Berg’s Seventh Law – “When a 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” – has been getting a workout lately.

But this next bit – an LATimes response to last week’s Bruen decision at the Supreme Court – may be heading to the Berg’s Seventh Law Hall of Fame. [1]

I’ll let the Times own words do the talking:

Is “California” “ready”? Well, the state’s government clearly isn’t:

California Democrats are scrambling to craft and enact new legislation this week that would somehow salvage the requirement — assuming local law enforcement continues to enforce it — that residents get a permit before carrying a concealed weapon. Current law forces gun owners to show “good cause” for needing such a permit, and that is now unconstitutional.

And they can’t talk about the issue without a certain amount of gaslighting:

Nathan W. Jones leads the Bay Area chapter of the Black Gun Owners Assn. But until a few years ago, he wasn’t even into guns…on Thursday, while many were apoplectic over the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the rights of gun owners to carry a loaded weapon in public — throwing gun control laws in California and New York into limbo at a time when shootings are increasing — Jones was thoughtful.

On the one hand, he wants it to be easy for law-abiding citizens to be able to defend themselves “if and when the time arises.” But on the other hand, he’s a 50-year-old realist who knows that fear and hatred of Black people run deep in the United States, especially when we’re armed.

And this is based on…?

“There’s no overt racism when we go to the gun range, but we know how people are looking at us,” Jones said of the dozens of Black members who meet up to go shooting. “We know the things that people think.”

So, gaslighting it is. “We know what you’re really thinking?” Every signficant pro-2nd-Amendment group, at the national and federal levels, have welcomed the surge in black gun owners – whatever their reasons for joining the tribe.

The writer, Erika D. Smith, is certainly impressively ignorant on the substance of the issue:

And the other, truly weird thing is that race is now actually being used as an argument in support of loosening gun laws

Justice Clarence Thomas, in his opinion for the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen case, waxed philosophical about how the right to bear arms was crucial for the self-protection of Black people in the South during Reconstruction.

And how in 1868, Congress “reaffirmed that freedmen were entitled to the ‘full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty [and] personal security … including the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.’”

Meanwhile, a coalition of progressive organizations, including the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid, the Bronx Defenders and Brooklyn Defender Services, filed an amicus brief in the case, urging the Supreme Court to rule exactly as it did.

Their argument? That gun control laws in New York, like California, disproportionately harm Black and Latino people who carry guns for self-defense. They complained of clients who have been “stopped, questioned, and frisked,” and deprived of their livelihoods because they “exercised a constitutional right.”

“We represent hundreds of indigent people whom New York criminally charges for exercising their right to keep and bear arms,” they wrote. “For our clients, New York’s licensing requirement renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction.”

Smith – and the white LA progressives who edit and publish the LATimes who greenlit Smith’s piece – seem almost amazed to notice the one real thing that the gaslighting just can not deflect from:

But the governor and lawmakers could fail in their efforts, and the Supreme Court’s ruling could stand. And then, California could be forced to confront a reality that has long made many self-proclaimed liberals uncomfortable: Black people — potentially a lot of us — legally carrying guns in public.

Dig beneath the ongoing, lazy slander of all white America, and the McCarthyistic “white supremacists under every rock” rhetoric that’s become background noise in most “progressive’ writing; that’s the real fear. The only thing a white progressive fears, and needs to control, more than a black person is an armed black person.

And when they become armed, and realize that the honky at the range isn’t the problem…

[1] Note to Self: Create a Berg’s Seventh Law Hall of Fame.

I’ve been in some form of broadcast and/or news media for 33 of the past 43 years.

I’ve had years of experience and training in every aspect of how the media works; from how to turn on a transmitter (and the FCC license to prove it) and edit video and how to talk so people can understand you, to the standards and practices a professional journalist has to follow to do news.

I’ve paid dues you can’t imagine.

More importantly, I’ve seen how the big media works. Do you have any idea the machine a TV station brings to covering stories and producing content? The sheer number of people in network, or even a major newspaper, can bring to reporting and covering a story? The talent, the training, the experience, the equipment, the money…

If you think you’re going up against Big Media with your First Amendment rights and your Twitter feed, your Tumblr account, your little podcast?

You’re simply delusional. Watch a crew from Channel 4 or MPR News or C-Span in action; you and your cell-phone cam will slink away in shame.

The First Amendment is for the professionals. Like me.

---

That sounds really stupid, doesn’t it?

So when a cop or “former federal agent” or veteran does the same thing in re civil rights – the Second or Fourth Amendments – does it sound any less myopic?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Found this stuffed in the screen door on Sunday morning. Couple of late-middle aged White women with ELCA hair going around the neighborhood (no doubt doing Good Works before heading off to hear the Gospel).

Struck me that Tina doesn’t mention which political party she intends to caucus with, if elected. She doesn’t have any endorsements.

I’ve been around long enough to recognize political euphemisms. “Who you love” means homosexual. “Where you’re from” means illegal alien.

This flyer was delivered days after Roe v. Wade was overturned, so “reproductive rights” means abortion. “Equal Pay” means “affirmative action for women.”

I’m going out on a limb and suggesting Tina is a Democrat who is terrified to admit it, because the public is less than enthused about Democrats right now.

Hiding your party affiliation to deceive voters is kind of shady, don’t you think? Wouldn’t honesty help voters make an informed choice? Or is that the problem?

Yep, definitely Democrat.

Joe Doakes

If Democrats are going to have to run stealth campaigns in places like 41B, the internal polling must be devastating.

Close your eyes. It could be Kamala Harris:

Uncanny Kamala impression: https://t.co/AHn2f7Xx5s

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) June 25, 2022

“ACK-shu-ally, we’re not fifty states. We’re one country“.

Show of hands if you’ve heard at least one progressive, lodged far on the left side of civic education’s Dunning-Kruger curve, say something like that.

Among the many failures – or acts of sabotage – of modern American education, perhaps among the biggest, most dangerous shortcomings is the complete collapse of civics education.

Modern students seem to learn nothing aboujt:

1. Why the Constitution existed – to provide a framework for self-government
2. What the Constitution does – limit the powers of government, and enumerate the checks and balances on power
3. Why our nation is called the “United States” – and why the constituent parts are called “states” rather than “Provinces”, “Counties”, “Ridings” or “Administrative Districts”. They are, or were intended to be, individual nation-ettes
4. What Federalism is – in the US’s case (like post-war Germany), a balance of powers and rights between the federal and state governments.
5. Gridlock was built into the system, because gridlock is a virtue. The government that governs least, governs best – and gridlock ensures minimal government. (This particularly galls “progressives”).
6. And perhaps most importantly? The Constitution, its enumeration of powers, and Federalism itself, was designed to help a nation that was from it’s founding not a whole lot more divided or less fractious than it is today, coexist.

With that in mind? Perhaps the Dobbs decision, and the court’s new-found originalism, are a big step in the right direction for a nation more divided in many ways than before the Civil War.

Because the alternative to a renewed federalism is a national divorce at best, and civil war at worst.

To: Democrats
From: Mitch Berg, whose common “irascible peasant” self-appelation has never seemed more on-target.
Re: You

Dear all Democrats,

Every once in a while, in front of a friendly audience, you slip and let the truth out.

In front of the NPR simps in 2016, for example, you said in as many words it was time for the media to put its finger – or arm, or butt – on the scale to tip the public against Donald Trump.

And now, from the (if you’ll pardon the expression) Colbert sixty minutes hate:

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1541775313889366017?s=21&t=Q7cn6cZ-NzCG4_5PMDU27g

You can put most of what this woman says into the mouth of a spousal abuser – which really is a great metaphor for the modern Democrat party.

That is all.

Minneapolis delivery driver with a (apparently) permitted handgun gives carjackers a significant emotional growth experience.

The driver was making a delivery to one of the Abbott buildings at 29th and Chicago, when the ne’er-do-wells made their move:

“My dad was making a delivery at Allina hospital earlier today and almost got carjacked, the suspects got scared and ran when my dad pulled his gun on them. One of them had a pistol and was tapping his gun on the passenger side window while his friend was trying to force open the door. [I’m] glad I convinced my dad to carry especially with how crazy crime is.”

The video leaves a bit to the imagination.

The part I’m having the most fun imagining…

SPOILER ALERT

…is the discussion the two punks had with the getaway driver who peeled out and left them running on foot away from an armed man.

But it’s fun to imagine.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Not sure how I got on this mailing list but here’s the latest news: Angie Craig hates my vehicle warranty. She wants me to burn E15 which the service advisor told me not to do, absolutely not, voids my warranty.

She also hates my family grocery budget. She’s proud to have taken bold, decisive action to address skyrocketing food costs by . . . appointing a task force to submit a report to Congress in nine months. I’m sure that’ll be a big help when I’m standing in the checkout line this weekend.

I would click “unsubscribe” except I’m pretty sure it would automatically put me on the No Fly List, the IRS Audit list, and the January 6 co-conspirator list so the FBI can bust down my door while CNN films. I guess I’ll just click “delete” instead.

Joe Doakes

It’s probably the best idea.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is at REI, getting a handlebar cell phone carrier for hjs bike. He rounds the corner from the coffee cups, and runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is shopping for…something? BERG tries to backpedal quietly away, but it’s too late.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, shhhhhhhhure as I stand here today, it’s Avery…

LIBRELLE: Shut up. The Supreme Court just violated the separation of church and state, by allowing an educator to pray at school functions.

BERG: Well, you got a few of the facts right.

LIBRELLE: What would you think if a Muslim were to throw down a prayer mat on the fifty yard line and delay the kickoff while he prayed to Mecca?

BERG: Coach Kennedy didn’t interrupt the game with an ostentatious prayer in the middle of the field. It was a personal observance, after the game, involving him and only him. Other than the fact that it took place on the field around people, it couldn’t have been less public.

LIBRELLE: It caused an uproar.

BERG: It caused a small group of progressives to go to the school board and, after years of such observances, change the district policy to ban “demonstrative religious activity, readily observable to (if not intended to be observed by) students and the attending public.” 

LIBRELLE: So what would you think if a Muslim did something like that?

BERG: Have you actually been in the Midway Target? The Roseville Walmart? Seeing Muslims throwing down their mats at prayer time in an out of the way part of the store is nothing new at all. I care about it no more than a Christian praying whereever they want.

LIBRELLE: Yeah, but what if a non-Christian kid sees the demonstration, by one of their school’s authority figures? That’s going to put pressure on them. (Nods smugly)

BERG: So let me get this straight: a Christian school staffer, praying, privately but in public view, is…

LIBRELLE: Oppressive, fascist and probably white supremacist and racist.

BERG: Mkay. In the meantime, a non-binary or LGBTQ teacher telling kids the details of their personal and identity’s sexual orientation, including how their various orientations practice intimacy, to kids of all beliefs, including Christian and even Muslim kids, telling them there are infinite genders and no real notion of masculine and feminine, when they’re still at an age where the parents haven’t had “the talk” with them themselves yet?

LIBRELLE: Essential social education, to make up for the sloth and incompetence of parents.

BERG: Aaaah…

(They are interrupted by an employee)

EMPLOYEE: (to BERG): Can I help yo, sir?

BERG: (waves box with holder). Good to go.

EMPLOYEE: (to LIBRELLE) And you, si…uh, maa… (looks at BERG, startingi to panic a big. BERG shrugs)

LIBRELLE: I need a new seat for my electric recumbent bike.

BERG: So you, the big environmentalist, have switched to a coal-powered bike?

LIBRELLE looks up, alarmed, stammering, giving BERG time to make his break.

And SCENE.

Berg’s 8th Law of Diversity states “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.

Like when, for example, the first Mexican-born Congresswoman is a conservative Christian? Never bet against the response being just a little psychotic.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi elbows the daughter of Mayra Flores out of the way during a photo op:

I love this princess stood her ground, while Nancy showed her true colors. pic.twitter.com/17ArfkD3MG

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 27, 2022

The contempt Big Left feels for “their” people who take off the Ketchup Bottle dresses and leave the cult positively throbs.

I think Flores – or whoever is running her Twitter account – is up to the challenge.

Except my daughter didn't flop like LeBron James!!

— Mayra Flores (@MayraFlores4TX) June 27, 2022

I may have to pony up for Flores’s actual election bid this fall.

I don’t wanna interrupt a guy when he’s on a roll, but has anyone told Billy Joe Armstrong – the guy who last had a hit about 20 years ago, calling George W. Bush voters “American Idiots” – that the UK has more restrictive abortion laws than the US?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails about yesterday‘s New York Supreme Court ruling:

The New York State Supreme Court struck down a New York City ordinance allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections. What a bunch of haters.

The Boston Tea Party was based on “no taxation without representation.” The Declaration of Independence affirms that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. The Constitution lays out the formula to determine consent, through voting. The consistent underlying principle is that the people who will be affected by the rules imposed by the government ought to have a say in who makes up that government. And illegal aliens hiding in the city are affected by the rules adopted by the City Council as much as anybody else, so they ought to have a say in who sits on the City Council as much as anybody else.

And why should it end there? Citizens of foreign nations are affected by laws made in the United States Congress: foreign aid payments to their nations; wars waged in their countries; immigration encouraged or not. Why doesn’t every citizen of every nation get to vote for our Congress?

Why should they have to vote at all? That’s a heavy burden for someone who doesn’t read or speak the language, can’t complete the Request for Absentee ballot, can’t afford postage to send it back on time. Why not let US-based voter advocates cast ballots for them? They could bring ballots by the suitcase full, helpfully completed on behalf of all the citizens of the world.

And why bother with paper ballots for all those people? Think of the expense and wasted time, running them through the machines again and again until the right guy wins. Why not simply program the machine to give the desired result and be done with it?

It’s a slippery slope the court has chosen, this notion that only certain people should be allowed to vote. Probably a bunch of MAGA Trumpers on the court. Or worse, Open Borders Libertarians.

Joe Doakes

Don’t be giving Steve Simon any ideas.

Look – believe what you want to believe. Let a thousand lights shine . The founding fathers intended for this to be a pluralistic society.

But I do get tired of preening.

To wit:

Do these look like women who are ready to back down?

At the Minnesota State Capitol on Dobbs with @PPFA Sarah Stoesz, @SenTinaSmith and @LtGovFlanagan @GovTimWalz
Photo by Aaron Lavinsky @StarTribune pic.twitter.com/38ANK3aqJF

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) June 26, 2022

Why, no, Senator Klobuchar. None of them do.

But not for the reason you are thinking.

All of you came up through the bureaucracy in one-party, one-view organizations either in government or the non-profit industrial complex – the Henco Attorney’s office, Planned Infanticide and the Minnesota Council of Churches. Three of the four of you were or are executives, meaning you’ve long since got out of the habit of taking orders from anyone.

Smith and Ms. Granola Frightwig, coming up through Planned Parenthood as they did, have never had to recognize any such thing as dissent or opposition.

Flanagan has a sinecure in a one-party district; Klobuchar and Smith are the beneficiaries of incumbency, neither of whom are up for election this year (for which their staffs must be thanking their lucky stars).

All of you can do pretty much anything you want without fear of media scrutiny of any kind. For Senator Klobuchar, it’s a matter of generational fealty to “one of their own”, but the other three can operate immune from all scrutiny as well.

Two of you have amply manifested this sense of entitlement; Senator Klobuchar for exhibiting the sort of behavior as a boss that only women can get away with (by bleating “if a man would do it, they’d just call him ‘tough'” loudly enough to make people believe this “Mad Men”-era stereotype); Lt. Gov. Flanagan by sending a mob to tear down a statue that she didn’t have to bother removing via due process, even though she runs the committee that manages the capitol’s statuary.

So no, Senator. None of you look like you are going to “back down”. None of you have ever had to develop the facility to do anything “across the aisle”. It’s a foreign concept to all of you.

And that’s a stupid thing.

In the radio industry I grew up in – especially the one I came of age in, in my later twenties, at places like KDWB – competition in radio was a constant, ugly thing. Especially in big-market music radio, getting ratings was mortal combat, a bloodsport where morality and ethics (and, often as not, sobrieity) got chucked before the first break of the morning weather. Pirates looked at major market radio executives and thought “arrrrr, cut off the cutthrrroat stuff, matey”.

Some of that faded after the 2008 recession, when most of the money left music radio. And talk radio has usually been, if not genteel, at least a little more civilized.

Among talk radio people in the Twin Cities, the comity was almost unsettling. While AM1290 and AM1130 competed for the same audience, the wrenching animus just wasn’t there.

For years, now, the personalities at the various stations [1] – Bob Davis, Sue Jeffers, Ben Kruse, Jon Justice and Walter Hudson from the 1130, all us NARN guys from the 1280 (and Jack Tomczak, who’s been at both), and even to a lesser extent the likes of Blois Olson and Jason DeRusha from ‘CCO – have gotten along very amiably, socially. It’s disconcertingly far from the cage match I grew up in.

And so it’s with more than collegial wishes and sympathies that I note that Andrew “Drew” Lee, long-time morning guy at the 1130, has passed away:

I won’t say I knew Drew well – but we met many times. He sat in on bass with my band a few years ago, and at various points made overtures about trying to get all of us local talk show hosts together under the 1130 banner (for which I thanked him, but genuinely like working for Salem, and they’ve treated us all way too well for any of us to walk away lightly – which Lee, as a radio lifer, understood).

He was a big-hearted guy, a devoted family man, and the kind of radio road warrior you just don’t find anymore. .

Prayers and condolences to his real and radio families.

[1] Heck, even the MPR folks let their sense of monastic above-it-all-ness drop for a couple years, there. Management put an end to that nonsense a few years back, unfortunately. It’s been their loss.

…of Minneapolis’s demise…

… apparently aren’t far off.

Four shot last night, right around downtown Minneapolis‘s casual tourist epicenter, the Stone Arch Bridge.

My favorite part about episodes like this; the wave of progressives from “City Life“ theme parks like Seward and Powderhorn who will sniff down their noses at people from Maple Grove expressing alarm at crime in Minneapolis.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Lots of cheering from the Establishment Republican crowd: hooray for gun rights, hooray for overturning Roe! After 50 years, we did it.

No, you didn’t. Those things didn’t happen because your foundation wrote White Papers that nobody read; or because you held round-table discussions on celebrity cruises; or because you made endless fundraising appeals to elect a majority in Congress. Those things happened because a Certain Somebody nominated three rock-solid conservatives to the Supreme Court and stood by them when they were attacked in confirmation hearings, a Certain Somebody whom you opposed every step of the way from the moment he rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy til the moment you confirmed an obviously stolen election just to get him out of the Oval Office.

I haven’t seen anybody from Powerline or National Review giving that Certain Somebody credit for the greatest conservative victories in the last half century. Who knows how 2022 would have turned out if we’d had a Conservative President in office instead of a President under Conservatorship? But hey, no mean tweets. That’s gotta count for something, right?

Joe Doakes

Enh. Going to meet you halfway on this one, Joe.

Anyone out there remember Ron Paul? Libertarian congressman from Texas? Built up a fairly powerful grassroots movement of young libertarian conservatives, many of whom say he was cheated out of the nomination in 2012? Who, had he been elected President, could have eggs enacted almost 0% of his very ambitious and generally absolutely satisfactory libertarian agenda, because he had a congressional libertarian caucus how about three representatives? I used to joke with libertarians that the only way Ron Paul was going to get his agenda enacted was if he had staged a libertarian coup d’état, Established an absolute libertarian dictatorship, and imposed liberty on the nation by force.

Without a fairly solid (if deeply imperfect) conservative base in Congress, Trump would’ve accomplished nothing.

And that majority came from somewhere.

UPDATE: On the other hand, David French needs to start finding a new career:

Rob Doar is the Political Director of the MN Gun Owners Caucus. If you’re in MN and want to fight for the right to keep and bear arms, they are the group doing the heavy lifting,

Beth Baumann contributes to Armed American News. Here’s the thread on the “Bipartisan Safe Communities Act” – AKA the “Civil Rights Lawyer Full Employment Act”.

And here’s today’s song list!

Dobbs finally arrived:

“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the majority. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

He was joined in the majority opinion by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. Justice Roberts filed a separate opinion concurring with the majority.

“With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent,” wrote Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan in a joint dissent.

The issue of abortion will now be returned to the individual states to regulate as each sees fit. Dark blue states are expected to impose the most radical pro-abortion policies while dark red states may ban all abortion. Many states may choose to allow abortion only under certain circumstances.

A few thoughts:

• I am Catholic. We walk by faith and reason. Both faith and reason point to why Catholics have always opposed abortion. In that sense, today is a great day.
• Now the battle really begins, and I do not mean the inevitable attacks and violence that will unfold over the coming days. The real battle is to win hearts and minds where possible. As long as Roe existed, all potential discussions about the morality and efficacy of abortion laws were always more theoretical than real, because 7 dudes said so. Now, for good and bad, the people and their elected representatives get to decide the matter.
• The Court’s decision is, at bottom, an admission of humility. Roe was always an exercise in raw judicial power, as Byron White said in his dissent nearly 50 years ago. And as is often the case, the best use of power is sometimes to refrain from wielding such power.
• Between this decision and the court’s earlier decision this week in the Bruen case, the court has at least started a necessary process of returning to first principles. And if the Court were to continue this process, I’d certainly like them to look at earlier abusive rulings. I’d start with Wickard v. Filburn.

Not to sound cynical about big media – good heavens no, not me – but when I see the New York Times reporting on active shooters, I pretty much expect their “reporting” to either lie, or to hide the accurate conclusion in plain sight.

And they’ve done that.

They include a snazzy, Edward Tufte-style graphic to explicate their case – and they reached this conclusion:

“It’s direct, indisputable, empirical evidence that this kind of common claim that ‘the only thing that stops a bad guy with the gun is a good guy with the gun’ is wrong,” said Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama, who has studied mass shootings for more than a decade. “It’s demonstrably false, because often they are stopping themselves.”

So let’s look at the graphic:

So let’s take a look at the numbers.Out of nearly 250 mass shootings that ended before the police arrived, nearly 10% ended with the assailant being shot by a “bystander“ – A “good guy with a gun“. That’s nearly 10% of spree shootings, ended before the cops arrive

(That is, of course, presuming the media actually recognizes the episode. For example, they studiously ignored this recent incident .

Even so, that is actually a tad higher than I’d have figured; given that spree killers tend to pick targets where nobody is likely to be able to resist them, and nowhere near 10% of the population at large generally carries a firearm, that’s actually a better result than one might rationally expect.

But now, let’s look at the other resolutions.

Of the 249 mass shootings that ended before the cops arrived, nearly 80% end with the killer either leaving the scene or committing suicide.

And the devil with these shootings is in the details. Some of the spree killers do leave the scenes of their crimes on their own two feet. But others “leave” because a citizen threatened them with immediate death – as in this case four years ago, where two good guys with guns changed a would-be racist spree killer’s plans, one with the threat of death, one with gunfire, causing him to run away. He was apprehended later.

One that killed himself, did it after killing two people – before a good guy pointed a gun at his head. He ran into a nearby store, and killed himself.

Or this case, where a church “security guard” (a volunteer with a carry permit) shot a spree killer who’d murdered four people already. He killed himself, it’s true – after his plan had been fatally derailed by a good gal with a gun.

So what’s my conclusion?

You can tell Big Media is lying about guns when their lips are moving, or their fingers are touching keyboards.

Same as it ever was.

None of the Twin Cities major media covered this story: carjackers attack woman in Northeast Minneapolis.

The surveillance video caught the episode, outside Tony Jaros’s River Garden:

That man then threw her to the ground in the parking lot, cocked the gun, beat Marlo, and pistol-whipped her across the head. Marlo said it appeared the gun jammed. His accomplice then walked over. It’s when Marlo says the bar’s cook just happened to be outside on a smoke break when he heard the commotion and came to her rescue.

They all tussled on the ground before one of the masked men knocked her keys away and attempted to get into the car. Marlo again got up to stop them from driving off. A group of men from the bar also joined the fight and another man pulled up in a pickup truck to help.

The men all dragged the driver out of the car and onto the ground. The two thieves eventually ran off.

I can not be the only one wishing the locals would have kept stomping when they got the punks on the ground.

It’s gonna happen someday, if the Hennepin County Attorney and the Minneapolis City Council don’t start taking this seriously.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

UBack when the Lesko Brandon administration was insisting price inflation didn’t exist, I detailed the recent history of price increases in a single product as a way to prove the lie.

Now that price inflation is admitted, turns out to be a good thing because it helps consumers cut back on needless expenses. Such as chip dip. Which just went to $5 per jar up from $3 less than a year ago.

Thanks, President Brandon, dieting has never been easier!

This photo explains why Democrats are in a panic about the upcoming election. They can blame Putin. They can blame oil companies. They can blame makers of baby food, tampons, and DEF. They can quote ‘experts’ telling consumers not to believe their lying eyes. But consumers don’t care about that. They see the evidence of inflation. They see Lesko Brandon’s policies hurting them. Whether they’re angry enough to do something about it at the polls, to punish the people who are punishing us, remains to be seen.

Joe Doakes

It certainly didn’t help Jimmy Carter much.

But at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, I don’t think people are as smart now as they were back then.

The Supremes have struck down New York’s “Show Cause to Carry” law:

The state law at the heart of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen required anyone who wants to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to show “proper cause” for the license. New York courts interpreted that phrase to require applicants to show more than a general desire to protect themselves or their property. Instead, applicants must demonstrate a special need for self-defense – for example, a pattern of physical threats. Several other states, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, impose similar restrictions, as do many cities.

Clarence Thomas, God bless him, wrote the majority opinion (joined by the entire conservatie majority – Roberts, Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh, Alito and Gorsuch:

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’” Thomas wrote in the opinion. The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.”

I’m no lawyer, but this part – from the text of the ruling – appears to be important:

Says Rob Doar from the MN Gun Owners Caucus:

https://twitter.com/robdoar/status/1539990799815000065

It’s a great day in America.

Updating this post as events warrant.

UPDATE:

The Progressive world as of 6/22: “Anyone who distrusted the Constitutional process in any way – say, on 1/6 – is a TRAITORRRRRRR!

The Progressive world on 6/23:

It has become necessary to dissolve the Supreme Court of the United States.

The first step is for a state the "court" has now forced guns upon, to ignore this ruling.

Great. You're a court? Why and how do think you can enforce your rulings?#IgnoreTheCourt

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) June 23, 2022

Why is it that “political commentators” whose sole background in life is yapping about grown men chasing balls around fields – Ed Schultz, Mike McFeely, Keith Olbermann – always so invincibly stupid?

UPDATE 2:

Democrats say things like this, thinking they’re making a great point:

KATHY HOCHUL: "I would like to point out to the Supreme Court justices, that the only weapons at that time were muskets. I'm prepared to go back to muskets." pic.twitter.com/xGoYKGE6g0

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 23, 2022

Also in 1789, there was no internet, television, linotype, radio or morse code…

…but the smart people already know this. They’re not the people that the likes of Hochul are talking to.

UPDATE 3:

Inside baseball from Charles CW Cooke.

So have you noticed how many “journalists “in the Twin Cities are doing the DFL‘s job for it?

For example, here’s WCCO TV is Esme Murphy:

Walz checks: $2,000 for couples, $1,000 for singles @GovTimWalz wants that, Republicans lead by GOP Majority Leader Sen @jeremyrmiller & House Minority Leader Rep @kdaudt say it an election year gimmick and that permanent tax cuts would mean more money for taxpayers @wcco 5pm

— esme murphy (@esmemurphy) June 22, 2022

What is the difference between actively propagandizing for the DFL, and referring to a cash giveaway as “Walz Checks“?

Call them a propaganda wing of the DFL. Call them the DFL‘s branding or public relations service.

Just don’t call it reporting.

HIllary Clinton openly wonders if the Democrat Party benefits from hitching its political fortunes to transgender ideology.

In another sign to transgender activists that their increasingly unpopular cultural crusade has become a liability for their Democrat enablers, Hillary Clinton has suggested that the feelings of a minuscule but noisy percentage of the population shouldn’t take priority over the party’s political concerns.

The embittered sore loser of the 2016 presidential election sat down with the UK’s Financial Times for an interview that was published on Friday to discuss a wide range of issues. And while her insistence that she was not going to run in 2024, deferring to President Joe Biden initially got the most attention, her remarks throwing transgenders under the bus have set off a firestorm on Twitter.

She’s not running for anything, she’s not nothing to lose, and she’s fleeced more money from Clinton Foundation saps than she can possibly spend in her lifetime.

On the other hand – I had to think the “moderates” would have to start to get worried about this sort of thing eventually.

Joel Doakes from Como Park emails:

Protesters outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Barrett.

First, it’s illegal to protest outside the home of a federal judge and rightly so. There are limits to free speech: fighting words, fire in a theater, perjury on the witness stand, and threatening/intimidating a judge are off limits. If Roe v. Wade is overturned, these gals can take their protests to their state legislatures. They have no place here.

Second, the sign makes clear this protest is not about saving Roe v. Wade’s “first trimester” limitation; it’s not about saving Casey’s “undue burden” limitation; it’s about Kermit Gosnell-style partial birth abortion butchery and Planned Parenthood’s baby-parts-to-order sales. They might be the only seven women in the nation who demand that. The rest of the nation recoils in horror.

Third, their costumes are meant to emphasize their plight. The bloody pants mean that if Roe v. Wade is overturned, women will have to seek back-alley abortions from unqualified practitioners who will leave them hemorrhaging from botched abortions. The tied hands holding the baby mean the women will be prisoners/slaves forced to carry the baby they conceived until it is born and can be given up for adoption. Dire predictions, considering that many states have already moved to guarantee abortions and some employers have even offered to pay for interstate travel if required to obtain one. This is not 1950. Alleys are for drug sales and commercial sex acts, not abortions.

The fact that seven women can get national media coverage for their little stunt instead of a quick trip to the local jail followed by prosecution in federal court indicates the effort likely is coordinated from the very top of the Lesko Brandon administration, probably the same people who sent the FBI after parents who complained to school boards about pedophile grooming curricula and covering up transgender rapes. I hope Democrats run this photo in every campaign ad from now until the election. It’s too much to hope that Republicans would be smart enough to do it.

Joe Doakes

Of course it’s too much to hope the Republicans do it.

But I’m going to help them.