Category Archives: PC

Political Correctness and its “unintended’ consequences.

Not Ready For Prime Time

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

White cop shoots Black youth in view of a million witnesses and store security video.  Where are the protests?

 Granted, the cop was off-duty, in civilian clothes, on personal business in a shopping center.  Granted, the youth was busy slashing shoppers with a knife.  Still – why isn’t this a racial hate crime?

 Maybe Somalis born in African who come to America as refugees don’t count as “African-American” but count as “White” the way Asians do for college admissions, and therefore this kid is not protest-worthy?  Or maybe the kid was a White Somali – they have them, you know; they sign up at the same place as Hispanics like that guy in Florida.   

Maybe St. Cloud is inconveniently far away if you depend on light rail for transportation to the protest?

 It’s just odd.

 Joe Doakes

In point of fact, they don’t count as “African-American”.

Segregated

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Cal State offers segregated housing for Black students.  This is a good thing, Black students demanded their own space, safe from racist attacks, racially insensitive remarks and micro-aggressions committed by faculty and students.

 Imagine if the headline said “Cal State REQUIRES segregated housing for Black students.”  The end result would be the same safe space for Black students; but would the headlines be as cheerful?  Of course not, freedom of association would be denied if Blacks were forced to segregate. 

 Imagine if White students said “Policing our speech to avoid micro-aggressions is mentally exhausting.  We want a safe space where we can freely express ourselves without offending others.  We want Whites-only housing.”  The end result would be the same campus free of micro-aggressions against Black students; but would the headlines be as cheerful?  Of course not, freedom of association would be denied if Whites were allowed to segregate.

 Why do these things always seem to be one-way streets?

 Joe Doakes

It’s only weird if your worldview is based in logic.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

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My new hero; the Lyft driver who told “Feminist” tyrant (and supremely annoying “human”) Annaliese Nielsen where to stuff her virtue-signalling:

Why is it so vital to resist the Wahhabi Social Justice Warrior?

Because they kill people.

UPDATE:  Commenter Seflores notes something that I’d missed the first time about Ms. Nielsen:

Coincidence? I think not.

And of course, being a “social justice warrior” in today’s academic and media society involves little more actual thought than…

I mean, why not?

Disparately Delicious

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The President calling on cops to admit they’re racist and the Pioneer Press article on racial disparity in regional park use gave me an inspiration: I plan to spend the weekend observing the customers at Big Daddy’s BBQ at Dale and University.  I strongly suspect that although the percentage of Black people in the United States is only 15%, the percentage of Black customers at a BBQ joint in the heart of a predominantly Black neighborhood will be significantly higher.

In the past, I would have said “Well, duh, it’s the local joint and they have award-winning food so why wouldn’t locals go there” but now that I’ve been educated about disparate impact, I can see it’s a clear case of institutional racism against White people.  I intend to protest this hateful practice until I get my order free.

 I’m having the half-rack of Beef ribs with collard greens and cornbread.  Wanna join me?

 Joe Doakes

I’m in.  See you there.

It reminds me of a story – quite possibly apocryphal – from North Dakota.  Back in the eighties, the Pentagon noted that roughly half of one percent of the population in North Dakota was black.   They sent a letter fo the North Dakota National Guard tellling them to take care that at least 1/2 of one percent of the NDNG were African-American – including officers and NCOs.

As the story goes, the state’s adjutant general wrote back, telling the Pentagon that the overwhelming majority of African-Americans in North Dakota were either college students, and thus only temporary residents, or already members of the United States Air Force and stationed in Minot or Grand Forks, and there really weren’t any eligible blacks to recruit.

Not out of institutional racism – but because at the time no black people lived there.

Change In Course

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Target to quit sponsoring Indy cars.

 Why quit?   They had a winning team, which means eyeballs on logo all season long.  Why would you give up advertising like that?

 Wrong eyeballs.

 The people who watch racing tend to be White Christian beer-drinking men.  Those people are not the “target” audience.  You can’t buy a spark plug or a shotgun shell at Target, a 2×4 or a necktie.  The chain is focused on women, gays and People Whose Lives Matter.

 Look for Target to shift the advertising money to a more politically correct area.  I wonder what?

My guess:  a Beyoncé tour.

Optimism

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Kurt Schlichter is predicting a dem meltdown.

Conclusion:

Nineteen sixty-eight was the year normal Americans saw the Democrats for what they were, and that’s the danger for them in 2016 too – that normal Americans will be reminded about what a circus of welfare-chiseling, race-obsessed, work-averse, baby-shredding freaks the Democrat party is.

So keep fighting for purity, Democrats – your painful cramming to pass your dozens of litmus tests is going to provide us with endless amusement. And don’t worry about us Republicans – it’s actually pretty easy to pass ours. You’re disqualified if you have ever given money or a medal to Hillary Clinton. After that, we can talk.

Amid all the predictions that this would be the end of the GOP – and I’m not happy with things, truth be told – this could turn out much worse for the Dems.

Policies Matter

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Not so long ago, a not overly bright person on a community forum called me a “racist” for asking “what does Black Life Matter” actually want?”

One might wonder if BLM is “racist” for finally answering my question.

Thing is, their ideas aren’t entirely wrong:

1. End “broken windows” policing, which aggressively polices minor crimes in an attempt to stop larger ones.

Broken windows policing has always been controversial.  But it’s worked; it was a key element in turning New York from a crime-sodden wasteland in 1975 to one of the safer cities in America in 2005.

It did lean hard on “communities of color” – because some of those communities have had all sorts of problems, both “broken windows” and crime.  We can debate the reasons for that – and a lot of African-Americans disagree with BLM on that; it’s usually they who are asking for more, and more integrated, police presence in their communities.

Is it possible to get good policing in a trouble community without impacting those, in the community, who are trouble?

2. Use community oversight for misconduct rather than having the police department decide what consequences officers should face.

I don’t disagree in principle:  groups investigating themselves never works.

But community review boards, especially in Democrat-run cities where most police problems are, inevitably turn into political footballs.

Better idea?  Make police carry individual liability insurance.  It’ll have the same effect it has on drivers; it’ll show us who the “bad” ones are, and fast.

3. Make standards for reporting police use of deadly force.

Excellent idea.

4. Independently investigate and prosecute police misconduct.

This would seem to make good common sense.

5. Have the racial makeup of police departments reflect the communities they serve.

A passable-sounding idea in principle; very hard to carry out in practice; if applicants for police service reflect the larger American community – 12% Latino, 11% black, 2% Asian, 75% white – what is “the community” supposed to do?  Assign cops to precincts on the basis of race?

Is it a good idea, though?  If our idea of “justice” is “bean-counting based on skin color”, then haven’t we really lost?

6. Require officers to wear body cameras.

Fine idea in practice, and I support it in principle.

The devil is in the details.  Can we allow officers to turn off their cameras?  Do you want officers stopping at Superamerica to take a dump preserved on the public record?

I’m not asking to be funny or gross.  If you allow officers to turn off the camera for purposes of bodily functions, then you create an opportunity – several, in fact.  Unethical officers will use that facility.   Bureaucrats will create more rules and procedures around cameras, which’ll take more time away from policing.

I’m in favor, but with questions.

7. Provide more training for police officers.

Not a bad idea, provided the “training” is useful.

8. End for-profit policing practices.

We’re talking about civil forfeiture, and even if the other nine proposals had been complete hogwash, this alone would be worth it.  Using funds from “crimes” that haven’t even gone to trial should be stopped, now.

9. End the police use of military equipment.

I’ll meet ’em halfway on this.   The hero gear gets way too much of a workout.  When you have armored cars and police in full battle rattle knocking down doors to serve warrants for non-violent crimes – pot dealers, people who owe the city money, that kind of thing – that does kinda send a message about what you think about “a community”.

10. Implement police union contracts that hold officers accountable for misconduct.

Now that is going to be interesting to see out in practice.

BLM’s got a few useful ideas.  Where they go wrong is in relying on politics and politicians to do the reforming for them.

The Army Of Davids. Or Abus.

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Everybody knows David slew Goliath, and that it was an amazing feat because David was a kid and Goliath a giant.  He won using a sling – a child’s weapon. 

 Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, says America needs an army of Davids, ordinary people with ordinary skills to take on extraordinary tasks using their own particular skills. 

 Suppose a fundamentalist Christian preacher in America were to embrace the concept?  Suppose he preached to his congregation: “God has turned His back on America because we have embraced Satan.  The only thing we can do is start over, just like Sodom and Gomorrah.  But we don’t have to wait for God to act, the Lord helps those who help themselves.  Every one of you can play a role in bringing God’s justice to this land, just like David slew Goliath, you can be an Army of Davids.  Do you work for the power company?  Search for a way to disrupt the grid.  Do you work in for the water department?  Search for a way to poison everyone in the city after you massacre the staff at the Christmas party.  Do you have knowledge of firearms?  Kill all the gays in a nightclub. You don’t need to travel overseas to kill sinners, they’re all around you.  You don’t need specialized training, you don’t need financial backing, you don’t need have your plans approved or coordinate your action with anyone else; just do it. The Lord will approve.”

 Suppose impressionable young men and women took him up on it and began to commit random acts of terrorism.  Do you think the Obama administration would find a way to restrict his preaching, limit membership in his church, seize his pamphlets, block his radio transmissions, deny him internet access?

 What if the preacher were a Muslim? 

 Joe Doakes

It’s simple:  If he’s Christian (and not explicitly “progressive”), he’s the “tip of the iceberg”.

If he’s Muslim, he’s a perverse aberration that reflects nothing

Quota

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

June 17th will be the 88th anniversary of Wilmer Stultz’s historic flight across the Atlantic in 1928, just one year after Lucky Lindy flew it, which resulted in a ticker-tape parade, meeting the President, lecture tour, book deal, product endorsements, new job, the works.  Not for him – for his passenger.

 You don’t remember Stultz?  He was the pilot of the airplane that Amelia Earhart rode in.  What, you thought she was the pilot, that she flew it solo, as Lindberg did, that she earned these honors on her own?  Not according to the scholarly articles cited on Wikipedia:

 “The project coordinators (including book publisher and publicist George P. Putnam) interviewed Earhart and asked her to accompany pilot Wilmer Stultz and copilot/mechanic Louis Gordon on the flight, nominally as a passenger, but with the added duty of keeping the flight log. The team departed Trepassey Harbor, Newfoundland in a Fokker F.VIIb/3m on June 17, 1928, landing at Pwll near Burry Port, South Wales, exactly 20 hours and 40 minutes later. There is a commemorative blue plaque at the site. Since most of the flight was on “instruments” and Earhart had no training for this type of flying, she did not pilot the aircraft. When interviewed after landing, she said, “Stultz did all the flying—had to. I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes.” She added, “…maybe someday I’ll try it alone.”

 Earhart actually did become the First Female Pilot to Fly Solo Across the Atlantic but not in 1928, she did it in 1932.  The first flight – the celebrated flight – was merely a feminist publicity stunt, akin to the two women dubbed “Army Rangers” last Fall and even our own First Affirmative Action President.

 Celebrating diversity is fine as entertainment, but it’s only entertainment.  Nobody wants their brain surgeon to be the guy who was socially promoted for diversity reasons instead of demonstrated competence.  Nobody wants their pilot to say “I’m just baggage, like a sack of potatoes, you’ll have to fly the plane on your own.”  And frankly, nobody wants to elect The First Woman President just so we can meet a quota.

 Joe Doakes

One can only wonder how much better this nation would be if Colin Powell, Tim Scott or Alan West had been our nation’s first black president.

Update Needed!

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Massachusetts passes bill to abolish biological term “sex,” replace with social construct “gender,” variable at whim.

 Next up: a bill to make Pi equal to 3 (to make math more rational and therefore easier for members of the teachers’ union to understand), and a bill to repeal the law of gravity (because it presently affects heavy people more and they tend to be Blacks living in food deserts). 

 I’m outraged that Minnesota Democrats are so far behind the times.  Why wasn’t Minnesota the first?

 Joe Doakes

Minnesota was always at war with Wisconsin, Winston.

Preparations

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock on November 11, 1620.

 Four years from this Fall, the United States will celebrate the 400-year anniversary of White People Coming to America.

 Who would you rather have as President overseeing that celebration: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?

 Joe Doakes

And I wonder how many Native Americans are looking at Trump and thinking “he’s got the plan…”?

June 6: A Tale Of Two Engines

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Bing – a search engine I rarely use (mostly out of habit) has this as its cover today – June 6, a rather significant date in world, especially Western, history:

Screen Shot 2016-06-06 at 10.57.23 AM

Don’t know your historical geography? It’s Pointe Du Hoc- the German strongpoint overlooking Omaha Beach, captured at immense cost by American Rangers who climbed a sheer cliff under fire 72 years ago today, with 64% casualties in a matter of hours.

Google – which, two weeks ago, honored America-hating radical and Bin Laden supporter Yuri Kochiyama with a Doodle – has this:

Screen Shot 2016-06-06 at 10.57.46 AM

Not that Microsoft is a saint in the whole “undercutting America” thing, but it’s getting a little insane.

(Via commenter JustPlainAngry)

Security Pantomime

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Milo Yiannopoulos is a gay British man who holds right-of-center views.  He’s been invited to speak at several American colleges campuses and calls his trip the “Dangerous Faggot Tour” which gives you an idea of his wicked sense of humor.

 His speech at DePaul University was disrupted by Black Lives Matter hecklers as campus security did nothing to maintain order. 

 Found this comment on another site:

 “DePaul ‘Security’ was analogous to the hand waving sign language translator from the Nelson Mandela memorial.  You don’t have to actually do a job, you just wear the shirt and scowl a lot and they write you checks!  Cargo Cult Security ™.”

 I am SO stealing that phrase!

 Joe Doakes

You and me both, Joe.

Sharks Everywhere!

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First things first:  I am pretty ambivalent about the Rest Room crisis.  I’ve joked that it’s a battle between hysterical ninnies on one side, and the smug, arrogant and complacent on the other.

But the “hysterical ninnies” have a point;  ambisexual restroom policies will give society’s thin residue of pervs one more avenue by which to exercise whatever urge overtakes them – in a society that, let’s be honest,  already offers them no shortage of venues.

So there’s a useful discussion to be had.

One of the most useless contributions to this discussion comes from “Dear Creepy Heterosexual Men Guarding Our Bathrooms”  a Facebook post by one Kasey Hodge (which has been breathlessly recirculated by a small army of others).

Sample excerpt:

So to those of you who think you’re being helpful by “protecting” me and my fellow women, you’re like a shark sitting in the Lifeguard chair. I wasn’t uncomfortable until you showed up at the pool and the only potential predator I see is you.

The most is being called “remarkable”, and Hodge “brilliant”, by a whole lot of people that, let’s be honest, we can’t expect to know better.

Now, I don’t disagree with a couple of Brilliant Kasey’s konclusions – that we need to end sexual violence *outside* bathrooms (does anyone seriously argue this?) and stop sexualizing children (some radical feminist agendas *do* dispute this, by the way) and that the restrooms are the least of our problems.    

But Briliant Kasey’s point of view – and the mass of fuzzy-thinkers who are golf-clapping it – concerns me on three levels.  

Four Billion “Sharks”:   Brilliant Kasey’s fear of heterosexual men seems to be misplaced and, let’s be honest, the kind of “overwrought” that takes a formal education to achieve. 

Think about it; when she calls the police, the odds are pretty good it’ll be men answering; the law of averages indicates 97% of ‘em will be heterosexuals (yep, there are female cops; when they wind up  in a jam with a bigger, badder bad guy, it’ll be the male cops who bail ‘em out).  When there’s a fire, it’ll be mostly males who go racing into the smoke (and yep, there are women on the fire department; when they can’t lift Brilliant Kasey’s obese uncle, it’ll likely be a guy who pitches in).  If she goes on a feminist drumming mission to Pakistan and gets kidnapped by the Taliban, it’ll be a bunch of males (straight and otherwise) who tramp through the mountains to find her.  

I have no doubt that she’s had a generation or two of professors and ideological matrons telling her that inside every straight male is a rapist just dying to get out.  

It’s a sick, offensive way of looking at 47% of the world. 

Inner Nature:  No civilized person would dream of telling a gay person to “shut up and act straight”.  Demanding people deny *what they are* is pretty barbaric.  

And yet Brilliant Kasey is mocking and denigrating males (including most gay ones) for exercising something what *they* are wired to be, by tens of thousands of years of evolution.   Evolution pretty much wires women to be nurturers, and men to be guardians (and “pretty much” is a surgically-precise qualifier, in this case; there are exceptions.  Please feel free not to spell them out when responding). 

Is that urge *arguably* misplaced in re the rest room controversy?  Arguably, maybe.   

So make *that* argument, Brilliant Kasey, rather than denigrate a strong plurality of humanity (with the enthusiastic, if deeply confused, agreement of much of this forum).   

Shut Up, Norman Lear:  Brilliant Kasey, apparently a high school student, perpetuates the myth that women are “oppressed” by – you get one guess, here – straight males.  This notwithstanding the facts that:

  • Those straight males grow up in a school system that systematically denigrates, and tries to medicate out of existence, “male” traits – aggressiveness, roughhousing, competition.  Go ahead, look at the Saint Paul Public Schools; “maleness” is a treatable condition in all but name!  Our school system spends 12 years very overtly trying to make boys act like girls.  “But wait!   Look at all the violence in our schools!”, you and Brilliant Kasey may respond.  That’s a *consequence* of this policy!   
  • Brilliant Kasey has a lot of female company at that school of hers; we’re on track to have between 60-66% of college degrees issued to women.   By the time young men decide whether or not to go to college, the education system has long since beaten any love of learning – or at least interest in schooling – out of them.  
  • One of the reasons feminists are bellowing more loudly than usual about “pay disparity” is that the claim has a shelf-life. In part because of the disparity in degrees among millennials, women below the age of 30 are earning *more* than men their age.  
  • While Brilliant Kasey has gone all splotchy with rage over the thoughtcrimes of heterosexual men, many of her sorority sisters are wondering where all the potential mates are.  Young men – disgusted and disillusioned by the social landscape they see – are opting to stay out of the whole “long term relationship” thing.  And getting blamed for it, natch – but by their mid-twenties, they’re pretty much used to that.  Some even revel in it.  
  • Let’s say Brilliant Kasey *does* overcome her fear of heterosexual men, and deigns to marry one.   Her spouse can look forward to a life of being considered guilty until proven innocent of any allegations of domestic abuse (men are guilty until proven innocent, although women initiate every bit as much domestic violence as men do), and, when Brilliant Kasey feels the need to “find herself” (again), an 80+% percent chance of losing his kids and most of what he *has* earned.  

And what happens after that lifetime of being denigrated, medicated, undereducated, underpaid, castigated, and legally excoriated?  Brilliant Kasey and her ideological wardens probably aren’t aware that male life expectancy has held steady, while it’s risen steadily for women.  It’d disrupt their narrative to note that while life is getting pretty good, or at least longer, for women, something’s amiss among the guys. 

If I were a betting man, I’d wager serious money that most responses to this will involve some variation on saying I’m “angry”, “fearful” or some such.  Just you watch.

I’m already laughing.  You’re been warned.  

The World Is Their Safe Space

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Faux Feminist “writer” Lindy West blocks conservatives wholesale on Twitter.

How wholesale?

Even lowly little me, Mitch Berg, from the far frontiers of conservatism, am blocked.

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I actually feel pretty jazzed about that.  Although I shouldn’t; West likely uses some sort of online ‘bot or another to block every account that references conservatism or libertarianism.

I guess I’m not that special after all.

It’s actually a sign of deep intellectual vapidity – being completely unwilling to deal with any form of dissent.  And it’s pretty much the norm on the American left’s social media.  Go ahead – try to leave a question with any leftist on Twitter.

Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 10.03.24 AM

The account should be named “OnlyCertainPeople4Alondra”.

Or Facebook.

I got banned from Rep. Norton's page after asking her to come on my show to discuss her legislation.

I got banned from Rep. Norton’s page after asking her to come on my show to discuss her legislation.

Or on their blog, Youtube channel, Snapchat…

They want the whole world to be their safe space – or at least the only parts of the world they let near them.

A Fine Line Between Experiment And Lunacy

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Immigrants are good for Minnesota: they bring us exciting new possibilities, interesting insights, exotic diseases such as tuberculosis.  

 “An alternative public health policy–one that the United States used for decades in the latter part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century–is to test immigrants and refugees for infectious disease before they are allowed into the country.

 In that earlier era, those who tested positive were sent home. Today, however, many are welcomed in and pose a risk of infecting the rest of the American population.”

 So – is America a melting pot, or is it a Petri dish?

 Joe Doakes

Find a fondue joint.

See if there aren’t health and safety standards for them.

Then let’s talk.

Sox It To Them

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It’s baseball season, time for the professional complainers to start whining about sports team names.  I have a suggestion – change them all to Sox.

 Baseball teams traditionally wear tall leggings.  We already have the Red Sox and the White Sox.  Change every team to Sox.

 ROY-G-BIV won’t get you very far, there are too many teams.  That’s okay, have contests to let the fans choose their new team name, maybe something linked to their location or history.

 Atlanta – Georgia – Peach State – obviously, they become the Peach Sox.

 Phoenix – desert – they become the Hot Sox.

 San Francisco – gay rights – Fabulous Sox (team color becomes lavender).

 Texas – everything is bigger – Big Sox.

 Minnesota – Twins – identical – Matching Sox. 

 Detroit is tough.  Their water is poisoned – Dry Sox?  Their infrastructure is in ruins – Wrecked Sox?   They seek a federal bailout – Need Sox?  The town is run by Democrats – Your Sox?  Tough one.  Besides, why does a town that has no running water need a baseball team?  Move them to somewhere prosperous and call them the Silk Sox.

 Or we could just ignore the whiners and get on with life. 

  Joe Doakes

Cleveland could be the Buckskin Sox.

Fake But Accurate-ish

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Whole Foods suing the hoaxer who lied about the cake.

It was all a lie, just like “hands up don’t shoot” or “he was cuffed when they shot him.,”  Why does the media believe it’s okay to substitute a desired result for objective truth?

I’m not talking about mindlessly parroting The Narrative on climate change, or gun control.  We expect that.  I’m talking about breathlessly reporting gay-threatening rainbow nooses (turned out to be an art project to raise awareness of LGBT suicide) or campus rape hoaxes, like Mattress Girl.   Their attitude seems to be that the fact the incident did not occur doesn’t mean it might not have occurred.  So falsely accusing someone of rape is simply a way to raise awareness of a problem that doesn’t exist, but could exist. 

Same idea with forged documents claiming Bush not serving in the military – fake but accurate, per Dan Rather.

And now gay-slur cakes.  Same idea.  Didn’t happen.  But could have.  So it’s all good.  The fact that an honest business had its reputation trashed doesn’t even cross their radar.

Liberals seem to believe an untruth told in furtherance of The Narrative is not a lie, it’s a Greater Good than the actual, verifiable truth, so you should be happy to be slandered. 

I hope Whole Foods pounds this guy into the dust for spreading lies about their business.

Joe Doakes

I expect an eventual, not-too-onerous settlement.  Fellow travelers and all.

This Is What 1933 Looks Like

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Christina Hoff Summers, Steven Crowder and Milo Yiannopolous versus the campus PC brownshirts.

Yes, I said “brownshirts”.  I very rarely invoke Nazi references.  I studied Naziism pretty closely; I invoke the history very, very sparingly, and with the precision of a brain surgeon.

Brownshirts on the inside.

UPDATE: Can’t believe I missed this; thankfully, someone got it in the comments:

Is it “1984”, or is it Macalester?

The Red Line

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Clearly, all of America’s school problems have been solved.

No, we know this, because thousands of American teachers will be taking time off during the school  year to attend a conference on “white privilege”.

The annual event is aimed at promoting the theory of White Privilege – that American society is hopelessly stacked against minorities and the only way to fix the system is for white people to acknowledge their immense “privilege” and repent.

Which brings up the two questions:

  1. What is “white privilege”
  2. What is it that you’d have us do about it.

The first?  Even asking will get you called a racists (as I found out on one particularly bobbleheaded neighborhood Facebook forum a few weeks back).   But one BLM activist defined it for me pretty well, last summer:  it’s being able to go into a room and not have everyone wondering if you’re “one of the good ones”.

Which sounds, to me, like freedom and equality.  Which may be a “privilege”, but it’s also supposed to be one of this nation’s ideals.

As opposed to this next bit (emphasis added):

“Our vision is to build a community committed to dismantling white privilege, white supremacy and oppression, every day, everywhere,” wrote Eddie Moore Jr., founder and president of “The Privilege Institute,” which organizes the event.

If “privilege” is equality, freedom, justice, and being seen as a person rather than a label, then you’ll “dismantle” it over my dead body.  You don’t gain freedom and equality by taking others’ away.  The Germans didn’t get any more free by killing Jews; the Klan got no more justice by lynching black people.

Repent, my ass.  It’s time to spread “privilege” around to all races, classes, orientations, religions, humans.

If this is the place where the civil war starts, then lock and m********ng load.

Rhetorically speaking, of course.

Virtue Whistles

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SCENE:  Mitch BERG is shopping in the dairy aisle at Target in Roseville.  

Suddenly, Avery LIBRELLE rounds the corner.  With LIBRELLE is Ashley FIGG, a young woman of apparently mixed but minority-ish ethnicity.  

LIBRELLE:   Merg!  It’s time for you to admit your privilege!

BERG:  OK.  I was born into an intact family who made sure I stayed in school, kept my pants zipped until I could support a family, and ensured I grew up knowing that actions had consequences.

LIBRELLE:   No, no, no.  You’re white!  I want to introduce you to Ashley Figg.  She is a student at Macalester College.

BERG:  Ms. Figg.

(FIGG glowers at BERG)

LIBRELLE:  We’re going to have a debate!

BERG:  A debate?

LIBRELLE:  Yes.  First, Ms. Figg.

BERG:  …I”m not really…

FIGG:   You are white.  You have privilege.

LIBRELLE:  Your turn, Merg.

BERG:  Um, OK.  Ms. Figg, what is it you would have us do about this “privilege” you talk about.

FIGG:  The fact that you even ask is racist.

BERG:  Um, how do you figure?

FIGG:  That’s racist, too.

BERG:  Seeking clarity in the discussion is “racist?”

FIGG:   You’re using your power over me.  That’s racist.

BERG:  That’s just bizarre.

FIGG:  F**k you.  I hate you.  I hope you die.

BERG:  (Turns to LIBRELLE):  Er, Avery?  What’s the…

LIBRELLE:  We should stop the debate…

BERG:  …um, yeah?

LIBRELLE:  Because clearly, Merg, you are racist.

BERG:  What, now?  I never mentioned race.

LIBRELLE:   You were using your power, being a racist.   Being a racist, race is endemic in everything you say, and do, and don’t say, and don’t do.  Right, Ashley?

(FIGG glowers)

BERG:  Lavrentiy Beria called.  He said “dial back the kangaroo”.

LIBRELLE:   And now you’re mansplaining.

BERG:  (Looks beyond FIGG and LIBRELLE).  Hey, look – it’s Hillary Clinton!  And she’s giving out suckers!

(LIBRELLE and FIGG wheel around, as BERG slips away)

(And SCENE)

(LIghts fade up in screening room.  BERG is sitting in the middle of the room.  A few rows behind, covered in popcorn debris and spilled soda, are Edmund DUCHEY and CAT SCAT, bloggers with “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com” a possibly fictional Minnesota liberal blog.  )

(DUCHEY leaps to his feet, scattering popcorn debris in all directions)

DUCHEY:  Merg!  Unless you can prove every word in that film short was true, you’re a liar!.  (Pauses to wipe drool from his chin).

BERG:  It’s satire.  It’s meant to illustrate larger truths through a caricature of people and events.  In this case, that the left’s social justice warrior class has become simultaneously obsessed with virtue-signaling, McCarthyistic witch-hunting and public shaming of dissenters, while simultaneously becoming less able to state a coherent case.

SCAT:  The fact is, the law says you have to have a degree in satire from an Ivy League school to practice it!

BERG:  You’re making that up.

DUCHEY:  So you’re saying it never happened?  Hah!

BERG:  Actually, of the dozens and dozens of these “dramatization” scenarios I’ve written in recent years, this one may be the least fictional of all.

DEUS (EX MACHINA, via thunderstorm).  You’re kidding?

(Urine stain appears on DUCHEY’s pants)

BERG:  (Looking upward)  Nope.    It pretty much happened.

DEUS EX MACHINA:  Wow.

(And SCENE)

 

La Generalissima

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29

Alondra Cano – “third world feminist” (whatever that means) and Minneapolis City Councilwoman – took time off from not bothering with her actual constituents’ real problems to sound off, like every other demigogue, on the Freeman press conference yesterday.

Her Facebook page seems to be set up to disallow copying, so I screenshot the whole dismal lashup:

 

screencapture

Let’s be clear, here; I don’t find the inquisition into possible police wrongdoing comical.

I find Alonda Cano – industrial engineer par excellence, social-media bully and frothing-yet-brittle demigogue – comical.

“Political pressure?”   The City of Minneapolis has bent over backwards to accomodate Black Lives Matter.  If a Tea Party or Pro-Life group ever blocked a freeway, the Minneapolis or Saint Paul police departments would rain down attack dogs and billy clubs like the Great Deluge.

Like all wannabe liberal demigogues, she’s making up her reality as she goes along, knowing the stupid and gullible won’t care.

It’s Probably A Good Thing It’s Raining Out

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31

Mike Freeman is set to announce whether there will be charges in the Jamar Clark shooting at 10:30 this morning.

Fox9 reports that Freeman will also show a number of videos – likely the ones that “Black Lives Matter” has been clamoring for.

My guess – and it’s only a guess?  The videos will support the officers’ side of the story, and Freeman will announce no charges.  Since Freeman isn’t running for office again, he can be the target for the community’s ire, taking some of the heat off of Mayor Hodges and Chief Harteau.   Again – it’s my speculation.

UPDATE:  No charges will be filed against the officers.

UPDATE 2:  Freeman is showing the videos.

UPDATE 3:  Nekima Pounds-Levy apparently wants to have quotas for charging and convicting officers.

UPDATE 4:  Did someone just threaten to burn the city down?

UPDATE 5:  Question from social media; “who let BLM (Pounds-Levy) into the press conference?”   Answer:  The same people who let them out onto 35W without repercussion.  The cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul have coddled BLM more than they would any other protest group.