Joe Soucheray got fooled.

The entire Twin Cities media has either been fooled, or is playing along.   I vote “playing along”.

Governor Messinger Dayton and Senate Majority Leader Bakk aren’t “fighting”, or “at odds”, or “in a conflict” over the DFL’s so-called “tax cuts” (which, let’s not forget, “cut” less than 10% of the four billion dollars worth of tax hikes the DFL jammed down back in 2013).

This is all theater.   And it’s about as spontaneous as a porn shoot.

Signs the DFL planned this from the ground up?   Ask yourself this; why is Governor Messinger Dayton, who is up for re-election this year, “in conflict” with Tom Bakk – who is not up for re-election this year – and not Paul Thissen, who is?

The entire “story” is a carefully-manicured charade designed to make Mark Dayton – who signed four billion dollars worth of tax hikes last year with little more thought (and perhaps little more knowledge) than he’d use signing a credit card receipt at the Oceanaire – look like a “tax cutting moderate” compared with the Senate (who are utterly safe for the next two years, and for whom the media will help engineer something in two years anyway), but heaven forbid not the House, who are, mirabile dictu, not involved in this particular fracas.

The worst enemy that fabian statism has is generalized prosperity.

It’s always been a theory – ’til now.

The North Dakota Democrat Party can muster not a single Democrat to run for office anywhere in Bakken country, according to Rob Port:

Democrats have managed to recruit exactly zero candidates in legislative districts representing the state’s oil patch with all local district conventions completed and less than two weeks to go before their statewide convention…If we count the urban districts in Minot and Bismarck as being “oil patch” districts, we add five more: Districts 3, 5, 7, 47 and 35. Of those, all have a full slate of Republican candidates, and just one has Democrat candidates.

And the North Dakota Democrat Party is fielding candidates for only about 1/3 of the state’s legislative races overall, almost exclusively in the eastern part of the state:

That speaks volumes, doesn’t it? Democrats will talk a lot about oil and energy policy this year, but the lack of Democrat candidates in the oil patch tells us their arguments aren’t getting much traction where that policy has the most impact.

What a glorious time to be alive.

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!

•  Brad Carlson is filling in for me today from 1-3.  He’ll be interviewing Kim Crockett about the Center of the American Experiment’s “Minnesotans are on the Move“.
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• I’ll be in for Brad tomorrow on “The Closer”!   And there’s going to be a special announcement…

(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 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!

I went down to the Capitol last night for a 6PM hearing on SF2639 – Senator Ron Latz’s bill to punish people accused but not convicted of domestic abuse by confiscating their guns and keeping them confiscated, innocence notwithstanding. 

We started out on a high note; Michael Paymar’s attempt to create a felony trap for law-abiding gun owners in Capitol-complex buildings got turned into a fairly innocuous tweak to the existing notification law.  The law, by the way, dates to 1994, and is utterly obsolete, a relic of a time when law enforcement still kept records on paper files.  The notification law is obsolete and needs to be gutted and tossed entirely – but for now, it’s no big deal.

So I showed up at the Capitol.   As usual, I was among plenty of friends:

The nose count, last I checked, was 70-75 civil rights supporters to about a dozen civil rights opponents.

I did a nose-count; Real Americans outnumbered people there for “Protect MN”, as usual, by a lopsided margin.  

So we waited.  

Strategizing got done…:

GOCRA leaders churning on strategy.

…but for the most part, everyone waited.  And waited some more.

There were several updates from security; they were busy with other bills; they were going to get through a few more and then take a half hour break before getting to 2639.

So we waited some more. 

A few cases of water bottles, courtest of GOCRA, made the rounds. It was warm in there.

GOCRA brought water and granola bars, which theypassed out up and down the line (including to the anti-rights people; I had the singular pleasure of giving water and a granola bar to Rep. Martens).

They took the half-hour break – which ran more like an hour.  And then they re-convened – and addressed the Fetal DNA bill.  For an hour.

I had to leave; I was fighting a cold, and had to work this morning.

Latz didn’t bring up his gun-grab bill until nearly 11 – after he’d let Heather Martens and her friends in through the back door, essentially packing the hearing room with his supporters.  Latz has set himself apart, along with Reps. Paymar, Hausman and Martens, as one of the most virulently anti-civil-rights people in the Legislature; he quite clearly passive-aggressively used his power as committee chair to make the hearing as difficult as possible for the unruly peasants who had the affrontery to oppose him. 

Rob Doar, the VP of Government of Affairs for the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, summed it up about the same way: “Senator Ron Latz is wll established as one of the most anti-rigths legislators in Minnesota.  Under his leladership of the Jundiciary Committee, we’ve come to expect he’ll use every tool at his disposal to make hearings as difficult as possible for anyone who opposes his agenda”. 

At the end of the evening, the bill passed from the Judiciary Committee. 

Which is no surprise; the bill was going to pass Senate Judiciary no matter what; Michael Bloomberg invested a LOT of money in this session, and there needed to be something to keep the metrocrat troops rallied, for all that investment; the Metrocrats control the Judiciary Committee.  When Bloomberg says “speak”, Latz will bark on command. 

Now, reality sets in.  There needs to be a companion bill in the House; the House DFL caucus is panic-stricken about their chances this fall, and getting saddled with one of Latz’s gun-grab bills would be poison for a couple of outstate DFLers that are already fighting for their lives.  And Tom Bakk – who is an Iron-Range union guy who loves his big-game hunting – knows what long memories us civil rights advocates have.    If I had to bet, I’d say this bill dies in committee without getting to the floor, or at the very worst, in conference. 

Which is not another way of saying “relax for the rest of the session”.  There will be more hearings, more amendments, more attempts to weasel legislation through the system.

You need to call your legislators.  Thank the good guys.  Politely urge the ones who are wrong to reconsider.  Urge the fence-sitters to throw a vote for freedom. 

We can win this round.  Indeed, we can humiliate the bad guys, just like last year.

…about my native North Dakota?

Taxes are falling, even as the economy booms?  Yes.

But beyond that?  The local sports – Bison football, Sioux hockey and now, in a stunning opening-bracket upset of Oklahoma, Bison hoops – win.

The DFL controls both chambers of the legislature, as well as the Governor’s office.

They passed four billion dollars in total tax hikes last session, for a net two billion dollars in increases, without a single Republican vote.

But now the DFL needs GOP support to change tax policy? 

That’s what this piece – “GOP senators refuse to be rushed on sweeping tax-relief measure” – would have you believe.

No, really:

Dayton and DFL leaders have rushed to pass the measure to ensure the largest number of Minnesotans can take advantage of more than $50 million in retroactive tax relief by April 15. Senate DFLers used a rare procedure to try to speed passage by a day, but Republicans in the minority used their limited muscle to delay the vote until Friday.

Earlier in the week, Dayton chastised Senate DFLers for not passing the measure swiftly enough. On Thursday, Dayton and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, joined together to direct their wrath at Republicans.

Look – this bill was never intended as anything but an election-year bandaid for the DFL – allowing them to say “We cut taxes! (to some favored classes of Minnesotans, for a total of a tiny fraction of the tax hike we unilaterally jammed down two years ago)” in an election year when the MNSure flop and the 2013 tax and spend and gun grab orgy looks certain to cost the DFL dearly. 

Baird Helgeson is, in short, carrying the DFL’s narrative water:

“There is no good reason for Senate Republicans to block the bill’s passage,” Dayton said. If Republican legislators force any further delays, “they will be solely responsible for denying income tax cuts to thousands of Minnesotans.”

The measure is nearly certain to pass Friday because Republicans are out of options to block it.

Ahem:  the DFL doesn’t need one single Republican vote to pass the “tax cuts”.  Not One. 

Why is Baird Helgeson and the Strib carrying the DFL’s water? 

Will Rachel Stassen-Berger, Tom Scheck and Bill Salisbury catch the Strib on this fairly egregious bit of journalistic partisan narrative-fluffing?

A friend and regular correspondent sent this from a Linden Hills Zoning Committee meeting last week:

There were about 40 citizens there to hear Council Member Palmisano speak about having to do this moratorium. Most there were opposed to the moratorium. The clear and present danger (my words) that prompted an immediate moratorium was so that a “study” could be done correctly to determine the effects of all this positive economic energy. Good heavens, storm water run-off might increase. Really folks the reasons are additional storm water, increased demands on landfills, irritating construction workers, dumpsters parked on the street (hey how about PLOWING the streets better) and ugly remodels. Wow if those are the reasons have I got a stadium remodel that should be moratoriumized for the same reason plus a burden on the current and future taxpayers.

That’s the thing about NIMBYs (people who say “not in my back yard” to everything) – they don’t want anything in their backyard!

Most people got up and said this is a real drag on their businesses, their personal lives, and it simply is an over-reaction to a problem that is already solved by zoning and permit laws. Just enforce the laws on the books. But the complaint from Mr. Cress of the planning department (CPED) is that his staff is stretched. Welcome to the real world so add some staff, authorize some overtime, work a little smarter. When asked if he recommended the moratorium he said that’s what elected officials do.

Then the last speaker from the zoning committee said she thanked the council member for not caving in to “scare” tactics of job loss and business loss. Really? What about the scare tactics of storm water increases and overflowing landfills. Good grief what a hypocrite.

This city is in so much trouble. We need more diversity at city council. The current groupthink is wildly destructive.

There’s an old adage – when you pay people to do things, they’ll do them.

The obverse of that adage is “if you get a city full of people who are True Believers in the power of government, you’ll get a lot of it”.

Reading this series of spoofs of Maureen Dowd’s Tea-Party inspired foray into dystopian literature, I’m reminded of the time this blog crowd-sourced a similar spoof of the the inimitable Susan Lenfestey – who, to be fair, doesn’t even know she’s being dystopian.

And I gotta say – this blogs readers have got it.

It might be time to do a new spoof.

But…who?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I was doing title research and found a 1962 deed that created private restrictive covenants. It prohibits tar paper siding, houses smaller than 1,000 sq. ft., building too close to the lot line, private sewers, etc. That’s how private developers maintained neighborhood standards before zoning came along.

This particular deed also says: “This lot is sold on the express covenant that it shall never be occupied for the purpose of doing a liquor business, nor for any immoral use.”

Put me in mind of our recent discussion on legislating morality. So now I’m wondering: in a state dominated by the DFL, does this mean drunken homosexuals can move in; but registered Republicans are banned?

Probably better not to ask.

Joe Doakes

Probably.

I don’t endorse candidates – well, rarely, anyway – but my fantasy ticket for 2016 is Scott Walker and Rand Paul.  Since neither is likely to settle for Veep, it’s probably fair to say that either of them (maybe with Susana Martinez for Veep) is my current front-runner.

Why Walker?  Look at Wisconsin. 

Why Rand Paul?   Because he’s putting the GOP – and more importantly conservatism – into places where it’s not been seen in decades.  And – the bleatings of too many establishment hamsters notwithstading – convincing people that conservative-libertarianism is the right answer to this nation’s problemsisthe future of conservatism, and especially the GOP, if there’s going to be a future at all.

And Paul gets this:

Historically, the Republican Party has been just what the public thinks it is, largely a bunch of risk-averse white men who are totally clueless at public relations, even though they are on the right (correct) side of almost every issue. Meanwhile, the liberal Democrats haven’t had a decent rational argument about anything for years, if they ever did. They ream young people, blacks and virtually every other “interest group”that supports them with their policies and they still win most national elections. What a disgraceful group of losers that makes the Republicans…Rand Paul is smart enough to realize this and actually goes out and does things about it…The country is changing. Whole new groups are ripe for the picking, most obviously the young who are being so completely raked over by the Obama administration via Obamacare and the rest of the entitlements so many of them know they will never see. They were ready to applaud at Berkeley.

The whole thing is worth a read. 

And, if you’re a GOP activist, a little bit of internalizing.

Remember – the gun grabber agenda picks up again with a vengeance today at the Capitol – and once again, we’ll need Real Americans to turn out to hold them back.

The first hearings, at noon today, will be for the Capitol Trap Bill:

Based on the flawed recommendations of lame duck Lieutenant Governor Prettner Solon’s capitol safety advisory committee, and steamrolled by lame duck Representative Michael Paymar, SF2690 would impose additional red tape hoops to jump through, and “gotcha” felonies for permit holders visiting the State Capitol Complex. THE BILL WILL BE HEARD THURSDAY, March 20, at noon in Room 15 of the Capitol.

This bill would create a trap for harmless permit holders whose meaningless, duplicative, unused notifications “expired.” A visit to any capitol-area building — even the Minnesota History Center — after this false “expiration” would turn a permit holder into a felon.

Then, this evening, Ron “I’m From Harvard.  Are You From Harvard?  No?  Oh” Latz will present a gun confiscation bill:

Civil rights opponent Ron Latz, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced SF2639, a bill that would create de facto confiscation of firearms from persons accused of domestic violence.

Senator Ron “I went To Harvard, you know. Did you go to Harvard? No? Because you know, I actually WENT to Harvard” Latz

THE BILL WILL BE HEARD THURSDAY EVENING, March 20, at 6 p.m. in Room 15 of the Capitol.

While GOCRA has no love for wife-beaters, this bill goes far beyond protecting victims, and would impose a back-door theft of personal property through exorbitant fees.

This bill would gang-rape due process for those accused but not convicted of domestic violence.  Remember – a shocking number of domestic violence charges are completely made up; many soon-to-be-ex-spouses know full well that getting the police to confiscate their soon-to-be-ex’s firearms, among all the many ugly consequences of false accusations of domestic abuse is a great way to dig at them – and Latz’ bill would put on onerous burden on the innocent. 

I’ll be there this evening.  Hope you can too.  Bring your maroon GOCRA shirts if you have ’em – but whether you have the shirt or not, show up. 

And remember – we Real Americans have been winning the battles against Bloomberg’s Billions lately, but it’s only because we show up; we make the phone calls, we sacrifice the time and shoe leather, we come to the hearings, we fight the fight on the street.  If we ever stop – at least while the DFL controls the show in Saint Paul – then the orcs win.

If you can’t make it to the hearings?  You know the drill; call your rep and your legislator.  If they’re among the good guys – mostly GOP, but also many out-state Democrats – then thank them for defending your civil rights, and encourage them to keep up the fight.  If they’re with the orcs – most Metro DFLers – express your opposition politely and calmly.  We win this thing by being better than our opponents.  And we pretty much always are.

I hope to see you tonight.

UPDATE:  I’m going to keep this post at the top of the page for the rest of the day; new posts will fill in below at the usual time, around noon.  Just saying.

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

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

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

…Will Saletan?   At Slate?

Huh.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

State Government, actually getting ready to doing their jobs!  Woo Hoo!

And what luck, just in time to set the tone for elections in which Democrats need some good news.  Wonder how the numbers will come out?

The answer, as in all “numbers” questions over this past eight years? However Mark Ritchie wants them to come out.

Percentage of women in the federal civilian workforce drops sharply under The Lightworker:

Since Obama has been in office, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management, the percentage of women in the civilian federal work force has been shrinking. Before Obama took office, it was already smaller than the percentage in the overall national civilian labor force. Under Obama, it has gotten smaller still…about 44.4 percent of civilian federal workers were female in 1998.

In 2013, only about 43.5 percent were female — the lowest percentage in the sixteen years available.

In 1998, nationwide, about 46.3 percent of the civilian labor force was female — about 1.9 points more than the female share of the federal civilian labor force. In 2013, about 46.8 percent of the nationwide civilian labor force was female — about 3.3 points more than the female share of the federal civilian labor force.

The economy is worse for minorities, worse for women…

…and a never-ending spiff for DC residents.

 Was I the only one who noticed – California Senator Diane Feinstein was silent during the part of the NSA scandal when it was just the peasants getting spied on…

…but she swung into action like Batwoman when it was her getting snooped?

For Sen. Dianne Feinstein, regulation of unmanned aerial vehicles has gotten personal.

In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday night, the California Democrat said a drone spied into the window of her home during a protest outside her house, and that privacy concerns for the technology were “major.”

…now.

Can anyone help but remember Feinstein’s time in San Francisco, where she moved to revoke all civilian handgun carry permits…

…after having herself issued a police permit?

When it was her life being threatened?

I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon and I made the determination if somebody was going to try and take me out, I was going to take them with me.”

 In the world of the left, only the right people actually need civil rights.

I’ve never been much of a TV watcher.   I’ve gone through some major parts of my life with no TV at all, and many more not really watching any.

But over the last eight months or so, via the miracle of Netflix, I’ve caught up on some of the shows everyone says “you just gotta see” – House of Cards, Mad Men, The Killing, Walking Dead, Lilyhammer, Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Battlestar Galactica (at least the first three seasons; it crashed to a halt in Season 4) and a few others.

It’s commonly said that we’re in a third “Golden Age of Television”.  And if you are a picker and chooser, the amount of quality TV out there is pretty amazing (although given how much TV there is out there compared with 40 years ago, I’m not sure the quality-to-dreck ratio is that much better).

But something’s always nagged at me about this boom in quality – from the Sopranos’ New Jersey full of strip clubs and body dumping grounds to Breaking Bad’s Albuquerque full of  tweakers, TV is focusing on flyoverland like it never, ever did in its earlier eras (Mary Tyler Moore’s Minneapolis and Happy Days’ Milwaukee were thematic window-dressing)…

…and it’s pretty alarming.

John Podhoretz identifies it:

[Brett Martin, author of the book “Difficult Men”, about the producers behind the current era in TV] notes that there was something explicitly political at work in the early days of what he calls television’s “Third Golden Age.” Americans “on the losing side” of the 2000 election, Martin writes, “were left groping to come to terms with the Beast lurking in their own body politic.” As it happened, “that side happened to track very closely with the viewerships of networks like AMC, FX, and HBO: coastal, liberal, educated, ‘blue state.’ And what the Third Golden Age brought them was a humanized red state. .  .  . This was the ascendant Right being presented to the disempowered Left—as if to reassure it that those in charge were still recognizably human.”

Of course, the “recognizably human” people who dared vote for George W. Bush were all sociopathic or psychopathic crooks: Tony Soprano, Walter White (note the name) of Breaking Bad, the polygamous Mormon Bill Henrickson on Big Love, and others. They were the characters at the center, and they were indeed fully human.

Less human, but no less emblematic?  “Peter Griffin”.

No, seriously.

Anyway, J-Po finds the part that’d been nagging at me:

It’s the depiction of the worlds in which they live that is so striking, even more so in the series that have come along since the body politic’s shift to the left, beginning in 2006. The canvas on which these characters are brought to three-dimensional life isn’t a “humanized red state” at all, but rather the red state of liberal horror fantasy.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

As women moved out of the kitchen and into the workforce, the Law of Supply and Demand came into play:

Everybody’s wages dropped.

Is the War on Women a case of Friendly Fire?

If we brought in millions of new immigrants, would the numbers get better or worse?

Joe Doakes

And if most of the immigrants were female, how much worse would it get?

An observation from The Blaze:

In nearly all movies involving “gangsters” with guns, you’re bound to see the firearm cocked sideways. It was even a joke in the movie Date Night where Steve Carell’s character calls this position the “kill shot.”

Methodist gangster illustrating the “John Woo Grip”.

A former U.S. Marine Corps marksmanship instructor thinks there could be some merit to that logic, according to the Daily Mail.

In an effort to save time, make a getaway and maintain some accuracy, Davis said the method being used is called “flash sight picture,” which aims down the side of the gun. It isn’t necessarily the most precise, but it can get the job done.

My theory – which is both utterly free of evidence and, I suspect, absolutely correct – is this:  during the 1980s, as the drug war was ramping up, the CIA infiltrated gangs in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Miami and along the border, and began teaching gangs the grip.  They also got to famed Hong-Kongese (Hong Kongian?  Hong Konger?) filmmaker John Woo, and got him to glorify the sideways grip in countless film shootouts.

The motivation, of course, was to save police.  It has had the concomitant effect of saving countless gangster targets over the years, while killing or maiming countless innocent bystanders who were sitting in second-floor apartments 45 degrees off the line of fire.  One Minneapolis cop once told me, back in the eighties, that the safest place to be in a gang shootout was the target; actual participants seemed to be very rarely harmed in gang shootouts,then as now.

We can thank the John Woo grip for this.

(more…)

Over this past nine months, conservative groups have railed against the Lightworker’s Administration’s abuse of the IRS to suppress conservative political activity.

Of course, if you live in Minnesota, you’re used to this.  The “Campaign Finance Board” has been a cudgel used against (mostly conservative) grassroots groups since its inception.

But the Dayton Administration is doing its best to make things worse:

As we’ve learned, the IRS under the Obama Administration has been weaponized against conservative non-profits in an effort to stifle opposition speech, but that’s not the only avenue of attack. A partisan bill was introduced in the Minnesota Legislature, but ultimately defeated last year that would impose onerous new regulations on grassroots organizations like Minnesota Majority, Tea Party groups and numerous other non-profits

It’s back this year and it contains all manner of vague, subjective language (like “clearly;” “reasonable;” and “biased,” that will allow a small 6-member board, appointed by the governor to determine who has violated the proposed new campaign finance laws and who has not. “Bias” is often in the eye of the beholder. In this case, it’s up to the governor to determine who the “beholders” are.

The bills involved appear to revive some of the worst, dumbest, most turn-free-speech-into-crime-ifying aspects of the late, unlamented McCain-Feingold law:

HF1944/SF1915 proposes to create “free speech zones” on the calendar, allowing the state to determine when grassroots groups can engage in unfettered speech and when such speech would be regulated.

In other words, putting bureaucrats in charge of when and, inevitably, how you may “speak freely”.

So…what are you doing Thursday?

The DFL is back at it again.  Two gun control bills have been introduced so far this session – and they’re both bad ones.

As bad as last years’ avalanche of stupid?  Perhaps not.  But noxious in their own way.  And both of them are the camel’s nose under the tent.

The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance sends:

Civil rights opponent Ron Latz, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced SF2639, a bill that would create de facto confiscation of firearms from persons accused of domestic violence. THE BILL WILL BE HEARD THURSDAY EVENING, March 20, at 6 p.m. in Room 15 of the Capitol.

While GOCRA has no love for wife-beaters, this bill goes far beyond protecting victims, and would impose a back-door theft of personal property through exorbitant fees.

The DFL is going to spin opposition to this bill as “supporting wife-beaters”, of course; the orcs are fluent liars. It’s the one form of language they’re good at.

And someone who’s legitimately convicted of domestic violence should give up their guns.  But this is on accusation – and as many has half of all accusations of domestic violence, at least during divorces, are false.

Capitol Carry Traps

Based on the flawed recommendations of lame duck Lieutenant Governor Prettner Solon’s capitol safety advisory committee, and steamrolled by lame duck Representative Michael Paymar, SF2690 would impose additional red tape hoops to jump through, and “gotcha” felonies for permit holders visiting the State Capitol Complex. THE BILL WILL BE HEARD THURSDAY, March 20, at noon in Room 15 of the Capitol.

Bad information leads to bad policy, and the information presented by the Department of Public Safety at those committee meetings this summer was terrible: the DPS spokesman had no idea that the DPS managed the permit holder database!

This bill would create a trap for harmless permit holders whose meaningless, duplicative, unused notifications “expired.” A visit to any capitol-area building — even the Minnesota History Center — after this false “expiration” would turn a permit holder into a felon.

This is one of the approaches gun-grabbers just love; make laws that create confusing restrictions that are bound, indeed designed, to entrap people.  Then, complain to the media about all the “gun felonies at the Capitol!”, and demand more gun control!

Anyway – GOCRA would love to see people at the Capitol this Thursday, as noted in bold above.   Needless to say, calling your representatives about these bills is going to be important.

Last year, the avalanche of real citizens showing up at the capitol shut the lavishly-funded gun-grab effort down.  Shot it down in flames.  Humiliated it.

It’s a new year, and a new session.  Time to beat the orcs back again.

In 1969, the US submarine Scorpion, homeward bound from the Mediterranean in the South Atlantic, disappeared without a trace. 

The search was finally resolved when a Navy researcher, John Piña Craven, using Bayesian search methods and, in effect, a free market approach to sorting through the various hypotheses, found the wreck.  It took a while – but in the end, the path to the sub’s wreck was perfectly logical.

The media – inflamed by the Malaysian government’s political skeeviness – is spinning conspiracy theories as fast as it can get them on the air these days.

If I had to bet?  I’d say this guy has it right.

Just a hunch – but if I had to bet, I’d go long on the theory.

I’m going to run this for one more day.  If you feel like it and are inclined to throw a buck or two in the kitty, it’s much appreciated.

Many thanks to the folks who have already donated!

And above all, thanks for reading all these years.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is sitting at a stoplight when his car is jolted from behind. 

Wearily, BERG gets out of his car and walks to the car that has bumped his rear bumper.  Avery LIBRELLE sits at the driver’s seat, still furiously typing on a mobile device.

BERG:  (Recognizes LIBRELLE):  Oh, jeez.   You know you slid into my…

LIBRELLE:  Wait!  (furiously finishes typing comment onto news website).  OK.  What now?

BERG:  Well, you sorta slid into my back bumper.  (Checks bumper).  Not much damage, but still…

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, well, I had to comment on this Ukraine thing.  The Administration is doing a heck of a job.

BERG:  The Administration is doing nothing at all.

LIBRELLE:  Well, we only have so much we can do.  We have no credibility.

BERG:   I’ll say.  Obama has pretty much…

LIBRELLE:   No, you racist, it’s not Obama.  It’s the US.  We have no credibility on human rights issues.

BERG:  What now?

LIBRELLE:  Look at slavery!  Look at what we did with the Indians.

BERG:  Wait.  Slavery – which we fought a civil war to abolish 150 years ago – and the wars against the Native Americans, which ended 120 years ago, destroy our credibility today?

LIBRELLE:  Absolutely.  And the people of the Crimea just voted, 93% of them, to rejoin Russia.

BERG: In an election in which they were surrounded by Russian troops.

LIBRELLE:  So that invalidates the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, then?

BERG: (slowly shakes head).  You do realize that justifying a larger, aggressive nation swallowing up parts of smaller nations based purely on ethnicity is how the west rationalized Germany taking the Sudetenland, don’t you?

LIBRELLE:  Bla bla bla.  Russia is liberating Crimea from the Ukrainitarians, who unlawfully stole it from them.

BERG:   OK, about that.  Let’s run, for sake of argument, with the idea that slavery and the conquest of the American Indians invalidates America’s claim to being a moral player.

LIBRELLE:  It does.

BERG:   Even though it happened over 110 years ago, and our society has spent the better part of the past 40-50 years atoning for both, which is something no other society on earth haseverdone for societies they previously conquered and enslaved.

LIBRELLE:   Bla bla bla.  Do you have a point?

BERG:   I always have a point.  You do realize that the reason the Crimea is ethnically Russian is that the Russians murdered, starved and deported the vast majority of the non-Russian natives of the region back in the twenties through the forties, and shipped in ethnic Russians to replace them, don’t you?  That is to say, within the past seventy to ninety years, they either murdered the people who lived there at the time – the Tatars, the Turks, the German-Russians and all other other ethnic groups that used to live there – in an ethnic cleansing no less brutal than Wounded Knee and the Trail of Tears, but within living memory, as they were also starving Ukraine into submission – or shipped them off to the steppes and a fate not one iota less horrible than slavery?

LIBRELLE:  Your point?

BERG:  You deny the US has any moral weight, but ignore vastly worse and more recent crimes to fit your narrative.

LIBRELLE:   Bla bla bla.  Hey, you have insurance, right?  Could you get this one?

(And SCENE)

Joe Doakes from Como Park sends an email…:

Ted Cruz says the US Labor Force Participation Rate is the lowest since Jimmy Carter and even Polifact concedes he’s right.

…and a photo:

Never thought I’d say it – but if anyone would make Jimmuh Carter look good in both economic and foreign policy terms, Obama would be it.

NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio launched his first salvo in his war on charter schools – which is, essentially, an extended payoff to the unions and the condo pinks that put him in office in the first place (occasional emphasis added by me):

While running for New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio could count on applause for attacking unpopular charter school co-locations, where charters that need space are squeezed into public school buildings alongside other schools.

Instead of extolling the promise of the charters, de Blasio provided a spine-stiffening defense of the “common” school, and his base ate it up: The unions loved it, parents whose kids were not in charters loved it, and many of de Blasio’s fellow Park Slope progressives loved it.

That’s been one of the charter opponents’ most galling tactics; they’ve made charters the subject of a class war, with charters as “the enemy”, notwithstanding that (especially in the city) they are the lifeboat for the underserved minority, and the students that the “common” schools have given up on.

So the new mayor must be feeling whiplash after the outcry that met him as he began to carry out a popular campaign pledge: slow down the charter co-locations and shift more money to traditional public schools. That the charter community opposed the mayor wasn’t a surprise. It was their political strength, organization, and popularity that caught de Blasio off guard.

From the rhetoric, you’d think de Blasio had personally bounced kids out of charter schools across all five boroughs.

Slate goes on to defend De Blasio.

But charter proponents know that it’s a short jump from “slowing down co-location” (in real-estate-starved NYC they put charter schools in the same buildings as public schools) to shutting down schools.  The left hates charters, and the slippery slope is very, very real.