What do you think the Twin CIties media would say, and do, and write, if they found out that…:

• Power Line, the Twin Cities’ premier political blog (yeah, Hot Air is huge, but it’s not really based here.  Sorry, Ed), and…
• A hypothetical conservative “mainstream” news outlet – say, the Pioneer Press after a buyout – and…
• The National Rifle Association, the Gun Owners of America, and the Minnesota Gun Owners CIvil Rights Alliance…

…all got funding from, say, the Koch Brothers?

Take your shot at writing the headlines you’d see in the Strib, on WCCO and KARE, and on MPR (to say nothing of NPR), in the comment section.

Oh, wait – it’s not remotely hypothetical. 

More next week.

The Kenosha school district’s teachers vote to decertify their union in the third-largest district in Wisconsin:

Today, teachers in Kenosha, Wis., voted to decertify their union, the Kenosha Education Association, by a margin of nearly two to one. Only 37 percent of the teachers opted to retain the union in an election made possible by the labor reforms enacted under Gov. Scott Walker (R). The result goes to show that when workers have a choice on whether to join a union instead of being forced into one by law, they often choose to vote down the union.

It wasn’t even close; the margin of victory was very nearly as large as the “yes” vote total.

The Gun Grab Orc movement – led by DNC chairbeing Fran Drescher Deb Wasserman-Schulz – has been pleading “voter suppression” for their resounding defeat in Colorado this past Tuesday.

And they were right.  It was voter suppression that doomed the Senators Morse and Giron in the recall elections.

Their suppression of voters dissenting against them.  David Kopel writes at Volokh:

As it turns out, Morse and Giron sealed their fates on March 4, the day that the anti-gun bills were heard in Senate committees. At Morse’s instruction, only 90 minutes of testimony per side were allowed on each of the gun bills. As a result, hundreds of Colorado citizens were prevented from testifying even briefly. Many of them had driven hours to come to the Capitol, traveling from all over the state.

That same day, 30 Sheriffs came to testify. They too were shut out, with only a single Sheriff allowed to testify on any given bill. So while one Sheriff testified, others stood up with him in support.

Admirably, Morse had urged his Committee Chairs to be polite and courteous to all witnesses, and they were. But President Morse did not follow the standard practice of the Colorado legislature, by which any citizen who wishes to testify is allowed to be heard, at least briefly. The patient endurance of Colorado legislative committees which have heard hour upon hour of testimony on bills about gay rights, motorcycle helmets, and other social controversies is a tribute to our republican form of government.

This, Kopel argues, was a key facet in the recall:

When Morse shut that down, and Chairperson Giron went along, they crossed the double-red line of Colorado government. Had the seven gun control bills (one of which I testified in favor) been heard on March 4-6, instead of being rammed through committees on March 4, the recall might never have happened. It’s one thing to lose; it’s another to thing to lose when you didn’t even have the opportunity to present your reasoning.

Even Michael Paymar wasn’t that stupid. 

And Morse may have been an even bigger coward than Representative Heather Martens (emphasis added):

While the gun control bills were before the Senate in March, President Morse urged his caucus to stop reading emails, to stop reading letters from constituents, to stop listening to voicemails, to vote for the gun bills and ignore the constituents. Giron, presciently following this strategy, had allowed citizens to raise Second Amendment concerns at a single town hall meeting, and thereafter refused to discuss the issue at public fora.

The battle in Colorado turned on many issues;

• Blue-collar Democrats joining the GOP to flush the orcs – as they often do, even in Minnesota.  It’s hilarious; the Demcrats have always been the party of class warfare – but of all hot button issues, it’s the gun issue that is the most strongly divided by class, rather than partisan identification.  And the Democrats are the party of the patricians, every time.
• The Colorado GOP running a flawless campaign.  The Minnesota GOP needs to study this.
• The gun movement turning out the manpower (even as they were outspent by at least 7:1 – 8:1 in Pueblo).  As we’ve seen in Minnesota, passion and relentless work ethic defeats money – at least on this issue. 
• Outrage over the Democrats’ arrogant hijacking of the process to jam down an oppressive law that was against the spirit of democracy in Colorado – even a Democrat-led Colorado – at the behest of carpet-bagging east-coast plutocrats.

More of this.

I’ll be broadcasting live from Gander Mountain in Lakeville (I35 at the County 50 Exit). 

You’re going to want to make it out there; they’re having another of their big defensive firearm days; you can actually try out sample firearms from factory representative for free at the Gander range.  It’s fuuuuuun!   (And I’m looking at the CZ75 in a whole new way)

I’ll be talking with Mark Walters and Rob Pincus from Armed American Radio about the victory in Colorado and the battle we Real Americans face in the coming year. 

Come on out to Lakeville between 1 and 3PM tomorrow!

Governor Messinger’s Daytons’ approval ratings – the media says – have dipped.

Survey USA shows the Governor at a 47 percent approval rating:

Significantly, however, the September approval rating is down 9 percentage points since May of 2012. Back then, when Dayton was still grappling with a Republican controlled Legislature, the governor’s approval rating was 56 percent in the SurveyUSA poll.

The dip was particularly glaring among Democrats:

According to the SurveyUSA poll, Dayton went from an 80 percent approval rating among self-identified Democrats in May of last year and February of this year to 67 percent approval rating. The pollster said that segment of the poll had a plus or minus 6.7 percentage point margin of sampling error.

And naturally, the Strib poll – which has a long history of comical inaccuracy – differs: 

The Star Tribune’s polling over the past two years do not track with the SurveyUSA polling. The latest Minnesota Poll, which had a margin of sampling error ofplu sor minus 3.5 percentage points, was taken in June and found Dayton’s approval rating was 57 percent. That was up from 45 percent in February of this year and 53 percent in September of last year in Star Tribune polling numbers.

In the Strib’s poll, Democrats approved of Dayton overwhelmingly – which would appear to be a major difference in the two polls.

That, and SUSA having a track record of relative accuracy, or at least not being utterly comical.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Complaints about how the Obamacare Outreach contracts were awarded.

The complainers’ logic escapes me: only Blacks can reach out to to other Blacks to give them free stuff, they won’t accept it from Whites? Or do you fear White Minnesota Democrats are 1963 racists who will intentionally exclude Blacks from the free stuff, Jim-Crow style? Is this about race at all, or is it about who gets the taxpayer-funded make-work job?

———-

Obama says bombing Syria will prevent Assad from using chemical weapons again, which will deter everybody else from acquiring and using them, which makes our own children safer in the long run.

Condensed version: bomb Syria, for the children.

———-

New “study” proves federally funded early childhood education programs will save Minnesota 4.8 billion in prison costs.

Look for details on this – Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom is involved so we know it’s anti-gun.

———-

A guy with a sawed-off shotgun arrested in Burnsville.

You see, this is why we need universal background checks, to prevent guys like this from carrying sawed-off shotguns into banks and convenience stores. Because although he’s already a career criminal who ignored half-a-dozen laws to commit this crime, he’ll surely obey the next law. Or the one after that. Or the one . . . .

———-

Windmills kill eagles.

So is that too many dead eagles, or not enough? How many dead eagles is too many dead eagles, if the goal is to achieve energy independence? You want green energy or not?

———-

Car bomb explodes on 9/11 outside building formerly used as US Consulate in Benghazi.

 

It’s empty (except for FBI investigators still trying to figure out what happened there a year ago when a bunch of film critics chased us away) so no important American officials killed this time. But bombs are used to send a message (see: Johnson in Vietnam, Obama in Syria). The message Al Qaeda sent with this bomb: “And don’t come back!”

Joe Doakes

“Hit the road, Barack”.

By the way, as a tax-paying Minnesotan I have to hope that nobody in the Messinger Dayton Administration was reading the WaPo piece about the Mexican townspeople that are resisting the narcotraficantes with their illegal firearms; they might start getting ideas:

The area’s lime growers, for example, were taxed by metrics that included acreage, limes harvested and crates packed. The meager wages of the lime pickers were also taxed, along with the bus fares that they paid to get to the groves. Gang members taxed sacks of corn and the tortillas made from them. A man installing a floor in his house soon had a gang member at his door, demanding a fee. A man who ran a restaurant said the cartel began taking a cut of the coins in his jukebox.

“The DFL Majority:  Like cartel sicarios, in Priuses!”

Over the past year, we Real Americans were asked “Why do you neeeeeeed an ugly military-grade firearm?” – and before we could answer, were promptly told “You really don’t!”.

There are many answers, of course.  The best of them is “I’m a law-abiding citizen buying a legal product that will never be used to commit a crime of any kind, so it’s none of your business, and go piss up a rope”.  But “serving as the ultimate deterrent to government overreach” is right up there.

And somewhere down the list – for Americans – is this answer; deterring, and if necessary doing more, to the scumbags that prey on society’s honest and hard-working people

An audacious band of citizen militias battling a brutal drug cartel in the hills of central Mexico is becoming increasingly well-armed and coordinated in an attempt to end years of violence, extortion and humiliation.

What began as a few scattered self-defense groups has spread in recent months to dozens of towns across Michoacan, a volatile state gripped by the cultlike Knights Templar, a drug gang known for taxing locals on everything from cows to tortillas and executing those who do not comply.

Law enforcement – up to an including the Army – is of no use in protecting the citizen:

The army deployed to the area in May, but the soldiers are mostly manning checkpoints. Instead, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is facing the awkward fact that a group of scrappy locals appears to be chasing the gangsters away, something that federal security forces have not managed in a decade.

They include a 63-year-old pot-bellied farmer mindful that he can run only 30 yards; a skinny 23-year-old raised in Oregon who said he had never used a gun before; and a man who wears a metal bowl stuffed with newspaper as a helmet. A 47-year-old bureaucrat, who is sure that she will be killed if the gang retakes her town, said of her decision to join the cause: “I may live one year or 15, but I will live free.”

“Hey, you can’t fight an army…” – and the narcotrafricantes are surely an army, if only an army of thugs – “…with your deer rifle!”

Volunteer fighters who have been using old hunting rifles and even slingshots are increasingly armed with silver-plated AK-47s, armored trucks and other bounty that they said they have seized from the cartel. And although the self-defense groups had been operating independently, they are coalescing under the leadership of a tall, white-haired surgeon who once worked for the Red Cross in California.

Read the whole thing.

(more…)

When politicians suffer reverses, they do their best to spin them into…well, not as bad a loss.  It’s human nature, and it’s Politics 101; never let them see you sweat.

For example, here in Minnesota, after Representatives Paymar, Hausman and Martens’ gun grab bills imploded (during a session in which the DFL had complete control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature), the gun grab orcs did their comical best to spin the results as a victory – with the criteria for “victory” all basically involving “doing the stuff people do in campaigns whether they win or lose”.

The Orcs – a term I used to refer to gun-control advocates, in the full sense that JR Tolkein intended for the word – are doing their best to spin Tuesday’s defeat in Colorado into something else.

It’s a lie, naturally.  Michael Bloomberg – the de facto leader of the Gun Grab movement in America today – bet big on this recall, spending $350,000 of his own money to try to keep the two seats.  The orcs outspent the Real Americans 6:1 in terms of officially-released spending numbers, and by some accounts that’s conservative; most of the orc money came from out of state, and much of that was laundered through local non-profits to make it look less lopsidedly carpetbaggy.

But make no mistake – for the Gun Grab movement, this was not just a defeat; it was a debacle:

…registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the two districts where voters cast ballots (though Morse’s district is more of a swing district than Giron’s more Democratic-leaning territory). And the anti-recall side easily outraised the pro-recall interests. The Democratic losses are a reflection of the fact that enthusiasm was squarely on the opposite side of Morse and Giron.

“The National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) is proud to have stood with the men and women in Colorado who sent a clear message that their Second Amendment rights are not for sale,” the NRA’s political arm said in a statement.

While the long-term significance of the election will assuredly be be debated, it’s hard to argue against the proposition that lawmakers in other states will have Colorado somewhere in their minds the next time a push to tighten gun laws begins ramping up.

In the larger debate over gun laws, Tuesday was another victory for the NRA and its allies, who earlier this year demonstrated the power they wield in the campaign to prevent the passage of tighter gun restrictions in Congress.

So let’s recap the year so far:  after being handed two grisly, horrible mass murders to exploit, the Gun Grab movement – on a raft of Bloomberg cash – managed to jam down some meaningless restrictions, none of which will have even the most obtuse effect on crime, on the law abiding citizens of a couple of coastal liberal cesspools, and Colorado.

In response, most of the rest of the country – including liberal cesspools (for the moment) like Minnesota – responded with an epic outpouring of grassroots dissent against the media narrative that Bloomberg paid for, leading to a raft of victories for freedom; sheriffs and legislatures throughout the country nullifying proposed federal laws in advance, the Illinois legislature facing down Orc governor Quinn, and finally Colorado.

UPDATE:  This has also been in the news; Public Policy Polling, the left-leaning polling firm that got the big kudos for being closest among the major polling shops in the 2012 election, suppressed its pre-recall poll that accurately predicted Giron’s stunning 12 point defeat:

Public Policy Polling (PPP) sparked controversy Wednesday after the left-leaning firm declined to release a survey it conducted last weekend that accurately forecasted the successful recall of a Democratic state senator from Colorado.

The survey PPP conducted, but did not release, showed Colorado District 3 Sen. Angela Giron (D) would be recalled by a 54 percent to 42 percent margin.

“In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll,” Director Tom Jensen wrote in a post on the firm’s website. “It turns out we should have had more faith in our numbers because she was indeed recalled by 12 points.”

This is baked wind, of course.  It had nothing to do with “not being right”; it just didn’t sufficiently fluff the narrative – which PPP is still trying to get perked up:

“If voters made their decision based on the actual pretty unobtrusive laws that Giron helped get passed, she likely would have survived,” the firm wrote. “But the NRA won the messaging game and turned it into something bigger than it was- even if that wasn’t true- and Giron paid the price.”

Real Americans – the kinds from both parties that flushed Angela Giron on Tuesday – know the real truth; Chicago didn’t become Chicago overnight.  Every “unobtrusive” law that punishes the law-abiding and leaves the criminal untouched is just another step toward Michael Bloomberg’s dream.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

One of the early, successful examples, of drawing a line in the sand, from before President Obama got into the act.

The Light Bringer can’t pull this off because his words carry no authority.  When the Roman Consul threatened you, it wasn’t with a strike “just muscular enough to not get mocked” or one that would be “unbelievably small.”  When Barak Obama threatens you, it’s an international joke.

Joe Doakes

You don’t risk American lives and spend American money to “send a message”.

Say what you will about both of Dubya’s wars – Afghanistan went bad, and the unintended consequences in Iraq were worse than the war itself for all concerned, we get that – but when Dubya went to war, he didn’t “send a message” to the Taliban, or “punish” Hussein. He went to war to unconditionally defeat them.

Not to send a message.

“Messages” are why we have a State Department.  “Punishment” is why we have trade sanctions, Stuxnet and spooks .

(SCENE: MITCH is driving down Thomas Avenue in Saint Paul, heading for the glamorous part of the street, when his phone rings.  He looks; the Caller ID on the screen says “Avery LIBRELLE”).

MITCH:  (Sotto voce) Criminy.  Not Avery again.

(MITCH picks up the phone):  Hello?

LIBRELLE: Mitch?  I need you to come down to the courthouse and bail me out of jail.

MITCH:   Jail? Huh?  What happened?

LIBRELLE:  Well, Mitch, I shot a gun.  At a person.

MITCH:  Huh?  You hate guns.  You are a gun-control activist.  You don’t even own a gun…

LIBRELLE:  I know.  It was one of yours.

MITCH:  Back up.  What?

LIBRELLE:  It was your gun.

MITCH:  (Visiblly confused, pulling his car over to the curb in front of the “Prada On Thomas” boutique)  OK, this is getting weird.  How did you get a gun from me?

LIBRELLE:  I was at your house.

MITCH:  WHAT?

LIBRELLE:  I needed some coconut oil, so I used that key that you used to leave hidden outside for your kids.

MITCH:  What the…that disappeared years ago.

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, but you weren’t using it.

MITCH:  Well, not right at that moment, because I was at work.

LIBRELLE:  Well, it was for A Better Minnesota.  Anyway – we’re getting side-tracked here.   I was digging through your pantry when I saw a couple of people cutting through your neighbor’s yard.  I hate it when people do that, so I figured I’d send them a message.

MITCH:  (Pulled over to the side of the road)  You WHAT?

LIBRELLE:  I opened your gun safe and took out that little cowboy gun.  I figured I’d send a message.

MITCH:  Oh, for the love of…my .22 revolver?

LIBRELLE:  Whatever.  I figure that sending a message would punish them.  So I went out on your back stoop and yelled “NEVER WALK THROUGH PEOPLES’ YARDS AGAIN!”, and pointed the gun sort of at them, but not very close, and squeezed the trigger.

MITCH:  I…I…I can’t believe this…

LIBRELLE:   Either could I.  The “Kick”, I think you call it, almost broke my hand.

MITCH:  So to warn off someone walking through a back yard…

LIBRELLE:  Yep

MITCH:  …that was not mine…

LIBRELLE:  Yep.

MITCH:  …you broke into my house, took my gun, and shot at them?

LIBRELLE:  Yes.  But in my defense, it did look like an unbelievably small gun.

MITCH:  Criminy, Avery.  Lethal force is one of those things that you only use when the danger to you is immediate and and lethal.  And you never point a gun at someone or something you don’t intend to destroy. 

LIBRELLE:  But they crossed a red line!

MITCH:  What red line?

LIBRELLE:  The one I was thinking as I watched them cross into your neighbor’s property.

MITCH:  Using lethal force is something you can only do if your life is in immediate threat of death or great bodily harm!  Not to “send a message”.  And if the force you use is “unbelieveably small”, then – any County Attorney will tell you – the threat to you must not have been all that big in the first place.  There are other ways to deal with threats aren’t immediately lethal to you. 

LIBRELLE:   Bla bla bla.  Are you going to bail me out for A Better Minnesota or what?  Because we need to talk about the public health threat your guns pose to us neighbors.

(And SCENE)

If you had “within minutes” as your entry in the  “When will the Democrats blame their Colorado rebuke on GOP perfidy pool, you’re a winner.

Democrat National Committee chair Fran Drescher Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is blaming the crushing rebuke at the polls on “Vote Suppression”. 

“The recall elections in Colorado were defined by the vast array of obstacles that special interests threw in the way of voters for the purpose of reversing the will of the legislature and the people. This was voter suppression, pure and simple,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.

This has been part of the extremist Democrat playbook since 2000; things that go well for them are signs that democracy works; reverses, on the other hand, are signs that democracy is rotten to the core. 

It’s a play for the low-information voter that still gets their information from CNN – and giving her extremist special interest base an “out” for having been humiliated by Real Americans even after outspending them 3:1.

How is it that the Administration is absolutely double-dog certain that Assad launched chemical weapons – in an area with no US presence, much less sovereign control – but after one full year still claims not to know what happened in Benghazi?

It’s been 12 years since 9/11.  What do we have to show for it?

The answer depends on who you ask.  And depending on how awash in partisan politics they are, that answer might change depending on what side of January 20, 2009 you ask them about.

I’m not going to try to sort that out now.

I’m just going to refer you back to a piece I wrote on 9/11 last year, that some of the people at whom it was aimed appreciated a lot.

I’m happy to note that freedom and liberty won a round last night.

The recall effort against two gun-grabbing anti-civil-rights fops in Colorado succeeded wildly last night.  Colorado state reps John Morse and Angela Giron were flushed from public life by their voters:

The election, which came five months after the United States Senate defeated several gun restrictions, handed another loss to gun-control supporters. It also gave moderate lawmakers across the country a warning about the political risks of voting for tougher gun laws.

You can tell it’s the NYTimes writing this piece; they think “moderates” in the west don’t already know better.  

The recall elections ousted two Democratic state senators, John Morse and Angela Giron, and replaced them with Republicans. Both defeats were painful for Democrats – Mr. Morse’s because he had been Senate president, and Ms. Giron’s because she represented a heavily Democratic, working-class slice of southern Colorado.

The Giron race ought to make outstate DFLers who supported the Paymar gun grab – I’m looking at you, Shannon Savick – sit up and take notice; Real Americans aren’t amused by your noodling.

Even better?  The avalanche of liberal money didn’t do the job (emphasis added)!:

While both sides campaigned vigorously, knocking on doors, holding rallies and driving voters to the polls, gun-control advocates far outspent their opponents. A range of philanthropists, liberal political groups, unions and activists raised a total of $3 million to defend Mr. Morse and Ms. Giron. Mr. Bloomberg personally gave $350,000.

There are so many upsides to this election.  The personal rebuke to The Nanny Mayor is in the top three.

Mr. Morse’s hand was on the tiller during much of that debate. A former police chief, he said he found himself in a position of not just rounding up votes, but actually explaining the mechanics of guns to fellow Democrats. He brought a magazine to show his colleagues how it worked. In an emotional speech in March, as the debate reached its peak, Mr. Morse stood on the Senate floor and spoke of gun violence and “cleansing a sickness from our souls.”

(Koff koff Jim Backstrom koff koff).

Cleanse this, ex-Legislator-boy.

And in this is a lesson that conservatives need to re-learn – and teach our idiot consultant class – every two years, rather than every 30; grass-roots activism works:

Angry constituents around Pueblo and Colorado Springs started to ask one another what they could do. In living room conversations and on Internet message boards for gun enthusiasts, the idea for a recall campaign against gun-control supporters began to jell.

“We’d never been to a rally or town halls,” said Victor Head, a plumber in Pueblo who borrowed money from his grandmother to kick-start the recall against Ms. Giron. “We’d never done much politically other than voting.”

Colorado is one of 19 states where voters can recall state officials, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and no evidence of fraud or official misconduct is needed to gather the signatures necessary to schedule a special vote.

I personally don’t favor recall elections for anything other than fraud, official misconduct or criminal activity, as a matter of policy.

But then, attacking the Bill of Rights is official misconduct.

Anyway – two down.  Thousands of orcs to go.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Everybody who works for President Obama must echo the party line, from the Vice-President down to the UN Ambassador.  They have no choice.

But here are some of the people outside the Administration, who think it’s a good idea for America to go-it-alone and start a war against Syria:

John McCain

Betty McCollum

Hillary Clinton

This list of names alone convinces me it’s a stupid idea.

Joe Doakes

Note to Joe; you left out Ellison.

I’ve been doing radio for a while.  I’ve interviewed a lot of people – Senators, Congresspeople, State Legislators, Governors, candidates for all of the above, Miss Minnesotas, authors, public intellectuals, fake intellectuals, Princesses Kay of the Milky Way, plate-throwers, journalists, bloggers, athletes, coaches – you get the picture.

And almost every time when I walk into an interview, I know more or less what I’m going to hear. 

Now, I don’t normally do a ton of interview prep.  I like to approach a subject from the same perspective that the audience has, from a complete white slate; it’s one of the best bits of interviewing advice Larry King ever gave.  That being said, I’m rarely surprised by what I hear in an interview.  I blog a lot, so I’ve had my mind on a lot of different subjects over the past 12 years. 

But last Saturday was a huge exception.  During the second hour on the NARN, I interviewed Linda Bell and Kirsten Block, from Minnesotans Against Common Core. 

Now, I figured I was going to hear more talk about national standards.  I oppose them, by the way – I don’t think the federal government should be telling the nation how to educate its children. 

But it’s worse than that.  In fact, it’s so much worse that for one of very, very few times in all of my years of interviewing people, I was actually dumbfounded by what I was hearing.  It was so much worse than I – a cynic who expects nothing good from our national education system – expected that I was nearly speechless. 

Standardized Poltroonery:  If you listen to some of the GOP’s talking heads who’ve come out in support of Common Core, you might think that’s the extent of it; the idea that a national set of standards will help ensure that our children all get a better education (because that worked so well with “No Child Left Behind”).

It’s wrong, of course.  When you nationalize standards, you accede to having them set via a political process, and political processes don’t work any better for allocating expectations in education than they do for allocating resources in an economy. 

That, alone, is reason to fight the Common Core. 

But it gets so much worse than that.

Orwellian:  Indeed, very little about the “Common Core” has much of anything to do with “Core” educational subjects at all. 

From the Fact Sheet at MACC’s website:

• It’s unconscionably intrusive: National student database – over 400+ data points collected (at a minimum – and likely many more).  Medical Histories?  Religion?  Guns in the house?  Bureaucrats’ impressions of your family life, gathered from mandatory home visits?  On top of the Obamacare Health Insurance Exchanges, the NSA will be the least of most of our privacy concerns. 
• We’re From Washington, And We’re Here To Get You To Shut The F*** Up:  the program is mandated by the feds.  Parental control? Parental input?  Dream on, peasant. 
• Richard Trumka Has Always Been A Great Man!:  The curriculae for Common Core programs will be written by bureaucrats – not teachers.  And not just the curriculum specialists who clog your local school systems today – the ones in Washington.  Or the ones that work for the big textbook companies.  Pardon the redundancy. 
• Shakespeare Out; Ginsburg In:  Western literature will be greatly de-emphasized. 
• Ryan WInkler Won’t Be The Only Innumerate State Rep:  The math standards are a disaster. 
• Teaching To The Test Didn’t Work.  Let’s Do More:  One of the worst traits of No Child Left Behind was that it gradually drove teachers and schools to “Teach to the Test” – since the tests were the measure of achievement.  Common Core will be worse – and thus, so will your kids education. 
• We Had To Pass It To Know What Was In It:  The State of Minnesota’s version of Common Core was adopted by the bureaucracy when the state wanted the federal money that comes with it, four years ago.  Neither Congress nor the Legislature had the foggiest clue what was in it.  They still largely don’t – which is why you see people like Jeb Bush supporting it.

Any school, public, private, charter or home, that gets any shred of federal assistance will be subject to the rules.

Common Core is an abomination, and needs to be repealed. 

I’m a small fish in a small pond – but I will actively work against any and all politicians who don’t condemn and work to repeal the Common Core as it is currently slated for implementation; with the intrusions, the lack of local involvement, the continued centralization of public education (and private and home-schooled education, as well. 

Whatever their party.

Last week – voters toss a carbon-taxing, border-opening, “War on Womyn”-pimping government in Australia, ushering in a conservative government. 

And in Norway – yes, Norway – a center-right coalition toppled the socialists. 

I know – “conservative” is relative around the world.  There was a time when the conventional wisdom was that European “conservatives” were like American Democrats. 

That was before American Democrats became the extremist party, of course.

The Shorter Anti-War (2003-2008) Liberal:  “We oppose war, until it means someone would call us nasty names“.

Joe Doakes from Como Park:

Hey Mitch, do SITD readers eat Booya?

I’m trying to decide whether to put it on my Bucket List, or give it a pass. Let’s take a poll: what’s the readership’s opinion?

Joe Doakes
Como Park

I switched to WordPress in November of 2006, right before the mid-term elections. 

And in that time, I (and my various co-authors over the years, Johnny Roosh, Bogus and First Ringer) have published 9,999 posts. 

And this is number 10,000. 

(That’s on top of about 2,400 published under my “Movable Type” system, from 2004-2006, and probably 1,800 more on the original blog on Blogger.com, going back to 2002). 

Apropos not much.  Other than “wow”.

To:  Carrie Lucking, “Executive Director”, Alliance for a Better Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant
Re:  Chain Of Command

Ms. Lucking,

The “Special Session” to deal with disaster relief teed up a few hours ago.

Just a hint; it might behoove you to copy your audioanimatronic marionette “Governor” Dayton on any legislation that gets proposed, or especially passed.  The vision of your audioanimatronic marionette our “Governor” proclaiming shock at legislation that the DFL has jammed through embarasses this state makes your chain of command look “not ready for prime time”. 

It’s pretty simple; route things from Governor Ms. Messinger, to you, to handler “Chief of Staff” Bob Hume, to Mr. Dayton.  And spend some time making sure he really knows what’s getting written into law. 

You’re welcome.

That is all.

When Representative Ryan Winkler talks, people listen.

And then the smart people snicker.

He tweeted this yesterday:

My favorite point in this op-ed: low wages do not cause poverty. http://t.co/jBfXzKYSiF. Only an economist could be so enlightened.

— Ryan Winkler (@RepRyanWinkler) September 8, 2013

Of course, he had the point of the op-ed all wrong.  Read it for yourself.

The point is that low wages aren’t the sole cause of poverty.  In the great scheme of things, they aren’t even especially important, in and of themselves.

Much more important?  When there is no opportunity to earn higher wages.

How does that happen?

• When a preponderance of people don’t have the tools to do better themselves.  For example, when our overpriced education system continually short-changes them.  Especially minority kids, who have both the highest poverty rates and are the most systematically shortchanged by the education system Ryan Winkler’s party designed.
• When mandatory wages for entry level work are so high that the market for entry-level, unskilled labor gets depressed – ensuring fewer people, especially poor people, get into the labor market at all.
• When an overabundance of regulation makes entrepreneurship – starting ones’ own business – less tenable.  Like the DFL has done for Minnesota, giving the state the worst climate for entrepreneurship in the country.

To further address the point, though, I’d like to ask Rep. Winkler (or his defenders) this question:  at what minimum wage hourly rate will poverty disappear?

Put a number on it.

That’s the question I’d like to ask.  In fact, I asked it.

Hopefully we’ll see an answer.

I’m sure we will.

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