Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 106th birthday.

I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence.  His eight years were not perfect, and I don’t beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for almost thirty years.  His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.

Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century.

But in these difficult times, after two terms of a President who promoted  fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, it’s worth remembering Reagan’s example; when times seemed at their most dire, Reagan walked onto the scene with a smile and a vision, and a backbone of steel, and cleaned up the mess lefty by his failed predecessor – something our next president will need even more of in 2016.

And the most important part? He did it by unleashing something that many, then as now, thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit.

The best we can hope for from our current president is that he approaches the job with the same tenacity to match his vision that Reagan had.

Oh, there are those who say “today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan!” – to which I respond with a contemptuous sign, before telling the critic to listen to “A Time for Choosing”, and tell me who is more resembles; Arne Carlson, or Scott Walker?

Reagan’s gone. But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people. Most of it, anyway.

So Happy Reagan’s Birthday, everyone!

NOTE: While this blog encourages a raucous debate, this post is a hagiography zone. All comments deemed critical of Reagan will be expunged without ceremony. You’ve been warned.

You have the whole rest of the media to play about in; this post is gonna be gloriously one-note.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is watiing in line at his favorite barbeque joint when Aaron ROSTON, writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, walks into the store and gets into line behind BERG. 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.

ROSTON notices BERG, despite BERG’s best efforts.

ROSTON: Merg!

BERG: Uh, hi, Eric…

ROSTON: Eric?

BERG: Sorry. Mistook you for someone else.

ROSTON: (not waiting for BERG to finish his sentence) Minnesotans are moving out of state because they’re racists. The Center of the American Experiment is basically the Klan Robe crowd for pointing it out.

BERG: “Klan Robe Crowd”, huh?

ROSTON: Yep. That’s the only reason to leave Minnesota. Racism.

BERG: Right. Not schools that are collapsing, a hostile business and tax environment, stagnant economy outside the metro because the economy is being hobbled by taxes, regulation and the stranglehold of one party on the bureaucracy, spiking urban crime, totaly bonkers transportation and energy policy, and a cold, tax-hostile place to retire?

ROSTON: Come on. You’re better than that!

BERG: What does that mean?

ROSTON: You know the roots of conservatism are entirely in racism.

BERG: I know that that’s precisely false in regards to modern, post Sharon Declaration conservatism.

ROSTON: You know you’re wrong.

BERG: Er, I know you’re gaslighting.

ROSTON: It’s true. Full stop.

BERG: “Full stop?” What is this, freshman comp class?

ROSTON: Experts the world over agree.

BERG: Name them.

ROSTON: It’s’ not my job to do your research for you.

BERG: There is noi “research”. Name just one of these “experts”.

ROSTON: It would blow your mind if I did.

BERG: You are right in more ways than one. (Looks over ROSTON’s shoulder). Hey, look, Eric…

ROSTON: Who?

BERG: …sorry, Aaron. Look – a six year old with a red cap that looks like a Trump cap!

ROSTON: (Spins around and looks in vain. But BERG uses the opportunity to make good his escape).

And SCENE

It’s weird, the things that stick in memory.

In my mind, February 2002 was cold and snowy. Who knows if that’s true – but that’s how it’s stuck in my mind.

I was working at a company in Minnetonka whose death spiral, which incompetent management had started long before the post 9/11 “Dot Bomb” reared its head.

9/11 had happened five months earlier. And my own personal collapsing tower, a divorce, had happened not long before that. I was living with my two kids – at the time, 8 and 10 years old – and getting used to a whole new way of living.

And as both worlds – the wider one and my personal one – spun out of control, I found myself missing the voice I’d lost fifteen years earlier, when I’d gotten whacked from my first, and to that point last, talk radio gig at KSTP. I didn’t need, or ask for, much – but having some way of getting what I was thinking out to someone other than my kids, dog and cats was something I was craving.

And which seemed so, so far away.

I”d come back from lunch, to an office across the lake from Ridgedale Mall, and was already bored out of my mind.

I went to Time.com – and it occurs to me, it may have been among the last times I ever did that – and read an article about “The New Generation of Conservative Intellectuals Online”. One of the featured thinkers was none other than Andrew Ferguson – and his “blog”, the Dish.

And, most importantly, a sidebar on how to create a “blog”.

I ran home that night, fed the kids, put them to bed, and went out to “Blogger.com” and started setting thngs up…

…and got to my first roadblock; picking a name.

Not sure where “Shot in the Dark” came from: I think it was mostly a play on words, encompassing the DIY/no idea what I”m doing vibe that I felt, as well as my nascent Secone Amendment activism

Either way, that next morning I got up at 5:30AM – the only “me” time I really had at that point – and started writiing.

And nearly every weekday morning for the past 18 years, it’s been the same routine. My kids are grown up and moved out, and one of them has a kid of his own. My little writing hobby that drew maybe half a dozen readers a day morphed into what I have today – four-figure daily readership – and so much more, a social circle and a radio show and a bunch of friends I can’t imagine my life without, and a whole world the doors to which I thought had slammed shut in the eighties.

Anyway – today Shot in the Dark turns 18. It can vote and join the military.

And I’d like to thank you all for being here, and being the reason I do it, all these years; some of you, literally since just about Day 1.

Thanks. And here’s to 18 more.

So – if you’re an anti-gun legislator and you’re proud of it, how about you show the world?

James O’Keefe asked the question of a phalanx of key anti-gun Democrats and their staffers. And the results were…

….utterly predictable:

Money quote (emphasis added):

After some discussion, Erik Sperling, legislative assistant for Congressman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI 13th) said he thought it would make it more likely for someone to break into his home if they knew for sure there was no way for the people inside to protect themselves.
“So, you’re sort of saying you should have a gun to protect your home then,” the undercover reporter says.
“Yeah, it’s a tricky thing,” Sperling says, adding that he’d want a sign on his boss’s house to say “Armed security, stay back,” because of his status. By the end of the encounter, he says, “What’s the thinking behind this strategy Because it seems to make the case for the (gun rights) side.”

Gun control – for the peasants. 

Baltimore admits it hasn’t actually recycled glass in seven years…

…but tells everyone to keep separating their trash:

Steve Lafferty, county sustainability officer, said it’s true the county has not recycled the material since 2013, the year it also opened a $23 million single-stream recycling facility in Cockeysville. Lafferty was hired to the newly created sustainability position in September 2019…Over the years, the county’s Department of Public Works encountered technical and financial limitations that meant it could no longer recycle glass at county municipal facilities.

But while separating glass from garbage won’t result in any recycling at all, it will keep a bunch of public employees working, and donating dues to their public employee union, thus keeping money coming to the Maryland Democrat Party.

Rush Limbaugh confirms he’s been diagnosed with lung cancer:

“Ladies and gentleman, this day has been one of the most difficult days in recent memory for me because I’ve known this moment was coming in the program today,” Limbaugh began. “I’m sure you all know by now, I really don’t like talking about myself, and I don’t like making things about me other than in the usual satirical, joking way.”
“So, I have to tell you something today that I wish I didn’t have to tell you,” he continued. “And it’s, it’s a struggle for me because I, I had to inform my staff earlier today. … I have been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.”
He signed off by revealing that he hopes to be back on Thursday and said, “Every day I’m not here, I’ll be missing you and thinking about you.”

I can’t help but remember the way the soulless ghouls of the fever swamp cackled and chortled over Tony Snow’s untimely demise, long ago.

Thoughts and prayers for the man who’s done more than any other to keep radio – not just talk – alive for almost three decades.

An MPR News tweet.

From 9:30.

AM.

Nearly 12 hours before the State of the Union address.

So – “fact-checking” the putative reputation of the speaker, long before the speech actually happens?

That’s not “fact-checking”. That’s not even “journalism”.

That’s public relations for the Democratic Party.

Early yesterday evening, as I drove home from work, I heard National Public Radio’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Iowa Caucuses.

As they – or one or another of their intervieweews, anyway – raved about the process, they kept mentioning an “App”. One of the NPR anchors – who “covers” “election security”, we were told – mentioned that “the App” was of unknown origin; “who programmed the thing” was literally a secret. The media hadn’t even been allowed to look at it, or at the people who developed it.

“What could possibly go wrong?”, I said to myself.

Nonetheless, Dems were in high spirits, including Tom Perez:

Well, you saw the headlines.

As I drove home around 11 last night, it was becoming clear the Hawkeye Cauci were turning into a Bolivian Cluster Cuddle, with “the App” not working, and with precinct chairs sitting on hold for hours, or just giving up and going home.

So – what about “the App?”

So – not only do people commit suicide when they cross Hillary, but so apparently do entire party units.

The conspiracy theory du jour – Bernie was winning, and the Hillary/Biden machine told the Iowa Machine to finesse the the results no matter what.

Which, Ben Shapiro notes, shouldn’t be a problem for Bernie or his Bros:

Wonder if Putin had anything to do with it?

I’ve seen a few people posting references to the 1933 Enabling Act that gave Adolf Hitler (actually the “Hitler Cabinet”, although that quickly became irrelevant) complete dictatorial power in Germany, trying to link it to the Senate’s vote on allowing the Dems to call witnesses.

Nope. Not a good parallel, for a bunch of reasons (historical, structural) – and a good one, but not for the reason those using it think.

Mostly, it’s being used as a way to logroll the uninformed – which, these days, in a culture that thinks Jon Stewart was “news”, is an awful lot of people.

For starters, the German Constitution after WWI gave the executive branch almost royal powers. That’s because in around 1919 they clipped out references to the Kaiser (“Caesar”, in German) and replaced them with an elected “President”. And not much else; there was little or no ability, for example, for the legislative branch to “impeach” the President – at all.

Germany had an incredibly strong executive branch, and a very weak parliament…

that was further weakened by the German people’s fatigue with politics. After fifteen years where Politics very frequently devolved into street violence (between, literally, real “brownshirts” and “Anti”-fa – who were literally the direct action arm of the Communist party, and descended into same “Anti”-fa we have prancing about playing street soldier today). By the way – the Communists supported the idea of the Hitler cabinet, at least behind the scenes; they figured the violence that’d ensue would give them an opening to get back into power. They miscalculated badly, of course – worse than Adam Schiff, even. By this point in history, Germans were perfectly fine giving all the power to someone who would just make it all stop, and let them get back to trying to rebuild their economy and self-esteem

And the actual vote on the act was taken as the non-Nazi members of the “Reichstag” (parliament) were being literally threatened by brownshirts (again – literally, the same thing as “Anti”-Fa with different accessories) and the nucleus of what became the “SS”. The threats weren’t social media bluster, either; the “cancel culture” of the day was boots against head against pavement.

Future elections were abolished, the Party co-opted the Army with promises of rebuilding after its humiliation after World War 1, and that was pretty much that.

So – it’s a terrible parallel: the Senate impeachment vote was precisely the one predicted when the Democrats first started talking about impeachment three years ago, reinforced when the GOP extended their majority in the Senate in 2018; precisely the vote the Constitution called for, with the deliberative Senate checking and balancing the popular House.

It will (!) be followed by elections in nine months, where the people will sort it out, for better or worse, electing another government that, via the inefficiency that is Federalism’s most glorious feature, stymie and frustrate any electoral majority.

If we’re lucky.

Just as the Germans learned. After 1945, their new Federal (!) Constitution distributes power between the executive and parliament, and between the Federal and State parliaments, with the sorts of checks and balances they’d learned they needed, the hard way.

But there is a warning here, for Americans. Germany learned the need for checks and balances…

…and America’s “progressive” “elites” are doing their damnedest to get rid of them. There are serious efforts to make the Senate majoritarian (or abolish it completely), to make the legislative branch more closely mirror popular passions; to abolish the Electoral College to give the control of the Executive branch (which is waaaaaay too powerful, thanks to Wilson, FDR and LBJ) over to the will of the simple majority…

…and thus let that majority wield the full dead-eyed power of government over the minority without check or balance, or need for the niceties of legislation and debate.

To make the trains run on tim…er, I mean, move America “forward”. In your “best interests”.

There’s your “warning”.

That moment when virtue-signaling collides with reality:

I have a hunch that’s not going to age well.

By the opposite token, I’ve got a feeling this is going to have repercussions among the “woke” crowd as well.

Ben Sexsmith in Spectator on Taylor Swift’s pummeling into a deluxe, fashion-forward conformity.

While complaining that country singers are expected to “shut up and sing” because Dixie Chicks…:

Swift is shown to have been under at least some pressure to avoid being ‘political’, including from her own father, but the media she appears to be so vulnerable towards was criticizing and deriding her for not being political enough. Her reputation, which is so important to her, was suffering in the late 2010s because her silence on the Trump administration was held to represent ‘white privilege’ if not outright racism.
There was article after article about her ‘blinding white privilege’ and her ‘indifference to the struggles of people of color’. For Quartz, Swift represented ‘a dangerous form of white women’. For The Root she was ‘one of the most dangerous types of White woman’ (my emphasis). A Daily Beast writer said Swift was ‘the living embodiment of white privilege’. 
This was the greatest pressure that Swift’s reputation faced and it is hard not to suspect that her politicization did not have something to do with answering such criticism. There is no point in complaining about celebrities being progressive. You might as well complain about the winter being cold or the tides coming in. But it is preposterous to imply a celebrity’s progressivism takes courage and iconoclasm. It is expected if not demanded of them, and Swift and her friends clinking wine glasses as they toast ‘the Resistance’ is one of the most bourgeois images of our times.

About the same time I read the article, I heard this episode of the NPR “prog media” cheerleading broadcast “On The Media”, talking (approvingly) about the extent to which celebs have to go to prove they’re “woke”, and its political ramifications.

And it reminded me of the sort of exaggerated denouncements that people issued during Stalin’s show trials – when people literally virtue-signaled to save their lives. The Modern Left is a show trial that never ends – but hasn’t killed anyone. Yet.

Remember the gun buyback in Minneapolis in August of 2016? You wrote about it in a column entitled Buyback Diary.
I sold a couple of guns, got six gift cards worth $25 each, issued by Sunrise Banks. I threw them in my range box for a rainy day.  Money in the bank, right?
Nope. Sunrise Banks charges a $5 fee per year. I just talked to the bank manager. The money is all gone. Should have read the fine print.
I would say something profound, like “I won’t make that mistake again.” Except I no longer have any guns to sell, having sold those two and lost all the rest in that tragic canoe accident.
Joe Doakes

Is there anything about that buyback (read the link) that didn’t turn into comedy gold?

For info on the Deplora Ball – a benefit for the widow and soon-arriving child of MN National Guard Warrant Officer Nord, killed in a December 5 helicopter crash near Camp Ripley – go right here.

Find out more about Mayor Tom Funk’s Senate race in SD 47 – Carver County and Chanhassen, the Scott Jensen seat – go here.

Fracking causes Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

By the same logic, so does military training, regional sales conventions and college.

The only correlation it discovered was “grant dollars in states with highly-charged political issues and lots of electoral votes”.

Four paintings that give a much better history of race relations in America than the NYTimes Magazine’s “1619 Project” possibly could.

I clearly read it all wrong. If A-Klo’s candidacy was the narcissistic joke I always assumed it was, she’d have never warranted a Iowa-Caucus-eve hit piece smackdown like this:

She told a story that she has cited throughout her political career, including during her 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate: An 11-year-old girl was killed by a stray bullet while doing homework at her dining room table in 2002. And Klobuchar’s office put Tyesha Edwards’ killer — a black teen — behind bars for life.
But what if Myon Burrell is innocent?

The Tyesha Edwards shooting was an iconic event in urban life and Minneapolis crime; I’m not sure anyone who lived here, then, doesn’t remember that episode and what happened around it. It motivated the Minneapolis Police to get serious about crime (including a serious clean up of the Phillips neighborhood). (It also provided the DFL a template for their messaging on 2nd Amendment issues; Sen. Wes “Lyin Sack of Garbage” Skoglund claimed reforming “Shall Issue” laws would lead to thousands of such episodes, since gang bangers would be getting, yes, he said this, carry permits. But I digress).

A black teen, Myon Burrell, was arrested and eventually got a life sentence – a capstone in the career of a rapaciously ambitious county attorney, Amy Klobuchar.

If this was a movie, you’d know what’d happen next:

The AP reviewed more than a thousand pages of police records, court transcripts and interrogation tapes, and interviewed dozens of inmates, witnesses, family members, former gang leaders, lawyers and criminal justice experts.
The case relied heavily on a teen rival of Burrell’s who gave conflicting accounts when identifying the shooter, who was largely obscured behind a wall 120 feet away.
With no other eyewitnesses, police turned to multiple jailhouse snitches. Some have since recanted, saying they were coached or coerced. Others were given reduced time, raising questions about their credibility. And the lead homicide detective offered “major dollars” for names, even if it was hearsay.
There was no gun, fingerprints, or DNA. Alibis were never seriously pursued. Key evidence has gone missing or was never obtained, including a convenience store surveillance tape that Burrell and others say would have cleared him.
Burrell, now 33, has maintained his innocence, rejecting all plea deals.
His co-defendants, meanwhile, have admitted their part in Tyesha’s death. Burrell, they say, was not even there.
For years, one of them — Ike Tyson — has insisted he was actually the triggerman. Police and prosecutors refused to believe him, pointing to the contradictory accounts in the early days of the investigation. Now, he swears he was just trying to get the police off his back.

Read the whole thing, make up your own mind. Unlike most modern journalism, it’s worth a look.

Here’s the real question. Forget about the presidency – A-Klo was always running for VP anyway.

But if these allegations are borne out, and she comes around for her next Senate run in 2024, why would any black Minnesotan who doesn’t settle for being a permanent DFL vote ever think of voting for her?

If you haven’t seen this, I’m going to jump on the bandwagon.

This is what “GOP” “Strategist” Rick Wilson and the NYTimes Wajahat Ali think of their opponents when they think they’re on friendly turf:

Don Lemon “apologized” by saying he “didn’t catch” all of what his guests were saying.

Of course he didn’t. He was too busy laughing at the smugging.

I don’t care for Trump – but if the GOP had beaten Hillary with Scott Walker or Mitt Romney or a new genetic clone made from Ronald Reagan or Dwight Eisenhower’s DNA, they’d be saying the same exact thing.

We know this because during the Reagan and Bush I and II administrations, they said the same thing.

It just didn’t get preserved and distributed.

Speaking of which – preserve and distribute.

The University of Minnesota is going to be starting mandatory pronoun training:

Faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota are gearing up to undergo pronoun training in order to make the campus a more welcoming environment for “transgender” and “non-binary” community members.
A university policy first floated in the summer of 2018 and recently finalized dictates that university employees “are expected to use the names, gender identities and pronouns specified to them by university members.” Failing to abide by this policy “could result in discipline,” according to the policy’s FAQ page.
Training for the new policy has begun, The Minnesota Daily reports. The training program involves instructing staff and faculty in the new gender pronoun rules; those staff will then be “tasked with working to educate their colleagues, helping them work through questions and mistakes.”

There are really two responses to this. Technically three, but “unquestioning acquiescence” is off the table. .

I can either:

• Point out that this sort of thing is at best an unproductive and ultimately damaging diversion to someone’s mental illness, and at worst catering to someone’s attention-seeking
• Tell U of M staff that my preferred pronouns are “His Highness / The Grand Admiral “

I’m leaning toward “B”. Satire seems to be more useful these days.

My wife is visiting friends in Texas. This is a photo of the gas price she paid at the pump earlier this week.

Plainly, fracking has had an effect on the economic environment. I blame Trump.


Joe Doakes

Schools are teaching the “1619 Project” – the New York Times Magazine‘s “historical research” project that claims the American experiment was never about anything but slavery.

Completely as predicted. Robbie Soave at Reason:

School districts in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Buffalo, New York, have decided to update their history curricula to include the material, which posits that the institution of slavery was so embedded in the country’s DNA that the country’s true founding could be said to have occurred in 1619, rather than in 1776.
“One of the things that we are looking at in implementing The 1619 Project is to let everyone know that the issues around the legacy of enslavement that exist today, it’s an American issue, it’s not a Black issue,” Dr. Fatima Morrell, associate superintendent for culturally and linguistically responsive initiatives for Buffalo Public Schools, told Buffalo’s NPR station.

The project, shall we say, is widely unaccepted by historians:

Many historians, though, have questioned The 1619 Project’s accuracy. Five of them penned a letter to The New York Times expressing dismay “at some of the factual errors in the project and the closed process behind it.” These historians said the project’s contention that the American Revolution was launched “in order to ensure slavery would continue” was flat-out wrong.
Another historian, Phil Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research, has criticized Matthew Desmond’s 1619 Project essay, which claimed that modern American capitalism has its roots in plantation slavery. Magness has persuasively argued that this claim lacks verification, and that Desmond relied on bad data about cotton-picking rates in the pre-Civil War south.
“Desmond’s thesis relies exclusively on scholarship from a hotly contested school of thought known as the New History of Capitalism (NHC),” wrote Magness in a second article. “Although NHC scholars often present their work as cutting-edge explorations into the relationship between capitalism and slavery, they have not fared well under scrutiny from outside their own ranks.”

But I’m going to take issue with Soave on one part, though:

Some conservative critics have overreached: Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called The 1619 Project “propaganda” and suggested that the Times was trying to brainwash readers. That line of attack goes too far, but there are valid criticisms of the project’s ideological slant.

I can’t – and don’t want to – speak for the authors’ intent. But the fact that it is being used to gaslight the next generation about what American is about means it is propaganda, whatever its intent.

Rep. Omar on Twitter yesterday:

There’s hope here!

If your healthcare, tuition and housing are “Free” (ergo, paid by me, the taxpayer who gets none of those benefits), I am your slave, and being a slaveholder is a moral burden on you as well.

I’m pretty sure Rep. Omar didn’t intend it that way, of course – as her droogs make pretty clear in the thread (and if there’s a 2020’s analogue to “never read the comment section”, it’s gotta be “never read the thread of someone with a blue checkmark).

But you never know.

Maybe Omar will finally get into trouble with Squad leadership for this gaffe…

There are only two real explantions for the DFL’s messaging on most issues – especially, but hardly limited to, 2nd Amendment issues:

Either:

• They are not especially bright
• They are counting on their audience not being especially bright.

Submitted for your review – a tweet, from yesterday, from Senator Matt Little, one of the suburban legislators that swept into office in the ’18 mid-terms:

So there’s the conundrum: do we assume that Matt Little actually believes that the polling station works the same as a black-market gun deal?

If he did, it’d explain a lot about the DFL’s depravity on election integrity, now that I think about it.

But no, seriously – does he believe that?

Or is his audience a class of people who just don’t think that hard?

Connecticut legislature proposes a new state police unit to investigate terrorism.

But only “far-right” terror, natch: (Emphasis added)

The proposal, which was unveiled Wednesday as part of the state Senate Democrats’ “A Just Connecticut” agenda, would publicly fund a new state police department that specializes in investigating “far-right extremist groups and individuals,” according to a news release.

Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney said the proposal is aimed at combating “potential” hate crimes but stressed that his caucus has no intention of persecuting people for their political beliefs, the Hartford Courant reported.
“Unfortunately, people who entertain hateful beliefs … are protected as long as [those beliefs] don’t result in hate-crime actions. That’s what we’re talking about,” Mr. Looney told reporters Wednesday. “We want to be more aggressive in enforcing our laws and identifying likely sources of potential domestic terrorism acts against religious institutions and ethnic institutions.”

Big Left has been trying to make “terror” (not to mention “racism, misogyny, white supremacy, Naziism and transphobia”) synonymous with “conservatism” for years – which is almost more insidious than the inevitable statutory persecution that this measure signals.

Connecticut Republicans, such as they are, at least are showing some backbone:

Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, a Republican, said there is “strong bipartisan support against any type of terrorism” but he took issue with the proposal only mentioning right-wing extremism.
“When they put a right-wing label on extremism, they do that to elicit a political response,” he said, the Hartford Courant reported.

The Democrat messaging strategy in a word: gaslighting.

In Senate hearings in Hibbing last week, Sen. Ron Latz and his DFL minions angrily derided Republicans for implying the city was dangerous.

About that time, this guy got arrested.

Again.

A loaded gun, a ballistic vest, multiple magazines and 18 rounds of loose ammunition.
That’s what police say they discovered inside a vehicle parked in an alley in the 1000 block of Beech Street in St. Paul last Saturday night.
The man in the driver’s seat has been arrested four times since September. Each time officers found firearms, say court records, which detail just three of the arrests.
The firearm, a loaded Brugger & Thomet TP9 handgun, was beneath the driver’s seat, according to the complaint. The ballistic vest, three Glock 9-millimeter magazines, two Tec magazines and the loose rounds of ammunition were in a suitcase in the back seat.
Lincoln was arrested at the scene and declined to make a statement to investigators. The female passenger with him said she didn’t know anything about guns in the vehicle.
State law prohibits Lincoln from possessing a firearm since he was convicted of felony level domestic assault in 2011, court records say.
He has two other unlawful gun-possession cases pending against him in Ramsey County from earlier this fall.
In the first, officers pulled him over Sept. 13 after noting that his vehicle’s windows were illegally tinted and found multiple bags of marijuana, as well as two loaded handguns, inside, charges say.

Obviously, we need universal background checks.

Democrats sold Obamacare is a revenue-neutral measure. The way they justified that lie was to have the federal government take over student loans so the government would get the interest money and not those greedy corporations.
Elizabeth Warren wants to forgive student loan debt. But that means no interest payments. Which means no money to pay for ObamaCare, which means thousands of poor children will go without vaccinations, or else we’ll have to steal money from Social Security to pay for healthcare and Grandma will be stuck eating dog food.
Trump should be hammering it right now. Democrats set this in motion. It was part of the deal. Now they’re pulling the legs out from under it, so who’s going to suffer? Students? Infants? Grandma?
Pit one group against the other. Divided they fall.
Joe Doakes 

It’d be fun to see .it done to the other side for a while.