SCENE:  Mitch BERG is waiting to see the movie “Darkest Hour” at a local theater.  Avery LIBRELLE, walking out of a showing of “Brokeback Mountain Part 2:  The Payback”, notices BERG before he notices…er, LIBRELLE.  

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!

BERG:  Er, hey, Avery.  What’s up?

LIBRELLE:  Guns are out of control!  The US has the highest murder rate of any industrIalized country!

BERG:  Well, for starters, that’s not true – Brazil and Russia and South Africa have much higher murder rates than we do.  But I’m curious – why do you limit it to “industralized” countries?   Because the US murder rate, overall, is 94th in the world, per capita.   Which is waaaaay down in the middle of the pack.  Mexico and Russia’s murder rates are twice as nigh; Brazil’s five times; South Africa’s, seven times higher than ours.

LIBRELLE:   But you should only compare apples to apples?

BERG:  Why?  When it comes to murder rates, what logical sense does that make?  I mean, I know why your side does it – but why do you think that is?

LIBRELLE:  You tell me!

BERG:   Because Big Left only cares about dead white people.   That’s why you never hear “gun safety” advocates talking about crime in places like El Salvador, Nicaragua, the US Virgin Islands or Brazil, anymore than you do about places like  Chicago, Newark, Camden, Baltimore, Saint Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Stockton or Oakland.

LIBRELLE:  Why would we talk about the murder rate in Chicago, Newark, Camden, Baltimore, Saint Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Stockton or Oakland?   We should compare apples and apples.

BERG  They’re in America.

LIBRELLE:  Are they?

BERG:  (Stares vacaintly for a moment).  Interesting point.

LIBRELLE:  Rethugs are so stupid.

(And SCENE)

The Obama economy stayed sluggish, despite an avalanche of taxpayer and deficit cash, because businesses sat on their money; with cheap credit via “quantitative easing”, their cash on hand zoomed upward (leading to record high stock indices) – but job growth and productivity remained sluggish.   With regulations metastasizing and Obamacare lurking over everything like a that friend from high school who stopped by and you just know is going to hit you up for a loan, business played it very very safe.

No more, it seems – or at least that seems to be written between the lines of this curiously schizophrenic NYTimes piece that seems to make a little room for every possible angle in re Trump, economic or not:

Mr. Trump bragged in a news conference last month that he has rolled back 22 regulations for every new one — 67 deregulatory actions, versus three new regulations. Often in conjunction with the Republican Congress, his administration has canceled several rules approved at the end of the President Barack Obama’s term, including a regulation on limiting mining debris in streams, a requirement that broadband providers obtain permission from customers to collect and use online information, and a ban on plastic bottles in national parks.

Administration officials said last month that, since January 2017, federal agencies have delayed, withdrawn or made inactive nearly 1,600 planned regulatory actions. Further rollbacks will affect financial services as well as energy and labor rules, among others.

And Mr. Trump has appointed outspoken critics of regulation to lead several federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

All of which, to the Times, are troubling.

Two years ago, “the authorities” dismissed reporters that gangs of Middle-Eastern and North-African migrants roamed the streets of German cities during the New Years celebrations, attacking women in an orgy of depredation Europe hadn’t seen since, well, Europeans were doing it to each other in the thirties and forties.

Dismissals aside, The Authorities” saw fit to staff “women only safe zones” in Berlin for this year’s New Year celebration in Berlin:

Organisers of Berlin’s New Year’s Eve celebrations are to set up a “safe zone” for women for the first time.

The new security measures planned for the Brandenburg Gate party come amid concerns about sexual assaults…Women who have been assaulted or feel harassed will be able to get support at a special “safety zone”, staffed by the German Red Cross, on Ebertstrasse…The city’s police have also issued advice to women, encouraging them to seek help if they feel threatened and to carry a small bag with no valuables.

The “zone” will be staffed by counselors and psychologists.

I’m thinking the Bundeswehr would be a better idea, but then The Authorities never ask me about these things.  Still, I’m not the only critic:

Critics say it does not tackle the perpetrators of sexual violence, while some others complain it is discriminatory.

A society that thinks giving refuge from rapists “discriminates” against…rapists may be too far gone to save.

On the other hand, Berlin is, in American terms, a hard-blue city.  Which brings us back to “perhaps too far gone to save”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

 

Lori Swanson is Attorney General of Minnesota.  She’s a busy little beaver:

She’s suing because Trump rolled back Obama’s last-minute internet regulations.

She’s suing because Trump rolled back Obama’s illegal health care payments.

She’s suing because Trump tried to keep terrorists out.

She’s suing because Trump threatens to end Obama’s illegal Dream Act for illegal aliens.

Aside from fielding a team of taxpayer-funded lawyers to litigate Democrat talking points, Ms. Swanson, what is the Attorney General’s job?

What would you say you do here?

Joe Doakes

The honest answer would be “Get some taxpayer-funded chanting points to flog on the stump during a gubernatorial run”.

Jon Tevlin – who replaced Nick Coleman on columnists row at the Strib a long time ago, and you’d have a hard time telling the difference unless you notice the incremental drop in entitled arrogance – is getting out of the column business:

In the past couple of years, however, I’ve gotten worn down by the weekly screeds and wishes that I lead a short, uncomfortable life. I began to dread the 3 a.m. calls and anonymous notes. After many weekends got ruined by hostile chatter on social media, my wife, Ellen, wisely suggested I either kill my column or Twitter. I survived the past few years, in fact, by removing social media from my phone.

I fear we are becoming a mean, arrogant country. In fact, at 6 a.m. the day after voters elected a bigoted, narcissistic megalomaniac,

(Yes, I did check to see if he was in that paragraph was intended as satire.  Apparnetly not.  Ed)

I wrote to my financial planner the following words: “I feel like I’ve wasted 30 years of my life. Get me out of here.”

Mr. Tevlin – if you have to ask, you probably did.  Sorry to say.

Paying attention to Twitter is a rookie flub, of course; the day when Twitter’s nonexistent business model finally sinks it will be a great one for public discourse.

But that leaves a vacancy on Columnists Row [1].   Who’ll fill it?

On the one hand, who cares?  It’s the Strib.

On the other?

Well, Bob Collins at MPR writes:

Ideally, the Strib would hang out a “white men need not apply” shingle since the newspaper’s lineup of voices is almost exclusively male, white, and comfortable.

(more…)

SCENE:  Mitch BERG steps out onto his porch to bring in his mail – and is startled to see Avery LIBRELLE looking over the envelopes. 

BERG:  Um, Avery?  What the…

LIBRELLE: Merg!  Venezuela is raising its minimum wage! If they can do it, why can’t we?

BERG:  The “increase” is meaningless.  Just like the ones in the US.

LIBRELLE:  They benefit those who need it most!  The poorest and most vulnerable!

BERG:   Let me ask you this, Avery.  Let’s say that I give you coupons, in payment for waving a sign around at a rally.  Those coupons can be used for one thing – to get mint tea at Whole Foods.

LIBRELLE:  Mmm. . Whole Foods.

BERG:  Right.  Now, I give you two coupons.   One for every four hours of sign waving.

LIBRELLE:  OK.

BERG: But Alida Messinger gives you four coupons.   That’s a coupon every two hours.

LIBRELLE:  I’ll work for Alida.

BERG: Right.  But Whole Foods only has one bag of mint tea left in the store.  At all.  How many coupons is it going to cost?

LIBRELLE:  I don’t get it.

BERG:   You have coupons good for tea.  But there is no tea.  So all your coupons are are pieces of paper given to you in exchange for a day of waving signs.

LIBRELLE:  The correct answer, then, is that my labor – sign-waving – is of intrinsic value, and should be rewarded with tea.

BERG:  Not to Whole Foods, it’s not.    The coupons are just pieces of paper exchangaed for slices of time you spent, er, working.  The sign didn’t get waved twice as much, or twice as hard, or… (looks at LIBRELLE) twice as effectively.  You just got more slips of paper.  But the tea is all gone.

LIBRELLE:  Right, but I still have three more coupons!

BERG:  Which are of no value.  Like the 40% “pay raise” in worthless money that the Venezuelan “poor” will get out of this “raise”.

LIBRELLE: But when they throw off the shackles of the international capistalists, they’ll all be rich!

BERG: Right.  Just like you’ll have three bags of tea when the truck finally arrives at Whole Foods.  Hey – why are you on my porch.

LIBRELLE:  Just checking for thoughtcrime.

(And SCENE)

I hate to indulge in Schadenfreud.

But I”m going to make a gleeful exception in this case; the Sexual Cultural Revolution has pulled its tumbrel up in front of MSNBC, and the Red Guards are looking for…

…uberliberal chanting point bot Chris Matthews:

 

Two former NBC producers independently alleged Matthews would rate the looks of his female guests on a scale and said Matthews was so abusive that staff joked about being battered women. The interviews in total paint Matthews as a tyrant liable to fly off the handle at the slightest mistake, who was eager to objectify women and made inappropriate sexual comments appear to be a matter of course for someone in his position.

Liberal Men with Power: “Rules Are For Mortals”.

Anyway – while I don’t like Schadenfreiud, watching Christ Matthews hoisted by the cultural petard he’s spent the last decade cheerleading for will be glorious.

Faster, please.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Interesting explanation of what’s wrong with Commerce Clause case-law precedent, written in a way that even I can understand the problem.

TL;dr version: the basic idea was sound but it’s been stretched out of shape to suit passing fads.

And that’s what’s wrong with this ruling by the appeals court in an Oregon baker case.  The court assumed the stretched-to-fit Commerce Clause interpretation was correct, so the anti-discrimination law protecting gays was valid, and therefore the baker was subject to that general law.  Having made the fatal assumption, the court was able to conclude the baker was not targeted for his religious beliefs.  Yes, but if the underlying assumption is wrong, then the baker’s First Amendment religious freedom should trump the federal government’s interest in regulating people who produce goods that could conceivably travel in interstate commerce.

I know, it’s complicated.  We all prefer simple soundbites.  But this is worth the effort to understand.  And Williamson does a good job helping with that.

Joe Doakes

The greatest achievement of the Establishment was convincing everyone that government is so complex, only government people could do it.