Background: At the Gun Rights rally last Saturday, Rep. Cal Bahr told the crowd we needed to “Stomp” gun control bills, and the idea that oppressing the law-abiding is a good plan to dela with crime.
Was Bahr’s rhetoric (for which he has since apologized and clarified) mprudent? Perhaps.
About 1,000 of my closest friends turned out for the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus’ “2019 Rally To Protect The 2nd Amendment” on Saturday.
Photo by Sarah Cade, Cade Imaging
Bear in mind – the weather on Saturday was inclement at best. I think the good guys expected half this number for turnout.
Compare this to “Protect” Minnesota’s turnout on a beautiful day a few weeks back:
Photo – Rob Doar
The comparison is inescapable – Second Amendment Civil Rights activists are real people, motivated by their real passion for securing civil liberty for all Americans; gun control activists are uninformed dupes of plutocrats who seek to enslave Real Americans.
Go ahead, Ryan Winkler. Bring those bills to the floor. I dare you.
How do climate proponents of anthropomorphic global warming reconcile these articles: this article , and this one . 20 years ago, climate scientists confidently assured me that as the planet warmed, snowfall would cease. I assume their assurance was based on some scientific model linking CO2 to increasing temperatures to melting polar ice, etc. But we just had a record snowfall even as CO1 readings and global temperatures continue to rise. Does that mean there’s a flaw in the model? This is a serious question, because at the moment, it looks as if the model has failed as a predictor and that brings into question the value of the AGW theory in general. Joe Doakes
Reading about MNLARS – the state’s drivers license, registration and titling system – is making me nostalgic.
Back in 1996-97, I worked for a company that was engaged to do the engineering for a big, extremely well-funded startup in Palo Alto, run by a former salesman from IBM. The company’s business model: pay people to read spam. The theory was, people would set up accounts, and then get a little bit of the ad buy money for clicking on ads, and links in spam emails.
Catering to greed, of course, is never a bad business model. But by the time I left the company, we were figuring that someone clicking on six ads a minute, 8 hours a day, might make $6-8.
I wound up leaving – and was delighted to read in PC Magazine that the project had made their “Ten Dumbest Ideas of 2007” poll. By this time, I the company had folded, taking $30 million in investor funding with it (along with, I was less delighted to learn, the company that I’d worked for).
Remember when $30 million on a bad idea seemed like a lot of money?
If that’d been a government project…
Oh, wait.
The Minnesota taxpayer has spent close to $100 million on the MNLARS system – half up front, leading to a spectacular failure, and half for a “fix” that failed even worse.
Walz released a budget this week that includes $94 million through 2021 to finish the system known as MNLARS, operate it for two years, hire staff, and reimburse deputy registrars who took a financial hit from the botched 2017 rollout. That’s on top of $15.7 million in stopgap funding that Walz was already seeking to get the system through June 30.
To pay for some of the costs, Walz has proposed a $2 fee every time a driver makes a vehicle license, tab or title transaction.
Rep. Alexandria “Tide Pod Evita” Ocasio Cortez may be this year’s socialist flavor of the month, a would-be disruptor of American politics.
But in another very important way, she seems to be very much business-as-usual; there’s evidence that, like (it seems) most Democrats from New York City, she’s corrupt as the day is long.
Almost too hard to pick a single pullquote from this long, laboriously researched piece. You should read it all.
But here’s an important bit:
Regardless of whether or not [Ocasio Cortez’ boyfriend Riley] Roberts was officially AOC’s spouse [at the time her campaign staff showed him on salary], it seems probable [Ocasio Cortez’ benefactor, strategist and now chief of staff Saikat] Chakrabarti was reimbursing her for her campaign expenses off-books. Brand New Congress PAC simply served as a pass-through to do so. When AOC won, she then hired Chakrabarti, her strategist/patron, as her Chief of Staff. Taking money from a rich guy, trying to hide it by passing it through a PAC, and then giving her benefactor a government job. That’s definitely unethical and potentially illegal. Chakrabarti may have made an illegal campaign contribution in excess of federal limits. Regardless, it raises questions about Chakrabarti’s hiring as AOC’s Chief of Staff after her election. Maybe add that to your next lightning round, Congresswoman.
Nick Sandmann and the other Covington Kids, justifiably upset after malicious editing left them the targets of the purple-faced rage of America’s virtue-signaling lynch mob, are suing the WaPo for $250 million.
The lawsuit claims The Post “ignored the truth” about the incident and says the paper “falsely accused Nicholas of … ‘accost[ing]’ Phillips by ‘suddenly swarm[ing]’ him in a ‘threaten[ing]’ and ‘physically intimidat[ing]’ manner … ‘block[ing]’ Phillips path, refusing to allow Phillips ‘to retreat,’ ‘taunting the dispersing indigenous crowd,’ [and] chanting, ‘Build that wall,’ ‘Trump2020,’ or ‘Go back to Africa,’ and otherwise engaging in racist and improper conduct. …”Sandmann’s attorneys accuse The Post of publishing seven “false and defamatory” articles about the incident between Jan. 19 and 21 and claim the paper “knew and intended that its false and defamatory accusations would be republished by others, including media outlets and others on social media.”
Defamation cases are hard to win – justifiably so. We don’t want a system like the UK, where the famous and well-connected can shut up all criticism.
On the other hand, given the intensity of Big Media’s drive to “other” everyone who didn’t vote for Hillary, I’m wondering if there’s a legal theory that’d support a class action defamation suit?
The governor of Virginia explained that a proposed law would allow a woman to give birth to her baby, then decide whether to kill it. A “post-birth” abortion. Aside from the fact that killing babies is what Kenneth Gosnell went to prison for, why only the mother? Why isn’t the father involved in the decision to kill the child? In the past, the “women-only” argument was that a woman’s body should be free from government intrusion. Government shouldn’t have the power to force her to carry a child, and neither should anybody else. That’s involuntary servitude, a fancy of saying sexual slavery, which is evil. Plainly, the woman is the only person with a right to decide what happens to her body, including whether to terminate the pregnancy by abortion. But under the proposed law, the carrying is done. The baby is out of her body. No slavery involved. So why should only the woman get to decide whether the baby lives or dies? Why isn’t the father involved? For that matter, why isn’t the baby involved? Who speaks on behalf of the living, breathing, child lying on the table? Shouldn’t there be someone appointed to defend the child’s rights including the most fundamental right of all – the right to be alive? Serious flaws in the logic of the proposed law. Send it back for more work.
Nobody ever flew one the other direction to escape from capitalist Austria into socialist Czechoslovakia. Lesson for Ilhan and AOC in there, somewhere.
Somewhere, somehow, I’m pretty sure either Ilhan and AOC got it in their head that someone did, or they know that nobody in their voting pool would check them on it if they said “as many people fled east as west”.
Minnesota “progressives” aren’t that curious or critical.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is shopping for a new casserole trivet for his Instant Pot (C) when MyLysa SILBERMAN, Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats, rounds the corner.
BERG: Er…Ms. Silberman.
SILBERMAN: [visibly searching for name] . Er – hello, Merg.
BERG: So – any comment about the allegations against Ralph “Satchmo” Northam?
SILBERMAN: In these inflammatory situations and divided times, it’s a journalist’s responsibility to make sure they get the facts straight.
BERG: OK. So – Brent Kavanaugh…
SILBERMAN: [Abruptly screams, face red with rage] WE ALWAYS #BELIEVEWOMEN, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!!
BERG: Huh. So – Democrat governor Northam…
SILBERMAN: [Abruptly calm again] Get the facts…
BERG: Northam, Ellison, Clinton…
SILBERMAN: [Abruptly calm again] We can’t report a story where we’re not absolutely sure…
BERG: The Covington kids..
SILBERMAN: [Enraged again] . WHITE! MAGA! THE…SMIRK! I JUST WANT TO BURN THAT KID’S FACE OFF!
BERG: Right. So I’ve predicted that the media will declare Northam “rehabilitated” within the year.
When private health insurance was unable to provide uniform affordable coverage, Congress had no choice but to take it over through Obama-care. The success of that program proves the principle is sound: government must do what private industry can’t do. Thousands of people are without electricity during dangerously cold weather. Private power companies have demonstrated they are incapable of providing uniform affordable coverage. Congress has no choice but to take over the electrical industry. This is right in line with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ socialist philosophy, she’s the logical choice to introduce the legislation. Government, not private business, is the only way to ensure prompt and efficient delivery of essential services to women and minorities, whatever the weather might be In other news, the Post Office isn’t delivering mail today. Mn/DOT pulled its snowplows off the road. St. Paul schools are closed and it’s mandatory recycling program is suspended. Government workers cannot promptly and efficiently deliver essential services because of the weather. Hmm, maybe we should revisit the concept of government taking over private businesses? Do we really expect union government employees to be climbing power poles in the howling freezing wind in the dead of night? Would that idea work any better than Obama-care or its inevitable successor, Kamela-care? Whatever those guys on the power poles make (and they’re almost all guys), it’s not enough. Whatever those gals in Congress make (and the goofy ones are almost all gals), it’s too much.
I for one am so happy I’ve got private-sector power. Although it’s a private monopoly in the area, so it’s not quite free market…
Remember that quip you get from every bobbleheaded liberal when you remind them that the Second Amendment is supposed to be about defending freedom against tyranny?
“What?”, they inevitably respond, “you’re going to fight at tank with your AR15?” (No, I won’t have to, because if the government comes for the guns, it’ll be the AR15s and the tanks against the progressives with their protest signs. But I digress).
The question about whether tyranny in Venezuela will, to paraphrase Mick Jones, will stay or go, is partly about socialist power politics, partly about manipulation of mobs…
…and mostly about who’s got the guns.
Military defectors say it’s also all about guns. The military apparently doesn’t have any, or at least access to them, despite the massive arms sales from Russia that Venezuela’s socialist regime has spent its oil bounty on. [Former soldier] Hidalgo Azuaje added: “We’re not saying that we need only US support, but also Brazil, Colombia, Peru, all brother countries, that are against this dictatorship.” The military men are pleading for arms. They’ll take care of the job, they say, if they have the tools to do it. Recall that when Venezuelan soldiers mutinied in the area of Petare earlier this month, their priority also was seizing weapons. It does suggest that a penurious armed force with no access to weapons is the problem. Apparently, not even the soldiers are trusted with guns by the dictatorship. The Maduro regime is starting to arm gangs as a means of checking the military. They trust gangs and thugs, but not responsible military men with guns, and seem to have disarmed them
It’s worth noting that Hugo Chavez – whose death let to Maduro and his clacque ineriting and extending their absolute power – got his start as a paratrooper in the Venezuelan army. So the regime knows what it needs to defend against.
When Brazil’s new government instituted a right to keep and bear arms for Brazilians, it wasn’t entirely about street crime.
Totalitarian dictatorship has been described as “a boot on your face, forever”. A monopoly on firepower is what makes it possible to keep that boot there, unmolested.
So the police roll up to a house, and the woman meets them out at the curb with two black eyes and a face puffed up from having been punched a couple times.
The guy comes to the door in a, er wife beater (don’t look at me, I don’t invent these terms) without a scratch on him except for scraped knuckles with smears of blood up and down his fingers.
Asked what happened, the guy responds “Sheprovoked the whoooole thing!”
How do you think that’s gonna play with the cops, the prosecutors, and a jury?
Not well, most likely. Whatever the “provocation” may have been, it’d be pretty absurd to presume it warranted beating someone purple. It’s kind of a no-brainer.
This past week, I’ve heard some people I otherwise have reason to believe are serviceably intelligent – who, in reference to the Covington flap, say “the MAGA cap is, itself, a provocation!” that warrants all manner of mayhem against people who wear them.
I’m not big into wearing paraphernalia for political campaigns, even those I completely support. But this claim is one of the most toxic things I’ve heard lately.
First of all – the MAGA cap is “racist” almost entirely because, for the past two years, Trump’s opponents have been *saying* it was. It has little or nothing to do with the actual behavior of actual individuals who supported or voted for Trump. It’s called “othering”, and it’s one of the most noxious tactics in modern politics.
Photo via Babylon Bee – simultaneously the most brilliant satire site out there anymore, and oddly enough perhaps the best news outlet there is in the Trump era.
Second – the idea that there’s some license to try to destroy peoples’ lives (or worse), not just because of the (utterly legal) beliefs they have, not even because of the (utterly legal) symbols they may wear, but because of the meaning that (people have told) you the symbols have?
Could there be a more toxic idea?
In this society, the remedy for (for sake of argument) “bad speech” has always been “more better speech”, at least among those who deserve to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, a fair chunk of our society [1] believes “our ends justify our means”.
I mean, don’t get me wrong – if the notion of the intellectual “Purge Night” takes off, the thought of taking a can of Pam to the next smug little fop wearing a “Che Guevara” t-shirt would work for me…
…but for the fact that *no free society can survive* that sort of thing, any more than the marriage in that first example is going to survive.
But just like the “She provoked me!” at the top of the post, “wearing your symbol justifies any evil I want to commit against you” is the refuge of the entitled narcissist and the abuser.
[1] And in the interest of diplomacy, I’ll say “both sides do it”, although my heart’s really not in it. Mike Pence’s kids aren’t throwing smoke bombs and punching 17 year old girls at their opposition’s rallies, but Tim Kane’s kid sure as hell did. Still, the point is “your (interpretation of) someone’s symbol doesn’t justify a response faaaaar out of proportion to the symbol itself”. Ever.
David Brooks wrote this piece – “The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture” – almost a solid week before the Covington kerfuffle, in which a dishonest media led a pack of bovine keyboard commandos to a high-tech lynching of a MAGA hat and the kids standing around it. But the episode brought it back to mind for me.
Brooks details a fascinating – and by “fascinating”, I mean “terrifying” – episode involving a chain of online “denunciations” that seem reminiscent of the sort of thing that got millions killed under Mao and Stalin. And the chain led back to one, er, man:
The guy who called out Emily is named Herbert. He told [NPR podcast] “Invisibilia” that calling her out gave him a rush of pleasure, like an orgasm. He was asked if he cared about the pain Emily endured. “No, I don’t care,” he replied. “I don’t care because it’s obviously something you deserve, and it’s something that’s been coming. … I literally do not care about what happens to you after the situation. I don’t care if she’s dead, alive, whatever.” When the interviewer, Hanna Rosin, showed skepticism, he revealed that he, too, was a victim. His father beat him throughout his childhood. In this small story, we see something of the maladies that shape our brutal cultural moment. You see how zealotry is often fueled by people working out their psychological wounds. You see that when denunciation is done through social media, you can destroy people without even knowing them. There’s no personal connection that allows apology and forgiveness.
My theory? The Covington social lynching, like the paroxysm of gleeful hate around the Kavanaugh hearings, are the result of an awful lot of people who’ve never learned to see political differences as anything but “hate” being told to “punch a Nazi” – and they can’t find any actual Nazis, because there are bowling leagues in Cincinnati with more people and political clout than the Nazi party in the USA today – but then again, to them pretty much everyone they disagree with is a Nazi…
…and they can’t punch, anyway. So they use the only weapons they have; the social media mob.
I collect great speeches. I’ve got a whole slew of big ones; Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” and the “Dunkirk” speech, Reagan’s “Shining City” and “A Time for Choosing” and the Brandenburg Gate speech, Kennedy’s “To The Moon!” and his Little Rock speech, “I Have A Dream”…
…and about a year ago, I finally got a copy of Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been To The Mountain“, made the day before he was assassinated. And while I’ve been hearing about the speech for decades, it’s amazing to listen to. Some speeches inspire you; some make you angry; “I’ve Been To The Mountain” is a little of everything, but also draining. It is almost emotionally exhausting to listen to.
But it’s worth a listen; it’s one of the greatest speeches in American history.
It ends with an account of a near-death experience when a woman tried to stab him, years ago in New York.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.” She said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.” And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, been in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze. And they were telling me, now it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.” And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”
It’s close to becoming a Berg’s Law: terms like “White Privilege”, “Misogyny”, “Bigotry”, “Hate” and “Mansplaining” are rarely anything more than ad homina that one can use without being accused of trafficking in a logical fallacy.
The embarrassing moment occurred during a discussion about experience being more important than race when determining whether or not someone is qualified for a particular job. “I’ve chosen to cross different parts of the media world, done the work so that I’m qualified to be in each one. I never considered my color the issue, I considered my qualifications the issue,” Webb said. “That’s a whole, another long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing, that people of color don’t have the privilege of,” said Martin – who also hosts CBS’ “Face the Truth.” A dumbfounded Webb asked, “How do I have the privilege of white privilege?” Martin responded, “David, by virtue of being a white male you have white privilege.” The Fox Nation host then explained that he was actually black. “I stand corrected,” Martin said.
Of course, if Webb had been white, the proper response would have been “Ms. Martin, you’re not just illogical, you’re a bigot and get the hell off my show”.
The Metrocrats dropped “House File 8” (HF8) this past week. The bill will institute “Universal Background Checks” for all firearms transfers in Minnesota.
The bill:
Expands background checks to all firearms. Current law requires the for pistols and “assaault weapons”.
Raises the age to purchase a firearm to 21.
A permit to purchase is good for one firearm, and expires immediately. They are currently valid for a year. And you’d need to get one to possess or receive any firearm at all, and it includes transfers between private parties. We’ll come back to this part.
A permit to carry is no longer usable as a permit to purchase or transfer.
Chiefs of police will no longer be able to process transfers.
All private party transfers are covered; you’ll need to get a background check. Even/especially if you’re a straw buyer!
Getting rid of all exemptions in current law.
Anyone notice what that third bullet does?
Every legal transfer includes a background check.
For making those checks useful in tracing crime weapons, they need to keep those on record.
And in IT, we have a term for “pieces of data that contain pointers to new pieces of data”. That term is “database”. HF8 would create a registry of guns in Minnesota – or at least of the guns owned by law-abiding citizens.
But for all of his optimism, Reagan did leave his audience with one clear warning for the future. He said the country needed “an informed patriotism.” He greatly feared that we were not doing enough to foster it. “Are we doing a good-enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” Reagan bluntly asked. When he was young, the nation’s youth “were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American,” he noted. “And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.” Young people learned those lessons from family, in classrooms, and through popular culture.
…in a way that seems definitely concrete as hell today.
And I don’t think that’s been remotely accidental. If mainstream America doesn’t know what it’s got, how will it know how / whether to defend it? What, indeed, to defend it from?
A generation of our “best and brightest” are being raised in an academy that actively disparages the values Reagan espoused. The lowest form of life on the intersectional pecking order is “the conservative supporter of the American tradition”.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, self-described champion of the working person, fudged her workman’s comp for her own campaign employees.
That’s OK, there really are two different sets of rules out there, and nobody is going to make modern Progressivism’s “It Girl” accountable for anything of the sort.
But the rest of the world? That’s another story.
The restaurant at which the Congresswoman tended bar closed last August. And there, the story deepens – if you work for a living in the Bronx:
Interestingly, the progressive congresswoman bemoaned in August the closing of a restaurant where she was previously employed — however, the restaurant cited an Ocasio Cortez-endorsed policy as a partial reason for its closure. “The times have changed in our industry. The rents are very high and now the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees,” one of restaurant’s co-founders said at the time. “Ocasio-Cortez’s desired ‘living wage’ of $15 an hour has been a living hell for many small business owners in New York, who’ve been unable to offset the cost through higher prices,” Employment Policies Institute Managing Director Michael Saltsman said in response to the closure. “It’s fine to mourn the impending closure of your former employer — it’s better to understand the misguided minimum-wage mandates that contributed to that closure.”
That would require actual critical analysis on Ocasio Cortez’ part…
You are the supervisor hiring a new employee. HR tells you that if the group of eligible candidates contains a woman, you must give her preference over the other candidates. They send you five candidates, one of which is a woman. You hire the woman. Next job opening, same thing. You hire the woman. And the next. And the next. And the next. There’s always a woman in the candidate pool, and you’re always required to give her preference. Eventually, your entire workforce will be women. It’s a mathematical certainty. Now see Minn. Stat. 480B.01, the balance of sexes in law school enrollment and in the ranks of County Attorney and Public Defender from which many judicial appointments are made, and the history of actual judicial appointments during the Dayton administration. Now project the trend line to see where we’re headed. Eventually, all of Minnesota’s judges will be women. It’s a mathematical certainty. Here’s the big question: is that wise?
Given that before long 2/3 of college students will be female, that’s pretty much the mathematical certainty for all non-blue-collar jobs.
