Join me from 1-3PM today on the NARN!

Today on the show:

• Let’s Make David Hogg a TV Star.
• US Senate candidate Jim Newberger

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
• FM107.5 in the West Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narnshow)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• 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!

It’s been my theory for a long time now that Federal law enforcement, not the military, have become the “Standing Army” that the Founding Fathers worried about.

Likewise – who needs a surveillance state, when you can can get over-wealthy, under-wise nerds to build it for you?

Where, a decade or so ago, the tech world’s products served to liberate us from the control of big institutions — I wrote a book on that! — now they seem designed to keep us under the thumb of big institutions. People used to start blogs to express themselves. Now they communicate via giant quasi-monopoly “social media” sites that mute and ban users over their politics. Your computer and phone used to be ways for you to learn more about the world than had ever been possible before in human history; now your devices have turned into tools for governments and corporations to keep tabs on you in ways that have never been possible before in human history.

And now we have the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Cambridge Analytica allegedly scraped data from Facebook users — apparently in accordance with Facebook rules at the time — but that has a lot of people hot and bothered. To be fair, if someone working for Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump had done this, there’d be less outrage in the press (in fact, when Obama’s campaign collected Facebook user information in 2012, the press mostly praised their ingenuity). But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an issue.

The whole thing is worth a read.

An international group of scientists have spent the past couple of decades working to distill the essence of Urban Progressive Privilege into one, single, blog post.

And it appears they’re very close to success.

To:  National Rifle Association
From:  Mitch Berg, devious peasant
Re:  David “Boss” Hogg

Dear NRA,

You need to pay any price, bear any burden, to get David Hogg a TV show.  Perhaps on Fox News.

You’ll have a supermajority in favor of the post-Heller interpretation of the Second Amendment for the next two generations.

With rhetoric like this:

“The pathetic f***ers that want to keep killing our children, they could have blood from children splattered all over their faces and they wouldn’t take action because they all still see those dollar signs,” Hogg said before describing the “exhaustion” he’s experienced as a result of his month-long stint as a political activist.

“At this point its like when your old-a** parent is like, ‘I don’t know how to send an iMessage’ and you’re like, ‘Ok give me the f***ing phone’ and you take it and you get it done in one second. Sadly, that’s what we have to do with our government because our parents don’t know how to use a f***ing democracy so we have to do it.”

Prime time cable network nightly show.  Now.

Maybe have John Paul Stevens for his first guest.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hmmm, so according to Mr. Justice Stevens, the Supreme Court is capable of getting a decision wrong, as it did in the case he dissented from. I wonder what other cases also were wrongly decided and therefore ought to be ignored by all right-thinking people?

Brown v. Board of Education – separate but equal?

Roe v. Wade – abortion on demand?

Stenberg v. Carhart – partial birth abortion?

Obergefell v. Hodges – gay marriage?

The retired justice may have done the nation a great service, opening the door to invite us to ignore the Supreme Court.

Joe Doakes

What he’s also done is shown us what he’d never have put in a legal opinion; why repeal the Second Amendment if it isn’t in fact a broad protection of citizens’ gun rights?

I never cared for Donald Trump – his public persona, at least.

And I certainly have never been a big fan of Roseanne Barr.

The debut of the reboot of Rosanne shows what I know, I guess.

Roseanne made a triumphant return Tuesday night, blowing past projections with a 5.2 adults 18-49 rating and 18.2 million total viewers for the debut of its revival, which drew 10% more viewers than the original series finale 21 years ago.

While nostalgia was expected to bring in eyeballs, no one predicted such a huge turnout on premiere night for the blue-collar family sitcom with a Donald Trump-supporting protagonist, especially among the younger demographic. But then, few predicted that Trump would become the Republican nominee and would win the presidential election when he first announced his candidacy.

But one thing that has become predictable is that liberal Hollywood and New York are shocked, shocked, that people in “flyover land” can take a break from fawning over Los Angeles and New York-centered, virtue-signal-clogged, impeccably progressive entertainment to partake in a little of (let’s be honest) the cultural Resistance:

But it worked, leaving many TV insiders shellshocked today by the magnitude of the revival’s ratings success that revealed the untapped potential of comedies that provide realistic portrayal of blue-collar America. What’s more, Roseanne did that while also making a social commentary, something rarely seen since All in the Family, Norman Lear’s 1970s classic that has long been rumored to get a reboot.

Y’know what’d be fun (and never, never get greenlit)?   A reboot of All in the Family with a crusty, intolerant patriarch who was a former hippie, longtime “progressive” activist and virtue-signaling bigot, whose daughter marries a hard-working conservative square-stater.

That would be a fun reboot.

Statistician from the vaunted FiveThirtyEight.org starts out as an anti-gunner…

…before realizing that the whole thing is a sham. 

There are l literally too many good parts to find just one pull quote – read the whole thing already – but this bit about the fact that complicated problems (crime, suicide) don’t respond to simplistic solutions:

Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Do your friends a favor and circulate it widely.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment.  It’s a relic of the 18^th century.

His proposal would make sense if humanity had been so fundamentally transformed by the passing years that we no longer needed a check on government power.  Looking around the world, or even at our own FBI, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Hey buddy, you know what else is a relic of the 18^th Century?  The Constitution itself.  Let’s dump that, too.  Make Donald Trump President-for-Life, abolish the concept of judicial review and expand Congress to 5,000 members that can form and dissolve coalitions at will, as other third world s***holes do.

Why not?  What could possibly go wrong?

Joe Doakes

With the modern left, today’s jokes are tomorrow’s crises.

I suppose we owe liberal retired SCOTUS judge John Paul Stevens a twisted thank you for accidentally telling the truth and calling for the outright repeal of the Second Amendment.

And for more than just exposing the manipulative lie.  As Glenn Reynolds notes, Stevens’ statement reveals something I suspect much of the left would rather have kept quiet:

1. Calls to repeal the Second Amendment are, despite whatever gyrations the callers go through, tacit admissions that the Second Amendment bars sweeping gun control.

2. Good luck with that, we’re more likely to see an amendment banning abortion pass than one repealing the Second Amendment.

3. The Second Amendment, according to the Framers (and some Supreme Court dictum) recognizes a natural right; repealing the amendment doesn’t extinguish the right.

4. Nothing could be better for the GOP in 2018 and 2020 races than for the Dems to make this an issue.

Further proof, as if any were needed among those paying attention, that there can be no compromise.  Ever.

SCENE:   A recording studio.  Mitch BERG is recording a voice-over for a video about Minnesota politics. 

BERG:  Democrat activist and former candidate Lindsey Port, whose allegations of sexual harassment against Al Franken led to his political demise…

PRODUCER:  (breaks in) Er, let’s cut there.

BERG:  Is everything OK?

PRODUCER:  Yeah – but Port didn’t actually file charges against Franken.  Franken was never alleged to have harassed her.

BERG:  Ah.  So – do it again?

PRODUCER:  Yep.  Take two!

BERG:  Lindsey Port, whose condemnation of Al Franken led to his resignation..

PRODUCER:  Er, cut.

BERG:  OK, what’s up?

PRODUCER:  Port didn’t condemn Franken.  She never even mentioned him.

BERG:  OK, so what happened?

PRODUCER:  Democrats think the fact that she talked about sexual harassment at all helped lead to Franken’s resignation.

BERG:  Really?

PRODUCER:  Really.

BERG:  That’s just crazy.

PRODUCER:  I know, right?

BERG:  Minnesota Democrats, right?

PRODUCER:  Yepper.  Take three?

BERG:  Lindsey Port was attacked by Minnesota Democrats for standing for something they claimed to believe in…

PRODUCER:  Perfect.  That’s a wrap.

And SCENE

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

 

Conservatives are throwing a tantrum.  Trump is a complete failure and we’re all doomed because he signed the horrible, no good, very bad budget bill.  Spending out of control!  Mountain of debt!  Economic collapse!  Doom!

Yeah, but where’d he get the budget bill?  From Congress, right?   And Republicans control the Congress, remember?   The Speaker of the House is Paul Ryan, R-Wisc and the Senate Majority Leader is Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky.  If those schmucks passed the bill and sent it to Trump for signature, how is it his fault that the country is doomed?  Why didn’t they exercise a little fiscal restraint?

Why is it Trump’s job to battle Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the Deep State, Democrats and, oh yeah, Republicans, too?

Joe Doakes

Plenty of blame to go around, in my book.

Silicon Valley has turned in to a de facto surveillance state, and is using its power to try to quash Conservative thought on the Internet.

The “#meToo” movement has harnessed the power of the Progressive Herd to co-opt what started as a good message (don’t abuse women!) into a policy bludgeon and a wedge used to shame, bully and censor dissent.

Conservative speech is actively squelched on campus, in many corporations, and in many community groups .

Big Left is relentlessly pimping a bunch of kids who, a month ago, were eating Tide Pods on Youtube, as the great unheard voices of wisdom on gun policy they clearly don’t understand in any way.

And the DC Establishment – Republican and Democrat both – have basically turned into the same, free-spending, debt-blind creature.

Sorry, libs;  the “resistance” in this country is entirely on the right.

Well, I guess it’s back to Uber.  Or cabs.

Channel 11 – which long since gave up any pretense of not being a DFL PR firm – notes that Remington, America’s oldest gun maker, has filed Chapter 11.

Now, people were talking about the likelihood, and even imminence, of Remington’s demise a solid year ago, as the Trump election caused panic-buying of guns (except in certain “progressive” circles) to slow down.

And before that, when people were panic-buying everything that looked like a gun, down to and including pop tarts chewed into gun shapes, people were pointing out that panic-buying was the only thing keeping Remington in business, so unsound was it even during the salad days of 2015-16.

So what did the Kare Bears have to say about it?

It also follows large student-led rallies across the United States calling for stricter gun laws after the mass shooting at Parkland High School in Florida in February.

For that matter, it also follows most of March Madness, the Oscars, and the Tide Pod controversy.  Each of them had as  much to do with Remington’s troubles as the Potemkin Protests.

Never thought I’d see the mainstream media cover this angle to the “spontaneous student demonstrations” against law-abiding gun owners; as I’ve noted, Big Left only protests when it’s kids who look like the children of NPR executives being murdered.

Kids – black and brown ones, anyway – being killed daily in Democrat-run hellholes like North Minneapolis, Dayton’s Bluff, Newark, Camden, Baltimore, Oakland, Stockton, Sacramento, Saint Louis, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland?  Not so much.

And someone finally covered that angle:

The pain was more than familiar to them, as was the loss. Not one student who spoke inside the school at 13^th and Brandywine had been spared the impact of gun violence. One by one they talked of friends whose funerals were reminders of how growing old can never be taken for granted in some of the city’s neighborhoods, of fathers gunned down before their kids even learned how to say the word Dad. “My whole life I been afraid of the world around me,” wrote Simone Akridge, 15.

So they, better than most, knew how the Florida students felt.

It’s the attention the Florida students have gotten that felt unfamiliar and unjust when so little attention is paid to the gun violence that touches so many children in cities like Philadelphia.

Ahem.

DO YOU F****NG THINK SO?

Note to every African-American – it is  unjust, because Big Left doesn’t care about you.  You are worth more to them poor, badly-educated, and bleeding in an emergency room or cold in the ground than you are alive, healthy and participating in the free market – but not when it comes to reminding the nation that the places Big Left controls are failed states run in a symbiotic relationship with criminal enterprises financed by a black market in drugs that leads to carnivorous gang activity…

…that kills your kids.

Those hamsters parading around DC?  They don’t see you, much less recognize your suffering.

Prog celebs spoke at the astroturf anti-gun “march” on Satuday…

…and then decamped in SUVs with armed guards:

It’s fascinating to watch the celebrities & students who just spoke about the evils of firearms to thousands of cheering people leave the rally under heavily armed guard with visible handguns protecting them as they retreat into private limousines pic.twitter.com/v6xdp0sdj3

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) March 24, 2018

A Pennsylvania school is planning to fight active shooters…

…with buckets of rocks:

“Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone. If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full students armed with rocks and they will be stoned,” said Dr. David Helsel, [Superintendent of the Blue Mountain school district in Pennsylvania – Ed.] testifying to the House Education Committee last week in Harrisburg.

“At one time I just had the idea of river stone, they’re the right size for hands, you can throw them very hard and they will create or cause pain, which can distract,” Helsel told WNEP.

Helsel says teachers, staff, and students were given active shooter training through a program known as ALICE which stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate and they routinely hold evacuation drills for active shooter simulations.

But if a teacher decides to lockdown a classroom, there are rocks in a five-gallon bucket kept in every classroom closet that students could throw if shooters get inside.

And the fact is, yes – with active shooters, any resistance is better than none.  It’s just crazy enough to…well, maybe be better than useless.

Speaking of better than useless – the district took some more concrete action:

Helsel says the district has no plans to arm teachers, however, Blue Mountain does have a maintenance employee who is trained and certified to work as school security and is armed.

People may laugh – but it makes more sense than any Twin Cities public school is going to.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Fiscal conservatives are furious that Trump didn’t veto the budget.  Some points to remember:

Trump is not a fiscal conservative.  The fiscal conservatives in the Republican primary were soundly defeated.

The party establishment – people like McConnell and Ryan and the Never-Trumpers – wanted Jeb!   The party establishment are not fiscal conservatives.

Heritage Foundation lists the ways Trump has accomplished more conservative goals in his first year than Ronaldus Magnus himself.  There is more to conservative government than budget.

Maybe that’s the problem?  Maybe we got used to the winning?  Maybe we were expecting Trump to defeat Democrats, Rockefeller Republicans, the Deep State, Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia; end trade deficits; balance the budget; put a chicken in every pot, a car in every garage and make sure every kid has 98% fewer cavities.

Remember the last near shut-down, six weeks ago?  Trump blamed Congress for failing to get its work done.  If Trump had vetoed this bill, the media would have blamed him for the government shut-down and Establishment Republicans in Congress would have washed their hands, saying “We sent him a budget, it’s his fault.”  If Trump signed the bill, the media would have blamed him for increasing the national debt and his fiscal conservative base would wash their hands of him, saying “He betrayed our principles.”

It’s not a betrayal.  He was never one of us.  An extra trillion or two of debt isn’t going to matter in the long run because the debt is unpayable and everybody knows it.  As long as Congress remains unwilling to embrace fiscal conservatism, it’s pointless for the President to waste political capital trying to save them from themselves.

Joe Doakes

My problem isn’t so much with Trump – well, not this problem – as it is with the horde of fair-weather conservatives who’ve tried to portray Trump as something other than he is.  And that’s after allowing for the fact that, as Heritage notes he’s accomplished a lot of conservative goals.

Doug Wardlow is running for Minnesota Attorney General .

David Hughes is running for the US House in the 7th Congressional District.

Find out more about the attempt to raise the age for “vaping” to 21, and other absurd attempts to criminalize e-cigarettes, at Tobacco Harm Reduction 4 Life.

Join me from 1-3PM today on the NARN!

Today on the show:

• Watching The Defectives
• Attorney General candidate Doug Wardlow
• CD7 GOP candidate David Hughes
• Kevin Price of Tobacco Harm Reduction 4 Life

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
• FM107.5 in the West Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narnshow)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• 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, and a GOP controlled Congress that hasn’t upheld Republican principles since the mid-nineties and seems to be herniating itself to out-Trump Trump in terms of giving goodies to populist bases, has just passed a budget bill that only Chuckles Schumer could love.

And he does.

Note to Trumpkins in the audience:  the Growth Fairy will only reduce the deficit if you stop spending money faster than you can create wealth.

On the other hand, if things continue as they are, Trump’s foreign policy may be on the brink of what used to be the unthinkable.

Everything you’ve been reading on Facebook was true.

Also “driverless cars”.