SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking through the woods in Como Park, looking for a place to practice the bagpipes.

Suddenly, Avery LIBRELLE jumps out from behind a tree. 

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!  Your sides has been owned again!

BERG:  Er, Avery?  What are you doing in the middle of the woods?

LIBRELLE: Stakeout for climate criminals.  So anyway, we were talking about how your side has been owned again.

BERG:  “We” weren’t.  You were. 

LIBRELLE:  Hahaha.  And it comes from Canada.  Here.  Read it. 

LIBRELLE: So yet again, a Canadian proves he knows what’s best for us better than the American electorate does. 

BERG:  Well, no.  He’s shown he’s absorbed Deb Wasserman-Drescher’s chanting points like a Macalester College poli-sci grad.  Pretty much every point Richard Brunt of Victoria British Columbia says is wrong. 

LIBRELLE:  No way!

BERG:  Way.  Corporate profits are high because companies are sitting on cash, rather than investing.  The “under 6%” unemployment number is a sham; the percentage of people in the workforce who are working is essentially unchanged since the lowest point in the depression.  The GDP growth rate Mr. Brunt is bragging about is the slowest of any recovery in the post-war era. This is especially noteworthy because, normally, steep sharp recessions have steep, sharp recoveries (see 1982). This one was a steep recession with a painfully-slow recovery. How painful? The current GDP growth is equal to the WORST quarter of growth in the recovery from the 1982 recession.

Gasoline prices are “falling” to about $1 more than they were when Obama took office. Worse than that when you adjust for inflation. 

LIBRELLE:  Hah, Merg!  There is no inflation!

BERG:  Does you or Mr. Brunt ever buy bread, beef, chicken, eggs or health insurance?  …? CPI shows low inflation, but that’s largely a function of the price of debt – which is being kept artificially low:

Oh, yeah – and oil imports are declining partly due to the slow economy, and partly due to drilling in the Dakotas, which is basically happening over Obama’s, let’s just say, passive-aggressive objection.

As to the “respected around the world” bit? That’s just delusional.

LIBRELLE:  That’s just like a typical Repblicon.  A message based on fear!

BERG:  Fear?

LIBRELLE:  Yeah.  Fear of black people!

BERG:  How did fear or black people enter the conversation?

LIBRELLE:  You’re afraid, aren’t you?  Boo!  There’s a black guy sneaking up on you!

(BERG turns, inflates the bag on his pipes, and starts playing random noises to drown LIBRELLE out as he walks back to his car).

Harassment’s a bad thing.

If I had money and video talent, I’d re-shoot the original “Catcalling” video with a woman wearing a conservtive-themed piece of apparel. 

Now that would be interesting.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A nearby office has a student intern. She describes herself as a social liberal but fiscal conservative. She also believes women should have the right to abortion up to the point of viability because prior to that, the fetus is not a child and therefore is not entitled to the protection of law.

Even after all these years, I am continually astonished at how glibly supposedly educated people say ridiculous things.

If you’re socially liberal, you can’t be fiscally conservative. Food is a basic human right (socially liberal) but some people can’t afford to buy food. So what, we stick to being fiscally conservative and let them starve? No, we buy them food. Her social liberality trumps her fiscal conservatism and she ends up being a plain liberal, she just doesn’t have the courage to admit it to herself.

If we call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. And calling a child a fetus doesn’t make it something other than what it is – a child. All liberals agree women should be allowed to kill their children, the question is when to stop: at quickening, twinning, trimester, viability, partial-birth, or any time up until its second birthday? But no liberal is willing to say that aloud in plain English. They don’t have the courage to admit to themselves the plain truth of their desires.

Liberal is a synonym for willfully self-deluded. How can we save a society that refuses to admit the most basic, simple truths?

Joe Doakes

True.

But it’s also human nature to jump into pools feet first.

Especially when one lives in a place where calling oneself “conservative” is so socially dangerous.

…but one might be forgiven for wondering.

A couple of weeks ago, I was doing a piece about Tina Flint Smith, Minnesota’s first whore. Having someone like that in the office of lieutenant governor would serve to concentrate all of the power of the executive office…

… wait – did I just call Tina Flint Smith a whore?

Dang.  That’s bizarre.

Anyway – I was talking with a Republican friend about “Take Action Minnesota”, the community organizing group run by that door-to-door, bore-on-the-floor whore Greta Bergstrom.  The group has been working overtime…

…What?  Really?  I did?  I called her a “whore?” Not only that, but concocted a cutesy rhyme to set it all off?  Oh, not again.  How could that possibly happen?

Well, I guess it just goes to show you it could happen to anyone.

Accidents!  Who knew?

Or at least that’s what the media wants you to think about – I’m sure it’s just a coincidence – a Democrat saying it about South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (emphasis added):

FLORENCE, S.C. (CBS Charlotte) – Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincet Sheheen is coming under fire for accidentally calling Gov. Nikki Haley a “whore” at a campaign event.

Sheheen was caught on video at an appearance in Florence last week stating “we are going to escort whore out the door” referring to Haley. His gaffe appeared to be a slip from the tongue and he quickly corrected himself stating “we’re going to escort her out the door.”

So Shaheen “accidentally” used a rhyming couplet, for which he corrected himself, before yukking it up with his peckerwood supporters?

But immediately after correcting himself, Sheheen has an almost gleeful interaction with the crowd and laughed at his gaffe. Video of the event has gone viral.

Who hasn’t had that happen, honestly?   

I’m imagining a world where the Democrat Party didn’t have a media “accidentally” serving as their Praetorian Guard.

It hasn’t been a good campaign for DFL Secretary of State candidate Steve Simon. 

For starters, he barely got over 40% in the primary – against a perennial candidate and a nobody.  Which might not have been a showstopper for the DFL machine to overcome, except that they were up against Dan Severson, who has statewide name recognition from a 2010 SOS run and a Senate bid (that came up short in the convention in 2012). 

Then, last week, the polls showed that Severson was ahead of Simon; he was the only GOP statewide candidate to lead in the polls at that time.  

At the very least – given the polling that, we are told, shows Mark Dayton supposedly cruising to victory – it’s a sign that the DFL/Big Money Democrat onslaught has a chink in the armor. 

At the most?  It shows that the DFL’s “We’re Inevitable!” vibe may not be entirely factual. 

Severson’s press conference last week – in which he showed smoking guns tying the SOS office to a policy of tossing veterans’ votes, and Rep. Simon’s signature on legislation that exempted the military from absentee voter reforms – went badly for Simon, and worse for the DFL’s Ken Martin, who tried and failed to take a chunk out of Severson in a comical morning of duelling press conferences. 

Simon is apparently desperate; he’s now telling his base that Severson proposes “forcing rape victims to pay for rape kits”. 

It’s BS, of course.  Not just the usual, comical, inept BS the DFL tosses around at this point in campaigns, all juvenile photoshopped heads and racist japes. 

No.  This is a sleazy, toxic, intentional, cowardly lie.  Severson responds (and I’ll add emphasis):

I moved it forward with the understanding that the bill would propose sharing the cost of all expenses associated with sexual assault between the counties of the victim and the perpetrator.

I specifically killed the bill before it EVER got a hearing because of the language specific to victims having to pay for anything.

In a just world, whatever DFL messaging genius that came up with this attack would get some sense groin-kicked into him.

As it stands?  Since a lie will make it around the world before the truth has finished checking Facebook in the morning, it’s back to the long, slow slog of telling people the one central truth of Minnesota politics.

If a DFLer says it, it’s a lie. 

If a DFLer who’s losing says it, it’s probably defamation.

When I discussed same-sex marriage with its proponents before last year, I pointed out that this would, inevitably, lead to the squashing of the First Amendment rights of those who don’t believe in it.

“Pshaw”, they said, although not using that exact word.  “It’s written into the law; the state can’t come into the church and force people in church to perform a same-sex wedding in a church”.

Which is mighty big of the state, and all, except for people of faith, it’s what happens outside of church that matters.

Of course, the stories of photographers, bakers and florists who’ve been hauled into court by bitchy gays looking for test cases, looking to flog people into submission using public accomodation law, are all over the place.

A town in Idaho is taking the next step; attacking not only a minister’s freedom of conscience and religion, but threatening his literal physical freedom, for not bowing to the beast:

The Idaho case involves Donald and Evelyn Knapp, both ordained ministers, who run Hitching Post Wedding Chapel. Officials from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, told the couple that because the city has a non-discrimination statute that includes sexual orientation and gender identity, and because the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Idaho’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, the couple would have to officiate at same-sex weddings in their own chapel.

The non-discrimination statute applies to all “public accommodations,” and the city views the chapel as a public accommodation.

On Friday, a same-sex couple asked to be married by the Knapps, and the Knapps politely declined. The Knapps now face a 180-day jail term and $1,000 fine for each day they decline to celebrate the same-sex wedding.

My prediction:  within the decade, there will be litigation that seeks to place churches under “public accomodation” laws.

One of the more galling facets of the 2012 Presidential campaign was watching Mitt Romney taking flak from the social right, the Rick Santorum crowd, on having been marginally impure on social issues, while at the same time getting beaten up from the fiscal purists (egged on by the left) for Romneycare, and the Libertarians for having been insufficiently pro-Liberty, whatever that meant. 

Of course, the key difference was that Mitt Romney had been in office, governor of not only a large state, but a toxically left-leaning one, in which he had few legislative allies.  To get anything useful done as governor of Massachusetts – and he did – he had to compromise.  “Romneycare”, bad as it may be, was a better compromise than what the Massachusetts Democrats would have spawned. 

The lesson, of course, is that rock-solid principle is easy, when your job never involves having to engage on a daily basis with your opponents to get anything done.  US Congresspeople do that only on the most symbolic and ritual level. 

Governors?  It’s part of their daily job.

And so while the likes of Govenors Romney, Pawlenty, Walker and others may have great black marks against them in the great book of princples in the sky, those marks are given by people who’ve never had to negotiate with a recalcitrant state employee union, or horse-trade with a hostile legislative majority. 

Fact is – as I say all the time – politics is a marathon, not a sprint.  Things get done over time, not overnight.  It’s work for the obsessively patient. 

Society get changed not by the people who have the coolest slogan – “Repeal Now!” or “War on Womyn!” or “TRU LBRT!” or whatever it is that sends a tingle up one’s true believers’ legs – but by the people who not only show up, but keep showing up.

Which is Kevin Williamson’s point in this NRO piece, which you should read in its entirety, and which concludes:

The Democrats did not build the welfare state all at once in 1965, and Republicans didn’t have an honest shot at repealing it all at once in 1995. Everybody has a big plan, and Washington is full of magic bullets: leash the Fed, enact the Fair Tax, seal the borders. But what’s needed — what might actually result in a stronger American order — is a thirty years’ war of attrition against the welfare state and entrenched incompetency. Federal crimes and misdemeanors ranging from the IRS scandal to the fumbling response to Ebola suggest very strongly that we have management and oversight problems as well as ideological ones, but holding oversight hearings long after (one hopes) Ebola is out of domestic headlines provides very little juice for a presidential candidate facing a restive base all hopped up on Hannity. Being the guy who gets up and demands the repeal of Obamacare might get you elected president; being the guy who fixes the damned thing simply makes you a target for talk-radio guys who have never run for nor held an elected office but who will nonetheless micturate upon your efforts from a great height.

Everybody wants to run for president. But somebody has to save the country.

Read the whole thing.

And hold the sloganeering.

…this story wasn’t a surprise to anyone that’s had to try to “debate” liberals on Twitter about economics, or been in a room full of AM950 listeners.

Republicans are better informed about what’s going on in the world; according to Pew, it’s not even close:

So how stark were the partisan knowledge differentials?

Out of 12 questions asked, Republicans outperformed both Democrats and Independents on 10. The differences were most pronounced on the questions regarding Common Core, fracking and where Shiites outnumber Sunnis, where the percentage of Republicans answering correctly outpaced Democrats by double digits. But Republicans also outperformed Democrats on questions centering on the federal minimum wage and the Fed Chairwoman, even though she’s a Democrat appointed by Obama, while the minimum wage is Democrats’ favorite wedge issue this election year to try to keep Harry Reid (D – Nevada) as the Senate Majority Leader.

Now, I myself don’t put a lot of stock in these sorts of polls, at least for purposes of drawing snarky conclusions about relative intelligence across party lines.  That’s kinda the other side’s obsession.

Which is why I bring it up…

There has apparently been an epidemic of kidnapping; 15 major celebrities, all of whom were stridently antiwar up until 2009, have completely disappeared from the face of the earth.

If you see any of these celebrities, notify the authorities.

That is all.

Nuisance lawsuits often get big headlines when they’re filed.  But for the cost of a filing fee, anyone can sue anyone for a billion dollars.

The real question is – is it going to fool a judge or jury?

Pimp loses his lawsuit against Nike for failing to warn on the box that Air Jordans should not be used to stomp people’s faces. 

I try to find things in common with people with whom I disagree.  I really do.

Part of it was growing up a liberal, into my twenties.  I don’t see liberals as “the enemy” – not reflexively, at least.  They’re people, mostly.

Do both sides have crazies?  People who regard dissent and disagreement as signs of depravity and evil, things to be eradicated?  Sure. 

Unfortunately, on the left the crazies are pretty mainstream.  One of my enduring memories was after the death of Tony Snow, the former talk show host who’d become Dubya’s press secretary before being diagnosed with colon cancer.  The outpouring of hatred in the lefty alt-media after the death of Snow – one of the most genuinely good people in the media racket – was a telling moment; to a big part of the “intellectual” left, it’s not just about elections and bills; it’s a scorched-earth battle for control of the entire culture. 

So perhaps it’s unsurprising that the NYTimes expresses…shock?  Confusion?  Befuddlement at Republicans in Congress expressing their concerns for the President’s security; I’ll add emphasis:

WASHINGTON — President Obama must be touched by all the concern Republicans are showing him these days. As Congress examines security breaches at the White House, even opposition lawmakers who have spent the last six years fighting his every initiative have expressed deep worry for his security.

“The American people want to know: Is the president safe?” Representative Darrell Issa of California, the Republican committee chairman who has made it his mission to investigate all sorts of Obama administration missteps, solemnly intoned as he opened a hearing into the lapses on Tuesday.

Genuine desire not to see the President and his family killed?  It doesn’t seem a stretch – on the right.  Conservatives see Liberals as wrong; Liberals see Conservatives as Evil.  Evil people wish death upon their political opponents.  (Anyone but me seeing a Berg’s Seventh Law reference here?)

Put another way:  Today’s GOP, for all its maddening problems, is directly descended from the party that freed the slaves and brought about a shot at freedom for hundreds of millions in the Eastern Bloc.  Today’s Democrats are controlled by extremists who are intellectual descendents from sixties radicals who drank from the same well of Kool Aid that might not have openly endorsed herding kulaks and counterrevolutionaries into railroad cars to ship to Siberia – but they could see the reasoning behind it, too.

The German Bundestag might legalize incest.

It’s all about love!

A kid spends ten years in public school.  Then, less than a year as a home-school kid.  Then enrolls in a public university. 

And then kills his mother and 26 other people.   Four years after ending a year of home schooling.

Obviously it’s Home Schooling’s fault!

Under a new law proposed this week by Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, every homeschooling parent with a child who has been labeled with a behavioral or emotional problem would be forced to submit to a host of strict, burdensome regulations.

The scheme put forth in the commission’s draft recommendations on mental health would require homeschooling parents to submit individual education plans regularly to a local education bureaucrat.

School officials could then decree whether parents may continue to educate their own children, reports the Connecticut Post. Administrators could pull the plug on any parents’ homeschooling by declaring that the child failed to make “adequate progress.”

Bear in mind that Lanza was well on his way to loopdie-land when he was in the public school system.  What good did any of them do? 

Members of the Democratic Governor’s Sandy Hook commission have conceded that the additional burdens they have recommended for homeschooling families may be controversial.

Dear Connecticut; the entire United States would be better off if the Blue States seceded – and if you want to get the ball rolling, that’d solve  problems for everyone.

Outrage is brewing over the scandal involving “Community Action”, a Minneapolis “non-profit” whose director, Bill Davis, spent a boatload of taxpayer money on living the high life, according to an audit. 

And yep, DFL figures are involved in the scandals up to their eyeballs:

[5th CD Representative and DFLer Keith] Ellison, [Senate Deputy Majority Leader Jeff] Hayden, [Minneapolis City Council president and DFLer Barbara] Johnson and City Council Member Robert Lilligren were on the board during the time covered by the audit. All have said they appointed alternates and did not regularly attend meetings.

Passing the buck to your patsy.  Not exactly a profile in courage…

…or, I suspect, much of a defense. 

The GOP has filed an ethics complaint against Hayden, and Ellison’s GOP challenger Doug Daggett has got Ellison pretty well dialed in.

But here’s the real scandal;  this is inevitable in a one-party city like Minneapolis. 

Maintaining one-party control in a place like Minneapolis (or Saint Paul, which has its own single-party patronage scandal brewing) requires paying off a lot of stakeholders from the dominant political class – in both the Twin Cities’ cases, that’s the DFL.

There are only so many patronage jobs available for the giving out in city government.  Likewise, the city school district can only absorb so many petty administrators and pay for so many “consultants”.

So the “non-profit sector” serves as a patronage factory for people in the dominant political class.  While many non-profits exist to do good things, many others exist to channel money from the government run by the party in power to the people who help get and keep it elected.

Picking examples of corruption in a one-party city like Minneapolis – like its intellectual kin in Detroit, Camden, New Orleans, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC and so many more – is like playing whack-a-mole.  Until the people of Minneapolis decide they need the accountability that a multi-party government can (with a little elbow grease) bring, not to mention an adversarial (as opposed to dutiful) media? 

Meet the new scandal, same as the old scandal.  And the next scandal.

When gay marriage activists sold the idea of same-sex marriage, their key points (other than the “if you disagree you are teh bigot!” that most of the lower-information supporters prattled endlessly) were:

1. The idea that marriage is purely about raising children is obsolete – people who don’t intend to, or can’t, have children, are married all the time, even in churches. 
2. With the idea of procreation left out of the equation, why, really, shouldn’t two people who love each other be able to be married?

This, of course, introduced some new questions; if, indeed, “love” is the basis for marriage, why can’t three or more people love each other enough to get married, by that same token? 

There was one other case I’ve been wondering about for the past few years; what kind of “love” do we mean, here? 

Who Wrote The Book Of Love?:  There are different kinds of love; the Bible breaks “love” down into three categories:

• “Eros” – physical attraction
• “Philos” – “brotherly” love, or deep friendship
• “Agape” (pronounced:  “ogg-OPP-ay”):  unconditional love – usually associated with divinity, sometimes also of the “Greater love hath nobody that they lay down their life…” variety.

The Vapours:  With that in mind, gay groups in New Zealand are up in arms over a couple of guys – Travis McIntosh and Matt McCormick, who happen to be longtime utterly heterosexual pals – who got married as part of a radio station promotion. 

They are not amused: 

 Otago University Students’ Association Queer Support co-ordinator Neill Ballantyne, of Dunedin, said the wedding was an”insult” because marriage equality was a”hard fought” battle for gay people.

“Something like this trivialises what we fought for.” The competition promoted the marriage of two men as something negative,”as something outrageous that you’d never consider”, Mr Ballantyne said.

LegaliseLove Aotearoa Wellington co-chairman Joseph Habgood said the competition attacked the legitimacy of same-sex marriages.

“The point of this competition is that men marrying each other is still something they think is worth having a laugh at …

Both of these gentlemen bring up two responses:

Yuk It Up:  In a free society, marriage – no matter who is doing it – is always worth having a laugh at.  There is no right not to be offended. 

More seriously?:  Mr. Habgood’s organization’s name, “LegalizeLove”, should give you a hint here.

Gay activists convinced a plurality of representatives that “marriageable love” didn’t just involve people who practiced “Eros” in the heteronormative manner. 

So why must marriageable love include “Eros” (to say nothing of “Eros” between just two people) at all?  By the standard we’ve been convinced/forced to accept, all love is equal.  Why not “Philos?”

(And if the “Deep brotherly love” is only “love of Rugby”, as indeed seems to be the case?  Love is love, dammit!)

Cue The Outrage Industry:  Perhaps it’s time for “Philos” activists to take to the streets to fight for Pal Marriage.  To combat the “Homonormative” hatred that is denying rights to other people whose love for each other is no less valid than that of any gay couple. 

NoH8!

The Democrats want women to have access to birth control…

…provided they control that access. 

Case-in-point. Colorado Republican Congressman and U.S. Senate Candidate Cory Gardner has suggested birth control pills should be over-the-counter as part of his campaign platform and stance on women’s health. Instead of applauding Gardner’s approach, which would greatly expand women’s access to birth control, Planned Parenthood has come out against him. The justification? Obamacare and government dependence for women is better.

“Progressivism”.  It’s not about making anyone’s life “better”.  It’s about keeping the goodies flowing to the political class.

To be a nicer, more civil person.  I truly am.

Here’s the deal.  I left the Libertarian Party in 1998 largely over the LP’s complete illiteracy on foreign policy and defense.

Now, many “Libertarians” are drawn to the belief, and the party, by the reductionistic magical thinking that all of the world’s questions break down into binary, black-or-white answers.  The right answer to everything lies in unbending, unyielding adherence to “principles”, any deviance from which for any reason is an unforgiveable impurity.

Which is a fine and dandy thing, if your “principles” are so well-thought-out as to account for all of the myriad gray areas life, human nature and history throw into one’s path.  For example, the idea that some “libertarians” have that one is either an isolationist peacenik…or a “warmonger”, with nothing in between.  Too stupid to mock.

Anyway.

What I’m trying to do is figure out a way to write “if everything you know about history and foreign policy is stuff you read from the inside of Ron Paul’s anterior colon, you probably are not going to be a partner in a serious debate”.

And I got nothing.

I’m open to suggestions.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails the third installment of his future history series, entitled “Future History”:

May 2015 President Sessions claims illegal aliens living off-book “in the shadows” create a habitat where domestic terrorists could hide and plot, declares national security requires all illegal aliens be held in detention centers until they are no longer a threat, cites President Obama’s refusal to close Gitmo as precedent. Thousands of La Raza supporters marching in demonstration arrested, transported to federal detention center in Arizona desert half a mile from Mexican border. Sheriff Joe Arpaio appointed Director. Baloney sales soar. Meat packing plants raise wages to attract Americans to do the jobs illegal aliens no longer do. Unemployment rate lowest in recorded history as illegals self-deport rather than face arrest and detention.

June 2015 Thousands of illegal aliens “escape” from Arizona detention center when gates inadvertently left open, flee to Mexico following well-marked trail thoughtfully stocked with Fanta soda. President Sessions closes detention center, thanks staff, “Heckuva job, Joey.”

July 2015 Minn. Stat. 290.06, Subd. 23, allows Minnesotans who contributed to a political campaign to seek reimbursement from the state by filing Form PCR with the Department of Revenue. The name and address of every person who sought a refund for contributing to Democrats appeared on the Department of Revenue website for a period of 24 hours, during which time several hundred copies of the list were downloaded, distributed and names of major donors pasted on bus shelters. Revenue Commissioner claimed department computers had been hacked. Democrat heavy donors reported dead fish wrapped in Star Tribune newspapers left on hoods of Volvos. Democrat party officials reported donations sharply reduced.

August 2015 European nations protest US border policies as hateful and racist. President Sessions orders all US troops in Europe to abandon equipment in place and return to the continental United States by sundown. Cites President Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq as precedent. Copies all European heads of state on email sent to Russian President Putin saying “The keys are under the mat.”

continuing . . . .

I was at a comedy club a few weeks back.

A very angry – and not especially funny, while we’re on the subject – woman who, I kid you not, identified herself as having been a political science major, told a joke (I’ll be generous) about “science”.  She ended with something like “That’s called ‘science’.  Take that, creationists!”

But it started me thinking about the contempt that the left feels for creationists. 

Now, I’m not one of them – if you read the biblical creation story as allegory, there is no conflict between the Bible and the record that is captured in the physical science of the world around us. 

And I wanted to stand up and ask the “comedian” something.

“So if we have to choose between…

Someone who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old, and lives their life accordingly – whatever that means?  A belief for which there may be little empirical basis, and even less empirical impact outside the faith community?  Or…

Someone who believes that:

• raising taxes during a recession helps the economy,
• banning firearms for the law-abiding lowers violent crime
• jacking up regulation on market economies will stop the climate from changing like it’s been doing for between 6,000 and 20,000,000,000 years
• Unionizing daycare providers will alleviate the scarcity of daycare
• Raising the minimum wage will alleviate poverty
• Pouring a bottomless bucket of money into Public Education will ever give us a better-educated populace
• Mandating increased healthcare services without increasing the supply of caregivers won’t raise the price of healthcare
• “Racism” is harming black Americans more than the Public Education system, a toxic “urban culture”, fatherless families and voting for Democrats who want to keep them that way are
• Giving terrorists a “save the date” card for leaving one of their homelands isn’t going to result in an epic surge of bloodshed
• “Anti-Poverty” programs have alleviated poverty over the past fifty years
• Barack Obama deserved that Nobel Peace Prize,

…which does more actual harm to the world?”

It wouldn’t have made a great “heckle”, unfortunately.

A friend of this blog emailed with a little blast from the past:

I read this FB post today:

“Money is incredibly tight right now but on the way home from working a double after 12 shifts straight I swung by the co-op because the kid has got to eat. After glancing over the $80 receipt from the 2 small bags of groceries I bought I see that I spent $12 on those 4 apples. WTF??? How is that even sane? Why is nonpoisonous food set to be available only for the elite? I will definitely be keeping a far closer eye on what I pick up at the Wedge. I’m still behind on my own rent and I had no intention of contributing to that yuppie store’s pretentious remodel. Pissed.”

from

https://www.facebook.com/[Redacted]

She spends $12 buying 4 apples at the CoOp and then pisses and moans because she’s broke.

Lynette Foxen was one of the faces/voices in this commercial from 2010

Minnesotans Respond to Tom Emmer’s Plan to Cut Wages

That’s why we have Aldi, ma’am.  It was good enough for me and my two kids when i was scraping for change under bus seats; it’s good enough for you.

UPDATE (11/28/2016):  The subject of the original email I got responded.  Since she blocked my response to her very, very long reply on Facebook, I’ll put it here.

Ok…

Quick response? Please don’t assume you know what I understand. I was a single parent for 11 years. For some of that time I was out of work. So I also had to choose between food and other bills, and I fed kids on straight-up staples for a very long time. Your stereotypes are just as wrong as some of my commenters’ are.

And yes – some of them WERE wrong. I don’t endorse everything that’s in my comment section, any more than the Strib does. Although as I made clear, I might have had some questions about your budget priorities (and yeah, I know it’s none of my business, and that’s just fine. I’m just say

But let’s be honest; you weren’t included in that ad because of all the nuance in  your story.  You were included for exactly the reasons I responded.  

But your friend is right. It’s advice I follow constantly. I’ve forgotten a thousand “asshats” in my years of writing.  Also stalkers, demented loonies and on and on. 

At any rate, I’ll leave you with this; I can see your point. It IS frustrating when you think other people misunderstand, or misrepresent, your motivations. To the extent that I did, I apologize – but let’s be honest, you were in a political ad.  You were put in there for deep context.   To the extent that I didn’t – spending extra (lots extra) on organic food was not a priority I had when i was very, very poor with kids. If you were a friend, I might have had a word with you about it.

Of course, there were some other things in your reply that I have screenshot.  Talking about “punching in the face” and “retaliation” is serious business where I come from.  

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails the second installment of his future history series:

March 2014 President Sessions notifies United Nations of US withdrawal. Secretary of State warns diplomatic credentials will be canceled. New York City Police seek 11,000 arrest warrants for unpaid parking tickets. Airlines jammed with overseas bookings.
President Sessions orders Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell to issue permits for oil drilling on leased federal lands within a week. Week passes. President Sessions fires Secretary Jewell, nominates oilman David Koch, Republican Senate confirms on 51-member vote citing Harry Reid “nuclear option” precedent, permits issued, drilling rush and land boom ensues.

President Sessions announces US troops will no longer act as World Policeman for free. Proposes $1 billion daily “security fee” for Saudi Arabia saying “That’s a nice country you have there, Your Majesty, be a shame if anything happened to it.” Sliding fee scale suggested for other US protectorates.

April 2014 Customs agents seize all newsprint owned by New York Times and Washington Post claiming the wood pulp may contain rosewood protected under the laws of other nations, cite Gibson Guitar case as precedent.

Democrat members of Wisconsin legislature chain doors to prevent Republicans from entering. Republicans chain doors to prevent Democrats from leaving. Governor deploys state police “to keep the peace by maintaining status quo” won’t let anyone in or out, disconnects land lines, turns off electricity and water, cell phone signals blocked. 10 days later, stench from inside moves police line back 10 more yards.

Continuing . . .

Childcare is hard to find in Minnesota – a state where daycare costs are already among the highest in the nation, per-capita.

And it’s even harder in Greater Minnesota.

Eight months before her due date, Angie Steinbach started calling day cares to reserve a spot for her baby.

Nobody had an opening as far as Marshall or Willmar — both a 45-minute drive away. Steinbach got on waiting lists “behind people who hadn’t even conceived yet,” she said.

When Steinbach’s boy was born, her husband — who had just earned a degree in computers — planned to stay home with their son. The couple didn’t find a way for them both to work until a relative tipped them to an opening at a child care in Granite Falls.

“You just don’t realize until you actually experience it firsthand just how bad the shortage is,” said Steinbach, community development director for the city of Montevideo.

Large parts of rural Minnesota don’t have enough child care for working families. Finding a place for newborns is especially difficult.

The piece does a fairly useful job of citing the economic problems that the shortage is causing.

What it doesn’t do is explain how the DFL’s strategy of raising the cost and crimping the supply of childcare with its daycare union jamdown is going to help anything.

Our culture is in the best of hands.

Joe Doakes from Como Park has apparently caught the same “history, past and future” bug that has infected the rest of the shot in the dark staff:

In the spirit of 1984, I’m considering writing a novel about the horrible future that could come to pass if just a couple of things go wrong . . . .
November 2014 Republicans retake the Senate, Jeff Sessions (R-Ala) elected Speaker Pro Tem in recognition of anti-immigrant stance

December 2014 Barack Obama struck in head by stray golf ball at Martha’s Vineyard, dies instantly. Elderly White man on nearby fairway cut down by fusillade of Secret Service bullets. Simultaneously, Joe Biden on peacemaking trip to Middle East, plane explodes in mid-air, shot down by missile stolen by Al Qaeda from Benghazi Consulate. Jeff Sessions sworn in as President.

January 2015 President Sessions issues Executive Order closing the border and redeploys troops from Iraq to Texas for “national security.” Order includes provision confirming President Obama’s practice of unilaterally designating as “terrorist” anyone the President feels is, might be, or may be associated with, terrorists.

Jesse Ventura goes on Oprah to claim deaths were CIA assassination conspiracy in retaliation for abandoning foreign service officers to die at Benghazi. President Sessions orders drone strike on the studio, issues press release regretting loss of innocent civilian lives but noting those who shelter terrorists share the penalty.

February 2014 Federal judge issues restraining order to stop troops from shooting border crossers on sight. Judge indicted by US Attorney for conspiracy to commit theft of government property, arrested, held without bail in secret location. Prosecutor explains that ordering troops not to shoot border crossers allows illegal immigrants to enter the country and obtain government benefits in violation of law, which makes judge co-conspirators to commit theft. Cites Rick Perry prosecution as precedent.

To be continued . . .