New Yorker columnist applies the PC test to the new Chik-Fil-A outlets in New Orc City.

Ben Shapiro:

But the mere whiff of Jesus means that New York must cast out Chick-fil-A like a leper, and that those who refuse to do so have succumbed to the blasphemous entreaties of the Midianites. “When a location opened in a Queens mall, in 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a boycott. No such controversy greeted the opening of this newest outpost. Chick-fil-A’s success here is a marketing coup. Its expansion raises questions about what we expect from our fast food, and to what extent a corporation can join a community,” Piepenring rants.

And insultingly, Chick-fil-A seeks to build community, using the word in its marketing, he complains. “This emphasis on community, especially in the misguided nod to 9/11, suggests an ulterior motive. The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words ‘to glorify God,’ and that proselytism thrums below the surface of the Fulton Street restaurant, which has the ersatz homespun ambiance of a megachurch.”

If you want to see proof positive of the irreconcilability of the differences between Blue State “elites” and actual humans, read the whole thing.

But you probably needn’t go that far.

To: Hollywood, the major media, the opinion-making classes, the educational/industrial complex
From:  Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant.
Re:   Want to do some good?

Millennials know nothing about the Holocaust:

Twenty-two percent of millennials in the poll said they haven’t heard of the Holocaust or are not sure whether they’ve heard of it — twice the percentage of U.S. adults as a whole who said the same.

The study, conducted by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, interviewed 1,350 American adults in February and recruited by telephone and an online non-probability sample.

Asked to identify what Auschwitz is, 41 percent of respondents and 66 percent of millennials could not come up with a correct response identifying it as a concentration camp or extermination camp. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says that at least 1.3 million people were deported to the camp, run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, from 1940 to 1945, and 1.1 million of them were killed. It was the largest concentration camp among many built by the Nazis during their campaign to wipe out the Jews and other groups.

But lest you think its just malfeasance and sloth:

Respondents indicated much more awareness of modern-day bias against Jews, with 68 percent saying anti-Semitism is present in America today, and 51 percent saying there are “many” or “a great deal of” neo-Nazis in the United States today.

So a majority “know” a non-existent factoid that is entirely a figment of propaganda intended to gull the hysterical, but a tiny fraction know why those people might conceivably matter.

So, media and entertainment industries – perhaps we could make with a  little of the “never again” in between comic book remakes and endless FBI “investigations”?

Just a suggestion.

That is all.

Dick’s Sporting Goods has earned the ire of 2nd Amendment human rights activists, over and over.

In 2013, they publicly announced they were out of the “assault weapon” business after the Newtown shooting (where a deranged boy killed his mother to get her AR15).

They apparently slowly retrenched, because they publicly did it again after the Parkland shooting.

Nothing like conviction.

But now, they want to take it to the next level…

…of virtue-signaling stupidity:

After announcing policies that most gun owners saw as alienating, Dick’s Sporting Goods said it will go one step further and destroy its remaining inventory of firearms dubbed “assault weapons.”

A spokeswoman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the remaining inventory at the retailer’s Field & Streams stores will be destroyed and then recycled.

“We are in the process of destroying all firearms and accessories that are no longer for sale as a result of our February 28th policy change,” she said. “We are destroying the firearms in accordance with federal guidelines and regulations.”

I’m sure the shareholders will be thrilled.

It’s time to start calling the current wave of lilywhite, urban-progressive-privilege-sotted gun mania what it is.

Bigotry.

As Jon Caldara at the D-Post does:

Boulder City Council is on the verge of passing a sweeping anti-gun ordinance, laughably called an assault weapons ban. So loosely written, this ordinance would ban the first gun I ever owned, a simple .22 caliber rifle, the same type most farm boys get on their twelfth birthday. Its sin? It can be fitted with a pistol-grip or a folding stock.

I understand the fear and bigotry coming from City Council. I used to be like that myself. In younger days I was a proud member of Handgun Control Inc., now called the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence…

The Anti-Defamation League and The Gay and Lesbian Fund sponsors a program plastered throughout Boulder schools call “No Place For Hate.” They ask students to make a resolution of respect: “I will seek to gain understanding of those who are different from myself.”

But Boulder’s council has done nothing to understand the culture and values of gun owners and little to understand much more than the cosmetic aspects of guns.

Boulder has become a place for hate.

Read the whole thing.

And then go forth and call a spade a spade.

A university student is under investigation for blowing the whistle on a hack “professor” who believes conservative students are “evil” – her words – and is acting on the belief:

Siena College student Zack Butler is currently under investigation for allegedly violating the school’s code of conduct and could face punishments as severe as expulsion.

His crime? Posting copies of an email sent March 20 by philosophy professor Jennifer McErlean to an alumnus expressing her resentment toward conservative students and a free speech event they’re set to host next week, a Turning Point USA conference called “Let Freedom Ring” that will feature a variety of prominent conservative movers and shakers.

In the email, McErlean decried conservative students as “evil,” noting she quit a civil discourse committee because working with conservative students was making her “miserable,” according to a copy of the email obtained by The College Fix.

She also let the alumnus know that her quitting this committee has freed her up to protest the “Let Freedom Ring” event.

Sounds like she could fit in at any college or university in the Twin Cities.

However, Mr. Butler is my hero for the day:

Two days after the email was sent, Butler and a friend posted around 600 copies of the email around campus.

“As a conservative student, I was bothered not only by the email but also the response, or lack there of, by the administration and felt something had to be done,” Butler said in a Facebook post. He added their goal wasn’t to offend anyone or to gain attention, but simply to “keep the dialogue going.”

Mr. Butler still has that idealism that comes with youth.

Of course, Big Left wants no “dialogue” – on academia any more than on guns, abortion, the welfare state, political correctness, or anything else.  They want a monologue; they talk, and you sit, handcuffed to the chair, and listen.  Gagged, if need be.

SCENE:  The Metropolitan Council, meeting at their downtown office.  It is 1996.  

Members Rick Blickson, Sandra Tostenson, Mark Skjellerud, Andy Blotzer and Audrey Vreeland are in committee meeting with Edgar Folkenflick and Eliza Vanderprimp, representatives from “Transit Works”, a consulting company pushing rail mass transit with metro areas.  

BLICKSON:  We are meeting here today to discuss “Transit Works” proposal that the Twin Cities spend $700 million on a light rail line.  Any questions or comments for the consultants?

TOSTENSON:   Yes.  So just to make sure – the proposed train would be able to run better than buses in the sort of inclement or icy weather that’s so common around here?

FOLKENFLICK:  No – light rail trains are no more robust in their handling in snow and ice than a bus, and may in fact me more vulnerable to route blockage in snowy conditions than buses.

SKJELLERUD: OK.  But the train is more reliable in general?  It can react to stoppages and other irregularities better than buses?

FOLKENFLICK:  That’s incorrect.  While a bus can merely detour around an obstacle, a train is entirely at the mercy of whatever is on the track.

BLOTZER: Er…OK.  But in terms of major incidents…

FOLKENFLICK:  …any major incident will require hours to clear, and enough heavy equipment to widen the Panama Canal, maneuvering on busy city streets, thus taking hours to clear any mishaps.

VREELAND:  So…er, Mr. Folkenflick, Ms. Vanderprimp – why would anyone buy something so seemingly ill-conceived?

VANDERPRIMP:  New York.  Boston.  San Franciso.  Washington DC…

BLICKSON:  We’ll take two!

And SCENE

Laura Ingraham’s ratings at their highest point ever.

To the Jesse Ferguson – former campaing spokesbot for the Smartest Woman Ever – the Syria bombing is the fault of…

…Susan Sarandon:

Former Hillary Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson blamed actress and political activist Susan Sarandon for Friday night’s strike on Syria.

Sarandon, who ultimately supported Jill Stein for president in 2016, was roundly criticized for helping “throw the election to Trump.” Clinton herself addressed the possibility in her book, “What Happened.”

And when I say “eat their own”, I mean “treat their own apostates like they treat their conservative enemies, when they are ordered to”:

Sarandon, who revealed that she had faced threats of death and rape from Clinton supporters following the 2016 election, said in a 2017 interview that she believed America would already be at war if Clinton had won the election. “I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president]. It wouldn’t be much smoother. Look what happened under Obama that we didn’t notice.”

I wouldn’t doubt it.

What is this world coming to, that I’m feeling sympathy for Susan Sarandon, who would no doubt cheer if people like me were eaten by wild dogs (after we’re disarmed)?

The Atlantic hired, and then fired, Kevin Williamson – perhaps America’s best political journalist, and one of the best interviewees I’ve ever had in a decade and a half of doing the NARN.

Andrew McCarthy has thoughts on the subject.

My thoughts?

I’ve observed for years that one of the greatest side-effects of Urban Progressive Privilege is a complete inability to “debate” anyone who’s not part of their club – because they have no concept of cognitive dissonance when it comes to politics or any area of life touched by politics (and politics touches every area of their life.

Differ with an blind date’s politics?  Ghost ’em!

Differ with a fellow student’s politics?  Shame them!

Disagree with a co-workers’s politics?  Slander, ostracize and try to destroy them!

The CD8 DFL had a very long convention on Saturday,  After ten ballots, everyone promised to go to the primary.

Nothing especially unusual htere.

The unusual thing?  The DFL trucked a bunch of Latino activists from the Twin Cities to canvass for the Metro DFL’s chosen candidate.

Phifer, a college professor who previously worked at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, initially entered the race to challenge incumbent DFL Rep. Rick Nolan.

When Nolan announced his retirement in February, Phifer had the advantage of a five-month head start over the four candidates who jumped into the race afterward. It showed on Saturday: her blue-shirted supporters were a vocal presence in the convention hall, and she got the most votes of any candidate on each of the 10 ballots.

But Phifer’s background as an ICE employee revealed a deep rift on immigration: members of the Latino DFL Caucus protested her candidacy and urged delegates to reject her in a speech from the floor, one of the convention’s most dramatic moments.

Which leads us to the sort of unintended comedy that makes me love the Metro DFL so much.  Alondra “The Brain” Cano, tweeting (what else) about a Duluth DFLer’s response to the fllood of – I”ll emphasize this – non-CD8 ringers – with the sort of club-footed fake victimization that’s become her trademark:

Don’t you just love it when elected members of a one-party autarchy with boundless political privilege and power unimaginable to regular schnooks start whining at other people with similar Urban Progressive Privilege about what victims they are?

R. Lee Ermey – “Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann” from the movie Full Metal Jacket, and a former USMC gunnery sergeant in real life – has passed away.

Maybe.

Ermey’s been the subject of numerous  internet death hoaxes – but unless someone hacked his official Facebook page, this one may be legit.

When Representative Lewis (Lord, I love saying that) is right, he’s right.

And on the bombings in Syria – he’s right:

Whether Kosovo, Libya or now Syria, for far too long Presidents of both parties have acted unilaterally (perhaps for the best of intentions) in taking military action without congressional approval. Outdated authorizations (AUMFs) are no substitute for the clear Constitution requirement that Congress must, at the least, be consulted barring imminent danger to the homeland. Indeed, it is Congress who has the authority and responsibility to debate and vote on what we want to provide any administration in such affairs. Matters of war and peace are too important for politics.

When President Obama bombed Libya, Republicans were rightly outraged. Roscoe Bartlett, serving on the Armed Services Committee, even called the decision an ‘affront to our Constitution.’ That was true then as it is today—especially when so many of the facts and circumstances on the ground have yet to be investigated. The sad truth is America cannot prevent or remedy every tragedy around the world. Nor can we expend our precious blood and treasure unless it is in direct interest of national security.

Finally, let me add that it remains more than a bit troubling that so many who call for intervention seeking to protect the borders of foreign nations seem so cavalier about our own.

I think the Syria bombing may well be Trump’s first serious foreign-policy misstep, and possible his first demonstrable breach of the law.

…how “dropping bombs on countries that didn’t attack us first” is suddenly a bad thing again after all these years?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

England has comprehensive gun control, the kind Democrats only fantasize about.  London has a higher murder rate than New York City.  Not with guns, with knives.  The Mayor of London calls for knife control.  When that fails to solve the problem, I expect it will be club control, lead pipe control, steel-toed-work-boot control and eventually, clenched fist control.
London police already have started on construction tool control:
How long until the average Briton wonders whether the problem is the tool, or the user?
Since they are reverting to Middle Ages rules and customs, including the barbarian hordes invading and attempting to conquer by jihad and systematic rape which the police from Rochdale to Rotherham are too politically correct to prevent, it’s time to propose Middle Ages solutions: all weapons must be peace bonded inside the city limits.  Nobles and their retainers will be allowed to carry all normal weapons everywhere except in the presence of the Lord High Mayor, but they must peace bond their swords, guns, battle axes, and lances with a bright ribbon to signify that they will not strike first.  Of course, in the Middle Ages the same rules would apply to the invading hordes, so that will be a welcome change to the law abiding public.  The penalty for violating the bond is death, sure and swift, a consequence the invaders remember from the lands they left.
Time to be the strong horse.
Joe Doakes

For the second time in 14 years, the NARN is taking a Saturday off due to weather.

We’ll be running a “best of” today.

Fortunately, both of our guests this week – Eight District GOP Congressional candidate Pete Stauber, and Ed Morrissey – will be on next week.

Tune in, and stay warm!

Proponents of breaking California into three states have enough signatures to get a vote:

Tim Draper, who made his money through Hotmail and Skype, has gathered 600,000 signatures supporting the change – way above the 364,000 needed.

Those who want to break up California believe it would boost educational standards and reduce the political power of Sacramento, the state’s capital.

I don’t know about you, but my fingers are crossed.

We know gun control isn’t about safety.

First, Britain – awash in the same sort of virtue-signaling panic that befalls Big Left regularly – banned guns after the Dunblane Massacre.

After a couple decades of increases, London’s murder rate passed up New York’s for the first time.

Ever.

If you read this blog, you already know what the Brits are “doing” about it.

Last week, TheBlaze reported the number of murders in London, a traditionally safe city, surpassed the number of murders in New York City in February and March for the first time in modern history. The murders were mostly carried out in stabbing attacks with knives.

Now, London Mayor Sadiq Khan is taking action — by implementing knife control.

What is Khan doing?
In response to the spike in crime, Khan deployed over 300 additional London police officers to the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife. In the U.S., such policies are very controversial and possibly violate the Fourth Amendment, but in England, police are able to stop and search anyone they suspect is carrying a knife.

The results?  The same sort of security theater that happens every time government tries to treat not the disease, not even the symptoms, but the tools involved in the symptoms (and, in the UK’s case, the very act of defending yourself from the disease). It’s like treating flu by banning vomit.

And when I say “security theater”, I’m not speaking imprecisely at all:

So after decades of dictatorial posturing, perhaps the number of knives available to criminals will drop (as Britons gnaw on food they can’t cut, or start buying their awful British food pre-cut for them).  That‘ll solve crime right?

Nonsense.  Criminals will start taping nails onto long sticks, or carrying socks full of five pence pieces.  And when the UK government gans nails and coins, they’ll switch to pointed sticks.  And when pointed sticks are finally off the streets, it’ll be rocks and pavers and fists and feet.

Britian keeps this “mind”-set up, they’ll all be legless, armless, immobile consumption machines in a few centuries.

Except the criminals.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“ . . . new employees are seen as crucial to ensure ample funding for the wave of retiring baby boomers . . . .”

This is the exact definition of Ponzi Scheme but the Post doesn’t seem to notice that the union’s position is absurd and in any other context, illegal.

Read the whole thing.

This is what people with half a brain are up against: people with less than half a brain.

Glenn Reynolds on the institutional deflection after Parkland:

Despite receiving a warning directly from the Russian government, the FBI failed to stop the Tsarnaev brothers from staging the Boston Marathon bombing. Despite having plenty of resources, the Charlottesville police failed to stop a car attack that left a woman dead. The FBI interviewed Omar Mateen, the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooter, and considered criminally investigating him. They didn’t — possibly because his father was an FBI informant.

The FBI also missed numerous “red flags” before the San Bernardino shooting. And despite having lots of warning, the FBI, the Broward County schools and the Broward Sheriff’s Department under Sheriff Scott Israel all failed to stop Nikolas Cruz from shooting up a high school.

And yet these repeated failures — among others — keep getting swept under the rug as we look for “solutions” to the problem of violence. No doubt Israel and the others whose incompetence made it possible for Cruz to kill his classmates were relieved to see our national discourse veer into questions of whether Laura Ingraham should lose sponsors for mocking David Hogg’s college-admissions failures, instead of their own failures to do their jobs.

Deflecting to “gun control” certainly takes heat off of the likes of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and the carnage on his watch, and that of his Democrat predecessor Bill “Rifle Up Your Butt” Daley.

Mayors of failed cities do a lot of deflecting, don’t they?

NPR’s exhaustive investigation has turned up – with the complete cooperation of the NRA – a link to the Russians!

$2,500 worth.

The National Rifle Association has accepted contributions from about 23 Russians, or Americans living in Russia, since 2015, the gun rights group acknowledged to Congress.

The NRA said in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., unveiled on Wednesday, that the sum it received from those people was just over $2,500 and most of that was “routine payments” for membership dues or magazine subscriptions.

That’s less than one day of Chelsea Clinton’s “salary” when she was an NBC “correspondent”.

Watch for this to become the biggest “scandal” per dollar transacted in American history…

…if the establishment media can help it.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

When I was in college, my PoliSci pro confidently assured me that land reforms in Rhodesia would lead to utopia.  13 years ago, Blacks living in Zimbabwe admitted it didn’t work out as planned, and were wishing they had White Men in charge again.

Today, Blacks in South Africa are dead-set on repeating their neighbor’s mistakes.

Whatever we do, America must NOT send any aid.  That would be imperialist aggression.  It would be interfering in their chosen culture.  Zimbabwean Blacks wanted out from under the White Man’s thumb, wanted to be independent and stand on their own.  They insisted they were ready to manage their own affairs, learn from their mistakes.  Who are we to judge the results?

Similarly, if South African Blacks want to take back their country and run it themselves – without any outside interference – then we ought to be fully supportive.  Go right ahead.  You’re on your own.

As for the White farmers who are losing their lands, well, I hear it’s nice in Australia.  Might want to move before the necklacing begins.

Joe Doakes

I’m tempted to say the same thing whenever I heard about “Democratically”-elected governments destroying their own nations – see Venezuela and Bolivia along with Zimbabwe and South Africa.

We warned you – but you did it anyway.  Fix it yourselves.  Still feel good, sticking it to the Yanqui?

As I’ve pointed out in the past, few things annoy me more than the “people” who, when people respond with “thoughts and prayers” after some sort of tragedy or another, bellow “F**K YOUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS – WE’VE GOT TO DOOOOO SOMETHING!”, where “SOMETHING” invariably means “some emotion-driven knee-jerk response that will do nothing to deal with the problem, but will serve Big Let’s agenda nicely”.

So it’s interesting to note that we, in fact, are right:

Prayer might make people feel better, but, as some critics have argued, does it direct their attention away from problems that need to be addressed? In other words, is prayer a distraction? Recent behavioral science experiments suggest that it isn’t, that prayer helps people focus their attention. In one study, research participants with varying levels of religiosity completed cognitive tasks that assess attention. After finishing these tasks, they were instructed to bring to mind one concern in their lives. One group of participants was then asked to spend ten minutes praying about that concern. Another group was asked to spend ten minutes thinking about that concern. A final group spent that time working on a puzzle. Then they repeated the attention tasks. Researchers looked for changes in their performance and found that among highly religious individuals, praying about a life concern, compared with thinking about it or being distracted with a puzzle, improved cognitive performance. No differences were observed among the less religious. These findings are consistent with the researchers’ proposal that prayer frees up cognitive resources needed to focus on mental tasks by reducing the extent to which people are distracted by negative emotions.

I’ve found that metaphysics and theology aside, it helps put emotional turbulence in context and free up mental resources for the rational thought actually needed after a crisis.

Which is another weapon Big Left thinks only the government really needs…

An App I’m Working On

There are times I wonder if this isn’t the right answer.

UPDATE:  Clearly, I wrote this before looking at the map.  While the article makes sense, clearly the author thinks all northerners look alike.  The idea of the Dakotas, Montana and Idaho siding with New England is as risible as Rebecca Otto’s candidacy.

My two cents?   It’s not just two nations (Dems aren’t the only ones fighting the last war).  Short of dividing up by counties (which would be much more politically accurate), I could see several options:

• Two nations .- with the West Coat, New England, the Mid-Atlantic and Chicago existing as an archipelago of liunacy
• Three nations – a Japan and China-aligned West Coast, a New England/Mid-Atlantic nation that’d join the EU, and the rest of the country.
• Four nations:  the above, with the former confederacy (less Texas, perhaps) forming a socially-conservative nation and the remainder a libertarian-conservative agricultural and petroleum based nation.

But again, it’s all hypothetical.

Or is it?

…is being able to blame “privilege” for every transgression, real or perceived, for which one’s facts, logic or intellect doesn’t equip one to respond.

A friend of the blog writes:

I guess we uppity peasants got put in our places. If one complains, uprises against the government, it is only because of privilegeand wealth. We are instead to sit passively, for the good of all, and let organized city services have their way with us. After all, they apparently make better choices for us then we can make ourselves.

Really. And here I thought it was our right to protest when government over stepped into our lives. I guess I will remind people of this when the next Black Lives Matter protest happens over an incident with an organized city service.

As we noted when we first defined Urban Progressive Privilege, another of its great privileges is not having people calling you on inconsistencies.

…doesn’t possess a theoretical model, nor does science have the instrumentation, nor can engineering not develop the instrumentation, nor indeed can logic, philosophy or even theology measure the sheer depth of my disdain for everyone and everything involved in this article.