June, 2015: the American left reveres “transparency” above all things, and demands it of pretty much absolutely every institution in society.

July, 2015:  privacy – of personal conversations, and of institutional emails, anyway – is the most sacred right in our society.

Sick of your tax dollars going to fund late term abortions, and Lamborghinis for ghouls selling baby parts on your dime?

There’s a protest scheduled over at the big box Abortion Hut – AKA “The Abattoir on Vandalia” – today over the noon hour.

Details?  Right here:

Invitation: Please Join Us at a Rally to Defund Planned Parenthood!
Where: St. Paul’s Mega Planned Parenthood, 671 Vandalia Street, St. Paul MN 55105

When: July 28th
Time: 12:00pm—1:00pm
Minnesota Family Council’s Director of Policy & Communications, Autumn Leva, will be speaking at the rally! We hope to see you there!

Right in the middle of the work day, unfortunately – but I’ll be there in spirit.

I have a hunch these video stings are making a lot of people who were soft-core on abortion quite a big harder-core.

It’s certainly working for me.

I got this email last week from MoveOn.org.

Interesting thing about it? There’s an odd…synchronicity in the chanting points that pop up in this email, the entire leftymedia’s coverage of the subject of last weeks bombshell videos of the Planned Parenthood ghouls selling baby parts.

Why, it’s almost as if the entire left, from Scott Pelley down to the lowliest, loneliest liberal blogger, is reading off the same script:

Dear MoveOn member,

Two weeks ago, a heavily edited, blatantly misleading video was released attacking Planned Parenthood.

Let’s stop right there.

The lefty chantingpointbots seem to think that “heavy editing” is unique to sting videos that gore their sacred cows.

News coverage generally shoots between 6 to 10 minutes of footage for every minute that appears on the air. With documentaries – think Michael Moore, who made hundreds of millions of dollars producing exactly the sort of footage that liberals love unless it’s James O’Keefe and the Center for Medical Progress – and “reality” shows it’s much, much much more; documentaries often shoot 30-60 minutes of footage for every minute of the final product.

Now be honest – do you think that those damning, eight minute videos of the Planned Parenthood ghouls talking about their Lamborghinis and the “crunchy” methods they use to kill prenatal children started out as 50-minute-to-eight-hour long conversations?

In the great scheme of video production, I’m going to suggest to you that these Planned Parenthood stings were edited vastly more lightly than most of what you see on television.

And this week, another deceiving, doctored video was released, continuing the smear campaign against the largest reproductive health care provider in America.

Did the ghouls actually say they were selling infant body parts?  Then the “doctoring” was irrelevant.

It’s clear we’re facing a highly coordinated attack on reproductive rights.

No.  You’re facing an attack on late-term abortion – the killing of “fetuses” that are in many cases perfectly viable.

“Highly Coordinated?”

Well, that’d be about time.   There’s no reason only “progressives” can be “highly coordinated.”

…of speaking for every conservative.

But yes.  Yes, I am.

Dog licks dog.

Donald Trump makes a huge, vainglorous declaration he’s never going to have to convince a legislature to support.

Facebook is full of cat videos.

Cheap hotels are often sketchy.

The Vikings don’t look very good this year.

And Minnesota’s real Governor, Tina Flint-Smith, former director of Planned Parenthood Infanticide Hut, pulled the wires and worked the remote control so as to make “Governor” Mark Dayton mumble words that sounded like the state won’t be investigating the goings-on at the non-profit, and there’s no way, nosirreebob that the Abattoir on Vandalia has ever trafficked in baby parts, no way no how, how about those Saints?

And it sure is humid out there.  Also big news.

Another day?  Another, even more cynical, Planned Parenthood executive caught on video haggling over prices for “not yet human” organs, presumably for actual humans:

A second undercover video shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council President, Dr. Mary Gatter, haggling over payments for intact fetal specimens and offering to use a “less crunchy technique” to get more intact body parts.

It is similar to last week’s viral video showing PPFA Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola admitting to using partial-birth abortions to get intact parts and suggesting a price range of $30 to $100 per specimen.

I can imagine Josef Mengele having a conversation like this:

Gatter twice recites Planned Parenthood messaging on fetal tissue collection, “We’re not in it for the money,” and “The money is not the important thing,” but she immediately qualifies each statement with, respectively, “But what were you thinking of?” and, “But it has to be big enough that it’s worthwhile for me.”…By the lunch’s end, Gatter suggests $100 per specimen is not enough and concludes, “Let me just figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ballpark, then it’s fine, if it’s still low, then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini.”

I’m sure she’ll get one, too.

…that if we voted Republican in 2014, greedy bloodthirsty soulless profiteers would enrich themselves and their organizations by selling children’s body parts.

And they were…

…well, no.  There’s nothing ironically funny, here.  Planned Parenthood is, in fact, harvesting body parts from pre-natal children killed in late-term abortions, and selling them for, er, non-profit:

This is a bombshell – but I’m under no illusions that Big Left, and their minions in Big Media, will allow this story to get to a wider audience (and when they do, they’ll blame Republicans, somehow).

Planned Parenthood responds:

Planned Parenthood, which in addition to abortions provides healthcare and information regarding birth control and other reproductive issues, explained in its statement, “Patients sometimes want to donate tissue to scientific research that can help lead to medical breakthroughs, such as treatments and cures for serious diseases.

“At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other high-quality health care provider does — with full, appropriate consent from patients and under the highest ethical and legal standards.

“There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.”

Let’s forget for a moment that we’re talking about “tissue” from pre-natal children aborted at around 24 weeks’ gestation – inside the envelope where 25% of children, if delivered alive, can survive and live normal lives.

If there’s “no financial benefit”, then why aren’t the “tissues” donated?   What’s with the price list that Doctor Spumoni rattles off?

We’re supposed to think that Planned Parenthood’s activities, and “after-market parts” service, is intended to save lives.

We can do that; we can also acknowledge that some of the Nazi’s medical “research” at concentration and extermination camps was intended to save lives, too.

Of course, if you are a functioning human being, you can not “forget for a moment that we’re talking about tissue from pre-natal children aborted at 24 weeks”.

Looking at the financial statements from major gun control organizations shows us a couple of things;  Michael Bloomberg owns the industry, and they sure raised a lot of money – some of it from people other than Bloomberg, sort of – after Sandy Hook.

The essential PAGunblog rounds up the usual suspects:

First, let’s look at the Brady Campaign. In 2012, the Brady Campaign made 4.91 million dollars in revenue, which was up from 2.93 million in 2011. We suspect most of that money poured in during the few weeks after Sandy Hook on December 15, 2012. It was the fight into early 2013 where it became apparent that Bloomberg and the White House were running the gun control agenda, and Brady started falling off everyone’s radar. So it is not surprising that in 2013, the Brady Campaign did not raise as much money as it did in 2012, most of which was probably raised in the first several weeks of that year.

For all their decades of blather, Brady is actually relatively moderate.  The “Coalition to Stop Gun Violence” is not…

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence had a similar story to the Bradys. They had raised 333 grand in 2011, and 492 grand in2012. But again, in 2013, they were down to 484 grand. EFSGV, their 501(c)(3) branch, also tracks the Brady Center. In 2011, 460 grand in revenue, then 638 grand in 2012. In 2013, EFSGV raised 950 grand, almost a million dollars. I guess maybe that foaming at the mouth stuff works! They outperformed the Brady Center in terms of revenue growth.

…and it seems a lot of extremist money came out of the woodwork in the fever swamp this last couple of years.

The “Violence Policy Center” – whom I’ve made my personal kick toy in this space for well over a decade now – is perhaps the ultimate gun control group; literally, as well as morally and financially, controlled by liberals with deep pockets:

VPC is largely supported by wealthy foundations, but their revenue was also up in 2013. They managed to boost their public support percentage to 21.50%, which is actually still pretty sad, but better than 2011 when it was 17.28% and2012, when it was 18.17%. I’m sure they are hoping since their public support is heading in the right direction, the IRS will stay off their backs.

That’s so cute – thinking Obama’s IRS is going to go after a gun control group.

And now, the big kahuna – Bloomberg:

It is without doubt Everytown is now king of the gun control movement, with 2103 revenues of 36 million. Their 2012 revenue was 4.86 when they were [Mayors Against Illegal Guns]. I’d note that Everytown spends previous little on fundraising, which means most of that money is likely coming from Bloomberg. We all pretty much knew as much.

If it weren’t for progressive plutocrats with deep pockets and deeper agendas, the gun control movement would have to hold a bake sale to raise money.

The long story short?  Part 1:  Michael Bloomberg has basically purchased the American gun control movement.

Part 2?  One liberal plutocrat can’t fight five million Real Americans (emphasis added by me):

I would not get despondent over their improved fortunes, however. Why?

Because in 2012, NRA’s revenues went from 219MM to 256MM, and in 2013 they went to $348MM. Get that? Between 2011 and 2013, NRA’s revenue increased by 129MM. That’s more than 3x the amount of every other gun control group’s revenue increase from 2011 to 2013 combined. And that’s just NRA proper.

And unlike the alphabet soup of gun-grabber front groups, the NRA is actual grassroots Real Americans.

Take heart.  Conservatism isn’t winning every issue – but the gun issues shows that it can win in today’s America.

Because Winkler is no longer the most ineptly, tone-deafly racist commentator in recent American history.

I’ve had the odd chuckle as George “Mr. Sulu” Takei has oozed back into a wry, giggly mainstream prominence.  He can be a funny guy.  And he’s got an interesting story; growing up in an internment camp, building a career in Hollywood at a time when an Asian couldn’t get a break, yadda yadda.

But someone’s gotta slap him:

In a nasty, racist rant captured by a Fox affiliate in Arizona, former Star Trek actor-turned-gay rights activist George Takei lashed out at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, calling him a “clown in black face.”

Here, a man who became famous sitting on a TV set pushing fake buttons and saying “Warp Factor Five, Aye-Aye” and running a snarky but occasionally hilarious Facebook account, gaysplains to one of America’s most accomplished jurists…

…not only using terms that are groaning with racist baggage, but also legally full of Roddenberry dust.  Thomas is, unfortunately for Takei, correct.  The Obergefell decision was, like Roe V. Wade, conjuring up law from nothing – or, worse than nothing, pure emotion.

Back to snarking on Facebook, George.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Some members of Summit Avenue Assembly of God Church wanted to show their appreciation for police.  They planned a celebration, lunch, photos of kids with officers, petting zoo, a fun way for members to say “Thanks for your service” on a Saturday afternoon.  Almost didn’t happen.

 

St. Paul’s Black Lives Matter objected to showing appreciation for police.  Protesters disrupted worship service in the weeks prior to the event.  The celebration had to be changed to include firefighters and other first responders to avoid further protests.  The church had to assign members to a security detail (my wife was on the foot patrol team with radios to report any sign of trouble), the television news showed up hoping for conflict, the volunteers were so alert for trigger warnings and micro-aggressions they were exhausted from stress.  That’s one “community celebration” that’ll never happen again.

 

You know, if I were a fiendish racist scheming to convince a bunch of polite, moderate Christians that Black people are selfish, hateful and bigoted, I could not possibly have conceived of a better tactic than these “activists” did all on their own.  Way to go, morons; you’ve turned back the racial relations clock a hundred years in that congregation.

 

Joe Doakes

Y’know, it’s high time someone organized a group.  Perhaps call it #BlackNeighborhoodsMatter.  Represent the majority of people in inner city neighborhoods – who don’t condone police bias, but who support a strong aggressive police presence in the neighborhood because it helps lower the crime rate that disproportionally plagues the neighborhoods.

But of course, the people who’d start such a group are too busy working and raising families, I’m going to guess, to be able to do much organizing, marching and agitation.

As I was digging around through the Campaign Finance Board’s lobbying reports yesterday, I happened upon this little bon mot among “Everytown for ‘Gun Safety'” “Minnesota’s” various disclosures:

Click to see full-size

First – to the surprise of absolutely nobody who hasn’t been marinading their head in “progressive” kool-aid – “Everytown for Gun ‘Safety'” “Minnesota” is (see the upper red rectangle) based in New York City; it is about as Minnesotan as open displays of emotion and capable professional sports (I say this so as not to jinx the Twins with unseemly optimism).

And in the lower rectangle?

They’re gone.  Done.  Hanging up their scolding sticks and sending their monogrammed checkbooks back to New York and jabbering away into the sunset.

This, after outspending the pro-human rights, Real Americans who support our civil liberties by a lopsided margin.

I’m sure they’ll be back for 2016, of course – if not as “Everytown”, as something else; maybe “No More Dead Children Inc” or something equally measured and rational.

But for now?  It’s like the Germans racing back across the Rhine in the summer of 1944.

And that’s a good thing – if you’re on the right side.

Pooing Where They Eat:  The funny part – if you’re a Real Minnesotan – is that when Bloomberg rolled into town with his armored car full of cash, he basically told the local pro-gun-confiscation group, “Protect” MN, and “Moms Want Action”, to sit down and shut up and let the competent folks do the thinking.

And so while in the past election and session Everytown disclosed a metric poop-ton of spending, as we pointed out yesterday, “Protect” MN spent not one dime on lobbying.

Again, have no fear; Bloomie will be back.  So will the blow-dried slickee boys who tried to browbeat the legislators during this past session and election.

Now would be a fine time to join GOCRA and MNGOPAC, by the way.  If you don’t keep Bloomberg and the gun-grabbers at bay, who will?

For well over a decade, “Protect MN” – it’s changed its name several times since it started way back when – has been the dotty, not-too-bright face of the gun control movement in Minnesota.

While the wave of Michael Bloomberg money in 2013 moved the center of gravity over to “Everytown for Gun Safety” and its “local” affiliate, Heather Martens has remained an inescapable farce in Minnesota politics.

Force. I meant force.  Honest.  I’ll catch it in post-production.  Sorry.

But a correspondent who follows these things found this bon mot during some recreational reading of state Campaign Finance Board filings.

(more…)

…that if I voted GOP, plutocrats would romp and frolic.

And they were right.

Change is all around us.
Some things – technology, reality TV, the Dow – change very quickly.

Others – glaciers, the cityscape or landscape around you – change so slowly as to be imperceptible, until you look at a time lapse photograph or think back over 20 years in a place, and go “wow –  that snuck up on me”.

Indeed, the “expanding universe” model of astrophysics says that literally every single thing in the universe is changing, all the time.

There is only one thing in all of the known universe that is not changing. And that is…: 

… Oliver Willis will always be Oliver Willis.

Between them, Marco Rubio and O. J. Simpson have killed two people.

Among them, Marco Rubio and Bernie Madoff scammed people out of $20 billion.

Together, Marco Rubio and the Minnesota Vikings have lost four Super Bowls.

Marco Rubio and Keith Ellison have, together, 40 unpaid parking tickets and 11 moving violations.

Get right on that.

As NYC’s mayor Bill DeBlasio notes, they matter a lot less when it’s black people shooting other black people:

“I think it’s clear that what we have primarily here is a gang and crew problem,” the mayor said last week. “You know, for those of us who were here in the bad old days—when we had 2,000 murders or more a year—a lot of everyday citizens were getting caught in those crossfires.” He added it’s “equally troubling when, you know, individual gang members shoot other gang members, but it’s a different reality.”

Translation: If young, largely minority men are killing each other over gang turf, then the violent crime revival is no big deal. It won’t hit the trendier corners of Brooklyn.

So whatever happened to Mr. de Blasio’s campaign that “black lives matter”?

Like every other crisis that “progressives” opt not to waste; they matter when it comes time to manage the public narrative.

You’ve heard the stories of the betrothed gay couples who’ve scoured the market for test cases waiting to happen – Christian photogs, bakers, florists and other vendors who politely tried to opt out of participating in ceremonies they don’t believe in.  They were sued into compliance or bankruptcy, or both.

And now, in Canada – a Christian jeweler who actually made the rings for a lesbian couple, who were favorably impressed with his work…

…until they discovered he didn’t personally believe in same sex marriage.  The idea of having their finely-crafted rings made by someone with impure thoughts – thoughtcrime! – sent them running to Big Gay Inquisition to smite the infidels.

Rod Dreher narrates:

Were this a Monty Python sketch and not a horrifying power play, the tendering conversation would presumably have proceeded like this: Customer: We are a lesbian couple who would like you to make us a wedding ring. Business owner: Okay. I do not support gay marriage, but I will serve you as anybody else. This, I understand, is how it works. Customer: You can’t deny me service simply because you hold different views from mine. Business owner: Indeed. I have no intention of doing so. Society is better off when our differences remain private. Customer: Okay, let’s do business. Business owner: Great. Customer: Your private views are disgusting. You can’t make me do business with you. Give me my money back or I’ll unleash the kraken. If this is to be our new standard — and time will tell — it would be useful to know what legal protection our recalcitrant firms will reasonably be able to recruit to their side. In both Canada and in the United States there already exists a pernicious imbalance in the supposedly free marketplace. If a browsing consumer doesn’t happen to like the politics or the race or the religion of a given business owner, he is quite free to decline to associate with it. Thus do some progressives like to skip Chick-Fil-A, an openly Christian business; thus do some conservatives prefer to avoid Apple, whose owner Tim Cook irritated them during the Indiana fight. By that very same law, however, it is strictly verboten for a business to discriminate against customers they themselves dislike — even if they feel that by fulfilling their legal obligations they will be violating their consciences. Are we really going to add to this already lopsided arrangement a general right to break contracts after the fact? Are we going to hand the integrity of our signed arrangements over to the whim of the mob? And if we are not, what are we to expect the government to do about those whose consciences now demand that they renege on their word?

Granted, it’s Canada.

On the other hand, it’s Canada – the prototype shop for all the stupid bits of social engineering leaking into the Western Hemisphere.

Why are “progressives” so annoying?

Their policies?  Their browbeating and illogic?  Their exaggerated sense of their own intelligence?

Yes.  All the above.

But the fact that they are such whiners doesn’t help much:

There is something profoundly cruel about vilifying a person for their democratic choices. When normal people become targets instead of politicians, something has gone very wrong. This then is the real politics of fear and hatred. It is espoused not by the Right, but the Left. And the people who are going to make the next five years truly unbearable are not the ones who make up the democratically elected government, but the ones who desecrate war memorials and spit bile at anyone who dares to think differently from them.

The only cure for crybabies is to desensitize them to being pummeled.

Governor Flint-Smith Dayton is threatening to veto the budget deal over the lower level of funding promised for pre-kindergarten.

I’m not sure that our legislature – much less our governor – is smart enough to fight the battle based on something like “what’s best for children”…

…but in case any legislators are focused on that, psychology and even teachers are starting to think that jamming down academics with young children is at best of no value, and at worst counterproductive in the long run:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201505/early-academic-training-produces-long-term-harm (I’ve added emphasis):

A number of well-controlled studies have compared the effects of academically oriented early education classrooms with those of play-based classrooms (some of which are reviewed here, in an article by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn McLaughlin,and Joan Almon).[1] The results are quite consistent from study to study: Early academic training somewhat increases children’s immediate scores on the specific tests that the training is aimed at (no surprise), but these initial gains wash out within 1 to 3 years and, at least in some studies, are eventually reversed. Perhaps more tragic than the lack of long-term academic advantage of early academic instruction is evidence that such instruction can produce long-term harm, especially in the realms of social and emotional development.

When you start regimenting kids bright and early, is it a surprise they grow up less able to think for themselves?

For example, in the 1970s, the German government sponsored a large-scale comparison in which the graduates of 50 play-based kindergartens were compared, over time, with the graduates of 50 academic direct-instruction-based kindergartens.[2] Despite the initial academic gains of direct instruction, by grade four the children from the direct-instruction kindergartens performed significantly worse than those from the play-based kindergartens on every measure that was used. In particular, they were less advanced in reading and mathematics and less well adjusted socially and emotionally. At the time of the study, Germany was gradually making a switch from traditional play-based kindergartens to academic ones. At least partly as a result of the study, Germany reversed that trend; they went back to play-based kindergartens. Apparently, German educational authorities, at least at that time, unlike American authorities today, actually paid attention to educational research and used it to inform educational practice.

Of course, universal “free” Pre-K isn’t about educating children, much less making them grow up to be better, happier, smarter people.

It’s about providing more jobs for Governor Flint-Smith’s Dayton’s biggest contributors, and thereby more dues for the DFL.

Universal pre-K may be the best possible advertisement for home schooling.

I got this email (via my pseudonym, Mr. Beria) from the “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” borg last week, for a meeting that’s happening today.

I’ll let it sit and ferment on its own, with a bit of emphasis added by me:

Dear Lavrentiy,

I am excited to invite you to support my good friend, Hillary Clinton, in her presidential campaign. Over the next 18 months I will be doing all I can to help elect this great progressive champion. Will you join me?

Tomorrow, the Hillary for America campaign will hold a strategy session for community leaders and volunteers to jumpstart grassroots organizing efforts across Minnesota. I want to personally invite you to join me, Tina Smith, and others at the campaign’s first grassroots organizational meeting.

All the details are below. I hope to see you on Tuesday!

Thank you for your support,

Mark

That’s Mark Dayton, in case the folksy, “grassroots” delivery of the plutocrat funded by plutocrats asking me to support another plutocrat supported by more, bigger plutocrats threw you off.

I’ve had the occasional liberal complain to me that I’m being overly broad when I say that all gun control efforts are rooted in racism.

Why yes, of course, gun control’s history is rooted in the ongoing effort to disarm black slaves, freedmen, and citizens from colonial times through the Jim Crow era.

And yes, modern gun control was launched as a white liberal response to the inner-city riots of 1968.

“But surely things have changed”, they say.

Surely they have not; the secret committee that issues carry permits in Illinois, with no review and no accountability, is denying permits to law-abiding black people at a rate vastly higher than white Illinoisans (Illinosians?  Illlinoids?):

One such example, Michael Thomas was puzzled that as a former Air Force reservist who routinely carried a gun during military service and has never had a run-in with the law, was turned down, even though the law does not afford police the discretion to deny permits to those who meet the prerequisites and who are not legally prohibited. But Thomas is just one of more than 800 people who have been denied licenses by the board. This board meets behind closed doors and keeps its records and reasoning secret. Even when applicants meet all the criteria, the board says they have no obligation to explain themselves… even when it seems clear that the only disqualifying factor is the color of the applicant’s skin.

Thomas wrote to the Illinois State Police, requesting a review of the decision, assuming that it must have been a mistake.

“I have never been arrested or convicted of any offense, either misdemeanor or felony, in the state of Illinois or any other state,” Thomas explained in his letter. “I have no criminal record of any type.”

The state police sent him a letter back, saying that the board’s decisions couldn’t be reviewed. Thomas, they explained would have to petition a court in order to appeal.

Fortunately, guns remain the one area where the the tide of liberty is rising, and all boats are being lifted: 

So that’s what Thomas did. He joined 193 other Illinoisans – many of whom happen to be African Americans – in filing lawsuits against the state police. Interestingly, few Caucasians who applied for the permit in Illinois have found themselves denied, even when their records are a bit more tarnished (though without felonies), than Thomas’s squeaky-clean background.

It’d be unseemly for a Second Amendment supporter to deny a state – even a state as patriarchal and authoritarian as Illinois – its’ Tenth Amendment rights to administer laws reserved to it the way its elected representatives decide.

Unless, of course, the 14th Amendment is being piddled on.

Here’s hoping this case has the same impact as Heller and McDonald.

…why the left has spent the last six years chanting about the perfidy of the Koch Brothers…

…well, wonder no more.

I got this letter from a left-wing PR group yesterday, asking people to come out to protest against “conversion therapy” – the controversial practice of trying to “convert” gay kids to being straight – and, I suspect, ban the practice:

Dear Rudolph,

OutFront Minnesota’s Lobby Day is this Thursday…Contact your legislators right now and tell them that no child should be subjected to dangerous and discredited conversion therapy…It’s those same conversations with legislators that will make the difference in whether we can protect youth from conversion therapy in Minnesota.

…

With pride and respect,

Marty Rouse
National Field Director

The thesis is that trying to use therapy to try to undo a key component of a person’s personality and identity can be traumatic, damaging and a bad idea deserving to be banned via the weight of government. Now, if someone voluntarily wants to give conversation therapy a try, I’m not sure where it’s the state’s interest…

…but let’s focus on the basic principle; dabbling in engineering peoples’ identities can cause all sorts of psychological harm.  And psychology/psychiatry have known for decades (or as close as those two deeply inexact sciences ever get to “knowing” anything, anyway) that trying to force people to change their personality causes huge problems.

And just so we’re clear; I agree.   I agree that forcing people to be someone they’re not causes long-lasting, terrible damage to the human psyche.

And that’s true whether you’re trying to “cure” homosexuality…

…or boyhood, which has been turned by our feminized academic establishment into a semi-treatable psychiatric pathology (subject to diagnosis by people with BAs in Education rather than MDs and PhDs) that needs to be wiped out.

So how about it?  Should we treat all assaults against the human psyche as abuse?  Or just the politically-incorrect ones?

In three years, the price estimate for the Southwest LRT, from downtown Minneapolis to Eden Prairie, has jumped from 1.5-ish billion to, as of yesterday, two billion dollars.   And in a move that smacks of “giving the DFL political cover” (or, if you feel really cynical, responding to the NIMBY responses of his Kenwood neighbors), Governor Dayton has started what looks like walking the project back:

Dayton said in a statement released Monday that the rising costs to design and build the Southwest light rail “raises serious questions about the viability and affordability,” of the project.

Dayton called on the Metropolitan Council, which he appointed, to review other options for providing public transit to the region.

In the news conference Monday, Dayton said the project will not get additional money until costs are under control.

Prediction:  Governor Dayton and the DFL are going to use any potential cancellation as proof of their “fiscal responsibility”, as well as to inoculate the Met Council from further criticism.

The big news in the alt-media world in the Twin Cities last week was the MinnPost’s profile of Michael Brodkorb.

Michael has been rhetorical catnip for both sides of the aisle for the past decade or so.  When he was “Minnesota Democrats Exposed”, especially in his pseudonymous phase before 2006, he was the Minnesota left’s Public Enemy #1.

And his role in the scandal that whipsawed the GOP’s majority in the Senate a few years back made him non grata in a lot of GOP circles.

I’m not one of the conservatives that tossed Michael under the bus; I’ve considered him a friend ever since I first met him – when he revealed on my show back in ’06 that he was MDE.  I’m not going to say that I agree with all his choices, but I’m not the one to cast the first stone.  I’m also not on board with his approach to politics these days – but that’s something I’ll tackle issue by issue.

And I have some questions over a lot of what he says in the MinnPost profile.   Which would make for an interesting conversation, on or off the air.

But to me, the interesting part of the MinnPost profile isn’t so much the unpacking of the past couple years of Brodkorb’s life; it doesn’t cover all that much new ground.

No – the interesting part for me is lines like…:

“Republicans couldn’t distance themselves fast enough. It was a vicious mix of schadenfreude and shunning.”

“You understand the tactic [of scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners PR]? Now you see it as having become counter­productive?

“Do you advise Republicans that [an aggressive, ideological approach to the media] only marginalizes them among general voters?”

“The “fringe of the fringe” of course is great fodder for the media. Every experienced reporter knows they’re fringe people saying fringe things”

“Well, the obvious irony is that for a lot of people around here they look at you and see the guy who kind of invented the partisan bomb-­thrower game”

And especially this one:

“But the tone and traffic you generated with [your writing] certainly helped … in establishing your bona fides within the party and achieving the post you held with the Senate”

The writer, of course, is Brian Lambert.

Now, Lambert’s not a bad guy.  But while I laud his sudden commitment to civility and reason, it’s hard to separate the Lambo in this piece from the Brian Lambert who was throwing partisan rhetorical rocks and garbage at conservatives years before it became the fashion.  Literally – my first encounter with Lambert was on December 18, 1985 – my first day as a screener at KSTP.  And Lambo was sitting in for Geoff Charles.  And he was not an iota less disdainful of and condescending to conservatives then than he was in his years at the Pioneer Press (when the “tone and traffic he generated with his writing helped establish his bona fides” for a job with then-Senator Mark Dayton), his turn as the liberal id of the old “Janecek and Lambert” show, and pretty much everything he’s ever written at the Twin Cities Reader, the Rake, MinnPost, and whatever I’ve forgotten in between.

And I’m thinking his solicitousness toward Brodkorb is going to be a new corollary to Berg’s 11th Law (“The conservative liberals “respect” for their “conservative principles” will the the one that has the least chance of ever getting elected”); perhaps “the Republican that Democrats don’t pelt with rocks and garbage is the one that does their throwing for them”.