Category Archives: Big Left

Contempt

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It was probably 15 years ago that I wound up running into a young Assistant US Attorney at a social event.

We got to talking – as I am wont to do with, well, people.

What quickly became evident in talking with him – early 30s, graduate of an Ivy League law school after having been a legacy Ivy League undergrad – was the sheer contempt he had for the people outside the federal “criminal justice” system he met.

Example: we got to talking about gun control. He was a Hillary guy. And he went to a demo the ATF put on for federal “criminal justice” employees, where they learned some basic firearm safety, and got to test-fire some of the guns the Feds used. And with that, he did in fact consider himself to be one of the class that should have the right to keep and bear arms (not that he would). The rest of the plebs, naturally,, should be disarmed forthwith.

Now bear in mind this AUSA wasn’t working on organized crime. Or even “crime” as most of us would understand it. His bailiwick was various abstruse import regulations. Not cocaine or fentanyl, mind you; things like wood, food and alcohol, livestock, furniture.

So that’s right – he oozed with sneering contempt for otherwise honest people who ran afoul of abstruse import regulations.

And he didn’t seem to be all that unusual among federal “criminal justice” employees.

Of course, I ran head-on into the contempt another tranche of government employees – the public school system – feels for the peasantry, first-hand, around that same time.

My own struggles with the Saint Paul school system were at a time when the big dumb consultant idea was “zero tolerance” for even the faintest most ethereal hint of “violence”.

Dumb as that could be – and outmoded as it has apparently become, given the evaporation of safety in Saint Paul schools – it was a fart in the breeze compared to the contempt shoveled at parents since the dawn of “woke” education.

I figured – correctly – that Saint Paul and Minneapolis would be pretty hopeless.

But – Little Falls (via Gary at LIberty & Proosperity Blog)

“My name is Cassie Fredregill, a local resident of Little Falls. As my 10-year-old daughter came home from school one day, she told me that there was going to be a class on sexting. As any concerned parent, I reached out to her teacher to confirm what my daughter told me and asked what this class was going to be about.” The thought of a 10-year-old getting taught about sexting is utterly repulsive…

…Cassie wondered why she hadn’t received paperwork that permitted her to opt her daughter out of the class.

In response?

The school district barred her from parent teacher conferences.

She was not happy (jump to 5:25):

Point being, a distressing number of schools are starting to see parents as the enemy – and themselves as a class of aristocrats who shouldn’t have to be troubled by them.

I’ll have Ms. Fredregill on my show on Saturday.

All Things Dispensed With

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I worked in radio long enough that I make a point of never revelling in the job misfortunes of others.

So yesterday’s news – 10% staff layoffs at National Public Radio – don’t provoke a happy jig. I wish em all luck, even the most useless mid-level bureaucrat among ’em.

But…has the organization learned the right lessons?

(Emphasis added):

When asked about his priorities, Lansing invoked what he has called the network’s “North Star” since his arrival in the fall of 2019: a push to ensure the network has a bigger and broader audience base, rooted in younger and more diverse listeners, readers and consumers. The emphasis, he says, must be on drawing in “the future audience to make NPR sustainable for the next 50 years.”

“Younger”? Well, over the past decade, the network has sure jammed down more than its share of breezy mediocrities (“It’s Been a Minute”, “The Moth Radio Hour”) – not sure if yesterday’s news is a verdict on that.

As to “more diverse” – they’ve tripled down on antagonizing half their audience. Even their “game shows” carry the message; the once excellent “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me“, which used to include the late PJ O’Rourke as a regular panelist, has become as lively and politically unpredictable as “Late Night with Steven Colbert“.

But you remember above, when I said I didn’t take joy in others misfortunes?

Well, I’m going to ask forgiveness for this, since I’m going to make an exception. Emphasis added:

The layoffs are in keeping with an increasingly grim landscape for media companies over recent months. Vox Media cut jobs by 7%; Gannett and Spotify by 6%. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, eliminated its Sunday magazine and a handful of other jobs. After becoming part of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN cut hundreds of jobs and killed off its brand-new streaming service, CNN+.

Maybe it’s not “joy”. Maybe more “I told you so”.

Except Vox. That’s pure childlike joy.

Nothing To See Here

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Hunter Biden paid $50K a month to rent a house he claimed he owned:

Hunter Biden claimed he paid $49,910 a month to live at President Joe Biden’s Delaware residence where classified documents were discovered, a document shows.

The file, labeled “background screening test,” shows Hunter Biden lived in the president’s Wilmington, Delaware, residence between March 2017 and February 2018. Hunter Biden also claimed to “own” the property, according to the document.

The document was originally discovered on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, according to the Washington Examiner, and was reshared on Twitter by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine.

Of course it’s money laundering. It won’t be confirmed until long after Biden has left office, but STFU. This is a payment to the Big Guy.

My only question: how will Big Leftymedia limber up for the logical and factual gymnastics they need to do to bury this?

Unquestionably

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The U of M paid Nikole Hannah-Jones $50K to speak at the U – and complied with a demand to conceal the evidence (emphasis added by me):

Hannah-Jones participated in a Dec. 6 “moderated discussion” as part of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs Distinguished Carlson Lecture Series.

According to a contract obtained by Alpha News, the university paid Hannah-Jones’ agents $50,000 for her appearance on campus. The contract prohibited the university from recording the live event, which some school officials took issue with.

“Is the no recording item firm? I would like to remove that if possible. I am looking at one of our local news reporters for the moderator, and we’ve had great success with replaying the conversation via Minnesota Public Radio when we use their hosts. This, along with providing the recording to classrooms for instruction and discussion is important to us,” wrote Gail Fridlund, an events manager with the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

But of course, the U acquiesced.

Tom Gagnon, executive vice president of the Lavin Agency, said “that provision is firm” but offered to explain the “good” reasons for the recording prohibition.

“I don’t want folks to think she’s being a diva!” he said in a later email.

The university ultimately agreed to prohibit recording and covered the costs of Hannah-Jones’ travel and lodging expenses.

Those “good reasons” are none other than you and me – taxpayers with the capacity for critical thinking. They’ve seen what happens when the plebs see how the grift works.

If someone knows someone with a samizdat recording, let me know.

Fifth Column

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The Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco is hosting the “Third Annual Midwest Gender Identity Summit,” – discussing the “needs of transgender patients in healthcare,” 

Just kidding. It’s the “Sanford Research Center”, in Sioux Falls.

Sanford Health – the titan of rural healthcare, and one of the biggest employers in the upper midwest – is pushing the very “blue” trans agenda in the very red northern Great Plains:

Both Sanford and the Transformation Project are representative of the larger forces that are working to bring the transgender movement to the deepest-red corners of the United States — a coordinated, well-funded campaign for which South Dakota has become something of a trial run. That campaign’s influence has reached the Republican-dominated state legislature, where dozens of anti-gender-ideology bills have failed over the past decade. “No one thought South Dakota was a state where this could be stopped,” Libby Skarin, the campaign director for the ACLU of South Dakota, boasted in February. “I think the fact that we have consistently stopped these bills has been a source of hope for folks, like if they can do it in South Dakota, we can do it in our state.”

Sanford, which purports to be “the largest rural health system in the United States” — it currently employs nearly seven times more South Dakotans than any other business in the state — has played a pivotal role in orchestrating those conservative failures. In 2021, a National Review investigation detailed the medical giant’s links to the failure of House Bill 1217, which would have banned males from competing in women’s sports. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem had sparked conservative outrage by vetoing the bill earlier that year — a move that dampened her status as a rising Republican star, even after she hastened to reintroduce an analogous bill at the outset of the next legislative session.

The Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) agenda is being pushed into very red places by very blue big business – as a project to try to “convert” red parts of the country.

And in the case of Transgender ideology in South Dakota, it’s working:

Despite the overwhelmingly Republican composition of South Dakota politics, gender ideology has made inroads in almost every area of the state’s governing institutions. Last month, for example, SDSU drew conservative criticism for hosting a “kid-friendly” drag show, an event that multiple local lawmakers argued could be illegal under the state’s prohibition on “show[s] or other presentation[s]” deemed “harmful to minors.” Elsewhere, the Noem-appointed head of the state’s Department of Corrections signed a new “Management of Gender Dysphoria” policy specifying that state-prison inmates could request transfers to facilities that corresponded with their “gender identity” rather than sex — and be provided with sex-change drugs on the taxpayer dime.

But no set of institutions in South Dakota has embraced gender ideology more than the state’s Sanford-dominated business community, which sits well to the left of the state’s political center of gravity. (In November 2020, Sanford replaced its CEO of 24 years after he informed employees that he wouldn’t be wearing a mask around the office, arguing that he had recently recovered from the Covid virus and therefore posed no threat of spreading it.) The state’s Chamber of Commerce chapters, which are closely tied to Sanford, regularly lobby against social-conservative bills, including medical conscience rights, the prohibitions on sex changes for minors, birth-certificate gender changes, transgender locker room use, and bans on men in women’s sports.

This is happening as other civilized countries are having intense second thoughts about the excesses of Big Transgender.

This shows how Big Left gets incrementalism in a way conservatives are having a lot of trouble with.

Root Causes

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“It’s Been a Minute” (henceforth IBaM) s one of the current plague of podcasts repackaged as radio shows that plagues both public and commercial broadcasting. As we discussed yesterday, some are better than others – some are OK radio, some are utterly dreadful as radio.

IBaM is pretty clearly trying to sell infotainment coverage smothered in public broadcasting convention, but to a black audience. It is, by public radio standards, breezy, sometimes to the point of sounding just a little contrived. But radio standards, it’s not the worst podcast on the air.

But this past weekend’s episode – about the wave of social media misogyny aimed at rapper “Megan Thee Stallion”, after she was shot in the foot by her…uh, paramour, rapper Tory Lanez. It features a “senior producer” from, guess what, another NPR podcast – Gabby Bulgarelli from a podcast called “Louder than a Riot”, and you’re on your own with that one.

Dog Bites Man. There’s an old newsroom bromide, passed down through Journalism 101 classes throughout the past 100-odd years. “Dog bites man isn’t news. Man bites dog is news”. If something is the norm, the expected, the utterly mundane? If you’re not the man being bit, it’s not realy news.

Anyway – I listened to this epi of IBaM, so you don’t have to. But if you’re curious – smoke ’em if you got ’em.

Here’s the part I wanted to focus on. It’s around 6:00 into the segment:

BRITNEY LEWIS (HOST): The coverage of this trial feels somewhat muted compared to the coverage of another trail that gained a lot of public attention this year, Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard. Why do you think that this case feels so different?

BULGARELLI: One, nobody cares about black people. Two, it’s close to the holidays. Three, because it’s a closed court…in some ways they feel similar. A lot of the arguing (sic) against Megan feels similar to how people rallied against Amber in support of Johnny Depp…

LEWIS: Mmm Hmmm

BULGARELLI: …the way Megan has been made out to be a liar – I don’t think anyone believes Megan to be a victim, so they don’t care…

I can’t comment on the merits of Bulgarelli’s argument, presuming there are any.

But she’s ignoring two elephants in the room:

  • Rappers shooting rappers is, regrettably and tragically, dog bites man. No, seriously – the list is long, and spans genres, coasts, even nations. It’s been a generation, and we still haven’t a conclusive idea who killed Tupac and Biggie. Ms. Thee Stallion was shot in the foot during a domestic squabble. It’s senseless, and stupid – but Ms. Thee Stallion survived, and will no doubt see her profile increase as a result. Oh, yeah – violent misogyny in the world of hip-hop doesn’t even rise to the level of dog-bites-man; it’s more like “Dog Licks Dog” . It’s ugly, and awful, and it’s the norm, to the point that pushing back against it is, in fact, the news in the show-biz press.
  • On the other hand, what – besides skin color – distinguishes the Depp/Heard trial from the Lanez/Thee Stallion dust-up? A woman’s claims of victimhood have been torpedoed by overwhelming, sworn evidence that she was in fact an emotional and violent abuser – something mainstream narrative denies exists. Millions of men who’ve suffered, either in silence or in the face of open derision from cops, social service professionals and society at large saw at least some vindication, even if only vicarious. The dominant narrative – “the power differential means only men can commit abuse” – was stomped flat, opening the door for millions of men to perhaps, one day, be taken seriously.

The inconvenient truth for identity-thrashers like Bulgarelli is the Lanez/Thee Stallion is “Dog Bites Man”; Heard/Depp is “Man puts mayo and a slice of tomato on a dog and takes a big chomp”, trashing a different bit of identitarian dogma outside Bulgarelli’s career specialty.

Think anyone at NPR will cover that angle?

Annals Of Leftist Incoherence

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I’m going to guess most of you didn’t know that Sunday was “World Toilet Day“ (I personally celebrate the Eastern Orthodox Toilet Day, which is December 3)

Something I didn’t know about the humble toilet; to at least one part of Big Left and, to at least one part of Big Left, it’s a social justice issue:

So, if you’re having trouble keeping this straight – and if you’re sane, you should – let me break this down for you:

Separate, safe toilets for women are in essential to human dignity – except in the United States, where they are a sign of toxic bigotry.

I hope that’s clarified things for you.

Countergaslight

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Are you old enough to remember when our Expert Class (TM) sicced it’s PR machine, and Big Left’s army of howler monkeys, from Stephen Colbert down to its horde of demi-human twitterbots, on anyone who expressed even ambivalence about Ivermectin?

“Hahaha, he’s peddling horse medicine!” was about the level and extent of the discourse?

Are you that old?

If you’re a toddler, yes – you are.

If you’re older than a toddler, you remember the “expert” response – from the ridicule…

…to the regulators:

But never mind history; they’re trying to change that:


“Hey, it’s not our fault if you took all that gaslighting and all those insults seriously! We’re the FDA, maaaaan”.

Don’t get gaslit.

Intentional Confusion

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So you read the headline of this Strib article, and you think perhaps straw-purchased guns are turning up more often, or maybe that some people out there with clean criminal records are going out to Fleet Farm, picking a gun from the display case, conducting a completely legal and above board purchase, and then embarking on the life of crime.

But then you read the lead, and it’s…

…about stolen guns being used in crime.

That were purchased legally, at one point or another.

I’m not sure if they’ve thought this through.

Unless some enterprising gang conducts a heist from the loading dock add Glock USA, literally every firearm available in the United States was legally purchased at one point or another.

“Even the Mauser KAR 98K grandpa brought back from World War II?“

Well, yeah, the German government purchased it from Mauser in the 1930s or 1940s, and give it to some soldier, from whom your grandfather got it by means fair or foul.

I don’t mean to make light of what is, honestly, a fairly scabrous campaign on the part of big left, the anti-gun movement and the media; the latest chanting point is “there’s a very fine line between legal guns, and legal gun owners, and criminals“.

Of course, with the owners, there is almost invariably not. The overwhelming majority of people who commit crimes with guns have significant criminal records and aren’t allowed to touch, much less own, a firearm.

With the guns? I mean, as long as you gloss over theft (or the federal felony of straw purchasing), it’s both technically true and complete balderdash.

Degüello

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I think the first time I noticed America’s political class divide when I was doing my first talk show, at KSTP, way back when. I made the, um, profound observation that while the American Left had always sought a “class war” in which they – or at least the garden variety of “they” – saw themselves as the little guy revolting against the Leviathan, in at least one contest, the gun control “debate”, they were in fact the patricians, trying to keep the plebs in line.

I was young and naive. Literally every cultural argument breaks down on those lines, down to the rhetoric Big Left uses.

And that class war’s biggest flashpoints in recent years were Brexit in Europe, and Donald Trump in the US. The Big Government response to Covid was an extension of that skirmish.

Which brings us to this weeks’ most interesting story, the argument over the case for or against Amnesty for the culture-war criminals.

Speaking to the case against “Covid Amnesty”, I present this piece from Unherd. Or rather, one part of a huge case for, not “amnesty”, but truth and reconciliation.

It was a salvo in the class war – America’s patrician class’s way of getting the plebs back for Brexit and Trump.

One of many “money” pullquotes:

Public faith in objectively shared political ground was already dissolving while my daughter gestated. If the Virtuals have a problem now, it’s that their counter-volley to Trump and Brexit consumed the last vestige of trust in that shared political ground: our faith in science. And the notion that such ground exists is the sine qua non of Virtual political legitimacy in its current technocratic form.

In this light, Oster’s call for amnesty can present itself as an effort to rebuild the neutral space of shared political endeavour after a period of conflict. But it reads as a continuation of now-familiar efforts to weaponise the appearance of such neutrality and common purpose, in the interests of one side of that conflict.

We all knew every pandemic policy would come with trade-offs. The lawn-sign [the “In This House…” mob – Ed.] priesthood forbade any discussion of those trade-offs. I don’t blame the class that so piously dressed their own material interests as the common good, for wanting to dodge the baleful looks now coming their way. But no “amnesty” will be possible that doesn’t acknowledge the class politics, the corruption of scientific process, the self-dealing, and the self-righteousness that went to enforcing those grim years of lawn-sign tyranny.

The whole thing is worth a read.

This Is Today’s DFL

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This is what every family in the Minnesota public school system faces todaym. This person is running for the Centennial school board:

This is the educational/industrial compex’s priority.

This is on the ballot in two weeks. Never forget it.

UPDATE: And the consequence of school board members like her aren’t remotely, uh, academic:

“Fridays and breaks can never come soon enough for me this year. I’ve always been able to make it to MEA without needing time off to recover, but not this year. This year I feel like I’ve been run over by a train every day I leave. This week I politely asked a student, that wasn’t supposed to be in my room, to go to her class. This was four minutes after the bell had rung. Her response, ‘Quit talking to me. Get out of my space.’ I was 3-4 feet away. I then calmly repeated that she needed to leave, and she responded with, ‘Shut the fuck up you bitch ass ho.’”

This is an inevitable result, not only of people like the woman in the first tweet, but of the concrete policy prescriptions of “Pacific Educational Group” – the San Francisco consulting firm employed by the Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Edina and many other metro school districts.

Buyin’ Time

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You knew it was coming. And here it is — student loan “forgiveness,” baby:

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he will forgive $10,00 in federal student debt for most borrowers, fulfilling a campaign pledge and delivering financial relief to millions of Americans.

Biden will cancel up to $20,000 for recipients of Pell Grants.

“Both of these targeted actions are for families who need it the most,” the president said in remarks from the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

I love the smell of moral hazard in the morning. But if there’s a cohort of our society that really loves this sort of thing, it’s the folks who assumed their “Studies” degree was their ticket to the carriage class. The donks long ago realized they have neither reason nor incentive to bestow other people’s resources on the working class or the small business dudes, because they aren’t picking up the check at Le Diplomate. The “S” in an S corporation now stands for suck it.

At this point, the game is evident even to those who’d rather not think about politics — helping the commonweal is right out. Higher education is the best thing the donks have going and subsidizing their efforts is the highest and best use of other people’s money. And if you look at the price tag, you’re probably a denier. And if you paid your own way to go to trade school, you’re a chump. The rewards go to Derrida, not derring-do.

The timing is crucial here — there’s no question this move will piss off millions of potential voters, but there’s also no question that we’ll all be getting a steady supply of ether from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota and the constellation of like-minded political action groups flattering the Studies majors from Olaf and Kenyon and Swarthmore (and Eau Claire and Bemidji, too) that despite everything, they are actually part of the in-crowd. The checks will clear in plenty of time for the clientele, but the unwilling benefactors will be too busy trying to make payroll to get out and door knock.

But hey, have a nice day!

 

 

 

 

 

You’ll Get Nothing And Like It

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Former Trump hand Michael Anton, writing for Compact, offers a bracing view of the various pathologies of Trump haters, whose numbers are legion, at least among the chattering classes. I am going to pull a few quotes; this article is a festival of pull quotes, truly a “read the whole thing” special. But a few of Anton’s observations deserve particular consideration, to wit:

Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime.

All along the Potomac, you can sense it: oh boy, here comes the hoi polloi. The whole point of the current January 6 show trial is to demonstrate, beyond question, that your concerns do not matter. Stay outta the 202, y’all. The enmity Anton describes began before Trump — before the MAGA hat became the visible headgear from hell, the tricorner hats of the Tea Party were not a source of great amusement to our betters, but rather an unwelcome interruption to the exciting new world on offer. The concerns of those citizens mattered not at all then and little has changed.

The Tea Party did not last; it was leaderless by design and easily coopted and dispersed by the professional Republicans who serve as junior partners in the Beltway ecosystem. So nothing changed. What did change? This time the hoi polloi had a herald, who happened to be a publicity hound from Queens. 

Why did Trump get the gig? Why wasn’t the herald someone more housebroken, like Marco Rubio or “Jeb!” or John “Daddy Was a Postman” Kasich? Amazingly, it was because a carnival barker like Trump was more credible than the other worthies in the field were. Back to Anton:

The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want.

What Tea Party/MAGA types want isn’t hegemony over their betters. Rather, they want to be left alone, without the ministrations of those who have plans for how they ought to live their lives. Can’t have that, of course. And if you are old enough to have had friendships of over 30 years, you understand and have likely experienced the following:

People I have known for 30 years, many of whom still claim the label “conservative,” will no longer speak to me—because I supported Trump, yes, but also because I disagree on trade, war, and the border. They call not just my positions, but me personally, unadulterated evil. I am not an isolated case. There are, as they say, “many such cases.”

Kevin Williamson and the NR gang, pick up the white courtesy phone. Then Anton gets to the nub:

How are we supposed to have “democracy” when the policies and candidates my side wants and votes for are anathema and can’t be allowed? How are we supposed to live together with the constant demonization from one side against the other blaring 24/7 from the ruling class’s every propaganda organ? Why would we want to?

I am not sure we can. There’s more, a whole lot more, at the link. Consider it carefully, as we are in a dangerous moment.

Truth And Reconciliation

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To: Scott Jensen/Matt Birk

Please, please, please: if you happen to win the Governors race, promise to release the full, unredacted records from the state’s “Covid snitch line”

Because I want to find every single one of these backstabbing weasels.

People often would send in lists of “non-essential” businesses that remained open or weren’t strictly following masking requirements, according to files from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA).

Another complaint reported on people for purchasing non-essential items at a convenience store in White Bear Lake. “Customers are coming and saying, ‘I’m bored and needed to get out of the house.’ They buy lottery tickets, a candy bar, a soda … those items are not ‘essential.’”

I was about to write“This might not be my better self speaking“.

But I think everybody’s better self wants a chunk out of these people, too.

Just The News!

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The “MN Reformer” is yet another effort to start a news organization by progressive plutocrats with deep pockets – because after the Minnesota Monitor, the Minnesota Independent and MNPost, certainly the fourth time’s the charm.

They’ve actually done some decent reporting over the last year.

Emphasis on “in the last year” – when there wasn’t an election on the way.

But there is.

The Reformer ran an op-ed by Dr. Hannah Lichtsinn calling for the state medical authorities to revoke Dr. Scott Jensen’s medical license. Jensen is, by the way, the GOP candidate for Governor. He’s also been an out-front skeptic of our state’s hamfisted, tyrannical public health response.

Neither the op-ed, the Reformer’s bio-blurb about Dr. Lichtsinn, nor any of the Reformer’s social media traffic makes any mention of any political bent that she might have.

Anecdotally – and I’m the one with the anecdote, here – Dr. Lichtsinn has been pretty much the polar opposite of Jensen; on social media, she was a positively strident proponent of lockdowns, mandates of every kind, and draconian enforcement.

And the reason for that is, she’s every bit as much a Democrat activist with portfolio as she is a doctor:

It’d be fair to say that, when not playing nice and empirical in op-eds intended to be marketed to the unconvinced center, she’s a “groaningly strident” progressive

Apparently the Reformer didn’t think the reader needed to know that.

Which is why the Reformer – unlike the MN Monitor and the MN Independent before it – bothered with all that “decent reporting” last year; to put up a veneer of legitimacy around what was intended to be yet another DFL PR operation during the 2022 campaign season.

Cancel Culture keeps banking hours

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First, some background to catch up on. In January, in this Newsweek column, Todd Zywicki pointed out how cancel culture has infected even the buttoned-down world of banking.

This past November, Missouri’s conservative Defense of Liberty PAC scheduled a high-profile event featuring a speech by Donald Trump, Jr. On November 9, however, WePay—a JPMorgan Chase subsidiary that provided the payment services for the event—announced the termination of those services. WePay accused the organization of violating its policy against promotion of “hate, violence, racial intolerance, terrorism, the financial exploitation of a crime, or items or activities that encourage, promote facilitate or instruct others regarding the same.” Although WePay eventually reversed its decision, the organization had to cancel the speech.

WePay’s actions followed a series of similar incidents in recent years that includes the cancellation of former president Trump’s personal bank account, Michael Flynn’s credit cards and at least one Christian nonprofit organization. The fossil fuel and firearms industries have been targeted too. Businesses selling controversial materials have had their payments services terminated and consequently shuttered. The decisions to cancel these high-profile individuals or groups are often reversed after public outcry and dismissed as a “mistake” by the providers. But what about individual people who lack the public standing to fight back?

In February then, the Minnesota Bank and Trust threw Mike Lindell (of MyPillow fame) out the frosted glass doors and onto the street.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been terminated as a client by the Minnesota Bank & Trust a month after the financial institution described him as a “reputation risk.”

Insider viewed two letters sent to Lindell by the bank dated February 11. In one letter, the bank said Lindell’s accounts with the bank would be closed by the end of business on February 18.

Here is some audio of a call a bank rep had with a MyPillow exec on the matter.

In March, Biden issued (er, that should probably be “Biden” “issued”…) an executive order calling for studies on the feasibility and ramifications of implementing central bank digital currencies. The EO calls for several reports due by September 5.

One such report was issued last week by the Treasure Department on a “Framework for International Engagement on Digital Assets”.

China is already taking steps towards a digital renminbi. Here, the central banks have several reasons for being interested in a digital currency. One is the threat that cryptocurrencies pose to their hegemony.

There’s the danger in a cbdc, though. The implementation will probably not involve something like a blockchain or some similar form of distributed ledger for tracking and verifying transactions. Rather, the state, or a state body, will track things in some kind of database.

And that’s why the Left is interested. Imagine the power the Left would have over you if the state can see all your digital transactions, and worse, has the power to stop them.

Hey, Joe Citizen, I don’t want you buying that firearm. Transaction denied. Hey, Joe Citizen, you’ve bought too much gas this month already and you’re killing the planet. Transaction denied.

If Elizabeth Warren is for it, that alone should be a red flag. The Left means to control you, by any means at their disposal. We’re a long ways from the innocent days when your neighborhood bank was part of your community and there to serve you.

Think “Walz Checks”, Only Gassy

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Modern Monetary Theory says the government can borrow and spend as much as it likes without consequences. If we can afford a gas tax holiday, why not an income tax holiday, a social security tax holiday, a liquor tax holiday?

Or is MMT a lie and the gas tax holiday simply at attempt at buying votes with taxpayer money?

Joe Doakes

It is, of course, a purely academic exercise, like so much of the policy big left has been foisting on this country for the past hundred years and change.

The Right Indoctrination

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SCENE: Mitch BERG is at REI, getting a handlebar cell phone carrier for hjs bike. He rounds the corner from the coffee cups, and runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is shopping for…something? BERG tries to backpedal quietly away, but it’s too late.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, shhhhhhhhure as I stand here today, it’s Avery…

LIBRELLE: Shut up. The Supreme Court just violated the separation of church and state, by allowing an educator to pray at school functions.

BERG: Well, you got a few of the facts right.

LIBRELLE: What would you think if a Muslim were to throw down a prayer mat on the fifty yard line and delay the kickoff while he prayed to Mecca?

BERG: Coach Kennedy didn’t interrupt the game with an ostentatious prayer in the middle of the field. It was a personal observance, after the game, involving him and only him. Other than the fact that it took place on the field around people, it couldn’t have been less public.

LIBRELLE: It caused an uproar.

BERG: It caused a small group of progressives to go to the school board and, after years of such observances, change the district policy to ban “demonstrative religious activity, readily observable to (if not intended to be observed by) students and the attending public.” 

LIBRELLE: So what would you think if a Muslim did something like that?

BERG: Have you actually been in the Midway Target? The Roseville Walmart? Seeing Muslims throwing down their mats at prayer time in an out of the way part of the store is nothing new at all. I care about it no more than a Christian praying whereever they want.

LIBRELLE: Yeah, but what if a non-Christian kid sees the demonstration, by one of their school’s authority figures? That’s going to put pressure on them. (Nods smugly)

BERG: So let me get this straight: a Christian school staffer, praying, privately but in public view, is…

LIBRELLE: Oppressive, fascist and probably white supremacist and racist.

BERG: Mkay. In the meantime, a non-binary or LGBTQ teacher telling kids the details of their personal and identity’s sexual orientation, including how their various orientations practice intimacy, to kids of all beliefs, including Christian and even Muslim kids, telling them there are infinite genders and no real notion of masculine and feminine, when they’re still at an age where the parents haven’t had “the talk” with them themselves yet?

LIBRELLE: Essential social education, to make up for the sloth and incompetence of parents.

BERG: Aaaah…

(They are interrupted by an employee)

EMPLOYEE: (to BERG): Can I help yo, sir?

BERG: (waves box with holder). Good to go.

EMPLOYEE: (to LIBRELLE) And you, si…uh, maa… (looks at BERG, startingi to panic a big. BERG shrugs)

LIBRELLE: I need a new seat for my electric recumbent bike.

BERG: So you, the big environmentalist, have switched to a coal-powered bike?

LIBRELLE looks up, alarmed, stammering, giving BERG time to make his break.

And SCENE.

Berg’s Eighth Law Is Universal And Immutable

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Berg’s 8th Law of Diversity states “American progressivism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder.

Like when, for example, the first Mexican-born Congresswoman is a conservative Christian? Never bet against the response being just a little psychotic.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi elbows the daughter of Mayra Flores out of the way during a photo op:

The contempt Big Left feels for “their” people who take off the Ketchup Bottle dresses and leave the cult positively throbs.

I think Flores – or whoever is running her Twitter account – is up to the challenge.

I may have to pony up for Flores’s actual election bid this fall.

Dobbs

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Dobbs finally arrived:

“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the majority. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

He was joined in the majority opinion by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Justice Roberts filed a separate opinion concurring with the majority.

“With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent,” wrote Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan in a joint dissent.

The issue of abortion will now be returned to the individual states to regulate as each sees fit. Dark blue states are expected to impose the most radical pro-abortion policies while dark red states may ban all abortion. Many states may choose to allow abortion only under certain circumstances.

A few thoughts:

  • I am Catholic. We walk by faith and reason. Both faith and reason point to why Catholics have always opposed abortion. In that sense, today is a great day.
  • Now the battle really begins, and I do not mean the inevitable attacks and violence that will unfold over the coming days. The real battle is to win hearts and minds where possible. As long as Roe existed, all potential discussions about the morality and efficacy of abortion laws were always more theoretical than real, because 7 dudes said so. Now, for good and bad, the people and their elected representatives get to decide the matter.
  • The Court’s decision is, at bottom, an admission of humility. Roe was always an exercise in raw judicial power, as Byron White said in his dissent nearly 50 years ago. And as is often the case, the best use of power is sometimes to refrain from wielding such power.
  • Between this decision and the court’s earlier decision this week in the Bruen case, the court has at least started a necessary process of returning to first principles. And if the Court were to continue this process, I’d certainly like them to look at earlier abusive rulings. I’d start with Wickard v. Filburn.

Cherry-Picked

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Not to sound cynical about big media – good heavens no, not me – but when I see the New York Times reporting on active shooters, I pretty much expect their “reporting” to either lie, or to hide the accurate conclusion in plain sight.

And they’ve done that.

They include a snazzy, Edward Tufte-style graphic to explicate their case – and they reached this conclusion:

“It’s direct, indisputable, empirical evidence that this kind of common claim that ‘the only thing that stops a bad guy with the gun is a good guy with the gun’ is wrong,” said Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama, who has studied mass shootings for more than a decade. “It’s demonstrably false, because often they are stopping themselves.”

So let’s look at the graphic:

So let’s take a look at the numbers.Out of nearly 250 mass shootings that ended before the police arrived, nearly 10% ended with the assailant being shot by a “bystander“ – A “good guy with a gun“. That’s nearly 10% of spree shootings, ended before the cops arrive

(That is, of course, presuming the media actually recognizes the episode. For example, they studiously ignored this recent incident .

Even so, that is actually a tad higher than I’d have figured; given that spree killers tend to pick targets where nobody is likely to be able to resist them, and nowhere near 10% of the population at large generally carries a firearm, that’s actually a better result than one might rationally expect.

But now, let’s look at the other resolutions.

Of the 249 mass shootings that ended before the cops arrived, nearly 80% end with the killer either leaving the scene or committing suicide.

And the devil with these shootings is in the details. Some of the spree killers do leave the scenes of their crimes on their own two feet. But others “leave” because a citizen threatened them with immediate death – as in this case four years ago, where two good guys with guns changed a would-be racist spree killer’s plans, one with the threat of death, one with gunfire, causing him to run away. He was apprehended later.

One that killed himself, did it after killing two people – before a good guy pointed a gun at his head. He ran into a nearby store, and killed himself.

Or this case, where a church “security guard” (a volunteer with a carry permit) shot a spree killer who’d murdered four people already. He killed himself, it’s true – after his plan had been fatally derailed by a good gal with a gun.

So what’s my conclusion?

You can tell Big Media is lying about guns when their lips are moving, or their fingers are touching keyboards.

Same as it ever was.

Dysfunctional

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One of the more controversial stances I’ve taken on this blog is “MInnesota Public Radio News sucks less than most local news organizations”.

It’s not an unblemished statement, of course. With some of their staffers, their eliminationist leftism slips out (or comes gushing out in a tsunami of foul, scabrous rotting bile). And you don’t have to scratch the surface too hard to find MPR doing its best to uphold Big Left’s narrative.

So yes – they suck less. It’s a low bar, and they barely get over it, but there you have it.

But the product has been slipping in recent years. MPR’s newsroom has been shrinking – by a little over half in the past 5-6 years. Their on-air programming has gotten more and more perfunctory; ; less local production, (except for their local talk shows, which don’t take nearly as much overhead and effort as doing news – especially given how over-staffed as MPR historically has tended to be).

All is not well.

Jay Boller at Racket has a long, well-reported and, I need to add, utterly stereotype-affirming report on the recent decline of MPR News.

Long story short: As executive salaries soar, less and less of that taxpayer and donor money is going to news and programming.

But naturally, to those remaining, the problem is, notwithstanding the fact that the organization has unionized and pushed itself to the bleeding edge of the social justice fashion curve, MPR News just isn’t progressive enough:

The employee-led Transform group re-stated its lists of demands around anti-racism and gender equality last fall after Taylor assumed her role, concluding, “We remain tired, perhaps more tired than ever before. But we will not stop trying to force this company to change. It is simply too important.” 

This comes at a time when some – few, but some – in the “progressive” non-profit industrial complex are starting to ask some of the same questions about their business and political models (about which more, likely, next week), after noticing that all that money seems to be buying less results and more internal, woker-than-thou discord. The parallels are worth discussing.

I’d love to ask someone from MPR to come on the show to discuss this – but they’ve long since circled up their wagons and stopped talking with anyone outside the Circle of Trust.