Text message that went out from Planned Parenthood on Thursday:

What must it be like to be the ghoul working at the Planned Parenthood “Abortion Talk” Command Post on holidays?
Text message that went out from Planned Parenthood on Thursday:
What must it be like to be the ghoul working at the Planned Parenthood “Abortion Talk” Command Post on holidays?
…that the best movie of all time (for my money) debuted:
Casablanca ends begins year 82.
I can’t post the whole movie – stupid copyrights – but I’ll throw this out there in the unlikely event some of you haven’t seen it.
Me? By my rough count, I’ve seen it something like 86 times in the past forty years.
Appetizer? One of the most gloriously emotionally manipulative scenes in the history of movies:
I’m also reminded that the first time I saw the movie is now closer to the debut than the present day. I don’t want to talk about it.
…and having given up on the “killer bees”, people in the Upper Midwest have this to worry about:
Fearless predictions:
Prove me wrong.
From yesterday’s show:
Liz Collin and the Fall of Minneapolis.
Also – condolences to the family of Mark Rice, aka “Mark from Saint Louis Park”, a long-time regular caller, and one of the few that the producers were told to always let on the air, because he always added great stuff to the show.
More on Monday.
These are the finalists:
To me, they all like the came from IKEA, and appear to have been designed to work as button icons on Android phones, but…
…the one on top, and the bottom right, offend me the least.
But let’s be honest – if on July 2 1863 the First Minnesota Regiment had gone into action behind any of these flags, Lee would have ended up sacking DC, NYC and Boston within a few weeks.
And the crop improved a bit from the semi-finalists:
Not sure if the committee noticed how redolent a flag with a five-pointed star would be of a Soviet, Nork or Red Chinese flag, or were anticipating the avalanche of jokes and not-so-jokes if they picked a flag that looked like, uh…
…the flag of Somalia.
Which seemed to have inspired a prett, er, impressive number of the original 2,600 submissions.
The comments have been off for, if I’m counting right, two weeks.
I’ve missed them. Well, most things about them.
I’m going to bring them back.
But there will be some changes.
Call Me “Pollyanna”. Once. As I pointed out last week, the goals of the comment section, like the blog itself if you think about it, are:
If I want a barroom brawl, I’ll go to a bar. And since I got more than my fill of that kind of bar in my 20s, and of online universes that act the same way without the fun of girls and booze, it’s safe to say my cup has long since run over in that department.
Debate. Argue. But treat each other with basic respect, which means if you don’t respect someone, and feel the need to express it especially directly…
…don’t.
Take it elsewhere.
Maybe take it to Twitter, and have your ire swallowed up in the frothing sea of it. Or try your luck with Facebook’s censorship. Come up with things worth discussing. Perhaps start a blog, or other online outlet of your own, and build yourself an audience. Let them debate in your comment section any way you want to. See how it goes.
It’s a free-ish country.
Stick. Otherwise?
If you make a habit of threadjacking, or especially obnoxious dick-measuring, I’ll mark your comments as “spam”.
Which means your future comments will go into the spam queue until I get a chance to look ’em over. All of them. .
Which means a couple of things:
Unreasonable? Nah. Not for grownups.
So – if you’ve got it in your head that you want to try to change the subject in the comments, and make a practice of it (you know who you are)? You can’t. So don’t.
If your go-to is volume? Volume is for guitars and cars. Not arguments.
Carrot? I”ll be re-opening comments on Monday.
No, not today. The “rules” aren’t really open for debate.
Joe Doakes emails:
From Ace of Spades on Thursday the 23rd:
**
So I’m going to say something that is considered racially rude, but I’m sick of the bullshit.
Conquest without morality was the rule of all peoples and nations until a couple of hundred years ago. Only in the very recent past has morality become a major consideration in warfare.
And the people most responsible for adding moral considerations to the law of conquest were… Europeans.
People pushing the Victim Narrative pretend that their ancestors were morally superior to their conquerors. In fact, they were not. Their ancestors conquered everyone they could conquer. The Comanche Empire conquered other Indian tribes, which is why Indian tribes allied with the American government to fight the Comanches.
If Indians had advanced shipbuilding, navigation, and steel-working, they would have conquered Europe.
Native Americans’ ancestors did not refuse to do this because they were more moral. They didn’t do it because they simply couldn’t do it. They were not superior in morality; they were simply inferior in technology.
And all of this endless bullshit whining about generations-old conquests is just a nasty cope.
You’ve heard of “Victor’s Justice,” in which the winner of a war can vindictively set the terms for peace…? Well we live now in an age of Loser’s Justice, when the losers of the war can, somehow, endlessly torment the great-great-great-grandchildren of the winners of their ancestors having won in war.
And we’re sick of it, and we’re done with it. We never point this out, because we don’t want to upset people who are clearly insecure about their ancestors’ failures. Who wants to pick on the fat kid?
But by not shutting this bullshit down, we have invited endless demands on us. Endless reparations and payoffs, endless “land acknowledgements,” endless affirmative action programs, endless demands for apologies (which are endlessly offered, and endlessly rejected as insufficient), endless demands we change our lives to “honor” people we don’t even fucking know, endless demands we “center” other people and endlessly think about what we owe complete fucking strangers.
Enough. Enough.
The fact that my ancestors were good at war is no credit to me. I can’t take racial credit for what people that lived 200 years ago did.
But neither do I have to take responsibility for the actions of ghosts.
And the fact that some people’s ancestors were bad at war is not a credit card with no limits entitling the bearers to make endless demands on others.
I’m done with walking around eggshells because some people just cannot get over their distant ancestors having been shit at fighting.
***
Could not agree more. The last man to have clear title to land was Adam, and he lost it when he got evicted for breaking the terms of his lease. Everyone after him has title-by-right-of-conquest (nowadays called “adverse possession” by lawyers and “colonizer” by activists) including Noah, who didn’t do his own slaying but moved into a world where his patron had slain everyone for him.
Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park
I would like to throw in a claim for my Viking ancestors and their history of fomenting what we now call democracy, along with their incredible facility at conquest.
But I can’t, because justice, the sins of the fathers are not visited on the sons, either their achievements.
It’s Thanksgiving.
I’ve written before about what Thanksgiving means to me, personally – on this blog’s first Thanksgiving (checks notes) twenty-one years ago. It’s still true in every respect.
I was on the road, driving somewhere the other day when the notion of listing the things for which I’m grateful popped up. I started trying to list them all – and the list only really came to an end when the car stopped, far too soon, at my destination.
So what the heck – I’m just going to start a stream of consciousness list of things for which I’m grateful on this, our country’s festival of thanksgiving.
I’m thankful for my family, and my family in law. Looking back over the past twenty years since I’ve been writing about all of us, there are so many ways things could have turned out differently, and much worse – but yet here we all are, and things are all right.
And I’m thankful for the family I grew up in – my sister and my brother, of course, and my father, who is blessedly still with us. And for my mother, who we’re spending our second Thanksgiving without, this year. And as I noted back last spring, I’m profoundly grateful for one of the greatest gifts my mother and father gave us all – boring, non-remarkable childhoods, free of the sort of pointless, mindless drama that has always afflicted less fortunate families, and that a certain segment of society has taken to celebrating these days.
The more families I get to know, the luckier I know we all were, and are.
So for Bun, Zam, Syd, Watermelon, and of course Barb, Jim and Dad, I’m happily thankful.
Oh yeah – and Pickle, the cat. I lost him last summer – one of those cancers that hits cats like tornados out of the blue. I’m thankful to have had eight years with the best cat ever.
Beyond just family, I’ve had some people who affected my life pretty immensely, mostly positively. I wrote about a bunch of them last month – and the more I wrote, the more people and events and priceless gifts of influence I thought of.
So for them, all of them, I’m grateful.
I’m thankful for the career I have. I blundered into it 25. years ago, more out of boredom with my short career writing instruction manuals – and yet after all this time, I still look forward to going into the office every day, literally or virtually.
I’m grateful in particular for the job I have with the company I’m at. Not naming names – but it’s a place I genuinely enjoy being, with people I genuinely enjoy working with. There aren’t many places where a UX designer with a BA in English could land on two engineering patents. For that story alone, I’m exceedingly thankful.
I’m grateful for the path I took to get there – all its myriad chicanes and hairpin turns. Starting in radio at 15, burning out on it when I was 21, getting back at 22, out again at 25, nightclub DJing, technical writing, and the various twists and turns that got me here.
At the very least, there are a lot of stories to bore my kids stiff with.
On the other hand, every once in a while I can offer someone a perspective they don’t have. And that is a great feeling. For both of us, I think.
I’ve become keenly aware in recent years that there are people who’ve been very important at one time or another, that I will likely never see again. The time for chance serendipity random encounters gets shorter every year. So one thing I didn’t expect, but for which I’m intensely grateful – my show and blog and, to an extent, social media have led me back into contact with a lot of people I likely wouldn’t have via the normal course of random encounters – high school and college classmates who tune in, and occasionally shout out on my show’s various social media feeds. In three particular cases – my college friend Ray Zentz, and my high school and colleg4e classmates Eric DeMar and Pennie Werth – they passed away, very unexpectedly, and (gulp) way too young. And in this past couple of course, I’ve been blessed to have had at least some contact with each of them, while I still could.
And for my many friends who are still with us, and who I do get to see and hang out with? Yes, I’m even more thankful for each and every one of you!
It’s easy enough to say “I’m thankful to be healthy”, and it’s true. But in the five years since my crash weight loss I’ve become humbly aware that most guys who spend as many years sedentary and overweight as I did, aren’t nearly as lucky as I am, to be as relatively healthy, after all that, as I am. I got another warning last spring – I’d found a little under half the weight I lost in 2018, and had to get back on the program – and it worked, again. I’m very aware I’m as lucky as can be. “I’m healthy” is, in this case, delivered with a bit of “whew – close call” as a happy nod. And for that, I’m thankful.
Back to a bit of nostalgia – I’m thankful for my entire high school class. I can’t say I’m friends with everyone in the Jamestown High School Class of 1981 – but this past couple of reunions have blessed me with a deeper appreciation of quite a few people who, between cliques and crowds and circumstances I barely knew in the day, with whom I’ve spent more time over a few drinks at reunions than we ever did in high school, and intensely glad for the opportunity.
I’m glad I got the education I did. It’s become the fashion these days among a certain crowd of conservatives to dunk on the modern college education – and from what I see among 20-and-30-somethings today, there’s something to it – but my BA in English has served me far better than I’d ever thought it could when I graduated from college. It taught me how to think, reason, look for the question behind the question, for the additional questions that every answer launches.
And of course, “education” is more than just curriculum and schooling. I’m thankful the many unintentional lessons I learned from some of the amazing people I met, and the collateral effects of the things I learned, in class and out.
I’m grateful that this version of the RIchard Thompson Band released this version of this day-appropriate song:
Perhaps a bit less ethereally? I’m so happy to have a band again. Oh, it’s just a classic rock cover band – it’s not the flaming-hot passionate “mission in life” vibe the twenty-some me wore back in the 1980s, when I took my swing at being a rock star, or at least a songwriter, producer and whatever else came my way. But I get to play guitar in front of rooms full of people who seem to enjoy it. And even if it’s a slow night at an out of the way bar, my Fitbit says I burn 6-7000 calories and rack up a zillion steps, so even then it’s a win-win.
Anyway – for that, I’m thankful.
Given the sturm und drang of this state and nation’s political scene, I’m deliriously grateful for the voice this blog, and the NARN, have given me over the years. On the one hand, social media have given everyone a voice, of sorts – and what people have done with that voice is another entire subject. But being able to do this on my own terms (within FCC and Salem Communications rules, natch) for all this time? To the extent I’m still sane, that’s probably why.
Of course, I’m grateful for the friends I’ve made during all these years of writing – Professor Reynolds, Gary Gross, Joshua Sharf, Sheila O’Malley, and the group of local bloggers that, about this time 19 years ago, started coalescing into that radio show: Scott Johnson, John Hinderaker, Brian Ward, Chad the Elder, Atomizer, Michael Brodkorb, and of course Ed Morrissey, King Banaian, Brad Carlson and Jack Tomczak. And of course, for the many friends I made in the “Minnesota Organization of Bloggers” days – including the three whose contributions still bless this blog, Mr. D, Jeff Kouba and First Ringer.
Why, yes – even Paddyboy! I’m thankful that Pad – someone I’ve considered a friend for over three decades, and to whom I owe an odd little debt of gratitude from back before the word “blog” meant anything but something that happened about an hour after you ate a gas station burrito – drops by, pique and all. I owe you a drink or two. Have your people call my people.
And I’m thankful for this little ephemeral bit of internet I’ve been wrangling this past 20.75 years. It’s been a sporty year – as I write this, the comment section is still shut down. And since you mention it, yes – I’m thankful I shut it down. It’ll be back. Yep – also grateful.
As I noted elsewhere around the time of the 20th anniversary, writing this every weekday morning has been sort of a Zen-like lesson – come rain or shine, feast or famine, writer’s block or fit of logorrhea, the exercise of sitting down and writing, five mornings a week, has been a way of centering myself for this past two decades. For better or worse – I have to think it’s better – one of the great takeaways from doing this has been, I think, one of the great lessons of life; keep plugging away, and things eventually explain themselves.
Of course, I’m profoundly and humbly thankful that people still choose to read it, after all this time. Thank you all!
I could keep at this for hours more. And perhaps one day I should. But cooking calls, same as last year.
And so to borrow a line from that first Thanksgiving post on this blog, way back when:
But I forgot one. I’m thankful to be here. Now. Doing what I’m doing, and with the chance to be doing the same thing – or better – next year.
Thanks to all of you. I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving and a blessed holiday season.
This post is an update of a post I wrote last year. Not much has changed – for which I’m also grateful.
Joe Doakes, no longer from Como Park, emails:
I miss him.
He is referring to Rush Limbaugh and his annual “True Story of Thanksgiving”
Rush has been gone for two years now. But someone else needs to carry on the tradition.
Spoiler alert below
Continue readingWe’ll start with this thread on Twitter. I urge you to read the whole thing; it distills the response I have to the modernes attempt to cheapen and undercut everything Western Civilization stands for into a hot red crystal of truth:
To: Governor Wilhelm Walz, Co-Governor, State of Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Hungry For The Truth
Governor,
You tweeted this yesterday:
And yet your administration and the DFL majorities in the Legislature told us that Minnesota’s economy was doing better than ever, that “Bidenomics” was not a bitter joke whose self-induced inflation was no way no how hurting poor and working class people worse than the general population, and that the actions of this past session were going to reduce poverty by 30%.
If any of that were true, food banks wouldn’t be seeing unprecedented demand – would they?
“Public is to art as it is to rest rooms”
— PJ O’Rourke, I think.
Among the less overtly but more insidiously stupid things the DFL controlled legislature sent the state chasing after this past session was redesigning the state flag.
The initial submissions are in and range from the adequate to the sardonic to the vile.
The choice is such that some have suggested we, alone among states, need two, seasonal flags. Now. as a North Dakota native, the idea that Minnesota’s seasons are radical enough to warrant separate is worth a laugh or two…
…but I see a case for multiple flags.
In fact, I think it’s going to end up looking like this:
The flags of the four powers that are eventually going to be forced to move in and liberate Minnesota, and partition it untli it’s De-DFLified.
One of my great strengths is I’m a very loyal person. If you’re a colleague, a romantic partner or a friend, I’ll stick with you – sometimes to absurd lengths.
One of my great weaknesses is I’m a very loyal person. I’ve stuck with some friendships, and other relationships, that didn’t deserve it. If you’re a colleague, a romantic partner or a friend, I’ll take a lot of fairly pointless and demeaning abuse on what my inner critic thinks is “principle”, but is really more equal parts inertia, a childhood of not having a lot of close frieends, and excessive self-doubt (as noted by others).
A great example was the long-gone and utterly unlamented “Dog Gone”. She’d been a social acquaintance, even a friend of sorts, going back to the ’80s. She’d known my kids when they were babies. And when she turned up on the blog, a few years later, I figured “good – let’s see what happens”.
We all know how that turned out.
I mean, things started out OK.
And then, as the wheels slowly wobbled off, I figured “Dogs are gonna Dog”.
For a while, it devolved to the fact I just enjoyed watching the smart people in the comments curb-stomping her, week after week – although as her “technique” degenerated into “pooping and running”, that fun didn’t last long.
Finally, of course, she used her 20+ year old contact with my family to take a deeply bizarre and very personal swipe at me. Something so over the top, so biliously narcissistic that even I had enough.
That arc took about a decade.
Because loyalty is wasted on some people.
No, that’s not accurate. It’s more true to say I waste loyalty on some people.
I’m not going to say that changed me, particularly – “Dog Gone” wasn’t a close friend, and jettisoning that fairly peripheral relationship had no effect on my life or how I live it.
But it’s a bit of a cue that I have a tendency to misallocate loyalty.
Apropos not much.
More later in the week.
I had a long drive over the weekend. I spent it listening to Jordan Peterson.
I caught an excellent episode with Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation. It’s a sprawling 97 minute discussion of everything conservatism is, everything it should be, where it falls short, how to make up the difference…
Here’s the episode:
…and, toward the beginning, a concept I’ve been struggling to put my finger on.
The topic was the American university’s new obsession with “safety”, especially intellectual safety. A higher education is, as Peterson notes, supposed to upset one’s adolescent stupidity, and thereby teach you how to think critically about all your, and everyone’s, preconceptions.
Roberts pointed out that in the traditional University system – especially in Europe – the goals are:
Now, call me a dreamer, but that’s what I’ve always shot for on this blog, and in the comments.
We’ll come back to that.
I’ve had plenty of feedback about the disabled comment section. I do appreciate it. I miss having it turned on as well.
It’ll be back.
But in this past week, I’ve done a bunch of thinking.
As I pointed out last week, I’ve always treated “managing” the comments with a certain amount of idealism. Pragmatic idealism – I also barely have enough free time to read the comments, much less play manager – but idealism nonetheless.
I figured “we’re all adults”. I asked a bunch of adults, respectfully, to mind their manners and treat each other with the same basic respect.
It didn’t seem like that big an ask at the time. And for about 20 years, I was mostly right.
And, let’s be honest – this blog is more a personal exercise in self-discipline and thought-development than “citizen journalism”, to say nothing of a money-making venue. I’ve been amazed to have an audience for a couple of decades, now – and, yes, blessed. Much of what I genuinely like about my life, particularly my social life, springs from the connections this blog started for me.
I figured the input should match the output.
But there’s been more than enough output for me to make it worth making things work.
More tomorrow.
New York State christened the “least free” in the United States:
The report, conducted by the Cato Institute, showed that New York ranked last place among the 50 states for 2022 policies that impacted economic, social, and personal freedoms.
New York ranked 50th for economic freedom and scored at or near the bottom for debt and state and local taxation, government consumption, land use and labor policy.
“Heeeeeyyyyyy – the study is by the Cato Institute! They’re biased toward freedom!”
We live in a world where that can be seen as a pejorative.
As Don Surber notes, suddenly everyone’s an expert on Argentina.
We’ll come back to that.
Libertarian-Conservative Javier Milei crushed his center-left opponent, showing Argentina’s crushing dissatisfaction with over a decade of center-to-far-left politics.
Big Left is, predictably, unhappy:
“A radical libertarian and admirer of Donald Trump rode a wave of voter rage to win Argentina’s presidency on Sunday, crushing the political establishment and bringing the sharpest turn to the right in four decades of democracy in the country.
“Javier Milei, a 53-year-old far-right economist and former television pundit with no governing experience, claimed nearly 56% of the vote in a stunning upset over Sergio Massa, the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades. Even before the official results had been announced Sunday night, Massa acknowledged defeat and congratulated Milei on his win.
“Trump also congratulated Milei. ‘I am very proud of you,’ Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. ‘You will turn your Country around and Make Argentina Great Again!’”
Don Surber’s response – “don’t anoint him yet, but the vote matters more than the candidate – isn’t wrong at all.
But he adds:
I don’t recall Argentina being great before but diplomacy requires a certain suspension of reality. It’s the 1970s chant of I’m OK, You’re OK updated for international relations. I’m Great Again, You’re Great Again.
Thing is, Argentina was, if not “great”, at least doing really, really well not that terribly long ago:
So what happened?
As Paul Johnson pointed out in Modern Times, socialism – in this case, populist socialism in the form of Juan and Eva Peron – happened. Argentina went from relative wealth to decay and authoritarianism, and all it got was a lousy musical.
Huh – a great political entity that got sucked into a vortex of authoritarianism, stagnancy and decay by leftists who just kept winning elections?
Huh. Weird.
I grew up Presbyterian – and remained in the church because I believe the Presbyterian Book of Workship puts less temporal BS between God and the Man who wants to study Him than any of the alternatives.
The Presbyterian Church and the people who work within it have been a huge influence on my life.
Of course, the biggest mainline group in the denomination, the Presbyterian Church USA, was swallowing the “progressive” line long almost as long as the Episcopals and Methodists. Their diversions into lefty politics and “social justice” are on record – and I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the PCUSA’s membership is on track to leave it extinct by 2050.
Given a choice between fighting and leavin, I left. I found a breakaway Presbyterian sect that focuses on faith, not progressive politics. It wasn’t easy, but I found one.
But others are fighting.
A friend of the blog emails:
Mitch,
I thought you might find this interesting. It’s an effort by orthodox Christians to retake rather than leave churches in historically progressive denominations. The following map is of congregations that are low on the progressive scale.
I came across it on a podcast.
And I’m reminded – picking up and leaving a church is like picking up and leaving a state; it works until the thing you’re getting away from decides not to stop coming after you.
Since I have the place to myself for the moment, I figured it’d be time to do a little intellectual spring cleaning. Call it “20-odd Theses”, if you want.
I don’t care what you put on your pizza. Pineapple? Shrimip? Kale? Put whatever you want on your pizza. And I’ll do the same. Keep your nose outta my food. I’ll do the same for you.
Same goes for hot dogs.
If you’re not a lawyer, the “Oxford Comma” is an affectation.
I, and to the extent it matters, this blog, stand for a few things I think are worth upsetting the apple cart for, above and beyond the above:
I support free speech. Not just the gauzy, “Question Authority” bumper sticker type that disappeared from every Subaru in Marcy-Holmes when Barack Obama was elected. The real thing – Communists standing on soapboxes, Nazis (pardon the redundancy) marching parades, Klansmen jabbering away freely – and all the good people confronting, refuting, and best of all mocking and taunting them back to the stone age. Because defending speech you agree with wouldn’t need a Constitutional amendment.
Human freedom and dignity, and the inalienable, unabridgable right to defend it.
The whole panoply of small-“l”l liberalsm (aka movement libertarian conservative) thought. You say it’s obsolete? Then so is my Christian faith. I’m not burying either of them for the sake of false polity, much less temporal swings in public mood.
Moral order. All humans are equal before just laws and God alone. Beneath that, it’s all about talent and merit.
The injunction to be kind to “love one another as God loves you” and to be charitable to oen’s fellow human is not a contradiction to the above.
Exploiting and swindling that sense of charity is a moral crime carried out by moral algae.
Christian Humanism, fundamentalist chanting points aside, is not a contradiction. Western civilization sprang from Judeo-Christian Humanism – applying the principles of both faiths to civil society. Not “theocracy” – but a society guided by generally-accepted principles drawn from that faith.
Truth is a virtue. Supporting truth is a calling. Upholding truth over lies is a mandate. Good and evil both exist, and being incisive, critical and honest about the differences is Right and Good vs, Wrong and Evil. Being honest about the differences is a colossal burden and supreme good.
On the subject of good and evil, truth versus lies? It’s a fact:
If you don’t believe all the above? I’m not going to say “unfriend me, go away, leave me alone”. I will in fact say “stick around, because I’m going to engage the sh*t out of you”. But it’s gonna be sporty.
Since the entire media will try to suppress it – here’s “The Fall of Minneapolis”, by Liz Collin and the Alphanews crew:
Watch it.
Pass it along.
I won’t give you any spoilers – you already know that Mayor Frey was a hapless stooge at best, a theatrical ninny at worst.
Chief Arradondo lied through his teeth. I always sensed this – the documentary shows us in black and white.
Walz? May he rot in hell.
Watch the whole thing. If you’re not outraged, you’re probably the enemy.
Back in the ’80s, the Twin Cities were plagued by a mass of Peace Creeps; a group of dolorous, white, upper-middle-class progressives who believed that if the US just disarmed, the Soviets – who, being the intellectual children of Stalin and the parents of Putin, would naturally join hands with the theretofore war-mongering West and march into a peaceful future, in spite of the West’s base intentions. Groups like the Anti-War Committee and Women Against Military Madness spent the eighties getting slavering, adoring media coverage; it was a warmup for the sort of intellectual tongue bath today’s media gives the likes of Greta Thunberg, Ilhan Omar or Hamas.
Of course, the groups were moral narcissists to think that Soviet or Red Chinese leadership were “just like us”; that people who routinely murdered or exiled or stuffed opponents into “psychiatric clinics” were anything like Western democracies (before Obama, anyway).
I used to wonder how long people like them would last in the systems they were holding up as their moral ideal?
There was no wondering, of course. This is how it turns out:
“The Pen is Mightier than the Sword” could only be written by someone who never had to bet their life on it.
The shocking part, at least to me, is not that he did it, or talked about it.
It’s that most “Progressive” voters don’t get what an authoritarian statement and action this is, or why that could possibly be a problem.
The good guy with the gun does in fact make a difference.
But according to the Crime Prevention Research Center, they make a much bigger difference than even I thought:
Evidence compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that the sources the media relied on undercounted the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks by an order of more than ten, saving untold numbers of lives. Of course, law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare. What is rare is national news coverage of those incidents. Although those many news stories about the Greenwood shooting also suggested that the defensive use of guns might endanger others, there is no evidence that these acts have harmed innocent victims.
Part of the problem is that the FBI is a little sluggish about counting episodes where the spree killer commits suicide after being confronted; the two events are not separate when they are inextricably linked.
But some of it is just plain bureaucratic dishonest. One fairly bald-faced example:
For example, the Bureau’s report about the Dec. 29, 2019 attack on the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, that left two men dead does not list this as an incident of “civic engagement.” Instead, the FBI lists this attack as being stopped by a security guard. A parishioner, who had volunteered to provide security during worship, fatally shot the perpetrator. That man, Jack Wilson, told Dr. John Lott that he was not a security professional. He said that 19 to 20 members of the congregation were armed that day, and they didn’t even keep track of who was carrying a concealed weapon.
Coverage of the actual episode right here. The FBI also treated this similar shooting as a “security guard” incident.
I mean, even more than the results themselves?
Then read the comments.
Otherwise, avoid both.
I stipulate this may be just this guy’s audience, but I don’t want 90% of these people reproducing, much less babysitting. .
Think back on all the financial corruption scandals in recent Minnesota history.
The non-profit scandals that edged a couple of Minneapolis DFLers out of office ten-ish years ago.
The DHS Daycare fraud case – involving hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Feeding our Future” – $250M at least, probably more like $500M.
What do they all have in common?
They all involve the cozy relationship between the DFL and the Nonprofit/Industrial Complex which, when manifested in policy, turns into the systematic transfer of wealth from taxpayers to the political class. It’s done over the table, via taxes, and under the table via graft paid to the Nonprofit/Industrial Complex.
And if the DFL accomplished anything in the State Legislature this past session, it was institutionalizing that stream at the state level.
Based on data gathered, [Minneapolis resident, attorney and plaintiff Zachary] Coppola alleges in the complaint that violence prevention contracts are “replete with apparent conflicts of interest.” In one case, Coppola found that the founder and sole employee of Cause and Effect, an organization that has received multiple violence prevention contract awards, is a city employee.
The complaint states that many of the violence prevention programs are also improperly using federal public funds. The complaint cites the example of One Family One Community, an organization that has received at least $175,000 in funds from the city. The organization operates a lobbyist association named the Community Housing Development Coalition, which lobbies the city on issues related to housing, public safety, transportation, and human services. In other words, the city is “paying a lobbyist to lobby the city,” the lawsuit says. Coppola states through the complaint that “not only is this a conflict of interest, but all federally funded violence prevention contracts expressly prohibit the use of funds for lobbying or political activities, so this use of federal funds is illegal,” he alleges.
Not mentioned in Coppola’s complaint, Crime Watch Minneapolis posted in September that Trahern Pollard, who is the founder of We Push for Peace, an organization that has received over $2 million in funds from the City of Minneapolis for “violence interrupter” activities, has formed a new LLC through which he is pursuing to acquire the embattled Merwin Liquors in north Minneapolis at the intersection of West Broadway and Lyndale avenues north. Pollard’s new venture, TXT LLC, seeks to acquire tobacco and liquor licenses to continue sales operations at Merwin Liquors, a move Crime Watch and others have implied is a clear conflict of interest to his city-funded violence interrupter activities as well as a possible indicator that money being doled out under the city’s Neighborhood Safety program isn’t being properly tracked or measured for accountability or measures of success.
I used to joke about Saint Paul being “Chicago on the Mississippi”, while Minneapolis was “Berkeley on the Prairie”.
I’m starting to think “A Cold New Jersey” is better.
…or ever: Ryan Winkler is right.
And the Minnesota Federation of Teachers has gone full Brownshirt.
Notice that the “Resolution” says nothing about the Hamas Charter’s call for the extermination of the Jews “from the river to the sea”.
Weird.
Also – BDS is not “peaceful”. It’s just an unarmed form of belligerency.