Satirical yet real:

Finland’s experiment with every wonks favorite utopian program, the guaranteed income, seems to have failed.

The reason? Hard as it may be to believe, if you pay people not to work, they won’t work.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

St. Paul and Minneapolis are considering raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.  There are no studies on the effect of a $15 per hour minimum wage because it’s never been that high.  The studies of effects of prior minimum wage increases go both ways, depending on who you believe.  What to do?

This is where it helps to be conservative, because we have principles to guide our actions, not just feelings.  One principle is:  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  Another is:  “Don’t tear down a fence until you know why it was built.”  The core thought underlying these principles is to make changes cautiously, only when you’re certain they won’t cause more harm than good.  Since the evidence is equivocal, adherence to conservative principles would dictate that we not raise the minimum wage to $15.

But Democrats are not conservatives so they have no such principles to restrain them.  They’re going to raise it because it will please the mob and that’s the most important thing to them.  So if you’re going to raise it despite the evidence, why stop at $15?  Why not raise it to $100 per hour and we’ll all be rich?  Pikers.

Power is the principle.

There has been a wave of crime, including a fair number of drive-by shootings, in the lower reaches of Saint Pauls North End neighborhood this summer.

Saint Paul being a one party neosocialist dystopia, the city bureaucracy and political class is having the usual reaction; no reaction. It’s just the north end.

But the North End hasn’t gone full-blown Bernie Sanders – not entirely. Even the media is noticing that some North Enders are responding in ways that are completely pathetic and stupid:

Tin Cup’s Owner, Gidget Bailey, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS she’s obtained a permit to carry and half her staff has done the same so she can have two to three staff members armed with a firearm each night her restaurant is open.

“It is just a shame that it has come to this,” Bailey said. “But, when you have to do this to make sure of your own safety, in a life or death situation, while you’re making an honest living at work is pathetic, just pathetic.”

Mohr, faster, please.

If you live in the north end (Or, let’s be honest, anyplace else), and are interested in seeing to your own defense, holler. Will get you hooked up.

Support for stricter gun control is down sharply…

Public support for more stringent gun-control legislation has decreased significantly after surging in the wake of the February mass shooting that claimed 17 lives in Parkland, Fla., according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The number of respondents who support “stricter gun control laws” has fallen ten percentage points after peaking at 66 percent on February 20, just six days after the Parkland massacre.

…now that the media has moved on to misrepresenting other topics.

Mark Steyn on the twisted history, fractured English pop vernacular, and cheesy-yet-glorious music of ABBA.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gun control advocates insist The Founders could not have intended ordinary citizens to own the same weapons as the government.  Why, every Tom, Dick and Harry could have a machine gun!  They could use those weapons to overthrow the government!  The Founders never intended that, surely?

I’m not so certain.  We’re talking about the guys who planned and conducted a years-long guerilla war to overthrow the existing government.  Their speeches, pamphlets and Declaration expressly justify taking up arms against the King.  The Minutemen used every weapon they could beg, borrow or scrounge.  Washington crossing the Delaware at Christmas was a raid to steal British muskets, powder and artillery.  Most of the rebels brought their own hunting rifles which were more accurate at long range than the weapons British mercenary troops were issued; they were better than military-grade.  The Founders knew from close-up and personal experience what arms citizens needed, and what they were needed for.

Gun control advocates think The Founders were happy ordinary people had military grade weapons long enough to throw off the British government, but intended to restrict military grade weapons to the government only, once The Founders took control.  That’s how socialist dictators do it in banana republics.  That’s how gun controllers would do it, if they were in charge.  Why wouldn’t The Founders act the same way?

Because they just fought a long, bloody war using barely trained and poorly equipped civilians as impromptu militia forces.  Because they knew how hard they had to work to gain their freedom.  I strongly suspect The Founders wrote the Second Amendment to ensure ordinary citizens access to weapons at least as good as the government agents have, in case they’re needed to throw off another tyrannical government in the future.

Gun control advocates picture George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as distinguished gentlemen.  They imagine The Founders must have viewed the world the way sophisticated and urbane Liberals see it today.  That’s the wrong mental image.   To understand The Founders, stop thinking like New York Liberals and start thinking like the Montana Militia.  That’s a much better picture of the men who fought at Valley Forge and Bunker Hill.  Now you understand Original Intent.  And now you know why it terrifies New York Liberals.

And you know why they work so hard to repudiate their actual legacy.

MoviePass is a particularly dimwitted startup – it sells, basically, transit cards to movies, in theaters, allowing people admittance to n movies per month, which in the age of Netflix and Hulu seems a bit like selling season tickets to Jesse Ventura’s old Indoor Football league.

As one might expect, the company – which seems a throwback to the sort of startups that glutted the market and popular culture during the DotBomb era, before 9/11 – is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

Which has led to one of the most brilliant – dare I say, Onion-like – bits of satire I’ve ever read:

We should let the privately owned MoviePass die, so a nationalized, public MoviePass can live.

Read the whole hilarious thing.

I’m already picturing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Amy Klobuchar or Maxine Waters or Ilhan Omar solemnly testifying before Congress about the moral imperative for the Federal Government…

…to transfer tax dollars to Hollywood.

Brilliant, brilliant satire.

UPDATE:   It just occured to me – what if the writer wasn’t being satirical?

Do me a favor – when this show goes on the road, let me know.  I’d hate to miss it.

…how the big media is doing its best to spin this story – the Administration talking peace with the Taliban after 17 years of war – as a bad thing.

Especially given that when the Administration reversed the Obama-era policy of giving the insurgents a “save the date” card, and cut off all talks six months ago, the same experts were wondering – as they always seem to – what was so wrong about diplomacy.

(There was actually a very good, even-handed story about this on an NPR broadcast last night.  I can’t seem to find it.  I’ll hold off on the conspiracy theories and assume I’m missing something, here…)