Truth!

Among the best ways for me to file your “argument” under “not worth the effort” is to begin with something like “your silence about [pick an issue that is not actually the subject of the current discussion] speaks volumes”, delivered with a rhetorical and literal “shame finger”.

I mean, I do appreciate the vote of confidence – your apparent belief that my addressing an issue on my show or blog will have some sort of affect on that issue over time, and that my “silence” – generally less “silence” than “lack of opportunity, interest, or any angle on which I have anything to contribute to the discussion” will cause the world such damage.

I assure you, it will not, but thanks for thinking I’m such a big cheese.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Obama Administration has been illegally maintaining a list of gun owners.

 This is my shocked face.

 Joe Doakes

How can you tell when a liberal policymaker is lying about “not coming for your guns?”

His lips are moving, or his fingers are near a keyboard.

“Seems like all the Bernie voters that wanted a free education just got one.”

  — my high school classmate Joe G.

…this time:

Clinton campaign manager: Russians leaked Democrats’ emails to help Donald Trump https://t.co/GxEWIOnAXt

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 24, 2016

And do it now!

A mass shooting in München (Munich) is just breaking.

Motives are nowhere close to being known – some sources claim “terrorism”, others are invoking Anders Breivik the anti-immigrant Norwegian who killed 70+ a few years ago.

Berg’s Eighteenth Law is iron-clad.

UPDATE:  Hmmmm:

A witness who wanted to be identified only by her first name, Lauretta, told CNN her son was in the bathroom with a shooter at the restaurant.

“That’s where he loaded his weapon,” she said. “I hear like an alarm and boom, boom, boom … and he’s still killing the children. The children were sitting to eat. They can’t run.”

Lauretta said she heard the gunman say, “Allahu Akbar,” or “God is great” in Arabic. “I know this because I’m Muslim. I hear this and I only cry.”

Again, Berg’s 18th Law is in full effect.  It’s entirely possible the killer is a Christian NRA member from Texas driven crazy by Trumpism and hatred of Obama and black people.    We are assured that a wave of such violence is around the corner – for like 20 years now.

The major media is never to be trusted for fast accurate reporting on these sorts of stories.

Never!

But if true…

The International Monetary Fund, after predicting that Britons would be “praying for the sweet release of death” with the Brexit vote, scaled back the gloom and doom:

After saying that leaving the European Union could trigger a UK recession, the International Monetary Fund now expects the British economy to grow by 1.7 per cent this year and 1.3 per cent next year.

That is weaker than the 1.9 and 2.2 per cent growth forecasts before the referendum, but the UK is still set to be the second-fastest growing economy in the Group of Seven industrialised nations this year – behind the United States – and third-fastest next year, behind the US and Canada.

Not that that’s any barn-burner growth rate – but since the IMF and the rest of Europe’s “elites”  predicted a zombie apocalypse, I’d call this a signifcant development.

As predicted, so far.

What – you want to tell me that a public union boss who’s an integral part of the machine in a major city that’s been run into the ground by decades of Democrat rule, doesn’t understand the concept of civil rights or the constitution?

The hell you say!

I’m just amazed that people thought this was a surprise.

To: Betsy Hodges, mayor, Minneapolis.

From: Mitch Berg, ornery peasant

Re: Rumors

Mayor Hodges,

Over the weekend, the rumor mill announced that you had told a gathering somewhere in Minneapolis you were planning on holding a “gun buyback”.

Please, please please please please please, oh please, please please please please please, I beg of you; go ahead with it.

You simply have to. I beg of you, with all my heart.

That is all.

UPDATE:  Rumor mill says it’ll be held August 27 at thePillsbury United Communities, or somewhere in that vicinity.

I’ve been a Comcast Internet customer for the better part of 16 years, now.
And are very, very rarely have problems with my service.

But when I do, it’s a humdinger. 

I’m going to hope to be back online on Monday.

…for the wave of “right wing violence” that, we are assured, will be much worse than Al Quada and ISIS and is just around the corner, honest, we see the left’s propensity to thuggery is alive and well:

An adjunct professor at Southern State Community College (SSCC) in Ohio is under investigation for threatening to shoot up the NRA.

“Look, there’s only one solution. A bunch of us anti-gun types are going to have to arm ourselves, storm the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, VA, and make sure there are no survivors,” James Pearce wrote in a Facebook post on June 13. “This action might also require coordinated hits at remote sites, like Washington lobbyists. Then and only then will we see some legislative action on assault weapons. Have a nice day.”

By all means, “professor ” Pearce, go for it.  

I have gun control advocates ask me constantly “so what’s wrong with ‘no fly, no buy’?” – in other words, with barring people on the feds’ double-dog secret terror watchlist from buying guns.

My response:  “You mean, other than completely sidestepping due process?   Well, there’s this sort of thing“:

Hawaii could become the first state in the United States to enter gun owners into an FBI database that will automatically notify police if an island resident is arrested anywhere else in the country.

Most people entered in the “Rap Back” database elsewhere in the U.S. are those in “positions of trust,” such as school teachers and bus drivers, said Stephen Fischer of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. Hawaii could be the first state to add gun owners.

In other words, the feds, or anti-gun states, can abuse databases – basically making entire classes of otherwise law-abiding citizens into de facto criminals with de facto trashed civil liberties.

Then, remember what happened in 2009 – when Homeland Security Theater secretary Janet Napolitano told law enforcement to watch out, essentially, for all conservatives, as potential terror threats.

Now, combine the three; the urge to abuse federal law enforcement, the power to ignore due process at will, and the technology to strip entire groups of their freedoms with the touch of a top secret button.

Obama’s America:  Orwell was only three decades off.

Reading this piece in the NY Times about feckless British millennials sniveling about the Brexit, mostly focusing on travel to the continent getting more difficult and overseas study getting more expensive (a very dubious conclusion),  it occurred to me – the millennial generation is more reactionary and terrified of change than their elders are.

Here’s to the 240th anniversary of the original Brexit.  

Our founding fathers bet long and all in on the idea that people could govern themselves.

This next few years will be an interesting time in terms of seeing if they were right.

A friend of this blog writes:

Hard to tell if this is supposed to be positive or negative publicity for the light rail- median income is down, we haven’t gentrified the area, and people and still mostly poor here. Was that the goal of the Green Line?

The goal of the Green Line was to make everything better.  Everything.

You just gotta be patient.

No.  Patienter.

(First, we gotta deal with the crime problem.  Then comes the happiness and joy).

In journalism class, my freshman year of college, the professor referred to the classic definition of the difference between news and, well, not news; “Dog bites man” is not news; “Man bites dog” is news.

With that in mind, this story qualifies as “Dog sniffs dog”.

Or maybe “Dog licks self”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails – reiterating something I myself posted on Facebook the other day:

Since the tragedy in Orlando, this sign has been popping up and gun sales to GLBT buyers are soaring.  

Great – if you know how to use one.  I’ve been shooting 40 years.  My sincere offer: if any GLBT new gun owner would like lessons, let Mitch know and we’ll arrange it.  No politics; no judgment; no fee: just safety and accuracy.

Joe Doakes

I did in fact make this offer on Facebook.

(more…)

I mean, this idea has worked so well for our diplomatic corps, up through Secretary of State, after all.

…the right-wing are the yokels.  The left?  They’re the intellectuals.

My mom worked at a nursing school. My niece is a NICU nurse.  I have quite a few nurses among my closest friends.  

So it’s hard not to say “I have all the sympathy in the world for the nurses that are striking at the various Alina hospitals”.

So I will let Larry from “Very Angry Bird” say it for me:

Normally, I am very sympathetic to anyone who is affected by the treachery and deceit of ObamaCare. The only ones who escape by shoulder to cry on are union types who supported ObamaCare when it was first being hatched. Since most unions are Democratic strongholds, the nurses union all supported ObamaCare. To put it in old west terms – they now know what it is like to be shot with their own gun.

nurses are wonderful people – but the nurses union is as hard left as the SEIU. The union jumped up and down and did cartwheels for Obama, and Obamacare, eight years ago.

Now, as the “Affordable Care Act” makes healthcare I’ll truly unaffordable for millions – exactly as predicted – the union is trying to insulate itself and its members from the policies that the union supported, worked for, and donated its members ‘money to.

Sorry, nurses. You lost me on this one.

While the pundits and talking heads make fervid proclamations about the Second Amendment – something many of them really just don’t get – the free market is voting with its feet:

“After getting robbed twice over the last three months, the owner of a Shell gas station in Sauk Rapids wanted to get more customers during the evening, hoping it would improve safety,” kstp.com reports. “Last week, station owner Frank Schwagel offered a 10-cent-per-gallon discount for law enforcement or people with proof of permit to carry after 7 p.m. each day.”

I’ve got four trips through the area planned between now and the end of October.   I’ll make a point of stopping at Schwagel’s store – even before 7PM, with no discount – to support them.  I hope you will too.

“Journalist” buys an AR 15 at a gun store, intending to caterwaul about how easy it is for law-abiding citizens to do things they have every legal right to do.

Violates state and federal laws in the process.

Seems there’s a lot of that going on.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!

I‘ll be filling in for Brad Carlson today; Brad’s off on assignment.

• No huge surprise.  I’ll be talking about Orlando, and the left’s manipulative, cynical reaction.
• I’ll be talking with Mark Steiger, president of Pink Pistols Twin Cities – an LGBT self-defense group.
• I”ll also be talking with 2nd CD candidate John Howe.

Don’t forget – on a normal weekend King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

Answer:   “Because he was always more Democrat than Republican, and he was always a liberal, full stop”.

Imagine how bad this could have gotten if Britain didn’t ban guns?

They need commonsense gun laws like the Chinese to prevent mass murder.

That so much of our mainstream media is grossly uninformed about the Second Amendment debate is a challenge.

That so much of the mainstream media gets their information from people who are actively trying to disinform the public is an affront.

This article – a WaPo piece from Christopher Ingraham – is a little bit of both.

I’m not going to pullquote it – it’s really too stupid to want to do more than acknowledge.  But it makes a point that some would-be public intellectual always tries to make whenever there’s a debate about the Second Amendment; in this case, this is what “arms” looked like when the founding fathers wrote the Amendment:

A British “Brown Bess” musket. The AK-47 of its day, it equipped both the British and most of the Continental Armies during the Revolution.

Right – the flintlock rifle was bleeding edge technology back then.  The “Brown Bess” smoothbore musket was the AK47 of its day; simple, rugged, built in immense numbers, capable of smothering firepower by the standards of the day.

Of course, at that time, the First Amendment referred to pretty much the printing press,

They never envisioned photography, linotype, telegraph, radio, television and the internet!

Freedom from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures and a general right to Privacy? The founders never envisioned organized crime, transnational smuggling, terrorism and cell phone encryption!

Trial by Jury? The founders had no concept of “paying for daycare!”

When society starts conflating “rights” with “technology”, we are doomed as a free society.

Maybe we are anyway.