Just to set the record/s straight:

Democracy is way too fragile to leave to government.

Only originalists really understand that.

What would be the only thing funnier than Fast Eddie Schultz – the liberal talk show host who really was as dumb as liberals think conservative talk show hosts are – trying to make it as a big-time political player and kingmaker?

“I feel like I am perfectly positioned with my national platform, with my name and visibility and credibility with the middle class, to be the person to head up this super PAC,” he told  told the Fargo Forum. “We are a 527; we are a nonprofit; we are incorporated in Washington, D.C., and we are going to get involved in issues around the country that are vital to a strong middle class, with our focus on jobs and wages, health care, education, trade agreements and justice.”

“Middle class issues are here to stay,” Schultz continued.

The answer is “Schultz, inevitably and comically, not merely flopping at it, but cratering worse than the movie Truth” (emphasis added):

According to Mediate, Schultz ran up $10,345.44 in legal fees, $3,000 in web design fees, and a $100 loan and only collected $25 in donations to the organization which was apparently headquartered at a UPS store in downtown Washington D.C.

“It was well-intended, I really wanted to do Americans for a Strong Middle Class,” a tired-looking Schultz said in a video explaining why the PAC crashed and burned.

It just hasn’t been Schultz’s decade.

Who could have foreseen such a thing?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Bad news: Shot In The Dark failed to make the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups again this year.

There are only six hate groups in Minnesota.

A chapter of the KKK somewhere Up North.  Not sure how they found them, I never heard of them.

Vinlanders Social Club, a racist skinhead outfit in Vinlanders, Minnesota

A Christian preacher in Annandale who preaches that homosexuality is wrong.  [I bet that’s Bradlee Dean – Ed]

The Remnant Press, a traditional Catholic publisher in Forest Lake.

The Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, a black separatist church in Minneapolis.

Weisman Publications in Apple Valley, Christian Identity, whatever that means.

Even if we concede that the KKK and racist skinheads are hate groups, so what?  Hate speech is constitutional in Minnesota, has been since the St. Paul cross-burning case.

And what’s up with calling the others haters, simply because they’re Christians of one stripe or another?

This looks like nothing more than a list of “people we don’t agree with and wish to silence.”

I’m not sure what you need to do to amp up the hate around here so you can get yourself noticed, Mitch.  But there’s one consolation – Powerline didn’t make it, either.

Always next year.

The potatoes seem so small, we’d call them “popcorn” where I come from.

But with the SPLC – which is sort of the curia of the Social Justice Warrior community – there’s always a next year.

I’m frankly more worried SITD will be considered a terrorist outfit than a hate group.  It seems pretty likely, with another Democrat administration.

The citadel of Verdun had stood outside the city walls since the early 1600s – a relatively new addition in the Gallic city with a history reaching back to the 4th Century.  For nearly 300 years, Verdun had represented the strength of the French nation; it’s surrender to the Prussians in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War had symbolically (and somewhat practically) closed the chapter of French dominance over the continental affairs of Europe.

The French were determined to never let Verdun fall again.  A massive defensive redesign in the 1880s produced a bulwark without rival in Europe, or likely the world.  28 fortresses produced a double-ring of defense, each with 8-feet of steel-reinforced concrete, covered further in sand and earth.  1,000 pieces of artillery, with another 250 in reserve, were supported by a gigantic maze of trenches, bunkers and even an underground rail system.  Verdun had been deemed, before the war, “artillery-proof.”  If the famed citadel would ever fall again, it would be due to the weakness of the men inside, not the steel that protected them.

On the morning of February 21st, 1916, that theory would be put to the ultimate test.  808 German guns, firing for ten straight hours, lobbed over 1 million shells against the fortifications of Verdun.  The barrage could be heard 100 miles away.

For the next nearly 10 months, one of the worst battles in human history would slowly unfold, consuming lives on an industrial scale that exceeded anything the Great War had previously seen.  78% of the entire French army would eventually serve at Verdun.  The Germans would dub the battle the “blood-pump of the world.”  And anywhere from 973,000 to 1.25 million lives would be maimed or claimed before it was over.

—

French troops at Verdun.  Even today, the name “Verdun” conjures the worst images of the Great War

If there is a battle that encapsulates the entirety of the First World War, it might be Verdun.  The crushing weight of artillery; the human wave attacks; the obstinance of commanding generals – all were embraced at Verdun.  The scale of the battle can be seen even today.  Despite the Great War pounding the earth repeatedly at a number of locations, only in sections of Verdun does nothing grow 100 years later.   (more…)

Tim PItcher’s website.

Camden Pike’s website.

And of course, ♫ today’s music playlist.

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

Today on the show,

• Senator Dave Osmek and senate candidate Tim Pitcher join us to talk about the upcoming session.
• Camden Pike, GOP candidate for House District 41B.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

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!

“Protect Minnesota” is taking it to the streets!

Heather Martens – who, let the record show, has never, not once, said or written a single true, substantive and original thing about guns or gun law – is undertaking one of her last actions as “executive director”

With the Minnesota legislature convening on March 8, now is the time to plug into our plan to stop the gun lobby and build safer communities! Every session, the gun lobby tries to ram through bills like “Shoot First/Stand Your Ground” or carrying pistols without a permit. We’ve been able to stop them year after year — but only because you have shown up.  

She’s making things up again.  Nobody “showed up”.

“Stand Your Ground” passed the legislature with bipartisan support; it was vetoed by Governor Dayton when Alita Messinger yanked his leash.  And that was the only reason Minnesota didn’t join 23 other states that opted to protect the rights of people who resist victimization by criminals and greedy prosecutors.

“Protect” MN’s clubfooted version of activism may have contributed to the good guys almost winning on that issue.

Anyway, they’re going to try to get people to turn up again:

Can you commit to showing up again? [Ha ha ha!  – Ed] You’re invited to a meeting near you next week:
In Mahtomedi – Wednesday, February 24, at 6:30 pm — Click here to RSVP
In Saint Paul – Thursday, February 25, at 6:30 pm – Click here to RSVP
In Duluth – Sunday, February 28, a faith summit from 1:30-4:30. Click here to RSVP.

Wanna know something funny?  If you try to RSVP, they don’t divulge the locations.  They are apparently worried that Real Americans will infiltrate the meetings and…tell the truth?  I dunno.

And what can the gentle reader expect?

At these meetings, you will:

• Learn how to pass our background check resolution at your precinct caucus Tuesday, March 1;
• Sign up for face-to-face meetings with key legislators during the session;
• Meet our new executive director!

So wait – “Protect MN” is going to pass a “background check resolution”, to become part of a DFL platform that already calls for gun control?

Sounds like a brilliant use of time and effort!

Oh, yeah – as re the last bullet:

That’s right, I’m stepping out of the executive director role to support Protect MN in other capacities. Watch your email for the full announcement. Meanwhile, see you next week!

If you learn the secret handshake, anyway.

As for me?  Heather Martens, I’ll attend your meeting for $1,500.

Thank you for all you do,

Heather Martens

The reader most likely “does” nothing – which likely has more effect on politics in MN than “Protect” MN does.

Bill Clinton calling himself the “first black President” was bad.

Rachel Dolezal “identifying as black” as an excuse for passing her honky self off as black for years and years was worse.

But Bernie?  Richie is gunning the speedboat.

Let the “Democrat” jokes begin.

…a more mundane case that could be a much, much bigger deal for offline individual privacy is brewing under the radar in Golden Valley.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Oh, thank God.  I was so afraid that my ongoing failure to comment on Black music was evidence of my exclusionary hatred of all things Black motivated by racism; but now it turns out I was simply being respectful of a culture that I don’t understand. 

Separate but equal.  Got it.  Good to go.

Joe Doakes

I guess I’m an appropriator.

Tough.

I hold my nose and say “I’d vote for Trump if he were the nominee, if only because I don’t want Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton nominating Anthony Kennedy’s replacement for the Supreme Court”.

And I’ll stand by it.

But news like this means I’ll likely need to smear mentholatum under my nose before I plug it.

The Marines are storing pre-positioned equipment in central Norway again.

To deter Russian aggression.

How’s that new diplomacy working, again?

The Lightworker plans to skip Antonin Scalia’s funeral.

Today’s ear-worm:

…but only barely.

As of the February before the election, the North Dakota Democrat/Non-Partisan League (the ND name for “Democrat”) Party has no announced candidates for Governor or State Representative.   The party very nearly could hold its convention at “Kroll’s”, a popular Minot diner.

How wonderful must it be, to live in a place where the peekaboo-socialists are virtually extinct?

It’s almost too wonderful to dream about.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Everybody knows the US can never retire its debts – we owe like 20 trillion dollars.  More, if you count the value of unfunded promises like Social Security and Obamacare.  But everybody also knows you can’t cut spending – can’t even propose a smaller increase in spending – because the media would bury you.

And with Bernie riding the “free stuff” horse into the White House, it’ll only get worse.

So – three possibilities:

1. America is unique in history: we never pay the debt and nobody ever cares, it’s all imaginary money anyway, in which case, why not spend even more, give away even more, and everyone can be rich forever?

2. Somebody calls the debt and the US Government can’t pay it.  It’s happened before, after the Revolutionary War.  The resulting economic chaos was mitigated because 90% of the citizens lived on farms where they were used to primitive life and had a chance at being self-sustaining.  This time around, 90% of the citizens live in cities that will run out of food and water in days.

3. We figure out a way to write off the debt and start fresh, but without a calamitous economic crash.

We’re living as if Option 1 was guaranteed and Option 2 cannot happen.  I’m not convinced that’s true.   Option 3 is never discussed.  Is that because it’s not technically possible?  Because it’s not politically feasible?  Or because Americans are reluctant to give up the dream of a free lobster in every pot and a free Cadillac in every garage?

 

Joe Doakes

I’m starting to think Trulbert was optimistic.

…but we need a lot more of this sort of thing.

Is it satire?

I call it 50-50.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is getting a cup of coffee.  Aaron ROSTON, a writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, walks up behind him in the line, looking for a free refill.  ROSTON is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist – mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of conservatives.

ROSTON:  Merg! The economy is doing great!  Look at all the new jobs!

BERG:  2/3 of the new jobs are minimum wage.    Times are OK, so far – provided you’re a college educated professional.  If you’re poor, or black, or low-skilled, not so much.

ROSTON:  So it’s time to raise the minimum wage.

BERG:  Raising the minimum wage just rewards some workers by causing others to get laid off.  Prosperity is the only real minimum wage hike.  Here’s the alarming part; the best measure of an economy is how fast people move up and out of the lowest economic quintile.  We used to be among the best in the worlds.  Now, most of the Western world is better than we are.

ROSTON:  Well, funny you should mention that.  Income mobility was pretty good back under the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, when the tax rates were much higher.  Hmmmmmmmmm.

BERG:  Wait, what’s with the theatrical “hmmmmmmmm”?

ROSTON:  It proves you have been outfoxed.

BERG:  Well, no.  It’s a false correlation.  In the fifties and sixties, the US had the world’s only functional economy.  Japan and Germany were still recovering from the war; Singapore and South Korea and Taiwan were third-world hellholes; China was an Orwellian  dystopia; India was still at the bottom of its experiment with “democratic socialism”.

The US was the only place where things actually could get built; it was the world’s only functional market.  We could afford high taxes, and cushy union jobs, because we were the only place actually building things.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation.  Ascribing mobility to higher taxes is the same as chalking them up to the fact that “laws against sexual harassment and racism were more lax in the fifties”; they were facts that corresponded in time, but weren’t related.

ROSTON:   What?  You’re a racist!

BERG:  Um, no.  That was an illustration…

ROSTON:  I will not interact with racists and sexists!

(ROSTON winds up and throws his coffee cup toward BERG from a range of three feet.  And misses.  ROSTON stomps away in a huff – grabbing a handful of sugar packets from the credenza on his way out).

BERG: (Sotto voce) Never let it be said that liberals suck at economics.

And SCENE.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Which of these Obama administration gun control proposals is NOT a thinly disguised money-laundering scheme to give federal dollars via grants to Liberals who will donate it right back to the DFL?

Joe Doakes

Is that a trick question?

I was bored the other night, so I started watching random old films on Youtube.

One of them was a documentary of sorts about an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam, from fifty (!) years ago.

And I thought I’d borrow a page from Lileks; I grabbed the first name I could actually read, and decided to see what the internet could find me.

The first name I registered on was the pilot of the last plane in this clip (an A4 Skyhawk) – Lt. Junior Grade Dave Griggs:

Sure enough, he’s out there.   He went on to become an astronaut – and in April of 1985, conducted the first unscheduled  spacewalk in history – accompanied by Utah Senator Jake Garn, the first sitting Congressman in space.

He was killed in a private plane accident in 1989.

I need more hobbies.

Jesse Hughes – lead singer of the band “Eagles of Death Metal”, the band that was playing at the Bataclan in Paris the night of the Paris Massacre – says what every gun rights activist already knows; the only response to bad guys with guns is good guys with guns:

“Did your French gun control stop a single [expletive] person from dying at the Bataclan?” Hughes said. “And if anyone can answer yes, I’d like to hear it, because I don’t think so. I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I’ve ever seen in my life charging head-first into the face of death with their firearms.”

The left’s answer, inevitably, is a series of academic postulates that wither as fast as the crowd at Bataclan under reasoned scrutiny, to say nothing of real-life events.

Dear MOA: With all due respect: QQQQ.

The only reasoned response?  You, and you alone, are responsible for your and your family’s protection.  And while the world is demonstrably safer than it was, 20 and 70 and 200 years ago, human nature means that evil, some time, some place, will be waiting for someone, somewhere – whether in the form of a lone mugger, a couple of rapists,  a gang of terrorists, or a government full of gangsters.

By the way – there’s been four terror-related mass shootings, and ten terror attacks altogether, since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, with a total death toll of 152, and 388 injured.

In Zürich, where handgun carry permits are relatively plentiful?  Holding steady at zero and zero.  While correlation doesn’t equal causation, it fits a pattern that we see here in the US, and that they saw in Israel in the seventies; terrorists (like delusional mass-shooters in general) avoid places where there might be resistance.

I hate Twitter.

There.  I said it.

Twitter is the most annoying social media outlet (at least among the ones I use; I’ve come to cordially detest “Vine” videos, but I don’t use them, either).  Twitter has become a necessary evil for self-marketing; I use Twitter for promoting blog and show content and following pundits in semi-real time, in theory, except that I make about as little time to spend on Twitter as I can get away with.  It’s nearly useless as a form of communication; it’s 300 million people shouting…

…and mostly doing it badly.  The 140 character limit had been one of the greatest blows to literacy in history – and yes, I know, learning how to fit a coherent thought into 140 characters can teach a writer a lot about economizing, if they’re inclined to learn those lessons.  But of 300-million odd Twitter users, perhaps three or four dozen are so inclined.

Twitter is a banal, but very urgent, wasteland.

And so if it were to collapse and disappear from the public discourse, I’d dance around the fire, myself.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

One of the keys to achieving a healthier citizenry is providing everyone with affordable (meaning subsidized) health insurance.  Naturally, since the government is paying for most of it, the government needs the data supporting the billings.  So all your medical records belong to the government.  But it’s okay, the data is totally secure, just like the personnel records at the Department of Homeland Security.

Joe Doakes

In all things, we must reinforce failure and reward incompentence.

With government, anyway.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is at a large gas station in Minnetonka, MN.  Having just bought gas, he’s looking for a new windshield wiper.  He turns down the aisle marked “Windshield Wipers/Condiments/Magazines Showing People Getting Hit In The Groin”, and notices Gutterball GARY – a blogger at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, who describes his hobbies as bowling, heckling people, and shouting really loud – reading a magazine.  

BERG tries to backpedal out of the aisle, but GARY notices him. 

GARY:  Hey, Merg!   You’re stupid!

BERG:  Nothing my mother doesn’t say.

GARY:  The Second Amendment is not an individual right!

BERG:  Well, the Supreme Court in the Heller and McDonald cases disagreed, and made it both a precedent and incorporated it to the states.

GARY:   You’re stupid and you have no idea what you’re talking about!  Justice Burger said the Second Amendment was “a fraud on the American public.”

BERG:  So?

GARY:  He was a conservative!

BERG:  Maybe compared to Nixon, who appointed him, but not really.   And he was really arguing a strawman; he was saying the Second Amendment doesn’t preclude regulation…

GARY:  Burger disagrees with you!  And he’s from Minnesota! It’s further proof you don’t know what you’re talking about!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

BERG:  Um,…

GARY:  …ha ha ha ha ha!

BERG:  Say, Gary?  In what case did Burger  write that opinion?

GARY:  Huh?

BERG:  Was that statement from a Supreme Court, or even an appelate, case?

GARY:  Huh?

BERG:  The thing Burger said?

GARY:  You’re stupid!

BERG:  Right.  It wasn’t part of a case.  It was a personal opinion, in a 1990 PBS interview.  It was of no more legal weight than you or me talking to PBS.

GARY:  He was a conservative, and he disagrees with you, and he’s a Supreme Court judge, so you’re stupid!

BERG:  Huh.  So because a “conservative” SCOTUS justice had a personal, private opinion that dissents from conservative and libertarian orthodoxy, I’m stupid.

GARY:  Yeah!  Ha ha ha ha…

BERG:  um…

GARY:  …ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

BERG:  So who said this:  “Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. … The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”

GARY:  That sounds like Ted Nugent!  Which means you’re an anti-semite!  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…

BERG: Actually…

GARY:  ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

BERG:  Actually it was Hubert H. Humphrey.  A “progressive”, a former Vice President and Senator, and the greatest politician Minnesota ever produced.  And it’d seem he disagrees with  Justice Burger.

GARY:  Who cares what an anti-semite thinks?

BERG:  Oh, the Nugent thing?  Pfft.  I didn’t even like Ted Nugent as a guitar player all that much; I certainly never appointed him my spokesperson.

GARY:  Nope!   Nugent is on your side, so you’re an antisemite!

BERG:  Ah.  So if someone were to say “With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel. . . . [S]preading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.”

GARY:  Sounds like Nugent or some other ReTHUGliCON.

BERG:  First – I’m always amazed to hear people actually talking in caps.  Second – no.  It was Democrat senator Fritz Hollings.

So – does that make you anti-semitic?

GARY:  You’re stupid.

BERG:  Natch.

And SCENE.