St. Paul man shoots daughters boyfriend after he allegedly barges into his house with a very bad attitude:

A 56-year-old man told investigators that his daughter’s boyfriend broke kicked in his front door, threatened his daughter, and he shot him.

Paramedics pronounced [“boyfriend” Kaleef] Barnes dead at the scene.

According to police, this killing marked the 13th homicide in St. Paul this year. Last year at this time, the city’s homicide count was at nine. Barnes’ shooting happened just hours after an unrelated shootingThursday evening in the North End neighborhood where one man was killed and another seriously wounded.

The case is still with the Ramsey county attorneys office. Coming weeks after the Hennepin county attorneys office declined to charge a woman for a self-defense shooting in her own home, and apparently declined to press charges against it would be car jacking victim, one might be tempted to feel encouraged that citizens are cleaning the cities up, just a little bit.

But Berg’s 18th law is still in full affect. We don’t know all the details, and if anything, John Choi may be worse at dealing with civilian self-defense shooters than even Mike Freeman.

So your metaphysical appeals in whatever form your worldview recognizes on behalf of the homeowner/citizen are encouraged.

Senator John Marty is apparently working hard to burnish his cred as a progressive extremist.

Yesterday, he introduced a bill to require licensing for gun owners.

And in it, he proved himself a word the successor to Wes “Lying Sack Of Garbage” Skoglund and the “Reverend“ Nancy Nord Bence, in that nut a shingle claim he makes is it simultaneously substantial, original and true.

Seriously:

“For young people, the 15-year-olds who can easily access guns now and commit armed carjackings and murders and other things, you know, they would have to go through training and they would have to go through a process to do this,” said Marty. “And, we would have limits so that some of these 16-year-olds couldn’t go out and buy guns.”

Anyone see the problem in the Senator’s statement?

Anyone at all?

I don’t want to keep seeing the same hands, here.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

I’ve been thinking that donations to politicians were buying access. If some front company in Ukraine donates a million dollars to Hillary’s Haitian Relief Fund, she’ll return their calls so they can express their concerns about US foreign policy. But thinking about it more, that’s gotta be wrong. Everybody knows that system can’t work. She gets calls from all her donors, she makes no promises to any of them, just says pleasing platitudes and moves on. That’s not worth a million dollars.

They’re buying notice.

I donate a million dollars to Hillary’s fund, foundation or library, her staff notifies my staff of actions which could harm me. But not just notice, timely notice, notice given far enough in advance that I can move assets, sell stocks, transfer funds to avoid whatever new tax or regulatory scheme is coming down the pike, and far enough in advance so I can wipe my computers, like with a cloth, or at least ditch my laptop at some rural pawnshop to avoid ‘insider trading’ sanctions by regulators.

It won’t work for little guys like me. Even if I had known three years ago that St. Paul rent controls were coming, could I have positioned myself to take advantage of them (or at least, not be hurt by them)? No. Not enough cash on hand, not nimble enough in the market, not able to take advantage of the warning. But what about Blackrock or Zillow? Could they have used that knowledge to stop buying in St. Paul and concentrate on Roseville instead? Absolutely.

I wonder how long the safe harbor provision is?

Joe Doakes

Depends on what the meaning of the word “is” is.

What would happen if someone in a position of authority blatantly defied the law? Would a piece of paper immediately appear and envelop them in parchment shackles?

Sulla is remembered as the first Roman dictator to take power by force. He first displayed his military prowess while serving under Marius, and a sharp rivalry developed between the two. The Senate was becoming wary of Marius’ own ambitions and when war broke out against King Mithridates, Sulla was given command of the army sent to deal with him.

In Rome, Marius maneuvered to have command given back to him, but Sulla had the messengers sent to give him the news killed and Sulla marched back to Rome. Sulla was the first to take an army past Rome’s sacred pomerium and enter the city. Sulla regained his power, Marius fled to Africa, and Sulla marched east again.

Allies of Marius (who died in 86 BC) continued to work against Sulla, and Sulla once again marched on Rome, this time decisively defeating his opponents at the Battle of the Colline Gate in 82 BC. The Senate appointed Sulla to the office of dictator, the first in 120 years, but this time with no expiration date. Sulla began a purge of people opposed to him and his friends, and Sulla used his dictatorial powers to undertake many unilateral reforms.

Our own constitution is a marvel of checks and balances designed to keep power from concentrating in a few hands. Power is pushed down towards the people and not the other way around. And yet, it is just a piece of paper. It has no inherent power. It is only our own will to abide by constitutional law and our will to enforce it against those who won’t that give the US Constitution Power.

Berg’s Seventh Law is absolute, and the Left routinely clutches its pearls and sees Republican Sullas on every street corner. Be you Trump or Dubya, you’re a dictator.

Let’s not rehash Obama’s unconstitutional use of the IRS against its political enemies, or its unconstitutional DACA, or Biden’s unconstitutional extension of the eviction moratorium.

My point in all this is a US President as dictator is not the only fear, and indeed is not necessary to erode the protections we enjoy under the US Constitution.

What if instead of one Sulla at the top, there are a thousand Sullas across the land? On school boards, in state assemblies, in bureaucracies, in entertainment executive offices, in corporate board rooms, in banks. What if people with power to affect how we live just decide “I’m going to do what I want. I’m going to take what I want. I dare you to do something about it.”

Vigilance cannot sleep. Wherever a Sulla is found, they must be met with force. I don’t mean physical force. I mean determined political resistance. If Sulla is on the school board, then we are there making ourselves heard. If Sulla is in the Speaker’s chair of a state House, then we fill the seats in front of them with our candidates.

The pieces of paper we hold dear may inspire us, and even empower us, but the foundations of freedom must rest on something stronger than paper. I don’t fear those who would do what they want whether legal or not, I fear those would let them.

Not sure why my comment moderation has run amok.

I’ll work on it as time permits.

I’ll also manually approve comments as I’m able during the day.

…in re his wife’s alleged prompting him to support the January 6 rioters, as viewed by his wife’s text, could be fairly described as ten dollars worth of hype wrapped around a quarter’s worth of evidence.

SCENE: It’s 6AM, at Twin Cities International. Mitch BERG is leaving an airport bar, after having his ritual shot of whiskey before getting on a plane for a business trip. As he turns to walk down the concourse, he almost literally runs into Aaron ROSTON, A writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.   ROSTON is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist – mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of conservatives. He is wearing a t-shirt that says GAY on the front.

ROSTON: Merg.

BERG: Hey, Aaron. On your way to Florida, I see?

ROSTON: Not bad, for a stupid person. How could you tell?

BERG: Just a hunch.

ROSTON: You’re an idiot, so you should know Governor DeSantis’s bill makes it illegal to say “gay” in Florida. I’m going there to practice civil disobedience and also spend my stimmy checks.

BERG: Civil disobedience?

ROSTON: I’m gonna say gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay gay…

BERG: Huh. Courageous. Of course you are, and you do realize that the Florida law doesn’t make talking about homosexuality illegal. It just bars teachers from doing spontaneous sex ed classes with kids under the age of 8.

ROSTON: You’re too stupid to be an educator, so I’ll explain this to you. What if I have a kid who has two mommies, or two daddies, and is confused about the situation? What am I supposed to do?

BERG: If a kid has same-sex parents who haven’t explained the situation to the kids, that’s both weird and – here’s a radical notion – their business, not yours.

ROSTON: So you’re a mouth-breathing gay hater. What if I wanted to tell my children…

BERG: They aren’t “your children”. You’re a public employee – a crossing guard, as it happens, but I hear teachers who say the same thing – who is part of a system we, the public, pay to teach our kids how to read, write, do math, think critically, and other skills. So – you were saying?

ROSTON: What if I wanted to tell (makes scare quotes) my students that my partner and I were going axe-throwing over the weekend?

BERG: Then you tell them you’re going axe-throwing. Big whoop.

ROSTON: You moron. And what if I then wanted to tell them that after axe-throwing, we were going to go back to my place and __________ his __________ in the ___________ until ___________ with a…

BERG: (Interrrupting): Well, if it were my five-through-eight-year old, I’d be calling the police and teaching you a lesson about boundaries.

ROSTON: So you hate gays.

BERG: Hey, look – over there! A kid in a wheelchair with a MAGA hat.

ROSTON: WHEREWHEREWHEREWHERE! I wanna make him cry…

(sees nothing)

ROSTON: (Looks around frantically) Where? Merg?

(But BERG has disappeared)

And SCENE

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” – Milton Friedman

“Milton Friedman is no longer in charge.” – Presidential Candidate Joe Biden

“Awesome, dude. Here’s your beer back.” -Diocletian

Joe Doakes

Here’s the article by Joel Kotkin that Mr. D. linked, and that I quoted from on the air.

And here’s today’s music.

Yesterday we took a brief gander at China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an infrastructure project on a grand scale meant to ensure China has access to the natural resources it needs and to facilitate trade going the other way.

In a serendipitous development in the Hunter Biden saga, yesterday the Washington Post published a story accepting as fact the reporting the New York Post did back in October 2020 based on the contents of a laptop that Hunter Biden left in a repair shop.

(This would be the same reporting the fools at Facebook and Twitter tried to stop from spreading. In addition to the reporting the New York Post did, NY Post columnist Miranda Devine wove all the disparate threads into a coherent story of corruption in her book Laptop From Hell.)

The initial reporting on the laptop focused on Hunter Biden’s involvement in Ukraine and his position on the board of Burisma even though he had no experience in Energy etc… That was not the extent of Hunter Biden’s money-grubbing, not by a long shot. He was also chasing deals in China, and the Washington Post story focuses on the China angle.

The deal was years in the making, the culmination of forging contacts, hosting dinners, of flights to and from China. But on Aug. 2, 2017, signatures were quickly affixed, one from Hunter Biden, the other from a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong.

Within days, a new Cathay Bank account was created. Within a week, millions of dollars started to change hands.

Within a year, it would all begin to collapse.

While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional documents showing Biden family interactions with Chinese executives.

Over the course of 14 months, the Chinese energy conglomerate and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and his uncle, according to government records, court documents and newly disclosed bank statements, as well as emails contained on a copy of a laptop hard drive that purportedly once belonged to Hunter Biden.

The “Fake news” of 2020 is today’s headline.

I’m not one of those conservatives that bags on teachers as his default setting. My mother’s parents were teachers. My dad was a great teacher. My little sister teaches. Three out of four of them voted or vote GOP. Teachers are as individual as anyone else.

Now, as an example, when bad cops – corrupt sergeants, mobbed-up detectives, thumpers on patrol, sadists in squad cars – emerge, the question pops up; why don’t the good cops do something about the bad cops? Why does the “thin blue line” seem to believe standing with a bad cop is more important than good civilians?

So – let’s take that (perfectly valid) logic and apply it to teachers. Why aren’t the good ones able to do something about teachers like this?

The question is only partly rhetorical.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

As my mind wanders, it links unrelated ideas.  For example: 

How deadly is Covid?  How many people died OF Covid, WITH Covid, or merely DURING the Covid pandemic?  It makes a huge difference but the media glosses over the distinction all the time.

Similarly, Miami Beach declared a Spring Break curfew because of a shooting, and a Wal-Mart got trashed by “Spring Break Youths.”  Except there is a striking lack of logo sportswear in the videos.  Are we certain these are UCLA students who brought their pistols to town for a shootout during Spring Break?  Are we certain those Walmart yutes are students from Harvard and Yale?  Could they be locals causing trouble DURING Spring Break? It makes a difference but the media glosses right over it.  

Blaming the wrong people leads to punishing the wrong people.   How can we make good decisions if the media gives us bad information? And that links to Ukraine, and gun control, and FBI racial crime statistics, and inflation, and . . . .

Joe Doakes

If people can’t trust the institutions that make self-government sustainable, what do they think the inevitable end result is?