstream Media are now spreading Russian disinformation.

  • Converts

    Wonder why Big Left’s noise machine was so quick to try to gundeck The Fall of Minneapolis? Because they’re smart enough to see that it coud change some minds. In this case, the minds of academic Glenn Loury and the NYTimes’s John McWhorter – both of whom formerly bought Big Left’s story on the events…

  • The Spirit Of The Season

    This fellow – a Doctor of Intersectional Grievance Studies – is sure nuff gonna show his neighbors what’s what: Where to start: Having spent at least eight years getting a PhD in Intersectional Grievance Studies, it’s understandable he’s not clear on the nuts and bolts of Christian theology – and, being an academic in a…

  • The Conversation We Need

    I’m going to commend you to this particular episode of Ben Shapiro, from a couple weeks ago. He’s talking about the Republican Candidate debates – comparing the debates Republicans deserve with the one the nation needs. The one we deserve? Well, the donnybrook between DeSantis and Newsome was a great one. In another time and…

  • Priorities

    I’m no expert, but it looks to me that keeping the southern border open is more important to the Biden administration than either Ukraine or Israel. Again – no expert. But those seem like strange priorities for the American executive branch.

  • Backlash: Sooner Than Later

    The Governor of Oklahoma has abolished the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office at all state institutions of higher education: Let’s roll this snowball.

  • Junk Food For Thought

    One the current tropes among the populist right is that “college is useless, and you should send your kids to learn a trade”. There’s a truck loaded with cinder blocks full of truth in there – for many 18 year olds, a year or two spent learning how to weld, be an electrician or mechanic…

  • The More Things Change, The Less Things Change

    There was a time when I might have asked what a metro school board, like for example Edina, might have done if a bunch of students wandered around the halls bellowing:\ “UptownDowntownWe Just Want Our Lebensraum Or: We don’t need ethnic pollutionBring us the Final Solution! But it occurs to me…: …it may be the…

  • Never Again –> Probably Soon

    20% of young people believe, to one extent or another, that the Holocaust was a “myth”. That sounds bad – and it is, but probably not for the reasons that jump out at you. As Ilya Somin at Volokh points out, part of it is an artifact of the survey question: While 8% of Americans…

  • A Pattern

    SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking to his parked car after a political event in downtown Saint Paul. As he walks past a near-empty office building, MyLyssa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, steps out. SILBERMAN: Merg! BERG: Er, hey, Mylys… SILBERMAN: In recent years, you’ve…

  • The Company You Keep

    As I’ve been noting for about eight years on this blog, I’m intensely ambivalent about Donald Triump. His personality roils with traits I personally don’t care for. But something about all the prosperity, peace and border security is looking good. “Oh, Merg, so you just want someone who’ll make the trains run on time, yuk…

  • As Predicted Here

    You know those photos that amusement parks snap as you come down to the end of a log flume or roller coaster? They catch the rider at a moment when they’ve just been waaay up high, and are in the process of falling waaaaay down, into the water (for the log flume) or back to…

  • I Heard It On The NARN

    Here’s the link to the Salvation Army. They need volunteers this time of year, in addition to all the financial needs. And here’s today’s music:

  • Saint Small

    SCENE. Mitch BERG is leaving a small cafe. Avery LIBRELLE is walking in. BERG is too tired to care and doesn’t try to evade or escape the encounter. LIBRELLE: Mer… BERG: Cut to the f***ing chase, Avery. LIBRELLE: In “One MInnesota! (TM) “, we are all prospering in a future where we boldly stride forward…

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