A few weeks ago, I saw the new film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott “Little Women“. I’m told there are seven different versions on film out there – I’ve only seen parts of the 1933 version with Katherine Hepburn, and of course the 1994 version with Winona Ryder (of which the less said, the better).

I liked it. A lot. Yes, it’s a“Chick flick“, and I don’t care, because all I really care about is “is it a good movie“.

Around the same time, I saw a new statistic; a solid majority of doctors under the age of 35 or women.

I used to ask Twin Cities media figures why they kept taking the likes of Heather Martens and the “Reverend” Nancy Nord Bence seriously, treating them as legitimate sources on the news, when the leading intellectual lights of Minnesota’s gun control movement burned them so consistently on actual fact.

On a national level, the same question goes.

The first- Jack Wilson, who pulled off an incredible shot against the shooter at the Texas Church Massacre That Wasn’t.

On Sunday, during what would otherwise likely be a quiet worship service at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, an armed gunman entered the church and after talking to a man for several minutes in the corner, pulled out a shotgun and opened fire.
The gunman, as was witnessed in recorded video of the entire incident, barely managed to get off more than a few rounds before an armed security guard standing 50 feet away from the shooter drew his pistol and fired a single shot, instantly killing the gunman with what appeared to be a perfectly placed head shot.

Go ahead – try to put a shot into a five inch circle at 50 feet. Simulate the stress of the situation first, though – do fifty jumping jacks and then grab your gun and squeeze off the shot in a second or less.

And as a practicing believer, I loved Wilson’s quote:

Wilson, who is running to be county commissioner in Hood County, shared on Facebook that while he is sad he lost  “two dear friends and brothers in CHRIST,” he thanks God for being able to protect the congregation because evil does exist in the world. 
“I just want to thank all who have sent their prayers and comments on the events of today. The events at West Freeway Church of Christ put me in a position that I would hope no one would have to be in, but evil exist and I had to take out an active shooter in church,” Wilson wrote.

Yep, I’ll be headed to the range. Or I would, if all my guns hadn’t fallen into Mille Lacs and they didn’t completely terrify me anyway.

The second? The Texas state legislator, Sen. Donna Campbell of New Braunfels, who led the push, after the Sutherland Springs church massacre, to remove the “gun free zone” language from Texas churches.

To be clear, churches would still be able to prohibit licensed citizens from carrying firearms on their premises so long as they provide oral or written notice.
Campbell’s bill codifies a previous opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton sought shortly after the shooting in Sutherland Springs. In the opinion, Paxton stated that “unless a church provides effective oral or written notice prohibiting the carrying of handguns on its property, a license holder may carry a handgun onto the premises of church property as the law allows.”

I predict a steep decline in copy-cat shootings in churches – in “shall issue” and “constitutional carry” states, anyway.

Great site
Joe doakes

I usually deride Medium.com’s “social science” section as “Tumbler for overdramatic solipsists” – but they’ve had some good stuff on 2nd Amendment issues over the years.

Goon attacks church, killing two…

…before being brought down by armed parishioners:

“It appears that a gunman shot two church members at back of auditorium with a footlong weapon, then a member shot the gunman with a pistol,” [Editor Bobby Ross of Christian Chronicle] wrote. “This is just based on me watching the video again. Screaming afterward in the church. So tragic. Two quick shots at back, then another shot. Then at least three members (I believe) with pistols [walking] toward where the gunman appeared to fall.”
CBS News Dallas reported that a witness confirmed to them that another church member shot the suspect.

Video of the episode:

The recognition of the good civilians with guns runs to the highest level of Texas government:

In the meantime, Jews in New York State react to yet another antisemitic attack – in some cases, utterly sensibly:

At the risk of sounding mawkish?  I’m proud to be an American when I see this.  

In a related matter, some prominent American Jews have some ideas on accessories in a time of rising antisemitic violence. 

Good enough is the enemy of perfection.

Accept no less than this in 2020.

A friend of the blog writes:

This retweet- I have no words…

… except that if the couple he was retweeting ever read this, then they would find the racism in the US.

Berg’s Eighth Law – “American progressivism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder.”

– applies here.  

And applies, and applies, and applies some more.  

Hunter Biden is being sued in Arkansas for paternity and child support. 
I don’t know anything about Arkansas child support law, but if this were a Minnesota case, our law requires the court to set child support based on income. Where income has changed downward, the court can rule that the obligor is intentionally self-limiting his income to avoid paying child support. In that case, the court can set child support based on imputed income.
Suppose you are Hunter Biden’s lawyer. He formerly made $80,000 per month for sitting on the board of a corporation. He no longer has that job. Do you concede that the board job was a legitimate job so his earning ability is $80,000 per month and set child support based on that? When he fails to pay, they’ll find him in contempt and throw him in jail. 
Or do you assert that the corporate job was phony, he was just a bagman for his dad to collect bribes from foreigners and now that his dad is out of office, the kid has no ability to earn the same level of bribe money so child support must be set lower?
You might get the kid out of paying child support, but what does it say about his dad, the candidate, and about President Trump’s phone call for which he just got impeached?
Answer, you quit. Hunter Biden’s lawyers just resigned from the case. I bet I know why.
Joe doakes

You can lie to the public, to a FISA court, or to a Democrat-controlled House with great, consequence-free effect.

But a family court? Where county money is at stake? Good luck with that.

CBC erases Donald Trump’s cameo from the movie Home Alone 2.

Steyn’s comment is the part I love throwing out there. Trump is a former Democrat, and spent a couple of decades as a blue state cultural icon before going apostate.

Or, as I put it on the air, “I disliked Trump back when “Celebrity Apprentice” was appointment TV for many of his critics today”.

To jog the memory – Berg’s Seventh Law reads “When a Liberal / “Progressive” issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”

So – if the Democrats accuse any Republican, especially Trump, of some sort of miscreancy?

You can count on it being a noise-screen to cover up their own perfidy.

And it never really fails:

Following months of angry claims by journalists and Democratic operatives that the Obama administration never spied on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, The New York Times admitted Thursday that multiple overseas intelligence assets were deployed against associates of the Republican nominee. It is not the first time the Times has revealed widespread spying operations against the campaign.
In addition to noting that long-time informant Stefan Halper was tasked with collecting intelligence on the Trump campaign, the Times story details how a woman was sent overseas under a fake name and occupation to oversee the spy operation. The woman’s real name is not mentioned in the article, though the Times says she went by “Azra Turk” and has a relationship with an unidentified federal intelligence agency.

This is going to go on a looong time.

Unless the Democrats sweep the White House and Congress in 2020, in which case it’s going to disappear…

“Someone” at Saint Olaf in Northfield “swatted” a group of Republican students:.

Despite the students telling the officers they had no guns and no ammunition and felt they were the victims of a malicious prank — as right-of-center students have faced open hostility on campus for several years — the officers continued to raid the dorm and upend some of its contents.
The officers had been unaware that they were headed into a dorm full of College Republicans as they initiated the search.
The entire leadership of the College Republicans at St. Olaf College lives together in a shared pod-style dormitory comprised of several bedrooms with a common living room. It was this pod searched by officers Sunday afternoon.
“We essentially got swatted, it was just a prank or an attack, something made to intimidate us, something made to make it difficult for us to study for finals and to make us uncomfortable here on campus,” said Chris, one of the students who lives in the dorm.

This is Saint Olaf – the place that drew national attention over a hate crime that wasn’t – and, in one of the more blatant Berg’s Seventh Law violations I’ve ever encountered, barred Ben Shapiro from the campus because, apparently, they didn’t want their students to experience even intellectual consequences for their hatred.

Not to mention legal consequences (emphasis added):

However a public statement to students put out by a dean on Tuesday actually praised those who called in the false threat, this despite the fact that officers had found nothing and the College Republicans told administrators they suspect they were targeted for their beliefs.
“We know this is a stressful time on campus,” reads the statement, authored by Dean Rosalyn Eaton. “We appreciate the individuals who alerted the college to these concerns, the residents who were cooperative during the search, and the college staff members who acted quickly.”

They “appreciate” a bunch of spoiled little snowflakes that sent armed, nervous cops to swarm over their dorm room.

Saint Olaf has apparently becoming a finishing school for Urban Progressive Privilege.

The “Reverend” Nancy Nord Bence, of “Protect” Minnesota, on Facebook:

Why, it’s almost as if “Protect” MN is admitting it’s a purely metro-centric organization! The “group” clearly think all gun policy should be set in the Twin Cities.

Well, among the right Twin Citians, anyway.

Totalitarian personality cult: 1935

Totalitarian personality cult, 1990

Totalitarian personality cult: 2020

News outlet Samhällsnytt reported that the 16-year-old climate activist is now included in the school curriculum and is being portrayed in an overtly sympathetic light, with the course describing her as an “alarm clock” that “allows us to discuss, talk, and reflect on what is happening to our world.”
According to one student, “Greta is practically painted as a saint.”
Students are tasked with making memes about Greta that mock her opponents and disprove criticism that has been leveled at her.
“In one task, they are asked to find a picture to illustrate the sentence “One simply doesn’t mess with Greta,” a nod to an outdated Boromir meme from “Lord of the Rings,” reports Sputnik.
According to education publisher Liber, including Greta in lessons is “important to constantly offer materials and teaching materials that reflect the contemporary.”

The mural is in San Francisco – but I’d expect Stockholm (and Minneapolis) to do their best to keep up with the joneses.

A friend of the blog emails:

Obama talks about undeveloped countries and opportunities for women in those countries. 
“It turns out that one of the best indicators of whether a country is developed or not is how does it educate its girls and how does it treat its women,” Obama said. “And typically, those countries that do a bad job on that are backwards and behind economically.”
Here, I agree. There are Middle Eastern countries that invoke religious laws to justify barring women from educational opportunities, employment, and just being out in public.

Amazing as this might seem to some millennials, there are places much, much worse than the United States.

But, MPR tweeted this article, leading with the following quote-
“There would be less war, kids would be better taken care of and there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes,” Obama said.
Why do we need to constantly perpetuate this sexist myth that all women are anti-war, that all women agree on what is the ‘right’ way to provide child care? As a woman, I am deeply offended by this myth.
I am offended for many reasons. Supporters of Obama love this type of quote. It makes them feel are warm and fuzzy for being “woke” and feminist. Then, they turn around and bash Betsy Devos for being pro Charter schools. Oh, women don’t know what is best for their children in that case? 

“Progressivism” is all about supporting the right women/gays/minorities. As Berg’s Eighth Law of Diversity notes, “American progressivism’s reaction to one of “their”constituents – women, gays or people of color – running for office or otherwise identifying as a conservative is indistinguishable from sociopathic disorder.” There’s only one lane allowed for women, gays and minorities – otherwise, they’re apostates, and treated as such.

They are the type of people who bashed Margaret Thatcher for her economic policies in Britain. Did Thatcher improve living standards in Britain? Of course. But, your answer to that probably depends on your political beliefs, and not based on the fact that she was a woman. I am not sure Obama supporters come to the same conclusion as me.
By the way, Hillary Clinton likely would have had us in a war by now. Oh, and Thatcher was not an anti-war woman, either. Does that make Trump “the woman” candidate since he hasn’t started a war? 

By the way – while I am the Twin Cities’ best feminist, I am unabashedly male, so I’m probably not the one to ask – but I can’t be the only one who cringes, visibly, at some of modern culture’s more visible pandering to women, can I? My peeve lately is people using the term “HERStory”, with helpful idiot caps, when a history article refers to women? More seriously, I can’t be the one that notices that modern “feminism’s” big push seems to be a return to victorian social conventions (but not, repeat not, mores) as re women?

I do not care if your political beliefs are different from mine. I am happy to debate policy differences. But I am sick of people in the 21st Century making blanket statements that all women believe this or all blacks vote for that. We have examples of competent and experienced women and people of color on all sides of the issues. We also have many examples of people- men, women, any race- who have not been competent. Even if you disagree politically, you can give credit to someone who is competent. 
Yes, as Americans who believe in freedoms for all people, we abhor the way some countries disregard women and children. But, if you conflate that with we need women in charge to make us all better, then you are being just as oppressive. You are not allowing women the same opportunities to have independent beliefs as you have allowed for yourself as a man.

Obama’s comment is the rankest form of pandering. And anyone who’s ever worked in the real world knows that women are, pretty much, like other humans. Some are good, many are walking trash. I’ve worked for managers who were good, and many who were worse than worthless, a few are downright evil – and they’re about evenly split by gender.

Why does the worst ex-President since Jimmy Carter think leaders would be any different?

They’re not.

It people just aren’t retaining stuff from 9th-grade civics class like they used to:

Are you gonna tell him?

I’m not gonna tell him…

The New York Times reports that hermit crabs have wealth inequity.  It’s settled science. 
Which proves that wealth inequity is part of the natural order of things, and not the result of capitalism or white supremacy.  Therefore, I no longer need to feel bad about it.  
Good to know. 
Joe Doakes

Watch for hermit crabs to get “canceled. 

Saint Paul “porch pirate” – one of the plague of demi-human locusts that have been stealing delivery packages from peoples’ porches – sinks to a new(er) low: leaving a snorky “thank you” note to their victim:

As if stealing a package from someone’s front steps isn’t cruel enough, a porch pirate in St. Paul added an insulting “thank you” note for the package’s rightful owner. 
“Two days ago Hilary was notified that a package was delivered to her home on the 800 block of Watson Avenue. When she got home from work at about 5 p.m., the package was missing, replaced with a thank you note from the porch pirate. Unbelievable,” wrote St. Paul Police Department in a tweet. 
The note reads: “So just a quick little thank you for leaving me the opportunity of stealing your package very nice of you. Thank you.”
The note is signed by “The new owner of your package.” 

Mayor Carter: It’s time to do the right thing.

Repeal the ordinances that prohibit booby-trapping.

Articles like these are the reason women in the sciences are not taken seriously.  
Carmen and Leonie have PhDs in computer science.   Divya is a student of geology on other planets.  They’re probably brilliant people in their fields but when they write stuff like this, they remind everyone of the shirt incident, which reinforces the reason nobody wants women in the sciences.
There is a silver lining.  I can’t wait for President Trump to issue an Executive Order directing all federal agencies to stop using the Supremacy Clause as Constitutional justification for federal laws over-riding state laws.  Power to the People, baby!
Joe Doakes

From the article:

We take issue with the use of ‘supremacy’ when referring to quantum computers that can out-calculate even the fastest supercomputers (F. Arute et al. Nature 574, 505–510; 2019). We consider it irresponsible to override the historical context of this descriptor, which risks sustaining divisions in race, gender and class. We call for the community to use ‘quantum advantage’ instead.
The community claims that quantum supremacy is a technical term with a specified meaning. However, any technical justification for this descriptor could get swamped as it enters the public arena after the intense media coverage of the past few months.

Read: A tsunami of stupid, driven by an ignorant, incurious media, might cause idiots – invariably idiots on the left – to think “quantum supremacy” is a racist dog whistle.

In our view, ‘supremacy’ has overtones of violence, neocolonialism and racism through its association with ‘white supremacy’. Inherently violent language has crept into other branches of science as well — in human and robotic spaceflight, for example, terms such as ‘conquest’, ‘colonization’ and ‘settlement’ evoke the terra nullius arguments of settler colonialism and must be contextualized against ongoing issues of neocolonialism.

Let’s be honest – it’s not just women who publish this twaddle.  Bowderiing science like this, if it jumps the banks of Moron Creek, will harm everyone, matter their pigment or genitalia.  

Ivy League academic, continuing Big Left’s urge to appropriate and pervert every aspect of society no matter how innocuous or innocent, progsplains that the classic claymation Christmas special Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is actually classically “queer”, and that conservatives who object just don’t understand Christmas:

“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is a “queer” icon whether “conservatives” like it or not, according to one Ivy League professor.
Columbia University English professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, has offered a whole new take on the classic Christmas claymation “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” claiming that the film is “the queerest holiday special ever” in a recent New York Timesopinion piece. 

But wait.  There’s more. 

Boylan began a gender transition to live as a woman at the age of 42. In her article, she compares her life experience to the Christmas classic, saying, “the subtext of this ridiculous story was the truth of my own improbable life. A fabulously blond elf who doesn’t like to make toys? A reindeer who is cast out by those who are supposed to love him, on account of an accident of birth?”

Of course “she” did.

For those moments when Avery Librelle seems just too realistic…

But forget what you know, because progsplain. Also shut up hater.

Boylan notes that she expects “conservatives” to be “infuriated by this suggestion,” adding that “conservatives seem to miss the point of a lot of things having to do with Christmas.” This supposedly includes that Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas’ employs a “fundamental critique of capitalism”

There are times I think a civil war may be the best thing that could happen to this country.

Because maybe fewer people will pay attention to their miserable field of candidates, that’s why. 

Hey, Mitch – why are Democrats and Big Left pushing to scrap the Electoral College and make the Senate a popularly-elected body?  

Oh, why do you think?

There used to be more holidays.  Nowadays, we’re down to a few Sales Events.  I miss holidays.
George Washington had his own birthday holiday. We gave Valentines to classmates, planted a tree in the yard on Arbor Day, and hung construction paper cones on doorknobs on May Basket Day.   
The high school band marched in the Memorial Day parade.  The school bell rang at 11:00 on Armistice Day as we sat silent for one minute. We knew who Squanto was and why he got invited to dinner by Pilgrims, the man carrying a musket while wearing a tall black hat with a shiny buckle on the front; the woman in a bonnet near a big, fat turkey.  We put out our shoes for Saint Nicholas and sang familiar songs in the Christmas concert.
The musket violates the zero tolerance policy for guns. It’s unfair to celebrate one President’s birthday but not the others.  Valentine was a Catholic saint, apartment dwellers have no yards to plant trees; parading on Main Street disrupts traffic and singing about a long-ago silent night converts schools into cathedrals.
We have cut ourselves off from our cultural traditions and wonder why our children have no sense of history, of belonging to a great nation, of pride in our culture.  And I fear what happens to a people who have no sense of history, of belonging to a great nation, no culture.  
Joe Doakes

The only mistake is to assume that this isn’t all according to plan. 

I noted the other day that “progressives” seem to have only read-only memory; once they get a point in their heads, regardless of veracity or logic, it just stays there.

It has literally gotten to the point where the politicians and pundits of Big Left don’t even bother trying to convince people with any basis in fact or critical thinking skills; their entire message is repeating Big Lies often and loudly enough to convince the invincibly ignorant and browbeat the underinformed and insecure.

The mission today: add to the list. What are the lies, one line at a time, that Big Left gets the ignorant and the authoritarian to believe?

I’ll start below – but leave more in the comments.

• “Trump’s election was illegitimate!”
• “We’ve got more ‘gun violence’ now than ever before!”
• “The ‘Republican War on Women’”
• There are 57 genders
• America is a racist nation
• America is an antisemitic nation
• America’s past is a uniquely terrible thing
• Trump supported neo-Nazis at Charlottesville
• Socialism lifts people from poverty; the free market does not
• Obamacare benefitted more people than it harmed
• Slavery in America was uniquely more terrible than slavery elsewhere
• “Nixon won because all the racists came over to the GOP, and stayed”
• “Nobody’s coming for your guns!”
• Boys and girls are identical in every way.
• “White privilege”, rather than class privilege, is a suffocating force in society. 
• “We’ve got twelve years to solve manmade global warming!”
• “Increasing public school funding directly benefits The Children!”
• Racism is in America’s very cultural DNA
• Religious faith is ignorance – it has nothing to do with meaning, merely a crutch for the intellectually vacant. 
• Blacks are more likely to be shot by police than whites
• Voter ID = “Voter Suppression”.
• The Second Amendment was intended to defend slavery 
• Rape culture dominates colleges – 1 in 5 women at colleges are raped or otherwise sexually assaulted
• Women are paid 3/4 as much as men for the same work
• “Children! In cages! It’s Trump’s fault!”
• LIfe only begins when the baby emerges from the birth canal.  
• “90% of the people want “universal” background checks on guns!”
• “Abortion is about womens’ health!”
• “Trump attacked women!”

UPDATE 12/18: Adding reader comments. 

• Trump trying to appeal to black voters is voter suppression!
• “There’s evidence that Trump has committed crimes!”
• “Impeachment is a serious inquiry into Presidential abuse of power.”
• “We must remove Trump to preserve Constitutional norms.”
• The “Scandal free Obama administration.”
• “Jimmy Carter was a good president.”
• Social spending is “an investment”
• Immigrants are a benefit to society (as a blanket statement)
• Gay marriage is all about love.  Not politics. 
• School choice hurts poor people
• Trump had sex with “Stormy Daniels.”
• Trump paid Daniels hush money, Daniels did not blackmail Trump
• There is 97% scientific consensus on global warming
• All of our problems can be solved by raising taxes on the wealthy
• That’s not who we are!
• We’re on the right side of history
• “If ________ saves the life of just one child” then some usurpation, oppression or indignity is “worth it”. 

What else? 

Please respond in the comments.   

Responses that are not direct answers to the question – i.e. Democrat chanting points – will be removed. 

Racist pig and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib blames “white supremacy”…

…for an attack carried out by black “Jews”.

Apparently, a judge following the law as written commits some kind of hate crime. Wisconsin legislature should look into this.
Joe doakes

The left sees “hate crimes” a lot like Michael Scott does:

And as Berg’s