I’ve observed in the past that there’s nothing Big Left hates more than one of “their” constituents – women, minorities (other than Asians), gays and the like – leaving the proverbial Progressive Plantation.
It’s not uncommon; religious fundamentalists frequently hate apostates worse than infidels (see also – the danger involved in being a “Moderate” Muslim).
Of course, some of the apostates are noticing it, too.
There’s a reason for those, of course; it’s absolutely true.
If I’ve noticed anything about radical progressives, it’s that they tend to be intensely angry – and desperately unhappy.
Why?
Here’s the story, from someone who’s been there.
Excerpt from the conclusion
Young adults often become radicals after they realize the immensity of the cruelty and malevolence in the world. They reject a society that tolerates such suffering. They sanctify justice as their telos. But without truth to orient justice, seekers of justice will crash and crash again into reality, and will craft increasingly nightmarish and paranoid ideological analyses, burning out activists, destroying lives through jail or abuse, and leaving the world an uglier, more painful place. To paraphrase Alice Dreger, there is no justice without wisdom, and no wisdom without surrender to uncertainty in the pursuit of truth.
The whole thing’s worth a read.
Think about it when looking at the new DFL majority in Saint Paul.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
A friend complains that the Republican Congress has accomplished nothing worthwhile in the last two years and as Democrats take the House, gridlock is the best we can hope for. He blames Trump Derangement Syndrome and says it truly is disgusting that a boorish, childish, selfish egomaniac is the best example of conservative leadership we have.
First, he’s judging the President by the wrong standard. A wise, mature, gracious statesman was not on offer in the last election. The alternative to Trump was Hillary. The correct standard to apply is: “Has Trump become Hillary yet?” No? Then he’s good to go. Carry on.
But he’s right about Congress. We can’t have a border wall, we can’t confirm conservative judges, we can’t fill executive branch positions, because of people like Senator Never Trump And To Hell With The Nation Flake, to name just one.
If Trump announced today he’s not running in 2020, which nationally prominent Republican would you pick to replace him?
Sorry to say, with Scott walker out of office and never nationally problem to begin with, I’m already out of ideas…
California’s ballyhooed background check law put in place nearly 40 years ago had no effect on violent crime or suicide, according to those noted conservative tools at…
…Johns Hopkins.
Researchers compared yearly gun suicide and homicide rates over the 10 years following implementation of California’s law with 32 control states that did not have such laws.
They found “no change in the rates of either cause of death from firearms through 2000.”
Of course, curbing crime and saving lives aren’t and never were the goals.
From a regular commenter – firearm licenses in Germany are up 130% in the past four years:
According to [a German news service] feelings of insecurity are an important factor for the increase of the licences. Since the start of the migrant crisis in 2015, Germany has seen several terror attacks on festivals, trains and a Christmas market.
“We must be careful not to get American conditions in Germany,” the deputy chairman of police union (GdP) said. “There is a danger that weapons will not be used properly and that their owners will endanger themselves.”
Given German history, Germans should be more nervous about getting German conditions in Germany.
Last February, while riding her motorcycle home from work in suburban Tacoma, Washington, Aubrey Bowlin – a 24-year-old woman who weighs in at about 100 pounds, soaking wet – wound up in a fight fight for her life in a road rage incident with a driver considerably larger than her.
First, he tried to ram her with his car; when that didn’t work, and they were stopped in traffic, he jumped out and started beating and choking the young woman.
She had already started to lose consciousness when she remembered her permitted firearm, And shot her attacker. The man, Bruce Jones, died of his injuries.
Prosecutors didn’t press charges – it was clearly self-defense, right out of the gate.
Happy ending, right?
Well, no. Partly, it’s because that thing you’re taught in carry permit training about “using a gun in self-defense is the second worst possible outcome” is exactly correct:
Still, the past six months have not been easy for her. Post-traumatic stress disorder is constantly with Bowlin.
“The physical injuries have healed, but it’s now the emotional ones that are with me, every second of every day,” she said.
Therapy is helpful, but it is the “most expensive thing I’ve seen, to date,” she said. Because of this, her family and friends have set up a GoFundMe page for Bowlin to help with the costs of counseling.
And partly, it’s because gun-control advocates are such incredible, mindless, depraved ghouls.
…an anti-gun website, which puts up photos of people whose lives have been “lost to gun violence,” has put up a photo of this guy that Aubrey shot, Bruce Jones.
The comments on the anti-gun website page about Mr. Jones are pretty scathing; The owners apparently never got the memo from gun-grabber central about never engaging with or recognizing the existence of their opposition.
But this sort of behavior is nothing new; many of the “children” counted as “victims of gun violence” gang members under the age of 21. It’s still a tragedy, to be sure – as is every life lost to gang violence – and some of the “mass shootings” shown on websites purporting to track mass shootings are self defense shootings with three or more attackers killed or wounded.
Feminists have spent the last forty years convincing men thatn “no means no”.
So far so good.
They’ve spent a chunk of the last fifteen convincing first universities, then courts, that a “no”, even one applied retroactively and contradictorily, hours or days or months after the fact, really meant “no” even if it was an explicit “Yes” in the first place.
Feminist dogma has it than men are stupid – but some have developed a sense of self-preservation, and are starting to get affirmative consent on video immediately before, er, doing something that needs consent.
And, predictdably, feminists are bunged about that, too:
[Feminists] are not pleased with the idea of consent videos and their “problematic” ramifications.
In the case with [a woman complaining about the videos, idiot Brit feminist writer Rachel King] complains that the “implication” of a consent video “is that those in a position of power are the ones who need protection, and that’s just not true.”
I try to be polite. I really do. And I try to treat people they way I’d like to be treated.
Which is how I rationalize the following – because if I were being a complete dumbass like Rachel King, I’d hope someone pointed it out to me.
Rachel. Dumbass. Men don’t have the power. When a woman has the ability to ruin a man’s life over a false, flighty or stretchy accusation, the idea of “male power” is as quaint as an episode of “Leave It To Beaver”.
King, who mocked that “it’s apparently ‘a scary time for young men,'”
(Love the patrohization, Rachel. Also – eat s**t and die a painful death)
also emphasized that false accusations just don’t happen,
Duke. Virginia Tech. Every f****ng word out of Lena Dunham’s mouth.
pointing to a popularized hashtag on Twitter as evidence. “In reality, the vitriol that victims of rape and sexual assault are subject to is enough to put anyone off making a false report. If you don’t believe me, check out the #WhyIDidntReport tag on Twitter,” she wrote.
I’m done playing nice with these morons.
”
…in this world too sample for government bureaucrats to try to piddle on.
America has survived many external enemies – but “progressivism” is one internal enemy that has the potential to actually destroy it.
And the “Administrative State” – which, along with the Non-Profit-Industrial complex is where the regulatory rubber hits the road – is in many ways the spear point of the “progressive’ attack on everything that makes America worth living in. Nothing saps America’s resilience, vitality and prosperity like the Administrative State, which exists largely to transfer wealth from taxpayers to “progressive” stakeholders.
Recent weeks have been marked by the whining and caviling of “progressives” about the actions of the Republican-controlled Wisconsin state assembly, which acted to greatly reduce the power of the incoming Democrat governor.
Lost in all of the sore-losering – or intentionally concealed in it – is the fact that over the past eight years, Wisconsin has taken steps to curb the excesses of the Big Administrative State that the rest of the country, and the nation, would do very well to emulate:
In 2011, much attention was given Act 10, Governor Walker’s signature reform to public-sector collective bargaining. Less well-known was Act 21, which can rightly be considered the beginning of an administrative-law revolution in Wisconsin. In 2017, Acts 39, 57, and 108 added to those reform efforts. And this past summer, the Wisconsin supreme court issued a significant decision in Tetra Tech v. Department of Revenue, creating a stricter framework for courts to apply when considering the amount of deference to provide agency interpretations.
Much of what we now consider the standard rule-making process in Wisconsin was first set out in 2011 Act 21. At its core, Act 21 provides that no agency may implement or enforce any standard, requirement, or threshold (including as a term or condition of any license it issues) unless such action is explicitly required or permitted by statute or rule. Gone are the days of implied or perceived authority.
Additionally, for each proposed rule, the act required agencies to submit a “statement of scope” to the governor for review and prepare an economic-impact analysis relating to specific businesses, business sectors, public-utility ratepayers, local governmental units, and the state’s economy as a whole.
You should read the whole thing – and pass it on.
The head of politics at Cambridge University has called for children as young as six to be given the vote in an attempt to tackle the age bias in modern democracy.
Prof David Runciman said the ageing population meant young people were now “massively outnumbered”, creating a democratic crisis and an inbuilt bias against governments that plan for the future.
In the latest episode of his podcast, Talking Politics, he said lowering the voting age to 16 was not radical enough to address the problem.
But then again… maybe it is?
“What’s the worst that could happen? At least it would be exciting, it would make elections more fun. It is never going to happen in a million years but as a way of capturing just how structurally unbalanced our democracies have become, seriously, why not? Why not six-year-olds?
On the one hand, it seems like a terrible idea.
On the other hand, the rhetoric of campaigns like those from “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” wouldn’t need to be especially rewritten.
Comedian Kevin Hart was dropped from hosting the Oscars over a bunch of “homophobic” tweets from long, long ago.
Given the record of many Oscar hosts in recent years, it may have been the best thing to happen to him – but I digress.
Comic Nick Cannon – famously un-PC comic that he is – came to his fellow comic’s defense against, pointing out similar similar/worse transactions by three of the whitest women in the business:
A sample:
And I fucking love Wreck it Ralph!!! 🤦🏾♂️ https://t.co/6cHA1EQEkg
— Nick Cannon (@NickCannon) December 8, 2018
So as the left has shown us in the past year, an “entertainer” or politician can get away with groping women, verbally and physically abusing them, and the sort of homophobia and sexism that gets ushered firmly away from the mic at any GOP event – provided they bring the power or the visibility Big Left needs.
And armed citizen with a legally owned a firearm has shot and killed a wannabe spree killer a restaurant in Oklahoma:
An armed citizen shot and killed a mass shooter at a restaurant in Oklahoma on Thursday after the gunman walked in and opened fire, hitting several people.
“A man walked into the Louie’s restaurant and opened fire with a gun. Two people were shot,” police said, CNN reported. “A bystander with a pistol confronted the shooter outside the restaurant and fatally shot him.”
Oklahoma City Police tweeted: “ALERT: The only confirmed fatality is the suspect. He was apparently shot-to-death by an armed citizen. Three citizens were injured, two of whom were shot. A large number of witnesses are detained. There is no indication of terrorism at this point.”
If episodes like this got anywhere near the saturation coverage that “successful” spree killings did, we wouldn’t have spree killings.
And people like the Reverend Nancy Nord Bence would get booed and heckled off more stages.
Disclosure: the pieces from the , which may as well be a click bait site these days.
On the other hand, there is nothing about what we know about political correctness, especially in the modern school and academic systems, that smells wrong in any way.
The principal at a New York performing arts high school ordered all Nazi symbol is removed from the stage…
… of the play The Sound of Music. Which – if you’ve never seen it – was set in Nazi occupied Austria:
The principal at the elite “Fame” school, Lisa Mars, ordered Nazi flags and symbols removed from the stage set of the beloved tale of the Von Trapp family, who fled the Nazis from their native Austria as Adolf Hitler took power, students told the Daily News.
Now, there’s an old saying; “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is”. So this ext graf – In which a 15-year-old high school kid would seem to have gotten it right…:
“This is a very liberal school, we’re all against Nazis,” one sophomore performer told The News about the fuhrer furor. “But to take out the symbol is to try to erase history.
… is perfectly likely to turn out to be false. But I do hope kids are smarter about history than the adults who run most of the educational/industrial complex today.
I hope Dash indeed, I pray – that it’s true.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I can’t believe how self-centered and thoughtless Christmas shoppers are.
I’m trying to back out of my parking space and pedestrians walk right behind me! Don’t they see me backing up?
They’re as bad as the drivers who back out of their parking spot when I’m trying to walk to the store. Don’t they see me walking here?
Joe Doakes
If only there were…pedestrian lanes!
A South Carolina woman kills an escaped inmate who had just kicked down her back door:
The inmate was still in his orange jail jumpsuit and had grabbed a knife sharpening tool from the woman’s kitchen in Pickens as he headed toward her bedroom around 3 a.m. Tuesday, Pickens County Sheriff Rick Clark said.
“This was a big guy. If she hadn’t had a weapon there’s no telling what would have happened,” Clark said. “I gave her a big hug. I told her how proud I was of her.”
I’m trying to imagine any Metro area chiefs of police who’d do that.
Bruce McLaughlin Jr., 30, died from a gunshot to the head, Pickens County Coroner Kandy Kelley said.
McLaughlin and a second inmate, Timothy Dill, beat up two guards in an escape they had planned for days, Clark said at a news conference.
I’m not gonna call it a “Happy Ending” – killing someone is the second-worst possible outcome.
But the worst – a dead victim – is far, far worse.
Too bad gun control activists would prefer women like that to shut up and get raped to death.
Joe Doakes from Como Park notes that if we’re really serious about climate change…:
Climate scientists insist we must stop driving petroleum powered vehicles. Public health officials are worried about an epidemic of childhood obesity. Cities want heavy vehicles off the streets to reduce wear.
Seems to me there is one common solution.
Ban school busses.
And we should ameliorate schools’ huge carbon footprints by making homeschooling mandatory…
…oops. Went too far.
Many years ago, I went out on a date with a woman who was a pretty “out” DFLer. Public employee union member, second generation DFL activist (at least), and predictably emotion-driven in her approach to all things political.
We went out 3-4 times – “dates” that almost always involved being out with quite a number of her friends, and an amazing paucity of one on one conversation.
Nonetheless, when “fish or cut bait” time came along, she said “I’m just not sure I can trust you to be kind”.
Bear in mind, nothing about me or my senses and practice of kindness, charity or anything of the sort had ever come up. But my conservatism had. Literally, the only thing she knew about me was the stereotypes she had of conservatives.
It was, if unwittingly, one of the nastiest things anyone’s ever said to me.
I thought about that when reading this New York Magazine piece about women who are abandoning relationships and marriages in a flurry of “Lifetime Network”-caliber pique and huff…
…Because Trump.
David Thompson fisks one of the interview subjects to a fine sheen – go and read it – but that was by no means all:
[the writer] goes on to share other tales of bedlamite sorrow. A woman named Samantha complains that her husband of 25 years, a fellow lefty, has “much less rage” than she does, specifically about “white privileged men,” and doesn’t wish to spend every evening equally infuriated by the existence of people whose politics differ somewhat. “Anger,” says Samantha, is her “de facto mode.” Though she’s trying to “get rid of it through therapy.”
A Brooklynite named Betsy boasts that “cultural change is like a steamroller. It flattens distinctions, and some people will get hurt,” by which she means men falsely and maliciously accused of rape, before adding, “and I’m okay with that.” Betsy and her husband are currently in counselling.
Another lady named Sarah tells us that her marriage became unsustainable “after the 2016 election, when I ramped up my political activism.” Sarah’s husband is described as “completely aligned” politically, a feminist, even, albeit one who doesn’t care to spend every waking hour raging about politics. “Talking about the Trump election,” says Sarah, “makes me more emotional than the end of my marriage.” And presumably, more emotional than the thought of her children losing the stability and reassurance of a family structure. But hey, priorities.
It’s not a new, original observation to say that progressivism is to the left what faith is to the cultural right. Far from it.
But some parts of “progressivism” are becoming downright cult-like.
SIDE NOTE to Minnesota Republicans fussing about “Sharia Law”: Progressivism will destroy this nation long, long before anything else will.
Who can be so stupid?“
– The world
“Hold my kombucha“
– Progressives
The media would like you to believe that all doctors support gun control.
Is O’Rourke the candidate to beat for the Dems, next time around?
Former Rep. Robert “Beto” O’Rourke (D-TX) has been meeting with former President Barack Obama. A meeting of these two minds makes a great deal of sense. In Obama, the Democrats found a blank slate candidate on whom voters could project their wishes and dreams and he won two terms. In O’Rourke, the Democrats may have found the answer to their struggles in Texas. And if they can even become competitive in Texas, national politics will shift in the Democrats’ favor. Democrats see 2020 as an opportunity to topple President Trump.
Two years is a long time in politics, but at the same time it’s no time at all. The 2020 primaries are just over a year away. Any serious candidate for president in 2020 must be laying the groundwork now if they have not already started. They must be looking at building campaign staff, and they must have money in the bank or proven access to money.
Read the whole thing
It’s not quite a “Berg’s Law”, since it only pertains to a few groups, most particularly “Protect” Minnesota – the voice of the gun control movement in Minnesota – but it’s getting close.
Let be say this as clearly and unequivocally as I can:
“Protect” Minnesota has never made a single statement about guns, gun violence, gun laws, the 2nd Amendment, or law-abiding gun owners that is simultaneously substantial, original and true [1].
Not one.
Doesn’t matter if it was Heather Martens, or Nancy Nord Bence, or any of their constantly-rotating stream of lobbyists, lieutenants and creepy hangers-on; it’s still true.
Not one single statement that is simultaneously substantial, original and true.
Case in point: their “coverage” of the episode a few weeks ago where a (WHITE! MIDDLE AGED!) Eden Prairie man got into a scuffle with a bunch of reportedly Somali teens at a gas station.
This was their first response to the story, going back a bit.
Now, I’ve been watching the story as well. We don’t know much about the story, but we know a few things:
First – the man had no Minnesota carry permit. Thank goodness.
Second – while the laws about displaying and threatening the use of lethal force are even more vague in Minnesota than the ones about the use of lethal force, it is under some circumstances legal to “brandish” a firearm to make a potential threat go away. The law – a mixture of vague statute and very specific case law – is muddled and specific; while the juridprudence on the subject might not be designed to be a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to prosecutors, and from people to defense attorneys – but if they had set out to design such a system, it wouldn’t look a lot different.
Third – for purposes of my point, the actual behavior of the “Somali teens” doesn’t matter; they may have been utterly blameless (although groups of teenagers, especially with adolescent boys showing out for the girls, are pretty much always small, demented mobs no matter their ethnicity; given that the news reports mention nothing about their behavior, I’m doing to assume there’s something to hide). So with that said – the video from Channel 4 seems to show that the man tried to retreat as the group of “teenagers” harried him.
Which means it’s not a “Stand Your Ground” case.
The guy may or may not have reasonably feared for his life and safety, thus possibly justifying brandishing a firearm – that, it seems, will be decided at trial.
Someone needs to tell the howler monkey – likely the gaffe-prone, not-especially-fact-obsessed Nord Bence:
As usual when “P” M makes a statement? No. This case wouldn’t be any different at all.
Why?
As we’ve pointed out countless times on this blog, there are four criteria you need to meet under current Minnesota law to use lethal force in self-defense; you have to reasonably fear immediate death or great bodily harm, you can’t be the aggressor, you can only use the force needed to end the threat, and you have a duty to make a reasonable effort to retreat.
“Stand your ground” merely removes that last clause when you are anyplace you have a legal right to be. Including McDonalds.
It doesn’t remove the other three criteria!
Was he in immediate life-threatening danger? Was he the aggressor? That’ll be decided at trial.
But – let me find the “Bold” button for emphasis:
He retreated! He backed away from the “teens”! Was it a “reasonable” effort to do so? We’ll see what the jury decides.
But “Stand Your Ground” was not, and would never be, an issue in this case.
And if you get your information from “Protect” Minnesota, about this or any other case, you are not only less informed, but you’re participating in making our society dumber on this issue.
A friend of the blog writes:
Those young, progressive, priveleged white men who fight their older progressive, priveleged counterparts are just so entertaining. Here, the new executive director of Union Park District Council is essentially calling some of the people in Union Park racist because they are opposing large development projects in their backyards.
He, and other young progressives, cry about lack of affordability (for some other group of unknown people), while they live in their single family homes in Mac Groveland or Highland Park (as is the case for this director.) Thinking about affordability, I wonder how these young, just out of college people afford their houses in neighborhoods like Mac Groveland or Highland Park. Thinking about racism, I wonder why these young, privileged white people chose those neighborhoods instead of the more transit connected, affordable neighborhoods in the city…
Urban Progressive Privilege – when nobody who matters in your social and vocation circle will ever call you on “inconsistencies” like this.
I’ve found that the correlation between these young non-profiteers and old Saint-Paul-DFL money is really, really high.
… that this was how the world of fashion worked
Payless’ recent marketing campaign tricked fashion influencers into paying significantly more for a pair of affordable shoes. The retailer created a new store, called Palessi, as an experiment to see just how much fashion-forward people would pay to have high-end shoes...Those that attended the exclusive party paid between $200 and $600 for Payless shoes that typically run up to $40. Payless, as Palessi, sold $3,000 worth of shoes in hours within the opening.
“I would pay $400, $500,” said one influencer. “People will be like ‘where did you get those?’”
Other influencers remarked on the look of the shoes, the quality of the material, and were overall impressed by the Payless shoes.
The discount shoe company “wanted to push the social experiment genre to new extremes, while simultaneously using it to make a cultural statement,” Doug Cameron, DCX Growth Accelerator’s chief creative officer, told Adweek.
My entire life, I have suspected the “fashion and put industry was built entirely on exploiting gullibility, herd mentality and insecurity.
GOP precinct in Texas is working on removing a high-ranking officer…
… Because he’s Muslim :
Republican leaders in one of the most populous counties in Texas want to remove a party vice chairman because he’s Muslim, according to emails between party leaders.
The emails delivered anonymously to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram indicate the Tarrant County GOP executive committee plans to vote Jan. 10 on whether to remove Shahid Shafi from his leadership position.
Some in the party say Shafi, a surgeon and city council member in a Fort Worth suburb, may be more loyal to Islamic law or not supportive enough of the party’s pro-Israel platform.
Shafi counters that he supports American laws and the court system, and says he has no affiliation to “any terrorist organization,” as some have alleged. Shafi, who became a U.S. citizen in 2009 and shortly after joined the Republican Party, says he supports the Second Amendment and has never promoted Sharia, or Islamic, law.
Members of the Republican Party’s burgeoning “Dumbass Bigot Caucus” would respond by claiming “every Muslim in the universe obeys every “Hadith” in the Koran to the letter, including the ones about deceiving infidels”, implying that Muslims, regardless of sector or even observance (25% of ethnic/cultural Muslims are non-observant) adhere to their holy texts absolutely, without question and all in the same way, in a way that no other faith does (or perhaps you’ve noticed how not a single Catholic gets divorced or get an abortion, no evangelicals ever root for Notre Dame, and no Jews ever, ever eat pork).
Radical Islam – Wahhabism and radical Shia – and attendant Muslim laws are a threat to western civilization – or at least to weak, fundamentally corrupt and decaying ones, like in Europe. The United States is still, despite the best efforts of progressives, a vibrant, strong, resilient nation, the kind of place people want to come to. We cannot, and will never be, defeated by an external threat – List of all by one that wants to drag humanity back to the seventh century A.D.
Progressivism, on the other hand, is a clear, present, immediate threat to this nation and everything that made it strong, vital and resilient. And this kind of bigotry drives pro-life, pro free market, pro second amendment, pro constitutional, people who happen to be Muslim straight into the arms of the progressives.
It is – I’ll be diplomatic – cripplingly shortsighted, and the kind of thing that needs to be expunged from the party.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Now a replacement NAFTA on more favorable terms to us.
What a nightmare Trump has turned out to be. No wonder Liberals have their hopes pinned on Mueller.
A Republican who actually does what he says when he gets elected?
Think you know MInnesota gun laws?
Take the quiz from the MN Gun Owners Caucus and find out how you stack up.