It’s getting harder for Democrat candidates to come up with more free stuff than the next guy.  How can we bribe voters without free stuff?
Amy Klobuchar wants to give free savings accounts/pension plans, funded by employers and off-set by tax credits, handled by the Senate’s hand-picked fund managers to invest in stocks and bonds.
But she hasn’t fully considered why employees aren’t saving money.  They don’t make enough?  Everybody can always set aside a tiny fraction of their income.  The trick is finding the motivation to do it.  Churches solicit tithes with promises of salvation.  Amy wants tax credits with promises of mutual funds.  Not nearly as enticing.  I’d rather buy the extra fru-fru coffee. 
When somebody else subsidizes the consequences of your decisions to insulate you from harm, you have less incentive to make good choices.  In some circles, that’s known as moral hazard.  In Amy’s, it’s a campaign promise.
Joe Doakes

The more dependent they make society on “the authorities” for basic life decisions, the more control they have.

California isn’t on the brink of bankruptcy.

Their public unions haven’t passed Illinois and Maryland’s as models of corruption, featherbedding and incompetence.

Their education system doesn’t give New York’s a run for it’s money as a two-tiered money pit.

Their society isn’t becoming an almost third-world example of the wealth gap between Malibu and Riverside.

That’s why they’ve got time for this kind of thing – a ban on long cash-register receipts:

Modeled after a new state law requiring that plastic straws be given in restaurants only upon request, the bill would require businesses to provide electronic receipts by default unless a customer asks for a paper one.Assembly Bill 161 by Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) said his bill is an easy way to reduce paper waste in the state while addressing consumers’ frustrations with excessively long receipts. Customers have taken to social media for years to complain and poke fun at the size of their receipts, particularly at CVS drugstore, posting pictures of the coupon-packed printouts measuring taller than a refrigerator.

“If we are looking at reducing waste, probably the easiest thing we can do is get rid of the material that someone hands us that we don’t want that we hold onto until we get to the next trash can and then throw away,” said Nick Lapis of Californians Against Waste, a bill supporter.

I can think of some waste to reduce…

During the House hearings on victim disarmament measures last week, this happened.

The reason it’s impossible to have a “conversation about ‘gun violence'” is that so many of the other side are just not equipped to have it.

In the olden days, young men found a mate at school, or at work, or at social functions. But nowadays, with feminism and #metoo, it’s risky to ask.
I recently met a guy who’s 40, has his MBA, good job, clean health, clean record, but no girlfriend. He explained it this way: if I ask a girl and she says no, I’ll be alone and humiliated. If I don’t ask her, I’ll still be alone, but I won’t be humiliated. And I can’t be reported to HR.
This is why America seems broken, why average IQ is decreasing, why young people increasingly feel they have no future. They’re right, they don’t.
Joe doakes

Why, it’s almost as if progressivism set out to destroy this nation’s morale from within.

The American “Civil Liberties” Union twote:

Girls who are trans are girls. PERIOD.

— ACLU (@ACLU) April 2, 2019

Because adding “PERIOD” to the end of a factually vacuous argument makes it a strong argument. Natch.

I’m just wondering why the A”CL”U is telling people what they must think about things that are contravened by scientific fact?

Unemployment rate down? Jobless claims at a low ebb? Market high, houses on the market a short, short time?

That’s all good.

But what says “economy humming along” like this: Sears is actually opening new stores.

While I agree with Sarah Hoyt that crimes against taste shouldn’t literally be prosecuted as crimes, and here in the US there might even be a First Amendment issue (justifiably so), I’ll admit I’m not gonna rip on the Poles too hard for this.

This winter, the news media ran stories about ice dams causing damage to the roof.  How do you pronounce the word “roof?”  Why don’t all -oo- words sound alike?  Try this sentence:
While the goofy cook chewed a root and doodled in a book on the roof, a pooch looked at a boot and woofed as a kook took good food out the door.
No wonder foreigners have such a hard time with English.

True. English is tough enough to plough through, though, without that.

Tonight: The House DFL may be trying to amend their Universal Gun Registration and Red Flag Confiscation bills to the Omnibus Public Safety bill. Debate may well happen tonight. It’s entirely possible we’ll need to get a huge turnout of people down to the Capitol or the State Office building to show the Legislature what Minnesotans really think about the erosion of our civil liberties.

That’s still up in the air. What I’d suggest is that you sign up for the MN Gun Owners Caucus’s email blasts – then, you’ll be getting the latest news. Also, make sure you “like” the MNGOC’s Facebook page – that’s also being updated constantly.

And maybe I’ll see y’all at the Capitol (or somewhere in the Capitol complex) tonight!

Friday and Saturday nights: My band, “Elephant in the Room”, is playing at the Stillwater Eagles both nights from 8-midnight. We do everything from Elvis to Nirvana, from the Cars to, well, The Eagles. I mean, we gotta do Eagles at the Eagles, right?

Stop on out, have a drink, say hi!

Alan Dershowitz, in re the faculty at Harvard Law School: “Your idea of diversity is someone with different color skin, or in a skirt, who thinks exactly the same as you do”.

See also “Comedy Central“.

The Midway Walmart is a former K-Mart, with all that implies. It’s a great place to go if you want a look at customer service from the old East Germany. It’s basically a small Walmart, with fewer groceries and more inner-urban dysfunction.

And now, via Fred Melo at the PiPress:

More than a rumor, not quite a fact: Walmart has at least kicked the tires on the prospect of leaving St. Paul’s Midway and opening in the former Rice Street Sears, which has room for an ample grocery. The degree to which they’re seriously considering it? I don’t know.

— FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) April 3, 2019

My fearless (and likely balderdash) prediction: both sites will sit, unchanged, for the next five years.

Then, Major League Soccer (or at least the Minnesota club) will fold, and all three sites will sit vacant (or blighted, in Walmart’s case) for a decade or two while various inner-city power interests argue for decades.

When you’re a Republican, especially in a bluish-purple place like Minnesota, you hope you can vote for Republicans who’ll hold the line on taxes – even to the minimal level of not proposing new ones.

Sadly, we’re disappointed – as I discussed with Liz Mair on the show over the weekend. Senator Howe is proposing a tax on electric vehicles.

Here’s the interview:

I get the logic, sort of – it’s to replace some of the gas tax revenue lost by the increasing efficiency of cars the greater number of people driving electrics, and the people dropping out of the commuting force as telecommuting picks up speed.

But a Republican should be proposing fewer, not more, taxes.

And if we could see to some of that unsustainable spending, that’d be a cherry on the sundae.

One of the reasons I’m such a yuge fan of Dennis Prager is his weekly “Happiness Hour” – in which he talks not only about the practice and moral imperative of being happy (hint:  it’s not just for you), but about the struggle to become happy.

One of his sayings, and his advice, on the subject comes close to an old Hungarian saying I’ve been fond of most of my adult life; “the best way to become wealthy is to appear as if you already are”.   Prager notes that this basic philosophy applies to so very much in life – about getting in shape, about falling or staying in love with one’s partner, and of course happiness.

There’s some science to the premise as well.  There’s a reason that disciplines from music to the military drill one endlessly on things they want to impress into the human brain – because almost nobody plays a piano scale or a guitar chord or clears a rifle jam automatically or intuitively.  But if you drill on them often enough, they become what people call “second nature”, because your brain develops space – neural pathways – for them.

Happiness works a little like that.  Not entirely – being happy isn’t quite as easy as playing a first-position “F” chord – but the idea of wiring the brain to be something isn’t all that conceptually different.

I believe you can push yourself toward happiness.  There’s some science, not to mention thousands of years of human experience, to support the premise.   It’s basic cognitive psychology.

And since one can wire one’s brain to be many good things via practice – a musician, a soldier, a happy person, whatever – it stands to reason you can do the same with unhappy, useless, miserable, depressing things.

Having raised, and working with roomful of, millennials, I’ve observed that the generation seems to collect psychological and psychiatric maladies in young adulthood the same way they used to collect Pokemon cards in childhood.  “I’ve got mild self-diagosed bipolar, which beats your dysthymia and separation anxiety!”.

Modern academia and media preach some miserable stuff to the kids; a common refrain among the young ‘uns is what a miserable world the “boomers” “left” them, with the misery being expressed in terms of climate change, the changing economy and, er, Trump.

And the few times I engage on the subject I mention that I can kind of relate – when I was a kid, the worries were nuclear war and overpopulation.  Of course, there actually were nuclear weapons all about the place, including 25 miles from my hometown, and there were still famines happening.   The nukes are mostly gone, and the obesity is a bigger problem among the poor than famine for the first time in human history.

And our presidents – Nixon and Carter – actually were corrupt and incompetent (respecively).   So compared with the world I grew up in, my kids have it pretty decent.

But I digress.

I thought about the way the world – academia, entertainment, the media – seem to be wiring the younger generation to be a bunch of dysfunctional, whiny mopes when I read this sad, pathetic story about a guy of color who dumped his perfectly good white girlfriend because, well, read the story.

Or don’t.  Maybe you’ll be happier if your brain doesn’t rewire itself just a little bit wrong with that little bit of dysfunction.

Or make yourself a little happier by considering that if this is all the younger generation has to fret about, we’ve done a good job.

When Saint Paul opted for Tony-Soprano-style trash collection, they used a “formula” more or less like the Five Families used to divvy up racketeering in New York and New Jersey; each of the trash haulers got a slice of the city more or less equal to their market share.

This meant there was no “need” to compete for customers – and also no benefit in competing for customers.

Some small trash haulers just pulled out of Saint Paul without any further ado.

Others?

Call Ken Berquist and Son trash hauling. The call transfers over to Waste Management. Another St. Paul hauler bought out by a national chain?: https://t.co/ZcaRMhwoII

— FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) April 2, 2019

Eventually, Saint Paul is going to have three trash haulers – BFI, Waste Management and maybe Aspen. They will have monopolies in their territories, costs will rise, customer service will eventually worsen…

…oh, wait. Who said “eventually?”

SCENE: Mitch BERG is hacking down shrubbery for the spring. Avery LIBRELLE, walking past, hears the chainsaw and walks around the front of BERG’s house.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Er, hey, Avery. Kinda busy here…

LIBRELLE: The US has more guns than any country in the world, and the highest death rate.

BERG: As you can see here… (produces a chart from his back pocket) …

…while per-capita civilian gun ownership is high – and has gotten higher since the data in that chart – our gun homicide rate is actually down the list a ways.

LIBRELLE: Hah! To laugh! Most of those countries with higher murder rates aren’t industrial?

BERG: So?

LIBRELLE: Do I need to speak slowly? They a r e n ‘ t i n d u s t r i a l.

BERG: No, I got that. So what? Is the life of a brown or black person, or a subsistence farmer, worth less than the life of a white middle class liberal American?

LIBRELLE: Why, no!

BERG: Then why do we not count their deaths the same?

LIBRELLE: Do you have any arugula?

(And SCENE)

Progressives love America.

Well, no. Let me rephrase that.  Progressives love the idea that America is a big, powerful, wealthy place that they might control someday. 

That’s more like it. 

They may protest the point – but they let the truth slip on occasion; Michelle Obama’s “This is the first time I’ve been proud to be an American”, and of course Eric Holder’s “This nation was never great”. 

Christian Adams has an excellent reminder. The whole thing’s a pullquote, so I’m just going to do the conclusion: 

America is an idea, a great idea, that all are created in the image of God as free. That idea, not always perfectly executed, transformed the world. Along the way, it also limited government. The freedoms enshrined in the Constitution restrain the power of government. Government cannot act the way progressives want because the Constitution stands in the way. After decades of trying to redefine the notion of freedom in the courts, Holder and his gang have hit a Trump wall, where judicial nominees no longer subscribe to the utopian view of the Constitution.

Let’s hope that Eric Holder changes his mind and decides to run for president. Do us a favor. Go to Iowa, Texas, West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania and tell Americans there that America was really never great. Please.

I’d love to see it.

Of course, they have a way of changing their tone when they have to. See also Amy Klobuchar.

A good guy with a gun is involved in ending one out of twelve mass shootings in recent years, according to Ted Nugent.

Just kidding. It’s according to the FBI.

And they may be under-reporting even that figure:

The FBI’s two latest reports state that there were 40 active shooter cases from 2014-15 and 50 cases from 2016-17.  During these two periods, the FBI reports that two and five shootings, respectively, were stopped by individuals with concealed handgun permits.  The two reports each describe an additional case where a permit holder was involved but wounded or killed by the attacker.
For four years, the CPRC has been collecting cases of concealed handgun permit holders stopping mass public shootings. As we will show below, permit holders saved lives in between 13 and 16 cases from 2014-17.  This includes the seven cases that the FBI lists, seven cases that should have been included (one of the seven is debatable), and two cases that the FBI had on its list but doesn’t include as instances of permit holders saving lives.  Thus, concealed handgun permit holders saved lives in 13.5% to 16.5% of 97 cases. We only started collecting these cases were permit holders stopped attacks in 2014, so a comparison is limited to the last two active shooting reports put out by the FBI.
It is entirely possible that in the two cases where a permit holder was wounded or killed by the attacker that the permit holder’s actions allowed others to escape the scene. But even assuming that was not the case, permit holders were successful between 87% and 89% of the time that they intervened.

But let’s take the FBI’s 8% figure at face value. 8% of the American people do not carry firearms. Likely no more than a fraction of that, even in gun-friendly states.

And almost all spree killings happen in gun-free zones, where nobody is supported to be carrying.

So – as the DFL tries to jam down the gun control agenda Michael Bloomberg paid them to work for here in Minnesota – where, one wonderss, on earth does “Protect” Minnesota get the idea that attazcking a spree killer, unarmed, is 20 times as effective as using a firearm?

According to a 2013 FBI study of 160 active shootings between 2000 and 2013, in only one incident was an armed civilian
able to stop the attack–and that was a US Marine– but 21 of those shootings (13%) were interrupted by unarmed civilians.
Thus, unarmed civilians are 20 times more likely to stop a rampage shooting than armed civilians.

Source: The Latest Research on Rampage Shootings Show that Gunmen Rarely Target Gun-Free Zones. Jennifer Mascia The Trace. November 30, 2016. Yes, they actually believe this crap.

Unmentioned – the ratio of successful attempts vs. fatalities for armed vs. unarmed people.

Because one might think that if attacking spree killers without weapons were a viable tactic, SWAT teams would be using it today.

Two weeks ago: conservatives got criticized for “pouncing” on “Progressive” hubris, overreach, hypocrisy and factual illiteracy.

This week: we get criticized for not pouncing:

.@CNN personalities @brianstelter and @secupp bashing @FoxNews personalities for being glad that Fox News didn't participate in the big, two-year-long collusion hoax pic.twitter.com/xCgVAL6Q1N

— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) March 31, 2019

Why, it’s almost like nothing we can do is going to make them happy.

Denied a chance to run the policy table by the fact that they don’t control the Senate, DFLers in the upper house are going to try to bully and shame Republicans into submission with today’s “Committee On Banned Bills” “hearing” at the Senate.

“These bills have huge public support and are common sense ideas,” Sen. Little continued, “They’ve been banned for completely crass partisan reasons; because they are targeting certain seats, and don’t want to give certain people any achievements to campaign with. But the senate can’t make good decisions if major options aren’t even on the table. Partisan games like this are rigging our democracy, and blocking bills that voters really want.” 
The Senate Committee on Banned Bills (COBB) is slated to review the proposed bills, take testimony from citizens and expert witnesses [of the caliber of Nancy Nord Bence – Ed.], and debate the merits of each policy.  A wide array of bills will be introduced during the hearing, including legislation dealing with paid family medical leave, gun safety, and the health care provider tax [agenda and complete list of members and bills below].

The bills include:

1. SF 434 – Latz – Universal gun registration
2. SF 399 – Hayden – MinnesotaCare provider tax repeal
   
3. SF 1012 – Torres Ray – Increase Teachers of Color Act strengthening and appropriation
   
4. SF 1060 – Kent – Paid family, pregnancy, bonding, and applicant’s serious medical condition benefits establishment; employment leaves authorization and regulation; data classification authorization and appropriation 
   
5. SF 856 – Champion – Right to vote restoration upon incarceration release or sentencing imposition; county attorney voter registration and eligibility investigation obligation repeal
   
6. SF 208 – Pappas – Resolution memorializing Congress to remove the deadline for ratification of the equal rights amendment by the states
7.  SF 200 – Cohen – Constitutional amendment for gender equality under the law

These are the DFL’s priorities – and they clearly believe there are enough uninformed people out there to give them a win.

They may be right.

When Richard Nixon’s re-election team wanted to know what the opposition was up to, and needed some dirt, they broke into a psychiatrist office in the Watergate apartment complex. The subsequent investigation brought down the president and tainted the Republican party for decades
When Hillary Clinton’s election campaign wanted to know what Trump was up to and needed some dirt, they laundered some money through their Law Firm to pay for a phony dossier, which they shopped to friendly agents in the FBI who used it to get a warrant to wiretap the candidate. The wiretap transcripts were given to the White House, where Susan Rice unmasked the participants in campaign discussions. Everyone who believes that she scrupulously kept that information away from Hillary’s campaign, raise your hands.
Everyone involved knew they were using the national security cover story as a fig leaf to hide their attempt tp play dirty pool in the election. When they got caught, they had no choice but to continue running with it, and got some cover from Never Trumpers to get a special investigator appointed. But it was always a lie, from the very beginning, And everybody knew it except the voting public.
They shouldn’t get away with it.

Joe Doakes

Modern “progressive” politics is always about telling the low-information emotion-driven voter whatever it takes to give you power.