The party that stood four-square behind Representative Ryan Winkler for calling Justice Clarence Thomas an “Uncle Tom“…

…has the vapors over two of the most innocuous jokes…

Nov. 16, 2012: “Poor Susan Rice. She’s the first woman in Washington to get in more trouble opening her mouth for a president than Monica Lewinsky.”

Nov. 18, 2012: “I keep hearing about this fantasy football thing. I don’t get it. My idea of fantasy football is where I am the quarterback and Angela Jolie is the center.”

They’re from Craig “Captain Fishsticks” Westover, an advisor to MNGOP gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson.  And the first one is accurate to a journalistic fault.

And, uh, note the dates.

So they – in this case, “Sam Jasenosky”, who would seem to be an undergrad journalism major (what else) – have been reduced to digging through advisors’ twitter feeds for any sign of political incorrectness to be tortured out of context.

I can hardly wait to see the ABM TV ad next year.

Here’s the fun part, though; ABM are the real sexists:  from yesterday’s post about the GOP candidates:

Julianne Ortman: A genie.

And lest the reader mentally compare Ortman – a graduate of U Penn law school and a former adjunct professor George Washington U  – to the “Djinn” of Arab mythology, they helpfully included video of Barbara Eden playing a jiggly, bubbleheaded blond piece of eye candy:

Because when you’re a Democrat, it’s only sexism if you’re one of the bad guys.

And because that’s what female conservatives are to Carrie Lucking’s little troupe of howler monkeys.

If Paul Wellstone really had all the integrity people said he did, he’d puke.

…I don’t read legal filings for the sheer fun of it.

But this one’s worth it.

(SCENE:  at the offices of “Minnesotans United for All Social Progressive Causes”, a modest little 501c4 non-proft in the Griggs Building in Saint Paul, located on a hallway close by “Take Action Minnesota”, “ProtectMN” and a who’s who of other Minnesota social activism non-profits supported by liberals with deep pockets.   Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK and Avery LIBRELLE are sitting at Ikea desks across the aisle from each other.  BIRKENSTOCK looks depressed).

LIBRELLE:  What’s the matter, Moonbeam?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Oh, the usual.  Just worried about job security.

LIBRELLE:  Why?

BIRKENSTOCK:  Well, work in the non-profit field depends on having another cause that progressives with deep pockets are willing to pour big money into.

LIBRELLE:  Right.

BIRKENSTOCK:  And in a matter of two years, we not only stopped the Marriage Amendment, but passed Gay Marriage.

LIBRELLE:  Yay!

BIRKENSTOCK:  Right, yay.  But that’s a cause that should have taken years.  Like abortion – that’s been a steady gig for progressive activists for a couple of generations now.

LIBRELLE:  True.

BIRKENSTOCK:  But with the issue now a non-issue, that’s that many fewer jobs for people like us.

LIBRELLE:  Well, you could always sign on with Heather, down the hall at “ProtectMN”.  Lotsa money going into that group soon.

BIRKENSTOCK:  I thought about that.  But I’d have to deal with all those gun people.

LIBRELLE:  Oh, yeah.  I hear you.  They never just shut up and realize that they’re wrong.

BIRKENSTOCK:  Well, there’s that.  But it also depends on Heather not screwing the whole thing up.

(Both look at each other and break into laughter)

LIBRELLE:  OK, point taken.

BIRKENSTOCK:  It’s just that gay marriage was a major income generator for people like us.  I’m just afraid that some of us – maybe me, maybe some other Macalester poli-sci grad with no marketable job skills – might have to go out on…on…

LIBRELLE:  Say it…

BIRKENSTOCK:  …on…

LIBRELLE:  You’re among friends.

BIRKENSTOCK: The private sector.  (Chokes back a sob)

LIBRELLE: Hug it out.

(The two trade hug. BIRKENSTOCK sobs softly)

(Door opens and Gretel STROMBERG, Executive Director of MUFASPC, walks into the room carrying a thick file of paper).

STROMBERG:  Hey, everyone.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (un-hugging, sniffling a little)  Hi, Gretel

LIBRELLE:   Hi

STROMBERG:   Why the long face?

BIRKENSTOCK:   It’s the way I was born…   (Resumes sobbing)

LIBRELLE:  I think it’s a figure of speech, Moonbeam.  (To STROMBERG) We were just talking about how there might be fewer jobs in advocacy now that gay marriage is a done deal.

STROMBERG:  What? Oh, you two sillies.  Not a chance.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (stops sobbing) Huh?

LIBRELLE:  What’s up?

STROMBERG:   Oh, have no fear.  We have a new cause.

BIRKENSTOCK:  (Looks at papers).  Wow.

LIBRELLE:  See?

STROMBERG:  It’s all about love. We don’t discriminate against love.

BIRKENSTOCK and LIBRELLE: We don’t discriminate against love.

(And SCENE)

I like my iPhone.

It’s not only functional, it’s a pretty amazing bit of design.

But as a matter of principle, I want to jam a pie in the face of every single subject of this article:

“Keeping your iPhone in its most minimalist state is always preferred in design circles,” says Shayna Kulik, brand strategist and founder of trend forecasting site Pattern Pulp.

It’s about people who don’t buy protective cases for their iPhones – as a matter of principle:

So who is this creative cult potentially sacrificing hundreds of dollars or more for the sleek look and feel of their case-free iPhone? For one, they seem to worship at the altar of Apple…Aubrie Pagano, CEO and founder of made-to-order clothing site Bow & Drape, agrees: “To throw a $5.99 plastic bedazzled cover over an iPhone corrupts its integrity.”

Sorry, millennial dweebs.  I have no money to waste on replacing something that is hugely useful but – I stress this – very expensive outside of my biennial contract.

And so I use an Otter Box.

And until iPhone screens are less fragile than Lindsay Lohan’s sobriety, I will.

(Android people:  Yes, I know.  I’ve heard it all before.  Don’t care.  All of your comments will be mutilated for my pleasure).

Priggish neighbors threaten the nation’s Sriracha Sauce supply.

I’m heading down to Huong Sen to lay in a five year supply tonight.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Opponents of the government should be forcibly committed to insane asylums, without trial but merely by executive order, say Hollywood actor and British talk-show host.  Just as Sissy Spacek was qualified to testify about the suffering of farm wives because she had played one in a movie, Sean Penn is qualified to talk about crazy people because . . . well, fill in the punch-line yourself.

Who says history doesn’t repeat itself?

Joe Doakes

Why do you think MNCare collects all that information, silly?

The Tea Party are extremists that the American people refudiate.

Right?

Well, not so fast (emphasis added):

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 42% of Likely U.S. Voters think the president’s views are closest to their own when it comes to the major issues facing the country. But just as many (42%) say their views come closest to those of the average Tea Party member instead. Sixteen percent (16%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

This marks a small setback for the Tea Party from April 2010 when 48% felt closest to the average Tea Party member, while 44% said they had more in common with the president

On the other hand, it’s right after the full-fledged media narrative-attack over the “shutdown”.

Thirty-four percent (34%) now believe their personal views are closest to those of the average member of Congress when it comes to the major issues of the day. But slightly more (36%) say their views are closest to those of the average member of the Tea Party. A sizable 30%, however, are not sure.

Opposition by Tea Party Republicans to the president’s national health care law has been blamed for the recent government shutdown, and just 30% of voters now have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. That’s back to the level seen in January and down from a high of 44% in May after it was disclosed that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups.

Many of the “unfavorables” are likely never voting conservative under any circumstances.

The GOP has to present an alternative to the Democrats.

A mediator ordered the Dayton Administration to pay the legal bills for the plaintiffs against his “unionization by decree” stunt.

From a news release from MN Majority (with emphasis added):

Governor Dayton and the Bureau of Mediation Services yesterday settled to reimburse $60,000 in attorneys’ fees to the home-based child care providers who sued to halt Governor Dayton’s unlawful executive order establishing a unionization procedure for the providers. In Swanson, et al. v. Dayton, et al, the court found that the governor’s executive order exceeded his constitutional authority, struck down the order and awarded attorneys’ fees to the prevailing plaintiffs. The Administration paid these fees in compliance with a Minnesota Court of Appeals’ order earlier this year which said the fees were owed because the Governor was not merely wrong in issuing this unionization order, but had no substantial legal justification to do so at all under Minnesota’s Constitution and laws.

Mark Dayton:  The Law and the Constitution are for peasants.

The providers aren’t done:

 Plaintiff home-based child care provider Hollee Saville said: “This is a great day for the small-business child care providers who resisted the schemes to force unionization, dues and fees on our entire industry, and we plan to continue to resist the new unionization legislation, which is also unlawful.”

And I love the closing quote so much, I’m going to add emphasis to it:

Plaintiff Becky Swanson commented further on the fee payment made yesterday. “This fee payment illustrates that the real ‘extremist’ in the child care unionization scheme is the Governor, who ignored the constitutional limitations on his own authority to do political favors for his union friends, not us self-employed child care providers who resisted this overreach, and whom he arrogantly derided as ‘right wing extremists.’”

It’s the only line they know.

Suck it, commies.

…sorry.  It’s getting so thick, I’m getting just a tad punchy.

There’s an election coming up.  And the Democrats are going to need to need all the racial tension they can generate.

And their wholly-owned subsidiary at NPR is there to help them – in this case, in a story about Senate hearings on “Stand Your Ground” laws helpfully entitled “Senators bicker over state ‘stand your ground’ laws”:

The 2012 shooting death of Martin, 17 and unarmed, [provided you leave out “fists” and “bulk” – Ed] and the acquittal this year of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman stirred racial tensions and sparked debate over stand your ground laws in Florida and at least 21 other states.

Well, no.

The case itself stirred no tensions to speak of – until the Obama Administration, desperate to get out the black vote, turned Martin into a campaign stage prop, with the willing and unseemly connivance of the mainstream media.

Now, if you recall the piece on “ProtectMN”‘s “strategy” for the coming year, one of their goals is to emphasize emotional stories.  This is a common debate technique, of course; as my lawyer friends tell me, “when the facts are against you, argue law; when the law is against you, argue facts; when both are against you, argue like hell” – which means “emotions”, when you get right down to it.

And the media aren’t going to do anything about it.

Case in point:

Lucia Holman McBath, the mother of Jordan Russell Davis, implored the Senate to resolve the nation’s debate. 

[I’m going to hold out on the actual incident that led Ms. McBath to testifying in the Senate for just a bit, here]

“You can lift this nation from its internal battle in which guns rule over right,” McBath told the panel.

Ms. McBath lost a 17 year old son to someone who shot him in “self-defense”.

So what was the miscarriage of justice that led to Ms. McBath’s son’s killer walking away based on a “Stand your Ground” claim?  I’ll add emphasis:

Her 17-year-old son was shot and killed nearly a year ago when Michael David Dunn, 46, allegedly opened fire on a Dodge Durango with four teenagers inside after complaining of their loud music and saying he saw a gun and thus a threat. Jordan had been inside. Authorities never found a gun in the vehicle, the Florida Times-Union reported.

And, may I add…:

Dunn’s trial is set for next year.

So Mr. Dunn hasn’t even been tried yet?

We do not know the facts of the case that NPR hasn’t deigned to report…

…well, yes. We do.  We’ve looked at this case in the past.  Dunn would seem to have done just about everything possible wrong for a “self-defense” case.  Is he claiming “stand your ground?”  Sure.

And if he’s found guilty – as I’d imagine he will be – of some degree of homicide or another?  It’s irrelevant to “Stand your Ground”, because every other factor of the shooting that would lead to a self-defense claim would seem to have been wrong.

The fact that he claims “Stand your Ground” in a shooting that is otherwise wrong in every legal particular is not a reflection on the Stand Your Ground law.

Not that NPR will tell you that.

If you’ve wondered if there’s a way you could put your money where your mouth was in support of the Second Amendment – well, here you go (emphasis added):

The Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee was formed following the end of the 2013 Minnesota legislative session, “ said Mark Okern, Chairman. “Over multiple days of hearings, law abiding gun owners heard proposal after proposal that would have taken away their ability to protect themselves, hunt, and enjoy the shooting sports while having no impact on gun violence.”

The Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee will mobilize Minnesotans to support pro-Second Amendment candidates through grassroots efforts. The PAC also plans to endorse and financially support candidates in the primary and general elections in Minnesota’s 2014 elections for the legislature and statewide offices.

And unlike Common Cause, MN GOPAC really is non-partisan!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Might be time to buy oil futures, regardless what Al Gore thinks. Barak Obama as a Jimmy Carter re-run is looking like a best-case scenario. Remember the oil embargo in 1973? Might be time for another.

Representative Chris Van Hollen, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Democratic leadership, told Reuters’ Washington Summit on Tuesday that the Saudi moves were intended to pressure Obama to take action in Syria.

‘We know their game. They’re trying to send a signal that we should all get involved militarily in Syria, and I think that would be a big mistake to get in the middle of the Syrian civil war,’ Van Hollen said.

‘And the Saudis should start by stopping their funding of the al Qaeda-related groups in Syria. In addition to the fact that it’s a country that doesn’t allow women to drive,’ said Van Hollen, who is close to Obama on domestic issues in Congress but is less influential on foreign policy.

Gasp. They don’t let women drive? I guess they don’t respect human rights like say Iran, or North Korea, so they can’t be negotiated with like those nations can. And where was Van Hollen last month, when invading Syria was a fierce moral imperative?

They had me at “don’t allow women to drive”.

Kidding.  Kidding.

In the past week or so, the news got out that “ProtectMN” – the astroturf group almost entirely funded by Joyce Foundation – is getting some big-name help.

Richard Carlbom, the PR whiz behind the “Vote No” movement re the Marriage Amendment, has started his own consulting operation. 

And as all consulting operations do in every industry, Carlbom and his consultancy are going where the money is. 

Michael Bloomberg is going to spend a metric ton of money on attacking the Second Amendment.  And the Joyce Foundation is picking up the pace in its campaign to fund grassroots astroturf anti-gun groups, buy friendly media and media coverage, and gin up junk-academia to attack gun violence gun ownership.

And Carlbom is bellying up to the fiscal bar; he’ll be working with “ProtectMN”, Rep. Heather Martens’ astroturf gun-grabber group – a relationship made possible by the Joyce Foundation’s grant, reportedly, of $100,000 to “ProtectMN” (via an intermediary cut-out group). 

This is on top of Joyce’s purchase of $50,000 worth of the MinnPost’s “Journalism” on the subject (to say nothing of their sponsorship of Minnesota Public Radio coverage of the issue), and sponsorship of a network of other liberal “community organizer” groups like “Take Action MN”, who share resources with the gun-grabbers. 

Nobody knows if Carlbom has any actual passion for the gun issue.  He could well be just an ideological Hessian.  But if so, he’s a Hessian that “ProtectMN” desperately needs; Heather Martens may be the most inept community organizer in Minnesota political history.  It’s bad enough (for the orcs) that every single substantive thing Martens have ever said is a lie; it’s worse (for them) that pretty much everyone with a right to an opinion knows it.  So Carlbom getting into the issue may or may not be a game-changer – but it’s a line-up change that the orcs have needed to make for over a decade. 

Here’s The Important Part:  Liberals with deep pockets will always fund gun-grabber groups.  They’ll try to put different shades of lipstick on the pig that is suppressing our human right to self defense; they’ll change their spokespeople and their tactics, trying to create something – popular support for gun-grabbing – from nothing. 

There are very few conservatives with deep pockets supporting our human right to self-defense.  And much as the Good Guys would welcome their involvement (and money), it’s not what the issue will turn on.

But with the addition of Carlbom, the gun-grabbers now have several people working full-time to try to sway not just legislators, but your neighbors. 

Against that, the good guys have a bunch of plucky volunteers. 

If every single Minnesotan with a carry permit, all 160,000 of them, would donate $1 a year to the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – the group that organized the entire grass-roots “Shall Issue” movement in Minnesota – the group could not only fund itself, but have at least one, probably two people working the issue full-time.  Lobbying, building infrastructure, investigating the orc groups, and above all making sure the grass roots – you and me, the Real Americans – can focus our efforts as effectively as possible.

Working together as volunteers, we Real Americans are more than a match for Michael Bloomberg, Representatives Martens and Hausman and Paymar, Senator Latz, Jane Kay and all the rest of the orcs. 

With the aid of a couple of people working the issue for a living?

We could stomp them flat and keep them flat. 

A buck a permit a year. 

We gotta make this happen.

Tom Gross at NRO notes a facet about the late Lou Reed – who passed away Sunday after a long battle with liver failure – that has gotten rare mention in the media; he was one of New York’s few arts intelligentsia who were staunchly pro-Israel:

I mention Reed’s Jewishness because not a single obituary I have read of him in the mainstream press mentions it, when for Reed it was an important factor.

Reed, who died yesterday of liver failure at the age of 71, was born Lewis Allan Reed to a Jewish family in Brooklyn. He said that while “he had no god apart from rock ‘n’ roll” his Jewish roots and standing up for Israel meant a lot to him. He was a frequent visitor to the country, last performing in Tel Aviv in 2008, and his aunt and many cousins live in Haifa and other Israeli towns.

Reed even had an Israeli spider named after him to thank him for his support for the country.

Like Gross, I remember his “Good Evening Mr. Waldheim”, from 1989’s New York album.

By way of going after the former UN Secretary General (who’d served in the SS during World War 2, Reed rips into Jesse Jackson – famous for supporting Farrakhan and the PLO, and for his “Hymietown” jape, noting that some of the civil rights workers murdered in the sixties in the deep south were Jewish.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gotta hand it to the President, he pays keen attention. But to whom?

He learned of the Fast and Furious gun-running operation by . . . seeing
it on the news.

He learned of that Air Force One flight that caused panic in Manhattan
by . . . seeing it on the news.

He learned of the IRS targeting conservative groups by . . . seeing it
on the news.

He learned of the Justice Department seizing AP reporters’ records by .
. . seeing it on the news.

He learned about the attack on Benghazi by . . . seeing it on the news.

He learned how badly the Obama-care computer program was crashing by . .
. seeing it on the news.

Now it seems he learned the NSA was spying on Angela Merkel, the German
Chancellor by . . . her calling him to complain about it. What, did he
miss the news that day? Guy’s slipping up.

joe doakes

Maybe he gets his news from a new government website?

I write a lot about Second Amendment issues (among many other things) in Minnesota and nationwide.

And I’m going to be writing a lot more about the subject in the coming year.  It’s going to be one of those years. 

And since I’ll be writing a lot on the subject, I may as well get this out of the way.

(more…)

October 14: delaying the individual mandate is “sedition”.

October 28: delaying the individual mandate was always a good idea, Winston.

Lou Reed died over the weekend, proving once and for all that only Keith Richards can ingest absolutely every recreational chemical known to modern science and live to tell the tale forever.

It took me a long time to really get into Lou Reed – which may seem really counterintuitive, if you know me and my taste in music (and if you read the “Music” category of this blog, you do, sort of; I haven’t written about everything, just yet).   After all,everyoneknows Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground were the godfathers of punk – right?

Sure. 

But even though the Venn diagram among the different outbreaks of “punk” in New York in the seventies has tons of overlaps, there was a yawning gap between the joyful, garage-band-y noise of the Ramones and the New York Dolls (and their Cleveland descendants, the Dead Boys) and the Greenwich Village scene that spawned Reed, crawling as it was with high-art pretension.  The likes of Andy Warhol and William S. Burroughs saw and were seen among the rat-bitten warrens of the Village, hobnobbing with and encouraging the likes of the largely unlistenably shrill Patti Smith, the campy “Stilettos” (featuring a young Debbie Harry, who’d form “Blondie” by the mid-seventies), and of course Reed and the Velvets. 

It probably wasn’t until I moved to the Cities and started doing music here that I took a step back, at the urging of my band’s old drummer.  “Forget all the BS”, he said, “and just focus on the fact that he’s a guy who loves doing basic rock and roll”.

And in one sense it was true – the classic Lou Reed was all about the joy of playing the most basic rock and roll, simple and unadorned and pared down to its most basic components, filtered through a layer of New York grime.

Usually. 

Reed was also an experimenter.  In “The Original Wrapper” (from 1986’s Mistrial), he wryly claimed the title of the orignal, well, rapper – since he never so much “sang” as “spoke in rhythm”.  He delved through jazz, experimental music, screeching noise…

…even some pared-down pseudo-classical music – as in this very, very, very pre-MTV video for his classic “Street Hassle”, featuring a spoken-word coda by Bruce Springsteen around the eight-minute mark:
r

So I’m going to find my old copy of “Rock and Roll Animal” this week here, and give it another spin.

This past Friday, I talked with Susie Jones, a reporter from WCCO Radio, about the Gun Grab Summit in North Minneapolis. 

Now, I’m stuck in a bit of a conundrum, myself.  On the one hand, I do seek a civil, grown-up dialog.  As a gun owner, I have a vested interest in making sure my “tribe” – the law-abiding gun owner – acts in a way that credits the responsibility that God gave us and that our Founding Fathers recognized in the Constitution (a responsibility that the record shows we’re really, really good at meeting). 

I also have kids.  And a granddaughter.  Violence is an awful thing.  Protecting against violence is one of the reasons I would be a gun owner, hypothetically.

So curbing violence – with guns, knives, axes, fists, cars, sex organs and every other kind – is Job 1 for me, and for every law-abding gun owner I know. 

On the other hand?  It’s hard to stay adult and civil when dealing with “ProtectMN”, the Joyce-Foundation supported astroturf group that has been campaigning against guns – as opposed to violence – under several names for a couple decades now. 

Part of it is that the group – its’ leader, Representative Heather Martens (DFL HD 67A), speaking as a leader and as an individual – has never, ever uttered a solitary substantive word of truth on the gun issue.  Ever.  Seriously – you can tell Ms. Martens is lying when you see her lips move.  She is the most disingenuous person anywhere in Minnesota public life. 

Yes, worse than Carrie Lucking. 

We are constantly reminded that we need to have a “Dialog” about gun violence. 

And “Dialog” requires honesty.  So I’m going to be honest. 

Monologue And Backstory:  The key to “Dialog” is, of course, discussion between two divergent-to-dissenting points of view.  Otherwise, all you have is a monologue. 

Now, in his conversation with WCCO’s Jones on Friday, “ProtectMN”s Leroy Duncan flatly denied that anyone was told not to show up at the event. 

But at least one executive from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance responded to ProtectMN’s invitation to Friday’s event; I reprinted Heather Martens’ response to that GOCRA offical here the other day. 

Now, this is what ProtectMN put up on their Facebook page the other day.  Read it and tell me…:

“It’s time to stop letting our critical national debates be handled by lunatics, and by corporate lobbyists. It’s time for us to take up the mantle of civics and citizenship again, beyond our narrow self-interest.

We need to have a real discussion about the civic duty of gun ownership sooner, rather than later. It’s time for the grownups to start talking, and more importantly, to take action.”

The MN Gun Violence Summit will consist of “grown-ups” talking about how to make our communities safer and reframe the debate about gun policy.

…if all of that Alinskyite framing (“lunatics”, “grown-ups”) sounds like someone looking for a dialog? 

Class Warfare:  Jones noted in her conversation with me that some of the people at the “summit” had complained that the issue was a matter of the plucky, put-upon inner city versus the smug, complacent suburbs – and that shooters just don’t understand life in the inner city.

I refuted them thusly; me.  I live in the Midway.  I’ve had a drive-by shooting in front of my house.  I had a break-in when I was in my house, once upon a time; the sound of my own firearm ended the incident.  Senseless violence?  A four-year-old girl was murdered half a mile from my house, right about the time I had two kids in her age bracket. 

Gun violence affects my city.  My quality of life.  My property value.  Just as much as it does yours, and more than it does those of any of the leadership of “ProtectMN” and “Moms Want Action”. 

And – this is the important part -not a single proposal they’re making, or have ever made, would affect gun violence in the least.

So, Mr. Duncan, please spare us the BS and never, ever play that crap with me. 

And the fact is, many shooters live in the suburbs because decades of DFL mismanagement have left the cities much more dangerous than the subs, the exurbs or Greater Minnesota. 

Indeed, given that Minneapolis and Saint Paul have the lowest incidence of civilian gun ownership in the State and the highest crime rates, perhaps it’s time we considered whether owning guns is a better deterrent to violence than banning them. 

The Potemkin Mission:  But “ProtectMN” isn’t about curbing violence.  Not even a little bit.

Proof:  In the legislative session just passed, most of the Legislature got behind a bill, HF1325, sponsored by Rep. Hilstrom (DFL, some godforsaken Western suburb). The bill would have added mandatory penalties for using a gun to commit a crime, and improved the state’s reporting to the national background check database (a ball the DFL has been dropping for over a decade now)…

…y’know – things that have a record in curbing violence. 

That’s the mission – right?

Not for “ProtectMN”.  They – Martens and the Metrocrat DFLers who controlled the Legislature – fought like hell against the bill that would address violence with measures that have actually worked around the country, claiming it was “The NRA’s Bill” (which was written by a rep with an “F” rating from the NRA, but whatever).  Instead, they fought for useless fripperies like magazine size restrictions, and yapping about cosmetic features of different guns – things that don’t and have never had the faintest impact on violence at the very most.

Zero.

Nada.

Zilch.

So I ask you – who is actually “dealing with violence”?  And who is acting out a fetish over metal objects?

The Takeaways From The “Summit”:  I’d like to address this to my brothers and sisters, my fellow human beings in places like North Minneapolis and the lower East Side. 

There is a “dialog” to be had about gun violence.  And we, your fellow Americans and Minnesotans of the Second Amendment community, are more than ready to have exactly that.  We, like you, want to make your streets, neighborhoods and homes safer – because they’re our streets, neighborhoods and homes, too.

“ProtectMN” doesn’t care about “violence”.  They froth and fume about guys in Lakeville with AR15s – and you know as well as I do (and Heather Martens does not) that they and their guns aren’t the problem. 

It’s the criminals.  The people who couldn’t pass a background check when they were 18, and sure as hell can’t pass one now.

And let the record show that Protect MN fought against the legislation that would attack them, in favor of attacking the law-abiding, in the past session.

And starting in January, they’re going to ramp up that attack. 

More later.

Join the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance.

BTW – please “Like” GOCRA on Facebook.

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

• I’m in the studio today from 1-3.  First hour:  we’ll be talking about the Republican State Central, as well as Minnesota’s teacher of the year. Second hour:  a “dialog about guns” that’ll actually curb gun violence, with Rob Doar of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance.
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow.  I think he’s got CD6 congressional candidate Tom Emmer on the show. Tune on in!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six 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 my new UStream video and chat channel.
• 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!

Perhaps you’ve heard; Minnesota’s new “Teacher of the Year”, Saint Paul science teacher Megan Hall seems to have answered the question “are today’s public schools nothing but left-wing indoctrination centers” with a rousing “Hell yeah!”

This is from her acceptance speech, with emphasis added by me:

Teachers are persistent and responsible and generous because we believe that every child in America, regardless of circumstances of birth, deserves a decent chance at a good life. [Applause] From where I stand, teachers create equality of opportunity. From where I stand, teaching is a profession that takes a gritty patriotism. And from where I stand, teachers are American democracy’s last line of defense against the tyranny of the 1 percent

Don’t believe me?  Here’s the video

How over the top was it?  Even the City Pages’ Aaron Rupar seemed to feel a little uncomfortable: “Yeah, maybe that would’ve been a good line to save for when you’re having beers with your liberal buddies after the speech”.

For all I know Ms. Hall is a perfectly adequate teacher – and in my experience in the Saint Paul Public Schools, adequate would have been pretty superlative.

But I have to wonder:  if Ms. Hall is protecting the students from “the 1%”, who is going to protect them from the Saint Paul Public Schools?

Because between the child abuse, the brain-dead kommissariat masquerading as a bureaucracy, and the massive horde of intellectually-walking-dead union members Ms. Hall shares a district with?

I’ll take my chance with those gol-durned rich folks, thanks.

But look at it her way; I suppose if I taught for a district with the worst major-market achievement gap in the United States, with a minority graduation rate lower than Miley Cyrus’ neckline, a district that minority parents were decamping from as fast as they can find open spaces in charter schools or suburban schools via open enrollment, I’d look for a scapegoat too.

Today at 10AM, “Protect Minnesota” and a coalition of mostly white, mostly upper-middle-class, entirely left-of-center groups will meet, as we discussed yesterday, to try to figure out how to suppress the Second Amendment for the law-abiding Minnesotan. 

Yesterday, we discussed the invitation – and how they’re really not interested in any solution that doesn’t involve infringing on the law-abiding, having rejected the RSVPs of Second Amendment activists.

But what about the agenda itself?

The invite – from “Protect Minnesota” The Brady Factory – says:

Find out what’s next in this important work and what your role can be. Sessions include:

— Changing the narrative around gun violence prevention

— Developing effective media strategy

— A deep dive on gun policy in Minnesota

— Grassroots lobbying

— Creating change with personal stories

What are they talking about?

Let’s turn this into real English:

Changing the narrative around gun violence prevention:  Whose narrative are we talking about, here?  The one in the media?  That one is certainly gun-grabber friendly.  Or are you talking about the one out there in the larger society – the one that keeps answering “guns in the hands of the law-abiding are a good thing” at the ballot box?

Developing effective media strategy:  I presume this means “expanding on their current strategy of having their plutocrat benefactors sponsor friendly media and pay for sympathetic “news” coverage”.

A deep dive on gun policy in Minnesota:  “Deep Dive?”  You don’t need no stinkin’ deep dive.  I’ll tell you what you need to know; for the past 40 years, our self-appointed “elites” have been trying to set gun policy.  From 1974 through 1994, it worked.  Then Minnesota’s gun owners got organized.  Since then, the “elites” have been shut down, and haven’t won a battle that wasn’t handed to them by a judge.

Take that time you were going to spend in your “deep dive” and do something useful.  Maybe take a walk.

Grassroots lobbying:  This should be a fun session.  The gun-grabbers have no “grass roots”

White, upper-middle-class, NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, free-range-alpaca-wearing, white-liberal-guilt-stricken perma-scowling Saint Olaf alums from Linden Hills, Crocus Hill and Saint Louis Park. These are the closest the gun-grabber movement gets to “grass roots”.

They have astroturf.  They have a few activists (see photo above) and a lot of money from liberals with deep pockets.

And that’s it.

Creating change with personal stories:  Go ahead.  Bring your personal stories.  We’ll bring ours.

The meeting should be fun.  And by “fun”, I mean “clogged with self-righteous but badly-informed bobbleheads”.

If any of you Real Americans attend as ringers, please send me your report.

Great piece here from Mother Jones about how the DFL went from disorganized and on the ropes after Paul Wellstone’s death, to pretty much controlling Minnesota today.

I know.  It’s MoJo.  It shows obvious signs that it’s written from Alliance for a Better Minnesota press releases (did the DFL really “lower property taxes?”  Because I sure didn’t get mine lowered).

But check it out anyway.

One in 11 American children is diagnosed – or “diagnosed” – with ADHD in one form or another.

In France, the rate is one out of 200.

Why?

Here in the US, ADHD is considered a biological disorder with biological causes – although as with so many “biological” emotional and mental disorders, nobody has actually empirically found that cause yet.

In France, it’s another story:

French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. Instead of treating children’s focusing and behavioral problems with drugs, French doctors prefer to look for the underlying issue that is causing the child distress—not in the child’s brain but in the child’s social context. They then choose to treat the underlying social context problem with psychotherapy or family counseling. This is a very different way of seeing things from the American tendency to attribute all symptoms to a biological dysfunction such as a chemical imbalance in the child’s brain.

 French child psychiatrists don’t use the same system of classification of childhood emotional problems as American psychiatrists. They do not use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM. According to Sociologist Manuel Vallee, the French Federation of Psychiatry developed an alternative classification system as a resistance to the influence of the DSM-3. This alternative was the CFTMEA (Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de L’Enfant et de L’Adolescent), first released in 1983, and updated in 1988 and 2000. The focus of CFTMEA is on identifying and addressing the underlying psychosocial causes of children’s symptoms, not on finding the best pharmacological bandaids with which to mask symptoms.

DSM vs. CFTMEA = Tomayto / Tomahto?  Perhaps.

But for whatever reasons, ADHD isn’t an epidemic in France: 

To the extent that French clinicians are successful at finding and repairing what has gone awry in the child’s social context, fewer children qualify for the ADHD diagnosis. Moreover, the definition of ADHD is not as broad as in the American system, which, in my view, tends to “pathologize” much of what is normal childhood behavior. The DSM specifically does not consider underlying causes. It thus leads clinicians to give the ADHD diagnosis to a much larger number of symptomatic children, while also encouraging them to treat those children with pharmaceuticals.

Also, I’m going to take a wild guess here and assume that the French system leaves the diagnosing to actual medical and mental health practicioners, and not teachers with BAs from the French equivalent of Mankato State.

In the previous piece about tomorrow’s “Gun Violence Prevention and Safe Communities summit “, I said “You’re invited”, sort of.

It’s not actually true.  A number of members of the Twin Cities’ human rights community responded to the invitation on Facebook – because the meeting invitation noted that “We all have to step up”, and nobody, but nobody, wants to curb gun violence more than the law-abiding, responsible gun owner [1], and so a number of Second Amendment human rights activists did step up, and RSVPed to the invite. 

And some of them have been getting responses:

“Dear [Redacted]

I am writing to inform y ou that the meeting on Friday, for which we received your RSVP, is not open to you.  If you come, you will be asked to leave.

Regards,

Heather

Presumably that’s Heather Martens, “Executive Director” and sole member of “Protect Minnesota’. 

So apparently when they say everyone needs to “step up” to prevent “gun violence”, they only mean “people who want to ban guns in the hands of the law-abiding citizen”. 

I wonder if theMinnPost,or Minnesota Public Radio, both of whom are sponsored by Joyce Foundation, the group of liberals with deep pockets who are “ProtectMN’s” only real source of money, will note that in what will no doubt be their embarassingly effusive coverage of the “event?”

[1] As evidenced by the fact that it’s us law-abiding, responsible gun owners that actually point out that the bulk of the gun carnage is being carried out by criminals, and most of the innocent victims are black children in places like Chicago.  The Twin Cities gun-grabber movement, being almost exclusively upper-middle-class white liberals (and, in terms of positions of power, white as the driven snow), seems only to concern itself with the deaths of children who look like their parents are NPR executives.  I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.