A friend of the blog writes in re a piece on the ongoing Allina nurses strike:
[Saint Paul City Councilman] Chris Tolbert said, “If a nurse in the health care industry can’t get quality health care from a health care company, we’re all in trouble.”
Well, that is what we Republicans said when the ACA was first signed into law.
History has such an ineluctable symmetry, sometimes….
Rahm Emanuel says “never waste a crisis”.
And the city whose mayor he is – Chicago – is an ongoing crisis that never seems to end.
The city has seen over 2000 shootings so far this year – that’s to say, the first half of the year:
At least 14 people were shot in Chicago over 10 hours Tuesday afternoon through early Wednesday, pushing the number of gun victims in the city this year to more than 2,200, including at least 21 children 13 and younger.
Among those shot Tuesday was 6-year-old Tacarra Morgan, who was seriously wounded in the abdomen while sitting on her porch in West Englewood with her mother and grandmother. Police said two volleys of gunfire erupted as three cars drove down the 6000 block of South Paulina Street around 1 p.m.
Very much like the victims have a great misfortune not to look like the children of NPR executives; they are disproportionately black and brown, disproportionately living in the neighborhoods “served” by Chicago’s Democrat elite.
In common with most violent crime victims in the United States, they lived in Democrat run the cities.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
White cop shoots Black youth in view of a million witnesses and store security video. Where are the protests?
Granted, the cop was off-duty, in civilian clothes, on personal business in a shopping center. Granted, the youth was busy slashing shoppers with a knife. Still – why isn’t this a racial hate crime?
Maybe Somalis born in African who come to America as refugees don’t count as “African-American” but count as “White” the way Asians do for college admissions, and therefore this kid is not protest-worthy? Or maybe the kid was a White Somali – they have them, you know; they sign up at the same place as Hispanics like that guy in Florida.
Maybe St. Cloud is inconveniently far away if you depend on light rail for transportation to the protest?
It’s just odd.
Joe Doakes
In point of fact, they don’t count as “African-American”.
Sandra Grazzini-Rucki was sentenced today for the kidnapping of her children, after losing custody to her ex-husband, David Rucki; she then sequestered them on a ranch for over two years. Not only did she keep them from her ex-husband – but she apparently didn’t visit them herself either.
Just my opinion, here; there is no circle of hell cold enough for people who deprive other parents of access to their children without damn good reason. Ms. Grazzini-Rucki is lucky I wasn’t the judge. Enough said.
More on this case – and its prime mover, Michael Brodkorb – tomorrow.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is at work in his home office. His phone rings.
BERG: Hello?
POLLSTER: Hello. I’m Kandi, a pollster working on a combined study commissioned by Harvard University, Northeastern University, the Trace and the Guardian, four organizations dedicated to disarming Americans by any means, fair or foul. If you have a few moments to spare, I’d like to ask you some questions about gun ownership.
BERG: Go ahead.
POLLSTER: How many guns do you own?
BERG: How many guns am I going to admit I own to an anonymyous rep for four organizations that are dedicated to ensuring that Americans are disarmed, docile sheep,?
POLLSTER: That’s correct!
BERG: None! Guns are scary!
POLLSTER: So that’s no guns, then?
BERG: As far as you know.
POLLSTER: Wow. It’s amazing how the number of gun owners is dropping, according to our Fact-Based Research ®.
BERG: It is, isn’t it? Absolutely astounding.
SURVEY: We’re also finding three percent of American adults own 50% of the guns!
BERG: Huh. I’m also gonna guess 3% of American adults own 50% of the iPhone 7s, and roughly .000001 of all Americans own 90% of all newspapers.
SURVEY: No comment!
BERG: Naturally.
SURVEY: Now, if you did buy a gun, why would you buy one? Are you a hunter, a target shooter, or would you buy a gun due to fear?
BERG: If I did have a gun, which I don’t, as I already told you, it’d be for self-defense.
POLLSTER: OK. “Fear”.
BERG: No, self-defense. A prudent response to the vicissitudes of human nature.
POLLSTER: Right. Fear.
BERG: Nope. A rational, prudent assessment of and response to life’s actual risks, based on data, ability and experience.
POLLSTER: Right. We call that “fear”. It’s just a category.
BERG: Naturally. Hey, someone’s calling…
POLLSTER: I didn’t hear a click…
(But BERG has already hung up the phone).
And SCENE.
Your liberal friends are probably salving their worries over Hillary’s health with a recent NYT hit piece on Scott Walker.
Have no fear. In what is becoming a Berg’s Law-worthy pattern, the Times’ piece is pretty much a NYPost article in a tweed sportcoat. Christian Schneider notes in the conclusion:
Christopher Hitchens once wrote, “It is a frequent vice of radical polemic to assert, and even to believe, that once you have found the lowest motive for an antagonist, you have identified the correct one.” In this case, the New York Times started with a motive and worked backwards, rather than letting the facts lead them to an honest conclusion.
Read the whole thing. Refer it to your liberal friends. Ask if it’s ever been different.
It was once said that the only thing that could hurt the career of a Chicago Democrat was being caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.
But in this blog’s comment section earlier this week, Mark “Mr. Dilettante” Heuring may have tripped onto something potentially more damning in re Angie Craig, the DFL-endorsed candidate taking on Jason Lewis in the Second Congressional District.
And she barely bothers to hide it. See if you can find it between the lines:
For the last 10 years of my career, I was a member of the leadership team at Minnesota start-up St. Jude Medical. At St. Jude, I was focused on supporting those employees who supported our business – so patients ultimately could benefit from their work.
Beneath all the executive verbal camouflage, it’s pretty clear.
Angie Craig works in HR.
Citizens of CD2 – think about life in your office. Think; do you want to be represented, have your taxes set, have policies governing your life and livelihood…
…set by an HR person?
In a sane world, that would shut out the lights right there.
CD2, you can have better.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Rep. Keith Ellison introduced the Campus Gun Policy Transparency Act which would require colleges to disclose their policies relating to guns on campus. He claims existing federal law requires colleges to publish campus safety information but not specific policies related to guns. In addition, he claims colleges are not required to report gun-related crime statistics.
“Students have a right to know if their fellow students are bringing guns to class.”
No, they don’t. They don’t have a right to know if their fellow students had an abortion, voted for Democrats, worship in a mosque or drive a Prius. Those are all private activities, nobody’s business but your own.
There is no evidence that guns on campus cause crime (and that’s not due to lack of reporting statistics – if there were lots of shootings on campus, emergency room records would be conclusive proof).
The only possible reason for requiring a federal campus gun policy but not a campus abortion policy, mosque policy or campus Prius policy, it to chill Second Amendment rights.
So, pretty much par for the course for Democrats.
Joe Doakes
To a conservative, rights are endowed to us by our creator.
To a liberla, “rights” are perks granted to us by a benevolent government.
The man who shot the apparently ISIS-affiliated maniac at the Crossroads Mall in Saint Cloud over the weekend has been IDed as Jason Falconer – a carry permit instructor, civilian carry advocate, and part-time officer and former chief of the tiny, tiny police department of tiny, tiny Albany Minnesota.
And if you’re a wanna-be terrorist, Falconer’s just about the last civilian you want to run into when you’re going on your rampage in a “gun free zone”:
USPSA Shooter, 3-Gunner, and NRA-certified firearms instructor Jason Falconer has been identified as the man who shot and killed a 22-year-old Somali immigrant who went on a stabbing rampage inside a St. Cloud, (MN) Mall on Saturday.
The apparent terrorist—who apparently asked victims if they were Muslims before stabbing them—was engaged by Falconer inside the mall.
Emphasis added by me:
Falconer is the president and owner of Tactical Advantage LLC, a shooting range and tactical training facility with a strong focus on arming concealed carriers. He’s also a former chief of the Albany (MN) police department, and he remains a part-time officer.
And is there bias involved? Oh, yes:
But Falconer has consistently been identified in the mainstream mediaonly as as a “former police chief” and “off-duty police officer.”
Falconer’s side gig? Ensuring law-abiding citizens are armed, and capable of doing…
…exactly what he did. I’ve been documenting these sorts of cases as they occur over here (and feel free to submit more of ’em!).
As Glenn Reynolds puts it, we The People need to be a pack, not a herd.
UPDATE: David French notes the obvious; Falconer was not only in the right place at the right time, but he was the right person. But then, anyone can be:
You can be Jason Falconer. In most communities in this country, you can not only own and carry a weapon for personal defense, you can also receive comprehensive training. You have virtually no control over whether you’re at the right place at the right time, but you do have control over whether you’re the right person.
And as has been noted in the comment section, this incident highlights the need for “Stand your Ground” legislation; a non-cop would have had a “duty to retreat” – to make a reasonable effort to disengage in the face of the attack.
What does “reasonable” mean? That your efforts to avoid using lethal force are enough to convince the cops, prosecutors and potentially a jury that you did your best to avoid using lethal force. It’s vague; it’s intended to be vague, concentrating the power of life and death in the hands of prosecutors.
“Stand Your Ground” will be on the agenda this coming legislative session. It’s doubtful the Senate or Governor will pass it.
So we’re gonna need a new Senate and Governor.
Latinos just not that excited about Herself.
(According to that noted conservative tool, the WaPo).
Angie Craig apparently believes that the most important thing facing voters in the 2nd CD is Jason Lewis’s radio shows from 2001.
Other Democratic-elected women say Lewis should be held accountable for the things he said, including what they said were offensive comments about women, the LGBTQ community and slavery.
I’ve sent an email to Murphy about whether the same standard is being applied to Bill Clinton, Al Franken, and Nick Coleman.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
In what conceivable way is my charitable giving any of my employer’s business?
More annoying – they pick some charity they want to fund and hit up everybody to contribute. I nominate the National Rifle Association. No? Why not? Why does it have to be the United Way funneling money to Leftist causes?
A “charitable contribution” is, by definition, a non-governmental activity for which my contribution is tax-deductible. Why would a governmental entity be encouraging government employees to reduce the tax revenues from which we’re funded?
Joe Doakes
It’s not like tax revenue ever really drops…
SCENE: Mitch BERG is shopping for chainsaw chains at MENARDS. He sees Garth MULLER, a professional golf pro and Vice Chair for Ideological Purity at the Minnesota 5th CD Libertarian Party. He is dressed head to toe in Minnesota Vikings wear.
MULLER: Hey, Merg! People who pledge allegiance to Skycloth before football games are no better than Nazis who sieg-heiled along with Hitler.
BERG: “Pledge allegiance to Skycloth? What are you talking about?”
MULLER: The American flag, and the miltaristic ritual of standing for the national anthem before NFL games.
BERG: Before what?
MULLER: NFL games.
BERG: That’s what I thought you said. I don’t stand to pledge allegiance to the government. I do it out of respect for what this nation is supposed to be about. And other than some community opprobium, there’s really no consequence for not standing for the anthem.
MULLER: But all the fuss about Kapernick and the other people taking a knee…
BERG: I don’t really care. Let ’em. It costs nobody anything.
But – that team you support?
MULLER: Go Vikes!
BERG: Yeah – if I decide not to pay my part of the taxes for “The People’s Stadium”, and carry the protest on long enough, men with guns will beat down my door and take the money. To pay for your recreation, sixteen Sundays a year.
So – “Skycloth”, consequence-free observance of an ideal.
Your NFL game? My money being taken from me by force. Which is either theft or slavery.
MULLER: But…
BERG: I know. Principle.
And SCENE.
First things first: Mark Dayton is “governor” of Minnesota in exactly the same sense as Mickey Dolenz was the “drummer” in the Monkees. Tina Flint-Smith is calling all the real shots in the state. Mark Dayton is there to say stupid things and draw attention away from where the action is.
But with that said?
Seriously, Governor Flint – Smith “Governor” Dayton?
You want tolerance?
Get over yourself, “governor”. If Minnesotans weren’t fundamentally tolerant, there wouldn’t be 100,000 Somalis in Minneapolis, and 20,000 in St. Cloud.
And if yesterday’s attack had happened in great swathes of the rest of the world – the Middle East, India, the Balkans, Greece, and or dare I say Somalia itself – this ethnic and religious oriented attack would have been met by death squads roaming the streets looking for Somalis to beat, stab and shoot.
No, “governor”, the intolerant one is the one who says “go along with the program and shut up, or get out of Minnesota”. Which, if you recall – and that is by no means certain – was you, “governor”.
For chrissake, just resign already.
UPDATE: Or as Walter Hudson puts it, “If we’re going to talk about tolerance, fine. Let’s define it as — above all else — not going on a stabbing spree at the mall.”
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Here’s an example of why Conservatives claim there is Liberal bias in the media – the entire focus of this story is misplaced.
The article says the shooter was a National Guardsman and makes the point that he and his wife both are members of the Minnesota National Guard.
Yeah? So what? Were they in uniform at the time of the shooting? Acting on orders? Using military-issued weapons? If not, then their membership in the Guard is entirely irrelevant to the story.
Why emphasize the Guard? Why not “former high school drummer” or “enthusiastic fly fisherman” or “diesel mechanic” or “Lutheran church member?”
Possibly because in the Liberal mind, the Guard is military, which uses assault rifles, which are bad, so naturally this guy also is bad, probably has PTSD, never should have been allowed to own a gun but for America’s militaristic culture of gun violence and the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned NRA.
Pathetic.
Joe Doakes
In the world of “fuzzy logic”, the liberal mind is God’s own lint trap.
Three different cases of workplace violence in America today; first, a bombing attempt on a charity 5K run on the Jersey Shore which went off just before the race got there, followed by a dumpster explosion in Manhattan that injured 29, followed in turn by a mass stabbing at the Crossroads Mall in Saint Cloud, Minnesota that ended with the death of the as-yet-unnamed perp (Saint Cloud Times coverage).
Remember – while Berg’s 18th Law of Media Latency (“Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident. It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts”) applies mostly to mass-shootings, it applies to any attention-grabbing episode.
Only one thing is for certain; the media will do its best to try to find a conservative to blame until it is absolutely impossible.
More as details become available.
UPDATE: I’m sure this is just a dirty stinking lie foisted on the people by the Trumpkins:
…in the heartland, in St. Cloud, Minnesota, the police chief said the attacker at theCrossroads Center Shopping Mall “made some references to Allah, and we have confirmed that he asked at least one person if they were Muslim before he assaulted them. We do know there were approximately eight people transported to the St. Cloud Hospital with non life-threatening injuries. The suspect was confronted by an off duty police officer and summarily shot and killed….no customers were killed.”
I betcha it’s a pro-lifer.
Here are the MN Gun Owners Political Action Committee endorsements.
My “Climate of Hate” page chronicling leftist violence in America.
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’l be on from 1-3PM today this afternoon.
Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is normally heard on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
It’s hard to think about warfare in the past century without conjuring up the image of the tank.
Today’s main battle tanks – nearly impregnable to any weapon that faces them on land – are like the land-battleships they were intended to be, 100 years ago.
British “Challenger II” main battle tanks. A Challenger scored the longest-ranged tank to tank kill in history – 5,000 yards. That’s three miles. With a first shot.
Some wars have involved vast fleets of tanks duking it out, in the desert…
Israeli “Patton” Tanks – US-built M-60s – maneuver across the Sinai in 1973.
…and the sub-arctic…
A British “Scorpion” “tank” (actually a light scout vehicle) in the Falklands in 1983. Although mostly intended for covertly snooping around enemy positions in Europe, it was heavier than anything the Argentinians had brought to the Falklands, and so may as well have been the above-mentioned Challenger II.
…and on the steppe.
German “King Tiger” tanks – the most powerful tank of World War II – at the Battle for Berlin.
Of course, at times the legend of impregnability was an illusion; beneath the hide of hardened steel, they were vehicles full of fuel and explosives and far-from-impregnable men.
An American “Sherman” tank, blown literally to pieces by an internal ammunition explosion. Those sides that are peeled open are 1.5-1.75 inches thick. The turret weighs something like five tons.
Today’s main battle tank is like a formula 1 car compared even to tanks from the 1970s; todays’ American M1 Abrams…
A pair of M1 Abrams tanks.
…is powered by turbine engine, has a laser range-finder integrated into a digital fire control system that allows it to score first-round kills while moving, against moving targets, at ranges well over a mile, firing hypervelocity rounds with tungsten or depleted-uranium cores that can slice through armor like it’s cardboard at ranges well over a mile.
Soviet-built T-72 tank, destroyed by an American tank round that drilled through the sand berm, and then through the armor.
And the concept got its first shakedown 100 years ago today.
“So what is it that makes half of Trump supporters so ‘deplorable’, to put it in Herself’s own words”, I ask some of my “progressive” friends.
Is he anti-immigrant? Well, anti-illegal-immigrant, yadda yadda, sure.
And there’s a shopping list of other complaints. And I may even echo a few of ’em.
But the one I hear – whispered conspiratorially, as if they’ll get spanked if they’re heard saying it – is “some of them are birthers“.
To which I respond “Then he’s in splendid company”.
The screen grab below is from a 2007 memo from Clinton strategist Mark Penn, essentially urging her to go “birther” on Obama, who was still well behind in the polls.
Clinton was the original “birther”.
Oh, the “fact check” industry among the media’s pet Democrats says it’s not true – by dint of the fact that Hillary has never physically been busted at a Birther rally, herself, in person.
But even “Factcheck.org” admits that it was Herself’s supporters who were the original…
…well, deplorables.
Trust in the mainstream media hits an all-time low:
A major pollster has some stark news: “Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media ‘to report the news fully, accurately and fairly’ has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage points from last year,” writes Art Swift, an analyst for the Gallup poll, which first asked the nation to weigh in on the press in 1972.
“Over the history of the entire trend, Americans’ trust and confidence hit its highest point in 1976, at 72 percent, in the wake of widely lauded examples of investigative journalism regarding Vietnam and the Watergate scandal,” Mr. Swift said.
The sentiment has fallen slowly and steadily, and has consistently been below a majority level since 2007.
14% of Republicans still trust the media – which means I still have work to do. 51% of Democrats trust the media – which is confirmation bias in action if I ever saw it.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
There’s 80 more background checks that won’t get done when criminals buy stolen firearms, common sense restrictions to stop gun violence blocked by the gun lobby. Damn the NRA!
Joe Doakes
It’ll be interesting to see which hitherto law-abiding citizens get collared for that heist. Because I’m sure that’s what they’ll be.
To: the owners of every single movie ticket website
From: Mitchell Berg, cranky consumer
Re: Huh?
All,
I went out on your website – which one doesn’t matter, because you’re all pretty much the same – last night to try to buy a ticket to “Sully”.
Ticket prices are insane – I get that.
But below the ticket price, you added a two dollar “convenience fee”.
For two dollars, I’ll stand in the line for 40 seconds. I shut off the browser and went to the Riverview Theater to see “Blazing Saddles”.
But I had a brilliant idea. Stop charging the “convenience fee” to buy the ticket. But start selling concessions online, have them ready at a “will call” window for concessions when I get there, and I will pay the two dollars not to stand in line for my damn popcorn..
See to this.
That is all.
MNDFL chair Ken Martin, in re the MN Supreme Court’s decision to toss his attempt to remove Trump/Pence from the ballot:
If they can’t competently follow the rules…how does anyone expect them to run the country,” said Martin.
Yes, Ken.
How.
Thank goodness the left is all about that.
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