To:  Governor Messinger Dayton
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  A Time For Choosing

Governor Messinger Dayton,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s declaration that legal gun ownership by the law-abiding citizen is a dangerous condition that needs monitoring?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. If you support it, please make sure everyone knows.  You’ve never been shy about using the media that serves as your praetorian guard, and the lavishly-funded apparatus that your puppeteer ex-wife owns, to get the message out before; please don’t stop now.
3. If you support the President, could you please prevail upon Minnesota’s DFL legislators to publicly declare their support as well?  Very, very publicly?  Maybe in a big press conference on the Capitol steps?

You ran as a “pro-2nd-Amendment” candidate in the 2010 election.  I’ve always suspected that you did it more out of memory of what happened to Ann Wynia (and the rest of the Democrat majorities) in 1994, or to the DFL’s majority in the House in 2002, than out of any sincere care for civil and human and rights…

…but I’m willing, if not expecting, to be surprised.

I mean, one way or another, it’s time for a big profile in courage, isn’t it?

That is all.

To:  Senator Amy Klobuchar
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Sen. Klobuchar,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you join President Obama in the belief that the law-abiding, legal gun owner is a public health risk and manifesting a mental illness?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. Could you please make your reasons for this support as public as you can, if applicable?  You’ve never been shy about using the media that serves as your praetorian guard to get the message out before; please don’t stop now.
3. If you support the President, could you please prevail upon Minnesota’s DFL legislators to publicly declare their support as well?  Very, very publicly?

You’ve spent the past six years in a calculated effort to create a public image of studied innocuity.  But given your massive victory last November, surely you feel secure enough politically to be honest about your stance and motivations.

I mean, you just know you’re bulletproof come election time, don’t you?

That is all.

To:  Senator Al Franken
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Sen. Franken,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s executive order saying law-abiding gun ownership is mental illness?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. If so, please make your support very, very public.
3. Again if so – please do what you can to make MN DFL legislators “come out” publicly on their support, would you please?

I mean, you just know you’re bulletproof come election time, don’t you?

That is all.

To: Rep. Colin Peterson (DFL MN-07)
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Power, Power, Power!

Rep. Peterson,

If you’d be so kind, I’d love it if you answered the following:

1. Do you support President Obama’s decree, yesterday, saying that law-abiding legal gun ownership is a form of mental illness?  Yes or no, please.
2. As you’ve always claimed to be a pro-Second-Amendment guy, then – if you don’t support Obama, what do you plan to do to fight this usurpation?

Your attention to this matter will be appreciated.

That is all.

To:  Rep. Tim Walz (DFL-MNCD1)
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Rep. Walz,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s executive orders trying to equate legal, law-abiding gun ownership with mental illness? I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. If so, are you urging DFL legislators in the 1st CD to do the same?
3. If not, how do you plan to manifest this dissent politically?  Concrete terms, please.

Please make your stance on this issue as public as you possibly can.  Tell the Strib, if you’d be so kind.  Failing that, at least inform Sally Jo Sorenson; she’s always been a reliable steno.

That is all.

To:  All Minnesota State Legislators
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Dear Esteemed State Representative Or Senator,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s decrees, especially the ones trying to turn legal, law-abiding gun ownership into a public health issue?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. Are you supporting legislation this session to “control guns” in Minnesota?
3. If so – how do you plan to publicize your approval for the Administration’s actions?
4. If not, how do you plan to manifest this dissent politically?  Concrete terms, please.

Please make your stance on this issue as public as you possibly can.  It does need to be part of voters’ decisions in this next election.

As it was nationwide in 1994, and in Minnesota in 2002.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

That is all.

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

– Samuel Adams

I’m way ahead of posterity.

Today they’re coming for the Second Amendment.  Tomorrow they’re coming for the rights you care about.

To Republicans?  No more compromise, on guns or taxes or the debt.  No retreat, no surrender.  Stand firm, or your head will go on the pike (rhetorically speaking) too.

Brian Rosenberg is the president of Macalester College in Saint Paul.  Macalester is, to put it mildly, a training ground for the regional “progressive” “elite”; the Twin Cities’ non-profits, MPR, and government – especially the DFL – are clogged with Mac grads of all ages.

Which is just fine.  They have that right.

But Rosenberg, with all due respect, would seem to be proof of Dennis Prager’s dictum, which I’ll paraphrase; it takes a university education to be this ignorant.

In the wake of Sandy Hook, Rosenberg has “taken a pledge”.  Like most pledges made in public (or at least on MinnPost), it’s smug, self-righteous and…

…and betrays what on the surface might seem like a brick-thick ignorance about how a representative republic works – but, when looking at Macalester’s record, might be better viewed as contempt for it.

(more…)

WELCOME, Instapundit readers!

———-

My neighbor AVERY LIBRELLE is concerned about gun violence.

We met at a local coffee shop, where we spoke over the sound of a group of locals that was keeping alive the tradition of out-of-tune folk music played by large, enthusiastic groups of the tone-deaf.

LIBRELLE:  We need to ban high-clip bullets and assault weapons!

ME:  Ugh.

LIBRELLE: “Ugh?”  What?

ME:  Oh, I’ve only been having this argument for 25 years.  For starters, they’re called “high-capacity magazines”.  A “clip” as a general term for “anything that holds bullets” is a bit of Hollywood slang.  Really explaining it requires me to get all pedantic about how guns work, and I know you don’t care, and explaining it really takes me off the topic, but here – let me show you this:

“Clips”, pretty much by definition, are not “high-capacity”.  To talk much more about it would be to go onto a tangent that only gun geeks really care much about.

LIBRELLE:  Well, the media uses them interchangeably.

ME:  Uh, yeah.

LIBRELLE:  Anyway – you can not show me a reason anyone needs a…what?  High-capacity “magazine”?

ME:  No, I can’t show you one.

LIBRELLE:  I knew it.

ME:  I can show you several. (more…)

Last week:  the Lower Hudson Journal News – an anti-gun rag in metro New York – published an interactive map of all legal carry permit holders in Rockland and Westchester counties of New York.

This week?  They’ve hired armed guards:

A Clarkstown police report issued on December 28, 2012, confirmed that The Journal News has hired armed security guards from New City-based RGA Investigations and that they are manning the newspaper’s Rockland County headquarters at 1 Crosfield Ave., West Nyack, through at least tomorrow, Wednesday, January 2, 2013.

According to police reports on public record, Journal News Rockland Editor Caryn A. McBride was alarmed by the volume of “negative correspondence,” namely an avalanche of phone calls and emails to the Journal News office, following the newspaper’s publishing of a map of all pistol permit holders in Rockland and Westchester.

“Negative correspondence?”   You mean, threats?

McBride had filed at least two reports with the Clarkstown Police Department due to perceived threats. However, the police did not find the communications in question actually threatening. Incident-Report 2012-00033099 describes McBride telling police she was worried because an email writer wondered “what McBride would get in her mail now.”

Police said the email “did not constitute an offense” and did not contain an actual threat.

When did American journalists turn into such pansies?

(It’s a rhetorical question.  It happened about the time they decided to be high priests of information in the employ of the left).

You, the peasant, shouldn’t have guns; they, the patricians, must – to protect themselves from you, the peasant.

See how it works?

…is on full display, as it always is when any conservative/GOP figure has serious health problems.

Prayers, btw, for George41.

The answer? “Gérard Depardieu est Jean Galt!”

Few Frenchmen are more recognizable at home and abroad than the movie star Gerard Depardieu. Last week, Depardieu caused a great controversy in his native land by moving to Belgium – partly to avoid the 75 percent income tax on the wealthy that was introduced by the socialist President of France,

What was it that Gandhi said? “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then you win?”

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Problem: people who are mentally ill and dangerous commit crimes with firearms.

Potential Solution 1: remove firearms from society. Objections: Unconstitutional under Second Amendment, difficult to implement door-to-door and as impossible to enforce as prohibition of alcohol, drugs and illegal aliens.

Potential Solution 2: remove people who are mentally ill and dangerous from society. Objections: Difficult under 1970’s Supreme Court equal protection rulings and current Minnesota law because the legal standard of proof is so high.

Recommendation: try the easier one first. Convince the Supreme Court to change the law back to the earlier standard, making it easier to remove people who are mentally ill and dangerous from society leaving the rest of us free to use firearms responsibly.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

I think Obama is going to use the classic totalitarian means of splitting the difference; calling dissenters “insane” and locking them all up.

Both problems solves – if you hate freedom.

… if a Republican activist had said this:

Me either.

The US 7th Circuit has struck down Illinois’ civilian firearms carry ban:

The state of Illinois would have to allow ordinary citizens to carry weapons under a federal appeals court ruling issued today, but the judges also gave lawmakers 180 days to put their own version of the law in place.

In a 2-1 decision that is a major victory for the National Rifle Association, the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals said the state’s ban on carrying a weapon in public is unconstitutional.

“We are disinclined to engage in another round of historical analysis to determine whether eighteenth-century America understood the Second Amendment to include a right to bear guns outside the home. The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside,” the judges ruled.

And there’s your importance of Heller and McDonald, right there.

“The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense. Illinois had to provide us with more than merely a rational basis for believing that its uniquely sweeping ban is justified by an increase in public safety. It has failed to meet this burden.

Boy, has it ever.

David Sigale, an attorney who represented the Second Amendment Foundation in the lawsuit, called the decision by the appeals court in Chicago “historic.”

“What we are most pleased about is how the court has recognized that the Second Amendment is just as, if not at times more, important in public as it is in the home,” he said. “The right of self-defense doesn’t end at your front door.”

I loved the little bit of closet fascism buried in this next graf (emphasis added):

 Mayor Rahm Emanuel said through a spokesman that he was “disappointed with the court’s decision.” The city is reviewing the opinion and will work with others “to best protect the residents of Chicago and still meet constitutional restrictions,” Bill McCaffrey added.

Comandante “Mayor” Emanuel:  your city is a war zone.  The best thing you can do to “protect the residents” is require each of them to become proficient at firearms.

(more…)

Steven Crowder went to a demonstration, and all he got was a stupid…

…union goon punching him in the face four times:

Quick, lefties! When did this happen at a Tea Party?

Project! Hurry!

They told me that if I voted Romney, government would be taken over by wealthy special interests.

And they were right!

The SEIU – who else? – is planning on protesting tomorrow at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

On Thanksgiving.

What exactly is SEIU protesting for? They say that an airport contract is breaking the city law on living wages – which, of course, is nonsense, since that would be prosecutable. They also say that the contractor has eliminated “affordable healthcare” for over 400 workers. Which is, again, bull. After all, can’t the SEIU just rely on Obamacare?

It’s California.  They’ll buy anything.

What does one-party rule look like?

California!

As bad as last Tuesday night was for the national Republican Party, it was far, far worse for the California Republican Party. Not only did Golden State Democrats maintain control of every statewide elected office; not only did Gov. Jerry Brown’s $6 billion Proposition 30 tax hike pass by solid margins; but Democrats also secured supermajorities in both state legislative chambers. Now, Brown and the Democrats can raise taxes by as much as they want.

The California Republican Party is functionally dead. And how is California doing, now that liberals have successfully terminated the state’s remaining conservatives?

You know where this one goes.  The state is drowning in debt.  There’s a $2Billion deficit next year, they state is committed to almost $400 Billion in state and local debt over the past ten years.

And what does that do to a state’s economy?

Smashes it faster than you can say “Medical Device Tax”:

According to a new census report released Friday, almost one-quarter, 23.5 percent, of all Californians are in poverty. One-third of all the nation’s welfare recipients live in the state, despite the fact that California has only one-eighth of the country’s population. That’s four times as many as the next-highest welfare population, which is New York.

(Wait – didn’t Paul Krugman tell us that blue-states carry the rest of us?)

Unemployment in California is 10.2% today.  It’s in the sixes in Minnesota.

I should start a poll for people to predict where Minnesota will be after two years of one-party rule in Minnesota.

Forward!

…it’s only Republicans that are corrosively racist.

Keep repeating it until the authorities instruct you to stop.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

“Just sittin’ around drinkin’ with the rest of the guys

Six rounds bought, and I bought five.

Spent the groceries and half the rent.

I lack fourteen dollars of having twenty-seven cents”

  — “Dang Me” – Roger Miller

My Dad had that song on a LP record album we played on the Hi-Fi in the living room. It just came up on the iPod again.

I’ve heard that song for 50 years and never understood the lyrics. Now I get it – he’s so broke from drinking with his buddies that he’d need $14.00 just to end up with 27 cents. Makes perfect sense when you see the lyrics written out. (My son the math major says that means he’s $13.73 in the hole but I never was good at story problems and besides, it doesn’t rhyme).

50 years to get a joke. I wonder what else I’ve been missing.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

UPDATE:  Welcome PowerLine readers.  Kudos on this one go to “MNCD4 Conservative”, on his eponymous blog.

From MNCD4 Conservative, video of an entire yard-full of GOP signs being stolen:

He’s been documenting a long string of these thefts and vandalism.  Read the whole thing.

Look at the video.  Does it look like kids out vandalizing for fun to you?  About as much as the SEALS that took out Bin Laden looked like yokels shining deer.

MNCD4 Conservative points out that he is one of CD4’s main campaign sign mavens, and that he sees very few Democrat signs vandalized – but many, many GOP ones:

I know opposing readers will say, “but your just ignoring or don’t see the other side”. And it is human nature, that if it doesn’t fit their world view, they tend to force things into the model that “its always the other side..”. Until something comes crashing in to upset the world as they know it. However, I specifically look for, stop, and often repair, every down/defaced sign I see [once I know whose it is and would have permission to do so]. I can only comment that, Pioneer Press articles aside, I have never found one to be other than Vote Yes or Republican when I have stopped. That’s a whole lot of improbability.

 

My project for next election: stake out my election signs, in such a way as I can get names and numbers when – not if – they get destroyed.

Lefty talk show host urges gay Romney supporter to kill himself.

Twice.

Wonder if this would be covered by any applicable “bullying” statutes?

Saint Paul’s business sector is collapsing.  If downtown business occupancy rates are under 30%,it’s only because state government has been renting so much of it; the City is also party to the destruction of the downmarket but once-at-least-breathing University Avenue business strip.  Crime is rising, the school system is garbage (although the superintendent is doing the usual fine job of pre-emptively foisting the blame on the taxpayers), and with over 1,000 vacant properties (with many more forfeited via one path or another to the city, which is busy dumping them on the market for peanuts after filtering them through the non-profit system that helps install so many of the City Council in office), it’s impossible to sell a house without getting the fiscal Abner Louima treatment.

The Saint Paul Council, and Mayor Coleman, are at a loss for a response other than “tax the living crap out of whoever in the city still pays taxes”.  And building indoor ice rinks and traffic roundabouts and bike expressways.

So when it comes to the whole “run a responsible city government that doesn’t impede the city’s success”, the Saint Paul City Council is a big fat flop

But everyone’s got their sweet spot.  The St. Paul City Council does excel at worthless smug symbolic frippery:

St. Paul became the first city in Minnesota to formally resolve that federal military spending needs to be trimmed.

A resolution sponsored by St. Paul City Council member Amy Brendmoen unanimously passed the seven-member board Wednesday, Oct. 10. It asks the state’s congressional delegation to support shifting funding priorities from military operations to the needs of local communities.

“The bottom line for me is that federal spending impacts the money that goes to local initiatives,” Brendmoen said.

Of course, some of our old friends are involved (emphasis added):

 Wednesday’s council meeting was attended by members of various anti-war and social justice groups, as well as state Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, and anti-war activist Coleen Rowley.

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, a professor [shouldn’t that have scare quotes? – Ed.] of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas, said that if every American taxpayer received a bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, St. Paul taxpayers’ share would total an estimated $1.7 billion over the past decade.

I guess you have to be a highly-educated “peace studies” “professor” to think “military spending” is done in the form of “government goodies” coupons that can be redeemed for more ice rinks and light rail trains.

But what if that putative 1.7 bill had been available for local spending, rather than exacted by the IRS or borrowed from China?

With people like Sandy Pappas and the Saint Paul City Council in charge, we’d have gotten $1.7 billion more in ice rinks, drinking fountain art and electric cars for city employees.

This sort of thing is apparently all the rage among PC liberal circles these days:

Other major cities to pass resolutions in favor of trimming military spending are Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Hartford, Conn. Rowley said peace activists have approached the city councils in Eagan and Lakeville but have yet to receive responses. They also plan to approach Apple Valley, Inver Grove Heights, Shoreview and Mounds View officials in coming days.

If we could trade “trimming the defense budget” with “sending the city councils of Saint Paul, Philly, LA and Hartford to Afghanistan”, I think it’d be a fair trade for everyone.

…when we’ve got Red Squirrel from the eponymous Red Squirrel Report:

I grew up in the 1970’s, so I got some of my learnin’ every Saturday morning from ABC’s Schoolhouse Rock…Last Friday, the government told us that the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%, even though they do not count millions of people who are too frustrated to even look for a job anymore. I think this country needs the folks at Schoolhouse Rock to explain the unemployment rate to the American people. Something catchy, similar to Conjunction Junction.

How about……..Frustration Nation? C’mon kids, sing along:

He’s got lyrics and everything.