Over the past couple of days, critics – and a few parents – are making the usual outraged noises about MSNBC chat-bot Melissa Harris-Perry and her notion that parents’ idea that they, rather than government and society, are responsible for their children.

On the one hand, the news consumer needs to allow for the fact that Harris-Perry is a media figure who needs to create some sort of commotion to rise above the fray, especially at flailing MSNBC.

On the other?  The notion that government and our “elites” really do believe that they are lending our kids to us at their own sufferance is out there in many slightly-less-obvious ways.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeik are a German couple.  They’re Christians, they’re from Germany, and they brought their three (now six) children to the US when they were threatened with imprisonment for trying to home-school their kids.

And as much opprobium as American society – pop culture, the educational-industrial complex and the like – put on home-schooling here, it’s nothing compared to Germany:

Home schooling has been illegal in Germany since 1918, when school attendance was made compulsory, and parents who choose to homeschool anyway face financial penalties and legal consequences, including the potential loss of custody of their children.

And so the Romeikes, like many before them, came to the US.

To escape such legal action, the family fled to the United States in 2008 and was granted political asylum in 2010, eventually making their home in Tennessee. U.S. law states that individuals can qualify for asylum if they can prove they are being persecuted because of their religion or because they are members of a particular “social group.”

Now – do you consider risking prison and losing your children over choosing to raise their children in a way that is considered perfectly more or less perfectly normal in the US a form of persecution?

I certainly do.

But not the Obama administration:

The board overturned the initial asylum decision, arguing that homeschoolers are not a particular social group because they don’t meet certain legal standards, The board said that the home-schooled population is too vague and amorphous to constitute a social group.

“People who reject the local educational system” – as millions do in the United States with varying but usually minimal repercussions – aren’t a “social group?”

Apparently the only “social groups” the Obama Administration recognizes are the ones that chant about “the 1%”…

Now the family is fighting that decision in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the case on April 23.

“We think we have a pretty strong case,” Romeike family attorney Michael Donnelly told ABC News. “We feel that what Germany is doing by preventing this family and a lot of other families from exercising their rights in the education of their children violates a fundamental human right,” he said.

Donnelly says the right of parents to decide the direction of their child’s education has been established in Article 26, section 3 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights which reads: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”

Most people don’t realize that compulsory education was part of a process established by Prime Minister Bismark in the 1870s to keep the German government, military and economy fed with the proper ratio of people; 10% officers/management/professionals, 30% non-commissioned officers/foremen/tradespeople, 60% soldiers and sailors/laborers and farmers.  People in manufacturing and retail would call it “supply chain sourcing”.  And the Big System can no more allow parents a role in the supply chain than WalMart can allow a company to hand-whittle their furniture their own way.

Fewer people realize that the likes of Horace Mann adapted the system to the United States in the early 1900s, and for more or less the same reasons.

Over the decades since – decades where people placed misguided trust in government – it became largely accepted that the government school (or parochial schools that largely aped the government style, with uniforms and some carefully-measured religious instruction thrown in for good measure) was not just the best way to educate kids – it was the only way.  That was intentional; public schools are a supply chain source, no less than the ones in Germany; it’s just that the manufacturing standards have changed since the 1960s.

Which is why the idea of school choice – home schooling, charter schools and open enrollment – was so openly and actively denigrated by the establishment.

So the Romeike case will be an interesting barometer of how the Administration views this key human rights issue.

…that if I voted for Mitt Romney, government would intrude into my private life.

And they were right!

(NOTE to all of my “Liberty” friends who thought Romney and Obama were precisely the same; I don’t recall Mitt proposing anything quite like this.  Please illuminate.  Thanks).

They warned us that if I voted for Mitt Romney, we’d be flirting with fascism before too long.

And they were right.

Dana Milbank reflects the exposed id of the spoiled, cossetted, inside-the-beltway journalist in exactly the same way as Nick Coleman, Doug Grow and Lori Sturdevant do for the self-absorbed, smug Twin Cities journalistic “elite”; all of them wrap a lot of high-minded-sounding wrapping around “being a hack for a party narrative” .

But a hack is a hack – and Milbank may never have been hackier than in today’s piece about an NRA press conference which revolved less around reporting and analyzing the news than in comparing it with Milbank’s narrative and, worse, the prejudices he’s accreted on the subject over decades of being an “elite journalist” and damn glad to tell you so.

But give Milbank this; he doesn’t bury his lede.  He really, really doesn’t like gunnies (emphasis added):

The gun-lobby goons were at it again.

The National Rifle Association’s security guards gained notoriety earlier this year when, escorting NRA officials to a hearing, they were upbraided by Capitol authorities for pushing cameramen. The thugs were back Tuesday when the NRA rolled out its “National School Shield” — the gun lobbyists’ plan to get armed guards in public schools — and this time they were packing heat.

About 20 of them — roughly one for every three reporters — fanned out through the National Press Club, some in uniforms with gun holsters exposed, others with earpieces and bulges under their suit jackets.

In a spectacle that officials at the National Press Club said they had never seen before, the NRA gunmen directed some photographers not to take pictures, ordered reporters out of the lobby when NRA officials passed and inspected reporters’ briefcases before granting them access to the news conference.

The NRA has been the target of an awful lot of what would be called “hate speech” if directed at any regular schemiel.   Death threats have been the least of it, the background noise.

If a media outlet were the target of this much hatred – whipped up by the likes of Milbank – do you think they might tend to their security?

Of course they would.

Hint:  Try to walk in to the Washington Post office without an armed security guard giving you a brusque once-over, if you don’t have an employee pass.  Get back to us.

It’s The Beltway Way – Provinicalism?  Milbank’s got it!

By journalistic custom and D.C. law, of course, reporters don’t carry guns to news conferences — and certainly not when the person at the lectern is the NRA’s Asa Hutchinson, an unremarkable former congressman and Bush administration official whom most reporters couldn’t pick out of a lineup.

Well, then.

Let that be a lesson, peasants; your worth is proportional to how much you’ve hobnobbed inside the beltway lately.

Everything They Need To Know About Policy Analysis, They Learned From Aaron Sorkin – Milbank rattles off the left’s shopping list of shame:

 Thus has it gone so far in the gun debate in Washington. The legislation is about to be taken up in Congress, but by most accounts the NRA has already won. Plans for limiting assault weapons and ammunition clips are history, and the prospects for meaningful background checks are bleak.

Watch any of Aaron Sorkin’s poli-tainment; “The West Wing” and “The American President”.  Liberal orthodoxy is always presented, without question, not just as the only rational approach, but the only approach.  Which is one thing when you’re watching an overhyped TV show.  It’s another when you’re reading the blithe assumptions of the “elite” media…

…in this case Milbank, who’s assuming that:

• “Limiting assault weapons” is of any use in fighting crime.  It’s not; violent crime has dropped like a rock since the end of the 1994 Ban, even as the number of “assault weapons” in general circulation has ballooned).
• Limits on “ammunition clips” (grrr) are equally useless; even if criminals obeyed the law, mass murder is not a function of magazine size; having extra magazines is of much more use to defenders than attackers.
• The background checks being proposed, above and beyond the NICS system, are of any use in fighting crime.  They’re not.  Criminals don’t take background checks.

And yet all three are presented critically, as if questioning any of them is too absurd to think about.

If You Can’t Dazzle ‘Em With Fact, Baffle ‘Em With Strawmen – Milbank presents the facts that fit the narrative and ignores the pesky stuff next:

Now, The Post’s Philip Rucker and Ed O’Keefe report, the NRA is proposing language to gut the last meaningful gun-control proposal, making gun trafficking a federal crime. Apparently, the gun lobby thinks even criminals deserve Second Amendment protection.

“Gun trafficking”, depending on your definition of the term (and Milbank doesn’t define it, and I doubt that someone who refers to “Magazine Clips” would know how to define it if he had to) is already illegal, at various state and federal levels (unless you’re the Department of Justice, ironically).  The “gun trafficking” bill that Milbank refers to, the Elijah Cummings bill, is a sloppy thing that would ensnare a lot of innocent gun transfers with felonies worth 20 years in prison, and the NRA is right to oppose it.

Not because “the NRA thinks criminals deserve” protection, but because it believes the innocent do.

Milbank is either too lazy to know the difference, or lacks the integrity to say so.

Boogeymen! – Next, Milbank – trapped in a world that he never made – whines about the state of the world:

If the NRA has its way, as it usually does, states will soon be weakening their gun laws to allow more guns in schools.

And why does Milbank think the NRA “usually” gets its way?

Because it’s a voracious all-powerful monster that consumes all in its path?

If that’s what it is, why does Milbank propose it got that way?

Because a solid, growing majority of the American people support it and its agenda.  The NRA is rapidly heading toward five million members, and any legislative staffer will tell you that if a phone call representes the opinions of ten other people, then someone who’ll come out and shell out money to join an organization represents at least as many.  There are more NRA members in the Twin Cities metro than there are actual activist members of every gun-control group in the country rolled up together.

That’s why the NRA is powerful; unlike their opponents, they represent actual people in vast numbers.

And all those uppity proles have just gotta piss Milbank off.

Dana Milbank, Low-information producer – Get a load of this next statement:

The top two recommendations Hutchinson announced Tuesday involved firearms in the schoolhouse. The first: “training programs” for “designated armed school personnel.” The second: “adoption of model legislation by individual states to allow for armed school personnel.”

Hutchinson claimed that his task force, which came up with these ideas, had “full independence” from the NRA. By coincidence, the proposals closely matched those announced by the NRA before it formed and funded the task force.

Oh, cry us a river, Dana.  Everyone claims to be independent of their side’s 900 pound gorilla.  Major media claim they’re not at the beck and call of the Democrats. Governor Dayton claims Alida Messinger doesn’t make him dance like an organ-grinder monkey.   Let it go.

The task force did scale back plans to protect schools with armed volunteer vigilantes, opting instead for arming paid guards and school staff — at least one in every school. States and school districts “are prepared” to pay for it, Hutchinson declared.

Vigilantes.

Milbank seems unaware that citizens with carry permits are 2-3 orders of magnitude less likely to hurt anyone (unjustifiably) than the general public – including journalists.

The task force garnished the more-guns recommendations with some good ideas, such as better fencing, doors and security monitoring for schools, and more mental-health intervention. But much of that is in the overall Senate legislation that the NRA is trying to kill.

And why does Milbank suppose the NRA is trying to kill those passive “good ideas?”

Because they’re part of a bill with many noxious, stupid provisions.

Save It For “Lifetime Movie Scriptwriting” Class, Mr. Milbank – Milbank’s big finish is apparently also an audition for a Mad Max reboot:

If so, American schoolchildren may grow accustomed to the sort of scene Hutchinson caused Tuesday, protected by more armed guards than a Third World dictator.

Where does Milbank live?

A quarter of schools have armed guards already. In urban schools with over 1,000 students, the figure is already over 90%.   Many schools feature metal detectors, pat-downs and permanently-assigned uniformed officers.

Our kids, bombarded by our onanistic, self-absorbed media with images of carnage that bely the fact that schools are safer now than they’ve been in decades, and that violent crime is down 40-odd percent in the past 20 years and is falling faster as the number of civilian guns explodes, are forced to endure “huddle on the floor and hope you don’t get killed” drills – called “lock downs” by more clinical-sounding school administrators.

Seriously – on what planet is “huddling in the corner and hoping you don’t get murdered” better than “there’s someone here whose job it is to protect us?”

Note to Dana Milbank:  I’m sure your journalistic credentials, including your “independence” from the nation’s major gun control groups, are in order.

But if you were working as a PR flak for the Brady Factory, how would your writing be any different?

Now, this is one of those stories where there are really a couple of levels.

At the surface, this is a story about liberal hypocrisy; a Pennsylvania NAACP leader blames a rape victim for tempting a couple of football players into perfidy:

In shocking comments, the president of the Steubenville chapter of the NAACP places the blame for the rape case that has shocked the nation on the 16-year-old victim.

Royal Mayo, a lifelong resident of the Ohio city that gained national infamy following the rape of the girl by two Steubenville High School football players, says that attention should be focused on the role of the young woman, whom he calls the “alleged victim,” saying she was drunk and wanted to go out with one of the football players. He also claims that other teens involved in the incident were let off easy, because they were “well-connected.”

Yes, yes, I know – official for a liberal organization violates PC kashrut with great gusto, exposing the left’s deep-seated hypocrisies, yadda yadda.  An example of the left’s war on women.  Same as it ever was.

But I’m here to issue a challenge to conservatism’s assembled linguists, the movement’s neologic engineers.

These stories are with us always.  They are constant blog fodder, and have been ever since most people still thought “blog” was a sound associated with gas-station burritos.  And these stories almost always need to plod laboriously through explaining something along the lines of “if a Republican or conservative would have said this, the media and the left’s chanting-point-bots (ptr) would be howling for blood, but since it’s one of their own, they’re silent”.

We need to come up with a snappy, dismissive word or short phrase to wrap up that meaning.  If I were a lefty and this were twitter, I’d make it a hash tag with an acronym: “#IAROCWHSTTMATLCPBPTRWBHFBBSI1OTOTS”, but that’s almost worse than having to type out the explanation.

So set to it, real men of linguistic genius!  We need a single word or short phrase that goes Alinsky on this pattern, and does it with style!

Andrew Cuomo’s magazine-size restriction – the one from which Representatives Hausman and Martens cribbed their proposed bill last month – is DOA:

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s seven-round limit on magazines sold in New York will be suspended “indefinitely” by a measure in his $136.5 billion budget set to be passed this week, Dean Skelos, a Senate majority leader said.

The ban on magazines holding more than seven bullets was set to start April 15. Cuomo has said the law needs to be rolled back because manufacturers don’t make seven-round holders. The measure was a center piece to a gun law the 55-year-old Democratic governor pushed through the legislature in January, making New York the first state to respond with tougher gun regulations to the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre.

Not sure what they mean by “seven round holders”; I suspect it means because of the vast number of firearms that are designed for eight, ten, fifteen or more rounds that can’t be magically refitted to hold seven.

Not, I’m sure, that Cuomo wouldn’t just press ahead anyway, but…

As I noted yesterday, there’s going to be a debate among the candidates for Mayor of Minneapolis.

The DFL ones, anyway.

Cam Winton – a former DFLer who is running a fiscally-conservative, socially-moderate campaign with backing from Republicans and DFLers who get that Minneapolis is rapidly going broke and frittering scarce resources away on “nice-to-haves” while the necessities go begging, has a murder rate three times the state’s (and double Saint Paul’s), and the city careens toward a pension meltdown – wrote to Dr. Larry Jacobs at the Humphrey Institute to ask why.

The letter is below the jump.

(more…)

With the clocking ticking closer to midnight on his mayoral legacy, Michael Bloomberg is banning as fast as he can.

Fran Drescher

In the era of “Yes, We Can,” Michael Bloomberg has long staked his legacy on “No, You Can’t.”  In the soon-to-be 12 years since he became Gotham’s Technocrat-in-Chief, Bloomberg has managed to ban, or try to ban: (in no particular order):

• Trans fats
• Salt
• Food donations to homeless shelters
• Soft drinks
• Fatty foods (mandatory calorie counters in restaurants)
• Outdoor smoking

Bloomberg’s nanny-ish reach has been so broad that in his waning months he’s repeating himself.  Hizzoner’s latest ban plan?  Hide cigarettes from public view:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pushing for a new citywide law requiring stores to physically conceal cigarettes and other tobacco products behind counters, curtains or cabinets—anywhere out of public view—as part of a new anti-smoking initiative.

The legislation would also increase penalties on the smuggling and illegal sales of cigarettes as part of an effort that Bloomberg said would help curb the youth smoking rate and promote a healthier New York City.

Three out of every five cigarettes smoked in New York City were “smuggled” – purchased over state lines where the $4.35 per pack expense, not counting the additional $1.50 per pack levied in New York City, wasn’t an issue.  So while smoking in New York is at historic lows (14% according to polling in 2011), most of those gains occurred from 2002 to 2007 – before Bloomberg’s more recent tobacco initiatives to ban workplace and outdoor smoking were set in motion.

Bloomberg isn’t likely to receive much push-back to his latest move.  Hitting tobacco is often a political winner and as nanny-state legislation goes, moving tobacco products behind the counter isn’t much of a reach.  Bloomberg’s past comments on tobacco put this latest move to shame, with Bloomberg even suggesting that children have the right to sue their parents if they’re exposed to second-hand smoke.

But Bloomberg’s acknowledgment that his past legislation has made underground tobacco sales Gotham’s latest cottage industry stands in stark contrast with his attitudes on marijuana.  Last June, in concert with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s move to downgrade possession of pot from a misdemeanor to a violation, Bloomberg chimed in that he would “limit” enforcement of New York City laws against marijuana.

So pot’s okay.  But a Big Gulp demands immediate legislation.

But of course, marijuana isn’t tobacco when it comes to the effect on health.  Right?  A 2012 study at the University of Alabama garnered some press for the headline that marijuana wasn’t as bad for your lungs as tobacco.  As usual, the substance of the research was buried by the lede.  Smoking marijuana, the study concurred, leads to chronic coughing, wheezing and potentially chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).  The study even admitted that longer term research would be required to see what the rate of lung cancer was among long-term pot users.  Or as one quoted researcher simply put it, “casual or recreational marijuana use is not a safe alternative to tobacco smoking.”

By his actions, Bloomberg demonstrates a capricious sense of how to use the bully pulpit of the mayor’s office.  Marijuana restrictions need to be eased because enforcement has not only failed but is as likely to hurt the causal user as the hardcore dealer.  Tobacco restrictions need to be tightened even as Bloomberg acknowledges that his previous efforts have driven demand underground.  Tobacco users, who legally purchase a legal product over state lines need to be taught a lesson.  Marijuana users, who use a product that is currently illegal, are due leniency.

The macro issues of the Drug War aside, at a minimum, Michael Bloomberg has a high threshold for irony.

The Southern Poverty Law Center – which is sort of the intellectual NKVD of the hard left – is publicizing its “list of patriot groups” to be watched.

“Patriot” in scare quotes, by the way, is the SPLC’s shorthand for “hate”.

Here’s the list in Minnesota:

• Alarm & Muster: The Modern Day Alarm Riders – Statewide: This is a national group.  Gotta say I don’t know much about ’em.
• Constitution Party – Redwood Falls:  Huh.
• Genesis Communication Network – Eagan: The broadcast home of libertarian on-air professor Jason Lewis as well as conspiracymongering huckster Alex Jones.
• John Birch Society – Statewide: Question for you: outside of SPLC news releases, when was the last time you even heard of the John Birch society?  I used to say that if the JBS didn’t exist, the left would have to invent them – but at this point, it’s more like “keep them on life support”
• Oath Keepers – Statewide:  The idea of getting law-enforcement agents and the military to pledge to uphold the Constitution even if asked not to is “hate”? 
• The Republic for the united States of America and The Republic for the united States of America — Republic Congress – Statewide: Huh.
• Tenth Amendment Center – Statewide: I supposed limiting the power and scope of government, as the 10AC advocates, is a hate crime in the eyes of the SPLC.
• We Are Change – Duluth: Fighting government abuse?  So hateful.
• We the People – Shoreview: I’ll believe ’em when I see ’em.

Wonder what I need to do to get on their list?

Heck, maybe we all already are!

The number of gun-industry firms refusing to do business with government bodies that attack the Second Amendment (like my company) has more than tripled.

In two weeks.

Wilson Combat, a custom pistol manufacturer located in Berryville, Arkansas, joined the movement on February 28 stating the following:

“Wilson Combat will no longer provide any products or services to any State Government imposing legislation that infringes on the second amendment rights of its law abiding citizens. This includes any Law Enforcement Department, Law Enforcement Officers, or any State Government Entity or Employee of such an entity. This also applies to any local municipality imposing such infringements.”

Wilson lists the states included on its no sale policy as: California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington D.C. and The City of Chicago, Illinois.

Fearless Prediction:  the Department of Justice will start prosecuting refuseniks on 14th Amendment grounds.

(Note: when I say “fearless prediction”, that means it’s not really a prediction.  That means I’m being hyperbolic, while realizing that reality has a way of overtaking my hyperbole more often than not).

The Shorter Anti-Unionization Activist: “Unionization would force us to,raise prices. Forcing us to unionize to accept state aid payments would cause me to stop accepting kids who get state assistance. Providers can already join the union; in eight years, out of 11,000 providers, exactly 57 have joined. I already work hard on improving the quality of the care I provide. By the way, the stories of unethical behavior on union reps’ parts in the card check process are true and omnipresent. We are independent businesspoeple! If we wanted to work inside of a larger organization, we’d have stayed with our old careers!

The Shorter Rep. Nelson (author of the union jamdown bill, and a carpenters union activist in his per-legislative life): Unions all help provide better quality care, training, and standards.

The Shorter Response To Nelson From Providers: Um, those are the job, in order, of existing licensing authorities, and myself.

The Shorter Pro-union Daycare Provider: I’m a loving nurturing person. I teach my kids. Aren’t teachers unionized?

The Shorter Union AFSCME Rep’s Case, with the actual thought completed in parentheses This bill won’t force anyone into a union! (It’ll merely give a mass of unlicensed fly-by-night providers the right to compel all you licensed providers to unionize to if you get state money.

The Shorter Committee Chair Joe Mullery: Unions don’t skim anything.  

The Shorter Mary Franson (leading opponent of jamdown, and a former provider herself):. This bill isn’t about improving care. It’s about enriching union officials and funneling dues money to the DFL-supporting unions.

The Shorter Carly Melin (27-year old second term rep who was carted directly to her district after graduating from Hamline Law just in time to meet residency requirements, and neither has kids nor any notable non-legislative post-law-school job history): Hey! Don’t insult the unions!

The Shorter Results:. Six in-the-bag-for-the-unions DFLers “yes”, five Republivans “no”.

In 2008, waterboarding people who had been captured in action against American and allied forces, or caught acting as terrorists around the world, was the absolute nadir of evil; terror suspects deserved the full protection of American due process.

In 2013, many of those same people are on board with killing Americans, on American soil, using drones.

Can we get a final ruling, here?

The Administration is working to make sure the “Sequestration” hurts you – yes, you – as much as possible:

The Obama administration denied an appeal for flexibility in lessening the sequester’s effects, with an email this week appearing to show officials in Washington that because they already had promised the cuts would be devastating, they now have to follow through on that.

In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.

SEE RELATED: Democrats pull out race card in sequester game

He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who gave him this reply: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

Where have we seen this before?

Right here in Minnesota, during the 2011 State Budget shutdown, when Minnesota bureaucrats did their level best to make the shutdown disproportionally onerous.

Minnesota: where next years’ stupid Democrat ideas are tried out this year!

Hugo Chavez: Pining for the Fjords

Hugo Chavez is dead.  Will his political philosophy be far behind?

He was the ubiquitous face of Venezuela, both domestically and abroad, for over 12 years.  Bombastic, dictatorial and often paranoid in style, Hugo Chavez signified, in his own words, “Socialism for the 21st Century,”.  In reality, his political orientation (known as Chávismo in his home country) was little more than a mixture of traditional Bolivarianism with sprinkles of nepotism and populism for good measure.  Or perhaps to more bluntly put Chavez in his proper context, he was just another Latin American dictator who was more interested in projecting his power than his philosophy.  He was also among the relatively few left-leaning leaders that human rights groups publicly challenged.

In short, Hugo Chavez will not be missed on the international stage.

The news of Hugo Chavez’s death has prompted the usual obituary postings recapping the Venezuelan leader’s life.  His attempted coup in 1992, his rise to power in 1998, the coup against him in 2002, and his attempt to become a counterweight to the U.S. in Latin America, aligning himself with China and Iran while promoting socialist agitators in other countries.

What been less discussed is what Chavez’s passing means for his country and Chávismo.

In the immediate term, the answer is, well, nothing.  Chavez had already appointed his successor, the radical Nicolás Maduro, as vice-president, ensuring the continuation of Chávismo and its political patronage.

Maduro has also continued the other tradition of Chavez’s reign – bizarre pronouncements.  Hours before Chavez’s death, Maduro proclaimed that Chavez had been somehow given cancer by “established enemies” (the U.S.), followed by expelling two U.S. attaches:

The U.S. government may be mum so far, but Latin American experts were quick to dismiss Maduro’s speech as wild and nonsensical.

“This clown show demonstrates that these guys are amateurs and play their hands too easily,” said Chris Sabatini, an analyst for America’s Society/Council of the Americas, a think tank in New York City.

It’s poorly executed plan for a post-Chávez Venezuela, Sabatini said.

“This is a desperate government peddling in absurdities,” he said.“They needed some sort of cover and now they don’t know what to do.”

Despite his likely backing of those who supported Chavez, Maduro is not the only viable option.  Opposition candidate and former mayor Henrique Capriles Radonski is likely to run again, having lost to Chavez in October by only 11%.  Capriles is most certainly the anti-Chavez, having been jailed for joining the coup attempt in 2002, while opposing most of Chavez’s high profile policies, including backing away from alliances with Iran and the Colombian rebel group FARC.  Worst for Chavez’s legacy?  Capriles would embrace the economic policies of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Despite the reputation of Latin America falling further into the Socialist clutches of Chavez and his followers, the real trendsetter has been Lula.  Initially feared to be a Chavez clone when he came to power in 2002, Lula’s more moderate economic policies have turned Brazil from being the largest debtor among emerging economies to a net creditor, while moving more Brazilians out of poverty and into the middle class.

Lula wouldn’t be recognized as moderate or conservative north of the Rio Grande, although his successor’s plan to privatize airports, ports, and roads is more conservative than policies here.  Nevertheless, “Lulismo” represents a definite turning of the political tides in Latin America.

Is it a pipe-dream to believe that Chavez’s policies could follow him into the dustbin of history?  Perhaps not.  In the days before Chavez won re-election against Capriles, the polls showed another outcome was possible – Capriles would beat Maduro by six points if they faced off.

To:  Everyone in the USA
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant who’s been through it all before
Re:  “Sequestration”

Hey, everyone,

You may not remember this, but we’ve been through all this before.  Remember the “partial government shutdown”, back in the nineties?  It was a whole big nothing-burger.

Oh, the Clinton Administration tried to make sure that the people felt whatever pain was generated – closing parks, cramping down on the voters.  But as a rule, the whole thing affected nobody.

And here in Minnesota, we had a “complete” shutdown two years ago (which, again, wasn’t – the courts kept most of the government going as “essential”).  It lasted a few weeks.  Then Governor Messinger Dayton abandoned it, when he realized Minnesotans, for all his efforts to squeeze and scare them – shutting down state parks and highway rest areas, threatening to lay off teachers – barely noticed any difference.  While the media did its best to prop up the Messinger Dayton line, the people of Minnesota heard the gales of calumny but saw and felt a big fat nada burrito.  Even Governor Messinger Dayton – as cosseted and isolated from reality as his staff keeps him – noticed; on his trip around the state to whip up support for the DFL budget, he saw tepid crowds of union droogs, and a few professional protesters, and realized he had nothin’ (which may be why Dayton makes so few public appearances these days).

So it’s time for “sequestration” – the “radical” budget cuts that Obama and the super-di-duper commission agreed to as a stick to lead everyone to the “carrot” of an actual federal budget.  We’ve been waiting nearly 1,400 days for a budget from the Democrat-addled Senate, so Washington figured a “stick” was needed.

By the way – how radical and drastic are those cuts?:

Yep. They’re not even cuts.  They’re reductions in the increase.  Indeed, almost completely worthless, if cutting spending is your goal, but really nothing but a fart in the wind; sort of like “dropping HBO” in your family budget, even though your gas bill is rising and your teenage kids are costing more and more.

Obama will try to make “sequestration” hurt; he’ll slow down the TSA lines, he’ll gundeck some ship overhauls and clamp down some military maintenance budgets, he’ll inveigle some big cities to lay off a few cops and teachers, he’ll shut down Yellowstone as the cameras record photos of crestfallen children.  Hell, Joe Biden may even personally try to close the gates at Disney World.

But there is no there, there.  It’s a scare tactic, engineered by Obama and his compliant media.

It needs to be ignored.

That is all.

Republican “xeroxes” a bill:  Leftymedia chants indignantly.

Democrat not only copies and pastes a bill from a special interest group, but allows that special interest’s registered lobbyist to sit in in the role of a legislator to introduce and read the bill into the record?

{crickets}

Berg’s Seventh Law may be the single most prescient thing I’ve ever written.

I’ve never been much of a movie-goer.

Part of it is that for much of my childhood – the part where real movie addicts got “going to the theater” in their blood – my hometown didn’t even have a theater.  There were always other things to do.

Part of it is that I spend so very little time in front of the TV watching things – and while I spend plenty of time in front of the computer, it’s almost always writing, either for work or, well, this.    The rare times I sit still and try to just consume, I usually fall asleep.

So the list of great movies I’ve never seen, or seen parts of, but not in sequence, or not the the whole thing, is a very long one.

One of them, until this past weekend, had been Schindler’s List.  Believe it or not.

But it was on FX on Saturday night.  And I took a rare night of doing nothing, and chugged a Red Bull and watched the whole thing.

Never seen it?  Don’t go in on a night when you’re feeling down on the human race.  Here’s the scene where the Nazis decide to ship the Jews out of the Krakow Ghetto:

It gets worse, and more depressing.

It’s because humanity, at its core, is rotten.  That fact is at the core of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and it’s been proven in the absolute human absence of that worldview, which was one way you could describe the Holocaust.

How to describe humanity?  I’ll leave it – partly for a little comic relief – to one of the greatest philosophers of our time, Dr. Perry Cox:

With that in mind, what actually separates us – the United State of America – from what you  saw in the video above?

Two centuries of small-“l” liberal democracy?  Sure.

A legal system that, at the moment, works?  You bet.

But Germany was a western country.  It was part of Western Civilization; the home of Bach, Händel, Schubert, Einstein (speaking culturally, not in terms of borders), Kafka, Beethoven.  Not a “liberal democracy”, necessarily, by the time Hitler took office – Germany had suffered some very hard times.

And that’s the point.

It took a bad outcome to a war, and a decade and a half of economic misery to turn what was one of the wealthiest, most educated “first world” nations, the culture of Mozart and Schubert, into the stormtroopers.  It took a demigogue at the head of a mass movement, one who tapped into long-standing cultural antipathies toward a cultural boogeyman at an opportune time, to turn the nation of Göthe into the nation of Amon Göth:

Has our Democracy ever been threatened with this?

No – leaving out all of history’s imponderable “what ifs“, we have not.

And how do we assure it stays that way?

You really have two options:

Have faith that government will always stay good.  Or at least “not evil”.  That judges and courts and laws and tradition will always hamstring not only the tyrants and murderers, but the tyrants who are murderers.  That, irreducibly, means trusting to human nature.  And it can, hypothetically, work.  And it can, hypothetically, fail miserably.

But that is the leap of faith that Second Amendment opponents like Alice Hausman and Heather Martens and Rahm Emanuel want you, The People, to take.

The other option?

Make sure the people – no, The People – are equipped to make certain government stays on the straight and narrow.  Make sure the people have not only the right to tell the government “you’re getting out of bounds”, but the ability to enforce it.

Want to see what the Second Amendment is about?  This is it.  Preventing what you see in Schindler’s List – preventing government from turning on the people, from metastasizing into a self-sustaining engine of evil.

That is the choice; trust in human nature’s desire to curb its worst aspects, or counterbalance it with sheer numbers.

I’m not saying the likes of Alice Hausman and Heather Martens are depraved totalitarians.

I am saying that depraved totalitarians need a society full of Hausmans and Martenses and Bidens and Emanuels and Michael Paymars, people more willing to empower government in spite of knowing the failings of human nature than they are to trust The People, to have a shot.

And that’s why some of us fight for the Second Amendment.

Two weeks ago, we noted that “Representative” Alice Hausman handed the job of reading “her” gun grab bill over to registered lobbyist Heather Martens.

Martens represents “Protect Minnesota”, a gun “safety” “group”.  I put “group” in scare quotes, because if the “group” has more than half a dozen “members”, I’d be frankly amazed.

But “Protect Minnesota” has a big budget, and big-money donors.  They are what’s called a “Checkbook Advocacy” group – a “public interest” group with few if any members, but lots of money and powerful lobbyists.  “Protect Minnesota” can be fairly and accurately called “astroturf” – fake grass roots.

So – Alice Hausman turned her chair over to a checkbook advocacy group.

We’re not done yet.

Earlier this week, we wrote about the bipartisan push to scupper the “RoboCop” bill in the Legislature.  As we noted, DFL committee chair Ron Erhard was basically a marionette for  yet another checkbook advocacy group, the “Traffic Safety Coalition”.

The TSC is another checkbook advocacy group affiliated with the Robocop industry – which is closely politically and financially tied with Chicago strongman, former Obama majordomo and possible Democrat presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel.

John Gilmore at Minnesota Conservatives unpacks the various groups involved; refer to the link just above for the ties to Emanuel:

  Shortly after I received the cheerleading email for this legislation, I sent it to a number of extremely competent republican activists. Suffice it to say that we tweeted the results of what we found simply by using The Google.

Could not, you know, alleged reporters do the same? Work backwards from the front group Traffic Safety Coalition to Redflex, the Australian company who bought four lobbyists (and apparently at least two GOP senators) to push the legislation, to Resolute Consulting, who “manages” the Traffic Safety Coalition non-profit! Who owns Resolute Consulting? Greg Goldner, a thug who has greased the skids for the loathsome, greasy Rahm Emanuel.

Oh: Redflex got into a lot of trouble in Chicago, too. If you’re too corrupt for Chicago, you set some kind of record. Redflex actually stopped trading its stock recently because of investigations into its affairs.

And Gilmore notes the laziness of the local media’s “coverage” of the story:

Worse, the Traffic Safety Coalition is lazily termed by the Star Tribune as “a national non-profit.”

A non-profit! Lars Leafbladism™ strikes again. If it is a non-profit, only pure motives can obtain. A front group for a thug PR guy of Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago? Why, who would suggest such a thing?

Well, nobody in our media, to give the rhetorical question a literal answer…

Remember when the left thought Sarah Palin’s jaunty “I’m Not Retreating, I’m Reloading” was a lethal threat?

I know; any human being with an IQ above plant life knew that the left was being drama-queeny at best, cynically manipulating an argument for low-information voters at worst.

Beyond that?  It was Berg’s Seventh Law in action.  Because while there’s not a psychopath simmering inside every liberal, or even most, it’s an ideology that promotes and rewards it.

As with this “guy”:

I guess I’ll rethink my request of @letargets for a @maryfranson (don’t worry, Mary, I just throw used gum). #nogunspo.st/ffMEnx

— Richard Molby (@rvm4) February 20, 2013

@LETargets is, of course “Law Enforcement Targets“, a Minnesota company that’s gotten flak for making custom targets of armed children, senior citizens and pregnant women, to help de-sensitize police officers to the idea of shooting to kill any of them.

The police’s current focus on “officer safety” at the expense of “citizens’ safety” is certainly worth discussing.

Desensitizing people to killing conservative legislators?  It’s worth condemning.

The final part of Alice Hausman’s HF241` – her gun grab bill focused on so-called “assault weapons” – may be the strangest, most vaguely-written, dumbest of all.  It’d ban any…:

3.23(5) shotgun with a revolving cylinder

 

It’d seem to be aimed at the big, scary looking “Streetsweeper”-class shotguns, which do, indeed, have a “revolving cylinder” holding their rounds…:

And it’s not “semi-automatic” (not to get technical, but that means “weapon that uses the force of either the explosion or recoil to eject the empty cartridge and chamber a new round”; the Sweeper has a wind-up spring).

But it said “shotgun with a revolving cylinder”.  That also includes the Rossi Circuit Judge…:

…a popular .410-gauge varmint plinker.

And for that matter, it includes the extremely popular Taurus Judge (no relation)…:

…which is a pistol, sure – but a .410 gauge shotgun with a revolving cylinder (that also happens to fire .45 Long Colt pistol rounds as well.

Look – we get it.  Alice Hausman is subcontracting her bill-writing out to Heather Martens – who, herself, knows nothing about guns whatsoever.

The question isn’t “are Hausman and Martens and the rest of the DFL metrocrats on the Public Safety committee talking out their asses on the subject”.  That’s a given.

The question is “aren’t you DFLers embarassed?”

Even some DFLers – the thin film of them that actually have to manage things in the private sector – are figuring it out.

This piece has made the rounds; it’s from the San Fran Chronicle, in a piece that gurgitates a whooooole lotta Minnesota myths:

“We’re screwed,” [Printing company owner Dik] Bolger said, if the tax goes through. His 79-year-old company competes nationwide and overseas for work with major brands like Chanel. “If you’re bidding for a $100,000 job on a national basis and tax expenses push you a couple of percent higher, then I’m not competitive.”

And I’m hearing this from businesspeople – some political, some not, and mostly off the record – all over the place.

For generations, Minnesotans lived out the progressive argument that high taxes and high services were what gave the state its fabled quality of life.

One thing Minnesota Democrats never, ever get; the “Minnesota Miracle” – creating a high-tax, “high-service” system that actually prospers – depends on several factors:

• Being the uncontested biggest economy…
• …within a national economy that has no serious competition (as the USA did not, between 1945 and the mid-seventies)…
• …allowing near-unbridled prosperity…
• …which supports boundless government spending.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I wonder if shooting a policeman’s family is considered Domestic Terrorism such that President Obama can issue a Secret Kill Order authorizing the drone operators to drop Hellfire missiles on this guy Dorner?

I know he’s accused of serious crimes and I assume this is the same level of enthusiasm and dedication the LAPD puts into every homicide investigation without showing any favoritism at all because of who the victims were or who the accused killer is; but I’ve got to admit, it is a bit comical that the largest and best equipped police force in the world can’t find one guy supposedly camping in the mountains. God help them if LaRaza ever decides to get serious about reclaiming California.

Actually, this situation sounds familiar. A terrorist with a $1 million price on his head hiding in the mountains and nobody can find him to end his reign of terror. They need to call in . . . Barak “The Slayer” Obama!

I see there’s an update – he’s not the first, some cattle rustlers in North Dakota were the first. So I guess that makes it okay, then.

Joe Doakes

Now that Janet Napolitano is finding terrorists (right-wing ones, anyway) under rocks, I imagine we’ll find out sooner than later.

Over the years on this blog, I’ve made certain observations about human behavior as manifested through online media, like blogs and Twitter.

I’ve captured and codifed some of these observations as “Berg’s Law“, a series of common observations that I’m pretty sure are universal.

One of the most commonly-invoked Laws is “Berg’s Seventh Law”, which states “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.

I’ve rung up quite a number of occurrences of Berg’s 7th over the years. And I’ve found another.

Big-time.

(more…)

To:  Eric Black, MinnPost
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  The New JournoList?

Mr. Black,

You built your reputation as a reporter.  And for that, I give you all due respect.

I was a reporter, too.  Not much of one; a couple of radio stations, some free-lance print work.  Nothing big, and certainly nothing to build a career out of – but I did learn one thing, and practice it; a reporter is supposed to ask questions.

And while I apply only the broadest possible definition of “journalist” to myself, I do ask questions.  I’m told I’m not bad at it, at least on the radio; even a reporter on your side of the aisle commented on it (I’ll direct you to paragraph 16).  So it’s not a foreign concept to me.

Now, far be it from me to gainsay one of the deans of Minnesota political writing, but I’ve got a question here.

Last week, you wrote about Dr. Carl Bogus’ assertion from fifteen years ago that the Second Amendment was written to protect slavery.  Now, my friend and frequent commenter Joe Doakes – who actually is a lawyer – pointed out that Bogus’ theory is given no weight by the legal academy, because it’s been pretty soundly debunked and, more signally, ignored by legal scholars; Bogus’ theory is only kept alive by anti-gunners who like, as Doakes put it, to “borrow his degree to lend them legitimacy”.

So here’s what I’m curious about.

Bogus published his theory fifteen years ago.  It was roundly shredded in short order.  It was substantially ignored (beyond a few trivial references to incidental research) in the SCOTUS’ debates that led to the Heller and McDonald decisions, which respectively adopted the “individual right” definition of the 2nd Amendment and incorporated that definition onto the states.

And yet somehow last week Bogus’ theory was pulled from legal history’s scrap heap and restored to glorious prominence by the gun-grabber left.

Hey! It’s Confederate soldiers, defending slavery! The MinnPost ran this image in Eric Black’s story last week about Carl Bogus’ theory. I’m never going to let the MinnPost live this one down!

So I got to checking.  The first I heard about it was a comment on my blog on 1/17, which pointed to your article in MinnPost the same day; around that time, I started seeing a lot of lefties on Twitter chanting more or less the same thing.  Danny Glover and Roger Ebert had spoken or written about it, stating the “slavery” theory as settled fact, around the same time.   And the story was churning around the leftyblog fever swamp, as these things do, once the likes of Kos and  Crooks and Liars repeated the meme (which meant every bobbleheaded leftyblog carried it like it was the revealed truth).

Disarmed people – Jews, in this case – dealing with the SS, which is short for “Schützstaffel”, which loosely translated means “Department of Homeland Security”. Connect the dots, people. The MinnPost can run its inflammatory, searing, emotionally manipulative images, I’ll run mine. Mine happen to be good analogies based on historical fact, but whatever.

Now, a concerted Googling (and a reading of your piece) seems to show that the “writing” about the subject links back to last Tuesday, when lefty talk show host Thom Hartmann – who is sort of the Dennis Prager of the left, only without the intelligence or credentials – wrote a piece on the lefty überblogs TruthOut and Smirking Chimp , lavishly citing Bogus’ theory.

Oops, I did it again! More disarmed people! The sign above their heads says “Arbeit Macht Frei”, which is German for “Work Creates Freedom”, which was sort of the “Hope and Change” of the era. Again – you publish your inflammatory, emotionally manipulative images? I’ll publish mine.

And I thought the dynamics of the story were interesting; in two days, the “story” of Bogus’ “theory”, which had laid mostly dormant since being shredded in the court of academic and public opinion half a generation ago, suddenly was on the lips and minds and blogs of, it seemed, every lefty,  from the fever swamp to Hollywood (pardon the redundancy) to, well, MinnPost and a half a million chuckleheaded leftybots on Twitter.

I’ve been writing online for a long time, Mr. Black.  I’ve seen memes come and go.  The “come” side usually takes a while; someone writes something, it gains traction, it holds sway, it rolls away like the tide.  It usually takes a little while.

The Klan attacking black people! And therein lies the real truth – and the Berg’s Seventh Law reference; Gun Control actually has its roots in American racism. The first serious American gun control laws were aimed at – you guessed it – blacks. In fact, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment was written in part in response to a Texas law aimed at former slaves who’d been shooting up Klansmen.

But the Bogus  theory went, metaphorically, from zero to sixty in four seconds flat.

Didja notice that?

Anyway, those are the facts; Bogus’ theory came, was shredded, went away for fifteen years, and suddenly re-germinated across the broad swathe of lefty opinion over the course of two measly days.  Now, leaving aside the fact that the theory is, well, bogus (as noted last week) – wouldn’t it have been a useful fact for the reader to know that Bogus’ theory has been languishing in academic obscurity for 15 years for a reason? I know, that would have been a statement against your interest and, I suspect, the MinnPost’s, but it’s kinda significant, no?

But here’s my question:  aren’t you the least bit curious as to the, er, pace at which this meme swept the left?  From “forgotten” to “conventional wisdom” in two days?

It almost seems as if there’s some sort of back-channel communication – one might even call it a list of journalists, absurd as that sounds – a, for lack of a better term, “Journo List” that syncs the leftymedia up on the major chanting points.

No, I know – that’s just crazy talk.  I know.

Anyway – did that strike you as odd in any way?  If not, why?

That is all.

PS:  Well, no.  It’s not.  Because while the theory that the Second Amendment was “about protecting slavery” is pretty much a fringe, fever-swamp conceit, it is a matter of settled historical fact and Constitutional Law that the roots of the gun control movement are intensely racist.

More at noon today.

We’ll be seeing a lot more stories about the national crisis of fictional girlfriends and “catfishing”, about Kate Middleton’s pregnancy and weight, about Lance Armstrong, and of course about all those precocious children and their demands for gun control

Wny do I predict this?

Just a hunch.