I’ll be in for Brad Carlson, who’s off on assignment today.  I’ll be talking about Planned Parenthood, Donald Trump, the 2016 Minnesota election outlook, and much much more!

So tune in the Northern Alliance! 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!

swapping shows with Brad Carlson. I’ll be on tomorrow, Sunday, from 1 to 3 PM.

Check back tomorrow for more details on my rare Sunday show!

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! 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!

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!

But not with me, today – I’m swapping shows with Brad Carlson. I’ll be on tomorrow, Sunday, from 1 to 3 PM. 

Check back tomorrow for more details on my rare Sunday show!

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570.  

So tune in the Northern Alliance! 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!

It was about this time seventy years ago that World War II was heading toward its climax; Germany had surrendered;  Marines and soldiers were mopping up on Okinawa.  The world didn’t know about the atomic bomb yet.

And the idea of Air Power was at its peak; after three years of strategic bombing over Europe, and about a year’s worth over Japan, the idea that one could bomb ones’ opponents out of a war – very much in vogue before the war – still held great sway.

Of course, strategic bombing over Europe had had a ghastly toll; the US Army Air Force lost more men in the air than the Marines did in the entire Pacific War.

And the bulk of those casualties came among the crews of the roughly 6-7,000 bombers lost over Germany (among the Americans alone; the Brits also paid a horrific price).

There was the most famous, the Boeing B-17…:

…with its legendary toughness without which the toll might have been vastly worse.

And the B-24 Liberator – newer, faster, but less popular, and generally regarded as less tough…

…and the B-29, which costs as much to develop as the entire Manhattan Project, carried most of the weight in the Pacific.

Why do I bring it up?

Because as we discuss the idea that our younger genration of twenty somethings, raised during the Obama economy by helicopter parents and made into a cause – the “Millennials” – by a generation of Baby Boom media who want to have someone to poke and prod the way they were poked and prodded and examined – many of whom are out in the streets protesting for $15 an hour to run a shake machine (for a while, maybe), it’s worth remembering this;  the officers, the pilots and navigators and bombardiers who flew these planes, averaged 22 years old.

Their enlisted crewmen?  The flight engineers and radiomen and 3-4 gunners on each plane?  They averaged 19 years old.

And this was what they did just to get the planes – in this case, the B24 – into the air.

Pretty amazing.

As the sales of my first book, Trulbert!, continue to outpace my meager expectations, the question “what next” is occupying more and more of my time.

I’ve been thinking about compiling my Twenty Years Ago Today series into an e-book, for all the people who’ve asked me about it over the past decade (and there have been quite a few).  I am strongly thinking about putting that out this September, in time for the tenth anniversary of the series.

But in terms of original books, as opposed to “Hewitts” (books compiled from blog posts)?

There are a few contenders:

• “An Accidental Conservative”:  how a guy who by all rights should have been a liberal, became a conservative.  Then a libertarian.  Then a libertarian-conservative again.  And why.   Pros:  that book is largely also already written.  Cons:  I have to dig through a little over 12,000 blog posts to assemble it.
• “Josef Sklrbczsz, American”:  The story of a young man from an Eastern European goat-town whose entire knowledge of America comes from the mass media.  Then, he comes to America.
• “Purple Sunset”:  An expansion of my “Secession Diaries” stories, from ten years ago.  Pros:  It’d be a fun piece to write.  Cons:  What?  Me, write a book of absurdist speculative political fiction?

The Twenty Years Ago one is kind of a no-brainer.

Beyond that?  The sky is the limit…

Dog licks dog.

Donald Trump makes a huge, vainglorous declaration he’s never going to have to convince a legislature to support.

Facebook is full of cat videos.

Cheap hotels are often sketchy.

The Vikings don’t look very good this year.

And Minnesota’s real Governor, Tina Flint-Smith, former director of Planned Parenthood Infanticide Hut, pulled the wires and worked the remote control so as to make “Governor” Mark Dayton mumble words that sounded like the state won’t be investigating the goings-on at the non-profit, and there’s no way, nosirreebob that the Abattoir on Vandalia has ever trafficked in baby parts, no way no how, how about those Saints?

And it sure is humid out there.  Also big news.

…anyone could have possibly seen this coming.

Smoke choked the streets of the city of Houston yesterday as Islamic protesters gathered to oppose the Supreme Court’s decision upholding gay marriage. Throughout the day members of the Muslim community prowled the city streets, tearing down LGBT flags from public buildings and private residences. A large pile containing hundreds of LGBT flags was burned later during a massive anti-gay-marriage rally.

Bring on the hate crime investigation!

Oh, wait…

Subject:  Summer in the Twin Cities.

Pro:  Hot weather brings out women in sundresses.

Con:  Hot weather brings out women in sundresses with so many tattoos they look like tooled saddles that got thrown through a set of Walmart drapes.

Tattoos are like graffiti; a little, cleverly done, in the right place, can be interesting and evocative and even a little artistic.  Otherwise, it’s just vandalism, and ugly, and it dominates the space; whatever the intent, neither graffiti nor tattoos ever look like much of anything, at best, to anyone else.

Verdict:  TBD.

It’s been 11 years, and Dan Rather is still living in a special little world all his own, where unicorns bring credibility down from the skies:

The film, which is set to open in October, tells the story of Rather’s infamous 2004 report on George W. Bush that alleged Bush’s father had pulled strings to keep his son in the National Guard in a bid to avoid service in Vietnam. Rather says the film pulls no punches:

“The nuanced, not preachy, script makes clear our report was true. Facts can’t be denied. But today it’s more about big corporations having big power than about truth. Bush was up for re-election. Sumner Redstone wanted him re-elected and would have his news division do what he wanted. What develops is the habit of pulling back, working from fear.”

In Hollywood, I’m sure Rather’s “evidence” is true enough.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It’s videos like the arrest of Sandra Bland, of cops who act like that, that make ordinary citizens lose respect for all police, which makes police feel more insular and more dependent on each other so they close ranks to protect all cops, even the crappy ones.  It’s a self-inflicted vicious cycle.

And the fact it’s a White cop abusing a Black woman on video isn’t just bad optics; in this Presidency, it’s automatically a racial incident.  The cops as a whole can’t seem to understand that each of these incidents not only inflames the Black community, it’s distasteful to the White community too and reduces our willingness to put up with it.

Look for some cops to get ambushed soon.  That’s how things are handled in the strata of society that can’t raise $500 bail to get their loved one out of a Texas jail – they have no meaningful access to the “justice” system so they utilize “alternative dispute resolution” which comes in 9mm parcels.

I took vacation days to stand the flag line with the Patriot Guard to honor fallen Marines returned from the war.  Armed citizens are taking vacation days to stand guard outside unarmed recruiting centers in Tennessee.  Nobody would volunteer to stand guard over cops having lunch so they aren’t ambushed.  There’s a deep and important lesson there, if only they would learn it.

Joe Doakes

Joe says “look for cops to get ambushed soon”; not sure if he’s counting the two New York cops killed late last year, in the wake of the Ferguson and Garner incidents.

In my 22 years in Saint Paul, I’ve met some good cops, and I’ve met some bad ones.  But it’s dawned on me in recent years that at the moment, “Law Enforcement” as an institution is perilously close to becoming the “Standing Army” that our forefathers warned us about; the arrogant mercenaries that care less about the people they’re defending than about the government that pays them.

I’m hoping some of the good cops figure this out sooner than later.

To: Roland Windsor, Dementee

From: Mitch Berg, uppity present

Re: Advice

Mr. Windsor:

You, a former staffer for Jimmy Carter, recently wrote:

“Republicans and conservatives are the enemy. They are expendable. They will be targets in the Revolution when it comes” writes Roland Windsor Vincent, in a recent post on his blog, Army Of The Revolution.

The face of incontinent fear.

The entry, entitled “Protect Animals And The Environment. Shoot Republicans“, centers around animal rights and how “active Republican and conservatives voters are enabling the Animal Holocaust” and “If we were to start shooting Republicans, we would likely not harm a single friend of animals or the environment.”

Oh, I know you’re a pathetic, probably mentally ill old man, raving at the demons you see around you and racking up a long list of Berg’s Seventh Law violations on the way.  But on the left, you have all sorts of fans, so while you’re a side show, the rest of the circus clowns in your crowd are just a little too easily impressed by that kind of talk.

But anyway – make your first shot count, you muzzy-headed, walrus-faced disgrace to humanity. You won’t get a second.

That is all.

Another day?  Another, even more cynical, Planned Parenthood executive caught on video haggling over prices for “not yet human” organs, presumably for actual humans:

A second undercover video shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council President, Dr. Mary Gatter, haggling over payments for intact fetal specimens and offering to use a “less crunchy technique” to get more intact body parts.

It is similar to last week’s viral video showing PPFA Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola admitting to using partial-birth abortions to get intact parts and suggesting a price range of $30 to $100 per specimen.

I can imagine Josef Mengele having a conversation like this:

Gatter twice recites Planned Parenthood messaging on fetal tissue collection, “We’re not in it for the money,” and “The money is not the important thing,” but she immediately qualifies each statement with, respectively, “But what were you thinking of?” and, “But it has to be big enough that it’s worthwhile for me.”…By the lunch’s end, Gatter suggests $100 per specimen is not enough and concludes, “Let me just figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ballpark, then it’s fine, if it’s still low, then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini.”

I’m sure she’ll get one, too.

With a nod to Andrew Lee at the lesser talk station, I think it is in fact time for Minnesota’s left to check it’s smothering, entitled sense of privilege.

Lee read a piece on the air – “38 examples of campus liberal privilege.”   The entire piece refers to how it’s possible for college and university students to spend an entire academic career without ever having any of their biases challenged.

But it doesn’t end graduation – not in the Twin Cities.

• If you are a tenured professor, with lifetime job security based entirely on the fact that you stayed in school three times as long as the rest of the workforce?  And who uses that sinecure to lecture the rest of society on How Things Should Be? Check your privilege.
• If you are a Macalester anthropology graduate whose idea of “debate” is posting a Stephen Colbert photo meme because you’ve never had to confront to do since that wasn’t rendered in the form of a giggly cartoon, it’s time to check your privilege.,
• If you are a Subaru driving, MPR listening, Saint Olaf or Carlton degree holding, free range alpaca wearing, Whole Foods shopping social justice warrior, you need to not only check your privilege, but honestly tell us when the last African-American you a match that wasn’t at a nonprofit office.

I may have to continue the list sometime…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Donald said unflattering things about John McCain’s military service, echoes of unflattering things Al Franken said.

 Franken now says it was a joke. 

So . . . was he kidding, then? Or was he kidding “on the square”? Or is he kidding now about having been kidding then?Hard to when a lying liar is lying. Safest to assume it’s “always.”

joe doakes

Among Second Amendment circles, it’s been a long-term matter of sport to pick out the various “sportsmens” “groups” that are fronts for the gun-grab movement.  Every election cycle, a “group” of “sportsmen” will issue an earnest plea for…gun control.

The groups are invariably ringers, of course.  And maybe it’s just me – but it seems like we’re seeing fewer of them here in Minnesota; if I’m right, perhaps it’s because the antis realize that northern Minnesota is lost to them, and they’re concentrating their Michael Bloomberg’s resources to motivating the ignorant base in the Metro area.

Still, you see all sorts of these potemkin organizations on the left; “people” and “groups” – almost invariably astroturf “organizations” intended to provide unlikely “bipartisan” PR cover for their extreme allies;  groups like “Sportsmen for Gun Safety”, or “Small Businesspeople For A Higher Minimum Wage” or “Babies for Choice”.

And, if i had to guess, this fellow,Izak Pratt,  to whom Brad Carlson introduced us on his July 11 broadcast.  Mr. Pratt claims to be a gay former Republican.

But the sniff test just keeps failing (emphasis added by me):

I voted against my own interests and didn’t think twice about it. I felt it was my duty to uphold what the Bible had taught me. It was my dumy own intereststy to make my parents proud and continue a legacy of “goodness” in an increasingly “immoral” world.

And there’s the first tell; the phrase “…own interests”, which is “progressive” code for “more fiscal and moral entitlements from government”, whether it’s farm bill benefits, an artificially high minimum wage, or government stepping in to tell society what to believe is the first.

I was vehemently against abortion, stem cell research, gun regulation, immigration reform, welfare programs and gay rights. I was also pro-war, slightly xenophobic with somewhat racist inclinations.

In my ignorance and backwards ideology, I had twisted parts of the Bible in order to justify my views — all while refusing to study or learn about differing opinions.

The reduction of all conservative thought to a series of ofay cliches seemingly cribbed from MSNBC – aka “bigoted chanting points delivered with an air of unearned condescension” –  is another big fat reeking tell; Izak Pratt was no more developed as a conservtive than I was as a liberal when I switched to the right.

Only nobody published my testimony indicting the left, naturally…

Then, during the summer of 2012, my views radically changed. I experienced an awakening that began when I immersed myself intensely into researching both sides of the political spectrum.

And all that “immersion” led him to switch to – surprise! – the left, as well as…:

 

… [dumping] Fox News and questioned everything I had been told.

I love it when progs throw that out there.  I don’t know that I’ve personally ever watched Fox, outside of the occasional waiting room.  CNN, either.

And all of that soul-searching led him to…:

 I guess facts such as the low unemployment rates, strong stock markets, high consumer confidence, equal rights and healthcare are all too inconvenient for many to accept. I mean, who has time for those silly facts, right?

Yawn.  The not-so-silly facts are that  unemployment rate is “low” because people are leaving the workforce, the market is high because companies are hoarding cheap unsustainable no-interest cash from the Fed, consumer confidence is about as reliable a measure of the economy as sheep entrails, and the “free” healthcare is going to clean us out.  Mazel tov on the “equal rights”.

The actual fact, Izak Pratt, is that what you call “facts” are actually chanting points.

And your leaving a GOP and a conservative movement is your loss and our gain; not because you’re gay, but because you’re the kind of gullible, incurious person that the left needs, loves, and fosters.

Glad we settled that.

… the editors of Gawker resigned. Merely rejoice that they did.  

It isn’t exactly the news I’d like – that would be “Gawker hit in freak carpet bombing accident .”

But it’s a start.

Via our old friend King Banaian – old coding languages that refuse to die.

There were some on there I didn’t know.  And I suppose it’s mildly heartening that they didn’t list Smalltalk.

Yet.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama wants to ban people who can’t manage their budget from possessing firearms. So we can add every Democrat politician to the list?
Joe Doakes

He might propose disarming Greece, Portugal and Italy…

… but then, soon enough, he’ll have to disarm the United States.

Wait…

To:  Governor Dayton, the Minnesota DFL, and just enough Republicans to make it a community embarassment
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Thanks For Nothing, Idiots

All,

We – those of us on the real right – tried to warn you.  But you were too busy gettign yoru arm twisted by Zigi Wilf, or entertaining sentimental stories about families going to Met Stadium in -25 blizzard conditions, or wiping foam from guys in helga braids off your face, to pay attention.

So pay attention now; you were wrong, and we were right, and the deal you were browbeaten into or were too stupid to know better than to oppose “crafted” to build the new Vikings stadium is one of the worst stadium deals in the US.

However, I’m sure the Downtown Brotherhood has made their thanks known.

On behalf of the rest of us?   Oh, yeah – we don’t count, except if we don’t pay our taxes on time.

That is all.

SCENE:  Bill GUNKEL, former Republican and now chairman of the Inver Grove Heights chapter of “Former Republicans for Ron Paul”, is driving down a Saint Paul street when he notices Mitch BERG walking his dog.  GUNKEL pulls over and rolls down his window.  

GUNKEL: Hey, Berg!

BERG: (Choking back mild annoyance, ordering the dog to sit) Hey, Bill.

GUNKEL:  Boy, Donald Trump sure showed those squishy RINOs in the GOP presidential field how it’s done!

BERG:  Huh.  How so?

GUNKEL:  He told it like it was!  He said the things that no Republican would dare to say!  He said what needed to be said on immigration!

BERG:  OK.  And that means what?

GUNKEL:  That means he really pissed off the Establishment!

BERG:  Huh.  And that, then, means what?

GUNKEL:  He might be a Republican I could vote for again!

BERG:  Because he “tells it like it is”, and “pisses off the Establishment”?

GUNKEL:  Yep! (grins like a toddler who just made a big pants)

BERG:  Yeah, let me show you something.  (Clears throat, takes deep breath)   “We need to complete the border fence, enforce existing laws on immigration, and crack down on hiring illegal workers.  And Karl Rove is wrong, and the Tea Party is right.  And I think Scarlett Johannson would dig me”.

There.  I just told it like it was on immigration, and pissed off the establishment.

GUNKEL:  (blinks, puzzled)

BERG:  I just did everything Donald Trump did.  I said a couple of things that pander to a voter bloc, but that I’ll never have to try to convince a single legislator to pass, or a single taxpayer to fund.  In other words, I just said stuff.

GUNKEL:  (blinks, puzzled)

BERG:  Talk is cheap.

GUNKEL:  (blinks, puzzled)

BERG:  The only thing I lack is a media to lavishly publicize what I’m saying, by way of trying to discredit the GOP, and especially to draw the conversation away from the likes of people like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, who are actually saying things the American people need to hear.

GUNKEL:  (Shakes it off)  You’re a RINO.

BERG:  Clearly.

(And SCENE).

The NY Daily News informs us that last week’s shooting in Chattanooga, claiming four Marines and a Navy petty officer, all unarmed – where a person whose motive can’t possibly be determined, but whose actions absolutely do not define his entire race the way Dylan Roof’s defined all white people – has “renewed the debate on gun free zones“.

That’s incorrect, of course.

There is no “debate” about “gun-free zones”.

There is a faction of society that clings to the notion that telling people to be nice will make everyone be nice.

And there’s a faction of society that notes, correctly, that nearly every mass-shooting in recent years – schools, post offices, the Crosswinds Mall in Nebraska, the Fort Hood massacre, the shootings at Virginia Tech, and even the Charleston shooting – either took place in a “gun free” zone, or in a state with restrictive gun laws.

That’s not a debate.

That’s the smart people being nagged by the ignorant.

Fact:  You are at much greater risk in a gun-free zone than elsewhere.

Here’s the crowd-funding campaign for the Edina condo-owner who’s being asked to move for displaying the flag.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on from 1-3PM today!

Today on the show,

• I’ll be talking with Represenative Duane Quam. 

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! 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 never quite understood the hatred for Tim Tebow.

And while I don’t much care one way or the other about gender reassignment surgery – I’m going to plead the classic libertarian “it’s their business, not mine” – I’m not really sure I understand the enraptured love of Caitlin “Chris” Jenner, either.

And I still don’t.

Although if that’s what it took to get away from the Kardashians, I’m certainly not going to second-guess him.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has smacked down the Gestapo-like no -knock raids  on conservative dissidents:

In a ruling [yesterday] morning, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rendered official what observers have long known: Wisconsin Democrats did, in fact, launch a massive, multi-county “John Doe” investigation of the state’s conservatives, featuring extraordinarily broad subpoenas and coordinated “paramilitary” raids of private homes; the “crimes” that provided the investigation’s pretext were not crimes at all, but First Amendment-protected speech; and the legal theory underpinning the investigation was bunk, “unsupported in either reason or law,” as the court put it.

I can maintain a certain amount of intellectual attachment for most political stories – but the Wisconsin KGB makes me genuinely furious:

The raid victims have suffered severe, long-term consequences as a result of these raids. Almost to a person, they say they no longer feel secure in their own homes. They report watching what they say, terrified that overt political involvement could lead their homes to be invaded again. One victim said, “I tried to create a home where the kids always feel safe. Now they know they’re not. They know men with guns can come in their house, and there’s nothing we can do.” Another victim — whose son was home alone when police arrived, guns drawn — is haunted by this chilling thought: “He could have been in the shower. They could have broken the door down. He could have been shot. Over politics.”

The prosecutors involved need to be removed from public life.  I almost tried to type “public service”, but my fingers stopped and started smoking.   In a just world, they’d be perp-walked out of their homes in their underwear in front of the mocking and jeering of their former victims.

A free society can only remain free while the majority are pulling in the same direction – toward freedom.  Laws are, tautologically, needed for “the rule of law”.  Laws – especially excessive laws, which covers most “campaign finance” laws – are also the footholds by which the unscrupulous eat others’ freedoms.