Why is it that the party that claims to eschew war (while getting us into most of the wars we’ve had since 1900) can’t keep its mitts off of militaristic rhetoric?

Big Left’s “Green New Deal” is, like nearly every gigantistic utopian Big Left enterprise since the Wilson Administration, the “moral equivalent of war” – requiring the nation to organize its economy along military lines, albeit without saying the “M” word.

Jonah Goldberg:

…the important point is that ever since philosopher William James coined the phrase the “moral equivalent of war,” American liberalism has been recycling the same basic idea: The country needs to be unified and organized as if we are at war, but not to fight a literal battle. The attraction stems from what John Dewey called “the social possibilities of war” — the ability to reorganize and unify society according to the schemes of planners and experts.
This was the through line of 20th-century liberalism, and now 21st-century liberalism, too. Wilson’s war socialism, FDR’s New Deal, Harry Truman’s Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, Jimmy Carter’s declaration that the energy crisis was a “moral equivalent of war,” and Barack Obama’s “new foundation for growth,” with his Thomas Friedman-inspired talk about “Sputnik moments”: It’s all the same idea gussied up as something new.
Another irony: The militaristic organization of the domestic economy is a hallmark of nationalist movements. But nationalism is a dirty word among liberals today.
Instead, they name-check a thoroughly nationalistic enterprise, the New Deal, and slap the word “Green” in front of it as if it were a fresh coat of paint.

If it got out that migrants mocked and taunted intersectional theory, I’d guess Big Left would appropriate the idea of a border wall, too.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gun use surges in Europe, where guns are rare.  What could be the cause of this? 
The article is a shambles.  It throws women afraid of being raped into the same bag as South American terrorists and Eastern European refugees – they all want guns and guns hurt people so guns are bad. 
The author’s inability to distinguish between citizens who desire guns for lawful self-defense in response to government unwillingness to crack down on refugee violence, versus the Muslims shooting up markets or the narcotics gangs killing judges and policemen, makes an analysis impossible and the proposed solutions worthless.
Is clear thinking really so hard to come by, these days?

On today’s left?

Rhetorical question, right?

A “Shoprite” store in Philadelphia is closing due to Philadelphia’s pop tax. 

Or so says the owners – someone with years of experience in the field, for what that’s worth:

Store owner Jeff Brown says this location has lost approximately 25 percent of its business over the last two years because of the tax on soda and sweetened drinks. 

The city, not to be “Mansplained”…er, “Bossplained?” “Enterepreneursplained?” Anyway, not to be taken to task by a mere prole, the city responded:

The mayor’s office responded with a lengthy statement pushing back against Brown.
“It is no surprise that Mr. Brown has decided to scapegoat the Philadelphia Beverage Tax, but neither he nor the beverage industry have yet to present any evidence that the tax has had any impact on sales. Here’s evidence to the contrary: an ongoing study by three of the most reputable academic institutions in the nation (Harvard University, Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania) finds the beverage tax has not affected overall store sales, contrary to other public claims by this supermarket chain.”
Brown says the 111 employees will be transferred to his 12 other supermarkets.

Anyone but me suspect hat Mr. Brown’s going to get an audit letter from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue sometime soon here?

Up next: a Harvard Study on how taxes have nothing to do with “Food Deserts”, no way, no how.

After eight years of DFL-led bureaucratic governance and repeated ta hikes, the city of  Luverne was shocked, shocked, to find that a company decided to ditch a deal and move their expansion to South Dakota:

With groundbreaking expected this summer at the Luverne site, Tru Shrimp executives said they recently discovered a state environmental rule about water discharge that could delay construction of the facility, which it calls a harbor, by one to three years.

“Our timeline is to build a harbor in 2019,” Michael Ziebell, chief executive of Tru Shrimp, said in an interview Tuesday. With investors’ money on the line, the company couldn’t afford to wait for the discharge issue to be resolved, he said.

Unexpectedly!

The board of the Balaton, Minn.-based firm in November gave final approval for the $45 million facility on 67 acres just outside Luverne. The state of Minnesota had invested nearly $2 million to build roads and utilities to the site and Luverne, a city of about 5,000 residents, invested $600,000 in the effort.

“I’m not going to kid you, it was like a gut shot and we were blindsided by it,” Luverne Mayor Pat Baustian said. “I understand it was a business decision and they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do, but we had no previous interaction with Tru Shrimp that suggested the regulatory issue was going to be a real problem.”

Nobody expects the Minnesota regulatory inquisition!

I’ve got a few pro-gun-control friends who say “I support common sense restrictions on people who shouldn’t have guns…”

So does every gun rights supporter.

“…including Red Flag Laws”

OK, we need to talk.

“Red Flag” laws have a bunch of problems:

1) They allow anyone – literally, anyone you’ve had a personal, business, romantic or habitation relationship with – to go to a judge and tell any story they want, literally, without you being there to defend yourself. And if a judge – whatever their motivations – agrees, then you’ll have armed cops swarming over your house, no different than if they’re serving a warrant on a drug dealer. By the way – Swat teams going after “armed subjects” have “assault rifles”, and get nervous.

What could go wrong?

2) You say you want to prevent suicide? OK – let’s say you actually *are* a danger to yourself. The laws allow the cops to take…your guns. Not the booze and sleeping pills, the rope, the gas ovens, the cars, the razor blades. They cart your guns away and apparently say “At least they won’t *shoot* themselves.”

Brilliant, huh?

And the thing is, there’s an actual law already on the books in Minnesota (253.05) that already allows people with legitimate concerns to get a 72 hour hold *for cause*, that *actually* is intended to keep people from hurting themselves!

3) And if someone is a danger to others? They, like Nik Cruz, have been legitimately threatening to hurt *others*? Yep, there’s a law for that – MN statute 518.01, if memory serves, which allows the cops to preventatively arrest people *for legitimate cause* if there’s an actual threat to *other people*.

“Red Flag” laws are less effective at preventing suicide than existing statute. They *do* less than current law at preventing actual crimes.

What *are* they good for?

Harassing law-abiding gun owners. Seriously – some local gun control activists have already promised to “Swat” local second amendment leaders if the laws pass. And you can already see the wheels turning in the minds of some sleazy divorce lawyers and political opposition researchers out there.

In states where these sorts of laws have been passed, that’s exactly what’s happened.

They are useless in dealing with suicide and crime, and good only for harassment.

What’s the defense?

And if your idea of a “defense” is “We’ve got to dooooooooo something” – just no. What you propose to doooooooo is worse than useless.

But give it a shot.

…that if Trump were elected, bigotry and hatred would run rampant.

And they were right.

Rep Steve Scalise – who’s had more, closer contact with the depravity of the hard left than most anyone – has had enough with Alexandra Ocasio Cortez’ supporters:

Hi @AOC. Happy to continue this debate on the Floor of the People’s House, but it’s clearly not productive to engage here with some of your radical followers. #StayClassy pic.twitter.com/lZCO3oiLUZ

— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) January 6, 2019

There are times when I wonder why this country even tries to maintain a “union”.

Last week, I was listening to NPR.

I know, I know. Worth with me, here.

I can’t find it online – I didn’t try all that hard, but then I suspect it’s not the only piece like this. that’s going to turn up if you look hard enough.

An earnest-sounding SEIU leader – y’know, a non-biased, politically-objective source, solemnly intoned:

“We don’t want to politicize the border and immigration issue . We just want policy to reflect the changing patterns of migration”

In other words: we want “ignore the national boundary so that people can migrate north to join our power base” to become the new normal.

Oddly, the NPR host said nothing about this.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The New Hotness wants higher income tax rates.  The Left says it’s sensible and there’s historical precedent.
The trouble with historical precedent is picking the right precedent.  College students who drink until they vomit could point to Rome, the pinnacle of civilization at the time, where vomitoria were provided in public entertainment venues.  So that makes it alright?   No.
Similarly, picking a time when America was the world economic superpower and capital investment had nowhere else to go, doesn’t mean that high earners today would find their wages captured by higher tax rates.  Rich people are rich, they’re not stupid.  They can move to low-tax venues.  They can shelter their incomes.  They can lobby for loopholes that only they can afford. 
The only way to ensure that everybody pays their “fair share” is to fully embrace Communism:  from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  But getting ordinary people into that mental state will require a period of socialization, during which the recalcitrant, deplorable, bitter clingers are identified and sent for re-education in the far North, or sent to farm the land by hand, or buried in mass graves.  And who will decide who lives and who dies? 

But the fact that it used to be the status quo back when the US was the world’s only functional economy (with ample tax shelters provided for the fabulously wealthy, like Ocasio Cortez’s benefactors) makes it “moderate”, to Big Left.

Big Left – and its wholly owned subsidiary, Big Gun Control – is actively working to “other” the law-abiding gun owner – to make the law-abiding practice of a legal act something not done in “polite company”, or at least that company as practiced by the part of our society that considers infanticide acceptable and self-defense gauche.

One Michael Schrader of suburban Detroit throws his two ignorant cents into the mix with this op-ed. about an open-carrying Michigander at a Detroit-area McDonalds.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were shopping in Fort Gratiot, and we decided to stop at the Fort Gratiot McDonald’s to have some lunch, as we have done many times before. We pulled in a parking space, turned off the car, and then spotted something that caused us to decide to go somewhere else.
In the few seconds it took for me to restart the car, we saw several customers hurriedly rush out of the restaurant with panicked looks on their faces.
What was it that we spotted? A man carrying a gun into the restaurant.
Because Michigan is an open carry state, it is quite legal for someone to walk into a busy McDonald’s with a firearm. Why do it? Because it is your right?

There are some legitimate questions of tactics and manners to be asked – but then, one asks why Michael Schrader would ask the questions. Because it is his right…er, wait.

Anyway – yes, he started trite. That merely cleanses the palate for the invincible ignorance:

Given that there were Canadians in that restaurant, and they don’t have the same gun culture that we have, how do you think that made them feel?

By this “logic”, people with happy marriages should shut up about it, unless someone in an unhappy marriage is listening.

I can’t speak for the Canadians, but I can speak for myself — seeing someone other than a police officer walking around with a firearm does not make me feel safe; quite the opposite.

And Mr. Schrader is entitled to his feelings – but they’re wrong. Carry permittees in the US are 1/6 as likely to harm the wrong person, per capita, than the police. That’s about 1/36 as often as the general public – and I”m gonna guess it’s even steeper in Detroit.

We next go from ignorant to stupid:

Suppose that I am armed, too. Should I fire preemptively at the other person with the gun just in case that person is a “bad guy,” and take the chance of killing a “good guy,” or should I hold my fire and take the chance that the other person will not be a “bad guy” or be a “good guy” and think I am a “bad guy” and fire at me first?

Tell you what, Mr. Schrader: ask the next shooter you see who’s carrying, but who is not any sort of threat to you in any actual way. Phrase the question at the top of your lungs, if you prefer.

See who the police haul in.

I speak for myself, and I am confident I speak for many others — I don’t need armed vigilantes protecting me from criminals.

To borrow an idea from my friend Rob Doar – whether I carry concealed or openly (if I even owned guns, which I don’t, because they terrify me), I’m not protecting you. I’m protecting me and mine. If heaven forfend I ever am forced to defend me and mine from an immediate lethal threat, and so cause your smug life to be spared, trust me – it’ll be the least of my concerns.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus podcast is back.

I know this, because I am producing and ‘anchoring” it this year.

The first of what should be weekly podcast during the legislative session is out today – A look ahead at the legislative session starting tomorrow with chairman Bryan Strawser and political director Rob Doar.

Check it out!

Are the big online content providers – Google, Facebook, Netflix and the like – eroding free speech to make doing business internationally easier?

Remember – while free markets will trend toward free speech, the Silicon Valley giants are not free markets; they are to their various corners of the ‘net at best industrious but regulation-made Germans or Swedes, and at worst – Facebook and Twitter – Red Chinese in hoodies and sneakers instead of Mao jackets.

They are bureaucracies – and bureaucracies crave uniformity. The kind of uniformity that only partnership and acuiescence with Big Government can give them.

Kevin Wiliamson:

It took a remarkably short time for the ethic of the Internet to devolve from “Information wants to be free!” to “Follow the rules blindly!” The danger is the California-emissions dynamic, i.e. the tendency of the most demanding and restrictive standard among a group of competing standards to become the de facto universal standard in that it allows a single consistent mode of production. In the United States, 16 states follow California’s auto-emissons standards rather than the national standard, which has made the California standard the effective national standard for many manufacturers. In a similar way, it will be tempting — it already is tempting — to make China the worldwide arbiter of free-speech standards for global technology companies and other international carriers. If you think that a commitment to “artistic freedom” is going to prevent that, go to the movies: The remake of Red Dawn originally was about a Chinese invasion of the United States; after protests from Beijing, it became the story of a ludicrous North Korean invasion. The New York Times submits to censorship abroad.

Read the whole thing.

Because we’ve all got to demand better.

Elizabeth Warren forms a 2020 Exploratory.

I give her a 1/1024 chance of winning.

Here’s the vehicle in which she plans to travel between her series of town hall meetings

Oh, I’m just getting started.

We apparently have a wave of cannibalism:

I blame California.

Joe Doakes from Como Park sent this to me back around Christmas Eve – and I spent most of that intervening week either on the road or on my back with the flu. But while holidays come and go, the economy is always timely:

You can judge the state of the economy by how many businesses are open Christmas Eve.
In bad times, you can’t miss a single customer.  You’re open for business, even if it’s only the owner and his wife staffing the store.
In good times, you can afford to take a day off and even pay your employees for no work.  The store closes early, if it opens at all.
How’s the economy in your neighborhood? 

Can’t speak for Christmas Eve – I was in North Dakota, where the rules are a little different – but I did notice I couldn’t find a place to grab a bite to eat anywhere on New Years Day.

Maybe there’s something to that…

Garrison Keillor is selling his saint Paul bookstore:

“I opened Common Good Books because I loved the bookstores I knew around the U, Perrine’s and McCosh’s and Heddan’s and Savran’s,” Keillor said Wednesday in an email. “And now I’m leaving town and am busy writing a book of my own so it’s time to turn over the business to someone else. The world is full of wonderful independent bookstores and needs every one.”

Keillor put his St. Paul home on Summit Avenue up for sale last year. He wrote in a Facebook post last month that he and his wife, Jenny Nilsson, had moved to Minneapolis.

I may actually have to get in there Dash I rarely make it south of Midway books these days…

Since we’re talking Garrison Keillor, I thought I would throw this out there; Keillor had a reputation as one of the worst bosses in radio, and he always brought so much smug entitlement to his brand of Minnesota politics that it was sometimes hard to parity without lapsing into self-parody in turn – but I loved A Prairie Home Companion. I listened to it most weekends for probably 15 years. Whatever Garrison Keillor’s many flaws, he got small town rural Scandinavian life.

Nowadays the show – rechristened Live From Here after it turned out Keillor was #HimToo, and still starring PHC’s designated replacement Chris Thile, seems to specialize in a really, really excellent underground country/bluegrass music, really really really really really bad standup comics, and skits written to a target audience of Brooklyn hipsters by, apparently, Brooklyn hipsters that Garner the occasional giggle and usually make me desperately miss Tim Russell and Sue Scott.

So who knows – maybe I’ll run down and buy a book from the old guy.

But it will be some Hayek or Paul Johnson. He’s not winning this thing.

Remember the old joke about the New York Times?  “Tsunami wipes out Manhattan.  Women and Minorities Hardest Hit?”

The Arby’s that’s been cranking out the rubbery beef, the crunchy chicken and the gloriously addictive potato cakes (that I can’t touch anymore) in downtown Minneapolis for a solid quarter century picked up and vanished like a carnival tent a few weeks ago.  It was the last nationwide fast-food restaurant in downtown.  All the rest – McDonald’s, BK, Wendy’s, Taco Bell – have long disappeared.   There are a few Subways, at least one Jimmy Johns,

The reasons are between the lines – rising rents and, ahem, rising labor costs (Minneapolis has high mandatory minimum wages and compulsory sick time for part-time workers).   They also blame the tsunami of food trucks that line the streets downtown from March through October.

But Minneapolis has become a place where it’s easy to get lunch for $9-15, but very, very hard to find anything below $7.   Arby’s was one of the last of them.

And so it seems that after years of trying to stigmatize and economically hobble Big Fast Food, they’ve gotten their wish…

…but, naturally, the usual suspects are the ones taking it on the chin:

Remaining food options are generally more expensive, pricing out low-wage workers and the homeless, who often gravitate toward city centers. Arby’s was one of the last places in downtown Minneapolis with a sandwich and fries for $5.

“I wondered why they closed, because they were so economical,” Marva Overton, a downtown worker, said as she bought a sandwich last week at Twin City Bites next to the former Arby’s. “It was so cheap to eat there and that was helpful to a lot of people.”

I recommend the Sicilian olives ($2.50 for a one-pound tub) at Sorrento Cucina.

I’ve got the worst flu I’ve had in a long, long time. Taking the day off.

As you can probably tell.

Back blogging for real tomorrow.

James C. Moore is identified as a “lifelong Texan”.

That, and an op-ed that tries to poo-pooh the notion that a good guy with a gun actually does anything useful in extremis – would seem to be the only reasons he wound up getting his “op-ed” posted on CNN.com. It’s entitled “Texas shooting isn’t as simple as it seems“.

To which one might reply “Thanks, Captain Obvious, your promotion to Major is pending”. Just about any human endeavor, especially those around the edges of insanity, evil and depravity, is an inexact study.

But not nearly as inexact as Mr. Moore would have us think:

But if Wilson is the example of a good guy with a gun who saved the day, what does the other armed parishioner who was killed represent? Will he become proof to gun control advocates that arming the well-intentioned doesn’t work?

Only if the “gun control advocate” is a complete idiot.

This line is the flip side of the Dems’ “If it saves just one life…” canard; “If it doesn’t save every single life, then it’s all a lie!“.

Analyses of the live-streamed video from the church are suggesting that several worshippers were armed and drew guns. One of them appears to have been killed as he reached for his weapon.

In other words, Kinnunan was aiming at the victim, and was getting ready to shoot when the victim started reaching for his gun. It wouldn’t have mattered if the guy was reaching for his kid, his inhaler, his reading glasses, his cell phone or a pack of Certs – he was already in Kinnunan’s sights. Reaching for his gun didn’t save him – but it didn’t kill him, either. Watch the video; the guy had a spit second. It wasn’t enough.

But it was for Wilson.

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, responded to the incident by citing statistics on Twitter that indicate 3,500 people died in Texas from guns; CDC data shows just over 3,500 such deaths in 2017 and the average is one victim every three hours in the state. Deaths, she pointed out, have increased between 2015 and 2017, the most recent year for which there is CDC data. Watts also pointed out that Texas has been home to four of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history.

Getting one’s info from Shannon Watts is its own punishment.

“Gun deaths” includes suicide. There is an epidemic of suicide – but that epidemic crosses all means of commission – tall buildings and bridges, rope, pills, or reading Shannon Watts.

And even the “four deadliest mass shootings” bit is a canard.

• Sutherland springs was “Gun Free”. It prompted the legislative changes that allowed Jack Wilson to kill Kinnunan.
• Luby’s Cafeteria happened when Texas was a restrictive “May Issue” state. Nobody in the cafeteria was legally armed. Suzanna Grazia Hupp offered gut-wrenching testimony on the subject.
• The Michael Whitman shooting at the University of Texas, awful as it was, was largely stopped by…armed citizens returning fire with high-powered rifles to keep Whitman’s head down while the police (and a citizen) closed in to take him out – which would be largely illegal today.

If you get your information from the “Gun Safety” movement, you’re not getting information.

Little has been reported about the suspect at White Settlement other than indications he has an arrest record, which will make some critics wonder how he got a gun. But it is not illegal to sell a gun to a felon in Texas, unless you know he is a felon, which he isn’t likely to tell you since he is a felon and wants a gun.

That’s not just Texas. That’s the law nationwide.

And it’s exactly why “universal” background checks are completely absurd – although I doubt Mr. Moore has thought it through to that point.

If you think that’s absurd, sit down right now and try writing an enforceable law that prevents it. There are sufficient loopholes in firearms regulations and such an abundance of supply of weapons that anyone in America can get a gun, good guy or bad guy.

Right.

And when you make it illegal for good guys to get, carry, or use their firearms, who does that leave?

Inevitably?

It’s depressing that a significant chunk of this country thinks this is “reasoning”.

Happy New Year to you and yours!

It’s gonna be a light posting day, as this whole holiday season has been.

But to tide you and the world over until tomorrow, here’s a good New Years resolution from Amy Alkon:

Now, go out and smack the world and the year upside the head with some kindness.