Shot in the Dark

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

  • Beggars

    The Guthrie Theater had to cancel its entire Spring and Summer run ofperformances because of the deadliest virus known to mankind.  They needhelp to keep the doors open.  Their state grants and corporate sponsorsaren’t enough. Won’t you considering digging deep to support the Arts? Um… Well… No. Joe Doakes Hard pass. Same with you, NPR.

  • For Posterity’s Sake

    Stipulated in advance – we don’t know yet how the Rittenhouse case in Racine is going to end up. Acknowledging up front that Berg’s 18th Law is in effect, it would appear that Rittenhouse’s first shooting might just be problematic, and that the second two appeared to be textbook legitimate self-defense. Of course, earlier we…

  • Messaging

    Last week, the Administration posted this photo – of Vice President Pence, looking across the DMZ at the Norks. You know the old saying, “Never, Ever Read the Commennts?” It’s even more true on Twitter. “Progressives” romped and cavorted with the image. One -well, probably a lot more than one – snaked “I’m sure this…

  • This Is Today’s News Media

    This may be the greatest lower-third super (aka “Chyron”, aaka the graphic at the bottom of the shot)) in the history of propaganda: When life gives you rotten fruit, ferment it down until you can make a flaming sambuca:

  • Scouting For Opportunity

    This is the job I want.  Quoting from the court’s opinion: “Howard Norsetter, a United States citizen who has maintained permanent residence in Australia since 1984, began working as a scout for Minnesota Twins LLC, in 1990 . . . Norsetter’s scouting duties included evaluating athletes and making recommendations on whether the team should sign…

  • He’s Baaaaack

    Ryan Winkler, Minnesota’s House Majority Leader – let that thought rattle around in your head a bit – replies to Senate Majority Leader Gazelka yesterday: “Trump’s America is deadly!” But the Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan’s Minnesota is the part that is rioting, burning, looting, shedding businesses and jobs, boarding up, moving to the burbs…

  • Mitigating Circumstance

    In a metro area of 2.6 million, with probably close to 2 million cars, I have merged onto the freeway behind the same car – a Malibu with a distinctive sticker and a Purple Heart license plate – twice in one week. So maybe 2020 isn’t so bad after all.

  • Rittenhouse

    I get it. If you’re a businessperson, a law-abiding citizen, a resident of a place like Minneapolis or Saint Paul or Kenosha, you might be getting a little tired of being siultaneousy treated like a villain, a sucker and a pop-sociology punching bag. And seeing the entitled, upper-middle-cass, over-schooled, undereducated “progressive” thugs and the depredations…

  • Remember

    If you run a business in the Twin Cities, this is what you are up against: Lotus has been a tradition in the Twin Cities as long as I’ve been here, and considerably longer. Even as Vietnamese restaurants got taken over by Thai joints (Unjustifiably, in my book), the Lotus has carried on. But will…

  • If It Please M’Lord

    Pennsylvania county offers drive through carry permits, whereas in Ramsey County I had to make an appointment a month in advance and it took them another month to process it. Joe Doakes Minnesota government reflects the passive-aggression of its supporters.

  • Open Letter To Governor Walz: Therapy

    To: Governor WalzFrom: Mitch Berg – Former Rock and/or Cow, current DeplorableRe: “Healing” Governor, Last night, as yet another round of looting began over a false rumor of another police shooting, you tweeted: Heal? You don’t “heal” from cancer while your tumors are still metastatizing. Minneapolis’s disease is the long-standing tolerance of lawlessness toward political…

  • Open Letter To House Majority Leader Winkler

    To: Rep. Ryan WInkler, House Majority LeaderFrom: Mitch Berg, Irascible PeasantRe: Timing Rep. Winkler, Yesterday you tweeted in re the shooting in Kenosha: Rep Winkler, I say the following with all due respect. I’m just spitballing, here, but maybe a white, suburban Harvard grad who called one of the leading jurists in the nation an…

  • Identity

    My name is spelled J-O-E D-O-A-K-E-S but henceforth, shall be pronounced “Throatwobbler Mangrove.”  Or else you’re a hateful racist. That is all. Joe Doakes While we’re on the subject, my preferred pronouns are “Your Excellency / First Sea Lord”.

  • Planned Economy

    Politics – the process that controls government – is the single least effective way of allocating resources of any kind. Case in point: remember when a “shortage of ventilators“ was going to be the crisis that led to carnage? If memory serves, that was sometime before “lack of tests“ was the crisis du jour. And…

  • Think Floyd

    This is the kind of detailed, reasoned explanation for Floyd’s death that the jury will hear from defense experts.  It includes the Power Point slides right out of the Minneapolis Police Department training on when and how to properly kneel on a suspect’s neck. If I were on the jury, I would be hard pressed to believe…

  • If You Can’t Stand The Heat, Get Out Of The Cul-De-Sac

    Among the left’s long list of abusive rhetorical techniques, and the one that has me in a particular state of pique, is the phrase “SAY HIS (or HER) NAME”. It’s a pretty ghastly bit of emotional manipulation – basically a bit of on-the-spot brainwashing, and the crudest, most blunt-force kind of framing there is. With…

  • Karma’s A M*********er

    John Thompson – the DFL-endorsed candidate currently awaiting coronation in House District 67A, the East Side – is the guy who we saw the other day standing in Bob Kroll’s driveway, bellowing that he’d be perfectly happy to burn exurban Hugo to the ground at the little group of tweenage girls standing by the garage.…

  • Monday Morning Quarterbacking

    Democrats want me to believe 160,000 Americans died on Trump’s watch because he could have prevented the virus and didn’t; therefore. we should elect Biden to replace him Really? Perhaps someone could lay out the step-by-step plan by which President Trump could have prevented a virus from killing old sick people this Spring or the…

  • Tripling Down On Innumeracy

    It’s a generally known fact that the ‘Gender Pay Gap” is nothing but a rhetorical trap to gull the gullible. Yes, all women make 77% of what all men make – but that’s almost entirely a matter of choice, As this bit from PragerU explains, the college majors that pay the best after graduation –…

  • Unreported

    While the Democrats work at quietly deflecting the nation’s attention from their senile soon-to-be-nominee, the media would seem to be working hard on keeping anyone from digging too hard into Kamala Harris’s past. With good reason. During her decade-and-a-half tenure as a chief prosecutor, Harris would fail to prosecute a single case of priest abuse…

  • Science Friction

    I’ve been a voracious reader all my life.  My brother can sit at the breakfast table to eat a whole bowl of cereal without reading a single word on the cereal box.  I have no idea how he does it. I never cared about the authors.  I lived for the stories.  The Archmage Ged, Kip…

  • This Is Today’s DFL

    This is DFL-endorsed candidate for the MN House, Bob Thompson, this past Saturday in Hugo, outside the home of Lt. Bob Kroll. It certainly didn’t end there: Additional footage of Thompson’s speech showed him wondering why protesters “were so peaceful.” He then told a man holding a blue lives matter sign to “take that sign” and “stick…

  • Don’t You Dare…

    …claim the Democrats are just a little bit deranged. No sirreebob: UPDATE: And Kim Du Toit – long time no hear! – agrees. With the concept, anyway.

  • Don’t You Think You’re Being A Little Hard On Our Little Creep?

    Rioting in Portland for 60 days now, most recently trying to burn down a police station. The Press says the riots are “mostly peaceful.”  Puts me in mind of a certain movie. I can imagine our anti-fa hero coming up from the basement, dressed in black, telling Mom he’s going out with his friends. “That’s…

  • What A Difference Four Years Makes

    Far be it for me, a mere peasant, to question the journalistic integrity of the New York Times…But, may please the court of opinion, there might be a slight difference in the way the “newspaper of record” carried the two different announcements of vice presidential candidates, four years apart.Well, the key and I might notice…

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