October/November, 2019: The Star/Tribune Editorial Board – presumably including member Patricia Lopez – endorses nearly every DFL candidate (with the exception of a scant few Republicans who are either shoe-ins or can’t possibly contend).

This pattern has been repeated in nearly every election in recent memory – the past 50 years, at least. Certainly since before Lopez joined the editorial board.

Lopez on Twitter last week:

November 2020: The Star/Tribune Editorial Board – presumably including member Patricia Lopez – will endorse nearly every DFL candidate (with the exception of a scant few Republicans who are either shoe-ins or can’t possibly contend).

I’m going to save this for the week before the next election.

We need to have a word to convey the most commonly-used idea in conservative media criticism. The idea, to wit, is:

Can you imagine what the media would do if a Republican had done something this stupid?

It is, of course, one of the most evergreen concepts in media criticism – the notion that if it weren’t for double-standards, the media would have no standards at all when covering Democrats.

South Bend mayor and current media flavor of the month Pete “No, I’m Not Beto O’Rourke” Buttigieg’s campaign used stock photos of Kenyans in publicizing their policies for black Americans:

[A reporter for The Intercept] tweeted that the public relations firm tasked with creating Buttigieg’s campaign material had simply taken a stock photo without checking the origin of the subject. “On top of everything else, the Buttigieg campaign used a stock photo from Kenya to promote its Frederick Douglass Plan for Black America,” Grim wrote on Twitter, adding, “The woman in the photo reached out to me very confused.” 

Using non-American black people in photos (“hey, they all look the same!”) the same week as he used names of black endorsers who’d not endorsed him?

And yet the story is getting no coverage outside the conservative media.

And saying “Can you imagine if a Republican did this?” is time-consuming.

We need a word, or at least a snappy phrase.

Ideas?

What a horribly un-woke childhood I had.  I remember the old version.
Of course, the new version works for the LGBT+ crowd nowadays.
And here’s the family court version.
Of course, you must listen all the way to the end to get the humor.  I suspect college professors in Wymins Studies never got beyond the first sentence before thinking “Brilliant!  Let’s Do It!”
Joe Doakes

Remember – Berg’s 21st Law is called a “law” for a reason.

On Facebook the other day, The “Reverend” Nancy Nord Bence went full-on gaslight:

“To face the reality of our gun problem, you’ll have to admit that you are the problem too. You’ll be forced to connect the dots between guns and your white theology, guns and your nationalism, guns and your Islamophobia, guns and your white supremacy, guns and your resentment of foreigners, guns and the people who so often shoot strangers in shopping malls and schools and churches and concerts—guns and you.”

That’s not “facing the reality of the ‘gun problem'”. That’s exposing the reality of American Tribalism, delivered with a nasal, smug upper-middle-class white ninny accent.

It’s a real-life example of what Dennis Prager says: “Conservatives think progressives are wrong; progressives think conservatives are *evil*. And you don’t bother talking, debating or reasoning with evil”.

Pass this around. People need to know the other side’s motivations.

This isn’t some crackpot. This is the moral and intellectual leader of the “gun safety” movement in Minnesota.

She’s one sick, twisted little person.

Ilhan Omar on Twitter over the weekend:

Wouldn’t make property taxes the equivalent of a poll tax?

Of course, politicians in safe blue sinecures don’t have to make sense.

And another good guy with a gun saves the day:

From KSWO ABC Channel 7 in Oklahoma: “Multiple witnesses have said the gunman shot two people in a vehicle and a civilian with a gun confronted him, causing the gunman to turn the gun on himself. We are working to confirm that story with Duncan police.“

That’s why this “mass shooting” got no media coverage, naturally. It disturbs the narrative.

Back in 2007 or so, James Lileks stopped by the NARN broadcast at Back to the Fifties – the classic-car show at the State Fairgrounds that used to be such a vibrant focus of life in the Midway before the same people that brought us Tony Soprano-style trash collection badgered the cruising hot rods out of existence.

Because “vibrancy”, to the new Urbanites, must exclude those who actually vibrate.

Anyway – while on the air, Lileks pointed to a 1967 Mustang Fastback, and proclaimed that “the electric car will never succeed until Detroit builds one that looks like that“.

Was Detroit tuned in that day?

I’ll just assume they were; Ford’s new battery car is going to be an electric version of the car that, along with the Model T and the F150, may be the marque’s most iconic vehicle – the Mustang:

Originally Ford was working on what it openly described as “a compliance car,” one built simply to meet incoming emissions rules in the US and Europe. But in 2017 it threw out those plans, putting together an internal skunk works called Team Edison with a brief to reimagine the project. Its goal was to design a BEV that could only be a Ford, and there’s little that’s more iconically Ford than the galloping pony.

Five models are on the way:

Between late 2020 and spring 2021, Ford will bring out a mix of rear- and all-wheel drive Mach-Es with either standard- or extended-range battery packs. The cheapest of these is the Select; $43,895 buys you a rear-driving one of these with the smaller pack, but you’ll have to wait until early 2021 to get one of those. That also applies to the $52,400 California Route 1, a RWD version with lower-drag 18-inch wheels and the long-range battery pack. All prices are before the IRS tax credit is taken into account; this will be $7,500 until Ford joins Tesla and General Motors in having sold 200,000 plug-ins, at which point it will begin to sunset. Ford expects this to happen at some point in 2021.

Maybe there’s hope? 

The Midway Monitor is delivered free to my doorstep. Big article about the Hamline Midway Coalition trying to figure out what went wrong with parking at the new soccer stadium.  Apparently, there’s not enough parking!  People are parking without permits in the neighborhoods, illegally parking vehicles in no parking zones, clogging up side streets, traffic tie-ups, running out in front of trains and buses.  What the hell, who knew that people would drive to soccer games? 
When Cupcake  wanted to open a 37-seat restaurant a decade ago, the City required 10 off-street parking spaces, a 4-to-1 ratio; but they approve a 20,00 seat soccer stadium with only 150 parking spaces.  That’s not 4-to-1, people, where are all the spectators going to park? 
Of course, it’s hard to be too sympathetic.  A year ago, the City approved the parking plan and neighborhood groups were upset about it.  Instead of 150 parking spaces on two parking lots that would be used a few days per year, they wanted more buildings and even less parking because . . . wait for it . . . fans would Ride The Damned Train.  And besides, they have 400 spaces to park your bicycle, in case you’re coming from, say, Afton and need a place to park the old 10-speed.  What could go wrong? 
Joe Doakes

Given all the wonderful publicity about the Vomit Comet lately, it’s a wonder people didn’t ride the train more frequently. 

I live about a mile from the stadium, and on game days the streets in my neighborhood are clogged and the sidewalks teeming with would-be spectators.  

Great job, City!

To: Fred Smith, CEO, FedEx
From: Mitch Berg, Crabby Peasant
Re: Debating Big Left

Mr. Smith,

I applaud your challenge to the NYTimes’ publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, to a debate between him, his business editor, your tax executive and yourself over your enterprises’ relative tax burdens and financial contributions.

I also note that progs – whether in government or the media – never deign to debate.

In case you didn’t know that, I mean.

If so, carry on.

That is all.

Just remember – when “progressives” whinge about red areas and GOP voters not “voting for their best interests”, that they are the people who brought you stories like this:

Baltimore has just hit 300 homicides for the fifth consecutive year, reported The Baltimore Sun.
On a per-capita basis, Baltimore is one of the most dangerous cities in America…The murder crisis in Baltimore could hit a record this year. There are 47 days left, and as of Saturday morning, 301 homicides have been logged into The Baltimore Sun murder map — as shown below: 

As Maryland ramps up its persecution of the law-abiding gun owner, the murder spree is actually accelerating:

All of this as the murder rate outside Democrat-controlled cities shrinks

So tell us about those “best interests” again?

Target claims it is a corporate leader for social responsibility, even going so far as to have transgender bathrooms, but they pay their workers a pittance.

Evil selfish bastards. Fight for 15!

In 2010, Target found on the hard way that there is no “progressive enough” when dealing with the Big Left’s mob; that a decade and a half of prostrating themselves to the howling mob didn’t protect them when the howling mob needed a kick toy.

Will they need to be educated again?

Whatever you do, stay the course:

Keep giving the DFL more chances to try to run a city.   

Maybe a few hundred more second chances and they’ll get it…

…nah.  Can’t keep a straight face. 

Why are progressives so anti-gun?

Perhaps because, subconsciously, they know Berg’s Seventh Law is for real.

Gun-controller shoots her kids, self:

Ashley Auzenne, 39, fatally shot Parrish, 11, Eleanor, 9, and Lincoln, 7 — and then herself — in their Deer Park home, local police said in a statement. Authorities found their bodies when they got a request for a welfare check and responded to the New Orleans Street home around 8:45 a.m. Tuesday.

Police also found a gun inside the home.

The Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the deaths a murder-suicide on Thursday, with Ashley Auzenne as the suspect, authorities said….Last November, Auzenne framed her Facebook profile picture with an “#End Gun Violence” banner.

And the reason? She got her way in her divorce – custody, apparently – but didn’t get everything she wanted:

She was concerned she’d not be able to move with the kids to her hometown, and would need to find a job and pay him rent if she stayed in their current home, he said.

And as we’ve noticed in the past, Auzenne was not the first prog to lose it and start killing helpless people with one of those guns they claimed to abjure (for everyone else)

Beneath all too many anti-gunners is a narcissist with a violence problem.

Disney also slammed baby boomers’ attitudes toward millennials, who are less financially stable than previous generations and are dealing with the ever-growing threat of climate change.
“And the more often you object to Millenials’ understandable resentment toward a generation that has selfishly poisoned their water, blown past every climate warning so they could drive their stupid hummers, and looked away or worse for sexual, racial and economic injustice, the more you prove their point that you just don’t understand anything of value to them,” she wrote. “Look, these kids are facing down a rising tide (literally) of changes that threatens everything you and I taught them to hold dear.”
“How about you guys sit the f— down and let the kids drive,” she added.
She concluded: “Get over the idea that all things pass, you are old and you need to let history do what history does: move on.”

“Nice try, Ms Disney, but I honestly don’t think millennials are more virtuous than the Boomer generation before them who thought we were all going to die. In fact, these millenials are still driving, still moving to the suburbs to raise kids, still choosing a lifestyle they can’t afford- all while telling someone else that they can’t. Why, it’s as if the two generations are the same. No wonder they are fighting. The more helpful approach might be to actually understand we can’t move on from history, we can just hope not to repeat the worst parts of the world’s history- something both liberal boomers and millennials seem hell-bent on doing.”

I’m spooling up for a stemwinder on the whole idea of turning generations into identity groups.

The Smartest Woman Ever and her daughter, Chelsea “The Ryan Winkler Of New York” Clinton, wrote a book about great women.  

And of course – you could see this coming – they left out “arguably” the greatest woman of the 20th Century. 

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton haven’t included Margaret Thatcher in their book of “gutsy” women@HillaryClinton tells @EmmaBarnett that Thatcher didn’t try to “make a positive difference” for other women

🎧Full interview: https://t.co/VqEUpMJ4jd#EmmaBarnettGetsAnswers pic.twitter.com/GDyYigC2pG

— BBC Radio 5 Live (@bbc5live) November 12, 2019

Just going to take a moment to remind you that Berg’s Eighth Law is not called “Berg’s Eighth Tactful Hint”:

American liberalism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder

Come for the Berg’s Eighth Law.  Stay for the thrashing around seeking relevance.  Margaret Thatcher made a positive difference.   Hillary Clinton made only a negative one – being an awful and tone-deaf enough candidate to get even Donald Trump elected president.  

In the old Soviet Union, people used to joke that they could tell when there was a shortage of butter, winter boots or heating oil was on the horizon, when  Pravda would start running stories about how bad butter was for your health, how good it was to get your feel wet, and the benefits of a cooler house. 

Completely unrelated:  I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that about the time Big Media and Big Left (PTR) start telling us that “maybe freedom of speech is too complicated for peasants today“…

…that we start getting “news” like this? 

I really, really do. 

What conservative, when seeing the precious, twee pretense of “arty” progressives’ political statements, hasn’t been tempted to cut loose with a can of spray paint, a sawzall or an air horn, just as a statement of artistic criticism?

The grotesque caricature masquerading as commentary?

The sanctimonious preening masquerading as high-concept art?

Or anything Ken Weiner ever drew? 

The struggle is real. 

Which is why I’m of two, or actually three, minds about this story – the (cue cliche alarm) Florida man who slashed the “Trump Baby” balloon.  

“I don’t know how many of ya’ll Republicans out there got any balls about yourself, but they got that Baby Trump balloon down here on campus right now and I’m going down here to make a scene, so ya’ll watch the news. If you got any balls, come join me,” Hutchinson [said in a Facebook video]. “This is pathetic. I’m fixing to get rowdy, so ya’ll pay attention. I’m shaking, I’m so mad right now, but I’m fixing to go, I’m fixing to pop this balloon, without a doubt. Stay tuned. Should be interesting.”
“Baby Trump” has been seen around the world where Trump has been, such as London, Buenos Aires and Los Angeles. Over $6,500 was raised through a GoFundMe to bring it to Tuscaloosa.…First-degree criminal mischief is a Class C felony in Alabama that is punishable between 1 to 10 years in prison and up to $15,000 in fines.

There’s a legal defense fund for the guy, and it’s racked up a ton of money. He’ll need it.

On the one hand – it’s fun to think about confronting those precious fops physically.

On the other hand? A conservative should be showing some respect for others’ freedom of speech, not to mention their property rights. A person’s right to swing their fist ends where the other person’s nose begins. Fun as it is to think of the snowflakes who haul that excrescence around wetting their pants at the thought of someone disagreeing with them, meeting them with violence makes you no better than “Anti”-Fa. One meets bad, stupid speech with more, better speech – so if someone wants to build a “Baby Snowflake” balloon, I’m all on board.

On the third hand? Hey, look – it’s a red state, and the authorities are arresting and prosecuting someone whose politics they most likely agree with, but who is breaking the law and inflicting violence on other. Someone tell Jacob Frey that that’s how it’s done.

Although telling Jacob Frey how it’s done will probably get prosecuted as a hate crime.

Progs wonder why the bitter clingers don’t vote in “their best interests” – i.e., for Progs.

Because this is what “best interests” look like under “progressivism”.

The FBI is politicized.

The Federal law enforcement system is largely an extortion racket.

The IRS is weaponized against conservative groups.

Academia from Kindergarten through Post-Doctoral levels is an indoctrination scam.

The media – on whom we once counted to keep government accountable – is a PR firm for one political party.

Sometimes it seems like our self-appointed idiot “elites” have this thing sewn up.

And I don’t think they know what a bad thing that’s going to be for them:

So what are we to do? When faith is gone, both of the spiritual and the political variety, what remains? People seek peace and prosperity, and will happily live with an untold number of illusions so long as they have those two things. Perhaps we’ve been doing that for a while. But what happens when those are gone? History shows us that when the ruling class and elites refuse to do what they should and instead do what they can, creating a government rigged in their favor, destroying the rule of law, and papering over corruption and injustice, the peasants pick up pitchforks and torches and they come for those who have behaved so abominably. Perhaps our elites should read more of that history.

I’m not sure the “elites” are quite that clueless; it is why they’re trying to grab the guns.   And, eventually, the pitchforks.  

Today is Veterans Day in America. It’s the day we who didn’t serve in the military honor those who did.

And it’a also two days after the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – a symbolic event, to be sure, but one whose symbolism should not be diluted by modern revisionism.

And there’s a connection: while Communism is not a sustainable model of governance (like its passive-aggressive cousin “Democratic Socialism”). there is no guarantee that when it falls it won’t be replaced by something even worse.

And among the reason that Soviet communism fell when it did was the fact that two generations of American (and NATO) soldiers ensured that “inducing a conflict to keep the peoples’ minds off their misery” wasn’t a valid end-game.

The world changed thirty years ago last Saturday because American will, and American steel, and American troops, ensured that that change took place in its proper lane.

Nobody (and that means you, Democrats) predicted the wall, and the blood-lusting tyrants who built it, would go away.

Well, almost nobody.

But while Reagan’s (and Thatcher’s, and Pope John Paul II’s, and Lech Wałęsa) were the hammer that pounded the Soviet system on the head, that hammer jammed them against the anvil that was the American soldier (and the German, British, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, French, Danish and Norwegian troops they joined).

And fall, it did.

And so I thank all you veterans out there.

And as a special treat for all of you – “Bornholmer Strasse”, a German TV dramedy about the point where the dam broke thirty years ago Saturday.

It’s in German – worse yet, Berlin German – but even if you don’t speak the language (and I, modestly fluent in “High” German, stretch to keep up with Berlinisch – the actions are pretty self-explanatory.

Some stories shouldn’t need Hollywood to go all, well, Hollywood on them to make them riveting utterly compelling.

But they do it anyway. And it’s almost always a massive drag.

It’s not a new phenomenon; The Battle of the Bulge was utterly atrocious, seemingly feeling the need to dumb World War 2 down to a cowboys ‘n indians movie – for an audience that had in huge numbers actually been there. Even as a kid, the Hollywoodisms (“They’re sending tanks! Send the artillery and infantry to the rear!”) annoyed me to no end.

The effect wasn’t always catastrophic: the Great Escape didn’t completely bastardize the subject, the greatest POW camp break in history – although adding Americans to the cast was an audience-grabbing anachronism (all Americans had been sent to different camps shortly before the escape’s famous tunnels were started).

But Hollywood’s wall of shame exerts a powerful vortex.

Stories that don’t need the Hollywood treatment get it anyway. 12 Strong – the dramatization of the events of the fall of 2001, where 85 Green Berets – count ’em, 85 – led an insurgency that drove the Taliban from the battlefield. What “improvement” does a story like that need? Well, it got little from the movie – which was watchable, but traded CGI for story all too often.

And the Tuskeegee Airmen’s story needs not even a whiff of gussying up; is there a bigger underdog war movie of all time? (There could be – if Hollywood ever produces Brothers in Arms, the story of an all-black tank battalion that became one of Patton’s best, written by none other than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). But gussying up it got, with Red Tails, a George Lucas labor of love that substituted P51 Mustangs for X-wings, Germans for Stormtroopers, and white bigots for Emperor Palpatine.

Now, when I saw that there was a remake of Midway in the works, I thought “at last, someone can improve on the turgid but accurate-ish 1976 historical epic. Then I saw the most dreaded six words in movies: “From the maker of Independence Day” (a movie, it needs to be said, that I detest with a cordial passion) and gave up all hope. Roland Emmerich would seem to have turned the all-in total-stakes back-against-the-wall fight by the battered American fleet against an undefeated Japanese Navy that outnumbered it by a prohibitive margin and had aims on closing the trap around Hawaii into a video game – and made an even worse movie than the 1976 version.

Worse still? If there’s a story in American history that’s begging to just be told, it’s Harriet Tubman. Her story is both pretty universally known and completely misunderstood; a gun-toting freedom fighter who defied the entire institution of slavery while running runaways to the North (or, more often, Canada) and returned to run a huge, effective spy ring during the Civil War? One hardly needs a screenplay.

But a screenplay we get – and it’s abominanble:

Set in 1849 Maryland, full of danger, rescues, superstition, frivolous gunplay, and pop-politics, Harriet demonstrates the current exploitation of African-American history, through historical revision, simply to sell tickets while aggravating political identity, tribal separation, and perpetual grievance — the same way that politicians manipulate voters.
Ever since Harvey Weinstein confirmed Hollywood’s Obama Effect, film culture has sought various ways of appeasing racial anxiety through movies about black victimization and white guilt. It’s the new diversity, as one of Harriet’s progressives summarizes: “Civil war is our only hope.”
…The difference in approach tells everything about the modern state of Hollywood race consciousness. Dismissing Demme and Morrison’s perception of slavery’s aftermath (its internalized stress and ongoing need for explanation, relief, and catharsis), Harriet looks at Tubman on a first-name basis, as if to standardize her travails into a Slavery Land thrill ride: She suffers spells after a head wound that causes hallucinations (or prophecies) that may indicate either madness or saintliness; she sacrifices her love life to crusading zeal (the film’s only complex moment occurs when her lover laments, “I’d a died for you. If you’d a let me”); and she frequently sings out her discontent in several message-driven musical interludes: “Sorry I have to leave” and “Lord, why you let me live?”

Even NPR took a pass on it.

Why, it’s almost as if Hollywood doesn’t trust moviegoers to make the right conclusions.

The notion of biological men “idenitfiying as women” (and vice versa) is old news.

Male athletes “identifying as women” and clobbering the people who are, in the various sports/events, the weaker/slower/less agile sex is becoming both a little commonplace and a cultural punchline.

So what’s going to bring some sense to this “social debate”?

When guys “identifying as women” – maybe as “women of color” – start going for minority-reserved government contracts, that’s when. 

This blog has taken considerable issue with Ramsey County’s once-and-again sheriff, Bob Fletcher, on many issues.

But it’s hard to see this statement as much of anything but the inconvenient truth – at least as far as Mayor Carter is concerned:

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS this year’s sharp rise in gun-related deaths and injuries are mostly tied to an ongoing feud between two rival St. Paul street gangs.

“There is no doubt that the biggest part of this is connected to a longtime feud between two of the city’s more violent gangs,” said Fletcher.  “We have to recognize what the problem is and the problem is we have a small gang war.”

Fletcher said more than a dozen of the record-setting shootings and killings can be linked to a murder as far back as 2008, and there are no indications the retaliatory shootings are going to end anytime soon.

In a city where the mayor is trying to re-christen street gangs as “street groups”, and bends over backward to not call the plague what it is but to fob it (per the “Don’t Waste a Crisis” commandment in the DFL’s playbook) off on the law-abiding gun owner and/or non-“street group” member, it’s hard to see this sort of statement on the part of an elected sheriff as the first salvo of a mayoral bid.  

This is from a few years ago – but the sentiment is growing, at least among our self-appointed idiot elite. It’s from Roxane Gay, a feminist professor who, for some reason, got a writeup in the NYTimes:

Men can start putting in some of the work women have long done in offering testimony. They can come forward and say “me too” while sharing how they have hurt women in ways great and small.

OK, here goes.

My Testimony: I have hurt women in one small – almost infinitesimal – way; I mock and taunt the likes of Roxane Gay for being the Robespierrian ninnies they truly are. I do the mocking and taunting because bellowing “you people are nothing but pseudointellectual brownshirts, peddling a form of groupthink that can only lead inexorably to totalitarianism” gets tiring.

I mock and taunt them because the world they want – where the “wrong” people are guilty until proven innocent, and innocence can never be proven because guilt is a matter of identity more than action – is worth fighting against. And fighting with mocking and taunting is better than doing it with guns and bombs and tanks, although I doubt the likes of Professor Gay’s followers know how or why.

This mocking and taunting no doubt infuriates Professor Gay – and I no doubt hurt her and her like among the weaker sex (“progressive” “feminist” “woke” “men” and their various female accomplices) in saying so. But much as they all may wish to bully me into acquiescence, I just won’t do it.

Which, no doubt, hurts them even more.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry.

A friend of the blog rights:

Re: St Paul trash referendum- I’m laughing at all of the Vote Yes Progressive Mac Groveland/Merriam Park people A- who are suddenly perplexed by the strong No vote on the East side and B- who called No voters on the East side “selfish wealthy homeowners” when it was brought to their attention that East siders said the vote No was a cheaper option for them (because trash collection cost would be shouldered by all property tax payers)
This is outrageously funny to me given how these same people support increasing taxes on “the wealthy” to pay for medical bills, cost of college, any other whim of the leisure class. It’s now selfish when it is opposite their viewpoint. But, I guess now we do have a clearer understanding of who they think are wealthy- Not them who are paying $2000 per month rent or buying half a million dollar houses. Nope. It’s the working class fool who lives in a house worth about $150,000, $200,000 at most. So selfish of them to be paying so little for housing, just making it living paycheck to paycheck. They could be racking up more debt and then perhaps they would feel more indebted to the ruling class, you know, if they had absolutely nothing.

Mac-Groveland, Crocus Hill, and pretty much all the Parks (Highland, Merriam, Saint Anthony, Desnoyer, Irvine) griping about anyone else’s “privilege” is one of those things that’s becoming an inside joke in “progressive” cities.

To everyone but…well, I listed ’em off.