Yesterday, we looked at the changes in voting in the 4th Congressional District after redestricting, and tried to give some context to what were, at face value, disappointing election results.  As I noted yesterday, the Tony Hernandez for Congress campaign had some big handicaps – fundraising was as terrible for him as it was for every other Republican, and a redistricting that was pretty benign for Betty McCollum – and a huge one, an epochal DFL turnout against the Marriage Amendment.

Most of those issues were writ larger across the river in the 5th Congressional District, covering Minneapolis and most of Hennepin County.  By all accounts, Keith Ellison was the biggest beneficiary from redistricting; the 5th CD became, on paper, even more strongly DFL than it was before.  And if anything, the 5th CD’s Republican party was even less functional last year than the 4th’s was.

But Chris Fields, the GOP-endorsed candidate in the 5th, brought the kind of game the GOP hasn’t seen in Minneapolis in way longer than I can remember.  Fields was a great candidate; he was elected Secretary of the State GOP last weekend, so hopefully he’ll be in a position to be one again soon.  He worked the district hard, had a small but highly-motivated staff, and raised a lot more money than Republicans normally do in the dismal 5th.

And so what happened?

Here are the vote totals and percentages going back to 2000:

But what does this mean in a larger historical context?

As yesterday:  the top two rows show how many more voters each party turned out in 2012 than in the year shown below.  The additional turnout for the DFL – and Ellison – in 2012 was staggering; 33,000 more than in 2008 (a great DFL year by itself), 43,000 more than in 2004 (a decent GOP year), 85,000 more than in 2000 (an excellent GOP year, outside the 5th anyway).

And as yesterday, the bottom two rows show a “rematch”; the DFL’s numbers in the listed year against Fields’ 2012 numbers.  Fields turned out over 30,000 more Republican votes than in most presidential off-years (2002 was a great year for the MNGOP), and 30,000 more than even in 2000, which was a very good GOP year throughout the US.

So what do these numbers mean?

Simply this:  the 5th remains a difficult district for Republicans.  But the combination of a strong GOP candidate, a motivated campaign that knows how to message the district (as Fields most certainly did, although the Minneapolis media was an even more bald-faced Praetorian Guard for Ellison than it was for McCollum) and raise money makes it possible for the district, as badly as it was gerrymandered, to edge closer to being a 60-40 district than a 75-25 one.  And as dismal as that seems, that’s at least within striking distance; Chip Cravaack overcame a 60-40 district in 2010.  It’s difficult – but not impossible.

And that is the mission for the GOP in both the 4th and 5th CDs; take their turf from “Impossible” to “Herculean”, and thence maybe to “Difficult”.

More candidates like Fields, like Tony Hernandez and Teresa Collett, will certainly help.

Better-organized District committees will also go a long way, as will a functional state party capable of raising money and – this is important – not undercutting the messaging of the 4th and 5th CD candidates.

And this last year, top-line percentages aside, was a decent start.

Oh, boo freaking hoo, Minnesotans.  It’s going to snow a little in April.

Life’s tough.  Wear a helmet – and more importantly, grab a shovel.

Sheesh.

In the four months since Sandy Hook and the Administration’s declaration of war on the law-abiding gun owner, twice as many states have strengthened their observance of the Second Amendment as have weakened it.

Although note that the Wall Street Journal article on the subject and its attendant illustrations…

…invert the meanings of “strengthen” and “weaken”, in their New York-centered way.

And yet the media continues to claim astronomical percentages of the people support anti-gun legislation.

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

And they were right!

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

Suck it:

The St. Paul-based outdoor goods chain already has 11 Gander Mountain locations across the state — all of which sell guns — but its store in the western Twin Cities suburb will have strictly a firearms emphasis. The company boasts it is “the nation’s leading firearms retailer.”

The 30,000-square-foot Rogers location — formerly a Best Buy — will have its official grand-opening in May.

“The new Firearms Super Center concentrates on firearms, ammunition, hunting and tactical clothing,” said Steve Uline, Gander Mountain’s executive vice president of marketing.

Watch for a bill in the next session banning gun stores larger than 1,500 square feet – and a Star/Tribune Minnesota poll saying 90% of Minnesotans disapprove of big gun stores.

More below the jump.

(more…)

There may be few more frustrating jobs in American politics than being a Republican in the Twin Cities.

Minneapolis is sort of like Berkeley on the Lakes, while Saint Paul is a mini-Chicago on the Mississippi.  Both are one-party liberal gulags.  And Republicans in both cities continuously batter themselves against the unthinking masses of DFL droogs, year after year, with seemingly no result.  Good candidates?  Bad candidates?  It seems to make no difference whatsoever.

Years like 2012 are especially frustrating.  The GOP fielded some excellent candidates, and some hard-working campaigns in CD5 (Minneapolis) and CD4 (Saint Paul).  And all of that hard work and effort and occasional inspiration held up like a stream of pee in a hurricane on November 6, as the GOP efforts ran smack-dab into the anti-marriage-amendment tsunami.

On the face of it – expressed in terms of percentages – it looked as dismal as ever – like the cities in the Twin Cities were the same 70-30, or 75-25, cesspools they’d always been.

But if you dig into the numbers a little, things brighten up nicely.

I’m going to look at a couple of races in traditional DFL country, just to see what I come up with.

———-

Tony Hernandez ran a solid, spirited race against Betty McCollum in CD4 in 2012.  There were flaws in the campaign; fundraising was slow, among other things – but Hernandez worked hard, and he had a group of very hard-working volunteers.

So what happened?

Well, Betty McCollum won.  She won big.  Part of it was the votes siphoned off by a Ventura Party candidate that ran to Hernandez’ right.  Part of it was the fact that it’s CD4.  And a big part was the epic DFL turnout against the Marriage Amendment.

The first illustration shows that it’s nothing new:

The top two rows show the head-to-head vote totals between the GOP and DFL candidates in CD4 for the past seven cycles, back to 2000.  The bottom two present the results as percentages.  Note that some of the results will not match the Secretary of State’s numbers; I presented the numbers as DFL/GOP totals, leaving out third-party candidates.

And the news?  Well, it’s not news.  The 4th CD is a 70-30 district.

Right?

Sure.  But look at that top row – the number of GOP votes.  109,000 people voted for Tony Hernandez in 2012, which was a fair-to-middling Republican year (against a great base-burnout campaign for the Dems nationwide, and a huge “new-voter registration” campaign in Minnesota).

This chart shows two more sets of data:

The top two rows show how many more voters there were for each party in 2012 from the selected year.  In other words, in 2012 there were 10,723 more Republican votes than in 2008 (and 418 more Democrat votes).

Compare presidential years (which always have better turnout for both parties than non-presidential years).  Hernandez drew 10,000 more votes than in 2008 (even without the thousands of conservatives who voted for the uncharacteristically-conservative Independence Party candidate), which was not a great year for Republicans; he was up 4,000 from 2004 (a decent GOP year) and 25,000 from 2000 (a very good GOP year).

The interesting part?  The bottom two rows.  They show a “rematch” of the selected years’ races using Tony Hernandez’ 2012 GOP vote totals.  The 2012 match shows they actually exist (in part due to redistricting, although that wasn’t nearly as favorable to Hernandez as one might have hoped); this time, they  happened to exist against the backdrop of an epic DFL turnout.

But what if those Republicans could be inveigled to turn out against a more prosaic DFL turnout?

Hernandez’ numbers against BettyMac in 2008 (which was also a great DFL year – notice the fact that the epic 2012 turnout only added 400-odd votes to McCollum’s 2008 totals?) makes it a 66-33 race.  Against her 2004 numbers (blah year for Democrats, base-turnout year for Republicans) it was 60-40, which is a whole world apart from 70-30.

And against 2000 – a good GOP year with a functional state party and average DFL turnout – Hernandez’ numbers make it a nine point race.

And against off-year DFL turnout?   If the GOP were to pull off a miracle and generate presidential-year turnout against off-year DFL turnout, it’d be a ten point race.

Which still isn’t victory.

But Hernandez – running an underfunded all-volunteer campaign with no outside funding to speak of, endorsed by an intensely-dysfunctional party Congressional District unit of a state party that sat out the 2012 election completely, against a cash-sodden union juggernaut and a media praetorian guard that seems sworn never to mention the great unspoken secret (that McCollum is one of the dumbest people in Congress), “aided” by a redistricting that seemed designed to be as benign as possible to the incumbent, and attenuated by a conservative third-party candidate – turned out more Republicans than the 4th has seen in decades.  He had the bad fortune to do it into the teeth of a DFL GOTV wildfire.

So if he’d had $500,000 instead of less than a tenth of that?  If he’d had a state party that could help, and a CD committee that could help marshal support?  If he’d had experienced management, and maybe a full-time field staffer?

Just saying – not only are there grounds for optimism, but they may be stronger than we thought.

So that’s Hernandez against history.   How about in the Fifth CD?

We’ll look across the river tomorrow.

(more…)

Joe Doakes got to writing before I did this morning:

A research chemist turned lawyer who became a elected representative of the people of Finchley, Margaret Thatcher changed the world.

Margaret Thatcher

As Great Britain’s longest-serving (and only female) Prime Minister, “The Iron Lady” fought Liberalism and championed Conservative policies that won a war, rejuvenated the national economy and defeated the Soviets.

Margaret Thatcher passed away today, April 8, 2013. She was one of my heroes.

And mine, too.  Although it took a while.

(more…)

As Jack Tomczak wrote on Facebook on Saturday:

Racist and sexist Republican party of Minnesota elects woman and black guy into leadership.

It’s true.  The MNGOP State Central Committee elected Keith Downey as chair, re-elected Kelly Fenton as Deputy, and Chris Fields as secretary.

Some of the races were, themselves, vastly more interesting than normal.  Fenton beat Ron-Paul-camp activist Corey Sax.  I’ve locked horns with Sax not a few times, but the guy had some useful ideas for “marketing” the MNGOP that the party could do much worse than look into.  I hope Sax takes his cue from the many “builder” Liberty supporters who’ve stayed involved in the MNGOP, and have improved it – if frustratingly incrementally – over this past year.

The Secretary race was difficult, pitting as it did two fantastic candidates.  Ryan Love is one of the GOP’s sharper tacks, one its most incisive Tweeps, and one of the more notably excellent activists.  He ran up against former CD5 candidate Chris Fields, who ran a spectacular campaign against Keith Ellison last year, and has only stepped up his game since then.  Fields ran straight into the teeth of the DFL’s GOTV tsunami, but…well, more on that later this week.   The only pity is that they both didn’t win.

Of course, the new leadership – and the entire party – faces a stern challenge.  After a year of grueling work, sparse donations and activist fatigue, the party is still over a million-and-a-half in debt.  The task at hand – decrease the out-go, increase the income, and start making the party a contender on the state level – is herculean.

More about that in the coming week.

Anyway – congratulations Keith, Kelly and Chris.  And good luck.

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

And they were right.

Here’s Cam Winton’s campaign site

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’ll have Cam Winton, ,conservative candidate for Mayor, to talk about his campaign. I’ll also be talking with Senator Sean Nienow about the Stadium funding fiasco..
• Brad Carlson is back on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via UStream video and chat
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

The topline number has all the mainstream media bobbleheads a-tingling; unemployment is “down to 7.6%”.

It’s wind in sails, of course; the labor participation rate has dropped to 63.3%, the lowest it’s been in ten years of measuring, and the lowest it’s been so far in this recession.

Which means the actual share of the work force above the age of 16 actually working is 58.49%.

That number is…:

• Almost 2.5% lower than the day Barack Obama took office (60.58%)
• Statistically the same as October, 2010 (58.5%), when unemployment peaked at 10%.
• Marginally up from December of 2010 (58.2%), when the recession bottomed out (and which looks like a statistical fluke, coming between two months in the 58.5% range)
• Marginally better than the low-points in this calculation (58.18, in November 2010 and July 2011, when the unemployment rates were 9.8% and 9.1%, respectively).

It takes a lot of lipstick to make this look like anything but a pig.

…don’t get far from a radio.

Or a computer, or a mobile device.  You get the idea.

Big Northern Alliance Radio Network broadcast tomorrow.  We’ll have Cam Winton on to talk about the Minneapolis mayor’s race, and Senator Sean Nienow will be with us to talk about his call for an investigation into the Vikings Stadium funding fiasco.

That’ 1-3PM tomorrow, on AM1280 The Patriot!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It happened once, when the government ran out of money in the midst of a Depression.

Could it happen again?

Good question.

On the one hand, you’d hope people would learn from history.

On the other hand, government isn’t “people” in the sense of “individuals acting in concert toward the mean of their best interests”.

And the record throughout history of “governments empaneled by waves of populist fervor on platforms involving mostly giving stuff to people” just isn’t all that good.

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

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

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

The gun-lobby goons were at it again.

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

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

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

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

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

Of course they would.

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

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

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

Well, then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vigilantes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where does Milbank live?

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

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

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

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

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

Grover Norquist will be speaking at the Tax Day Rally at the Capitol.

(SCENE:  MITCH is at the grocery store.  He meets Avery LIBRELLE, who is also out shopping)

LIBRELLE:  I’m so upset that the GOP in the Legislature has muddied the waters with their “Civil Union” proposal.

MITCH: Why’s that?

LIBRELLE:  Civil unions are nothing but separate but equal.

MITCH:  Yeah, that’s the cliché du jour for gay marriage supporters.  The idea that having an identical civil contract that confers exactly the same rights – in the eyes of the government, which is what we’re talking about here – is somehow like Plessy v. Ferguson Jim Crow-era absurdities is completely nuts.  From the perspective of government, it’s more like “Equal but Equal”.

LIBRELLE:  But the word “marriage” has a status to it that “civil unions” doesn’t.

MITCH:  And that remark shows what “gay marriage” proponents are really about.  It has little to do with “rights”, and lots to do, I suspect, with forcing society into accepting something that it, on its own, just does not.   The “status” of the word “marriage” is a matter of individual perspective and belief; is it government’s job to change that, for its own good?

LIBRELLE:  Sure!

MITCH:  Huh.  Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

LIBRELLE:  No kidding.  The GOP is wasting the legislature’s time with this bill, bringing it up after the deadline for policy bills.

MITCH:  Right.  No different than Representatives Paymar and Martens still flogging their gun grab legislation.  They can’t get committee hearings, but they can still bring up their bill as an amendment to another bill during floor debate.

LIBRELLE:  Well, that’s different.

MITCH:  Why?

LIBRELLE:  I don’t know. (takes a bunch of grapes from the produce stand, picks a few, starts eating) It just is.

MITCH:  OK.  Well, anyway – I think this means the GOP minority sees that there’s a fracture in the DFL caucus.  We know that outstate DFLers are feeling really nervous about this bill – that support for gay marriage, like gun grabs, is entirely focused in the Metro.  It’d be dumb for them, as a minority, not to propose the compromise; it shows the people that, contrary to the DFL and media’s narrative, there is a compromise.

LIBRELLE:  That’s so wrong.  We should not play games with civil rights.

MITCH:  Like Paymar and Martens and Latz are doing?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, that’s different.  That’s about the children.

MITCH:  So is marriage.

LIBRELLE (eating more grapes)  Well, the courts have ruled on this already.

MITCH:  Right – the courts ruled that civil unions interactions with existing laws, and the federal DOMA law, were a problem.  So the law needs to be written right, and adjustments need to be made to other laws, state and federal.  That’s what legislatures do; try to pass laws that pass legal muster.

LIBRELLE:  But eventually gay marriage is going to happen.  Young people all support it.

MITCH:  Maybe they do.  Young people also made Justin Bieber and Nicky Minaj stars.  More to the point?  Most “young people” have no idea what marriage really is.  But whatever, fine; maybe gay marriage is inevitable in the great scheme of things.  And truth be told, but for one thing, I don’t really care.

LIBRELLE:  (3/4 done with bunch of grapes) And that one thing is that you’re a bigot.

MITCH:  Er, no.  In fact, I guarantee I’ve put more on the line against genuine hatred of gays than you have or ever will.  But no, the one thing is that gay marriage is one more attack on the importance of gender – the idea that the sexes are different, and different for a reason, and that reason is that each gender has a vital role in raising the next generation of children.

LIBRELLE:  Gays can raise children just as well as breeders.  Sometimes better!

MITCH:  Right.  This isn’t a dig at gays’ motivations as adoptive parents; I think gay adoptive parents are a better idea than, say, single parents if that’s the choice, which it very rarely is.  And at the moment, I don’t doubt that gay parents are better parents than straight parents, as an average across all of society, if only because you have to be so superhuman-ly above average to qualify to adopt, whatever your affectional orientation.  In fact, that is one of the reasons I would like to see gay marriage – so that we can drop this absurd stereotype of the Magic Gay Couple, all superhuman in their loving wisdom.  I joke that Gays will have truly arrived as equals when you see a gay married couple on Cops, with a lady in a wife-beater T-shirt being dragged out to a squad car as her wife screams “I’ll be waitin’ for ya, Evangeline!  Ah love yewwww!”.

LIBRELLE:  That’s just weird (almost done with grapes)

MITCH:  Whatever – the point is, when society grows beyond the narrative it’s been fed this past few years, the idea that gay couples are actually better than straight couples, then maybe we can talk about equality.

LIBRELLE:  Oh, whatever.  Hey, didn’t you predict gay marriage would die in committee?

MITCH:  Yep.  I win some, I boot some.  I think gay marriage is worth more to the DFL as a wedge than as a few thousand married couples with nothing to be pissed off about other than…property taxes and business taxes and regulations that restrict entrepreneurship.

LIBRELLE:  Huh?  Well, you were wrong.

MITCH:  Really?  When did Governor Messinger Dayton sign the gay marriage bill into law?

LIBRELLE:  He hasn’t yet.

MITCH:  Huh.  OK.

LIBRELLE:  But they will pass it!  They have to!

MITCH: OK!  We’ll see!

LIBRELLE:  (finishes grapes, tosses stem into trash bucket)

MITCH:  Um – were you going to pay for those?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, it’s not shoplifting. It’s an undocumented meal.  The AP says so.

(And SCENE)

A few years back, sentient people ridiculed Rep. Nancy Pelosi for saying we had to pass Obamacare to know what was in the bill.

Rep. Diane DeGette (D(im bulb)-CO) shows that even then it’s pretty doubtful liberal Democrats know what they’re talking about in re guns:

While participating in a public forum on gun control hosted by the Denver Post Tuesday, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said that the number of magazines will decrease over time as shooters fire bullets, CNS News reported.

“What’s the efficacy of banning these magazine clips? I will tell you, these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them,” she said.

She went on to say that “the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will be shot and there won’t be any more available.”

The bad news?  DeGette doesn’t understand what she’s legislating about.

The worse news?  The mainstream media in attendance probably don’t understand it either.

Somewhere in between?  Her staff is no better or brighter (emphasis added to accelerate the ridicule):

DeGette’s spokeswoman Juliet Johnson issued a statement Wednesday, saying the congresswoman mispoke.

“The Congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years, and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism,”

One might ask “is it important that legislators understand everything they legislate about?”

On the one hand, it’s probably a bit much to ask every legislator to understand everything about every issue; they get much of what they know via staff briefs and, I suspect, Google.

On the other hand?  After “working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years”, it seems a little absurd that DeGette apparently hasn’t the faintest idea what she’s legislating about.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

We must knock down a warehouse to build a ballpark for the St. Paul Saints and also give $200,000 to artists to decorate the empty Union Station. Because it’s too expensive not to.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could afford to let some developer convert the warehouse into condo lofts, leave the Saints in their existing ballpark and allow travelers to enjoy the classic beauty of the station as-is? I’d be willing to spring for that. How much would that cost?

Joe Doakes

To the Minnesota bureaucrat, spending itself is both beautiful and efficient.  Or something.

Better late than never!

It’s way past that time of year again; time for the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers Winter(ish) Party!

It’ll be Friday night, April 19, at Ol’ Mexico in Roseville, from 7PM ’til I say it’s done.

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RSVP in the comment section, or on the event Facebook page!

As of yesterday, 132,552 Minnesotans have current, valid carry permits.

And as the Gun Owners CIvil Rights Alliance notes, the rate of applications and issuances is zooming almost geometrically, even as the bobbleheads in our legislature try to ratchet back our Second Amendment rights:

The increase over last month (7,213), is also a record, breaking last month’s record (5,765), which broke the record set the month before that (4,800), which broke the record set a couple months after the carry law passed in 2003 (3918).

And if that nearly-vertical total line doesn’t smack you in the head, perhaps this chart – the monthly delta in permits in circulation – will:

Among Minnesotans who are over 21 and have clean criminal records, 132,552 is right around 3% of the entire population.  That’s huge; the House Research staff back in 2003 figured maybe 70-90,000 Minnesotans would get permits, eventually.  We’re almost double that now, and the more Michael Paymar and Ron Latz talk, the faster people sign up for their card.

And if each of them could pony up a buck, GOCRA could afford to have a full-time lobbyist at the Capitol to make sure Heather Martens’ lies were being countered in real-time.

The lessons are obvious:

• Minnesotans – the smart ones, anyway – aren’t fooled.  The DFL majority, despite Governor Messinger Dayton’s blandishments, is run by gun grabbers.
• If you are a law-abiding citizen, you should get your permit.  Even if you never plan to carry a firearm; it’s a good primer in the law, and every permit granted to a law-abiding citizen sends the right message to Senator Latz and Representatives Paymar, Hausman and Martens; we’re not the problem; we’re not fooled; we’re not going anywhere, and we’re not going down without a fight.
• You should join GOCRA.  The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance is the single most successful grass-roots political organization in Minnesota (emphasis on Grass Roots; GOCRA isn’t supported by plutocrats with deep pockets, or foundation money) today.  It’s like a “Spanky and Our Gang” movie come to life, a bunch of regular guys and gals who got together and have, over the past 15 years or so, moved mountains.   And they need all us Real Americans (people who care about all ten amendments in the Bill of Rights) to beat back the orcs.  Come on out, there’s plenty of room.
• It’s a great time to become an activist.  There may be things in life more fun than being in a room with a couple of hundred like-minded fellow freedom fighters, watching half a dozen bobbleheaded orc-sympathizers wallowing in their ignorance.  But few of those other things are this inexpensive!

Now is the time!

(SCENE:  At the Cabinet room in the west wing of the Capitol building.  President OBAMA is talking with Attorney General HOLDER, Homeland Security czar NAPOLITANO, Secretary of Defense HAGEL, Secretary of State KERRY, administrative assistant Shaquanda ELLIS, and Vice President BIDEN)

OBAMA:  So we’ve got to figure out who’s killing prosecutors in Texas.  Any ideas?

NAPOLITANO:  Gotta be white supremacists.

HOLDER:  Oh, my God, I hope you’re right.

NAPOLITANO:  Or possibly tax protesters, Tea Partiers, anti-abortion protesters, Second Amendment activists, land activists, Tenth Amendment activists, Ron Paul supporters, talk radio listeners, FOX news viewers, seat-belt protesters…

HOLDER:  Yes, yes, absolutely.  Some of them.

OBAMA:  Wait – that’s a very, very broad net you’re casting.

NAPOLITANO:  We think it’s a huge conspiracy.

HOLDER: YES!

KERRY:  Just like it was in Oklahoma City!  I remember scouting the remains of the Murragh Building in my Swift Boat.  It’s seared, seared in my memory.

BIDEN:  They should have fired a couple of shots through the door with a double barrel shotgun at McVeigh!

ELLIS:  Beg your pardon, sirs and maam, but if I may interject?

OBAMA: Go ahead?

ELLIS:  OK.  On the one hand, we have a movement – white supremacists – who have committed a few crimes over the decades, but have never really developed a pattern of killing law-enforcement.  Isolated incidents, yes, but no clear pattern.  On the other hand, we have the Mexican narcotraficantes, who do in fact have a pattern of killing prosecutors throughout Mexico, and who have been operating and committing violent crimes in the US for years, and whose pattern these murders fits to a “T”, and whom the Administration inadvertently armed in operation Fast and Furious…

HOLDER: (Plugs ears, runs from room) Nanananananana, can’t hear you!”

NAPOLITANO:  Clearly you are racist.

(And SCENE)

The “Armed Citizen Project” – which we talked about a month or two back – is expanding from Dallas to Houston:

The Armed Citizen Project is raising money to give free guns to residents living in high-crime areas and to single women — so they can defend themselves against criminals.

Based in Houston– the group now wants to expand to Dallas.

“It sounds good but you have to be careful,” said [crappy-Dallas-neighborhood-resident Calvin] Carter.

“It’s good to be able to have weapons in case something happens to you or your family when you’re not there, that weapon could save them.”

It’s not just a gun giveaway: 

In order to get a free gun you have to pass a background check and complete a safety training course.

You also have to have lived at your current address for at least a year.

Of course, not everyone gets it:

“That appalls me completely,” said [obvious babbling idiot] Lynne Weber [seriously, watch the video; she couldn’t fit the stereotype of the babbling middle-class ignorant white anti-gun woman if she were carrying an MPR coffee mug and wearing an alpaca scarf and driving a Volvo – or if she were Heather Martens, I suppose]. “I’m against having guns in our society. I want gun control. I think doing that would not empower women but endanger them and everyone around them.”

Watch for the media to scour the web for any errors on the parts of beneficiaries of the program – and to studiously ignore or bury any positive results.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Michele Bachmann, rather than Sonia “The Wise Latina Woman” Sotomayor, had said this:

Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you’re being asked — and — and it is one that I’m interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what State restrictions could ever exist? Meaning, what State restrictions with respect to the number of people, with respect to — that could get married — the incest laws, the mother and the child, assuming they are of age — I can — I can accept that the State has probably an overbearing interest on — on protecting the a child until they’re of age to marry, but what’s left?

But #crickets.

Back in February, 11-year-old Grace Evans testified in front of a Minnesota House committee against  gay marriage.

Now, let’s back up a minute:  I have supported civil unions – as well as getting government out of the business of administering and giving benefits for marriage – for quite a while.  I also note that the only really solid arguments for gay marriage come from libertarian conservatives.  Liberals, for the most part, appeal either to emotion (“shouldn’t two people who love each other be able to marry?”) or illogic (“we don’t have popularity contests over civil rights!”) or demands to fall in line with grouphink (“if you oppose gay marriage, you’re teh bigot!”).

One of the reasons I supported the Marriage Amendment – in a back-handed way – was that I thought it might force gay marriage supporters to come up with a rational argument, rather than more browbeating and emotional manipulation.  We found out in 2012 that money trumps reason.  So it goes.

And so today, the Minnesota left is still stuck on stupid, mixing “browbeating” for debate.  Which brings us back to Miss Evans’ testimony.  Lefties, naturally, took spittle-flecked umbrage:

One comment on YouTube called Grace Evans “an 11-year-old bigot.” Another said, “shame on you little girl, your speech was —.” Another comment on YouTube said, “What is sad is im (sic) certain this girl will grow up and support full marriage equality but yet she will be haunted by this.”

On the Facebook page for The Uptake, a Minnesota news [sic] website, someone posted a comment, “Stupid Indoctrinated Child.”

A comment posted on the local CBS affiliate website said, “Who ever (sic) spoon fed their child that script to read in front of everyone needs to check into a mental hospital. You are using your kids as pawns in your selfish game. Hopefully one day that child will grow up to think on their own, and then come to the realization that their parents did them a huge disservice by indoctrinating them into this school of hate.”

Say what you will about gay marriage; I have little problem with it legally (while noting that it does open the logical door to all sorts of forms of “marriage” that society abjures today, whether you like it or not), and understand the moral case.  I also disagree with the devaluation of the value of gender in parenting (which is a genuine threat to this society), and also know damn well that once it’s the law of the land there will be legal attacks on any institution that doesn’t support it; the First Amendment will “protect” dissenting groups and tradition-supporting churches about as well as the Second protects law-abiding shooters in Chicago, or Tenth guards the delegation of powers; exactly as much as the most-powerful clique at the Capitol and the skill of their exquisitely-expensive lawyers allows them to.