Elizabeth Warren forms a 2020 Exploratory.
I give her a 1/1024 chance of winning.
Here’s the vehicle in which she plans to travel between her series of town hall meetings
Oh, I’m just getting started.
We apparently have a wave of cannibalism:
I blame California.
Joe Doakes from Como Park sent this to me back around Christmas Eve – and I spent most of that intervening week either on the road or on my back with the flu. But while holidays come and go, the economy is always timely:
You can judge the state of the economy by how many businesses are open Christmas Eve.
In bad times, you can’t miss a single customer. You’re open for business, even if it’s only the owner and his wife staffing the store.
In good times, you can afford to take a day off and even pay your employees for no work. The store closes early, if it opens at all.
How’s the economy in your neighborhood?
Can’t speak for Christmas Eve – I was in North Dakota, where the rules are a little different – but I did notice I couldn’t find a place to grab a bite to eat anywhere on New Years Day.
Maybe there’s something to that…
Garrison Keillor is selling his saint Paul bookstore:
“I opened Common Good Books because I loved the bookstores I knew around the U, Perrine’s and McCosh’s and Heddan’s and Savran’s,” Keillor said Wednesday in an email. “And now I’m leaving town and am busy writing a book of my own so it’s time to turn over the business to someone else. The world is full of wonderful independent bookstores and needs every one.”
Keillor put his St. Paul home on Summit Avenue up for sale last year. He wrote in a Facebook post last month that he and his wife, Jenny Nilsson, had moved to Minneapolis.
I may actually have to get in there Dash I rarely make it south of Midway books these days…
Since we’re talking Garrison Keillor, I thought I would throw this out there; Keillor had a reputation as one of the worst bosses in radio, and he always brought so much smug entitlement to his brand of Minnesota politics that it was sometimes hard to parity without lapsing into self-parody in turn – but I loved A Prairie Home Companion. I listened to it most weekends for probably 15 years. Whatever Garrison Keillor’s many flaws, he got small town rural Scandinavian life.
Nowadays the show – rechristened Live From Here after it turned out Keillor was #HimToo, and still starring PHC’s designated replacement Chris Thile, seems to specialize in a really, really excellent underground country/bluegrass music, really really really really really bad standup comics, and skits written to a target audience of Brooklyn hipsters by, apparently, Brooklyn hipsters that Garner the occasional giggle and usually make me desperately miss Tim Russell and Sue Scott.
So who knows – maybe I’ll run down and buy a book from the old guy.
But it will be some Hayek or Paul Johnson. He’s not winning this thing.
Remember the old joke about the New York Times? “Tsunami wipes out Manhattan. Women and Minorities Hardest Hit?”
The Arby’s that’s been cranking out the rubbery beef, the crunchy chicken and the gloriously addictive potato cakes (that I can’t touch anymore) in downtown Minneapolis for a solid quarter century picked up and vanished like a carnival tent a few weeks ago. It was the last nationwide fast-food restaurant in downtown. All the rest – McDonald’s, BK, Wendy’s, Taco Bell – have long disappeared. There are a few Subways, at least one Jimmy Johns,
The reasons are between the lines – rising rents and, ahem, rising labor costs (Minneapolis has high mandatory minimum wages and compulsory sick time for part-time workers). They also blame the tsunami of food trucks that line the streets downtown from March through October.
But Minneapolis has become a place where it’s easy to get lunch for $9-15, but very, very hard to find anything below $7. Arby’s was one of the last of them.
And so it seems that after years of trying to stigmatize and economically hobble Big Fast Food, they’ve gotten their wish…
…but, naturally, the usual suspects are the ones taking it on the chin:
Remaining food options are generally more expensive, pricing out low-wage workers and the homeless, who often gravitate toward city centers. Arby’s was one of the last places in downtown Minneapolis with a sandwich and fries for $5.
“I wondered why they closed, because they were so economical,” Marva Overton, a downtown worker, said as she bought a sandwich last week at Twin City Bites next to the former Arby’s. “It was so cheap to eat there and that was helpful to a lot of people.”
I recommend the Sicilian olives ($2.50 for a one-pound tub) at Sorrento Cucina.
I’ve got the worst flu I’ve had in a long, long time. Taking the day off.
As you can probably tell.
Back blogging for real tomorrow.
James C. Moore is identified as a “lifelong Texan”.
That, and an op-ed that tries to poo-pooh the notion that a good guy with a gun actually does anything useful in extremis – would seem to be the only reasons he wound up getting his “op-ed” posted on CNN.com. It’s entitled “Texas shooting isn’t as simple as it seems“.
To which one might reply “Thanks, Captain Obvious, your promotion to Major is pending”. Just about any human endeavor, especially those around the edges of insanity, evil and depravity, is an inexact study.
But not nearly as inexact as Mr. Moore would have us think:
But if Wilson is the example of a good guy with a gun who saved the day, what does the other armed parishioner who was killed represent? Will he become proof to gun control advocates that arming the well-intentioned doesn’t work?
Only if the “gun control advocate” is a complete idiot.
This line is the flip side of the Dems’ “If it saves just one life…” canard; “If it doesn’t save every single life, then it’s all a lie!“.
Analyses of the live-streamed video from the church are suggesting that several worshippers were armed and drew guns. One of them appears to have been killed as he reached for his weapon.
In other words, Kinnunan was aiming at the victim, and was getting ready to shoot when the victim started reaching for his gun. It wouldn’t have mattered if the guy was reaching for his kid, his inhaler, his reading glasses, his cell phone or a pack of Certs – he was already in Kinnunan’s sights. Reaching for his gun didn’t save him – but it didn’t kill him, either. Watch the video; the guy had a spit second. It wasn’t enough.
But it was for Wilson.
Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, responded to the incident by citing statistics on Twitter that indicate 3,500 people died in Texas from guns; CDC data shows just over 3,500 such deaths in 2017 and the average is one victim every three hours in the state. Deaths, she pointed out, have increased between 2015 and 2017, the most recent year for which there is CDC data. Watts also pointed out that Texas has been home to four of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history.
Getting one’s info from Shannon Watts is its own punishment.
“Gun deaths” includes suicide. There is an epidemic of suicide – but that epidemic crosses all means of commission – tall buildings and bridges, rope, pills, or reading Shannon Watts.
And even the “four deadliest mass shootings” bit is a canard.
If you get your information from the “Gun Safety” movement, you’re not getting information.
Little has been reported about the suspect at White Settlement other than indications he has an arrest record, which will make some critics wonder how he got a gun. But it is not illegal to sell a gun to a felon in Texas, unless you know he is a felon, which he isn’t likely to tell you since he is a felon and wants a gun.
That’s not just Texas. That’s the law nationwide.
And it’s exactly why “universal” background checks are completely absurd – although I doubt Mr. Moore has thought it through to that point.
If you think that’s absurd, sit down right now and try writing an enforceable law that prevents it. There are sufficient loopholes in firearms regulations and such an abundance of supply of weapons that anyone in America can get a gun, good guy or bad guy.
Right.
And when you make it illegal for good guys to get, carry, or use their firearms, who does that leave?
Inevitably?
It’s depressing that a significant chunk of this country thinks this is “reasoning”.
Happy New Year to you and yours!
It’s gonna be a light posting day, as this whole holiday season has been.
But to tide you and the world over until tomorrow, here’s a good New Years resolution from Amy Alkon:
Now, go out and smack the world and the year upside the head with some kindness.
School shootings have been front-page bait for nearly 30 years. It’s been nearly two decades since Columbine. Nearly ten since Virginia Tech.
And yet official America has learned nearly nothing, and contents itself with waving childrens’ bloody shirts to try to disarm people who didn’t, and never do, do the shooting in the first place.
The Orlando Sun Sentinel has an excellent interactive story showing the extent of the incompetence, breakdowns and bad planning that allowed Nick Cruz to slaughter 17 kids.
And of course, human frailty:
Cruz fires his first shots, killing freshmen Martin Duque, Luke Hoyer and Gina Montalto in the hallway of the first floor.
Taylor, the campus monitor, hears gunshots and races up to the second floor. He ducks into a janitor’s closet. Taylor has a radio but does not call a Code Red.
I’ll rarely second guess someone who exhibits what some might call “cowardice” to avoid getting shot. But the fact remains – Parkland’s security depended on a group of unarmed school monitors who failed to even order an alert that might have locked the school down, much less dealt with Cruz.
The story notes that there were heroes present that day…
Athletic director and campus monitor Chris Hixon is already at Building 12. He enters the double doors at the west end of the hall and runs toward Cruz.
Cruz shoots Hixon, who crawls to take cover in a nearby doorway. Cruz finds him about 30 seconds later and shoots him again.—
[Social Studies teacher Ernie ]Rospierski flees with 10 students toward a stairwell as Cruz fires down the hall.
Two of the students, Jaime Guttenberg and Peter Wang, are hit. Wang dies in the hallway and Guttenberg in the stairwell, but others get away as Rospierski holds the door closed from inside the stairwell to keep Cruz from advancing.
…but a good plan, competently executed, is a whole lot better for everyone involved that heroes – especially dead ones.
The story is positively heartbreaking – a cascading tragicomedy of avoidable errors, frailty/cowardice, and official negligence.
Note that at any point, any armed response – any – would very likely have caused Cruz’ psychopathic reverie to break, sending him running away or off to a corner to shoot himself, even if it didn’t incapacitate him outright.
The performance of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office – both Scot Peterson and the other officers who responded – comes in for particular contempt. The department, led Sheriff Israel, who turned into an gun control leader to try to cover his own incompetence, covered itself in shame that day.
And yes, Sheriff Israel bears a disproportionate share of the blame. Although six deputies were on scene while the shooting was still going on, they were as useless as door-to-door salespeople – in large part due to policies pushed by Israel:
Since Columbine, officers are taught to rush toward gunshots and neutralize the killer. But the first Broward deputies don’t rush in.
Broward Sheriff Scott Israel later reveals that he personally changed department policy to say that deputies “may” instead of “shall” rush in.
And they lived down to their leadership – at least two BCSO officers went on the radio to urge their fellow officers to stay well clear of the school buildings.
Of course, not all the cops on the scene were useless simps:
Four Coral Springs officers enter through the west doors, where they see Chris Hixon shot. Two officers pull Hixon out of the building and onto a golf cart. He will not survive.
The Coral Springs officers later tell investigators their training was clear – run toward the gunfire.Coral Springs Officer Raymond Kerner, the school resource officer at nearby J.P. Taravella High School, would tell investigators:
“Basically, what we’re trained to do is just get right to the threat as quick as possible and take out the threat because every time you hear a shot go off it could potentially be a kid getting killed or anybody getting killed for that matter.”
So there’s that.
Which, in its own way, evades the point; depending on law enforcement, even competent and courageous law enforcement, is not only a chimera, it’s an abdication of an adult’s responsibility.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Think about the increasing number of young Americans demanding socialism, even as the horrific collapse of Venezuela is in the news. Why do they want that to happen here?
It occurs to me that “hot” is a word which has no meaning to a child, until the child touches something hot. Until then, it’s just noise. What if “socialism” is the same? What if the only way to appreciate “capitalism” is to live under “socialism” for a while? Maybe, instead of class credit for protest marches, schools should require students to spend a month living in a place where the water isn’t safe to drink, the electricity isn’t reliable, there is no free wi-fi, food stores are empty, gasoline is only sold in back alleys, medical care is cash only and no antibiotics remain. A place where the police are not your friend, government officials demand bribes and the press reports what they’re told to report.
Would students learn a new appreciation of America? Or would they wave aside their experience saying: “But we’ll do it RIGHT this time.”
Joe Doakes
On the one hand, it’d lead to some of the “haves” among the students bleating “Yeah, but this isn’t socialism done right. “
On the other? It’d put some meat behind Churchill’s dictum “a man who’s not a liberal a 20 has no heart, and a man who isn’t a conservative at 40 has no brain”.
And maybe acclerate the timetable among those that can be saved.
So – if you’re out and about and need to warm up and work up a sweat tonight or tomorrow, stop on by the Eagle in Stillwater. My band Elephant in the Room will be playing from 8 ’til Midnight, Friday and Saturday.
It’s in the old Famous Dave’s, on Highway 36 at Greeley.
We’ve got some music for the holidays, too! [1]
Good food, not-too-expensive drinks, great location, pool tables just around the corner, fast service – and EITR. What a perfect way to decompress from the holidays?
(And don’t forget – we’ll be at the Outpost in Ramsey on Friday, January 11. Two weeks from tonight!)
[1] OK – to be accurate, it’s two songs. But hey, you’re not gonna get that from a dance club DJ, are you?
Dems and MSM (pardon the redundancy) alarmed that Trump’s rhetoric doesn’t seem to have changed the GOP’s support among Hispanics:
VoteCast data from the Associated Press showed that 32 percent of Latinos voted for Republicans at a time when many pundits and most Democrats hoped that the demographic group might lead an electoral revolt against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
“Data from November’s elections show the GOP’s position among Latinos has not weakened during the Trump administration, despite the president’s rhetoric and policy,” read the tweet from MSNBC.
Of course, the media has spent a decade ignoring the fact that Hispanics poll even more hawkish on border security than anglos do; the GOP loses them on mass deportation. Even the most conservative Latinos frequenlty have someone in the family who came here illegally.
The city of Baltimore held a gun buy-back earlier this week.
They spent a bunch of money.
And the mayor thought she had something to crow about:
She did not.
Update: City of Baltimore paid $500 for this spent rocket launcher in its gun buyback. Military and ATF contacted for tracing pic.twitter.com/enlJcBUUHx
— Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) December 21, 2018
It’s a spent tube from a military “AT-4” anti-tank weapon. I emphasize – spent. It’s been fired – so all it really is now is a fiberglass tube with some miscellaneous parts and hardware. The only thing it’ll ever launch is flowers – but only if you tip it up on end and fill it with dirt and seeds.
And they can be had for about half what the city of Baltimore paid for it – $500.
Springsteen on Broadway – the Broadway hit just released on Netflix – is, as Kyle Smith describes it in National Review,
…a luminous performance, an unexpected new late-career peak. His persona may be fake but his artistry is sublime.
Let’s back up a moment and talk about that “fake persona” bit. It stems from the show’s big opening admission – in Bruce’s words:
“I made it all up,” he tells the audience in his new Netflix special Springsteen on Broadway. “Bruce Springsteen” the persona — all gritty working-class authenticity — is a creation. “I’ve never held an honest job in my entire life!” he says. “I’ve never done any hard labor. I’ve never worked 9 to 5. I’ve never worked five days a week. Until right now.”
To be fair, this surprises nobody who’s followed Bruuuuuce this past, um (counts quickly) 40 years or so – as Dave Marsh showed in his classic bio “Born to Run” back in the early ’80s, he pretty much eschewed everything but playing in bands and building a following.
News flash – to succeed at something, you gotta live it every day, as someone once said.
And that’s one of the lines about the whole evening that resonated with me the most – because there are times I feel like I “made it all up” too; I’ve never had any formal training for any of the careers I’ve had – or even for any of the things I do for fun. My UX career? Tech writing before it? Music? Blogging and talk radio (OK, I had some OJT when I was a kid, but beyond being a DJ, nothing)? I decided I was gonna do them, and started doing them. After 20 years as a UXer, I still feel like someone’s going to bust me as a fraud someday.
Anyway – it’s a great show, and I hope you get a chance to see it on Netflix.
(And for those whose response is “I won’t listen to Bruce, since he’s teh liberal” – well, yeah, but in his prime he was also America’s best *conservative* songwriter, which makes some peoples’ heads melt, but I’m right and they’re wrong)
I’ve got friends who still say, with a straight face, that the media does a good job of playing things down the middle.
Here’s 18 cases where the media displayed naked bias, shimmying around the narrative poll, waiting for Big Left to stuff dollar bills in its G-String.
One example here:
After the Avenatti carnival turned the Kavanaugh confirmation upside down, NBC attempted to report the bizarre claims his client was leveling. NBC spoke with a supposed corroborating witness Avenatti produced, but that woman instead debunked most of the client’s claims. When confronted, Avenatti told NBC the woman debunking his client’s claims was in fact his corroborating witness, but after being told she didn’t corroborate anything, he shot back: “How about this, on background, it’s not the same woman [as the corroborating witness]. What are you going to do with that?” There was more back and forth and the “corroborating witness” ultimately said Avenatti was lying about everything, yet despite all of this happening before Kavanuagh’s confirmation vote, NBC didn’t actually publish the story until weeks later. The Daily Wire published a helpful overview.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Trump plans to withdraw the 2,000 US military members from Syria. Neo-Cons are upset. Defense Secretary Mattis is resigning. The establishment consensus is Trump is making a horrible mistake. Is he?
George Washington warned against entangling alliances. That’s pretty good historical precedent for Trump to bring our troops home. Yes, the neo-cons reply, but the world has changed since Washington’s time. We need to police the world. Failing to do so is isolationist. Failing to fight every battle means people will die, nations will fall.
So? The world, to Americans, means Christendom. True, that world has changed. Rome ruled for 500 hundred years before it fell. A thousand years later, England, France and Spain were the great powers; then the Axis Powers for a decade; then the nuclear nations calling themselves the Security Council; power constantly changing.
But England is no longer a great power (despite having nuclear weapons). It contributes a few hundred people to each global conflict, not enough to tip the scale. As a power, they’re a has-been. So are France, Spain, Rome.
We’re headed their direction. The economic and military domination we enjoyed after WW II is gone. We should stop pretending, stop over-extending. We should pull back to our own shores, fortify against the coming global crash, hope to ride out the long night while the rest of the world burns.
Socialism is a disease and we’re facing an epidemic. The treatment for an epidemic is quarantine: save the ones you can, let the rest die. Isolation is not a bad thing for a nation, it’s the responsible thing. Put America First.
Joe Doakes
I’m starting to think we’ll need that internally.
Build a wall around California, Illinois, and the mid-Atlantic states. And make them pay…
…well, no, let’s not get fancy . Just build it.
Vermont teen busted planning to carry out a school lmassacre.
That’s the good news.
The bad news? Then, they went and confiscated the firearms belonging to a relative that had nothing to do with the case:
According to the news report and the law as written, the actions taken by law enforcement were illegal and should have been prevented by the presiding judge.
This case raises serious questions about judicial review in gun violence restraining order cases. Many who push for “red flag” laws claim that the courts will weigh the evidence at hand and the law equally without violating individual rights. The Vermont law clearly states that it is only applicable when “prohibiting a person from purchasing, possessing, or receiving a dangerous weapon or having a dangerous weapon within the person’s custody or control.”
But in this case, the firearms in question were owned by a relative and kept in another home. Having potential access to them by criminal means like theft doesn’t qualify under the law.
Further proof that there is no such thing as a “good faith compromise” with gun control advcoates. Every single one is either:
I’ve been involved in the issue a long time, and I have yet to meet an exception.
The short answer: whille the GOP on the national level capitulates on spending and allow all sorts of government scope creep the chips are down, the Democrats take the gas pedal of power and jam it to the firewall:
Democrats are increasingly lining up to support a “Green New Deal,” which, while vague on details, could end up being the largest expansion of government in decades.
As it stands, the “Green New Deal” is more aspirational than actual policy. Indeed, it takes its name from the New Deal of the 1930s, and its main backer, incoming Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, compared it to the Great Society of the 1960s.
More than 40 Democratic lawmakers support the “Green New Deal” as part of a broad plan to fight global warming and bring about what they see as “economic, social and racial justice.” A poll found most Americans supported the deal, but knew little about it.
But the big question is when Americans find out what’s in the “Green New Deal,” will they be willing to pay for it?
After a few months or years of media alarmism and emotional logrolling from an in-the-bag media?
Is that even a serious question?
Hope you all have a happy and blessed one.
My present to all of you:
California Democrats have gone way too far with the taxation and regulation, says Ted Nugent.
Just kidding. It’s…
The leader of the most populous state has kept Democratic lawmakers in check by limiting spending on social programs in favor of saving it to protect against a future economic downtown. He sometimes butted heads with legislative leaders, warning spending too much now could hurt taxpayers or require budget cuts later…
“I’d say we’re in for contentious times and for too many rules, too many constricting mandates and probably too much spending,” Brown told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday.
And it’s not even like Brown – a died-in-the-wool prog – has been especially restrained in his own approach to taxing, regulating and squashing enterprise.
German “journalist” Claas Relotius spent many years on the European and world journalistic fast track, until it was realized he’d spent years falsifying stories.
One of those stories was about the xenophobic misanthropic fascist racists in…
…Fergus Falls, MN.
And he didn’t just make up the little stuff. Two local residents combed through the story:
There are so many lies here, that my friend Jake and I had to narrow them down to top 11 most absurd lies (we couldn’t do just 10) for the purpose of this article. We’ve been working on it since the article came out in spring of 2017, but had to set it aside to attend to our lives (raising a family, managing a nonprofit organization, etc.) before coming back to it this fall, and finally wrapped things up a few weeks ago, just in time to hear today that Relotius was fired when he was exposed for fabricating many of his articles.
The following was neither the dumbest nor the most extravagant of Relotius’ lies:
6. The view from the Viking Cafe
“You can see the power plant where he works when you look out the window of the Diner, six tall, gray towers, from which rise white steam clouds.”
The Viking Cafe is Fergus Falls’ most treasured downtown establishment — over 60 years old. One of the reasons we Minnesotans all like it so much is that it has a cozy, underground feeling. Why? Because there are literally NO WINDOWS in the interior of this restaurant. Sure, you can see a little bit out the small front windows, but nothing beyond the shops across the street. The power plant Relotius refers to is almost 2 miles away on the northeast edge of town, blocked from view by a neighborhood on a large hill, and sports a single smokestack. Relotius’ imaginings are dramatic for the movie version of Trump’s America someday, but is it accurate and true? Not in the least.
Further proof that if you read it in the mainstream media, and it’s even a little bit political, distrust first. Then verify.
Then, almost invariably, distrust some more.
Ken Martin’s “investigation” into the domestic violence allegations against Keith Ellison is almost done.
Is the suspense killing you, too?
Starbucks’ decision to virtue-signal and open their rest rooms to the homeless is working out exactly as well as any rational person – which seems to exclude their PC-addled, apparently drug-garnished Seattle-based management – could have predicted.
Too much failure to even try to pick a single pullquote. Just read it.
State “bump stock” bans are going over like Lynyrd Skynyrd tapes at an NPR fundraiser. Vermont’s gun grab netted almost nothing:
State police told local media this week that a total of two reciprocating stocks were turned in prior to the Oct. 1 deadline. Two! That’s it! For the entire state!
The ATF estimates that there are up to a half million bump stocks in circulation in the U.S. While it’s not clear how many are in The Green Mountain State, it’s almost certainly more than two! [Going purely proportional share of the population, the number could be right around 1,000 – Ed.]
It’s not like they couldn’t have predicted this:
Authorities in Vermont should not be shocked by the poor turnout. Compliance in the other eight states that have prohibited them has also been virtually nonexistent.
Only three stocks had been surrendered by the February deadline in Massachusetts, and as of earlier this year, none (0) have been turned in since Denver and New Jersey banned the devices, as GunsAmerica previously reported.
Henceforth, any citizen caught possessing a bump stock faces up to a year in jail, a fine of $1,000 or both, Vermont State Police Capt. Tim Clouatre told NBC5.
Kinda makes you wonder how it’ll work when they start going for the guns themselves…
Well, the Trump administration is making moves to ban “bump stocks” – mechanical devices that speed up semi-automatic firing.
That’ll have an effect on firearm homicides – right?
What do you think?
And it’s not limited to ARs. Other firearms, down through handguns, can be jury rigged to “bump fire”. Not that you’d want to – it’s a great way to burn up money and hit nothing you’re shooting at.
Well, the good news is that they have no intention of stopping with this utterly meaningless result.
Wait…
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