Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I gave up my landline years ago. The only people who called me were telemarketers. It was nice having a cell phone, because nobody bothered me. But lately, I’ve been deluged with telemarketers robocalling recorded announcements about health insurance. This would be illegal on landlines, but for cell phones, there seem to be no rules

I’d pay extra for a cell/data service and media apps that actually kept my data private.

But I don’t suspect that’s the point…

Beto O’Rouke – flirting with the idea of running for president with all the grace of an elementary school choir singing a medley from Les Miserables – discusses his take on the Constitution.

Caveat: I did not make this up. Emphasis added by me.

“I’m hesitant to answer it because I really feel like it deserves its due, and I don’t want to give you a — actually, just selfishly, I don’t want a sound bite of it reported, but, yeah, I think that’s the question of the moment: Does this still work?” O’Rourke said. “Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships . . . and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?”

More and more, I’m starting to believe those who do believe we can, and must, govern ourselves by those principles should seek an amicable divorce from those who can’t.

…is that you can be a corrosive, giggly bigot, and nobody will ever, ever call you on it.

I add the emphasis:

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle implied without evidence Tuesday that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) has something to hide and the president is blackmailing him over it.
Graham has become one of the President Donald Trump’s staunchest allies in the Senate, although he has criticized him for some key decisions, such as the military pullout from Syria. Ruhle seemed to imply there’s more to their relationship than politics, however, during a discussion about Graham with former Rep. David Jolly and professor Eddie Glaude.
“Before Don got elected, Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a racist, xenophobic bigot. Those are Lindsey Graham’s words,” Jolly said. “I doubt Lindsey Graham could tell you Donald Trump has had a change of heart in the last 24 months, I bet the change of heart has been with Lindsey Graham, not the president.”
“Or it could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham,” Ruhle replied. “We’re gonna have to leave it there.”
The smirk Ruhle produced when she spoke suggests she was referring to rumors about Graham’s sexuality, which some Democrats have been trumpeting anew recently. Jon Cooper, chairman of the Democratic Coalition super PAC, explicitly accused Graham on Saturday of letting himself be blackmailed for “some pretty serious kink.”

Did I say “Nice thing?”

I meant “horrible, Orwellian, evil” thing.

Let’s talk social fashion in the mainstream media.

Out: “Violent Home Invader”

In: “Unwanted house visitor”.

No, I’m not making this up:

Rape is “a bad first impression”, too.

The Metrocrats dropped “House File 8” (HF8) this past week. The bill will institute “Universal Background Checks” for all firearms transfers in Minnesota.

The bill:

• Expands background checks to all firearms. Current law requires the for pistols and “assaault weapons”.
• Raises the age to purchase a firearm to 21.
• A permit to purchase is good for one firearm, and expires immediately. They are currently valid for a year. And you’d need to get one to possess or receive any firearm at all, and it includes transfers between private parties. We’ll come back to this part.
• A permit to carry is no longer usable as a permit to purchase or transfer.
• Chiefs of police will no longer be able to process transfers.
• All private party transfers are covered; you’ll need to get a background check. Even/especially if you’re a straw buyer!
• Getting rid of all exemptions in current law.

Anyone notice what that third bullet does?

Every legal transfer includes a background check.

For making those checks useful in tracing crime weapons, they need to keep those on record.

And in IT, we have a term for “pieces of data that contain pointers to new pieces of data”. That term is “database”. HF8 would create a registry of guns in Minnesota – or at least of the guns owned by law-abiding citizens.

This is today’s DFL.

If you’re not a member of the MN Gun Owners Caucus, you need to be.

It was thirty years ago today Ronald Reagan gave his farewell address after two of the most defining terms in 20th Century politics.

And while he was his usual upbeat self, he had a question and challenge for Americans – one that may have seemed abstract-ish back then…:

But for all of his optimism, Reagan did leave his audience with one clear warning for the future. He said the country needed “an informed patriotism.” He greatly feared that we were not doing enough to foster it.
“Are we doing a good-enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” Reagan bluntly asked.
When he was young, the nation’s youth “were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American,” he noted. “And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.” Young people learned those lessons from family, in classrooms, and through popular culture.

…in a way that seems definitely concrete as hell today.

And I don’t think that’s been remotely accidental. If mainstream America doesn’t know what it’s got, how will it know how / whether to defend it? What, indeed, to defend it from?

A generation of our “best and brightest” are being raised in an academy that actively disparages the values Reagan espoused. The lowest form of life on the intersectional pecking order is “the conservative supporter of the American tradition”.

Is there any hope?

This’ll be a big topic this weekend on the show.

But Minneapolis is building one around the Cedar Riverside Apartments anyway.

Weird.

(H/T – a friend of the blog)

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, self-described champion of the working person, fudged her workman’s comp for her own campaign employees.

That’s OK, there really are two different sets of rules out there, and nobody is going to make modern Progressivism’s “It Girl” accountable for anything of the sort.

But the rest of the world? That’s another story.

The restaurant at which the Congresswoman tended bar closed last August. And there, the story deepens – if you work for a living in the Bronx:

Interestingly, the progressive congresswoman bemoaned in August the closing of a restaurant where she was previously employed — however, the restaurant cited an Ocasio Cortez-endorsed policy as a partial reason for its closure.
“The times have changed in our industry. The rents are very high and now the minimum wage is going up and we have a huge number of employees,” one of restaurant’s co-founders said at the time.
“Ocasio-Cortez’s desired ‘living wage’ of $15 an hour has been a living hell for many small business owners in New York, who’ve been unable to offset the cost through higher prices,” Employment Policies Institute Managing Director Michael Saltsman said in response to the closure. “It’s fine to mourn the impending closure of your former employer — it’s better to understand the misguided minimum-wage mandates that contributed to that closure.”

That would require actual critical analysis on Ocasio Cortez’ part…

…heh. I slay me.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

You are the supervisor hiring a new employee.  HR tells you that if the group of eligible candidates contains a woman, you must give her preference over the other candidates.  They send you five candidates, one of which is a woman.  You hire the woman.
Next job opening, same thing. You hire the woman.  And the next.  And the next.  And the next.  There’s always a woman in the candidate pool, and you’re always required to give her preference.  Eventually, your entire workforce will be women.  It’s a mathematical certainty.
Now see Minn. Stat. 480B.01, the balance of sexes in law school enrollment and in the ranks of County Attorney and Public Defender from which many judicial appointments are made, and the history of actual judicial appointments during the Dayton administration.  Now project the trend line to see where we’re headed.  Eventually, all of Minnesota’s judges will be women.  It’s a mathematical certainty.
Here’s the big question: is that wise?

Given that before long 2/3 of college students will be female, that’s pretty much the mathematical certainty for all non-blue-collar jobs.

Stop on out to The Outpost in Ramsey. My band “Elephant in the Room” is playing from 9PM-1AM.

And it should be a fun night!

The Outpost is on Highway 10, about 100 yards west of Anoka, juuuuust inside the city of Ramsey.

Come on out!

Black transgender Minneapolis City Councilor was chastised by a barista at a southside coffee shop. The barista, who apparently didn’t know his place on the intersectional plantation, was sacked.

A friend of the blog writes, quoting the Strib  article:

“My intent is to help them and the broader community understand each other’s roles and how to be better community members.”
But, don’t take time to understand the new barista and what he might have thought. Don’t take any moment at all. Just fire him. That’ll make him understand his role..

Intersectional gobbledigook and virtue-defense follows in the Strib article.

I get the intended sarcasm – but yes. It did convey the role, if not of the barista, then of every other person living and working in Minneapolis. “For the encouragement of the others”.

To: Senator Scott Jensen
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: Quitcherbeefin’.

Senator Jensen,

Back in 2016, you ran as a gun-friendly candidate. You gladly accepted the endorsement of the MN Gun Owners PAC.

And then you turned around in the 2018 session, when Everytown for Gun “Safety” started pumping money into the state, and stabbed you pro-human-rights supporters in the back.

And judging by this Facebook post, you don’t seem to get why what’s left of your “base” is upset with you today:

For the benefit of those not following along at home, the Senator is talking about this photo:

It was taken the opening day of the MN State Legislature, on Tuesday. It’s Jensen, spooning with a couple of suburban gun-grabber soccer moms from Moms Want Action.

And now, Senator Jensen, you’re upset that your real supporters – well, former supporters – are taking umbrage at you for cuddling up with the Criminal Safety movement.

No, it’s not you. It’s us, naturally…: “Mean spirited pushiness has halted discussion of important issues” you say. No – the illiteracy, cowardice and inherent bullying nature of the gun grabber movement has halted discussion, Senator Jensen.

You picked the wrong side.

No, seriously – remember Dario Anselmo? The Republican who spoke at the Moms Want Action rally last fall, trying to ingratiate himself with the gun grabbers? Who went and endorsed an actual  Democrat who wound up riding into office on a wave of out-of-state money that Anselmo never had the faintest shot at, anyway?

Ringing any bells, Senator?

Repent.

That is all.

#1: Watching Doctor Who. Never had the faintest interest. Not sure why.

And that seems less likely to change now than ever . before.

Why is it that the party that claims to eschew war (while getting us into most of the wars we’ve had since 1900) can’t keep its mitts off of militaristic rhetoric?

Big Left’s “Green New Deal” is, like nearly every gigantistic utopian Big Left enterprise since the Wilson Administration, the “moral equivalent of war” – requiring the nation to organize its economy along military lines, albeit without saying the “M” word.

Jonah Goldberg:

…the important point is that ever since philosopher William James coined the phrase the “moral equivalent of war,” American liberalism has been recycling the same basic idea: The country needs to be unified and organized as if we are at war, but not to fight a literal battle. The attraction stems from what John Dewey called “the social possibilities of war” — the ability to reorganize and unify society according to the schemes of planners and experts.
This was the through line of 20th-century liberalism, and now 21st-century liberalism, too. Wilson’s war socialism, FDR’s New Deal, Harry Truman’s Fair Deal, John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, Jimmy Carter’s declaration that the energy crisis was a “moral equivalent of war,” and Barack Obama’s “new foundation for growth,” with his Thomas Friedman-inspired talk about “Sputnik moments”: It’s all the same idea gussied up as something new.
Another irony: The militaristic organization of the domestic economy is a hallmark of nationalist movements. But nationalism is a dirty word among liberals today.
Instead, they name-check a thoroughly nationalistic enterprise, the New Deal, and slap the word “Green” in front of it as if it were a fresh coat of paint.

If it got out that migrants mocked and taunted intersectional theory, I’d guess Big Left would appropriate the idea of a border wall, too.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Gun use surges in Europe, where guns are rare.  What could be the cause of this? 
The article is a shambles.  It throws women afraid of being raped into the same bag as South American terrorists and Eastern European refugees – they all want guns and guns hurt people so guns are bad. 
The author’s inability to distinguish between citizens who desire guns for lawful self-defense in response to government unwillingness to crack down on refugee violence, versus the Muslims shooting up markets or the narcotics gangs killing judges and policemen, makes an analysis impossible and the proposed solutions worthless.
Is clear thinking really so hard to come by, these days?

On today’s left?

Rhetorical question, right?

A “Shoprite” store in Philadelphia is closing due to Philadelphia’s pop tax. 

Or so says the owners – someone with years of experience in the field, for what that’s worth:

Store owner Jeff Brown says this location has lost approximately 25 percent of its business over the last two years because of the tax on soda and sweetened drinks. 

The city, not to be “Mansplained”…er, “Bossplained?” “Enterepreneursplained?” Anyway, not to be taken to task by a mere prole, the city responded:

The mayor’s office responded with a lengthy statement pushing back against Brown.
“It is no surprise that Mr. Brown has decided to scapegoat the Philadelphia Beverage Tax, but neither he nor the beverage industry have yet to present any evidence that the tax has had any impact on sales. Here’s evidence to the contrary: an ongoing study by three of the most reputable academic institutions in the nation (Harvard University, Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania) finds the beverage tax has not affected overall store sales, contrary to other public claims by this supermarket chain.”
Brown says the 111 employees will be transferred to his 12 other supermarkets.

Anyone but me suspect hat Mr. Brown’s going to get an audit letter from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue sometime soon here?

Up next: a Harvard Study on how taxes have nothing to do with “Food Deserts”, no way, no how.

After eight years of DFL-led bureaucratic governance and repeated ta hikes, the city of  Luverne was shocked, shocked, to find that a company decided to ditch a deal and move their expansion to South Dakota:

With groundbreaking expected this summer at the Luverne site, Tru Shrimp executives said they recently discovered a state environmental rule about water discharge that could delay construction of the facility, which it calls a harbor, by one to three years.

“Our timeline is to build a harbor in 2019,” Michael Ziebell, chief executive of Tru Shrimp, said in an interview Tuesday. With investors’ money on the line, the company couldn’t afford to wait for the discharge issue to be resolved, he said.

Unexpectedly!

The board of the Balaton, Minn.-based firm in November gave final approval for the $45 million facility on 67 acres just outside Luverne. The state of Minnesota had invested nearly $2 million to build roads and utilities to the site and Luverne, a city of about 5,000 residents, invested $600,000 in the effort.

“I’m not going to kid you, it was like a gut shot and we were blindsided by it,” Luverne Mayor Pat Baustian said. “I understand it was a business decision and they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do, but we had no previous interaction with Tru Shrimp that suggested the regulatory issue was going to be a real problem.”

Nobody expects the Minnesota regulatory inquisition!

I’ve got a few pro-gun-control friends who say “I support common sense restrictions on people who shouldn’t have guns…”

So does every gun rights supporter.

“…including Red Flag Laws”

OK, we need to talk.

“Red Flag” laws have a bunch of problems:

1) They allow anyone – literally, anyone you’ve had a personal, business, romantic or habitation relationship with – to go to a judge and tell any story they want, literally, without you being there to defend yourself. And if a judge – whatever their motivations – agrees, then you’ll have armed cops swarming over your house, no different than if they’re serving a warrant on a drug dealer. By the way – Swat teams going after “armed subjects” have “assault rifles”, and get nervous.

What could go wrong?

2) You say you want to prevent suicide? OK – let’s say you actually *are* a danger to yourself. The laws allow the cops to take…your guns. Not the booze and sleeping pills, the rope, the gas ovens, the cars, the razor blades. They cart your guns away and apparently say “At least they won’t *shoot* themselves.”

Brilliant, huh?

And the thing is, there’s an actual law already on the books in Minnesota (253.05) that already allows people with legitimate concerns to get a 72 hour hold *for cause*, that *actually* is intended to keep people from hurting themselves!

3) And if someone is a danger to others? They, like Nik Cruz, have been legitimately threatening to hurt *others*? Yep, there’s a law for that – MN statute 518.01, if memory serves, which allows the cops to preventatively arrest people *for legitimate cause* if there’s an actual threat to *other people*.

“Red Flag” laws are less effective at preventing suicide than existing statute. They *do* less than current law at preventing actual crimes.

What *are* they good for?

Harassing law-abiding gun owners. Seriously – some local gun control activists have already promised to “Swat” local second amendment leaders if the laws pass. And you can already see the wheels turning in the minds of some sleazy divorce lawyers and political opposition researchers out there.

In states where these sorts of laws have been passed, that’s exactly what’s happened.

They are useless in dealing with suicide and crime, and good only for harassment.

What’s the defense?

And if your idea of a “defense” is “We’ve got to dooooooooo something” – just no. What you propose to doooooooo is worse than useless.

But give it a shot.

…that if Trump were elected, bigotry and hatred would run rampant.

And they were right.

Rep Steve Scalise – who’s had more, closer contact with the depravity of the hard left than most anyone – has had enough with Alexandra Ocasio Cortez’ supporters:

Hi @AOC. Happy to continue this debate on the Floor of the People’s House, but it’s clearly not productive to engage here with some of your radical followers. #StayClassy pic.twitter.com/lZCO3oiLUZ

— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) January 6, 2019

There are times when I wonder why this country even tries to maintain a “union”.

Last week, I was listening to NPR.

I know, I know. Worth with me, here.

I can’t find it online – I didn’t try all that hard, but then I suspect it’s not the only piece like this. that’s going to turn up if you look hard enough.

An earnest-sounding SEIU leader – y’know, a non-biased, politically-objective source, solemnly intoned:

“We don’t want to politicize the border and immigration issue . We just want policy to reflect the changing patterns of migration”

In other words: we want “ignore the national boundary so that people can migrate north to join our power base” to become the new normal.

Oddly, the NPR host said nothing about this.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The New Hotness wants higher income tax rates.  The Left says it’s sensible and there’s historical precedent.
The trouble with historical precedent is picking the right precedent.  College students who drink until they vomit could point to Rome, the pinnacle of civilization at the time, where vomitoria were provided in public entertainment venues.  So that makes it alright?   No.
Similarly, picking a time when America was the world economic superpower and capital investment had nowhere else to go, doesn’t mean that high earners today would find their wages captured by higher tax rates.  Rich people are rich, they’re not stupid.  They can move to low-tax venues.  They can shelter their incomes.  They can lobby for loopholes that only they can afford. 
The only way to ensure that everybody pays their “fair share” is to fully embrace Communism:  from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  But getting ordinary people into that mental state will require a period of socialization, during which the recalcitrant, deplorable, bitter clingers are identified and sent for re-education in the far North, or sent to farm the land by hand, or buried in mass graves.  And who will decide who lives and who dies? 

But the fact that it used to be the status quo back when the US was the world’s only functional economy (with ample tax shelters provided for the fabulously wealthy, like Ocasio Cortez’s benefactors) makes it “moderate”, to Big Left.

Big Left – and its wholly owned subsidiary, Big Gun Control – is actively working to “other” the law-abiding gun owner – to make the law-abiding practice of a legal act something not done in “polite company”, or at least that company as practiced by the part of our society that considers infanticide acceptable and self-defense gauche.

One Michael Schrader of suburban Detroit throws his two ignorant cents into the mix with this op-ed. about an open-carrying Michigander at a Detroit-area McDonalds.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were shopping in Fort Gratiot, and we decided to stop at the Fort Gratiot McDonald’s to have some lunch, as we have done many times before. We pulled in a parking space, turned off the car, and then spotted something that caused us to decide to go somewhere else.
In the few seconds it took for me to restart the car, we saw several customers hurriedly rush out of the restaurant with panicked looks on their faces.
What was it that we spotted? A man carrying a gun into the restaurant.
Because Michigan is an open carry state, it is quite legal for someone to walk into a busy McDonald’s with a firearm. Why do it? Because it is your right?

There are some legitimate questions of tactics and manners to be asked – but then, one asks why Michael Schrader would ask the questions. Because it is his right…er, wait.

Anyway – yes, he started trite. That merely cleanses the palate for the invincible ignorance:

Given that there were Canadians in that restaurant, and they don’t have the same gun culture that we have, how do you think that made them feel?

By this “logic”, people with happy marriages should shut up about it, unless someone in an unhappy marriage is listening.

I can’t speak for the Canadians, but I can speak for myself — seeing someone other than a police officer walking around with a firearm does not make me feel safe; quite the opposite.

And Mr. Schrader is entitled to his feelings – but they’re wrong. Carry permittees in the US are 1/6 as likely to harm the wrong person, per capita, than the police. That’s about 1/36 as often as the general public – and I”m gonna guess it’s even steeper in Detroit.

We next go from ignorant to stupid:

Suppose that I am armed, too. Should I fire preemptively at the other person with the gun just in case that person is a “bad guy,” and take the chance of killing a “good guy,” or should I hold my fire and take the chance that the other person will not be a “bad guy” or be a “good guy” and think I am a “bad guy” and fire at me first?

Tell you what, Mr. Schrader: ask the next shooter you see who’s carrying, but who is not any sort of threat to you in any actual way. Phrase the question at the top of your lungs, if you prefer.

See who the police haul in.

I speak for myself, and I am confident I speak for many others — I don’t need armed vigilantes protecting me from criminals.

To borrow an idea from my friend Rob Doar – whether I carry concealed or openly (if I even owned guns, which I don’t, because they terrify me), I’m not protecting you. I’m protecting me and mine. If heaven forfend I ever am forced to defend me and mine from an immediate lethal threat, and so cause your smug life to be spared, trust me – it’ll be the least of my concerns.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus podcast is back.

I know this, because I am producing and ‘anchoring” it this year.

The first of what should be weekly podcast during the legislative session is out today – A look ahead at the legislative session starting tomorrow with chairman Bryan Strawser and political director Rob Doar.

Check it out!

Are the big online content providers – Google, Facebook, Netflix and the like – eroding free speech to make doing business internationally easier?

Remember – while free markets will trend toward free speech, the Silicon Valley giants are not free markets; they are to their various corners of the ‘net at best industrious but regulation-made Germans or Swedes, and at worst – Facebook and Twitter – Red Chinese in hoodies and sneakers instead of Mao jackets.

They are bureaucracies – and bureaucracies crave uniformity. The kind of uniformity that only partnership and acuiescence with Big Government can give them.

Kevin Wiliamson:

It took a remarkably short time for the ethic of the Internet to devolve from “Information wants to be free!” to “Follow the rules blindly!” The danger is the California-emissions dynamic, i.e. the tendency of the most demanding and restrictive standard among a group of competing standards to become the de facto universal standard in that it allows a single consistent mode of production. In the United States, 16 states follow California’s auto-emissons standards rather than the national standard, which has made the California standard the effective national standard for many manufacturers. In a similar way, it will be tempting — it already is tempting — to make China the worldwide arbiter of free-speech standards for global technology companies and other international carriers. If you think that a commitment to “artistic freedom” is going to prevent that, go to the movies: The remake of Red Dawn originally was about a Chinese invasion of the United States; after protests from Beijing, it became the story of a ludicrous North Korean invasion. The New York Times submits to censorship abroad.

Read the whole thing.

Because we’ve all got to demand better.