Fifty years ago:  rallying for free speech.

Today…:

(Jump ahead to 3:02)

“F*** Free Speech”.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Remember when Al Franken lit into Betsy DeVos over her school choice beliefs?

Some might have thought Franken opposed school choice.   He does, in fact, support school choice.

For those who can afford it.

…the Senator also has very little experience with public schools.

According to an interview with Harvard magazine, Franken was a math and science whiz as a boy. As he approached secondary school years, his parents wanted to find a better school for their gifted student. Franken ended up attending and graduating from Blake, one of the most exclusive private schools in the Minneapolis area, where the tuition for upperclassmen is currently $29,025 per year.

Franken’s two kids also avoided public school. Instead, his kids attended The Dalton School in New York City where tuition is $44,640 per year. Dalton is known for educating celebrities and children of royalty.

Forget about Franken; I sincerely doubt you find the children of many superstar superintendents toiling away in public schools.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

SpaceX announced it would launch two tourists to ride around the Moon in 2018.  Experts say they’ll be in for a rough ride: non-stop vomiting and the constant need to pee.

 So . . . like watching the Ghostbusters reboot, then? 

 Joe Doakes

It’s a fair cop.

Jennifer Carnahan is running for chair of the MNGOP.  Here’s her website.

Here’s Charle’s CW Cooke’s article about the history of “authoritarian” Presidents.

And here’s ♫ today’s music playlist. 

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

Today on the show:

• Jennifer Carnahan  will join me to talk about her bid for the chair of the MNGOP
• The State of the Trump Union

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:

• 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!

We’ve fallen a little behind on our World War I series.  Over the next few weeks/months, we’re going to work to get caught-up to the calendar.

German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg was uneasy as he approached the podium in the Reichstag on January 31st, 1917.  Despite having done more than perhaps any other figure in Europe to ensure the Great War, Bethmann-Hollweg’s support for the conflict had slowly dissipated.  Only weeks earlier, the aging Chancellor had been forced to offer the outline of negotiations by rebellious German legislators eager to bring the bloodshed to an end.

Now, Bethmann-Hollweg was finding himself forced to announce a policy he had long fought against – the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare.  While the policy had done more to turn the tables of war in favor of Germany than any other action of their armies, Bethmann-Hollweg feared a continued policy of sinking any and all ships would eventually bring the United States into the conflict.  Three weeks earlier, the leaders of Germany’s Navy had met with the Kaiser and implored Wilhelm II to restart submarine operations.  The nation was starving to death and Berlin’s U-boats were the other weapon that could return the devastation of the blockade in-kind.  The Kaiser agreed.

Bethmann-Hollweg told the assembled delegates that the U-boat campaign would renew the following day, February 1st, 1917.  “We have been challenged to fight to the end,” the Chancellor intoned.  “We accept the challenge. We stake everything, and we shall be victorious.”

A submarine’s view of the war – German U-boats would sink tremendous numbers of British commercial vessels during the Great War

For a weapon that nearly decided two World Wars, the Unterseeboot or U-boat was barely a consideration in Germany’s naval program.    (more…)

Wednesday night on national public radio, I listened to Illinois senator Dick “Turban” Durbin respond to President Trump State of the Union address.

Asked about the Democrat response to republican healthcare initiatives – in this case, the proposal to allow people to buy insurance across state lines – his response was:

“Come on. You think people are going to go to a hospital or a doctor in another state?”

And sure enough, you can see Democrats repeating this on social media today.

Do they not see the difference between “health insurance” and “healthcare”?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Mayor of New York wants to build dozens of new homeless shelters.

 Homeless?  What homeless?  Where did all these homeless people come from, all of the sudden?  I didn’t hear anything about homeless for the last eight years.  Trump has only been in office for a month and already, we need to build more homeless shelters?

 And what’s this about clusters?  Seems as if Queens and the Bronx have most of the present homeless sites instead of trendy Manhattan.  I wonder why? 

 And what does this line mean:  “Yet he provided no details about where these shelters will be built, a glaring omission that follows furious protests over the last year when the city tried but failed to locate shelters in some neighborhoods.”

 Hypocritical NIMBYs in New York?  The most Liberal, caring, compassionate, Democrat city in the world? 

 Joe Doakes

Hard to believe, isn’t it?

Now that Donald Trump is president, anti-semitism is a topic.

Suddenly.

Because it never existed before January 20, right?

 The press was largely uninterested in December 2010, when 200 tombstones were overturned—an assault just as large as the one in St. Louis—at the aforementioned Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn. There were no fundraisers by Muslim-Americans or anybody. It was covered by the New York Post and Brooklyn weeklies but otherwise largely ignored. Not a word in the Times. To be sure, this was not part of a “wave” of anti-Semitism, such as we have seen. Still, 200 tombstones is 200 tombstones. Two hundred families traumatized, assuming they knew. Not even worth a paragraph? RELATED: What’s Behind the Rash of Anti-Semitic Incidents More recently, outside the pro-Israel echo chamber there was little interest in February 2015, when President Obama said—and his spokesman reiterated—that the attack on a Jewish grocery in Paris by Islamist terrorists was just a “random” attack on a bunch of “folks.” I doubt very much that the press would have accepted such mumbo-jumbo from Donald Trump or Sean Spicer.

I’m waiting for the press to blame Trump for the failure of Obamacare.

Rep. Eric Lucero is a Republican, Latino…

…and is being told to get back on the DFL plantation by race-baiting DFL stooges:

During the Public Safety Policy and Finance Committee Wednesday, Lucero was repeatedly harassed and shouted at, first for not being a person of color, and then after his heritage was established, for being a person of color and not voting with Democrats…A testifier at the committee hearing scolded the committee for “not having a single person of color.” Lucero quickly corrected the testifier, who neither recognized Lucero’s ability to comment on racial issues nor apologized for judging him based on the color of his skin alone.

After the committee voted to pass the legislation, an African American testifier stood up and began shouting remarks at Lucero like, “I’m coming for you indigenous brother!” “Take off your KKK hood!” – calling Lucero a “pawn for the racist game” and telling him he’s “furthering racism.”

I’m sure you can imagine what the Twin Cities media would do if a white person started berating a minority legislator with racist twaddle.

Imagination is all you have in this case:

The major television stations and newspapers in the Twin Cities captured every moment of the exchange, and not one outlet reported on it.

Why would they?  They’re part of the plantation-owning class.

Politifact says President Trump is right…

…rates him “mostly false” anyway.

They don’t “check facts”.  They ensure congruency with the narrative.  No more.

….every so often I read something that shows me exactly why so many people did.

Like this.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Wrong winner at the Academy Awards?  Should have kept the sealed envelope in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall’s porch.  Then nobody would know the contents until revealed by Carnac the Magnificent.  Would have been a lot more entertaining.

 Joe Doakes

I’m not one of those sticks in the mud that swears off all Hollywood over a little matter of pervasive arrogant cultural bias…

…but I cant’ imagine much less entertaining than even a well-executed Oscar broadcast.