Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Why would the Ghetto in the Sky need a million dollar security upgrade (oh, it will be, by the time cost over-runs are included)?

How many hateful racists are living on the West Bank, making residents afraid to walk to the light rail station, vandalizing cars, and robbing tenants?   Why not round them up and throw them in the clink?

Key fob, cameras and a new fence which I assume includes a gate to enter and exit . . . is this a “gated community?”  Is that a good thing, now?

As far as Minneapolis voters know, it is…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The schools used to celebrate Christian holidays – Valentine, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas – but had to quit because of our culture of tolerance and respect.

But the schools do celebrate Hmong New Year and have pow-wows so it’s not a ban on all holidays, only Christian holidays.  Because, you know, tolerance and respect.

The school board, under fire from parents, agreed to take another look at the policy to see if it supports the diversity in our community.  My guess: every religion is allotted one holiday and the board will decide which one you get.  Looking forward to the Catholic holiday: Shrove Tuesday.

Joe Doakes

I’m just surprised they haven’t adopted (and I say this knowing that today’s sarcastic jape is tomorrow’s Saint Paul School Board policy) Festivus.

Illinois counties, sick of Chicago’s anti-gun idiocy, are declaring themselves “sanctuaries” from Blue Illinois’ gun laws:

At least five counties recently passed resolutions declaring themselves sanctuary counties for gun owners — a reference to so-called sanctuary cities such as Chicago that don’t cooperate with aspects of federal immigration enforcement.

The resolutions are meant to put the Democratic-controlled Legislature on notice that if it passes a host of gun bills, including new age restrictions for certain weapons, a bump stock ban and size limit for gun magazines, the counties might bar their employees from enforcing the new laws.

Go ahead, Rahm Emanuel.  Foray out into the countryside looking to confiscate guns.

You too, Ron Latz.

…for owning an AR15. 

Mathematically, it’s not even close.

And no, it’s not even remotely an idle intellectual exercise.

…condescendingly coos “nobody is coming for your guns”, grab them by the throat and force them to read this.

I authorize the use of extreme force to accomplish this.

And then never, ever even think about compromising with the orcs.

Uber and Lyft are cutting into the DC Metro subway system’s ridership; it’s cheaper than cabs and more convenient than the train, with the added advantage of not having to share a moving jail cell with transit customers.

And in Democrat America, there is no greater sin than beating government:

The plan would increase D.C.’s tax on ride-hailing services from 1 percent to 4.75 percent. Nearly quintupling the city’s tax on ride-hailing services will have the obvious effect of driving prices up for customers, punishing them for choosing a product more to their liking.

Yet that’s how D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and WMATA Board Chairman and D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) proposed to raise a portion of D.C.’s “share” — $178.5 million — of the $500 million in new subsidies Metro craves. The council and mayor already approved their annual $178.5 million contribution for Metro, but the taxes that will ultimately serve as its source must be authorized through the District’s budget process.It is no wonder that Metro would want to hammer the competition with tax hikes. Ride-hailing services have contributed to Metro’s drastic decline in ridership, albeit in a relatively small way. And customers increasingly turn to the apps when Metro leaves them stranded. In some cases, Metro service disruptions have increased demand for ride-hailing services by as much as 25 percent.

But the tax adds insult to injury: It makes taxpayers prop up a service they do not want while making it more expensive for them to use preferred alternatives. The logic is clear: If it moves better than Metro, tax it.

Prediction:  if bicycles start taking people off transit, you’ll see a tax on bikes and cement pylons on all the bike lanes.

The good news:  research shows that the old theory that “if you start leaning a language after age eight, you’ve got no chance of reaching fluency”.  (I started German at fourteen).

The bad news:  The new cuitoff is 18.

The older you get the more difficult it is to learn to speak French like a Parisian. But no one knows exactly what the cutoff point is—at what age it becomes harder, for instance, to pick up noun-verb agreements in a new language. In one of the largest linguistics studies ever conducted—a viral internet survey that drew two thirds of a million respondents—researchers from three Boston-based universities showed children are proficient at learning a second language up until the age of 18, roughly 10 years later than earlier estimates. But the study also showed that it is best to start by age 10 if you want to achieve the grammatical fluency of a native speaker.

To parse this problem, the research team, which included psychologist Steven Pinker, collected data on a person’s current age, language proficiency and time studying English. The investigators calculated they needed more than half a million people to make a fair estimate of when the “critical period” for achieving the highest levels of grammatical fluency ends. So they turned to the world’s greatest experimental subject pool: the internet.

So I guess starting Norwegian a year ago February isn’t going to get me there.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

First half property taxes are due May 15th. When I arrived at work this morning, customers were already lined up outside, waiting for the doors to open at 8 AM.

Retail stores open at midnight on Thanksgiving to serve customers. Banks are open on weekends to serve customers. Why aren’t we having extended hours when we know demand will be heavy?

Why doesn’t government have customer service?

Joe Doakes

It doesn’t need it.  While in the private sector “Service” means, well, service, in government it’s a euphemism for “showing the proles who’s boss”.

New York has a poverty rate well above the national average.  Crime is rising in NYC, as taxes scare away more and more  middle-class jobs.

So what does Andrew Cuomo want to do?

Build a navy to chase oil drillers away from the New York coast:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has apparently become unhinged by the primary challenge from the Left of “Sex and the City” co-star Cynthia Nixon. In an effort to get to the Left of Nixon, Cuomo has descended into a bizarre fantasy world.

To stop the Interior Department’s approval of offshore drilling, he vows “to commission a citizen fleet from throughout the state to go out and interfere with their federal [drilling] effort just as Winston Churchill did in Dunkirk…If you think I’m kidding, I’m not and I’m going to lead that citizen fleet.”

Odd that he opposes citizens owning guns to defend themselves – but he would authorize militancy against…business?

I’ve said for years that “progressivism” means never having to make sense”.  I’m starting to think it’s a positive handicap these days.

A study shows that global warming skeptics’ actual behavior is more environmentally responsible than Warmists’, and that enviro-weenies feel they are entitled to do a little polloting:

The study, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, followed more than 400 Americans for a full year. On seven occasions—roughly once every eight weeks—participants revealed their climate change beliefs, and their level of support for policies such as gasoline taxes and fuel economy standards.

They also noted how frequently they engaged in four environmentally friendly behaviors: recycling, using public transportation, buying “green” products, and using reusable shopping bags.

The researchers found participants broke down into three groups, which they labeled “skeptical,” “cautiously worried,” and “highly concerned.” While policy preferences of group members tracked with their beliefs, their behaviors largely did not: Skeptics reported using public transportation, buying eco-friendly products, and using reusable bags more often than those in the other two categories.

This pattern was found consistently through the year, leading the researchers to conclude that “belief in climate change does not appear to be a necessary or sufficient condition for pro-environmental behavior.”

It’s more important to signal virtue than to actually be virtuous.

When I hear city governments talking about hiring “resilience directors” – like Minneapolis and Saint Paul – the job usually involves…

…well, let’s let the City of Minneapolis explain it:

…expanding access to affordable housing, and the impact that would have on our other goals, including building an inclusive economy and strengthening police-community relations,

In other words, it’s a non-profit executive being paid for directly by the taxpayer.

Of course, when I originally heard the term “resiliency officer”, I thought they meant something like this – actually working to make their cities more, y’know, resilient:

In the wake of Harvey, Houston has become a prominent test case for resilient rebuilding. Last month, the Houston City Council approved regulations requiring new buildings in the 100- and 500-year floodplains be built 2 feet above ground level or above the projected water level of a 500-year flood. The city previously mandated a 1-foot height for homeowners in the 100-year floodplain, and a report earlier this year found that 84 percent of Harvey-damaged homes in the area’s floodplains could have been spared with the higher height standard.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who originally proposed the new height rule, also is seeking funding to build a third reservoir for the city, though such a project would take years to complete.This year’s hurricane season, which begins June 1, is forecast to be “slightly above average.”

Leave it to the DFL to pervert the term “Resilience” beyond all recognition.

What is it with New York attorneys-general?

I mean, anyone remember Elliot Spitzer?    The former AG, who became governor, turned out to be a pretty depraved kinda guy.

The latest, Eric Schneiderman, is apparently #ARealPieceOfWorkToo.   Four women are coming out to note that the AG is one sick puppy:

According to these notes, the former girlfriend told Selvaratnam that she had been in love with Schneiderman, but that in bed he had routinely slapped her hard across the ear and the face, as tears rolled down her cheeks. He also choked her and spat at her. Not all the abuse had taken place in a sexual context. She said that Schneiderman had once slapped her during an argument they’d had while getting dressed to go out. The blow left a handprint on her back; the next day, the spot still hurt. When the former girlfriend objected to this mistreatment, he told her that she simply wasn’t “liberated” enough. Just as Schneiderman had done with the other women, he had pushed her to drink with him and to set up a threesome, and he had belittled her work and appearance, saying in her case that she had fat legs and needed Botox.

And when the woman looked for help among (inevitably) her fellow Democrats?

Well, what do you think happened (emphasis added):

After the former girlfriend ended the relationship, she told several friends about the abuse. A number of them advised her to keep the story to herself, arguing that Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose. She described this response as heartbreaking. And when Schneiderman heard that she had turned against him, she said, he warned her that politics was a tough and personal business, and that she’d better be careful. She told Selvaratnam that she had taken this as a threat.

Everyone’s got virtues to signal:

The former girlfriend told Selvaratnam she found it “shameless” that Schneiderman was casting himself as a leading supporter of the #MeToo movement. She promised to support Selvaratnam if she spoke out, but she wasn’t sure that she could risk joining her. The former girlfriend told Selvaratnam she’d once been so afraid of Schneiderman that she’d written down an extensive account of the abuse, locked the document in a safe-deposit box, and given keys to two friends.

Democrats are nothing if not pragmatic.

Also cold.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Should the job of Chief Law Enforcement officer be a political appointee?  Because that’s what’s happening.

Voters in Ramsey County overwhelmingly cast their votes for the candidate endorsed by the Democrat Party.  As a practical matter, that means the election is decided once the party endorsement is given.  But the endorsement is awarded at the county convention which is attended by insiders and activists, the dedicated handful of true believers who hand-pick the candidates.  The decision isn’t made in a smoke-filled back room only because true-believers have banned smoking.  The fix is in.

How does that make Republicans feel about their prospects of being treated fairly by law enforcement?

About the same as the prospects from any other branch of Saint Paul government…

…if all my guns hadn’t fallen into Mille Lacs;  after a New York state comptroller sent aletter urging banks to treat gun-related transactions the same way they handle potential money-laundering and human-trafficking funding, Hornady responded:

Today, the State of New York did one of the most despicable acts ever perpetrated by any state by asking New York banks, financial institutions and insurance companies to stop doing business with the gun and ammo industry.

While it may not make a difference to New York, Hornady will not knowingly allow our ammunition to be sold to the State of NY or any NY agencies. Their actions are a blatant and disgusting abuse of office and we won’t be associated with a government that acts like that. They should be ashamed.

It’s coming high time for Real America to cut the orcs off in every possible way available.

…that science has given final victory to the forces of good.

By which I mean “people who put two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence”.

And indeed, there is some scientific evidence that good does indeed prevail over evil.

But those of us who truly practice Two Spaces never needed science.  We were right on a moral level all along.

81 shootings in one weekend in Chicago.

Chicago recorded a 22.3% reduction in murders and a 26.5% decline in shooting incidents for the first four months of 2018 compared with the same period in 2017, according to police department data.

It was also a cold winter with a very cold April at the end. I’m sure that’s got nothing whatsoever to do with it…

Gun control; when you want to kill off brown and blacks people without being called names.

What Linda Slocum was in Minnesota, this hamster is on the national level:

In a USA Today op-ed entitled “Ban assault weapons, buy them back, go after resisters,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., argued Thursday that prior proposals to ban assault weapons “would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.”

Swalwell proposes that the government should offer up to $1,000 for every weapon covered by a new ban, estimating that it would take $15 billion to buy back roughly 15 million weapons — and “criminally prosecute any who choose to defy [the buyback] by keeping their weapons.”

In the past, Democrats and gun safety groups have carefully resisted proposals that could be interpreted as “gun confiscation,” a concept gun rights groups have often invoked as part of a slippery slope argument against more modest proposals like universal background checks.

I’ll frame my response in the form of song – in this case, to the tune of the Beatles’ classic “Revolution”:

You don’t say that you want a civil war,

Well, you know,

You will get one anyway.

You don’t want people to have guns anymore,

Well, you know,

You want to take them all away.

But if you advocate going door to door,

There won’t be no Democrat party any more…

And don’t you know that that’d be…

all right!

That’d be…

all right!

I’ll just leave it right like that.

As Bill Whittle noted in a video I featured the other day, Kanye West’s apostasy on Donald Trump and the idea of leaving the Democrats’ narrative does something that was unthinkable not too long ago; given black people “permission” to leave that narrative behind.

And if you take this Pew poll seriously, they’re thinking about it.

Monica Showalter at AmThink (with emphasis added by me):

Black men’s approval for Donald Trump has absolutely doubled, according to a new Reuters poll, and his overall support among blacks has risen sharply.  This seismic shift just happens to coincide with rap superstar Kanye West’s break with the Hollywood left, coupled with his open admiration for Donald Trump.  According to the Daily Caller:”

A poll taken on April 22, 2018 had Trump’s approval rating among black men at 11 percent, while the same poll on April 29, 2018 pegged the approval rating at 22 percent.  It should be noted that Reuters only sampled slightly under 200 black males each week and slightly under 3,000 people overall…Trump experienced a similar jump in approval among black people overall, spiking from 8.9 percent on April 22 to 16.5 percent on April 29.

Kanye made his remarks on April 25, and much of the left panicked, calling him a sell-out, a traitor to his race, and other typical epithets black people who don’t toe the Democratic Party line have endured for years.  Kanye responded by doubling down, posting a picture of himself with an autographed MAGA cap, and calling Trump his “brother.”

Let’s focus on that bolded number – 16.5 percent.

As Whittle notes, if the Black vote for Democrats drops below 85%, they will never win another presidency; they’ll never control the Senate or the House; they’ll never confirm another SCOTUS justice.

So of course the Dems are attacking West.  And every other black, Latino, gay, and female conservative.

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

Today on the show:

• Some things never change.
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The other day, I linked to an excellent Strib piece about my friend Sarah Cade – a liberal, millennial, biracial, female “gun nut”.

It’s an interesting story, and one that has to be terrifying Big Left, inasmuch as millennials are more likely to be pro-gun than anti (even after a few months of  puffing up David “Boss” Hogg).

And who should sound off in his sclerotic, concussed manner than our old pal Nick “The Monkey” Coleman.

Coleman – former “big cheese”f and the only liberal columnist too dumb and expensive to be kept on at the Strib, ever – turned his rheumy, sheets-to-the-windy eye to the piece with the same even handed logic that made him every blogger’s favorite kick-toy from 2002 until…well, until he pretty much disappeared.

Well, thanks, Nick.  Your opinion is worth – well, pretty much the same as the last ten years worth of your career prospects, ever since you graduated from “Moronic Clown” to “Turbo Clown”.

Kanye “George W. Bush Hates Black People” West – has caused one of the more glorious meltdowns by revealing himself as an old white man.

Bill Whittle:

Money quote:

“If black support for Democrats drops below 85%, the Democrat party ceases to exist”.

Oh, and the money shot – one that surprised even me?

How can I tell it’s hitting home?

A liberal acquaintance referred to West as “the Justin Bieber of hip-hop”.

When they turn to name-calling…

Nine Burger Kings close in the metro and Saint Cloud.

Is there any wonder why?

I think not.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Chinese invented gunpowder, everybody knows that.  Traders spread firearms technology from China to the Middle East and eventually to Western Civilization from which the Founders were descended.

“Guns are now responsible for 75% of killings in America” claims the recent headline.  The implication is that banning guns will end killing.

Thoughts:

First, what was responsible for killings before guns were invented?  The West only obtained guns 500 years ago.  Were there no killings earlier?  None at the time of the Norman Conquest?  None during the Roman Empire?  None before Christ?  That doesn’t square with my recollection of history.

Second, if guns only cause 75% of the killings, what causes the other 25%?  Doesn’t the existence of non-gun killings undermine the claim that guns are responsible for killings?

What if the gun itself isn’t responsible for the killing, what if some human being is responsible for the killing and the gun is merely the tool he used?  After all, Cain didn’t have a gun but Able is just as dead.  What if we’re confusing “cause” for “effect” and thereby placing responsibility for the killing on the wrong thing?

What if?

Leftist adulation for Ruth Bader Ginsburg grows to Tulip Fever proportions:

Amy Wallace, a 34-year-old attorney in Minneapolis, got a Rosie the Riveter-inspired RBG sleeve last year, which had a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it cameo in the new film.

“Justice Ginsburg is my only personal hero, and as an atheist, my adoration of her is the closest thing I get to personal worship,” she told Refinery29. “The secular iconography of Rosie the Riveter mashed up with Justice Ginsburg seemed like a perfect articulation of the way I feel about her.” The idea for it came after seeing someone else’s tattoo of Our Lady of Guadalupe with a modern, feminist twist (A.K.A. standing inside a vulva instead of surrounded by a religious halo).

Let’s give credit where credit is due – the Strib’s Richard Chin did an excellent piece on my good friend Sarah Cade yesterday.

Cade is described as a  “young, biracial and passionately liberal…gun nut” – and is a great face for the changing population of shooters and 2nd Amendment activists in Minnesota.

Cade, a millennial from Maplewood, didn’t come from a hunting family or grow up around guns. In fact, she’s been a gun owner for only about five years. Still, she’s trying to be a new, nonthreatening face for gun rights advocacy in Minnesota.

Sarah Cade with the AR-15 platform gun she customized herself.
She writes pro-gun op-ed articles and testifies at legislative hearings. She lobbies her legislator, gets quoted in newspaper articles and interviewed on podcasts. She debates people online, speaks at public forums and appears in gun rights advocacy videos.

In many ways, she defies the stereotype of a Second Amendment crusader.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Of course, I think the notion that the opinions and values of middle-aged white guys are so devalued these days – we’ve done a lot of good for society – but I think it’s important that defending the 2nd Amendment become a priority for people other than, well, us.