Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’m thinking of applying for this as a side gig.  It could be a useful addition to a retirement nest egg, sort of a part-time job in retirement that pays enough to matter.

“Members of under-represented groups are encouraged to apply.”  That must mean me.  They already have a Liberal Black man, a Liberal woman, a Liberal Jew, a Liberal GLBT on faculty.   I should qualify as a Token Conservative White Man.  I’m a shoo-in.

That IS what they meant by “under-represented,” right?

Joe Doakes

It’s always worth a try.  If only for the blog fodder.

North Dakota Democrats – who haven’t won a statewide office since 2008, and don’t actually have enough legislators to fill their committee assignments in the NoDak state legislature – have the same city mouse/country mouse divide that Minnesota DFLers do; Democrats from Fargo and Grand Forks, bodies scarcely less dogmatically “progressive” than their cousins in Minneapolis, have come to dominate the imploding party.

How much do they dominate it?  According to Rob Port, they heckled North Dakota’s sole significant elected Democrat, Senator Heidi Heidtkamp at a recent “reorganization” meeting.

Best part?  The urban simps are so ungodly (Ungoddessly?) ouy-of-control that the rural wing of the party is thinking about splitting up along lines that go back nearly 100 years:

“[Rural Democrats] were completely ignored,” [Rob Port’s] source said, adding that he wasn’t sure what the message for the party would be in 2018 but added that it “damn sure won’t be rural friendly.”

“A number of districts wanted an economic message coming out of the party,” my source continued, adding that there was also a desire to communicate to voters that “not all Democrats are against oil.”
“They were completely ignored,” my source said.
Saying that some are calling the party the “Democrats of the Red River Valley,” my source added that “some people are talking seriously about splitting from the party and reforming the NPL.”

That would be the Nonpartisan League part of the Democratic-NPL, the history of which you can brush up on here.

My sources pointed to a Facebook event created for a “New NPL Caucus Meeting” scheduled for July. One of my sources described that as a “organization meeting” for the NPL, though the event page itself seems to describe the effort as a caucus within the Democratic party itself.

The event page does say this new caucus was created on April 8, the same day as the Democratic party’s reorganization in Bismarck.

This, as North Dakota closes in on an decade of Republican hegemony that has left it, even with the lull in wildcatting, in excellent economic shape.

The message to Minnesota voters is clear:  try conservative governance for a generation or so.

The ten governors with the highest approval ratings are all Republicans:

According to a Morning Consult poll of more than 85,000 registered voters across the United States, Republican governors get the most thumbs up by their residents — and it’s not even close.

Toping off the list is Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, who boasts a 75 percent approval rating, with only 17 percent disapproving of his job performance. Closely behind Baker is Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.  Of the top five most popular governors, three are Republicans in solid blue states.

Which is great news.

#3 on the list is North Dakota’s Doug Burgum, by the way, whose approval ratings are around the same that Led Zeppelin was getting in 1974.

Expect a chorus of “what about Kansas?” to erupt from the left any time; in Kansas, Sam Brownback is in the bottom ten.  Whenever the subject turns to the success of Republican governance, Democrats chant in unison “Kansas!  Kansas!”, to draw the attention away from the mass of GOP-run states that are doing quite well, thank you.

More on that later today.

Two restaurants in Minneapolis abolish tipping, raise their staff wages to $15 an hour:

Common Roots Cafe (2558 Lyndale Ave. S.) and Butter Bakery Cafe (3700 Nicollet Ave. S.) informed their customers of the change by posting signs in their establishments and on their social media accounts.

In a lengthy explainer, Common Roots Cafe says it will be raising the pay of its staff from at least $11.40 per hour to a minimum of $15 per hour, plus benefits. As a result it won’t be accepting tips, something the cafe said “never felt right for our business.” To cover the extra cost, prices are rising 15 percent.

“We believe all people, regardless of where they work, should make a fair wage and should not have to depend on tips as a major part of their compensation,” the cafe’s Facebook post said, adding: “We think of this [as] a small step we can take toward making the restaurant industry more equitable and to make our workplace stronger and more supportive of all staff.”

The Butter Bakery Cafe posted a shorter message to customers on Tuesday, saying that it has “built fair wages into our menu prices” and is now a “tip free” eatery.

First things first:  their business, their choice.  Better this than the city forcing it on the businesses.

Although that’s coming.

Other restaurants in the cities have experimented with no tipping policies before but they’ve not always been successful. WCCO reports Upton 43 and Victory 44 ended their no-tipping policy last March after a trial run.

Chef and owner of both establishments, Erick Harcey, said it actually went over well with customers and staff members, but caused the restaurants to be priced out with competitors who didn’t have the same policy.

Let’s check back in six months, shall we? 

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The guy dragged off the United Airlines flight now claims he was selected because of his race, which is discrimination.  Is that why he was having hysterics on the plane?

The guy’s response seemed disproportional.  You don’t want to be the guy forced off the plane, I get that.  But seriously, what’s the downside?  You call your work and tell them the story.  Are they really going to fire you over it?   If it’s that big of a deal that you be there to perform the brain surgery, see if they can’t get you another flight instead of a hotel room or rent a car and drive.  Don’t act like a special snowflake, that’s for college kids.

On the other hand, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the airline kicked paying passengers off the flight so they could transport a flight crew who needed to be at the destination location to fly a later flight.  This was not a disruptive passenger, it was not even an overbooking situation, the passengers were booted off the plane entirely for the airline’s convenience.  The airline could have canceled that later flight for lack of a flight crew but it would have cost a boatload of money.  More than $800?  So offer more money.  If they got up to a grand or two, somebody would have taken the bait.  And if not, for that kind of money, they could have hired a private charter to haul the flight crew.

It’s Chicago to Louisville, for crying out loud.  It’s a one-hour flight or a 5 hour drive. For the amount of bad publicity the airline is getting, they could have hired a limo to drive the crew.

And for the CEO to go public claiming the passenger was removed because he was disruptive is pure bull.  He was removed because the airline was too cheap to transport its own flight crew at market prices, i.e., what the paying passengers would accept to give up their seats.

The airline acted brutally and stupidly.  It deserves all the bad publicity it can get.  I’d start with Congress considering legislation that paying passengers cannot be bumped by non-paying passengers (flight crew, family, airline mile redeemers, etc).  Nobody else gets this kind of preferential business model.  Why should airlines?

Joe Doakes

Post-script – or, actually, two post-scripts.

First – whenever the “Free market” does somethingi stupid, or especially something brutal, always look to see if government is the real reason.  The answer, almost invariably, is “yes”.

Government regulations forbid paying premiums of greater than four times the original ticket price – to a maximum of $1350, to passengers who get bumped.

Why?

And the post-9/11 environment of security theater means that episodes that used to be simple customer service disagreements and even misunderstandings are now law enforcement episodes, and even federal crimes.  Thus, the Chicago Airport Police were involved with what should have been a negotiation between passengers and a gate agent – before boarding.   Of course, being Chicago cops, someone just had to “fall”…

…got into an argument over this past weekend’s festivities in Berkeley, where Real American pro-free-speech activists banded together to deter, and occasionally, where necessary, necessary meet, “anti-fascist” fascist violence at a pro-Trump rally.

Devil (on Mitch’s left shoulder):  Oh, God, I am so freaking happy to see that the good guys – any good guys, people who try to express their views peacefully, fought back against the Blackshirts and other neo-fascist thugs.    Those little upper-middle-class fops are bullies, every one of them.  They sucker-punch, they gang up on lone people, they use weapons like sticks and pepper spray against the unarmed and unsuspecting, they throw smoke bombs at old ladies and punch out teenage girls – but I’m gonna guess every one of them crapped their pants when they saw Real Americans lined up to stare their snowflake asses down.

Angel (on Mitch’s right shoulder):  Yeah, it’s tempting to cheer.   But remember – if 200 Republicans, conservatives, Tea Partiers or Trumpkins go to the hospital, it’ll warrant not a single headline – but the moment Joshua Micah Gildersleeve from Oberlin gets his face scuffed up, it’ll headlines across the entire mainstream media, and the left will make “right wing thuggery” a chanting point forevermore.

Because you know it as well as I do, Mitch’s-inner-devil; the only damage the media and the people who set our society’s opinions care about is damage to the kids who look like their kids.

Devil (on Mitch’s left shoulder):  So we should sit still and be placid, passive victims and punching bags for those worthless bullies?

Angel (on Mitch’s right shoulder):  That’s not what I’m saying.  But let’s be realistic; if a couple black guys punched out a Klansman in self-defense in 1920, it was a tree falling in the forest that was used by the bullies to justify even more violence.  Hell – they’re trying to provoke violence, so they and their patsies and enablers in the MSM can tell the gullible general public “Look at what these big bag righties did to our best and brightest!”

Devil (on Mitch’s left shoulder):  Bu you know as well as I do they don’t even need any kind of resistance to their “resistance” to “Justify” any of that.   And..

(Devil notices Angel removing halo, donning a Gadsden Flag t-shirt, and picking up what looks like a stuffed sweat sock).

Er, Angel?  What is that?

Angel (on Mitch’s right shoulder):  It’s a sweat sock with a big russet potato in it.

Devil (on Mitch’s left shoulder):  Er…what the…why?

Angel (on Mitch’s right shoulder):  Hits like a truck full of bricks, doesn’t leave a mark.

Devil (on Mitch’s left shoulder):  Um…again, why?

Angel (on Mitch’s right shoulder):  (pulls stocking cap low over head).  I’m heading down planetside.  I’m gonna find the next snowflake anti-Free-Speech rally.  If they try to bully anyone else into silence, I’m gonna go all Old Testament Angel on them.

Devil (on Mitch’s left shoulder):  But…you’re the angel of Mitch’s better nature…

Angel (on Mitch’s right shoulder):  I’m an angel.  I’m not an idiot.

(And SCENE).

Nat Hentoff passed away over the weekend.  He was 91.  

After getting his start as a jazz critic with the Village Voice, Hentoff swerved into a career as a civil liberties activist.  Probably 25 years ago, I read Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee – a book about free speech, but even moreso a treatise on how protecting freedom for the unpopular and unsavory was as important, or more important, than protecting it for “the good guys”.  It also warned of today’s campus totalitarianism.  Hentoff, a longtime ACLU activist, lived out what the organization was back before it turned into the “Manhattan Civil Liberties Union.

It’s become a traffic-worn cliche to say an old-time conservative, a Ronald Reagan or a Jack Kemp, “..couldn’t get elected in today’s GOP” – but it’s actually true that Nat Hentoff couldn’t get arrested in today’s power-mad hard left.  We know this because today’s left literally did, in fact, reject him:

In 2009, after 50 years, Hentoff lost his job at the Village Voice. He was told it was due to “budget” concerns, but most believe he had been fired because his libertarianism was increasingly controversial on the left. In the years that followed, he wrote for numerous publications, including The Washington Times, and worked with the Cato Institute. He was honored by and spoke on free speech and privacy at a Conservative Political Action Conference and served on the advisory board of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which fights for free speech on our campuses.
When the Village Voice cast him adrift, he observed that he would just have to put on his “skunk suit” and saunter off to someone else’s “garden party.” And he did just that. He supported the Iraq war, but was a dogged critic of the Bush administration’s assault on privacy rights in the name of the “War on Terror.” He said he was going to support Barack Obama in 2008, but couldn’t because of the man’s views on partial-birth abortion. Last year he was to be found in the camp of Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. He had not become a conservative, but remained Nat Hentoff. He was a man who could get up in the morning, look himself in the mirror and see the face of one who had, regardless of what others might say, remained true to his convictions.

He may have been the last liberal who actually was a liberal.

Slave markets return to Africa.

Our idiot betters were chuckling – briefly, at least – at Mike Pence and his wife’s rules for his conduct in public around female associates, staff and the like.   In that particular context-mangled teapot-tempest, Mike Pence was supposedly a “Neanderthal” “Taliban” “sexist” for never meeting with women alone.

Of course, if you’re in politics of any party (but especially the GOP, especially given our media’s, er, cozy and complementary relationship with the Democrat oppo research force, and triple-especially if you’re connected with Trump, it’s just good common sense.

I was going to leave it there – but it turns out, in this grievance-mongering era, that it – or having cameras rolling at all times – is not a bad tactic if you’re a man of any kind having to deal with women on any non-marital level.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If this had occurred in a state park in Minnesota and the boyfriend had been equipped with a revolver and Permit to Carry, could he have shot the rapist dead and escaped prosecution?

The boyfriend was not being threatened, personally, so he can’t use self-defense.  His girlfriend is being threatened so he might be able to claim he killed the rapist in Defense of Others.  Ah, but what about the Duty To Retreat?

“Finally, Bishop also fails to prove the final element of a defense-of-others claim. A person claiming self-defense has a duty to retreat and to avoid danger if reasonably possible. State v. Austin, 332 N.W.2d 21, 24 (Minn. 1983); see State v. Soukup, 656 N.W.2d 424, 428-29 (Minn. App. 2003) (stating that principles of self-defense in homicide cases apply to assault cases as well, including duty to retreat or avoid physical conflict). The evidence demonstrates that Bishop did not attempt to retreat or to avoid the danger. Bishop had ample opportunity to retreat into the secure apartment building or to have avoided any danger or physical conflict by not leaving the building in the first place. There is also no indication in the record that D.B. was moving toward Bishop in such a way as to prevent Bishop from retreating to safety, but rather the evidence demonstrates that D.B. was walking away from Bishop when Bishop stabbed him. Further, Bishop’s family was either inside the locked apartment building or close enough to be able to easily retreat inside before D.B. could become an imminent threat. There is no evidence to support that Bishop took advantage of the reasonable opportunities to retreat or avoid the danger.”  — State v. Bishop, A07-1435, A08-1339, unpublished (Minn. App. 2009).

Bishop was convicted because he failed to retreat when he acted in defense-of-others.

Yes, I know: the quoted paragraph makes no sense.  The first sentence talks about defense-of-others but the next three talk about defense-of-self, then back to others before concluding his failure to retreat deprived him of ALL defenses, self and others.  The court seems to blend the two theories.  And this is the appeals court, the one that is supposed to correct mistakes of law made at the trial level, but they don’t seem to understand the law, either.

I was taught the defender stepped into the shoes of the victim.  If the victim could not retreat, the defender didn’t need to retreat.  But read the quoted paragraph again.  It’s perfectly possible to read that language to mean the boyfriend with the revolver was required to leave his girlfriend while he retreated to safety, that he was not allowed to intervene to defend her.  Is that really the law of the land so the boyfriend must stand there and watch?  Or is the court mistaken so he can safely pull the trigger?

This is where Duty To Retreat leaves us – confused and bewildered and uncertain of our rights.  Are we allowed defend our loved ones, or must we leave them to be raped or killed?  If for no other reason, clarity and certainty make Stand Your Ground so important.

Joe Doakes

As the memes from MN Gun Owners Coalition put it, you need to be familiar with a dozen bits of case law if you plan to be ready to defend yourself or others outside your home.

Otherwise, “duty to retreat” is just a make work program for lawyers.

Matt Windschitl called out “Iowa Gun Owners” as a scam from the floor of the Iowa state legislature.    We’ve met Windschitl in this space before; I’ve interviewed him on my show,

Iowa Gun Owners is the Iowa “branch” of the “Minnesota Gun Rights”. – which is a misnomer, as MGR actually is headquartered in Iowa.

Windschitl savaged IGO for taking credit for Iowa’s recent passage of “Stand Your Ground” legislation, pointing out that not a single legislator had heard from Aaron Dorr, and the group had not even registered as lobbyists.

The TV story shown in the link above notes that Aaron Dorr doesn’t take a salary “from the group”, and that most of the group’s  nearly $300,000 in donations went to “direct mail” expenses.

Unmentioned;  the Dorr Brothers own the direct mail company that serves IGO, Minnesota Gun Rights, and several other state gun and pro-life groups.

This is the first serious media attention that’s been paid to the Dorr brothers’ operations.  It should not be the last.

The Democrats nationwide – including here in Minnesota – are as split along rural-urban lines as, well, the rest of the US is.  And that fault line is shaking the endorsement challenge in the Governor’s race in Virginia, where the “progressive”, Northern-Virginia, government-worker set has pretty directly set out to alienate the rural Democrats that used to dominate the party and the state.   The state party “Uninvited” one “Mudcat” Saunders – a Virginia democrat operative and activist who’s served as a go-between among rural and urban Democrat interests – from a lmeeting on…

…well, patching up the rural/urban split:

In short Democrats believe that because of their populous numbers in the urban suburbs in Northern Virginia they don’t need rural voters, nor are they showing any willingness to petition, engage or win them over.

Their beef with him was his unwillingness to vote for Hillary Clinton last year; it doesn’t help that he was pretty outspoken about it.

“They don’t have to. And this is why we are the minority party,” said Dane Strother, a Washington-based Democratic strategist with deep Southern roots, “If we remain uninterested in the rural vote we will remain the minority party.”

Virginia Democrats are in the midst of a civil war that is only getting worse rather than better since the election of Donald J. Trump. Virginia did not go for Trump, but its rural voters, a decent amount of them Democrats, voted decisively for Trump over their party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton.

It’s not just Virginia.  When Collin Peterson finally retires, the 7th CD will not elect another Democrat to Congress for several generations; if Rick Nolan and/or Tim Walz leave office to run for Governor, its entirely possible those districts will go GOP.

And yet the MNDFL – as shown with last week’s teapot-tempest with Rep. Hortman scolding the GOP’s “white males” for sitting out Rena Moran’s speech along with a whole bunch of DFLers – is obsessed with the same social justice fripperies that have led to the slow eradication of the DFL in most of greater Minnesota.

Yet another “false flag” “hate crime” hoax; the arson attack on a Bhutanese shop owner in Charlotte turns out to be…

…well, we know where this is going, don’t we?

UPDATE: CMPD releases photos of suspect in case of arson, threatening note left at east Charlotte store #cltnews https://t.co/I7zTA0xDkk pic.twitter.com/sr7BpMrCmr

— NBC Charlotte (@wcnc) April 7, 2017

NBC Charlotte states that police describe the man as black, 5-foot-8 and about 200 pounds with a short afro and goatee.

He is accused of not only leaving the note but setting the victim’s store on fire and smashing its windows as well.

The store owner, whose name is Kamal Dhimel, is reportedly scared for his life because of the letter and fire, which the FBI is investigating.

This blog will henceforth consider all reports of “white supremacist” “hate crimes” as hoaxes until proven otherwise.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

My computer automatically loads pop-up ads every time it opens.  This time, it informed me that hardly any girls want to be physicists, engineers, computer programmers.  Girls must be encouraged to science, technology, engineering and math careers.

Why the gender of the engineer matters is not explained.

If numbers are the sole concern – if meeting the quota is all it takes to make society better – then simply designate an appropriate number of biologically male engineers as involuntary pre-operative transgendered women and viola, instant utopia.

Joe Doakes

Simple, ingenious and PC!

Ben Shapiro’s five questions about the Syrian missile strikes.   Tom Cotton on the upside.

Here’s the website for the Ladies of Liberty Alliance.

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

Today on the show:

• Missiles, Brinksmanship and Gas – Oh My!
• Jessica Craig will join me to talk about the Ladies of Liberty Alliance get-together tonight

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is  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!

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!

Trump bombed s Syrian military installation.  It’s been in all the papers.

I’m not going to comment about that, per se – what can I possibly add?

No, I’m not commenting about the pros and cons and rights and wrongs of yesterday’s action in Syria, or of whatever might be around the corner…

File this under “Evidence of a shoddy education”: around the world, (we are told) the movie adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984” is being screened…

…to “protest Donald Trump“.

Forget for a moment that Orwell wrote the book as a satire of contemporary British far leftists snd their tendency to eat each other, not to mention the horrors of the Stalinist regime that they were busily sweeping under the rug at the time.

No.  The funny thing, I’m going to bet, is that the “progressives” – who will no doubt need to buy two tickets to the screening to save a chair for their self-righteousness and indignation – after the election we just had, will no doubt will see themselves as Winston Smith, rather than O’Brien.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When the man in the muscle shirt screams at the woman laying bleeding on the floor: “Now look what you made me do,” we know he’s in the wrong.  There is nothing she could have done that would justify his violent response.

 Unless she was a Trump supporter.  That’s provocative, like the Nazis marching in Skokie.  Then he had no choice but to respond with violence.  He was totally justified, it was her own fault, just as Liberals are justified in responding to conservative campus speakers with violence.  It’s our own fault for provoking them.

 Joe Doakes

We should all know better, shouldn’t we?

The Evanglical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), aka “Unitarians with Lutefisk” (Keillor said it, not me!), are the far-left-leaning wing of American Lutheranism.  The people who gave us “ELCA hair” are headquartered in Minneaopolis, and often seem to spend more time on politics than faith; among certain ELCA circles, “faith” seems to be little but a common theme for (inevitably leftist) politics.  (Most mainline Protestants and Catholics in the Metro are no better).

One of their less-informed stances, like that of most of the dogmatist American left, is on civilian firearms and the Second Amendment.

And they’ve been taking some heat on the issue – because while, like my own former Presbyterian organization (the Presbyterian Church in the USA), the leadership is about as ideologically diverse as a the crowd at the Whole Foods in Berkeley, the folks in the pews on Sundays are all over the place politically (or were: the ELCA, like the PCUSA and other American liberal denominations, is hemorrhaging membership faster than the Gary Glitter fan club).

Anyway, some of the folks in those pews are law-abiding citizens who value the right to keep and bear arms, and they’re not shutting up and taking it from their self-appointed betters.  And  it seems to be rankling the ELCA; someone wrote a post on the ELCA’s “Engage” website responding to some of the flak they’ve gotten.

Well, not so much “responding”.  But we’ll come back to that.

I have received several angry replies to my “Stomping Stand Your Ground” blog. The writers deserve a response.

Although they don’t get a “Response” so much as getting “tut-tutted” by someone who really doesn’t know much about the issue.

One writer called the blog “shameful and disgusting…politically motivated crap. If my church supported this, I would be looking for a real church.” Another wrote “What load of crap! This Lutheran group ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

The ELCA has been supporting this “crap” about actions in support of gun violence prevention (GVP) since 1989.

Since the right to keep and bear arms is one of the things that separates a “citizen” from a “subject”, then yes – the ELCA should be ashamed of their pro-authoritarian stance, and anyone who believes that we, The Peoplle (of all faiths) are supposed to be citizens, not subjects, in our secular, political life, should have some pointed, acerbic questions for the ELCA’s temporal leadership.  (And so should you Catholics and PCUSA Presbyterians and Episcopals and Methodists, too).

Churchwide Assembly action happened in 1989, 1993, 2013 and 2016. Furthermore, the Church Council acted in 1994, the Social Statement “For Peace in God’s World” calls for the need to create peaceful environments, and the St. Paul Area Synod passed two strong GVP resolutions in 2013 and 2016. The ELCA must be a “crappy” church.

If you believe that the best way to secure Peace in God’s World is to keep authoritarianism, dictatorship and tyranny at bay – and I do – then yes.  Those resolutions, as they relate to disarming the law-abiding citizen – are prima facie evidence of a church that is, if not “crappy”, at least more suited to life under an authoritarian regime than a pluralistic democracy founded on the idea of self-government.

I would argue that the will of God and the ethics of Jesus are unabashedly nonviolent in focus. Violence is the result of the Fall and not God pulling the triggers of violence.

And it’s here that the writer – knowingly or not – gets insidious.

All violence is not the same.  Invading Normandy to free Europe is not the same as invading France to enslave Europe.  Freeing a concentration camp through force of arms is not the same as driving people into a camp via force of arms.   Shooting someone who is threatening to kill you or your family is not the same as threatening to kill someone or their family.  To slop them all together under an intentionally-vague label is rhetorically shoddy – and morally repugnant.

The gun in the hands of the law-abiding citizen deters violence; the gun in the hands of the would-be victim of violence turns them, often, into non-victims.

Jesus’ disgust at weapons is clear in his words “Enough!”, “No more of this!” and “Those who live by the [gun] shall die by the [gun].” The Sermon on the Mount is his “magnus opus” on nonviolence.

The Sermon on the Mount decried revenge killing; some religious leaders at the time were preaching that the doctrine of “an eye for an eye” meant that revenge killing was acceptable.  Jesus corrected those false teachings and put the kibosh on that with his sermon.  (Too bad Mohammed never had such a sermon, huh?).  It was not a foreclosure of self-defense.

God and Jesus must be crappy.

No, but the writer’s interpretation of scripture is a tad, er,  fecal.

The Bible also endorses self-defense in several places:  in Exodus 22:2-3 we are told “If the thief is found breaking in, and he is struck so that he dies, there shall be no guilt for his bloodshed. If the sun has risen on him, there shall be guilt for his bloodshed. He should make full restitution; if he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft.”.  Which reads a lot like Minnesota’s case law on self-defense; you can defend yourself from an immediate threat to your life and health.  If you do it later, as revenge, then you are in huge trouble.

Proverbs 25:26 says “A righteous man who falters before the wicked is like a murky spring and a polluted well.”   Allowing wickedness – whether street crime or political tyranny – to oppress the faithful is wrong.   LIfe – ours, and those of our fellow humans – is a gift from God; to allow the wicked to destroy them is an affront to His creation.

Anyway – you gotta figure that even if the learned scribe from the ECLA can’t do theology, they’ll at least have some Old Testament evidence and logic on their side.

Right?

You actually read this blog, right? What do you think?

Another called the article “misleading and false.” The sources for my comments are Protect Minnesota,

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

As I’ve shown in this space for the past fifteen years, “Protect” Minnesota has never – not once – made a substantial, true, original statement about guns, gun owners, gun laws, the Second Amendment and its legal history, the law-abiding gun owner’s affect on crime, or anything else.

Among the informed, using “Protect” Minnesota as a source is tantamount to admitting you know nothing about the subject.

…The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, State Health Facts, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Center for Health, plus Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins Universities. I will trust these sources immensely more than those quoted by the gun lobby.

Let’s ignore for a moment the “Appeal to Authority”  – the logical fallacy of using the provenance of your sources as evidence, rather than the actual facts.  Saying “my sources are better than your sources!” are the mark of the seventh-grader who hasn’t learned debate, or logic, yet.

Leaving aside the risible “Protect” Minnesota, the other sources – I’m familiar with all of them – have deep flaws in the information they present.

What are those flaws?  We could go through them point by point, study by study, and systematically refute their applicability and authority.    Indeed, we have, and do, do that; it’s one of several reasons the good guys have been winning this debate for the past twenty years; the facts are on our side.

But I suspect we won’t be going through the with the anonymous writer, because the pro-criminal-safety movement – including the ELCA’s Reverend Nancy Nord Bence, the false-witness-bearing head of “Protect” Minnesota – have told their various adherents not to “engage” with Human Rights activists.

Seems exposure to the facts has caused the Kool-Aid to wear off with some of the less zealous disciples.

One hopes the writer of this piece is made of sterner stuff – more below – but this next bit casts doubts:

I am pleasantly surprised that no one criticized the references to the Second Amendment nor to our nation’s Founding Documents of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is nice knowing they are not “crappy.”

Fourth Grade called.  They wanted their big finish back.

Speaking of “big finishes”:

Stand Your Ground escalates the probability of gun violence.

No, it doesn’t – the statement relies on turning a dubious correlation into a  specious causation – but let’s take it at face value for a moment.

If someone shoots someone wrongly – as an aggressor, in commission of a robbery or a gangland shootout – then “Stand your Ground” is irrelevant.   If someone is not the aggressor, and shoots a rapist, a robber, a burglar, a kidnapper, an attacker, then you can say an act of “gun violence” has happened.  But you’d be portraying an act of self-defense – where, by legal definition, someone legitimately feared for their life and health – into an evil act.

And that, itself, is downright evil.

Not “crappy”.  Evil.

Note to readers:  I’m going to try, in a spirit of respect, inquiry and attempt for mutual understanding,  to send a link to this story to the people from “Engage” to see if they will, y’know, engage.  Please feel free to do the same; tell ’em I sent you.

I’d very much like to invite the people behind “Engage” on my show for a rational, factual debate on the subject.   I doubt they’ll do it; I don’t think they have the confidence in their command of the issue, legally, theologically, morally or factually.

But hope, as they say, springs eternal.

(more…)

Didn’t he do this twenty years ago?

A regular reader writes:

If only all of the transit oriented development projects that have destroyed neighborhoods had been just an April Fool’s day joke…

Alas, the other 364 days a year, the government of Saint Paul and the Met Council are as funny as chemotherapy.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

We won’t cooperate in enforcing federal law.  But we still want the federal gravy. 

 Liberals are big on equal outcomes, right?  Everything has to be equal in order to be fair?  Okay, then.  Treat them like kids in grade school.  When someone farted and wouldn’t own up, everybody skipped recess. 

 If any city in the nation refuses to cooperate with federal law enforcement official, no city in the nation gets federal funding.  End it.

 I’d bet a brand-new nickel the cities that were in compliance weren’t the ones sucking up the biggest share of the funds.  Let’s turn off the spigot and see who cracks first.

 Joe Doakes

The bluff is overwhelming.

Back when I worked as a nightclub DJ, it was easy to meet Green Berets, “Delta” members, Navy SEALs, former fighter pilots, CIA agents, and – my favorite – uncercover narcotics officers – at the bar.  Especially around last call.

My favorite?  One evening, a very aggressive little fella spent half an hour boasting about his physical prowess by the DJ booth (a gross misapplication of resources, if you catch my drift).   Then a fight broke out.   The bar’s staff – the bouncers and some of the bar staff – began moving toward the fight.

The little fella got up and joined them, telling people to move back or he’s arrest them, flashing a “badge” at bystanders, telling them – and at least one bouncer – that he’d arrest them if they interfered with him.

I got a quick look; it was a badge for County Sheriff’s Department SCUBA volunteer – basically about as official for purposes of arrest powers as Dwight Schrute’s Lackawanna County Reserve Sheriff’s Reserve uniform.

I pointed this out to the bouncers when the real police were on the way (as they were very often at that particular bar).  The little fella scampered away like he’d heard there was a steroid sale at GNC.

Anyway – it’s nothing new.  It’s just that some people get more into the game than others.

On March 4, a group of thugs, concealed in an un-permitted counterprotest, attacked a pro-Trump rally in the Rotunda at the State Capitol; a 17 year old girl was punched, at least one man was maced by someone who was trying to crash through a group of Trump supporters to disrupt the peaceful pro-Trump rally, a woman was hit in the head by a smoke bomb – an incendiary device…

…and you have already spent more time reading this than Ramco Attorney John Choi spent in deciding not to press charges against the six upper-middle-class snowflakes that were arrested, incuding Linwood Kaine, son of Hillary Clinton’s veep candidate.

They are, of course, the children of the golf buddies of the city’s DFL establishment, or at least the children of similar Democrat apparatchiks elsewhere.  Urban Liberal Privilege grants them a separate, unequal, nicer brand of justice than the rest of us get.

But there’s an effort afoot to change that.  The “Protecting Civil Discourse” rally on March 18 demanded that the Ramco and Saint Paul City Attorneys offices actually listen to the actual evidence, and follow the logical conclusion and charge the snowflakes.

Calls and emails are eminently appropriate:

• John Choi – Ramsey County Attorney  651-266-3222 (elected 2010)
• Cyndy Melby – John’s Exec. Assistant cyndy.melby@co.ramsey.mn.us
•  Samuel Clark – St Paul City Attorney 651-266-8710 (Mr. Clark was U.S. Sen. Klobuchar’s State Director & was appointed by Mayor Chris Coleman 3/2015).
• Laura Pietan – Assistant City Attorney 651-266-8740
• Chris Coleman – St Paul Mayor 651-266-8510 / mayor@ci.stpaul.mn.us (2018 Minnesota Governor Candidate)

Of course, John Edwards was right – there are Two Americas.  The children of our misbegotten “elite” live in one of them, where people with the right political backing can beat people up, block freeways and vandalize not merely freely, not merely at will, but with a nudge and a wink from the powers that be.

Time to let those powers know we’re watching.