Extremism Watch

Governor Klink (or one of the chirpy 20-somethings in his communications office) writes:

So let’s make sure we’ve got this straight. The governor whose party says:

  • public safety is a “privilege”
  • We need to ban most/all guns
  • The police should be defunded or radically reorganized
  • Parents should just shut up and let teachers and school administrators do their thinking for them
  • A five-year-old can pick their own sex
  • entire (politically favorable) classes of debt should be eliminated without consequencedebt should be eradicated without consequence
  • Society needs to be radically rebuilt from the core outward
  • fetuses should be abortable until birth, if not after

… feels the need to warn us about “extremism“?

Vow Of Silence

To: Governor Walz
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Debates

Governor,

You pretty terrible performance in his debate with Scott Jensen at FarmFest last week.

Which is, I suspect, why you’ve backed out of the traditional debate at the State Fair:

Governor Walz: Don’t like the noise, heat and humidity?

After doing like 14 years at the State Fair, I totally get it.

So I’d like to formally invite you and Dr. Jensen – either or both of you, honestly – to join me either Sunday afternoon, or any Saturday between August 27 and election day.

Of course, we’ll be talking about your response to Covid and the riots, as well as you propensity for naming giveaways for self-glorification (“Walz Checks”) and claiming credit for tax cuts you opposed, and the like.

But it’ll be cool and quiet.

Have your people call my people.

That is all.

Ray Of Hopelessness

I wouldn’t say there was much in the way of “surprises“ in the primaries last night. Mostly confirmation of existing hunches, and a brief stab of hope followed by waves and waves of confirmation that Minneapolis is not only screwed, but seems hell-bent on participating in its own screwing.

The marquee race, Don Samuels tackling Ilhan Omar, ended up a lot closer than I, or anyone, I suspect, figured it might.

That is painfully close. A few hundred people who kvetch about crime turning out? A few hundred Republicans crossing over? An errand thunderstorm? All could’ve affected the results enough to retire Omar.

I have to expect the results surprised congresswoman Omar as well; she ran almost no television, and a fairly languid campaign up until the frenzied (and occasionally tone deaf) tour with The Squad this past week. Primaries usually draw the party’s loyalists to the polls – the hard-core who also go to caucuses and the next layer outward. In Minneapolis. that generally means white, upper-middle-class progressives, and public union employees. I haven’t looked at the precinct results yet, but I have to suspect Samuels started getting people to the polls who normally wait ’til November, if at all, to vote.

Omar pulled it off by two points. If she doesn’t focus on crime, and Minneapolis continues to deteriorate, someone else – Samuels, or some new law and order DFLer – might have a shot.

Which is probably the closest thing we can find to a silver lining on the next two races.

In Hennepin County races, the top two finishers in the primary go onto the general election. and if the choices of the county voters gave themselves last night are any indication, there is going to be a big opportunity for a “law and order“ candidate in two years.

It’s hard to come up with an adjective phrase even softer than “soft on crime” to describe the choices that will move to the November ballot. Mary Moriarty and Martha Holton Dimick will be the “options“ this fall for Hennepin county attorney. Mori

And for sheriff, committed progressive Dawanna Witt will square off against Joseph “Who?” Banks. When Witt wins, she will make Dave Hutchinson look like Ted Nugent.

Last night – at least as re the CD5 DFL primary – was a little spasm of common sense and protest voting in the highest profile race in the city, the results are fairly clear; the people who come out of the primaries are fine with Minneapolis’s status quo.

On the other hand, the DFL finally cut itself loose from its biggest public relations boondoggle of 2020; John Thompson got pummeled, with a level of voting that suggests orders went out from party HQ:

And in house district 52 a – the area around my radio station – the reliably moderate, center left Sandy Mason got pummeled…

by…

Liz Reyer.

Liz who?

I don’t know who she is, but she pulled off the exceptionally difficult combination of “ELCA hair“ and pink. Not just literally, but figuratively and morally:

So Eagan has moved from center left to “Alandra Cano“ territory.

On the GOP side: Jim Schultz beat back a challenge from Doug Wardlow, to advance to run against Keith Ellison for Attorney General this fall.

Every time I see these, I have to ask – who are the 12 freaking percent of people who vote for Sharon Anderson?

I’ve got nothing against Wardlow; I’ve emceed or spoken at five of his fundraisers over the years. but I’m having a bigger and bigger problem with people defying the party endorsement. Especially after saying they would honor it.

Speaking of honoring endorsements: in the new 33B, endorsed candidate Mark Bischofsky prevailed over Tina Riehle, a candidate supported by most of the GOP brass (including Kurt Daudt and Karin Housley, who took a break from opining for the sanctity of the endorsement to float Riehle against the endorsed candidate, for reasons I am just not advanced enough an intelligence to figure out)

Here’s hoping the GOP can pull it together enough to get behind the primary winner, and flip that very winnable seat.

Open Letter to Rep. Phillips

To: The Hon. Rep. Dean Phillips (MN-03)
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Burning Daylilght, Bucko

Rep. Phillips.

You recently tweeted this:

Well that’s great.

But I’ve got some questions.

For starters: you’ve had two years with control of the presidency and both chambers of Congress. Why, 2.5 years into this period of complete control, are you suddenly concerned with jobs leaving, prices rising, debt skyrocketing, the price of medicine and “climate change”?

Did you used to wait to do your school projects to 9PM the night before they were due? Did your entire conference?

Also – as I asked your colleague Rep. Craig the other day – what powers to you, a Congressperson, have to affect any of those issues via your votes?

Open Letter To Rep. Craig

To: Rep. Angie Craig
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Your Superpowers

Rep. Craig,

The other day, you tweeted this:

Please tell us what ability you, a Congressional Rep and member of the Legislative Branch, have to influence the price of commodities, like gasoline?

Also – you’re aware that gas prices are falling because the market is reacting to the recession that your party is trying to tell us doesn’t exist, right?

That is all.

Uncancellation

Last week, after a brief campaign by the DFL‘s noise machine too spin remarks by GOP lieutenant governor candidate Matt Birk out of context, to local restaurants – the nook and Shamrocks, both owned by the same company – removed the “Matt Birk“ burger from their menus.

The petition reportedly got 176 signatures. And the restaurants caved.

I think it’s high time they realized that the vast majority in Minnesota does, in fact, stand for a free market of ideas, where everyone can and should be heard without having to worry about having their livelihoods clobbered by the mob.

The first step of pushing back? What the heck – a counterpetition. If they got 176 signatures? We are going to get 352.

There’s a pretty good chance this is going to be followed by a group of people who like burgers, and who tip well, going down to one of those restaurants just to make sure they’re getting the message.

Go ahead Dash sign up. And pass the link around to everyone who is sick and tired of cancel culture and doesn’t want to take anymore.

A Little Good-Ish News, If You Consider “Courts Supporting Common Sense” To Be Good News

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails about yesterday‘s New York Supreme Court ruling:

The New York State Supreme Court struck down a New York City ordinance allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections. What a bunch of haters.

The Boston Tea Party was based on “no taxation without representation.” The Declaration of Independence affirms that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. The Constitution lays out the formula to determine consent, through voting. The consistent underlying principle is that the people who will be affected by the rules imposed by the government ought to have a say in who makes up that government. And illegal aliens hiding in the city are affected by the rules adopted by the City Council as much as anybody else, so they ought to have a say in who sits on the City Council as much as anybody else.

And why should it end there? Citizens of foreign nations are affected by laws made in the United States Congress: foreign aid payments to their nations; wars waged in their countries; immigration encouraged or not. Why doesn’t every citizen of every nation get to vote for our Congress?

Why should they have to vote at all? That’s a heavy burden for someone who doesn’t read or speak the language, can’t complete the Request for Absentee ballot, can’t afford postage to send it back on time. Why not let US-based voter advocates cast ballots for them? They could bring ballots by the suitcase full, helpfully completed on behalf of all the citizens of the world.

And why bother with paper ballots for all those people? Think of the expense and wasted time, running them through the machines again and again until the right guy wins. Why not simply program the machine to give the desired result and be done with it?

It’s a slippery slope the court has chosen, this notion that only certain people should be allowed to vote. Probably a bunch of MAGA Trumpers on the court. Or worse, Open Borders Libertarians.

Joe Doakes

Don’t be giving Steve Simon any ideas.

Junetwentieth

Goivernor Klink on Twitter over the weekend, commemorating Juneteenth:

“…work to dismantle unjust systems of oppression”

Like open-ended emergency powers that can be extended endlessly at the whim of a political party in power?

Like arbitrary authority that allows a governor to crush businesses at a whim, but spare the ones that donate to his campaign?

Those sorts of systems of oppression?

On it.

Results

The Pioneer Press, apparently knowing (what little is left of) its audience, says:

Now, I don’t pry into other peoples personal healthcare decisions, and I’m pretty merciless to any idiot who tries to yap about mine.

But it’s worth noting that Dr. Jensen, though not vaccinated, appears to have missed zero days of work or campaigning due to Covid.

In the meantime, the people who run this state – Lt. Governor Flanagan and her figurehead, the…uh, somewhat comorbid Tim Walz – have both had Covid and been off the job in the past couple years.

Correlation – especially with three data points – isn’t causation.

But it’s a better correlation than the one data point the PiPress ran with.

The Battle/s For The GOP

Every election, and GOP primary, is a “referendum on Donald Trump”.

Just ask the Democrats and media (ptr), who want and need every election to be a referendum on Orange Literal Hitler.

Of course, as a conservative who wants to see DeSantis mop the floor with whomever the order of succession puts up against him – Harris? Pelosi? Buttigieg? Beto O’Rourke? – in 2024, I’d very much like the whole “referendum on Trump” thing to shut up and go away.

The Youngkin victory in Virginia last fall should have put that to bed – he was elected while the Democrats tried to make the vote about Trump, and still try to retroactively apply him to the race – but then, our media being dishonest about this sort of thing is hardly Man Bites Dog, now, is it?

This past week has given both sides evidence.

The primary in Pennsylvania earlier this week had Dr. Mehment “Doctor Oz” Oz winning the Senate primary – but by a narrow enough margin that Trump reportedly may start swearing off endorsing people.

On the other hand, in Georgia, Trump’s bete noir Governor Kemp cruised to a comically easy victory over Trump-endorsed Perdue in the race against Stacey Abrams, the unelected real president of the US and EU.

In the meantime, a week that saw Madison Cawthorne exit his race, saw Marjorie Taylor Greene winning her contest handily.

My two cents: The battle will center on the GOP fight against the depredations of Obama’s third term, versus the Democrats trying to stretch Donald Trump’s relevance two years beyond his exit from office.


Meanwhile, in Minnesota, the CD1 primary ended in a recount-worthy race between Brad Finstad and Jeremy Munson…

…and a blowout of Jim Hagedorn’s widow and, uh, controversial former MNGOP chair Jennifer Carnahan.

Who may still seek a recount, for all we know.

Game Day

In addition to a number of primaries that may or may not be referenda on Donald Trump, depending on who you ask (more tomorrow, hopefully), today is the first of four drama-clogged elections in Minnesota’s First Congressional District.

As the Strib notes, there are twenty candidates in the running. The DFL (8 candidates) and GOP (10) ones are vying for a significant shot on the ballot in a special election coming up on August 9.

You can fairly feel the media, practically begging for a strong performance by Jennifer Carnahan, widow of the late Rep. Hagedorn and controversial former state GOP chair. It’d guarantee a couple months of soap-opera drama before a DFL victory – a win-win for the DFL and media (pardon the redundancy). Matt Benda has the money; State reps Jeremy Munson and (to a lesser extent) Nils Pierson have the political name recognition.

Tomorrow’s going to be a fun one.

Coming Not To Bury, But To (Strange As It May Seem) Praise

This blog hasn’t shown a lot of love for Ilhan Omar.

There are a lot of good reasons for that.

But as Greenwald points out, there’s more than one dimension to keep in mind:

The first point in particular – I was unaware of it, but am happy to see she stood on a principle most of us can agree on.

It almost physically hurts to say it, but ya gotta give her some credit.

The honeymoon won’t last, but let’s give her that.

Chilling Effect?

Asking for voter ID is the next step toward a government run by the KKK.

Unless you’re actually a DFLer.

Then…:

To be a delegate at DFL State convention, you need:

May be an image of text

Photo ID, proof of vaccination, and qa negative test result?

The DFL does know that Black men are the least-vaccinated population in Minnesota, right?

It’s almost as if they’re trying to…

…keep black men from participating?

“One Minnesota”

During his 2018 campaign, Governor Klink used the slogan “One Minnesota”.

To those of us who study history, that caused a mirthless chuckile; German historians finished the slogan out: “One People, One Minnesota, One Leader”.

And those of us who remember history were right; when politicians yap about “unity” and “One” anything, it’s about making everyone equally miserable and straitened, not happy and prosperous.

Case in point: Minnetonka is being OneMInnesota’ed.

The Good News: No More Need For Conspiracy Theories

The bad news? Reality may be worse.

I had Representative, and with any luck at all, next year, Senator Eric Lucero, on my show last weekend.

He talked about “ESG” – short for “Environmental Social Governance”, which is basically the plan, well underway, to impose “social credit” scores on businesses. These will inevitably trickle down to citizens.

The conversation should scare the crap out of you.

You don’t need conspiracy theories anymore. This is the real thing.

Lie First, Lie Always: In The Footsteps Of Wes Skoglund, The Shadow Figure Staggers Through The Winter

Senator John Marty is apparently working hard to burnish his cred as a progressive extremist.

Yesterday, he introduced a bill to require licensing for gun owners.

And in it, he proved himself a word the successor to Wes “Lying Sack Of Garbage” Skoglund and the “Reverend“ Nancy Nord Bence, in that nut a shingle claim he makes is it simultaneously substantial, original and true.

Seriously:

“For young people, the 15-year-olds who can easily access guns now and commit armed carjackings and murders and other things, you know, they would have to go through training and they would have to go through a process to do this,” said Marty. “And, we would have limits so that some of these 16-year-olds couldn’t go out and buy guns.”

Anyone see the problem in the Senator’s statement?

Anyone at all?

I don’t want to keep seeing the same hands, here.

It’s Time

To: Senator Warren Limmer, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the entire Senate GOP Caucus

From: Mitch Berg, irascible peasant and, hate to say it, guy who’s starting to feel like a bit of a chump

Re: Action

Senators,

Let me direct your attention back to 2002. The GOP had played safe on “shall issue” carry permit reform for years. But in 2002, just in time for those crucial midterms, the GOP doubled down.

The time was right. Every DFLer in greater Minnesota who opposed the bill in the 2002 legislature, got retired from office that fall.

OK. Back to the present. it’s 20 years later, gun rights are in the ascendant. Why are you acting like it’s 1996?

We need to talk.

I supported you. When your people called, I gave you airtime. I voted for you.

Enough of us did to keep you in the majority – last year, against incredible odds, when most of the smart money said we would be falling into the minority again.

A key part of that fairly miraculous performance was the fact that Minnesota’s hundreds of thousands of gun owners turned out for you, come hell or high water.

So here you are, now, sitting on a thin majority, heading into a midterm where all the signs show the people are chomping at the bit to get out and support red meat conservative issues.

So, Senator Limmer, why in the flaming hootie-hoo are you sandbagging us on stand your ground and constitutional carry?

Despite complete GOP control in the Minnesota Senate and years of promises to Minnesota’s law-abiding gun owners, the Senate GOP is not moving on important gun rights legislation.

Call Senator Warren Limmer, Chair of Senate Judiciary, TODAY and demand hearings on Constitutional Carry and Stand Your Ground.

Then visit our Action Center at http://gunowners.mn/action and send an email to your State Rep & Senator demanding action on this important gun rights legislation.

They’ve made campaign promises of support for these bills for years – let’s hold their feet to the fire to take action!

If I may speak frankly – and it’s my blog, so I certainly may – you have played it too safe, and squandered opportunities to move the needle, for far too long.

Please see to this ASAP.

That is all.

The Real Election Fraud

One out of six Biden voters would have changed their votes, had they known about the Hunter Biden laptop story. That would’ve been more than enough to turn a close election into a landslide for Donald Trump.

It’s being noted that, two years later, the New York Times is finally covering the story.

But it was never “disinformation”, nosirreebob.

The idea that this is not the plan, to say nothing of “non-accidental,“ is impossible to the point of being a media unicorn descending from heaven.

We know this, because three weeks after the election, representatives from the New York Times and Washington Post news rooms (speaking in the open, on a national public radio program), declared their mission to be to go to change the walls” of the media, from “passing on the facts and telling the story“ to “denormalizing Donald Trump“.

Do people think there is no connection?

Appeal To Ridicule

Senate majority leader Gazelka called it: the various metro teachers unions are making a grab for a chunk of the “9 billion dollar surplus”.

Erin Murphy – Senator from the mean streets of Highland Pari, and living proof that the DFL is the party of misogyny – decided to chirp:

Yeah, those damn teachers…

…who work for a system that is the biggest consumer of tax dollars in the state, whose administrative overburden is the biggest single expense, and whose union is by far, not even close, the biggest and most powerful lobbying body in the state.

Solidarity

On Sunday, Governor Walz declared “solidarity day“ with a population whose home was invaded, looted, pillaged and burned.

No, not Lake Street or University Avenue.

I know, I was confused, too.

Anything to deflect away from the unrolling disaster that is the Metro…

SIDE NOTE: Have you never noticed how the correlation between “People who use the phrase ‘stand in solidarity with…'” unironically and “irreparable douchebags” is just shy of 100%?

Lie First, Lie Always: John Marty Is Coming For Your Guns

After a few fairly quiet years, gun control is back in the MN Legislature.

Alice “The Phantom” Hausman (who isn’t any better about being seen in 66A today than she was in 66B fifteen years ago, and whose upcoming retirement from office is greeted by many with “I thought she already was…“) has introduced the House version of a bill unreeled a few weeks ago by Senator John Marty.  The only real question this time around is “which gun control activist is she going to pick to introduce her bill in committee this time?”

So – in a year where people have had enough of crime, where gun sales and carry permits have broken all previous records, and when gun control in general is polling the lowest it has since it became an issue, about 55 years ago, why is Minnesota’s radical left suddenly going long on it?

I’ts simple.  Science. 

We’ll come back to that. 

Fighting For His Life:  Redistricting has pitted Senator John Marty (DFL-Roseville) against Senator Jason Isaacson (DFL-Suburb Full Of The Un-Bright).  In the scramble to reorganize around the new boundaries, they both have roughly 6-8 weeks to appeal to their party’s base – insane “progressive” extremists – to get the nomination to go ahead.  

It is a race to the bottom in ever since.  And Marty, on the subject of “who’s craziest about guns”, jumps out to an early lead.  He wrote this op-ed on some astroturf radical-left blog a few weeks ago outlining the philosophy behind his bill:


The recent conviction of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery is welcome news; it has been described as “justice being served.” The convictions were appropriate for the three white men who followed a young black jogger in their cars, confronted him, and then shot him. But it cannot bring back Ahmaud Arbery. Convictions alone cannot be seen as justice.

Beware.  A “progressive” is going to start talking about what “Justice” really is.  

When people – and in many states, the laws – allow armed people to chase others they suspect might have committed theft, and if they get scared about their safety in the ensuing struggle, kill the person they are chasing, we have normalized lynching.

What Marty has done, here, is take a couple of facts, and turn them into a bald-faced, inflammatory lie. 

You are allowed to chase thieves.  Even alleged thieves.  

And if you reasonably and immediately fear death, use only the force needed to end that threat, are not the aggressor, and in many states make reasonable efforts to disengage, you can defend your life.  

A jury found that the Arbery’s killers didn’t meet – or come close to meeting – the standard for self-defense (even given the antiquated pre-Civil War law allowing whites to chase blacks, which the defense tried in its desperation to use).   

If the rules in Georgia “normalize lynching”, they’re sure going about it the long way, since all three men have been “normalized” into life terms in jail, at the very least.  

So Marty’s lying. 

The killers in the Arbery case, like the killer of Trayvon Martin in 2012, claimed that they were authorized by the law to make what they considered a citizen’s arrest. In both cases, when the young black men being hunted down, undoubtedly frightened, resisted their assault, the killers said that they became frightened and needed to shoot as a matter of self-defense. The people who provoked the incidents claimed self-defense.

And again, Marty’s lying about the Martin case.  I won’t go through all the details…

…because Massood Ayoob already did, and with a level fo detail that everyone should bring to the table in trying to debate gun grabbers like Marty and Hausman

Although the courts convicted the killers in the Arbery case, our laws are encouraging vigilantism. Multiple states have enacted the NRA-backed “stand your ground” laws, where a person can shoot someone based simply on their subjective feeling that they are at risk, even if walking away and avoiding the confrontation was a reasonable alternative. In Minnesota, there are currently at least three proposed bills to adopt a stand your ground provision here.

Marty is not only lying, here – self-defense involves the “subjective feeling”,  provided a jury agrees that the feeling was reasonable, the fear was immediate, the shooter wasn’t the aggressor, and the force used was reasonable. 

And he’s playing word games.  Years of abuse of “science” have trained ignorant people with big vocabularies that “subjective” is a synonym for “inferior”.  I’ve had at least one person – with a PhD in Education, no less – say this regarding “Stand your Ground” laws. 

To which I respond “what ‘objective’ standard “perceiving an imminent threat’ do you recommend?”

It was a short conversation.  

These laws give people a sense of entitlement to bring high-powered weapons to public settings, ostensibly to protect themselves or other people or property. In the recent Kenosha case, Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who was acquitted, felt it was his right to bring a high powered, semi-automatic rifle to a protest. Rittenhouse’s lawyer said that he did “nothing wrong.”

Marty’s lying again.  Rittenhouse’s defense claimed his shooting was justified.  A jury agreed.  

Stand your ground laws promote vigilante justice, and guns in the hands of racist vigilantes lead to modern-day lynchings. We need to repeal those laws and take a comprehensive look at how we regulate guns.

Marty is lying and preying on his audience’s ignorance.  

“Stand your ground” wasn’t a factor in Rittenhouse’s defense; he may have tried harder to retreat than any self-defense defendant I’ve ever seen (with the possible exception of this guy).  

And it wasn’t part of the Arberry case, either.  

Practically anyone can purchase an arsenal of weaponry powerful enough to gun down dozens of victims in minutes, including semi-automatic rifles and large capacity ammunition magazines.

And yet practically nobody actually does it.  

In a nation with more guns than people, if law-abiding gun owners were a problem, you’d know it. 

After so many years in which the gun lobby dominated the political system, it is a hopeful sign that we are seeing the beginning of a national conversation about gun laws.

As we’ve noted countless times in the past, whenever leftists start talking about “conversations about giuns”, they mean “they lie, scream, defame, slander and insulit; you listen”. 

Which is what Marty is doing.

Up next, Big Left’s inevitable deflection to cars:

As we work to promote safer communities, consider how we regulate automobiles. There are lawful uses for both guns and cars, but both are deadly when misused.

With cars, we require the operator to be trained, licensed, and insured. We register the vehicle, and re-register it when transferring to a new owner.

Except literally nobody says owning and driving a car is a constitutional right – a mandated “Right of the People”, on par with free speech, assembly, worship and the press.

John Marty should propose training for people to be allowed to vote. 

Licensing for the news media (that may be redundant these days). 

Insurance before worshipping. 

Make that dog hunt, Senator.  Then we’ll talk.  

We don’t have a gun registration system because the gun lobby has used fear tactics to fight even modest regulation. They say, “First they’ll register your guns, then the next thing they’ll do is take ’em away.”

Right. Just like they did with cars…

Well, no.  Just like they did with guns, in New York. DC, Chicago, and like they tried to do in California, Virginia and New York State.  Not to mention the UK and Australia, in the past few decades.  

But keep talking about cars. 

So what is Marty proposing (with emphasis added by me):

Here are some reasonable changes that are long overdue:

Licensing gun owners and registering firearms, requiring training and insurance.

Which takes us back to having to get permission from a state functionary to exercise a constitutional right, and requires trust that a future administration won’t revoke the licenses and send cops around to the registered addresses to round ’em up at their pleasure.  

Like they did in Chicago, DC, New York City, Australia, the UK, and like they tried to do in New York State, California and Virginia. 

– Prohibiting people without occupational need or personal safety risks from carrying weapons, whether concealed or openly brandished, around the community.

This is just pandering to “Karen”.   There is an extremely negative correlation between carry by the law abiding citizen, with or without a permit, and crime committed by those citizens.  

– Putting a lifetime ban on gun ownership for people convicted of violent crimes.

This is just pandering to the ignorant; these people are already banned from owning guns until their rights are restored by a judge.  Someone convicted of a violent crime will have a pretty steep burden of proof to get a judge to restore their rights – outside Hennepin and Ramsey counties of course.  

Perhaps Marty should propose registrations, licensing and lifetime bans on judges that catch and release violent criminals?

– Banning certain dangerous weaponry such as large capacity magazines.

Which are, again, not correlated in any way with the street crime that accounts for most gun homicides.  

These modest proposals do not punish responsible gun owners any more than vehicle registration punishes responsible car owners.

And again, this is mealy-mouthed double talk.  Marty is lying.  He proposes confiscation of guns – which only happens to those who are law-abiding and responsible. 

But these proposals will help stop the arms race on our streets where gang members are more heavily armed than the police and where anyone with a temper or a minor grudge can end up murdering someone in a road rage incident.

Wait – what?

Gang members aren’t “responsbile gun owners”, or even legal gun owners.  Ands they will not be getting licensed, buying insurfance, or registering their guns.  

None of my audience needs to be told this.  And I suspect none of Marty’s audience gets the distinctionn

Regulation saves lives. Over the last 75 years, motor vehicle regulations have cut the traffic death toll by about 90 percent, based on the number of miles driven.

Logic isn’t a long suit of Marty, or anyone who votes for him.- but the distinction wouldn’t confuse a moderately bright fifth grader; the lawful, ordinary use of cars is prone to accidents.  Ensuring their safe use, and making cars themselves more accident. proof, will have an effect. 

Guns are designed to poke holes in targets, whatever that target is.  That’s their purpose. 

If gang members start running down crowds of people with cars, Marty’s analogy would be marginally less nonsensical. 

Speaking of nonsense, Marty is going to butcher the sainted memory of Justice Scalia:

Regulating firearms would reduce fatalities too. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Second Amendment gives an individual right to bear arms in self-defense, but that is not an absolute right. The court says that reasonable restrictions may be placed on the possession of firearms.

Commenting on Scalia’s dicta on the Heller decision should only be allowed to people with licenses and insurance.  

“Reasonable regulation” incliudes keeping them out of felons hands – prudent restrictions against objective issues.  

Not the sort of Karen-baiting ninnyism that Marty and Hausman are yapping about.

 


Blindsided Them With Science: So – why are Marty and Hausman going long on gun-grabbing, at the tail end of a decade that saw the most radical turnaround in public opinion in the history of the gun rights debate?

Polling shows that the public isn’t smelling what the DFL’s been cooking. Crime is making the Twin Cities – once the pride of the upper midwest, and crown jewels in “progressivism’s” CV, gradually unlivable.. Schools are collapsing, and the teachers union seems hell-bent on accelerating the unfolding disaster.

But the DFL has dealt with all of that before.

But there’s one more challenge – one the DFL hasn’t had to face in the past.

Science.

Let me explain.

After two years of lockdowns, mask hysteria, Vaccine Summer followed by Omicron Winter, and mandates, it turns out that pure, unadulterated science has found a cure for Covid-19: war.

And with the end of Covid, comes the end of the sort of bullying, log-rolling and virtue-screaming that validates and affirms the self-esteem of today’s generation of “progressives”.

With the end of Covid, and of bullying, log-rolling, of snitch-lines and the hierarchy of officially-blessed paranoia atop which they sat for two glorious (to them) years, their reason for existence has been undercut.

Marty senses – out of self-preservation, but not incorrectly – that trying to logroll and bully and harp on law-abiding gun owners (not gang bangers, nosireebob) might provide the sense of mission that events have so cruelly yanked away from Marty’s base.

Show me where I’m wrong.


Everything Old Is New Again

In 2010, faced with running against charismatic Republican Tea Party firebrand Tom Emmer with somnolent and visibly addled Mark Dayton, Big Leftymoney rallied enough money to prop up “moderate” “Republican” bureaucrat Tom Horner, an Arne Carlson/Dave Durenberger-era functionary designed to soak up “moderate” “Republican” votes from Republicans who found themselves disaffected by Tom Emmer’s “extremist” (as established in the coordinated media campaign supported by the same big leftymoney).

It worked. Horner soaked up enough squishes to give Dayton his margin of victory.

They’re trying again:

The signs are all there; Hepola gives off all the indications of being Leftymoney astroturf.

Of course, times are a little more parlous than they were in 2010. And the DFL faces two legal weed parties on the ballot, which will eat up a lot of younger DFL voters.

So the rationale is as clear as the provenance is murky.

By the way, I hereby invite Mr. Hepola on my show. I may be the only person in Twin Cities media who doesn’t paint his toenails on the air, which will likely be the showtopper, but the offer is made.