Author Archives: Mitch Berg

Epidemic Of Mildness

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SCENE:  Mitch BERG, driving down Larpenteur Avenue, is behind a Subaru.  The Subaru, coated in liberal campaign stickers dating back to when the car was new (Wellstone’s first re-election campaign), suddenly blows a tire.  It tries to drive for a block or two on the flapping flat until it pulls over

BERG pulls over behind it and gets out to offer help…

…and is visibly dismayed to see Cat SCAT, designated “fact checker” at progressive blog “”MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, and office manager at a small phrenology practice, clamber out of the malfunctioning door.

SCAT:  Merg!  There is going to be an epidemic of white right-wing male violence!

BERG: Yeah, Big Left has been warning us about that for a long, long time.  In the meantime, while we wait, and wait, and wait for that to happen, all the actual violence is coming from the left. James Hodgkinson, the murder of Brooks Jennings, Floyd Corkins and his attack on the Family Research Council, the various “Anti”-Fa thugs and their attacks, the assaults on Sarah Anderson and Shane Mekeland, and a long, long list of other attacks.

SCAT: Yeah, but you’ve got people on the right calling for violenbce!

BERG: Such as?

SCAT:  Ted Nugent!

BERG:  A man whose commercial peak was 40 years ago, whose peak infliuence as a pundit was 25 years ago, and who was cashiered from the leadership of the NRA for being a loose cannon.

SCAT:   You conveniently omit Lester Crrunkins!

BERG:   Who in the flaming hootie-hoo is Lester Crunkins?

SCAT:  He’s a prominent Republican Party official who called for the violent establishmebt of a white homeland!

BERG: And where’s he from?

SCAT:  Prominent!

BERG:   Where?

SCAT:   Er…

BERG:   He’s from a town in western Oklahoma, he was the only person who showed up at the convention so he elected himself chair, and he’s been castigated by his county and state parties.   And that’s only after they found out who he was in the first place, since the only reason anyone knows who he was was the media flocking to report on a “prominent” Republican calling for violence.

Which is intended to draw attention away from the likes of Maxine Waters and the other Democrats calling for violence – which is what I call “Berg’s Seventh Law”, by the way.

SCAT:  (Winds up to try to punch BERG.  Swings.  BERG dodges the punch easily and steps back).  :

SCAT:  (Winded) .   That was self-defense!

BERG:  Of course it was…

(And SCENE)

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North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp seems to be on the path to political palookaville even before this week; polls were showing her trailing republican Kevin Cramer by two digit margins.

A fiasco over the weekend would seem to have not only put the final nail in her political coffin, but if there is any justice in the world should be tied into the Democrats frothing hypocrisy on #MeToo.

The Senator and her campaign placed an ad in the Bismarck Tribune with “signatures” from 127 “sexual assault survivors“. It was in response to a statemenr by Cramer that indicated North Dakota women were too tough to get sexually harassed:

Sen Heitkamp was upset by this and apparently decided to capitalize on it by running a full-page ad in the Bismarck Times [it’s the Bismarck Tribune – Ed.] and several other papers on Sunday. The ad contains a statement about survivors of sexual abuse and is signed by 127 women who, in the context of the ad, are identifying themselves as survivors. But some of the women named in the ad came forward to say they never consented to have their names appear in it.

And some have since come forward to say that they weren’t survivors of any form of sexual abuse at all, and at least one said that she had only told a few people about her episode, and found the whole thing really, really scary.

(One must also wonder if the Democrat party doesn’t expect us to “believe survivors” by dint of the fact that the Democrat party puts them out there as “survivors”, facts be damned.)

In a just world, this will not only take down Heitkamp, but slop over onto Amy Klobuchar.

Fight The Power

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Senator Warren just held a press conference saying that genetics tests prove that she is of between 1/64 and 1/512 Native American ancestry – and therefore “Native American”

Those same tests say that I – one of the most northern European people I know, and proud of it – am between 1/64 and 1/256 African-American.

If I were to use my “African-American heritage” to get preferential treatment, including prestigious academic appointments, based on a genetic sample like that, not only would people mock and taunt me, I would mock and taunt myself. And I would deserve it.

Please, my Democrat friends – nominate this woman for president in 2020.

Robots Gonna Robot

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After weeks of leading Democrat leadership and media figures calling for Democrats to “get in Republicans’ faces…

…that’s exactly what they, loyal droogs all, are doing.

Remember when Democrats said, with straight faces, that Sarah Palin’s use of crosshairs on a map would make Republicans start shooting up democratic events? In retrospect, it had to have been a Bergs Seventh Law reference; they were projecting their own behavior onto people they were “othering”. Last week, an MNDFL staffer called for Republicans to be “guillotined” after the election:

Last week, DFL staffer William Davis responded to a Facebook post that said, “On 11.6- take back your country.” On that post, Davis commented, “On 11.7- bring them to the guillotines.”

Staffer Davis claimed it was “an inside joke” among DFL staffers. Am I the only one who can hear the Democrats, in my mind, tut-tutting about what a bunch of sick puppies Republicans would be if their “inside jokes” were like that?

Anyway – the depravity that the Democrat leadership is asking for in as many words, is happening.

First, Sarah Anderson was attacked by a sign vandal in Plymouth,  after confronting him trying to steal one of her signs:

“I said, ‘You can’t do this!’ And he said, ‘Yes, I can, I’m an anarchist! I can do whatever I want!’ And I said, ‘No, you can’t, that’s not your property,’” Anderson said.

Anderson tried unsuccessfully to videotape the encounter as the man backed her into the street, swearing.

“And he charged at me again, and he said, ‘Go kill yourself,’ and I end up stepping here and there’s traffic coming.”

That’s when Anderson got back in her car and saw the man walking on foot toward a gas station.

She drove to the station and captured a cellphone image of the man charging her — again. He tried to stop her from leaving, punching her in the arm.

“I said, ‘I’m leaving now. I’m leaving now.’ And he was still with his head in my vehicle, just yelling,” Anderson said. “He was irrational, just completely irrational.”

And up in Becker, Shane Mekeland gave details of an attack over the weekend:

Mekeland described his assailant as a man who was a “much, much bigger person” who “did not seem dangerous” when he first approached to ask questions about Mekeland’s campaign. Mekeland said the man gave no immediate indication of political leanings but that remarks the man made as he attacked Mekeland suggested a political motivation.

“It was a typical politically charged statement — not necessarily one way or the other, just a statement in general,” said Mekeland, who declined to elaborate. “But it was in reference to politicians not caring about the middle class.”

Modern “progressivsm” is historically rooted in the notion that the ends justify the means, and is largely peopled by those who have a deep sense of entitlement.  The question, to those of us who study them, isn’t so much “when will they get violent” – they’ve already inflicted a massive amount of violence – but when will the attacks turn systematically deadly.

We are dealing with people that demented, here.

Relax

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The world isn’t coming to an end over politics.  It’s not going to.

Kevin WIlliamson, on how good things generally are – and why some parts of our society are having such a hard time accepting that.

Especially those on the left who consider the way things are today an “emergency”.  It’s a laden term:

Those familiar with the political career of Indira Gandhi will have a special appreciation for the concept of “emergency.” The Emergency refers to a 21-month period during which Mrs. Gandhi suspended civil liberties, ruled by decree, jailed political opponents, censored newspapers, and laid the foundations for what might have been a permanent dictatorship. Dissident political parties were banned, regional governments were dissolved and their leaders incarcerated. (The Malthusians never sleep: India also set on a course of involuntary sterilization during this period, as a means of population control.) There had been political unrest and political violence (as, unhappily, there long had been in India), but the proximate cause of the Emergency was the fact that Mrs. Gandhi had lost a court case that might have resulted in her being removed from office. The Emergency was the fact that there was political opposition to her government, and that the opposition was effective.

Our situation is not quite so stark, but it is analogous. Longstanding American institutions ranging from the First Amendment to the Electoral College to the Senate have been suddenly and rashly declared “illegitimate.” Why? Because, at the moment, they are keeping the Left from getting what it wants. The Left wants to silence certain right-wing critics and dissidents, and the First Amendment stops them. The Senate and the Electoral College perform their intended constitutional role in protecting the interests of the less-populous states and their residents, ensuring the protecting of minority interests from the tyranny of the majority. This annoys the would-be tyrants. (They are, to their discredit, unable to truly appreciate that political tides turn, and that majorities are fickle things.) The ordinary political processes of the United States have produced results that the Left does not like, and, hence, those processes and the institutions that enable them must be considered illegitimate. The nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is to be understood as a national emergency because . . . Democrats would prefer to have somebody else, and they believe they having something like a divine right to rule.

And one can only hope that it’s their eventual undoing.

Why We Need Money In Politics

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If you can’t get the media to do anything but paint Democrats’ toenails on the air,  you have to get your own media to do it for you.

Of course, the conservative media that does exist – talk radio – largely reaches an echo chamber.  A smart, superlative echo chamber, but the proverbial choir nonetheless.

Doug Wardlow did something I’ve been dying for a Republican to do for years; put out an ad that tells the actual truth about Keith Ellison…

…that the likes of Esme Murphy or John Cronin will never, ever allow to cross their lips.

And it took money  – filthy lucre! – to get it on the air, to do the job the Twin Cities media will not.

And that’s why Democrats want campaign finance “reform”.

The Twin Cities Media Won’t Cover This…

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…I don’t suspect – but I will:

The governor’s race is inside “Statistical Noise” levels.   Ditto Housley and Smith.   (Klobuchar is shown nine up over Newberger, which is closer than other polls as well).

Last week, an NBC/Marist poll claimed Walz and Smith were pulling away – this being the same poll that showed Tim Pawlenty and Lori Swanson winning the gubernatorial primaries in landslides.   Was that a media/Democrat attempt to “bandwagon” Republicans into staying home?

Maybe, maybe not.

But don’t get bandwagoned anyway.

Our Common Enemy

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Diversity is not, in and of itself, strength (as the multi-cultis claim); diversity lends strength to shared beliefs.

And while cultural conservatives lament the commonalities  our society seems to have lost, perhaps we’re gaining a new one:

Americans hate PC:

On social media, the country seems to divide into two neat camps: Call them the woke and the resentful. Team Resentment is manned—pun very much intended—by people who are predominantly old and almost exclusively white. Team Woke is young, likely to be female, and predominantly black, brown, or Asian (though white “allies” do their dutiful part). These teams are roughly equal in number, and they disagree most vehemently, as well as most routinely, about the catchall known as political correctness.

Reality is nothing like this. As scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon argue in a report published Wednesday, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape,” most Americans don’t fit into either of these camps. They also share more common ground than the daily fights on social media might suggest—including a general aversion to PC culture.

The whole thing is worth a read.

PC – like smug white progressivism itself – seems to be tied to income and education; there seems to be a correlation between being able to afford to feel “white guilt” and inflicting it on others.

Which, to be fair, is something anyone traveling through leftist circles in Minneapolis could tell you easily.

When Out And About Tomorrow Night

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My band, “Elephant in the Room”, will be playing at the Outpost in Ramsey Saturday night at 9PM.

It came up pretty suddenly – so our leather-lunged lead singer Tommy “The H Bomb” Huynh won’t be interrupting his family vacation for it.     It’ll be the old, four-piece version of EITR.

Anyway – come on out to the Outpost Saturday night.  You never know what’ll happen!

Angie Craig: Miracle Worker!

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Angie Craig would seem to have been the first person in the world to have discovered an “NRA sharpshooter” who keeps his finger on the trigger while racking a round.

He also points the gun at his hand during the course of the commercial.

If you’re a non-shooter: “Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot” and “don’t point your gun at something you’re not willing to destroy, right now” are two of the inviolable rules of gun safety.

“Sharpshooter”? Please. Any competent range safety officer would look at this and yell at him so hard it’d give him dermabrasion. This is Angie Craig’s tame Fudd shooter.

Anyone breaking those rules claiming to be a “sharpshooter” of any kind is a fraud and a liar. And so is any politician putting them out there.

If this guy is a credible voice for shooters, I’m a point guard on the Portland Trailblazers. And Angie Craig is, well, a businesswoman.

In fact, the guy in the ad is a known gun control activist – and if he was ever an NRA member, it was a long, long time ago. Judging by his grip, that was the last time he shot a firearm, too. The ad is playing to what we human rights activists call the “Fudds ” – hunters who figure, wrongly, that gun controllers will never come for their deer rifles and duck guns.

This ad – and Angie Craig – need to be mocked and taunted.

Pass the video around for suitable mocking and taunting.

UPDATE:  The guy is “Bob Mokos”, and we’ve sort of met.  I went to the “Protect” MN / Moms Want Action event  oin the . mean streets of Eagan a couple years ago.   I saw him give his speech.   And I was struck – then as now – by the fact that at no point in his story about his sister’s murder did he ever mention a perpetrator.

Not once.

Nothing.

Seemed odd to me.

Heads, You’re Guilty; Tails, You’re Not Innocent

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Mitch wrote on Shot In The Dark about Rhode Island’s gun control recommendations.

The caption under the photo in the linked article Mitch linked to, shows the governor addressing a crowd just before signing legislation making it easier for police to remove guns from “violence prone individuals.”  This looks like an area ripe for abuse.

Historically, a person convicted of a felony-level act of violence loses the right to a gun.  But this law must go further, else there’s no need for a new law.  Are we extending the sanction to conviction for a misdemeanor-level act of violence?  Pushing?  Shoving?  Disturbing the Peace?

Do we even need a conviction?  How about suspicion of having committed an act of violence?  A dozen Democrats claim Justice Kavanaugh has been “credibly accused” of having committing an act of violence against Dr. Ford decades ago.  Is that enough to deprive him of his guns?

Do we need a suspicion that a person has actually committed an act of violence?  What if he’s only threatened an act of violence (“One of these days, Alice, bang, zoom, straight to the moon!”).  What if he hasn’t threatened it, but has considered it (“Somebody ought to belt you in the mouth, but I won’t”)?

What if there’s no evidence that he’s never said or done anything to suggest he might become violent, but a woman in tears says she’s afraid he might become violent and hurt her children.  That’s a common claim in custody battles.  Once the court has made a finding the man is potentially dangerous, there’s no way he’s ever going to get custody of his kids.  Is one party’s self-serving claim enough to deprive a man of his kids AND his guns?

What if someone finds out I’ve snorted derisively at the suggestion cross-dressers should be allowed to use the women’s bathroom – is that “violence” against the trans-gendered?  Are my guns at risk?

Well, no, not right away.  Not in this version of the statute.  It’s like the seat-belt law – in the initial version, there’s no fine.  Until next session, when it’s amended as part of the school funding bill so nobody can vote against it without being accused of hating children.  Until the prosecutor decides to demand your guns for a parking ticket, the judge appointed by the liberal Democrat governor goes along with it, and the judges on the court of appeals appointed by the liberal Democrat governor declare it was a harmless error which should not be overturned.  Next stop, Supreme Court, but how much lawyering can you afford?

Test cases are for other people.

And so will due process be, if the left has its way.

On Latte Support?

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Daniel McCarthy at American Spectator noticed the same thing about the Brett Kavanaugh hearings that I do about every single “Protect” Minnesota rally; Where are you ends, and the participants, or almost exclusively upper middle class Caucasians. The few African-Americans there are either from Allied political groups there for the optics, or people like Senator Kamala Harris, Who is political career is largely floated by… White liberals.

And according to McCarthy, the hearings are a sign that that breed of upper middle-class white liberalism is dying off.

But the Democratic voters out there yelling about Kavanaugh were as white as any country club gathering of Republicans. They looked like a line of Starbucks patrons — Caucasian, professional, largely millennial, with earth tones and earnest expressions aplenty. Men and women wore the same fashionable glasses and more or less the same clothes. It was a Pumpkin Spice Riot.

Where were the black Democrats? Where were the non-yuppies? Hillary Clinton could have asked the same questions on November 9, 2016, after she failed to get them to show up for her the way they’d showed up for Barack Obama. That election, like the Kavanaugh protest, showed that white liberalism has a problem: it’s too liberal for a majority of whites, yet too distant from the concerns of most non-whites. But its proponents enjoy so much cultural prestige as liberals and so much self-confidence as part of a historic white majority — however much they may disdain such a thing — that they failed to recognise alienated they are from everyone else. They see themselves as the natural moral arbiters of society. But nobody else sees them that way. Nothing says that a multiracial or multicultural society has to be politically centre-left, after all. India has a right-wing nationalist and religious fundamentalist government. Brazil looks set to elect a right-wing president in a runoff later this month. Yet white American liberals cling to the belief that demographic magic will rescue them from the insufficiency of their ideology appeal. White liberalism is in fact in more trouble in this country than conservatism is. The only places where white liberals values matter are in elite cultural institutions — which is why getting Kevin Williamson fired from The Atlantic is a lot easier than getting senators to vote against confirming Kavanaugh.

In of movement dominated by magical thinking, it’s no surprise that magical thinking about them selves would be part of the deal.

The Bandwagon

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NBC/Marist poll shows DFL Senate Candidates leading by biblical margins in the upcoming election.

The glum picture for the GOP comes as both parties point to the state’s four competitive House races as bellwether contests in the race for control of the lower chamber. The poll finds that 53 percent of likely voters prefer a Congress controlled by Democrats after the November midterm elections, while 41 percent prefer Republicans.

Unmentioned: this same showed Lori Swanson winning the DFL primary fairly easily, and Tim Pawlenty clobbering Jeff Johnson. They were off 28 points in that matchup.

But then the point of these October polls isn’t accuracy. It’s “bandwagoning“.

Stuck On Stupid

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A Rhode Island state “gun violence task force”has released its recommendations for what to “do” about “gun violence“:

Sounds familiar?

They include: a ban on ammunition feeding devices — known as magazines — with a capacity of more than 10 rounds, prohibiting the concealed carry of firearms on school grounds and within 1,000 feet of elementary or secondary schools and in government buildings, and raising the age to buy a “long gun” from 18 to 21, where it already stands for handguns.

The group stopped short, however, of backing a ban on military-style assault weapons

, opting to call instead for a new requirement that they be registered with a state or local law enforcement agency.

Isn’t it strange? No matter how many “panels of experts” the ass, the recommendations always come back around to “squat on the law abiding citizen, and do nothing that would ever address violent crime?”

Thoroughly Modern

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SCENE:  Mitch BERG is waiting for the train at University and Hamline.  

Suddenly, a group of 20 through 60-something women with protest signs and pink “feline” caps rushes across the street, waving signs and chanting chants.  One of them is Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, a twenty-something graduate of Saint Olaf, and of Camp Wellstone.  She works as a telemarketer for “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”. 

She notices BERG.

BIRKENSTOCK (Loudly, aggressively):  Merg!

BERG:  Um, hi, Moonbeam…

BIRKENSTOCK:  Women are strong!  We are invincible!  A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle!  We will eclipse masculinity!  We will smash the patriarchy!

BERG:  Huh.  So women who make any sort of claim of abuse…

BIRKENSTOCK:  Must be believed without question or reservation!

BERG:  Huh.  You don’t think that’s already a big contradic…

(But BIRKENSTOCK has already run down the platform, joining a mob stomping on a roll of MEN-tos. 

BERG:  Huh.

(And SCENE)

The Carnage Continues Apace

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The Green Line (aka “The Vomit Comet” – ride it late on a weekend night or early on a weekend morning to find out what that means.  Or…don’t) has claimed its second life this year:

The crash occurred at Syndicate Street and University Avenue about 4:30 p.m., according to Metro Transit spokesman Howie Padilla. Two men were crossing the tracks at the intersection, when a westbound train struck one of them.

The man who was struck by the train was taken to Regions Hospital, where he died about 5 p.m., Padilla said.

The crash disrupted Green Line service between Hamline and Western avenues until shortly after 5:30 p.m., according to posts on Metro Transit’s Twitter account.

That’s on top of another, two blocks away, last January, and at least 2-3 more previously.

That’s a project I may need to take on – going over the human factors problems that make the Green Line such a death machine.

On top of the six (last I checked) on the Blue Line, and makes the Metro Transit trains’ body count roughly 11 times that of Minnesota carry permit holders.

 

October – But No Surprise

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From his initial eledtion in the Democrat wave of 2006, until the 2016 election was all over but the shouting, Tim Walz got, and earned, an “A” rating from the NRA, and good marks from state 2nd Amendment human rights groups as well.

You could see the change, though, as the 2016 campaign wound down; he started cuddling up to the gun grabbers.

Tim Walz, cuddling up to the Dreamsicles and Moms Want action in 2016.
Pass this photo around.

It made no sense – until you remember he was starting his gubernatorial run.

And for any DFLer, the road to the governor’s mansion starts with convincing the bat-splittle crazy Metro DFL that you hate guns worse than rape.

He tried to play both sides, of course; while he spooned with the gun grabbers, even picking lifetime F-rated Peg Flanagan – one of the most “progressive” reps in the House – for a running mate, he also claimed to the press that he, given his shooter bona fides, could serve to “bring both sides together”.

Which did not amuse the Real American movement.   I think we’d rather negotiate with Erin Maye Quade; she’s at least honest about wanting to destroy our ultimate guarantee of liberty.  Also she’s out of office.

But that’s not going to prevent the Media/DFL Complex from trying to flog the charade for the uninformed (aka “Most Democrat Voters”).

The PiPress got smokescreen duty, apparently, this week, and ran this puff piece about Walz:

Tim Walz, the Democrat with the “F” grade from the NRA, wants to ban bump stocks, expand background checks and give courts the authority to temporarily take away someone’s guns if the person is deemed a threat, as well as ban “military-style assault rifles” in Minnesota.

Jeff Johnson, the Republican with the NRA’s “A” grade and endorsement, wants none of that. He opposes any tightening of gun laws.

Election 2018Guess which of the two candidates for Minnesota governor owns more guns.

Walz. He owns three today. The Nebraska native and former Mankato High School teacher grew up with guns and was given his first at age 11.

Unmentioned:  in addition to “expanded background checks” (in reality, a gun registry) and taking guns with no due process on accusation and after ex parte hearings, he also supports an “Assault Weapons” ban.

The article is part of Walz’ effort to appeal to what Real Americans refer to as “Fudds” – people who are dovish on gun control, since nobody is talking about taking their hunting rifles or duck guns or whatever their hobby is.

Yet.

Walz is yet another “camel’s nose under the tent” DFLer – only worse, since he still tries to parlay his revoked NRA cred to appear “moderate”.

He’s the worst form of traitor.

 

Old World Craftsmanship

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Volunteer for the Melissa Hartman campaign shows us the care and precision that the DFL wants to bring to the healthcare industry:

I suspect the volunteer is also a project manager on the MNLARS system…

The Voice Of Minnesota!

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Minnesota’s various gun grabber groups – “Protect” Minnesota and Mom Want Action (A wholly owned and financially a really dependent subsidiary of Every town) held a huge rally out in Excelsior yesterday.

They rented (as I’ve been told) the cities bandshell on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, to gather together the overwhelming force of the Twin Cities gun control movement in one place, to make the foundations of the “gun lobby and proud to Shudder in fear.

Oh, yes they did:

Can you feel the foundations shaking?

The funny part? This picture was taken by a second amendment activist. But “Protect“ Minnesota is on camera and violates the first rules of propaganda videos; “when your people are talking to a tiny crowd, do nothing but close ups“. He penned out to a “wired“ shot… Of a couple of dozen people listening to one of their do ranged speakers

At the event’s “peak “, there may have been 70 people at the “rally”.

Between rental and other costs, the “event” is estimated to have cost $18,000 to produce. That’s roughly $300 per attendee.

In comparison, the Minnesota gun carcasses/NRA rally at the state capital on April 23 cost $500, and drew close to 4000 Real Americans.

That’s right – the total cost of the Real American rally was blessed in the per capita cost of the grabbers event for two people.