https://pjmedia.com/davidsteinberg/ilhan-omars-husband-no-longer-works-for-minneapolis-councilwoman-sources-say-omar-asked-for-him-to-be-fired/

Ilhan Omar’s soon to be ex husband’s days of being part of the lifetime sinecure the DFL gives its “elite” are apparently at an end. His job as a bag man…er, community liaison for Alondra Cano apparently got terminated over the summer.

David Steinberg – who hasn’t quite shamed the Strib or MPR to cover the story yet – writes:

My sources stated that Ahmed Hirsi was terminated following a request by Rep. Omar. They added that Omar’s motivation for the request was to force Hirsi to become reliant upon her assets and income.
For the majority of 2019, Ahmed Hirsi has reportedly borne the responsibility of raising the three children he has with Omar. (One source used the term “abandoned” to describe Ilhan’s recent share of the parenting.) Since June 14, Hirsi does not appear to have a reliable source of income.
Meanwhile, Rep. Omar currently draws a $174,000 Congressional salary, and reportedly received a $250,000 book advance in January.

Read the whole thing. Pass it along.

Man uses AR15 to repel a violent home invasion:

The masked teens — a 15-year-old and two 16-year-olds — approached three residents around 4 a.m. Monday at the front yard of a home just outside Conyers and tried to rob them, the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office said.
One of the would-be robbers took out a gun and fired shots at them before one of the residents returned fire, authorities said.
“The victims of the attempted robbery were all uninjured, but the three attempted robbery suspects were all shot during the exchange of gunfire and succumbed to their injuries, one on scene and two at a local hospital after being transported,” the sheriff’s department said in a news release.

Many media outlets are omitting the fact that the teens went into the robbery blazing away with handguns, trying to spin this story as “Man kills teenagers with a black rifle1”.

Given the increasing number of home invasions and group robberies (see also: downtown Minneapolis) going on, it’s useful to remember that military weapon designs are designed, not to “kill as many people as possible”, but to not ever jam, and not run out of bullets before your attacker runs out of attack.

Mission accomplished.

John Hinderocker posted an article on Powerline on September 3 called “Some Comments on Guns,” in which he praises an earlier column posted by Paul Mirengoff called “A Conservative Plan to Reduce Shootings and Other Homicides.”
Good, we agree there are conservative ways to handle the problem. But then Hinderocker loses his mind and endorses red flag laws.
Plainly, he’s never been up close and personal with acrimonious divorce cases; with law enforcement’s arbitrary denials of gun permits; with petty bureaucrats lording over groundlings; with entitled leftists entrenched in the deep bureaucracy of every local government office; with judges who think they’re God and you’re dirt because you hold the wrong political opinions, voted for the wrong political party, are a white male caught up in the liberal feminist system.  I confidently predict red flag laws will be administered exactly the same as Orders for Protection, handed out like Kleenex, because judges will be terrified that someone will do something stupid and they will get blamed for it.  If Hinderocker had experience with that system, he’d be scared spitless of giving those people the power to disarm him, without a hearing, based on rumor and gossip.
I was tempted to argue reductio ad absurdum:  Most Methodists are white people.  Many Methodist congregations condemn certain sex acts.  Many Methodists also own guns.  Clearly, Methodists are a white supremacist hate group and a danger to historically oppressed victim groups.  Society must ban Methodism to protect those potential victims.  Just a pilot project, to test it out and see how well it works to reduce crime.  We can move on to Lutherans later.  Absurd, right?  And plainly unconstitutional. 
Except today’s atheist liberal left wouldn’t think the argument is absurd, they would jump on it with enthusiasm.  But they wouldn’t want the Lutherans next, they’d want the Catholics next, because they’re even bigger haters. Banning religion would be right up their alley.  How can you argue that your rights are entitled to Constitutional protection, when the people you’re trying to convince don’t believe the Constitution should protect you or your rights?
There’s a reason the Second Amendment doesn’t say ” the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall only be infringed a little.”
Joe Doakes

There is a temptation among some conservatives who have experience with big negotiations to think that this is something where a rational agreement can be reached.

Not with our opponents, it can’t.

As crime plummets nationwide, Minneapolis and Saint Paul are getting more dangerous.

And the neighbors are getting antsy:

Minneapolis Police are pledging once again to improve safety in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood, following an attempted abduction this month and a reported sexual assault in August.
The sexual assault happened after police say a man broke into a home. The attempted abduction happened in a parking lot of a property on 6th Street Southeast, where a University of Minnesota student told police a man tried to grab her as she was taking the trash out last Thursday morning.
“That’s very serious and very scary, and traumatic,” 2nd Precinct Inspector Todd Loining said.
Loining told a group of neighbors on Monday that the attempted abduction happened at the same building as a reported shooting in February. That shooting, part of a string of crimes this winter, prompted police to increase patrols in Marcy-Holmes.

So there’s some alarm about the surging crime stats.

And what will every last one of those people do next election time?

Vote DFL, naturally.

Such is the inferiority complex of Twin Cities media that this story is getting major airtime; the iconic TV sitcom Friends discussed relocating the show to Minnesota for half a seazon:

I said “discussed”:

The relocation to Minnesota developed in the writers’ room during the fifth season, thanks to a recurring desire to genuinely surprise the audience with plot developments. (Just like season four’s episode “The One With the Embryos,” where Monica and Rachel lose a bet and switch apartments with Joey and Chandler.) “The idea was that Chandler would be unexpectedly transferred to Minnesota for work,” Austerlitz writes. “Since there was no urgent reason for the characters to stay in New York, each of his friends would ultimately choose to join him there, and Friends would keep them in Minnesota for half a season.” The gang would grow to love this magical Midwestern respite from their go-go-go New York lifestyle, with “cheap apartments, friendly neighbors, and subzero temperatures.”

Bear in mind – the change was shot down. Hard. 20+ years ago.

Urban planner screws up and tells the truth: their goal is to make driving a car harder.

Joel Kotkin:

This became glaringly obvious recently, when the CEO of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Phil Washington, reeling from data showing a steady drop of transit riders, decided that the only solution was to make driving worse.
“It’s too easy to drive in this city,” said Washington. “We want to reach the riders that left and get to the new ones as well. And part of that has to do with actually making driving harder.”

And if you listen to the DFL apparatchiks that infest the Met Council, you hear the same thing – just a little quieter.

Well, outside friendly confines, anyway.

In medieval times, the Almoner was the church officer in charge of distributing money to the deserving poor. The church learned quickly that it couldn’t give money to everyone who held out their hands: there was never enough money to fill all the hands.
And not all hands deserved to be filled. Some were poor through sloth, some through drunkenness, some weren’t poor at all, just looking for a freebie.
The Almoner had to wisely distribute tithes and offerings given to the church to ensure the money went to the poor who deserved the church’s help.
If we replaced the concept of entitlement with the concept of deserving poor, and put the Almanor is in charge of distributing the funding, people would get off welfare, get off charity, get on with their lives, get on the path of work and prosperity and success, setting a role model for their children.
Joe Doakes

At some point, it’ll become inevitable

The primary goal of most government employment outside of the military, law-enforcement, first-responders (except their unions, of course).

The only thing notable about the episode last week with Rep. Jamie Long – a Minneapolis DFLer who got a patronage job in the DFL-dominated university/non-profit complex – is that he and his bureaucratic benefactor, former Senator Ellen Anderson, got busted.

It’s good to be an insider:

Turns out, before the position was even posted, Anderson was in touch with Long about the position. Anderson asked Long was to write his own position description and dictate his own hours to align perfectly with when the legislature was not in session. 
“Any information you have about what would be optimal for you would be helpful,” Anderson wrote in an April 1 email to Long, obtained via a public records request. 
In the same email, Anderson appeared to suggest that the secret donor’s money was specifically meant to employ Long while the legislature was not in session. The email mentioned money given “to start a legislative fellows program and hire MN Rep. Jamie Long.” 
According to the Pioneer Press: “The fellowship ultimately paid $33.65 an hour and was funded by a grant the university received on Feb. 27 from a donor whose identity was redacted from school records released to the public.” That would be about $40,000 for seven months of work—a set up that may have violated ethics and campaign finance laws.

The only notable thign about it is that GOP Rep Swedzinski actually found out about it, and took action.

IN other words, he held the dominant party in the bureaucracy accountable.

Something that never happens in single-part autocracies like Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Duluth or Bloomington.

It’s about trying to delegitimize the opposition to their gullible, querulous. base.

There’s going to be an appeal, of course – but the $30 million judgment against Oberlin College has withstood has withstood its first challenge:

Before appealing, Oberlin College filed two post-trial motions, a Motion for Judgment Notwithstanding The Verdict (pdf.) and Motion for a New Trial (pdf.), as explained in our post, Oberlin College Seeks New Trial in Gibson’s Bakery Case.
Gibson’s Bakery responded with an Opposition to the Motion for Judgment Notwithstanding The Verdict (pdf.), and Opposition to the Motion for a New Trial (pdf.), as explained in our post, Gibson’s Bakery: Oberlin College’s request for a new trial is “baseless”.
Judge John Miraldi has ruled, denying both motions. The Order Denying Motion for Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict (pdf.) and Order Denying Motion for New Trial (pdf.) are embedded at the bottom of the post.

I’m as excited – and realistic – about this as I am about the Twins’ post-season chances.

I’d like to see Democrat candidates for President asked to comment on this article.
Free people threatened by an oppressive regime beg for American help to resist.  What should America do?
Liz?  Joe?  Pete?  Anyone?  Anyone?
 Joe Doakes

They’ll do what Saint Barack did; equivocate and hedge and deflect away.

Minneapolis passed a “renter protection” ordinance last week that’ll hamstring landlords trying to do even the most basic due diligence about potential tenants:

The renter’s protection ordinance prevents landlords from using old criminal or housing records to deny applicants. Specifically, an applicant cannot be denied if they have a misdemeanor conviction older than three years, a felony record dating back seven years, and more serious offenses that occurred 10-plus years ago. Landlords also lose the use of a credit score during the screening process and there is a new cap on security deposits at one month’s rent.

I can see giving people a break on criminal records after a long-enough time keeping one’s nose clean.

On the other hand, I don’t think the City of Minneapolis is the one to plop an arbitrary figure on how long it takes a criminal to be a safe risk…

…for someone else’s investment.

Previously, property owners could look at someone’s criminal and credit history before renting to them, sometimes going back a decade. Renters said mistakes of the past should not affect their future, especially something from 10 or 20 years ago. 

In the 1960s, New York City instituted “Renter Protections” – rent control, making evictions for cause nearly impossible, onerous regulations on landlords – that caused the stock of “affordable housing” to become unsustainable; as landlords abandoned or sold out cheaper properties, housing either became unlivably awful and abandone, or sustainable but only affordable by the wealthy.

San Francisco followed suit; there is little between great wealth and grinding poverty.

Sounds like a fine plan, Minneapolis. You’re in good hands.

Ric Ocasek, founder and driving force behind seventies new-wave/pop earth-movers the Cars, died yesterday. He was…

…75? Yep. Apparently he spent the better part of 45 years lying about his age. He was well apparently a member of the Class of 1963, and halfway through his thirties and a veteran of years and years of playing in bars in Cleveland, Columbus, Ann Arbor and finally Boston by the time The Cars, their incandescent first album, landed in 1978.

It’d apparently been a rollercoaster year for Ocasek – inducted into the Rock and Roll Halll of Fame in 2018, in the middle of being separated from his wife of nearly 30 years, onetime supermodel Paulina Porizhkova – a marriage that was the subject of myriad “Beauty and the Beast” jokes when the 45 year old Ocasek and the then-23 year old Porizhkova married in ’89.

Oh, well. We’ll always have the good times.

This is the ad…

…that got Alexandra “Tide Pod Evita” Ocasio Cortez to call Elizabeth Heng – an actual immigrant as opposed to a canned intersectional faux-Ali-from-the-block, and a child of the Cambodian Genocide – a “white supermacist”.

Anything that brings out Tide Pod Evita’s inner junior high Mean Girl so clearly deserves to be played far and wide.

Pass it along,

I like John Bolton. I respect his opinions and his intelligence. But he outlived his usefulness in the Trump Administration
Bolton is a foreign policy hawk. He wants the United States to bring about regime change in socialist dictatorships. In other words, he wants us to meddle in the internal affairs of sovereign nations to overthrow states that we don’t like.
That mental attitude – that the United States has both the power and the obligation to make the world a better place – was the underlying rationale for the Iraq War, liberating Kuwait, and countless other excursions around the globe. But the more we spend on climate change avoidance and free student loans and Medicare for everyone, the less money we have to spend on foreign adventures. The more people want to be peace studies majors, the fewer people want to sign up for the military. The more Americans want to retire to Texas and Florida and Arizona, the less Americans want to see bombs falling on children across the globe.
Bolton’s ideas were perfect for the Bush Administration. But I don’t think that policy is going to fly in the 2020 world. I think President Trump has a better understanding of what’s possible, what’s realistic, what’s necessary, than John Bolton. So his services are no longer required.
Joe doakes

There was a time when the world needed phalanxes of Boltons. And therel’l come a time when we need more, I have a hunch.

In the wake of the crummy news on election night last year, I signed off our broadcast by urging people to look at the, er, silver lining; given a sudden influx of power, Democrats, especially “progressives”, would inevitably overreach.

They did. And they are.

And people are taking note; Pew shows the parties’ favorabilities have flipped since last year.

The media will be working overtime to fix that – you’re starting to see stories about hungry senior citizens, which is the media’s old standby when Democrats are in trouble – but so far all is as predicted.

Counter-terrorism official claims that mass shootings in America are White right-wing terrorism and therefore should be handled like any other terrorists.
Author ignores untreated mental illness, claims it’s all White Supremacy and easy access to guns.  Only nation in the world to have this problem.  Article is easy to read, conveniently free of citations to studies or news reports or actual proof.  Entirely based on “I’m an expert, believe what I say,” which is a form of the logical fallacy “appeal to authority” that I’ve found particularly annoying since junior high school.
And what’s the proposal – treat White Supremacy like Muslim terrorism?  How?  Put all White American Presbyterians under surveillance?  Infiltrate spies into White organizations like the Kiwanis?  Tap the President’s phones (wait, already did that, it was a bust). No, the author wants the country to adopt two gun control bills presently in Congress, tinkering with background checks. 
Suppose the FBI receives a background check application.  Applicant has no criminal record, never officially diagnosed as mentally ill, not in their database.  But the FBI agent finds disturbing Facebook pictures of the applicant in front of a Nazi flag giving the Nazi salute saying “Finish what Hitler started.” 
Is that enough to deny him the gun?  On what legal grounds?  That he’s a member of the American Nazi Party?  “Being a hater” isn’t listed in any state or federal law as grounds for denial and for good reason – it’s political speech protected by the First Amendment, and thus cannot be used to deny firearms purchases under the Second Amendment.
The author was a Deep State government employee for years.  And his big solution to mass shootings – background checks – can only work if it’s expanded to include crushing unapproved political opinions.  Now we see why draining the swamp is more important that anyone thought.
Joe Doakes

If I were President, it’d be the moral equivalent of…

…well, not “war”. Maybe “dismantling the Department of Education”.

Which is, to be fair, mighty important.

I went to a pretty unheralded little college in the middle of nowhere.

And it was one of the great experiences of my life.

It wasn’t that I learned things that directly helped me in the job market; my BA in English with minors in History and German didn’t kick open the doors of corporate America. Or non-profit America. Or anything.

But it taught me to think. Think hard. Sometimes to think hard about things I didn’t already know, or actively doubted. I had to study things – Freud, Nietsche, Marx – that I found disagreeable, and learn to understand them. I hard to confront ideas that didn’t comport with what the 18 year old me know about the universe. Sometime in my junior year, that cognitive dissonance led me, who’d grown up in a Democrat family, and who had written a Federalist party platform at 1980 Boys State that would have made Alexandria “Tide Pod Evita” Ocasio Cortez’ leg tingle – to vote for Ronald Reagan.

I was uncomfottable.

College kids today, increasingly, are deprived of this experience:

Post-secondary eduation in the US has gone through three borad eras;

1. Christian education
2. Gentlemens’ (and womens) education
3. Consumer education (in the post GI-Bill era, where the student was looking for a good value for their money and time)

…and, well, something new.

What is that something new?

Elite private education in America is on the cusp of this new era. The controversies over free speech, safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions and the like are symptoms of this shift. They are currently considered controversies because the colleges are in transition, and many do not realize that the old standards no longer hold. Once the transition is complete, the “correct” side of the controversies will become central to a school’s identity — just as faith was to the Christian college, self-confidence was to the gentlemen’s college, and alumni devotion and achievement were to the consumer’s college.
Some have suggested naming this new college “the therapeutic university” or “the woke college.” I prefer “the comfort college,” because it combines the emotional component of the first with the political elements of the second. Our students are comfortable in their opinions but uncomfortable with their lives, finding their world and the Williams campus a threatening place. Once Williams’ transition to comfort college is complete, the students will expect to find their college truly comfortable in all respects.

And key to intellectual comfort is the suppression of all cognitive dissonance:

The slogan of the comfort college is “diversity and inclusion.” And just to be clear: The presence of previously underrepresented groups is vital, necessary and welcome. What’s more, insensitivity toward people’s identities should be self-censored, and social pressure to do so is a helpful tool.
But another agenda, an agenda that runs counter to true diversity and inclusion, has (often silently) accompanied these positive changes. At some point along the way, this laudable attention to the language of inclusion turned from a psychologically realistic sensitivity into a harsh and confrontational tribal marker. Much of comfort-college language — “neurodiverse” versus “mentally ill,” “minoritized” versus “minority” — simply identifies one as a member of the woke tribe, and using the wrong term will bring about social death.
The lack of cognitive significance in tribal language is a symptom of the deeper disease: the devaluing of the pursuit of knowledge. Students are now absolutists. Students, administrators and some faculty know what is right (and who is wrong). Any challenge to their views cannot be in pursuit of knowledge or even clarification. It can only come from the desire to crush and oppress.

I started this piece thinking that the future is going to be run by “elites” whose beliefs haven’t been forced to change since high school.

Given the totalitarian aspects to this change, maybe junior high is a better analogy.

Remember my definition of “Urban Progressive Privilege“; it’s a characteristic of people who can count on their worldviews remaining unchallenged throughout life.

Minneapolis’ “May Day Parade”, awash in a battle between white uperliberals and intersectional even-more-uberprogs, is “taking a year off“.

The decision goes beyond a year’s worth of funding. This year’s parade, held on a sunny Sunday in May, “was a wild success,” the nonprofit noted, that netted a $50,000 surplus. Instead, this break is meant to address bigger, structural issues — including the parade’s history of marginalizing and appropriating artists of color, Zoll said.
“The first word that comes to mind is gratitude,” said Minneapolis artist and author Junauda Petrus-Nasah. By taking a year off, Heart of the Beast is showing that it wants to do the “big, healing work” needed to transform. As a black, queer artist, Petrus-Nasah has experienced firsthand how the MayDay Parade “hadn’t genuinely made itself safe for people who aren’t liberal in a white, South Side kind of way.
a group of people walking in front of a crowd: The MayDay parade will be taking a year off so the nonprofit behind the annual rite of spring in south Minneapolis can reinvent it, improving it for artists and audiences of color.

“There’s a lot of work to be done around the soul and identity of this space that goes beyond mission statements.”
Artists and neighbors heard the news Wednesday at a meeting at the theater’s home, the Avalon Theatre on Lake Street.

I would almost like to attend those meetings.

Under deeeeep cover, natch.

As the Twin Cities’ best feminist, I have to ask my fellow, if lesser, feminists – do you all get tired of being pandered to in the guise of “equity”?

New Monopoly game gives women a “head start” in the name of “equal pay”:

Hasbro wants to take the conversation over the gender pay gap out of the board room and into the living room with its new Ms. Monopoly game, launching this month.
Dubbed “the first game where women make more than men,” the updated version of the classic board-game introduces new women-centric elements, starting with its titular character. Ms. Monopoly is the niece of the elder Mr. Monopoly and a “self-made investment guru,” according to the product listing on Walmart.com.
In the game, women get a head start: Female players receive $1,900 in Monopoly money at the beginning of the game, compared to $1,500 for each male player, USA Today reports. Women also receive $240 each time they pass ‘Go’ on the board, while men get $200.

I’m not sure about all you lesser feminists, but it seems like this is a return to the days of victorian deference, not equity.

Maybe that’s what “feminism” actually wants?

Defamation award against Oberlin upheld in court.

Staff in 100 NPR-affiliate stations are wondering what job hunting’s going to be like with an ex-college on their resume.

This is my sad face.

NASCAR is too woke for gun ads in its printed programs?  Wow, I had no idea people who attend races are such sophisticated, urbane Liberals.  I didn’t even know they SOLD white wine spritzers at the track.  I thought NASCAR were a bunch of gas-loving, beer-drinking, gun-toting, red-neck mothers like me.
Shows what I know.
Joe Doakes

When Marketing people operate without adult supervision…

Today is the 59h anniversary of the Sharon Statement – a 400 word essay that set out the founding principles of Young Americans for Freedom. It was hatched at William F. Buckley’s home in Sharon, Connecticut – hence the name – and it establishes principles that conservatives need to keep in front of them now more than ever.

Read it. Frame it. Give it to a muddle-headed young ‘un. History will thank yoiu.

The Sharon Statement

In this time of moral and political crises, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths.

We, as young conservatives, believe:

That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force;

That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom;

That the purpose of government is to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice;

That when government ventures beyond these rightful functions, it accumulates power, which tends to diminish order and liberty;

That the Constitution of the United States is the best arrangement yet devised for empowering government to fulfill its proper role, while restraining it from the concentration and abuse of power;

That the genius of the Constitution—the division of powers—is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people, in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government;

That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs;

That when government interferes with the work of the market economy, it tends to reduce the moral and physical strength of the nation; that when it takes from one man to bestow on another, it diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and the moral autonomy of both;

That we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure; that history shows periods of freedom are rare, and can exist only when free citizens concertedly defend their rights against all enemies;

That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties;

That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace; and

That American foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just interests of the United States?

Pass it along.

I’ve said it before; I knew isomething terrible happened the moment I turned in NPR, and heard public radio personalities trying to ad-lib. Even before I heard the words “airplane”, “terrorist” or “World Trade Center”, I knew something awful was going on; Public Radio people don’t go to the bathroom without a script.

Hard to believe – nobody under the age of 18, officially, was born on 9/11. Some of the soldiers and Marines who’ll be fighting the war that started 18 years ago will have born after the war began. For an entire generation, the war is all of reality.

In case you’ve forgotten:

And say what you will, but Dubya never had a better moment:

After eighteen years, the takeaways are all pretty bad.

Quoting Glenn Reynolds:

One thing I guess I didn’t believe 17 years ago is that America would elect such a feckless President in 2008, and stand idly by while he flushed our global position, and security, down a left-wing toilet. But we did, and we’ll be paying the price for a long time. That said, for the first time I feel like our diplomacy is on a good track, and that — thanks also to fracking — the problems that led to 9/11 are being addressed.

God bless America. We need it.

We were given a moment – against our will – when we, a nation, had to react to what is, in the great, historical scheme of things the norm; barbarity, terror, the imposing of ones will onto others via violence. And for a brief moment, we did react. Positively, effectively, and up to the best of this nation’s traditions. But now, 18 years later, we’re even more tribal than we were after the 2000 elections. Perhaps terminally. I’ll add “both sides are responsible”, but you know that’s largely punching a ticket.

And the great lesson of 9/11 was that, when government lets us down – and it did, and always does – the individual stepped up and dealt with what they needed to. The people below the points of impact in the World Trade Center, far from being the mindless cattle that law enforcement expected people to act like, largely organized their own evacuations from the doomed buildings; there were relatively few dead from among those below the floors with the impacts. And passengers on Flight 93 did what would have been unthinkable years before – utterly contrary to the “conventional wisdom” of the day. And yet 9/11’s greatest institutional legacies are a government that treats people even more like cattle (seen those TSA lines lately?), is more intrusive and hamfisted (wiretap laws and militarized police with greater purview to use force for routine interactions), and just plain bigger and dumber.

And in that? The terrorists did win.

Sorry to say.

You want to lose, and lose huge, next year?

Go wobbly on guns.

Dance with the ones that brung you, or accept the consequences.

That is all.