To: State Employees (who find themselves on-camera with one of the local TV stations that are devoting slavering coverage to the (DFL side of the) shutdown.

From: Mitch Berg, schnook taxpayer.

Re: Priorities

Dear state employees:

Sorry about the whole shutdown situation. You do realize that Governor Dayton could end this whole thing at any moment by accepting the balanced GOP budget that’s been on the table for almost two months.

But I’d like to talk with those of you that’ve been on camera with Channels 4, 5, 9 and 11 on every single newscast for the past couple of weeks, asking how you plan on getting by without a state paycheck.

“Prioritize!”, some of you say. “Gotta pay the rent and the mortgage”, you intone.

“It’s tough out there”, one of you actually said.

Just  a quick question, asked with all due respect; what do you think all of us in the private sector have been doing?

That is all.

A “wave” of gun violence prompts a Philadelphia ‘burb to send the entire city to time-to-think:

Darby Borough, Delaware County is under a State of Emergency due to a recent uptick of gun violence.

Five shootings in three days led to the announcement Friday night.

Mayor Helen Thomas [heh] announced the state of emergency telling residents the gun violence had to stop.

“I Mayor Helen R Thomas declare a state of emergency.”

Officials say the shootings were not fatal and they seem unrelated, but something had to be done to curb the violence.

And that answer; keep the law-abiding majority penned up in their houses.

An 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew is in effect for adults and juveniles for at least 10 days.

Anyone outside during that time can be stopped and questioned by police, though Police Chief Bob Smythe says they’re more concerned about groups loitering or causing trouble.

“You’re in a group of more than three people and you are causing a disturbance. You’re going to be stopped and you’re going to be cited,” says Smythe.

A larger police presence is expected on the streets and Mayor Thomas says after the 10 days, officials will re-evaluate and go from there.

Hopefully they’ll evaluate the crushing ridicule (that they certainly deserve) that they get for adopting a banana-republic solution to a law-enforcement problem.

On Tuesday, I took a rare chance to listen  to the Dennis Prager show.  I don’t get out much over the mid-day, so it was fun.

He started talking about San Francisco’s probably-upcoming ban on pets. I expected him to bag on it.

He didn’t. According to Prager, it’s a good idea.

And by the time he got done talking, I agreed.

Think about it; San Francisco’s ban on pets follows closely follows moves to ban circumcision, McDonalds Happy Meals, Junior ROTC and for all I know having more than one child are a spectacular lesson in what “progressivism” really means.

The old joke is that under liberalism, everything that isn’t mandatory is banned- and San Francisco is getting closer and closer to it every day.

And what a wonderful lesson for people  – having an object lesson in the inevitable end-result of progressivism right there for all to see.

It’s like a lab experiment – for everyone!

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

It’s actually getting comical, reading the breathless scare stories about the shut-down. As if there were no way to handle these calamities:

No State Troopers! Oh, gee, that would suck. Those guys don’t do any real law enforcement anyway, Sheriff’s Deputies do. I recall a judge once aptly described the State Patrol as the grown-up version of high school hall monitors handing out notes saying “No Running!” Lay-off Hell, abolish ‘em completely.

A cop friend of mine calls them “collection agents for the insurance industry”.

No Zoo! Nobody to feed the animals at the zoo! We have a perfectly good zoo, at Como Park. Give away the animals to other zoos out of state, lay off all the zookeepers, shutter the facility, sell it to a developer for large lot hobby farms.

Tired of seeing all those stupid TV “news” segments full of people whinging about not being able to go jogging at Afton?

No camping at State Parks! So? Since when is your vacation choice my responsibility? Nobody paid for my motel room, when I was on vacation. Go to the KOA campground, if you must camp.

For that matter, screw the gates.  I paid for that state park. I’m going there, closure or not.

Have to let all the Prisoners go! Ship ‘em elsewhere, promise to pay later. Everybody knows there eventually will be money and if there isn’t, then yeah, let ‘em go. What do you think happens when the government falls, as during the Civil War? We’re not to that stage just yet; but if the governor continues to play chicken, holding everyone hostage until he gets his tax increases, then maybe we see how bad things will get.

If the governor can’t run the government, then why have one?

The “people” voted (sometimes two and three times) for a guy that we warned you could not possibly run a viable government.  We were right.

No city or county internet! Apparently, they’re on a contract to buy services from the state. Might want to shop around for an alternate provider, huh?

These problems can be solved. All it takes is gumption.

So let’s have gumption.

I decided I’d try to write a song.  It’s sung to the tune of John Lennon’s “Imagine:”

Imagine a right-winger,
in John Lennon’s skin?
A hard-core tax-protester,
rooting for Reagan to win…
Imagine all the moonbats
whose worldview would come unglued…

John Lennon was a closet Republican, who felt a little embarrassed by his former radicalism, at the time of his death – according to the tragic Beatles star’s last personal assistant.

Imagine him and Yoko
protesting in their bed.
Their Revolution was Hayek,
rattling round his head.
Imagine all the moonbats
stepping to the ledge…

Fred Seaman worked alongside the music legend from 1979 to Lennon’s death at the end of 1980 and he reveals the star was a Ronald Reagan fan who enjoyed arguing with left-wing radicals who reminded him of his former self.

You may say I’ve got delusions,
but it’s on the Internet!
So I picture him and Thatcher…
And we haven’t heard it all yet!

In new documentary Beatles Stories, Seaman tells filmmaker Seth Swirsky Lennon wasn’t the peace-loving militant fans thought he was while he was his assistant.

He says, “John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on (Democrat) Jimmy Carter.

Imagine John and Yoko
standing proud and tall.
Standing next to Reagan,
Saying “all you need’s to tear down the wall!”
Imagine all the lefties
swallowing their nines…oh ooooooh….

“He’d met Reagan back, I think, in the 70s at some sporting event… Reagan was the guy who had ordered the National Guard, I believe, to go after the young (peace) demonstrators in Berkeley, so I think that John maybe forgot about that… He did express support for Reagan, which shocked me.

“He was a very different person back in 1979 and 80 than he’d been when he wrote Imagine. By 1979 he looked back on that guy and was embarrassed by that guy’s naivete.”

You may say that I’m a wingnut,
But seems that John was, too.
I hope someday someone will find out
that George Harrison was one too…

Ramco Judge Kathleen Gearin has ruled on “critical services” for a potential upcoming government shutdown:

Ramsey County Judge Kathleen Gearin’s ruling came Wednesday, just two days before a state government shutdown would begin. DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled Legislature would have to agree on a budget before Friday to avoid the scenario.

Dayton and top lawmakers were sequestered in the governor’s office on their sixth straight day of budget negotiations. They have yet to report a breakthrough in a drawn-out dispute over the level of spending in the next two-year budget and how to pay for it. The state faces a projected $5 billion deficit in the two-year budget cycle, which begins on Friday.

Dayton wants to raise income taxes on high earners, while Republicans insist on no new revenue.

One wonders if MPR’s reporter – Elizabeth Dunbar – is aware of the distinction between “no new taxes” and “no new revenue”.  New revenue happens when people become more prosperous and pay more in taxes.

I’ll chalk it up to carelessness, and continue.

Gearin said state payments to school districts and local governments should continue even if there’s no budget by Friday. She said the state must also fulfill its obligations to the federal government and continue to administer those programs, including food stamps, welfare payments and Medicaid.

“The failure to properly fund critical core functions of the executive and legislative branches will violate the constitutional rights of the citizens of Minnesota,” Gearin wrote in a 19-page written order.

But Gearin emphasized that state payments during a shutdown should be limited “only the most critical functions of government involving the security, benefit, and protection of the people.”

What a radical notion; limiting government to what it’s actually needed for.

I need to read the order (and so do you, so go and do it) more completely, but it’s hard to read what I’ve seen so far as anything but at least a qualified victory for the MNGOP.  Mark Dayton’s attempt to push all the pain of this shutdown onto this state’s most vulnerable residents – which we’ve been documenting for weeks, although the mainstream media can’t seem to be bothered – has been rebuffed for now.

With government doing the things it actually needs to be (or should be) doing, I think Governor Dayton just got chopped off at the knees.

Music rights are a funny thing.

When I was in radio, I learned that music rights and royalties work something like this:

1. To play music in public – on a radio station, television show, movie, in-store muzak, jukebox, elevator, nightclub, TV or radio commercial or whatever – you pay a fee to one of the big three music licensing agencies – ASCAP, BMI or SESAC.    The agencies distribute the fees to the songwriters (the names that used to be listed under the song title in incredibly tiny type on old albums and .45s)  via an incredibly complex (the better to hide the cheating) formula.
2. If you didn’t pay the licensing fee, the songwriter and publisher could haul you in to court and charge “mechanical royalties” – better known as “a court judgment”.

And that’s pretty much it.

We’ll come back to that.   Rolling Stone is “covering”  Michele Bachmann’s campaign in…

…well, the same way all the media are “covering” it:

Michele Bachmann hasn’t exactly gotten her campaign off to the best start. It’s bad enough to confuse movie legend John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gacy and crazily insist that John Quincy Adams was a founding father at the age of nine…

Because goodness knows we can’t have a gaffe-prone president or vice president atop the executive branch…

…but now she’s gone and pissed off Tom Petty. The Minnesota congresswoman played “American Girl” yesterday when she walked onstage at a rally, and Rolling Stone has confirmed reports that Petty’s management team immediately sent the Bachmann campaign a cease and desist letter.

So I’m wondering – provided that Bachmann’s campaign paid her licensing fee, what recourse does Petty really have?

I mean, for over 20 years Rush Limbaugh has been using “My City Was Gone”, by the ultra-socialist Chrissie Hynde, as his theme song, right? Hynde can’t have been thrilled

Say, if I were to play “American Girl?”

Would he object? Even if I were to be a rebel…

…and reject his california-liberal politics?

Because I certainly won’t back down. (Wait – I don’t like that song that much).

Because a good chunk of the right is singing…

Anyway – this one’s for you, Mark Dayton and Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen:

…you knew that was coming, didn’t you?

Dave Osmek – a city councilman in Mound, which by the way receives no Local Government Aid, and hasn’t for quite sometime – writes:

I’d like to add my two cents to the whole DFL meme. Consider the following scenerio:

Evil Rich taxpayer A: Owns a nice house out on Lake Minnetonka (valued at $750,000) and his own commercial business (valued at $500,000)

Virtuous Poor taxpayer B: Owns a nice house in St. Paul (valued at $225,000)

Evil Rich taxpayer A pays a property tax rate of 1% on the first $500,000 of value and pays 1.25% on the next $250,000 of value. He also pays 1.5% on the first $150,000 of his commercial value and 2% on the next $350,000 of value.

That’s $8125 in property taxes, and $9250 on the business.

Virtuous Poor taxpayer B pays a property tax rate of 1% on his $225,000 house AND gets a homestead “credit” that further reduces his taxes by another 7% to an effective rate of 0.93%.

That comes down to $2092.

Bear in mind these aren’t income taxes; for all we know, the two hypothetical virtuous taxpayers may well make the same money.

And we’re supposed to swallow the DFL meme that the EEEEEEEEvil rich don’t “pay their fair share”? The numbers just don’t add up!

The DFL is counting on Minnesotans who don’t do things like numbers…

I’ve said this to some of you before.  As Mark Dayton’s little game of chicken careens toward its intended denouement, I’ll say it again.

Come back with your shield, or on it.

You hold the high ground.  Use it.  We didn’t send you there to cave.

And I don’t believe, in your collective heart of hearts, that you intend to.

But just in case you had any doubt where we, the people who sent you there, stand?

Make Dayton – or, more accurately, his union and special interest owners – squirm.

I’m one of the few Twin Cities conservative bloggers who bothers, occasionally, to try to stomach reading Twin Cities leftyblogs.

The battle of the blogs has been a rollercoaster for the past decade.  From 2002 through 2005, it was no context; conservative blogs owned the field.  After 2004, liberals with deep pockets – most famously but not only George Soros –  began pumping huge money into building an instant alt-media infrastructure (including, locally, the deliciously-ironically-named Minnesota Independent) designed mainly to pass chanting points down a virtual “chain of command” from the Soros-funded “Media Matters For America”, either explicitly or via the monkey-see, monkey-do mob social dynamic of the left.

But as Erik Telford notes, it’s just not working:

I’d told you three years ago that conservatives would be leading the left in the realm of online politics, I would have been laughed out of the room. Now we’re dominating so thoroughly that the left is running scared — literally.

One of the key drivers of the left’s online dominance used to be the Netroots Nation Convention, an annual gathering of several thousand left-wing bloggers. Started in 2006, the convention provides attendees with networking opportunities and trains them to more effectively organize and mobilize “progressives” through the Internet.

Telford is, of course, one of the organizers of “Right Online”, which since 2008 has been accompanying Netroots around the country.  And this year, the contrast couldn’t have been more stark.  More in a bit.

This year, The New York Times declared the conservative side victorious, saying: “judging by the fervor for one’s favorites and animosity toward the opposition, the passion of bloggers seemed to have swung toward conservatives.” The Washington Post noted “the only chants of ‘Yes We Can’ seemed to be at RightOnline.”

Let’s go back to that “animosity” bit for a moment.  Conservatives are used to having to react civilly to dissent; most (by no means all, but a crushing majority) of conservatives are fine with, or at least accept, the fact that we share a society with people with differing opinions.

But here’s your leftymedia in action, at Netroots:

VIDEO

Clearly, the tables have turned in a dramatic way…In fact, the president has found himself embattled in the new media sphere — with attacks from both his left and his right. Call it reverse triangulation.

Just a few weeks ago, the White House acknowledged its shift from an offensive to a defensive posture with the addition of Jesse Lee — who, as the “Director of Progressive Media & Online Response,” is charged with the unenviable task of defending the president from critical bloggers and online activists from both sides of the ideological spectrum.

At the same time, Tea Party groups are using technology to organize and mobilize in unprecedented ways. Republican members of Congress are better than their Democratic counterparts at using Facebook and Twitter to inform and motivate their constituents.

The roller coaster can certainly turn again; Soros has a lot of money.  Perhaps he’ll invent a computer program that can generate content more efficiently than this current army of flacks.

But for now?  All good.

Bill C in the comment section yesterday pointed us to h Ann Althouse’s coda on the Prosser/Bradley flap:

Everyone who thinks Prosser must to resign if he attacked Bradley ought to say that if Bradley attacked Prosser, she should resign.

Note that almost none of the people who were crying for Prosser’s resignation over the weekend are saying any such thing.

If that happens, then the tactic of leaking the original version of the story to the press will have backfired horrifically for Democrats, as Governor Scott Walker will name the Justice to replace Bradley. If both Justices erred and must resign, that will be 2 appointments for Walker, both of whom, I would imagine, will be stronger, younger, and more conservative than Prosser, and, with Bradley gone, the liberal faction on the court will be reduced to 2, against a conservative majority of 5.

Kinda makes  you want to apportion blame evenly, doesn’t it?

No – I have a hunch that’s not what’s going to happen.  More on that below.

AND: Remember, the legislature has the power to impeach, so it is Bradley who is at the greater risk as the story, suppressed for 11 days, comes out. The legislature could play neutral and impeach both Prosser and Bradley, but that would give 2 appointments to Scott Walker.

I can think of a lot of women who, when physically assaulted by a co-worker, might not call the police immediately.  Alcoholic women from trailer parks, women with Alzheimers and women on parole who get attacked by other parolees while buying crack, mostly.

Not a lawyer and judge.

Eleven days?  It just doesn’t pass the stink test.

ALSO: People may assume that the man is larger than the woman, but — from what I have heard — Bradley is significantly larger than Prosser. Bradley is also 7 years younger than Prosser, who is 68.

My hunch – Bradley did it, and has spent the couple of weeks trying to make it go away.

My prediction – the Wisconsin Dems will play the gender card for all its worth.  They’ll try to set up a (utterly false) equivalence with Prosser’s alleged verbal confrontations with the Chief Justice.

Those are no-brainer predictions, of course.

SCENE:  The Emergency Room at Regions Hospital in Saint Paul.  It’s July 5.  Mrs. JACKIE SZCZYMCZYK, sits in the waiting room, surrounded by other people waiting for results.  She appears distraught.  A BYSTANDER, sitting next to SZCZYMCZYK, is holding a hankie on a cut foot.

BYSTANDER (to SZCZYMCZYK):  “What are you here for?”

SZCZYMCZYK:  My husband – he…he…(sobs)…he choked on a buffalo wing.

BYSTANDER: Owwie.

SZCZYMCZYK: While he had a lit bottle rocket in his butt.

BYSTANDER:  Um…oh.  Wow.  My.

SZCZYMCZYK: It was all so trivial – such a stupid thing, really – but he fell over and cut his toe on a piece of glass from the bottle he’d broke over his head.

BYSTANDER: Oh, I’m sorry.  Well, none of it sounds life-threatening…

SZCZYMCZYK: It wasn’t supposed to be.  But it took us an extra half hour to get to the hosital, what with the Stillwater Lift Bridge being out because of the budget shutdown.

BYSTANDER:  But – wait.  I’m sorry, but I heard that Governor Walker of Wisconsin offered to pay the bill to keep the bridge open.

SZCZYMCZYK: Oh, my Chuck is a teamster.  He never woulda had nothing to do with Walker.  But why isn’t the bridge open, then?

BYSTANDER: Governor Dayton turned it down.  He wanted to make sure the bridge shut down.  No matter what.

SZCZYMCZYK: Well…

(DOCTOR MANOJ BALAKRISHNAN enters the scene, along with nurse Excedrine MCCARTHY, RN)

BALAKRISHNAN: Mrs. Szczymczyk?

SZCZYMCZYK: Yes?

BALAKRISHNAN:  I’m Doctor Balakrishnan.  I’m afraid your husband is dead.  There was nothing we could do…

SZCZYMCZYK:  (Breaks down crying).

BALAKRISHNAN: If only he could have gotten here half an hour earlier, I coulda done sometihng….

(SZCZYMCZYK breaks up in squalls of crying).

PANJAKRISHNAN: There was nothing we could have done.  I’m so sorry.  That extra half hour was a matter of life and death.

MCCARTHY: “By the way, on behalf of the nurse’s union, I hope you’re happy to pay for a Better Minnesota!”.

SZCYMCZYK: Huh?

MCCARTHY: “Way to stick it to that top two percent, sister!”

———-

Well, OK.  I usually play these mock dramedies for yuks.  There are usually plenty of yuks in the workings of the DFL mind.  But a death in an emergency room isn’t funny.

So why is Mark Dayton – and only Mark Dayton – insisting on virtually guaranteeing it?

Scott Walker offered to keep the bridge open.  Stillwater businesses offered to keep the bridge open.  Dayton spurned both offers…

…and, for that matter, the Legislative GOP passed a balanced budget that would have taken care of all of this.  And Dayton vetoed that – them, actually – for what?

…to protect a tax hike that is utterly meaningless, except as a way to try to dictate what’s on Minnesota’s moral conscience?

We know what his priorities are.

Joe Doakes of Como Park writes:

When the state government shuts down, it won’t be spending tax money, right? So why should I pay state taxes for the portion of the government that’s shut down?

I’m willing to pay for what I get, but fair is fair – if they’re not providing the service, I shouldn’t have to pay for it. I propose we only pay for what’s deemed “essential.” If that’s 10% of the budget, we pay 10% of the taxes; the rest, we keep. Even Cy Thao should agree with that.

That’d be Cy Thao, the former St. Paul state senator who famously said:

When you guys win, you get to keep your money.

When we win, we take your money

And when you’re not working, we should keep our money.

Because while we, the taxpayer, may not have “won”, it’s for sure that by floating Mark Dayton into office on a wave of toxic sleaze, all you state workers lost.

As if it the leftyblog-conservativeblog battle weren’t already horribly overmatched, the most long-awaited conservative blog in town – Laura Gatz’s “Princess Politics” – is finally up and going.

Stop by and say hi, and make Laura a stop on your daily blog browsing.   It’s gonna be a fun MOB party this summer.

Wait – did I say MOB party this summer?

Why, I do believe I did.

More coming soon.

So yesterday I finally got back on the road.  Sort of.

For the first four years of this series, I was riding to a job in downtown Saint Paul.  It was about six miles each way; a brisk twenty minutes, mostly downhill, in the morning; a gruelling (initially) climb up Cathedral Hill followed by a relaxing blast up Summit Avenue at the end of the day.

My new commute is something on the order of 20-odd miles.  Doable, certainly, but I’m not really in shape to make that kind of a jaunt and make it to work and do it on the way home at night just yet.  So I compromised.  I threw the bike onto a bike rack and drove out to a park and ride in a nearby suburb, and I rode the last probably five or six miles in to the office.

Gotta say, I miss the relative calm of city biking.

The first half of the trip was mostly bike lanes and trails; it was a fun, if choppy, ride.  Hills are fine; new hills that I haven’t done before suck.

The last half, though, was over a couple of busy suburban arterials with no shoulders and only notional speed limits.  I was keenly aware that I was only as safe as the least-engaged driver wanted me to be.  I grew eyes on the back of my head (or, to be fair, kept my head swiveling about like an owl on the hunt) for the last couple of miles in to the office.

The last three miles is, as it happens, the worst part of the whole trip.   The rest of the commute – from my front door to somewhere in the western subs, on a hypothetical all-bike ride to work – is striped bike lanes (Minnehaha, Prior, Marshall) or dedicated bike paths (the Greenway, the River Bluffs trail), up to that last little gauntlet of death.

So my goal for my abbreviated biking season; get to the point where I can do the whole, Saint Paul-to-western-subs trip at least once a week.

You heard it here first…

Over the weekend, the usual pack of Sorosbloggers and Trotskytweeps came out with a “story” – that recently-re-elected Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge David Prosser had “choked” one of his fellow justices.  The “progressives” were in high dudgeon, which is about the only kind of dudgeon any of them can do.

Having read a lot of lefty alt-media, I thought I’d defer my judgment, based on two key rules one must follow when appraising the leftymedia:

1. Everything they say is a crock of s**t until proven otherwise, and it is rarely proven otherwise.  I know – that sounds harsh.  But on “story” after “story” after “story”, it’s proven true.  If a leftyblogger writes it, distrust and then verify.  You will almost invariably end up distrusting some more.
2. Remember Berg’s Seventh Law, which for those of you who don’t remember, reads “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds”.

So what about the allegations against Prosser?

What do you think?

To be fair, there are competing stories; Justice Bradley (one of the court’s stable of liberals) claimes Prosser attacked her; other witnesses disagree (emphasis added):

…the justices were arguing over the timing of the release of the opinion, which legislative leaders had insisted they needed by June 14 because of their work on the state budget. As the justices discussed the case, Abrahamson said she didn’t know whether the decision would come out this month, the source said.

At that point, Prosser said he’d lost all confidence in her leadership. Bradley then came across the room “with fists up,” the source said. Prosser put up his hands to push her back.

Bradley then said she had been choked, according to the source. Another justice – the source wouldn’t say who – responded, “You were not choked.”

In an interview, Bradley said: “You can try to spin those facts and try to make it sound like I ran up to him and threw my neck into his hands, but that’s only spin.

“Matters of abusive behavior in the workplace aren’t resolved by competing press releases. I’m confident the appropriate authorities will conduct a thorough investigation of this incident involving abusive behavior in the workplace.”

Ann Althouse owns this story among the blogs so far.  She says:

I’m reading the Journal Sentinel’s account as referring to 3 — not 2 — sources, with 2 of the 3 versions portraying Bradley as the aggressor: “the source… another source… [a]nother source….”

I want to know not only what really happened at the time of the physical contact (if any) between the 2 justices, but also who gave the original story to the press. If Prosser really tried to choke a nonviolent Bradley, he should resign. But if the original account is a trumped-up charge intended to destroy Prosser and obstruct the democratic processes of government in Wisconsin, then whoever sent the report out in that form should be held responsible for what should be recognized as a truly evil attack.

So far, if I had to speculate (and that’s what I’m doing), it looks like Bradley threw a shrieking fit and hauled off on Prosser, then dried to engineer a press hit against Prosser, and cry “abuse!” like some feckless Jerry Springer guest when busted.

I could be wrong.

But I’m feeling pretty comfy with that interpretation of the events so far.

Benefit for Joel Rosenberg’s family will be tomorrow night at 7PM at Dreamhaven Books. Dreamhaven is at 2301 East 38th Street in Minneapolis.

…but this was pretty good.

Good enough that the NARN’s going to have to find a way to raise the ante…

Rahm Emanuel’s police chief Gary McCarthy says gun freedom – observing the Second Amendment – is “racist”:

“So here’s what I want to tell you. See, let’s see if we can make a connection here. Slavery. Segregation. Black codes. Jim Crow. What, what did they all have in common? Anybody getting’ scared? Government sponsored racism.”

McCarthy knows the facts – that fighting racist gun controls was actually a foundation of the 14th Amendment.

But telling “progressive” audiences the truth is not what “progressivism” is about.

“Now I want you to connect one more dot on that chain of the African American history in this country, and tell me if I’m crazy. Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms, into our urban centers across this country, that are killing our black and brown children,” he said.

Nice to know they still hire scumbags as police chiefs.

“The NRA does not like me, and I’m okay with that. We’ve got to get the gun debate back to center, and it’s got to come with the recognition of who’s paying the price for the gun manufacturers being rich and living in gated communities,” McCarthy said.

Who was it who brought the McDonald suit to the Supreme Court, “Chief” McCarthy?

A poor black Chicago man.

McCarthy illustrated his point by recalling a crime scene investigation while he was a police official in Newark, New Jersey where five children were shot, two of whom were killed. McCarthy said when he got home, he turned on his television to unwind and found an episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” showing.

The mind just reels.

Benefit for Joel Rosenberg’s family will be held on Tuesday night at 7PM at Dreamhaven Books.  Dreamhaven is at 2301 East 38th Street in Minneapolis. Here’s the Googlemap.

It was June 24, 1991.  I’d been working at KDWB/K63 for a little over six months.  It was my radio fix, of sorts; I got in maybe 24 hours a week, in and among my various nightclub gigs.  It wasn’t much of a living – but, I thought, it at least kept my toe in the racket.

Sorta.

I was in the studio on a Monday morning, picking up some hours filling in for the guy who normally ran the show after “Harley Worthit”, the morning guy, got off the air.

It was exactly the most boring job I’d had in my radio career.  I wasn’t a “disc jockey”; I was a “board operator” running satellite programming; my job was to sit in the booth, make sure the satellite didn’t go down (it was always fun when it did; I actually got to play real music from the studio.  It happened maybe twice) and listen for the cues from the network to drop in local commeercials – and then return to the network.  Hour in.  Hour out.

Endlessly.

It was pure distilled tedium.

It was not what I got into radio to do.

After four years of looking for another radio job…

…wait – four years?  Was that possible?

No  – it’d been more than four years of looking for a job in news or talk radio.  A few nibbles, a couple of tugs on the line – but nothing.   Other than sitting in the dank little control room at K63 and listening for commercial cues and turning pot knobs to keep the needles out of the red.

If it weren’t for the people that I got to hobnob with, and the thin thread to the goal that I held onto by just being in the building, and the people  – well, it was hardly worth it, was it?

Around 11, one of them – Joe Hansen – walked into the studio.  He was going to work the afternoon shift starting at noon – but he liked coming in early to hang out and shoot the breeze.

“Hey, man”, he said, as the smell of cigarettes permeated the room.  “You hear they’re looking for an “executive producer at KSTP?””   Having worked at KSTP, I knew the job was really sort of a poor man’s “program director” gig, although Hubbard Broadcasting liked to call them “executive producers” to keep them from feeling too powerful.

But no, I answered.  I had not.

———-

I’d been out of talk radio for four years.  In the eight years I had been in the business, I’d not come close to being management.

I was married, and had a stepson and a baby on the way in about six weeks.

Radio was not packing the gear as a way to feed a family.

But the idea of landing a job in the racket that would not only pay well enough to feed a family, but get me back into talk radio?

I went home and got out my typewriter and started cobbling together a resume and a cover letter that could make me look like management material.

And twenty years ago tomorrow, I addressed an 8.5×11 manila envelope to Ginny Morris, the general manager at KSTP, and dropped it in the mailbox.

…when you didn’t dare question the patriotism of those who dissented from a rush to war?

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is questioning the priorities of lawmakers criticizing the U.S. intervention in Libya.

She’s asking bluntly, “Whose side are you on?”

Remember when that kind of question would’ve earned a government figure (or anyone) a curt “don’t question my patriotism!”?

Wisconsin throws off the shackles of unreasoning paternalistic oppression and becomes the latest “Shall Issue” state:

The GOP-controlled Assembly approved the bill on a bipartisan vote of 68-27.

The Senate backed the bill last week on a 25-8 vote, and the measure now goes to Walker, who supports it, for his signature.

Wisconsin would become the 49th state to legalize the carrying of concealed guns.

The legislation would require those who want to carry concealed firearms to obtain permits. It would allow people to carry concealed weapons in the state Capitol and other public buildings but not places like police stations and courthouses. Weapons also would be prohibited in buildings where posted notices bar them, and in places like Summerfest music festival at Milwaukee’s lakefront.

The closest thing to a downside, according to my fellow Green Room blogger “MadisonConservative”?  Wisconsin conservatives had been hoping for “Constitutional Carry”, as in Alaska, Arizona and Vermont (and, starting July 1, Wyoming), which require no permit at all for the law-abiding citizen to carry, concealed or openly.

I’m OK with incrementalism – remember, Wisconsin has leapt from being one of two no issue states, straight over “discretionary issue” (which Minnesota was from 1974-2003, and again for a year or so in 2004-05) to the ranks of shall-issue states.  Those states now number 39, leaving only nine states with “may-issue” laws, and only one, Illinois, which denies the human right of self-defense to its citizens (along with Hawaii and New Jersey, which have “may-issue” laws but rarely issue permits).  Anything worth doing is worth taking the time to do right – and as more and more people see that the law-abiding gun owner is the least of this nation’s problems, I can see more states adopting unrestricted carry.

Which is not to say that there aren’t people who still just don’t get it:

But Matt Havighurst of Madison said he doesn’t like the bill “at all.”

Havighurst, 41, who was playing with his 3-year-old son, Noah, at the lakeshore at James Madison Park said if the measure passes the government should send out free signs saying “no guns allowed” to anyone who doesn’t want them on their premises.

“What are you going to do at a park?” he said of such signs. “Put them all over at every entrance?”

Perhaps Mr. Havinghurst should take his son to a park in Chicago – no carry permits and, for that matter, no legal civilian gun ownership – and test his theory.

But not with the kid.  Too dangerous.