Category Archives: Slander Files

Catalogueing the ongoing, systematic slander of conservatives, individually and as a group, by the Big Left and its minions.

The Scarlet Drawing

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Lot of talk from Liberals after the Charlie Hebdo killings about Free Speech doesn’t mean Without Consequences, it only means the government can’t punish you for saying it.

Private groups can still bring social pressure to cost you your job, your elected office.

And maybe your life, because you asked for it by drawing offensive cartoons.

When it comes to subjects dear to Liberals hearts like sluts, welfare and Muslims, Liberals claim to abhor social shunning because it has a chilling effect on Constitutionally protected freedoms but they don’t, really, abhor shunning; they just want to change who wears the scarlet letter.

Joe Doakes

In many ways, they are the new Puritans.

Dear Barry One

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To: “Barry One”
From: Mitch Berg, Justice Warrior
Re: Fundraising

After pop tart du jour Lena Dunham used her latest book to elaborately but coyly accuse you of raping her while attending liberal cesspool Oberlin College (IDing her “rapist” as a Republican, which is about as subtle at Oberlin as identifying a “choreographer” is in Montana), I wondered how long it’s be before you sued.

And it seems we may be edging toward an answer.

So just to tell you – I will offer you two hours on my talk show, any time of your choice, to raise money any darned way you want.

Have your people call my people.

That is all.

MPR: Pounding That Wedge For All It’s Worth

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For the record, I’m a fan of MPR’s Bob Collins – if for no other reason than few people write about aviation issues as well as he does (and there are other reasons).

Which is not to say that I agree with him all the time.  We’ve had our disagreements. 

The Minority Case:  And this Collins blog post is one of them; it quotes a story from Tim Pugmire about an incoming state representative John Heintzeman of Nisswa, who scored a big upset win earlier this month.   Pugmire quoted Heintzeman as saying:

“People of faith need to be able to know that they can practice their faith in the way, in the tradition that their family has over many, many years, without being afraid of somehow violating the law,”

 Collins follows:

“Rural values” and “traditional values” are fairly vague terms, which are often left to the rest of us — city slickers — to figure out what they define exactly. They often are intertwined with religion or “faith,” as Heintzeman said.

 And that usually leads to the obvious question: whose religion and whose faith?

For the benefit of the audience that Collins is writing to – the Volvo-with-a-reproduction-”Wellstone”-sticker driving, free-range-alpaca wearing, straight-ticket-DFL-voting Macalester alumni set that is the “must win” demographic for MPR, I’ll explain it.

It’s about Islam. 

It’s so the young Somali woman working at the Midway WalMart need not worry about feeling racist, faith-ist repercussions when she politely asks an infidel like yours truly to please move the pork chops across the scanner, since her observance of her faith doesn’t allow her to handle them. 

Oh, it probably also covers cases like the photographers and bakers and florists who, for religious reasons not a lot different than the young Somali, tried to beg off participating in gay weddings, even trying in some cases to refer the “customers” to gay-wedding-friendly competition, leading to test cases (since that was what the “customers” were looking for in the first place).   And, yes, sometimes those concerns aren’t purely individual in scope.

It could even – hard as this may be to believe – cover religious freedom for people whose beliefs are more in line with the MPR audiences’. 

Really, it’s about protecting the minority from the majority – which is supposed to be what a representative republic (as opposed to a democracy) does. 

In other words – everyone’s religion and faith.  Or even their complete lack of either. 

Rights are rights. 

Oh, there’s more to it than that.  There’s a wedge to be pounded:

Pick Your Herbicide:  Perhaps you’ve heard the story; a GOP district chair in Big Stone County, whose day job is was working at a Hardware Hank, did a no-no; he said really stupid things about Muslims.  Of course, this is red vegan meat for the DFL establishment – at least in part because it’s more fun for them than some other stories that wecouldbe talking about. 

Collins finds a greater significance in it, though (emphasis added):

In Big Stone County, the chairman of the Republican Party is defining those values, at least for his neck of the woods.

Jack Whitley posted this yesterday on his Facebook page.

Let’s make this clear: a guy who was elected chairman of the GOP in the fifth-smallest county in Minnesota, a county with fewer registered voters than MPR has assistant producers, is “defining” “rural values”?

Would that be in the same way that Paris Hilton or Plukey Duke “define” “urban values?”

No?

Naturally, everyone from Ken Martin to CAIR jumped on the statement… 

“It’s very disturbing to see a Republican Party leader engage in outright bigotry and hate,” the Council for American-Islamic Relations said in a statement calling on Republicans to disavow Whitley’s values. “Without a clear rejection of these inaccurate and intolerant remarks, the party’s silence will appear to be agreement.”…

 …““How such a violently bigoted person can hold a position of leadership in the Minnesota Republican Party is confounding and absolutely unacceptable,” DFL Chair Ken Martin said in a statement which called on Downey to demand Whitley quit his party position.

…using it to impugn all Republicans and, as Collins seems to be flirting with, the whole idea of “rural” values themselves.

Naturally (as Collins notes), MNGOP chair Keith Downey did condemn the statements.  Some of Ken Martin’s oompa-loompas have wondered publicly and in the media why Downey doesn’t just fire Mr. Whitley; perhaps that’d work in the DFL, but chairs of GOP house, senate or county districts are elected by their members, and need to be removed by them (as readers of this blog have learned over the years).

But this isn’t about inside-the-GOP party mechanics:

Too-Free Association:  In 2008, Barack Obama referred to Americans with “rural” values as bitter, gun-clinging Jeebus freaks.   The Obama coalition relied on creating a big, sharp, thick wedge between “mainstream” America – in the stereotypes, the part that is white and mainstream-Christian and straight and usually male – and anyone else. 

And the Minnesota DFL is no better; Minnesota’s political map is the results of decades of wedging city vs. suburbs, metro vs. outstate, white vs. black, and in the case of MPR, us vs. them.

And there sure could be more wedges:  if the Minnesota media ever held the DFL to account for, say, Keith Ellison (who openly supports Hamas, whose charter calls for the extermination of Jews), or Phyllis Kahn (who bent party rules, and party dogma about election fraud, to the breaking point in keeping a Muslim insurgency from ousting her at her district convention) I’m sure that could create some wedges, too. 

But nobody wants those wedges, apparently.

I Am Just A Caveman:  I’m still trying to figure out what Mr. Heintzeman’s statement – about protecting freedom of religious conscience from majority coercion, which is a right most people support unless it transgresses Big Gay – has to do with Mr. Whitley’s outburst. 

And I imagine I will be for some time.

The DFL Embraces Evil With A Big French Kiss

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The DFL has a long, filthy history of dropping hit pieces in the closing hours of campaigns that would make people who care about petty annoyances like “right and wrong” and ‘truth” puke up their skulls.  Classic example – this piece from 2010, which tried to whip up ingorant anti-Arab sentiment against King Banaian – who happens to be of Armenian descent. 

But the people who do Democrat “Farmer” Labor Party hit pieces don’t bother with right and wrong.  Their ends justify their means.

I cited this piece, dropped against Stacey Stout in House District 43B, on the show over the weekend.  I called it “Evil”. 

It is. 

Here’s the front:
20141116-170204-61324262.jpg

Uh oh.  An abusive guy (are there any other kind in the DFL’s world?  Other than Pajama Boy, I mean?)

And here’s the back:
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This ad proves that the DFL is counting on finding a plurality of incurious cretins.  And in 43A, it apparently worked. 

Let’s go through this point by point:

Stout, like most people who don’t see “people with swastika armbands” as a government model to emulate, opposed a DFL proposal to take guns away from people accused, as opposed to convicted, of domestic abuse. 

The “Gun Show Loophole” is a fraud; every gun show I’m aware of requires an NICS background check, and require a police-issued “Permits to Purchase” to buy a gun.  The bill the DFL refers to would have required people to transfer all firearms via a Federal Firearms Licensed dealer.  That means if you’re handing a gun down to your kid, or lending a shotgun to your friend for duck season.  This does nothing but raise the price of firearms (FFLs don’t work for free) and create a paper trail for every gun – the same trail that police departments in Connecticut and New York are trying to use to confiscate firearms. 

As to her opposing a background check for “assault weapons?”  That was a proposal that would have added a second,  utterly redundant background check for buying such weapons. 

Stout made the right call in all three cases – if “following the law and the Constitution” is what you care about, which for the Democrat party it is not. 

Taking those stances, in favor of the law-abiding citizens’ civil liberties, and turning them into “support for rape and domestic abuse?”

If you’re a DFL official, you might want to steer clear of me today. 

And if you voted for Peter Fischer over this ad?   Sorry for all the two-syllable words.

It Could Happen To Anyone

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

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

Dang.  That’s bizarre.

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

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

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

Accidents!  Who knew?

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

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

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

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

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

Who hasn’t had that happen, honestly?   

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

Despicable Steve

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If a DFLer says it, it’s a lie. 

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

To Be Fair

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

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

So how stark were the partisan knowledge differentials?

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

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

Which is why I bring it up…

Mischaracterization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liberal Math

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

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

Obviously it’s Home Schooling’s fault!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pondering The Imponderable

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I was at a comedy club a few weeks back.

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

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

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

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

“So if we have to choose between…

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

Someone who believes that:

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

…which does more actual harm to the world?”

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

Mark Andrew’s Ninety Seconds Of Hate

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Mark Andrew is a former Henco commissioner and former DFL chair.  He also works in the “green energy marketing” biz.  Since “government” is the primary target of green industry “marketing”, it’s fair to say Andrew is part of our nation’s ongoing green graft racket – by which the “green” industry tries to chivvy tax money from friendly governments.

And as yesterday’s Strib op-ed shows, he really really doesn’t like the Koch Brothers – their refinery (the Flint Hills refinery in Rosemount), them, or their business:

What make’s their businesses so dirty is not just what they do, but how they do it.

Koch Industries’ corporate ethos is to pollute the American landscape with impunity.

(Really, Mark?  That’s their “ethos”?  The Kochs base their behavior on the idea that polluting is a moral good?  That seems a bit far-fetched).

After hours, they fuel a dark labyrinth of propoganda networks to spew out pollution of another kind-disinformation, defamation and denials. Their goal is not to gain market share–it is to rid the world of government oversight of their businesses and the nefarious groups that prop them up. This is how they roll.

Put another way – and in this case an accurate one?  The Kochs use some of their fortune (in the tens of billions) to press libertarian solutions (some of their stances have angered conservatives and would probably have gotten Andrew’s support, if he were intellectually honest, which this article pretty much confirms he’s not).

Oh, yeah – they’re thought-criminals (emphasis added):

The brothers over the years have outspent ExxonMobil’s subsidies of shadow climate denier groups by a 3-1 margin.

But this piece isn’t just an attack on the Kochs.

No – it’s against those polluted by association – in this case, the Ordway Theatre in Saint Paul, which the Koch Brothers help underwrite (again, emphasis added):

It is not so curious then, that the Koch’s would want to align themselves with St.Paul’s Ordway Theatre, one of the nation’s leading non-profit live performance venues. The 14th Annual “Flint Hills International Children’s Festival, presented by the Ordway” opens this weekend, and is the perfect halo under which the conglomerate might dwell for a few days, basking in the glow of delighted children whose lives are put at risk by their business and political actions.

The Koch’s [sic] and the Ordway’s that birthed the theatre couldn’t be a starker study in contrasts…Bathed in a riot of color, the brochure captures multi-colored children carefully photographed and captivated by a phantasmagoria of dance, music, acrobatics and reverie. And not a refinery to be found!

The stagings are fantasy adventures as far removed from daily reality as the Koch brothers’ climate change denials.

One wonders if the Kochs slither about in black capes and top-hats and laugh maniacally as they twirl their waxed mustaches.

What Andrew is trying to do is “shame” the Ordway – and the rest of Minnesota’s cultural community – into putting the Kochs “beyond the pale”.   Something like this:

Look for more of this; well-heeled liberals badgering Big Minnesota into dissociating with anyone who pushes back against Big Narrative.

Because to the Minnesota left, the only act that can be shamed any more is disagreeing with Big Left.

Epilogue:  A local journo pointed out on Facebook that Andrew’s op-ed reads a lot like Andrew’s former boss at the Minnesota Daily – Nick Coleman.

I toyed with responding on Facebook “A badly-written hatchet job, long on name-calling, thoughtcrime-shaming and innuendo and short on fact?  Yes, I see the similarity”.

But I don’t like it when people gunk up my Facebook page, either.   But it never ceases to amaze me – journalists actually think Nick Coleman is a good writer and reporter.

Smack, Unsmacked

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It’s been a staple of leftybloggers for the better part of a decade, now; every so often, some social “science” organization or another will release a “study” showing some variant “liberals are smarter than conservatives”.

This blog has made a decade-long romp out of trashing these “studies” – which are inevitably junk science.

The latest to the table in debunking this little lefty conceit is that noted conservative tool…

…Will Saletan?   At Slate?

Huh.

Continue reading →

Chanting Points Memo: Koch Fiends

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How much reporting could conservatives save by simply referring to Berg’s Seventh Law - “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds” – to explain “progressive” efforts to slander/”attack” conservatives, their organizations, and their supporters? 

Hard to say.  Lots.

That said, it’s good to get the details.

James Taranto chronicles the left’s current assault on  the Koch Brothers - who, along with the tiny think tank “ALEC” and the NRA are the the repository of most lefty boogeyman-mongering – and finds it a troubling variant on a standard “progressive” tactic…:

We’re torn between finding this effort sinister and ridiculous, and the truth is it’s both. Alinskyite tactics were meant to be applied against the powerful by the powerless. When applied by powerful men, like Reid, who are supposed to be public servants, they take on the character of tyranny rather than rebellion.

…as well as a classic case of Berg’s Seventh Law in action (

No doubt the Kochs can take it, but note that his attack aimed not only at them but also at ordinary Americans who have been victimized by ObamaCare and spoken out about it. The aim is clearly to intimidate others and thereby suppress information about ObamaCare’s failures.

Not to mention make dissenting from the “progressive” narrative too painful for non-billionaires to carry on.  See also “Joe the Plumber”.

Same As It Ever Was

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The other day, a pack of the usual crowd of waxy yellow Leftyblog and Leftytweet buildup  teased themselves to ecstasy over this photo:

It’s a group of “Trail Life” boys – from a breakaway sect of Boy Scouts that bars openly gay members – “giving a Nazi salute” as they recited their creed. 

Except it wasn’t:

But it turns out that the boys were not saluting Hitler and contrary to the first Associated Press caption, they were not reciting a creed. The boys were singing “Taps,” a longtime Boy Scout tradition that the Texas Trail USA troop had adapted as their own.

The boys had gathered in a circle with their hands raised straight into the air. They gradually lowered their hands as they sang the song. It concludes with their hands flush against their side.

“It really misrepresented what was going on,” [John Stemberger, chairman of the board of Trail Life] told me. “There are children involved and that made it more outrageous. They were exploited and misunderstood.”

The picture accompanied what was actually apparently a relatively fair story.

But when it comes to the un-PC, “fair” isn’t part of the left’s playbook. 

Read the whole thing.

Journalism Saves The Day

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The City Pages got out there are did that gumshoe journalism that they’re famous for, in noting that this photo…

…attributing a quote to Michele Bachmann, which has been sweeping Facebook for the past week, is in fact a hoax.

Just one problem: She didn’t say it, and a version of this fake quote has been circulating since 2011

Whew.  Of course, some version or another of that quote has been around for decades - P.J. O’Rourke noted something like it in Holidays in Hell, twenty years ago, if I recall correctly.  If you tell a liberal a conservative Christian supports snake-handling, they’ll believe it without question.

But this is good!  Actual fact-checking!

I’ll urge the City Pages to start working on this one:

Or maybe this:

It’s good that we have highly-trained info-ninjas, watching society’s ramparts.

He Who Forgets Never Knew History Is Condemned To Being A Liberal “Journalist”

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The Democrats are in trouble.  Obamacare is tanking, and the economy is “growing” at a pace that would have been considered a disaster were Barack Obama, the vessel of the left’s hopes and dreams, not President. 

And despite a concerted media attempt to black out the bad news, people are starting to talk. 

And so the left is doing its best to get people to talk about…other things. 

Any other things. 

So when my Twitter feed (actually a tweet from one-time SITD commenter “TimInStP”, one of the most incisive liberal minds ever to comment in this space) screamed “The GOP Just Named its Hot New Innovation Lab After a Nazi Pistol”, I figured it was worth looking into. 

It wasn’t.  I mean, it was from Gawker, which is to national liberal media what Minnesota Progressive Project is to Minnesota; ergo, not worth the time it took, to look into.

But as a view into the lengths the deranged left will go to to try to slander dissenters, it’s instructive anyway:

The Republican National Committee today excitedly announced the launch of a new startup lab to bring techies and creatives together, Silicon Valley-style, to get Republicans elected. Oh, and they named it for a Nazi gun, a type of ammo, and a philosophy that puts war before peace.

Welcome to Para Bellum Labs, America!

Para Bellum?  Why, I took enough Latin to know that means “prepare for war!”.

And Gawker got that part right.  Sorta. 

In fact, it’s part of an old Roman cliche, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”—if you seek peace, prepare for war. That’s been quite an inspiring little phrase through history, at least to militarists. It was especially inspiring to Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken, the German government’s arms manufacturer from the late imperial era to World War II.

DWM started using the “parabellum” phrase as a name for its signature guns—first, the light machine gun used by the Kaiser’s best during World War I, and then its most iconic gun: the Parabellum Pistole, or the Luger pistol…Yep, Nazi parabellum!

So let me get this straight:  Because the Republican startup used a phrase that was also used by, among hundreds or thousands of others, a German company (in corrupted form) in 1908 to describe a pistol that was used, 30 years later, by a regime that wouldn’t even start to form for fifteen years, the GOP “named its lab after a Nazi gun?”

Oh, it gets better.

The gun was so popular in the Third Reich that its ammunition—one of the first to use a slug that was 9 millimeters in diameter—became known as “9 mm parabellum,” which you can find now at your local gun store.

It was nowhere near “one of the first” 9mm rounds (and if you walk into your gun store and ask for “9mm Parabellum”, the clerk will know you learned everything you know about guns from video games; it’s “9mm Luger”, or “9×19″).  And the “Parabellum” pistol (usually called a “Luger”, or a “P-08″ in German) was so popular among the Nazis that they phased it out of production in favor of the Walther P-38, which was simpler to produce and easier to maintain in the field…

But wait!  P-38 was the same designation as the plane flown by America’s top fighter ace, Superior Wisconsin’s own Richard Bong! 

Richard Bong was a Nazi!

(Calms down).

Oh, yeah – most police in America today carry 9mm pistols.  Are they also Nazi sympathizers?

Gawker is like a lobotomy that you don’t have to pay for.

Uncommon Bravery, All-Too-Common Narrative

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It was a year ago yesterday that a depraved lefty walked into the national Family Research Council headquarters a a pistol, 100 rounds of ammo, and the intention to kill every person in the office. 

He was stopped by a building manager and acting security guard, Leo Johnson, who, although shot twice, subdued the leftist gunman, who had walked into the lobby claiming to be a new intern.  Johnson asked for ID. 

After Corkins takes a suspiciously long time rummaging through his bag to produce identification, Johnson cannily stands up and walks around the desk to get a closer look at what Corkins is doing. Corkins bolts upright, gun in hand. Without the slightest hesitation, Johnson rushes Corkins, who fires twice. A bullet shatters Johnson’s left forearm. “And I just couldn’t hear anything, my arm just kind of blew back. So at that point I was thinking: ‘I have to get this gun,’ ” Johnson told The Weekly Standard. “That was my sole focus—I have to get this gun—this guy’s gonna kill me and kill everybody here.”

From there, Johnson somehow manages to push Corkins across the lobby and pin him against the wall with his bad arm. “I just started punching him as hard as I could, until I could feel his grip loosen,” recalled Johnson. Eventually he takes the gun from Corkins with his wounded arm. Before long, Corkins is subdued on the ground. Corkins now admits that it was his intention to shoot everyone in the building. There’s no question Johnson saved a lot of lives.

This was a genuine hate crime; the shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins, had a backpack full of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches he intended to smear into his victims’ faces after shooting them, apperently to suffocate the wounded. 

Johnson was a hero.  And you’ve heard scarcely a word about it in the mainstream media, who spent most of the past 18 months trying in vain to pound the utterly-non-bias-related Martin-Zimmerman case into a “hate crime”, and the past couple of years trying unsuccessfully to politicize the Giffords, Aurora and Newtown shootings.

And yet here was the real thing (and by no means for the first time).  And…

(crickets)

There are some illuminating contrasts between the media’s handling of the political dimensions of the Family Research Council shooting and the shooting of Representative Giffords. In the latter case, the media rushed to assume political motivations and were quick to blame, of all people, Sarah Palin…there is no evidence whatsoever Loughner saw this map or that allegedly violent political rhetoric—even “campaign” is a term borrowed from war—was in any way a cause of the Giffords shooting. That didn’t stop serious news organizations from lending institutional credibility to the irresponsible allegations…though Giffords was shot in January 2011, as recently as this year in an article on gun violence the New York Times saw fit to remind readers that “many criticized Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential nominee, for using cross hairs on her Web site to identify Democrats like Ms. Giffords.”

 And NBC news fairly raced to blame the Aurora shooting on the Tea Party. 

By contrast, the media handled awkwardly the revelation that Corkins admitted to plotting mass murder as a means of furthering a popular liberal cause. “A detail sure to reignite the culture wars that erupted around the shooting is the fact that Corkins told FBI agents that he identified the Family Research Council as anti-gay on the Web site of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” wrote the Washington Post during Corkins’s trial in February. It’s a little unseemly for a newspaper, when finally forced to confront actual politically motivated violence, to worry about the shooting’s impact on the metaphorical “culture war.” Particularly when irresponsible actors in that culture war continue to get a free pass from the media.

The SPLC – cited with grave solemnity as an authority by rafts of lefty bobbleheads – has become a bit of a hate group in its own right:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was once a laudable civil rights organization that sued racists and violent extremists. Now it regularly demonizes anyone who runs afoul of its knee-jerk liberal politics, and despite this it is still regularly cited by the media as a “nonpartisan” watchdog. Some of the SPLC’s newly targeted “hate groups,” such as pickup artists, are merely kooky or distasteful. Others singled out by the SPLC, including Catholics who go to Latin mass or Christian organizations similar to the Family Research Council, are well within the mainstream. Tellingly, the SPLC doesn’t just name the Family Research Council on its website—it posts the council’s address on a “hate map.” That map is still on SPLC’s website, and the organization refused calls to take it down after the Family Research Council shooting.

But they won’t. 

I bring it up because we’re seeing the same thing with the Widstrand beating in Saint Paul.  Now, to be clear, there’s no evidence that it was a “hate crime”, per se; in other words, there’s no evidence that any of the youths stood on a soapbox and bellowed “I’m doing this because I Hate Whitey”.  And for purposes of charging that brutal assault, evidence is what is needed.

But you can see, feel and hear the nervousness in official Saint Paul and Minneapolis government circles; as crime as dropped in most parts of the Twin Cities, it’s stayed steadily well above average on the East Side, the North End, the North Side, Phillips.  Parts of the East Side have been deteriorating before our eyes over the past decade, in a city that is generally mostly just stagnant. 

And yet nobody in offical Twin Cities circles will call the elephant what it is.  They hold official observances for the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” misery-exploitation caravan – which exists to protest the deaths of children who look like the children of NPR executives – and studiously ignore the fact that black on black crime in the Twin Cities is astronomically higher than any other rate in the state.

A Stupid Solution To A Nonexistent Problem

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As we noted last week, Rep. Michael “The Kia Hamster” Paymar is proposing a bill to ban citizen carry at the Capitol complex.

Keep this in mind:  to carry at the Capitol, a citizen (as opposed to a law enforcement officer) must have a valid carry permit – which means that they…:

  • have passed a background check
  • passed a training course that certifies they know the law and the pract
  • are over 21
  • have no record of remotely serious violent behavior
  • are among a population that is two orders of magnitude less likely to commit any crime at all than the general public

…and have notified Capitol Security that they – a legal citizen – intend to carry in the Capitol complex within the limits of the law. 

There’s no reason for this, of course.  State Capitol police happily admit they’ve never had a whiff of a problem with a legal carry-permittee carrying a firearm at the Capitol.  No outbursts, no threatening behavior, no nothing.

Oh, Paymar and his metrocrat pals funneled out a fake meme in the in-the-bag media that legislators were feeling “intimidated” by all the citizens with firearms in the hearing rooms.  I don’t doubt that there were a few metrocrat ninnies who do wet their pants at the sight of a firearm alone. 

But Paymar was deflecting – trying to draw attention away from the fact that his proposals were getting creamed.  Even in a legislature controlled by Metrocrats.

What would be less humiliating for a legislator:  to claim that a mob with guns killed your bill, or the fact that even your own party deserted your cause? 

That is the only reason Paymar is proposing this change in the law. 

It’s stupid, of course.  Andy Aplikowski writes:

There were how many murders overnight in the Twin Cities? We have rampant gang warfare being carried out on the streets, but the highbrow lawmakers and bureaucrats are more focused on taking guns out of the hands of peaceful law abiding citizens. They are far less dangerous than violent criminals

We know that.  So does Paymar.  This proposal isn’t about facts. 

———-

The Real Americans that stymied Paymar last spring are not sleeping through this.  We’ve got work to do on Tuesday:

The Advisory Committee on Capitol Security will hold two meetings to consider changing current law to ban concealed carrying of firearms by permit-holders in the state Capitol.   The first meeting will be held this Wednesday, August 14, from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Room 107.  This meeting will focus on discussion of current law and policy, and there will be no public testimony heard at this meeting regarding firearms on the Capitol Complex.  To view the agenda for this meeting, please click here.

On Tuesday, August 20, this committee will meet again from 10:00 am to 11:30 am at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul on 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Room 107 to discuss policy changes to current standards regulating firearms on the Capitol Complex.   Please attend this meeting and OPPOSE these changes to current law that would ban concealed carry in the state Capitol.  Public testimony will be heard (though time may be limited).  If you wish to testify, please submit your name in writing to angela.geraghty@state.mn.us.  To view the agenda for this meeting, please click here.

Please plan to arrive at least an hour before each meeting.  Remember, with a permit, concealed carry is lawful in the Minnesota State Capitol and other state buildings in the area if you have notified the Commissioner of Public Safety of your intent to do soin advance

Tuesdays are rough – they probably are for most of us in the private sector, and as little as the DFL knows about the private sector, they surely know that.

But I’m going to do what I can. I hope you will too.

Corollary

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Level-setting:  Berg’s Laws are pretty much inviolable rules of human (largely political) behavior based on years of observation.  And while Berg’s Seventh Law gets most of the action these days, Berg’s Tenth is getting a workout, too.

Berg’s Tenth Law reads:

Berg’s Tenth Law of Quantum Context: When a liberal says a conservative is “lying”, the odds of the “lie” being merely an ambiguity triggering some form of cognitive dissonance increases in geometric proportion with the volume and stridency of the liberal’s declaration. Here are the references in this blog to Berg’s 10th Law.

 It’s a nice broad (but iron-clad) law.  But sometimes laws need corollaries.

Which brings us to “The Santorum Corollary” to Berg’s Tenth:

The Santorum Corollary to Berg’s Tenth Law:  If the news media reports something askance about a conservative’s behavior, a full look into the facts will almost invariably show that it was reported with key context missing. 

That’s almost invariably.  People misbehave; sometimes they’re conservatives, sometimes they’re apolitical, and sometimes they’re liberals; the media reminds us of the conservative ones, anyway (sometimes in an onanistic frenzy).

But the Santorum Corollary is nearly airtight, as in this week’s episode; the lefty “alternative” media thought they heard Rick Santorum saying something weird - or so they were told by the HuffPo, which is paid good money to do “progressives’” thinking for them:

Here’s the “story”, as reported by the HuffPo:

Speaking to anti-abortion group Students for Life after receiving an award last month, Santorum attempted to explain what he saw as an enthusiasm gap between liberal and conservative activists. During his speech, a clip of which can be seen above, via Right Wing Watch, Santorum argued that the pro-choice movement infuses passion about abortion rights into “every aspect of their life.” He said that because of this, showering at a gym had become an “uncomfortable” prospect for students.

(Switching into leftyblogger cant):  Oh, noez!   Can I haz weird? 

(Back to English):  Showering around pro-choicers is “uncomfortable?”  That sure sounds…off, doesn’t it? 

But the HuffPo said it!  And thus it must be The Revealed Truth!  Every leftyblogger took the “story” as gospel in the tittering, Junior-high cadence that is the lingua francaof the “Reality Based” alt-media community. 

But was it accurate?

Have you read the Santorum Corollary yet?    Of course not!

From the Byron York piece that the HuffPo wrenched out of context…:

“In July, members of anti-abortion group Students For Life, the group Santorum was addressing, complained that they had been bullied by pro-choice activists after using facilities at an Austin Y.”

“The group had come to the area to show support for anti-abortion legislation then being debated at the state Capitol, and had made last-minute arrangements to use showers at the gym. They did so one night, with the students entering the building in shifts wearing blue shirts, indicating support for the bill. After the first night went without incident, the Y contacted a director at Students For Life and asked them not to return.”

According to the director of the anti-abortion group, YMCA staffers stated that abortion rights activists had intimidated them into making the decision:

“Said, again, ‘You guys [the pro-life students] were respectful. We have no problems with you, in particular, however there were some people that support abortion who talked to our staff, intimidated them.’ They actually said that they felt threatened, and they asked us not to come back,” [Students for Life director Alexa] Coombs said.

So apparently its the pro-infanticide crowd that gets hinky about cognitive dissonance…

…and feels the need to sexualize their own bigotries. 

Now, who are the weird, skeevy ones?

Just so we’re clear on that.

Paymar: Bitchy

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Michael Paymar is back.

 

His attempt to make the law-abiding gun owner pay for the Newtown Massacre squibbed in the last session; even his own party deserted his effort; even some sensible DFLers like Rep. Hilstrom threw Paymar and his metrocrat extremists under the bus.

But he and his buddies in the mainstream media are trying a different tack; around the time his bills bogged down amid party defections and an avalanche of public opposition, Paymar and the metrocrat extremists started a whispering campaign that the legislators were “intimidated” by the number of citizens who showed up at the hearings with firearms – legally, naturally (the law allows people to carry in the Capitol complex if they are legal carry permittees and they notify the head of Capitol security).

Of course, it is an objective fact that Paymar is vastly safer in a room full of carry permittees – who’ve passed background checks and completed training in the subject – than he’d be in a room full of, well, DFLers. Or any other private citizen. Because it’s an objective fact that carry permittees, nationwide and in Minnesota, are a couple of orders of magnitude less likely to commit any crime than the general public are.

But Paymar wants to continue the slander of his fellow citizen; he’s authoring a bill for the next session that’d clamp down on citizens carrying in the Capitol complex.

It’s not just a solution in search of a problem, of course; it’s a bitchy little slap at the law-abiding citizen.

I can’t wait until he’s in the minority again. 

 

 

The Minnesota Left’s War Against Women Who Think For Themselves

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I noticed this late last week; Buzzfeed noting that the GOP is working on a national level to turn the Democrats’ “War on Women” rhetoric back in their faces:

After enduring an election year in which the Obama campaign advanced a largely successful narrative that the GOP’s platform was anti-woman, the Republican National Committee has spent much of the past month gleefully highlighting the indiscretions and sexual harassment charges of male Democratic politicians.

With a flurry of public memos, tweets, and op-eds, the RNC is working to make the Democratic Party take ownership of Eliot Spitzer, who resigned the New York governorship after a prostitution scandal and is now running for city comptroller; San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, now facing allegations of sexual harassment; and Weiner, whose online sexual dalliances have driven the political news cycle all week, and given RNC communications director Sean Spicer some irresistible ammunition.

I’m inclined to call Reince Preibus and tell him to send his counter-message SWAT team here to Minnesota.

We’ve got a doozy for him.

———-

I had a conversation with a modestly prominent MNGOP source last week. Yet again, the source noted, the DFL-leaning media was trying, in their words, to “shame” a female conservative.

I’m not going to identify the former political figure involved; they’ve asked for people to keep their noses out of their private lives, and I’m going to do exactly that, and urge you to do the same.

But the source referred me to the Twitter feed of Shawn Towle, of “Checks and Balances”, a regional political publication.

Last week Towle tweeted with the breathless glee of a seventh-grader who’s just disovered his older brother’s stash of Playboys:

@ChecksnBalances: @ChecksnBalances: Breaking: alla #weiner style @UMNnews confirmed via source this pic [whose link I'm going to redact] is [the female conservative] 

Towle tries, in successive tweets and with his oddly stunted written delivery (I think “alla” means “a la”), to equate the “incident” – a photo of a female conservative in her underwear – to the Anthony Weiner controversy. 

I’m going to redact the photo; it’s on a “Tumblr” blog with one post – a photo – and no comments. 

And if you have read Shawn Towle, it doesn’t seem a big stretch to think that he does think there’s an equivalence between…:

  • …a sitting congressman sending raunchy photos to women who hadn’t actually solicited them, and…
  • …someone who is not an elected official and whose mildly racy photos – from an episode amid some extreme marital difficulty – were distributed and published very much against her will.

Or, for that matter, that Aaron Rupar of the City Pages – who writes about this “issue” like he’s covering the fall of the Twin Towers, only with that little tinge of smug, self-righteous prurience he seems to bring to ”reporting” on conservative women with marital difficulties or boyfriend trouble – thinks this is a story.

How bad was Towle and Rupar’s “reporting?”  Even Nick Coleman – who rarely has a kind or constructive word to say to anyone to the right of his little brother Chris, the Mayor of Saint Paul – twote:

@NickColeman: City Pages published a pic of [the subject of the story] in underwear? Why on earth? Have they been to the beach? Maybe CP should get out more.

Or stock up on toilet paper.

And Dave Mindeman at mnpAct tweeted:

@newtbuster: [the subject] Story – Embarrassment for Her..Unnecessary For Public http://t.co/DPE18sgV0V

Yep.  This “story” serves no purpose, other than to try to stick it to someone that Rupar and Towle disagree with, in the most personal, ugly way possible.  (And no, none of the links you see in my story lead to the actual “story”)

But the real story here isn’t the fact that a couple of wanna-be liberal journos have gotten themselves a week’s worth of whacking material.

No, there are three real stories here:

Stalking- I’ll take the subject of this story at her word that the photo in question was obtained and distributed illegally.  The woman who is the subject of this story has been cyber-stalked – with the complete, onanistic approval of at least two Twin Cities “media” outlets (and the tacit approval, I maintain, of most of the rest of the media). 

While a civil suit seems a long shot, I do sincerely hope the FBI does in fact find someone to charge in this gross invasion of privacy – and that there are consequences for Towle, Rupar, Checks and Balances and the City Pages.  In a just world, there’d be some way to sue them back to the stone age. 

The Scarlet “C” – It’s that this is the kind of thing that every female conservative in Minnesota faces if they give the Big Left’s smear machine even the slightest whiff of imperfection.  As I said on Friday, there’s a yawning double standard; Bill Clinton’s serial philandering was “Just Sex”; Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner and Jesse Jackson’s sexual (and pseudo-sexual) peccadillos are accepted as the sort of thing that goes along with being great and powerful.  But if a conservative woman for any reason colors outside the social lines that the left abandoned for themselves in the 1970s – gets divorced, has a social life that doesn’t pass their all-critical muster?  They get turned into Hester Prynne with a healthy dollop of puritan-via-Beavis-And-Butthead “shaming” thrown in on top.

Women, to Democrats, are supposed to be barefoot, Democrat, and marching to the voting booth to thank the nice Democrat for their abortion and contraceptives.  Thinking for themselves is the real crime.

 Er, “Blind” Hate – Beyond sheer illogic and “shaming”, though, there’s a whole ‘nother layer of depravity at work here.  What Towle and Rupar have done is isn’t just an Alinsky-ite smear job using the tactics of the internet stalker – which would be bad enough. 

To dig into the personal details of a wretchedly difficult part of a couple’s personal life – a couple that is not currently involved in politics, no less – and pruriently splash it all over the public square?  That’s beyond politics, beyond spite.  That’s the kind of ritual misogyny you see in mobs of inbred cretins stoning a woman for infidelity in some Godforsaken third world backwater. 

If you’re a female conservative, really, that’s what the Democrats – and their junior-league PR interns at the City Pages - are these days; rural Iran with better coffee.

———-

Questioned about this, liberals say “serves them right, belonging to a moralistic party” – which would be illogical even if their own party was itself morally consistent (which it’s not; the self-appointed party of the poor and the working class has left us with a terrible economy for workers.  The self-professed party of minorities has made the economy worse for minorities, and has increased racial strife in this country, all the while mining minority communities for votes.  The putative party of women has made “womanhood” all about the disposition of a uterus).  It’s the ad hominem tu quoque, arguing that personal inconsistency invalidates an argument.  This line of illogic would have you believe that stumping for a moral case is invalidated by not living up to it in every facet of one’s life; it’s actually quite the opposite. 

No.  The only reason this sort of non-story “story” gets covered by lefty “journalists” – and “covered” to the point they risk going blind – is that, true to Alinsky, it makes an example of any woman that leaves the liberal plantation.  It’s done to warn other women – and blacks, latinos, Asians and gays – not to make waves.  To sit down on the left side of the bus, and shut up, or the personal cost to you and your family will be just too high.

The only reason it hasn’t worked so far is that so many of Minnesota’s conservative women have enough guts to make Red Adair look like Woody Allen.