I detest litmus tests.

I always have.  They’ve always struck me as a way to avoid needing to think too hard about things, especially politics; as a way to avoid having to deal with the nuances that are inevitable with a realistic appreciation of the world around you.

But over the last year years, Second Amendment voting has become, if not a litmus test, at least a key indicator about a politician’s, or group’s, or person’s attitude about the most important political question of all.

We’ll come back to that.

There are a lot of reasons I support the right to keep and bear arms, and am an activist on the issue.  But there’s only one reason that it’s a litmus test to me.

Line Of Defense:  Self-defense?  Well, it’s important.  The idea that people should be forced to rely on the attention span of the state for their safety is fantasy at best, a toxic delusion at worst.

The police are under no obligation to protect you, and even when they knock themselves out to try, it’s a fact – when seconds count, the cops are minutes away.

Them? Or you? You get to decide this.

But self-defense isn’t why this is a litmus test issue to me.

Value:  And even if they were obligated to protect you at all costs in all situations?

As Jeffrey Snyder asked 25  years ago in A Nation of Cowards – do you really think that your life is of immeasurable worth, but that of the cop we call when things get ugly is worth $50K (or whatever we pay a cop these days)?  No – if your life is truly of immeasurable worth, then it’s truly your job to protect it – right?

If you truly believe that your life is of infinite value, while that of someone who risks their life for your is worth merely a salary and a life insurance settlement, I have to question your moral order.   Not here, of course.

The real question is, is it morally right to demand, and expect, that someone risk their life to save yiours, even with aunion contract?

Deterrence:  There is no rational doubt that armed citizens deter crime.

The number of crimes deterred in a year is hard to estimate, since most – including mine – are never reported.   The FBI used to say 80,000/year; Kleck estimated two million a year in the early ’90s, 98% of them without a shot being fired.

Whichever is right, each of those is a victory of good over…evil?  Decay?  Collapse?  Of right versus wrong.   Each of those victories, morally, is of incalculable good.

But that’s not the reason either.

A Good Guy With A Gun:  You know how you know that “a good guy with a gun” is an inherently good thing?

Jeanne Assam was a good gal with a gun when she saved countless lives at the New Life Christian Center in Colorado Springs on 12/9/07. She shot and wounded Matt Murray – who, reverie broken, backed off and shot himself.

Because Big Gun Control spends so much time and effort trying to attack the idea.  Not with facts – or at least, not by presenting facts in a way that can  be debated (and, inevitably, debunked).  “Shut up”, they explain.

There is a reason that mass shootings happen in places (schools, government buildings, posted property) or cities (New York, Chicago, San Francisco) or states (California) and not at NRA conventions or in Bozeman, Montana. Good citizens with the capacity to resist are a deterrent.

And as we’ve seen in a few mass shootings, when a good guy (or gal) with a gun interrupts the narcissistic fantasy, the fantasy implodes; the bad guy with the gun usually gives up, or kills himself.   Exactly as law enforcement says – move in on the shooter to break their reverie -although they don’t generally circulate that for public consumption.

Nick Meli was a regular schnook with a Glock on 12/11/2011 when Jacob Robert walked into the Clackamas Mall in Portland, OR with a rifle and a couple hundred rounds. He killed two – and then saw Meli pointing his permitted Glock at him. He retreated into a store, and shot himself moments later. Two died. Only God knows how many didn’t.

But no – that’s not the reason that the Second Amendment is my litmus test.

Fun Fun Fun (Til The Democrats Take The Garand Away):  Let’s be frank, here – shooting is fun.   No – it’s fun!

The focus and concentration are a poor man’s Zen meditation.  A day of busting caps out on the range is about as much fun as one can have, by oneself, legally.

And for someone who always wanted to be one of those guys that could hot-rod a car, but never had the money or the mechanical aptitude?  Modern guns, being the modular creations they are, lend themselves to extensive hot-rodding; a plain-Jane AR15, or even AK or SKS, is within reach of a whole lot of people, an outlet for mechanical creativity that’s do-able even for people of fairly unimpressive mechanical skills.  Even Glocks have gotten “democratized”; it’s possible to buy aftermarket lower frames that allow one to soup up a humble Glock 19.

A vital policy point?  No, but certainly a factor, if only personally .

So while I’ll throw it on the “yea” side of the scale,  it’s hardly the reason the 2nd Amendment is a litmus test.

Being Necessary For The Security Of A Free State:  Of course, none of the above were the proximate reason for the 2nd Amendment – which was to allow The People to defend their lives, families, property and communities against encroaching tyranny.

The protection of property and the preservation of order; Koreans on the second day of the LA riots, after the police pulled out.

“What?  You’re going to try to fight a tank with a gun?   If government becomes tyrannical, you’ll have no chance!” the usual response goes – which strikes me as a bad attitude for a citizen of a free society to have even while they’re still “free”.  But we’ll come back to that.

There are two answers to that old chestnut:

1. Nobody fights tanks with rifles.  You fight the truck that hauls the food, fuel and ammo to the tank.
2. But think about it: what do we know about the average American serviceperfson?  That they are the children of people with two masters degrees in Political Science from Carlton, who shop at Whole Foods and listen to NPR and have “Coesist” bumper stickers on their cars and voted for Hillary?  No!  They are overwhelmingly the children of the blue-collar and middle-to-lower-middle class people that own the guns today.  If government, for whatever reason, decided to go door to door seizing guns, they’d be beating down the doors of the parents, brothers and sisters of people in the service.   How do you suppose that’d work?

The right to keep and bear arms helps ensure that an attack on freedom will be an attack on the standing army.   Which may be one of the best guarantors against the depredations of the “standing army” that our founding fathers so feared.

But important as that is, that’s not the reason, either.

Words Have Meanings:  No, the reason is this:   without the right to defend one’s home, family, property, community and freedom from both crime and tyranny, then “citizenship” is meaningless.

The word “citizen”, going back to its Latin roots, means someone who has the ability to govern oneself; one who is him/herself a microcosm of government – someone who has the means at hand to govern themselves, and to participate in and consent in their own government.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights spell out the things that a citizen of a free society is endowed with by their creator; the right to participate and consent in their government via speaking, publishing, assembling, petitioning and voting; the right to not having their status as a citizen spuriously removed without due process, via jury trials, right to representation, freedom from unreasonable searches;  the right to be fairly secure that their property won’t be arbitrarily seized…

…the  right, means and power to defend one’s life, family, property, community and freedom.  Just like the government in which one participates.

Words Have Opposites, Too:  So being a “citizen” means having the ability to see to one’s own self-government – by oneself, as part of a small community, or a larger body that governns by consernt of the self-governing citizens.  

And if you take away any of the means by which a “citizen” governs, what happens?

Are they  a slightly lesser citizen?  No – it’s like taking away a hydrogen atom and wondering why you don’t still have water.

When a citizen can’t govern him/her self, then they’re no longer a citizen.  They are a subject of whomever took those rights away.

Observing the Second Amendment is one of the key differences between being a citizen – a consenting party to one’s own governance – and a subject, one whose life, liberty and property exist by the good graces of their ruler (or ceases to by the ruler’s bad graces, often enough).

And knowing that is why I will no more vote for someone who stands for abridging the Second Amendment than I will for someone who believes in speech rationing, or no-knock warrantless searches of people without meaningful due process, for that matter.

All three are non-negotiable.  All three are essential.  All three are reasons to go to the barricades.  I will no more vote for someone who promises to abridge my role as a citizen – by turning me into a subject  – than I’ll vote for someone who vows to send Jews to camps in Idaho.

Details:  “What – you think citizens should own cannon?  Tanks?  Nuclear weapons?”

They’re kind of expensive, and I dont’ wanna think about what it’d cost to practice with any of ’em.  But since we’re arguing out in loopdieland, I’ll bite.  Sure – show me why I shouldn’t, in logical terms – meaning terms other than “It doesn’t seem right to me”.

Put another way:  I’m a law-abiding citizen.  I’ve never stolen so much as a candy bar in my life.,  If you put a gun in my hand, I’m still the same guy.  I’m not overwhelmed by the urge to harm others.  How is that different if you put a machine gun, cannon, flamethrower, tank, or submarine in my figurative hand?  It’s not.

It’s also a pointless deflection.  Very few people are pushing to buy tanks – and I don’t think the criminal market for them is especially big either.

Many people are pushing, constantly and with great ardor, to abridge my right to defend my life, family, property, community and freedom, though.

A friend of mine wrote this on social media earlier this week, in re the City of Minneapolis’ proposed plasstic bag ban.

I know this is asking a lot, but I would like environmental activists to think more than one step in front of their faces. Case in point: The City of Minneapolis wants to ban the use of plastic bags in grocery stores (fortunately, the state legislature ended that, but please keep reading). Consumers would have to pay to take their groceries home in a plastic bag. At the same time, a Minneapolis sanitation ordinance says pet waste must be double bagged — in plastic!

So, we’ve taken in 2 cats who needed a loving home. And when we scoop their poop, we’re supposed to put it in a plastic bag that goes into another plastic bag before it goes into the garbage for collection by the city. But instead of re-using the plastic bags we get for free (just by virtue of buying groceries), we’re supposed to pay for the manufacture of “designated” plastic bags for pet waste? The sheer number of people who walk their dogs in the neighborhoods and city parks who are “required by city Ordinance” to pick up and dispose of their pet waste in plastic bags” is staggering.

Are you freaking kidding me??? Are you pet/environmentally friendly or not? And if you think pets are good for low-income and elderly residents who benefit from the companionship, you are penalizing them for the benefit you champion. Look past your nose!!!

We’re lucky enough that the City Limit is less than 5 minutes by car from our house. We can drive outside of Minneapolis to a suburb to shop where we are not penalized for using plastic bags.

The people further inside the city, without vehicles, are the ones being harmed by this environmental activist masturbation.

What’s that old definition of totalitarian?  Everything that isn’t mandatory is banned?

PS: She also notes that while walking around one of Minneapolis’ lakes, they noticed a lot of garbage lying about.   I know – Minneapolis has Socialist trash collection, how can that be, right?   And so they took time out from their walking to bring gloves and (presumably) plastic, legal bags for picking it up.

Might need a lawyer to do that in Minneapolis, these days.

1`Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Republicans in Congress told me they couldn’t accomplish anything because they didn’t control the House.   So we got them the House.

They told me they couldn’t accomplish anything because they didn’t control the Senate.  We got them the Senate.

They told me they couldn’t accomplish anything because they didn’t control the White House.  We got them the White House.

Now they can’t accomplish anything because they don’t like the guy in the White House.  They won’t work with him.  And he hasn’t given them proposed legislation to consider.  He’s not their leader and even if he were, they wouldn’t follow him.  He’s a poop.

Pretty much, Republicans in Congress can’t accomplish anything.  So what good are they?

I’m thinking primary challenges.

Joe Doakes

Bigly.

At all levels.

Big Left has been warning us that there’s a wave of ideological hate crime just around the corner, and that  you gotta watch out for those crazy right-wingers.

It’s a Berg’s Seventh Law occurrence, of course.

A gunman attacked a Republican congressional baseball practice this morning.  His mission?  “Kill as many Republicans as possible”.

Shortly after the shooting Wednesday morning at a congressional baseball practice, Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) told NBC News that it appeared the “gunman was there to kill as many Republican members as possible.” Walker, who was at the practice for the upcoming annual congressional baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia, confirmed he was “shaken but okay.”

“Punch a Nazi”.

“Anti-Fa”.

Hello, Liberals – when so much of your side is awash in demented hatred (the real thing, not the “disagreement with our narrative is hate” thing that so many of you jabber about), and given the instability wrapped in entitlement that so many people on your side have, what do you think is going to happen?

Be careful out there, Real Americans.  It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

UPDATE:  While Berg’s 19th Law is still in effect (“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”), the shooter’s Facebook page indicates he is a Sanders supporter.

UPDATE 2:  The WaPo has ID’ed the shooter as a 66 year old Illinois man.

UPDATE 3:  As usual, many on the left are acting like poo-flinging baboons.

UPDATE 4:  James Hodgkinson is the name, and this is from his Facebook page:

Apparnetly “& Co” is “All Republicans”.

Clearly, we need universal background checks for Democrat voters buying guns.

Netflix edits history – cutting out the part of a 20-year-old Bill Nye episode about there being precisely two genders.

Because science!

(Note for bobbleheads:  It would be appropriate for Nye to explain why he’s reversed course; since he styles himself a “Science Guy”, perhaps he’d include some evidence that led to his conclusion, rather than just a perfunctory flush of the memory toilet.

I got this the other day:

The first thing I thought was after reading this part:

I missed it.

I got so wrapped up in work yesterday that I forgot to send out an email commemorating the anniversary of the mass shooting at Pulse Nightclub, in Orlando, FL., one year ago.

Put another way:  “I’m such an incompetent tourist on this issue, I had to be reminded by my minions about one of the key parts of my job.

Which leads to the bigger question – what is this “Job” that the Reverend Nord Bence is supposed to be doing?

She follows with a list of mass shootings:

Absent from the list?

Any reference to perpetrators; every one of them a terrorist, a criminal, a  deeply mentally-ill person, often a narcissistic delusional bent on going out in a blaze of glory.   Most of them, by the way, in places where legal carry of firearms by civilians was strictly prohibited, sometimes by federal law, often in cities and states where civilian gun ownership is very stiffly regulated.

What she is doing is exploiting the blood of this long list of victims – victims of human evil and dementia, and of government’s short-sighted deprivation of the means of self-defense – for her “group”‘s onanistic gain.  .

What a foul  person the “Reverend” Nord Bence is.  Truly vile and disgusting.

Loathe as I am to elaborate, she makes one other “point”:

The average person will react in one of two ways when confronted with such a list: give up, or get to work.

Wrong.  They respond one of three ways:

1. They give up.
2. They assume, deluded as they are, that oppressing the law-abiding will solve the issue, in complete contravention of all rational evidence
3. They work to deprive the terrorists and madmen the gun-free zones and defenseless victims they crave.

We know which one the depraved ghoul Nancy Nord Bence is.

How about you?

I don’t imagine she will.  Exploiters never do.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If IQ exists (which SJWs debate but serious researchers do not), then the Theory of Evolution through Survival of the Fittest would suggest that average IQ was higher in the past.  It must have been – only the people clever enough to survive, lived long enough to reproduce.

Nowadays, with endless help groups and support networks and government programs, people who would have starved to death in the past are now surviving and breeding, as are their children.  The inevitable result must be a general lowering of IQ.  It’s not your imagination – people really are getting dumber every year.

Imagine that a new Black Death or Spanish Flu kills off 70% of the world’s population.  Would the survivors be smart enough to rebuild?  Or would our civilization disappear, to be discovered centuries from now as stone ruins deep in some jungle where St. Paul used to be?

Joe Doakes

In a semi-related matter, I’ve had a piece in my “drafts” folder for a few months now about how The Walking Dead is the most conservative thing Hollywood has produced in a generation.

I may have to finish it.

…of a smug, entitled, East-Coast fop “analyzing” the blue-collar white people who put Donald Trump in office – the line “Shut up, you worthless sister-boinking Budweiser-drinking white trash” Avery explained” croxsed my mind – but in the end, I figured this piece in (where else) Slate by (who else?) Isaac Chotiner parodied itself far beyond my feeble talents.

Shot:

If there is one thing everyone should be able to agree on about the past seven months, it is that the white working class can no longer be described as “forgotten.” Beaten-down? Racist? Mistreated? Angry? Victimized? Sure. We have read and heard the white working class described in all of those ways. But the election of Donald Trump has ensured that we are discussing this group ad nauseam.

Chaser:

I spoke recently by phone with [author Joan Williams], who is also a distinguished professor of law at University of California Hastings College of the Law. During the course of our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, we discussed Trump’s view of his own voters, the role of racism in class resentments, and whether there is any way to avoid being “condescending” to Trump’s supporters.

 

Governor Dayton agreed to a budget deal.

Then, when his leash was yanked by the special interests that own him, he vetoed the budget:

And now? Layoffs are imminent.  Over 400 legislative staff jobs – not to mention the 201 legislators themselves – will find themselves without a paycheck pretty quick here:

The layoffs could include up to 230 regular Minnesota House employees and 204 staffers in the Minnesota Senate.

And that’s not counting 201 elected lawmakers — a total of 635 people.

Dayton says:

“I regret the effect on the staff very, very much,” Dayton told reporters on Friday.

Maybe he could sell another Renoir?

A friend sent me this – an email from “MoveOn.Org”, a group that was founded to get Americans to just shut up and “move on” and ignore the antics of an ageing lothario, 20 years ago (antics that including lying under oath repeatedly).

They’ve changed their tune…:

I just have to ask: is there anyone, even among the lefty herd, dumb enough to fall for this?

The GOP majority in Congress may not like Trump much, but barring some major crime that isn’t currently in evidence, they’re not going to vote to impeach, much less remove him from office.

No, contributors won’t be buying an “impeachment”; they’ll be paying for more political noise and lots of spiffy vacations for MoveOn execs.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Ramsey County proudly announced the opening of premier courts for a Hmong game called Tuj Lub at Keller Park in Maplewood.

Players need a piece of grass about the size of a tennis court.  But they can’t provide their own lawn, or form a club like the Curling Club on Selby Avenue, or get a business to sponsor them like the bocce ball courts in the basement of the Halftime Rec on Front Avenue.  They need Ramsey County government to subsidize their hobby.

I’m a shooter, an American competitive sport with a long and noble tradition.  When do I get a shooting range?

If we’re not going to subsidize all sports, then how do we pick and choose which?

For that matter, why subsidize ANY sports?  Is that the purpose of Ramsey County government?

In pioneer days, the County was the principal organizational unit of government statewide.  But Ramsey County is almost entirely contained within cities.  What is the purpose of Ramsey County government nowadays?

Joe Doakes

Why?

To provide an income for the Democrat oolitical classs.

Come on, Joe.  You’re not new to this.

To: “Randy”, Owners of “Camden Tavern” in NoMi
From:  Mitch Berg, Law-Abiding “F**k” with a clean criminal record and some disposable income
Re:  Your Wish Is My Command

(Advisory:  the language on the graphic below is NSFW)

“Patrick”

Seems you’ve made your intentions clear regarding law abiding citizens who exercise their legal, constitutional right to see to their own self-defense:

Not sure where you get “insecurity” from taking prudent, legal measures to protect oneself, but I gotta ask you:  Is a 100 pound woman worried about roaming gangs of repists “inept at protecting herself?”   Maybe a guy who’s not 25 anymore who notes that today’s hoodlums are faster than they were when he middle-aged woman beset by a small criminal enterprisewas 25?  Maybe someone who’s physically handicapped?

Anything to say to those “inept f**ks, Mr. Patrick?

It should go without saying I wouldn’t use your tavern for an outhouse.  And I sincerely urge all carry permittees to pass the word that you, Randy Patrick, don’t want people who follow the law in your bar.

The Camden Tavern is posted “no guns”.  I’m sure the hoodlums of the North Side will respect your wishes.

Good luck, a****le.

My Theory:  Donald Trump’s arrogant blowhardiness is almost entirely intended to send the Big Left – the Dems and the Media (PTR) – chasing after squirrels, obsessing over diplomatic niceties, and wasting their own time while he and his uneasy GOP alliance get things done.

Evidence toward that theory submitted for your approval.

Just remember – when the gun-grabbing left says they want a “conversation about guns”, what they mean is “they talk, scream, defame, slander and insulit; you listen”.

“Aw, Mitch – you’re just being hyperbolic”.

Nope.  If only.

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design is hosting an “art” exhibit entitled “Unloaded” – styled as “a nationally traveling multimedia group exhibition that explores the historic and social issues surrounding the divisive nature of gun ownership in the United States.”

Let’s look at their idea of history and social studies via “art”

Yep. It’s a figure of…something with a pistol for genitals.

The exhibit’s hoarder – well, OK, “curator” – says her ambition is to melt down all guns.

This is the “conversation”.

(Response:  “What is it about firearms that instantly, inevitably turns your thoughts to genitals?)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

These are the people that Liberals claim we should recruit as immigrants, so Americans can more fully experience the benefits of diversity.  Because soon as they’re standing on American soil, they’ll be fully American same as you and me.  And if you don’t like it, then you should leave.
Joe Doakes

Cutting a little close to home, Doakes.

Here’s AlphaNews’ coverage of the demonstrations at the Capitol.

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

Today on the show:

• They put the “Fa” in Antifa
• Dreamsicles everywhere, and nowhere.

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!

Four Saint Paul yoots arrested for systematic robberies, followed by brutal rapes.

The sexual assaults began with a robbery. The suspects used a gun to threaten the teens and two of their friends and, before stealing their cellphones, forced them to unlock the phones and turn off applications used to find stolen cells.

Three of the four young men charged are gang members, the Ramsey County attorney’s office said.

“Despite the victims complying with their orders and handing over their valuables, the perpetrators in this case forced the female victims into a car and repeatedly raped them,” said Ramsey County Attorney John Choi. “These allegations are brutally horrific, and we will prosecute these defendants to the fullest extent of the law as we attempt to achieve justice for the victims, their families and our community.”

I”m gonna go out on a limb and say that not only would “jiustice” have been achieved if one or more of the thugs involved had ended up sprawled on the ground with 4-5 shots to the chest, but the deterrent effect would make the riverfront a lot safer.

I mean, has anyone tried to rob anyone on East River Road by Saint Thomas lately?

It’s what Trump didn’t do.

According to that noted conservative tool…

…Alan Dershowitz?

But speaking of obstruction…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Plainly, this is a meritless lawsuit, brought by some whiner hoping to strike it rich.  There is no air pollution in Paris.  There can’t be: that’s where the Paris Accord was signed, which eliminated all air pollution and thereby saved the planet from global warming before President Trump condemned us by withdrawing the United States.

If the air in Paris were that bad, they wouldn’t be complaining about who’s still in the “save-the-planet” group, they’d be fixing the problem.

Wouldn’t they?

Joe Doakes

As Glenn Reynolds says, “I’ll believe climate change is an emergency when its advocates start acting like it’s an emergency”.

I’m a sucker for this kind of story; Roy Larner, a 47 year old bloke from London, took on three knife-swinging terrorists with his fists, yelling “F**k yoiu, I’m Millwall” (a Brit soccer team):

Now out of the intensive care ward of St Thomas’ Hospital, where he was treated for knife wounds all over his body including his neck, the father-of-one has told The Sun how he reacted when the killers burst into the restaurant shouting “Islam, Islam” and “This is for Allah”.

“Like an idiot,” he told the newspaper, “I shouted back at them. I thought, ‘I need to take the p*** out of these b******s’.”

“I took a few steps towards them and said, ‘F*** you, I’m Millwall’. So they started attacking me.”

No mythmaking needed; Larner is pretty sober about the actual consequences of what he did; he was stabbed eight times:

“It was the worst thing I could have done as they carried on attacking me.

“Luckily, none of the blows were straight at me or I’d be dead.”

Again – such a good thing the British people are utterly disarmed; who knows how bad things could’ve gotten?

Yesterday, we reported on the fishy use of camera angles in presenting Saturday’s Dreamsicle rally in Minneapolis.   While the media narrative was that the events were well-attended, the photographic evidence from the even couldn’t be shot from angles tight enough to show that attendance was sparsse at best…

…and, from the looks of it, mostly not people from North Minneapolis.

We caught the Strib fluffing for Betsy Hodges yesterday.

Today, it’s the Minnpost.  Read their photo caption (before it gets disappeared):

“We’re the MinnPost. We’re funded by the Joyce Foundation, which also funds “Protect” Minnesota, not to mention contributions from Minnesoto’s gun-phobic self-appointed elite. So when we say there were hundreds at a gun grabber rally, but only a couple dozen are ever visible, nearly all of them painfully obviously the saime white, ELCA-hair-coiffed Subaru-driving Whole-Foods-shopping Southside liberals that turn up for every gun-grabber rally, well, who are you going to believe?  Us, or your lying eyes?”

Oh, yeah;  it’s not just photographic history being fluffed:

North Minneapolis resident Nikki McComb said she’d like to see more creative solutions in addressing gun violence. For instance, she said, she helped run a north Minneapolis gun buy-back project last year called Art Is My Weapon, which bought back weapons, no questions asked, and redistributed the disassembled pieces to north side artists for use in their works.

What made the project so effective, McComb said, was that it rid the streets of 250 guns while giving something positive back to the community. “We’re just really trying to use art as a catalyst for change,” she said.

Remember that “Gun Buyback” fiasco?   Read the story.   It got some guns – out of gun owners’ closets and attics, not “the streets”.

Or…workshops:

Read the writing on the “stock”.

Observers say it was more like single digits; not even a quarter of “250”

The MinnPost:  doing Fake News (at least about guns) before it was called that!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hollywood is where they make movies, fictional stories presented for entertainment.  They are carefully scripted, staged and shot to show the best angles and most effective presentation.

Pallywood is the term given to movies made by Palestinians, fictional stories presented to gin up outrage against Israel.  They are carefully scripted, staged and shot to show the best angles and most effective presentation.

And now we have CNN-wood, a fictional story presented by CNN to pretend that ordinary Muslims are against ISIS and Islamic terrorism.  The story was carefully scripted, staged and shot to show the best angles and most effective presentation.

Movies that we know show fake scenes is one thing.  We willingly suspend disbelief to enjoy the story.  Propaganda that we suspect may be fake is something else, but we are suspicious enough not to be taken in.

The news media creating a news story that it knows to be fake, but which it presents as the truth, is a deliberate lie told with intent to deceive.  If we cannot rely on the news to report honestly, how can we distinguish it from propaganda?  And if we can’t distinguish it, why should we give journalists any respect?

(MItch:  we can’t, good question, and as a group we should not; there are honest journos, but the institutions are rotten to the core).

Stories like this validate Trump’s assertion that the major media is fake news.

They make Trump credible.

Joe Doakes

And I think about half of this country knows that.

(And a quarter thinks the media is in the bag for the right.  Yep.  They’re out there somewhere).

Victor Davis Hanson’s conclusion on the problem our coastal “elites” have:

An elite’s lectures on melting ice caps, transgendered restrooms, or Black Lives Matter are progressive versions of an unapologetic sinner’s singing hymns in church on Sunday; the harangues bring them closer to their social-justice deities and apparently give personal meaning to their otherwise quite non-transcendent lives.

In all their own manifest hypocrisies, Americans take for granted that elites of the Left have become the Jimmy Swaggarts of our age.

How did he get there?

Read the article!

(And see how it ties into this)

The other, I noted the hilarious-yet-grim irony of Betsy Hodges, mayor (for now) of Minneapolis, whiich is by far the most violent city in Minnesota, lecturing the state on “gun safety” and “violence”.

Betsy Hodges, at Dreamsicle Day last weekend.

In recent years, as crime in the state at large has plummetted (and the number of law-abiding citizens with carry permits has skyrocketed), crime in Minneapolis is getting worse.

Nonetheless, the gun control movement (once thier serial lies are revealed) carries on trying to convince the undecided that

1. there’s a yuge problem with violence outside the urban core, and
2. there’s a groundswell of popular support for addressing it by stripping the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.

We address the former quite frequently on this blog.  The latter point takes a little more patience, but it’s out there.

Last year, I pointed out the laughably sparse turnout at “Protect” MN and Moms Want Action events in Eagan and on the mean streets by the Stone Arch Bridge by the Guthrie.

And this year?

Look at the photo of Mayor Hodges, above, standing in front of the banner wearing a dress made from a tablecloth salvaged from an old “Chi-Chis” restaurant.  Interesting angle, no?

Here’s the view from behind Her Honor, toward the, ahem, crowd.

25 people, not counting the cop.  And four of them are affiliated with “Protect” MN and Moms Want Action.  And the “rally” is in North Minneapolis, sort of – but the crowd, almost to a person, has that “south Minneapolis” look about them; the ELCA hair,