Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If the Palestinians heed Saudi Arabian advice to cut a deal with Israel, President Obama should get another Nobel Peace Prize.

You will recall that Obama and his Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, proclaimed their intention to raise gas prices to European levels to compel Americans to drive less and thereby emit less carbon dioxide, which would save the planet from global warming.  To force gas prices higher, the President refused to issue permits for oil companies to extract oil from federal lands using conventional drilling methods.

In response, oil companies were forced to develop a new technology – fracking – to extract oil from lands where they already had permits.  Extracting that oil caused a glut in the oil market, which brought down oil prices worldwide, which has cut into the profits of Middle East oil-producing nations, who no longer can afford to subsidize Palestinians to terrorize Israel.  Thus, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently told Palestinians to accept the United States’ peace proposal because Palestine is not a top priority for Saudi Arabia: it’s focused on Iran.

Yes, yes, the Trump Administration will try to tell you that Jared Kushner made it happen and Trump will try to claim credit for himself, but it’s immediately obvious that Barak Obama did not accidentally bring about the exact opposite result he intended; rather, he achieved his secretly intended outcome by implementing the wise policies he carefully crafted a decade ago.

It’s high time President Obama got an award for the content of his character rather than the color of his skin.

Just remember – today’s conservative parody is tomorrow’s CNN/New Yorker headline.

A longtime friend of the blog writes:

This from MPR – a loving puff piece about the wonderfulness that Ms Bender plans for Mpls (and coming soon to a neighborhood near you)
check out her credentials (mid article) she is committed to solving 21st century problems with 19th century city planning.

When looking at politics in Minneapolis (and, soon, Saint Paul), remember – Betsy Hodges is no longer mayor because she wasn’t far enough to the left for the city’s dominant strain of the DFL.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hornady has the right idea.

 

“We recently noted the thinly-veiled threat that New York State comptroller Thomas J. DiNapoli made when he sent a friendly letter to most of the nation’s largest financial institutions. In it, he hinted — wink, wink — that it could be bad for their business if they continue to facilitate transactions that involve firearms an

And they should expand the program to cover cops and private security firms who protect these guys, too.

 

https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/shock-banks-credit-card-cos-to-start-monitoring-gun-purchases

 

as well as these guys and all their members:

The prior week, the American Federation of Teachers announced it would cut ties with Wells Fargo over what it said was the bank’s failure to discuss with the union its relationship with the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers.”

Might be time for firearms manufacturers to take a page out of Microsoft’s book.  You don’t own that firearm.  You have a license to use that firearm.   We can revoke the license if you engage in conduct prejudicial to the firearms industry.  You must turn in the firearm and we’ll reimburse you for the depreciated value of it.  Find someone else to sell you a gun.

Joe Doakes

It’s time for the good guys to make it hurt for the bad guys.

I took a very very rare Saturday off from the NARN (with a pre-recorded show) to attend the big gun rights rally last weekend.

The rally – co-sponsored by the MN Gun Owners’ Caucus, the NRA and the RNC – drew around 3,000 people.  The Strib, sure as can be, called it “hundreds”; it was just like 2004 all over again.

There was a throng of great speakers – but I didn’t get to do much listening.  I was a zone captain, leading a group of marshals that were watching out for ringers and troublemakers in the area in front of the stage.  It was packed, of course – I logged 10,000 steps in the 2.5 hours I was going back and forth across the area.   The only “trouble”…well, we’ll come back to that.

The event was a huge success – and needs to be even bigger, if we’re going to show the legislature, the media, and Big Left who is boss.  But the human rights crew were the big winners.

The biggest losers?  The media – who largely beclowned themselves:

• Channels 4 and 5 spent more time interviewing the four criminal-safety advocates who held a “picnic” 100 hards away from the group than they spent interviewing actual attendees.
• Channel 9’s coverage focused on the one, single, solitary Confederate flag that showed up, as well as interviewing the least well-spoken people they could find.  Their slant was nauseating, and their reporter  – who was visibly upset by being around gun owners – was unforgiveable.  Channel 9 may be an even bigger DFL PR firm than Channel 11.
• Minnesota Public Radio’s coverage was relatively fair on the surface – but word surfaced that they’re working on a story trying to tie gun rights groups to “racism”.  And I’m sure you could find racists there – heck, they’re everywhere, including among the public radio audience.

One (?) anti-gunner tweeted out a predictable “It looks like a lot of old white men”.   Which was an intetersting non-observation observation; two of the speakers were black, two were women, one was a Hawaiian native.  The crows was as white as, well, Minnesota at large (and as the critic) – but I saw black, Latino, native, Pacific islander, and many Asian attendees; the rally was vastly more racially diverse than any “Protect” MN or Moms Want Action meeting.

Feel the diversity!

Not to mention reps from the Pink Pistols – the gay self-defense group.

And the most striking thing I noticed?

Most gun rallies I’ve been to have in fact been overwhelmingly male – because shooters are overwhelmingly male.

But this year, for the first time, I noticed women coming to the event.  They streamed in in twos and threes and in small groups of women (along with countless others who came apparently with their significant others), and largely kept a low profile – fewer t-shits and flags, but lots of listening and participation and – the important part – signing up with the MNGOC and the NRA.

Big Left is terrified of groups like this – because they know that:

1. 3,000 of the good guys has more political effect than 30,000 of their people – because the good guys come to play for keeps.  Most lefty marchers are out to see and be seen and skip school and hit on babes and in quite a few cases earn a few bucks.  The shooters?  They’re in it for freedom.  There’s no contest.
2. Notwithstanding the Parkland students’ carefully coiffed media presence, younger people are pro-gun.  We saw that at the rally, too – lots of young people, male and female.  The next generation is promising.

Of course, there’s a way to go.  If you’re a shooter, you need to stand up and be heard – and never stop it.  The orcs are doing whatever they can to sap your freedom; they need to be smacked down every session, every hearing, every bill, every day.

Saturday was a good start.

Millennials are drifting to the right, according to that noted conservative tool Reuters:

The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall. And they increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy.

Although nearly two of three young voters polled said they do not like Republican President Donald Trump, their distaste for him does not necessarily extend to all Republicans or translate directly into votes for Democratic congressional candidates.

Will it continue? We’ll see.

I think there’s a decent chance. Part of it is the inevitable rightward drift of adulthood.

And part of it?

Work with me, here.

“Millennials” grew up during the Great Recession. And one of the iconic bits of escapism during that time has been the series The Walking Dead – a show whose moral is “the world is not a safe space; merit is survival.”

I don’t want to overplay a Hollywood entertainment as sociology – but as Breitbart said, politics is downstream of culture.

UPPER MIDDLE CLASS NPR-LISTENING WHOLE FOODS SHOPPING DEMOCRATS FROM GOOD NEIGHBORHOODS WITH “GOOD SCHOOLS”:  “The problem with Republicans is that they’re just so racist”.

EVENTS:  “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Upper Middle Class Democrat from a Nice Neighborhood:  We’re going to fulfill a liberal goal and start busing your kids and seriously integrating your school district”.

UPPER MIDDLE CLASS NPR-LISTENING WHOLE FOODS SHOPPING DEMOCRATS FROM GOOD NEIGHBORHOODS WITH “GOOD SCHOOLS”:  “No – we’re the good kind of racist!”

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

They pay burger flippers nearly $12 per hour now.  The workers went union for a fair wage.

Bad news, people.  The fair wage for someone whose only marketable skill is flipping burgers is $10.  They were overpaying to keep the union out.  Now they’ll agree to raise wages but that will force layoffs to balance the budget.

There will be one guy working for $100 an hour but the rest of you will be replaced by a burger-flipping machine.  I predict bankruptcy in three years.

Joe Doakes

The story is from Portland – which seems to believe, these days, that if you vote for something hard enough, you’re enttitled to it.