Kevin Williamson on – ahem – “Why Alexandria Ocasio Cortez drives Republicans Crazy”, and I’m gonna stop right there.

She doesn’t “drive anyone crazy”.  She’s a walking, talking testimony to the media’s left-wing bias; Ocasio Cortez actually is as vapid and ignorant as the media would have had you believe Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann were, and much more extreme.

No matter!

Ocasio-Cortez, seen from that point of view, presents Republicans with a lot of things they despise — her far-left politics — wrapped up in a package that they very much want but cannot have. She’s everything they want and everything they hate at the same time: Odi et amo, RNC chairman Ronna Romney McDaniel might well say.

About those politics: Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a socialist, a declaration mitigated somewhat by the fact that she doesn’t seem to know what the word “socialist” means. She is a reflexive practitioner of identity politics, immediately suggesting that any criticism of her is racist or sexist or both. And she is an unapologetic authoritarian, threatening to abuse congressional subpoena powers to retaliate against Donald Trump Jr. for posting something mean about her on Twitter. An avowedly socialist practitioner of identity politics and social-media bully: that, and not her views on marginal tax rates, is what gets up Republicans’ noses. Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist, too, but he’s a grumpy old Muppet from Vermont — a useful cat’s paw to maul Mrs. Clinton, but otherwise old news.

As a purely tactical matter, Republicans would probably be better off keeping Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer as their leading partisan archnemesis, inasmuch as neither of those candidates can deride the GOP as the party of rich old white folks without inspiring at least a little bit of a giggle.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may personify much of what Republicans despise about the distinctively millennial brand of censorious progressivism that currently dominates the Democratic Party, but, if they were smarter, they’d be grateful for that: If this callow dilettante is the best the other side has to offer, then maybe the Republicans — no strangers to callow dilettantism — still have a chance after all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Headed toward another government shutdown because Democrats won’t defend the border.

I’d be more concerned about a government shutdown – women and children hardest hit – except everybody is already dead from the end of net neutrality, or soon to be dead from global climate change, so at this point, what difference does it make?

Small bit of comedy in the article: “The House and Senate used to pass annual appropriation bills, and the president signed them into law.”  Yeah, that was when we had a thing called “budgets.”  Democrats did away with them: too confining, too oppressive, and they never liked math anyway.

True.

But since most government spending is on autopilot, really, what difference does it make at this point?

On NPR the other morning, I heard a story about Hungarian protests against a new overtime  law.

The protesters complained to NPR’s reporter on the scene that the main broadcaster in Hungary – which is governed by a conservative, putatively “Trumpist” popular government led by Viktor Orban – is controlled by the state, and that all major private media is controlled by allies of the government.

And I thought “Hmmmmm”, as I listened to NPR on the local Minnesota Public Radio station, and looked at the copy of the Star/Tribune in the passenger seat of my car.

But I continued listening.

One of the protesters complained that the media didn’t accurately report the numbers of people at their demonstrations, when they bothered to report about the demonstrations at all.

And I pondered for a moment, remembering when the media reported “hundreds” of attendees at Tea Party rallies at the Capitol in 2009-2010  that drew closer to 7,000.

And I thought “Huh.  So there are examples of media bias that the mainstream American media will report on”.

The punch lines practically write themselves;  Keith Richards gives up drinking.

Aaaaaand rock and roll is, if not dead, navigating with a walker.

Some Venezuelans are realizing something that we Real Americans have been tryihg to explain to Califorians, New Yorkers, New Jersey-ites and Connecti…cutters (?); that the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has nothing to do with hunting, and is only coincidentally about self-defense against criminals.

They’re figuring it out…

“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, 28, a Venezuelan teacher of English now exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. “The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”

Under the direction of then-President Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2012 enacted the “Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law,” with the explicit aim to “disarm all citizens.” The law took effect in 2013, with only minimal pushback from some pro-democracy opposition figures, banned the legal commercial sale of guns and munitions to all – except government entities.

Chavez initially ran a months-long amnesty program encouraging Venezuelans to trade their arms for electrical goods. That year, there were only 37 recorded voluntary gun surrenders, while the majority of seizures – more than 12,500 – were by force.

…just a tad too late.

Liberals scoff when Real Americans talk about guns being a bulwark against tyranny.

Perhaps because they’re OK with tyranny.

To:   The Reverend Nancy Nord Bence
From:  Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re:  Think.  Think Really Really Hard

Rev.  Nord Bence,

Over the weekend, you posted this on “Protect” MN’s Facebook page:

Over the years, I’ve pointed out – with absolute accuracy – that you have never made a single statement about guns, gun owners, gun history, gun laws, the 2nd Amendment or gun crime that was simultaneously substantial, original and true.  

Here’s the good news:   your claims above are substantial, and, er, “original”.  But they are howlers. 

Run Awaaaaaaay:   First – you say “police in Minnesota can already use the Stand Your Ground defense”. 

Well, yeah.  That’s right.  The police don’t have a “duty to retreat” when doing their jobs.   Unlike civilians, they are supposed to run toward trouble.   

They don’t have “Stand your Ground”.   They have “Qualified Immunity” – not only no obligation to try to retreat, but a mulligan for mistakes made in generally good faith in the line of duty. 

Question for you, “Reverend” Nord Bence:  Would you prefer that police also be required to run away from criminals?  

Just curious. 

Shoot Off Your Unqualified Mouth First, As Questions Later:  Next comes the notion that self-defense reform would give citizens “the same right to shoot first and ask questions later” that cops “have”. 

Nope.  It merely means that citizens don’t have to convince a county attorney that they tried hard enough to run away from a threat (that was otherwise a reasonable threat of death or grave injury), provided you were anyplace you had a legal reason to be. 

That’s it.  

It’s not a license to kill. 

And I suspect you know that – and are lying anyway, to logroll the gullible dolts who take you seriously.   

Either that or you are a deeply, deeply stupid person.  

My money says “both”. 

That is all.  

Writer Tim Willard with a brilliant Twitter thread on why he hates communism so completely.

It starts here – but I urge you to read the whole thing:

I get asked why I loathe Communism so fervently. It’s damn near a religion with me.

How about a little background. I’m from the wrong side of the tracks. My siblings would have stolen railroad tracks and sold them for scrap. When we left the farm, we went to the trailer park.

— Tim Willard (@TWillardAuthor) December 16, 2018

Politifact long ago gave up any claim to being non-partisan, at least among people who pay attention.   Fact-checking Politi”fact” is itself a target-rich environment for fact-checkers and “progressive” dogma-untanglers.

This year, they were kind of sly about it – the “winner” was “the “online smear machine” that attempted to “take down Parkland students.”

They’re referring mostly to Alex Jones’ reprehensible claims that the Parkland massacre was a setup and that the kids are “crisis actors”, and the small but vocal social media crowd that echoed the claim.

Of course, this brings up a logical problem, and a condundrum

First the logical problem, as David Harsanyi points out in Federalist:  –

Although I know of numerous Twitter accounts that have accused gun-rights advocates of being “terrorists,” many of them featuring blue checkmarks, I can’t recall a single conservative in Congress, anyone in the National Rifle Association, or any other mainstream right-wing group accusing the Parkland kids of being “crisis actors.” I do recall a single article on RedState questioning David Hogg’s actions the day of the mass shooting, which was quickly corrected and apologized for.

Yet PolitiFact spends much of its time detailing the Parkland kids’ cause by highlighting their political opponents who have nothing to do with the smear, implicitly linking them to the “Lie of the Year.” The piece is framed in a way that intimates that anyone contesting the Parkland kids’ political cause is now in league with the online mob – and Russian bots!

By the way, even if we allow that kids who experience this tragedy should dictate the contours of a policy debate, it is worth noting that there are “Parkland kids” who hold diverging opinions regarding the Second Amendment and arming teachers. They are largely ignored by the media.

It’s not the kids’ fault that they find themselves the focus of ugliness on social media. It’s the fault of those who attack them and the adults who exploit them for political causes. Young people should be given some leeway in their activism, even if they say ridiculous things—and David Hogg and other leaders of the March for Our Lives movement often say things that aren’t even in the proximity of the truth. There is no need for ad hominemattacks. But the “Parkland kids” were also given a massive stage on which to offer their uncontested emotionalism to drive the debate. Kids or not, Americans have every right to challenge their contentions.

And Politifact using Jones as the figurehead of this criticism is a strawman that tries to paint all criticism of Hogg and company as the same breed of crazy.   And yet Hogg and the rest of the kids that’ve been propped up with liberal plutocrat money deserve criticism; they are little petty tyrants in the making, and they are serial liars to boot.

Now the conundrum; without Politifact to tell people who Alex Jones was and what he was claiming, would anyone outside the alt-“right” fever swamp have ever heard of him?

The “online smear machine” is an amorphous and ugly entity that isn’t confined to any ideology and spares virtually no one in the public eye. But any way you look at it, imbuing it with an importance it doesn’t deserve isn’t doing public discourse any favors. Even if it makes conservatives look bad.

And finally – given that almost nobody in this country hears about Alex Jones except when the media expresses its high dudgeon over him, are his antics really “the biggest lie” of the year?  Or even the biggest lie about the Parkland massacre?

It’s debatable, in fact, that it was even the most significant lie disseminated about the mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High. The sheriff of Broward County, after all, was featured at the widely covered CNN anti-gun rally where he misled the nation about the failures, cowardice, and incompetence that allowed the shooting to occur. And the sheriff of Broward County isn’t some random Twitter troll.

Yet.

Further evidence that the mainstream media needs to be distrusted but verified – and then, especially on hot-button topics like this, almost invariably distrusted some more.

To: “Representative” Ilhan Omar
From: Mitch Berg, Deplorable taxpayer
Re: The eternal gift you are

Representative Omar,

You flaunted your Muslim piety at every turn, (while ignoring the parts where Progressivism is in conflict) – And demanded respect for same.

And now, you mock Vice President Pence’s faith.

Pick one.

That is all.

The panel of law-enforcement and educators responsible for recommendations in the wake of the Parkland school massacre have…

…committed an act of common sense for which heads will roll.  

They advocate allowing staff, with proper training, to be armed at school.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission voted 13-1 to recommend the Legislature allow the arming of teachers, saying it’s not enough to have one or two police officers or armed guards on campus.
Florida law adopted after the Feb. 14 shooting that left 17 dead allows districts to arm non-teaching staff members such as principals, librarians and custodians — 13 of the 67 districts do, mostly in rural parts of the state.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the commission’s chairman, pushed the measure at the Tallahassee meeting. He said most deaths in school shootings happen within the first few minutes, before officers on and off campus can respond.
He said suspect Nikolas Cruz stopped to reload his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle five times, all of which would have been opportunities for an armed teacher to shoot him.
“We have to give people a fighting chance, we have to give them an opportunity to protect themselves,” Gualtieri said. He said there aren’t enough officers or money to hire one for every school, but even then officers need backup. “One good guy with a gun on campus is not enough.”

I can hear Big Left – who, let’s not mince words, benefit from dead students – howling already.  

In fact, so can you. 

The only acceptable solution – saddle the law-abiding with laws that at best do nothing, and at worst make citizens and their children helpless victims mass shooters, street criminals, and other such Democrat constituents. 

The Salvation Army North could use your help this Christmas season.

I’ve observed in the past that there’s nothing Big Left hates more than one of “their” constituents – women, minorities (other than Asians), gays and the like – leaving the proverbial Progressive Plantation. 

It’s not uncommon;  religious fundamentalists frequently hate apostates worse than infidels (see also – the danger involved in being a “Moderate” Muslim).  

Of course, some of the apostates are noticing it, too.

There’s a reason for those, of course; it’s absolutely true. 

If I’ve noticed anything about radical progressives, it’s that they tend to be intensely angry – and desperately unhappy.

Why?

Here’s the story, from someone who’s been there.

Excerpt from the conclusion

Young adults often become radicals after they realize the immensity of the cruelty and malevolence in the world. They reject a society that tolerates such suffering. They sanctify justice as their telos. But without truth to orient justice, seekers of justice will crash and crash again into reality, and will craft increasingly nightmarish and paranoid ideological analyses, burning out activists, destroying lives through jail or abuse, and leaving the world an uglier, more painful place. To paraphrase Alice Dreger, there is no justice without wisdom, and no wisdom without surrender to uncertainty in the pursuit of truth.

The whole thing’s worth a read.

Think about it when looking at the new DFL majority in Saint Paul.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A friend complains that the Republican Congress has accomplished nothing worthwhile in the last two years and as Democrats take the House, gridlock is the best we can hope for.  He blames Trump Derangement Syndrome and says it truly is disgusting that a boorish, childish, selfish egomaniac is the best example of conservative leadership we have.

First, he’s judging the President by the wrong standard.  A wise, mature, gracious statesman was not on offer in the last election.  The alternative to Trump was Hillary. The correct standard to apply is: “Has Trump become Hillary yet?”  No?  Then he’s good to go.  Carry on.  

But he’s right about Congress.  We can’t have a border wall, we can’t confirm conservative judges, we can’t fill executive branch positions, because of people like Senator Never Trump And To Hell With The Nation Flake, to name just one.  

If Trump announced today he’s not running in 2020, which nationally prominent Republican would you pick to replace him?

Sorry to say, with Scott walker out of office and never nationally problem to begin with, I’m already out of ideas…

California’s ballyhooed background check law put in place nearly 40 years ago had no effect on violent crime or suicide, according to those noted conservative tools at…

…Johns Hopkins.

Researchers compared yearly gun suicide and homicide rates over the 10 years following implementation of California’s law with 32 control states that did not have such laws.

They found “no change in the rates of either cause of death from firearms through 2000.”

Of course, curbing crime and saving lives aren’t and never were the goals.

From a regular commenter – firearm licenses in Germany are up 130% in the past four years:

According to [a German news service] feelings of insecurity are an important factor for the increase of the licences. Since the start of the migrant crisis in 2015, Germany has seen several terror attacks on festivals, trains and a Christmas market.

“We must be careful not to get American conditions in Germany,” the deputy chairman of police union (GdP) said. “There is a danger that weapons will not be used properly and that their owners will endanger themselves.”

Given German history, Germans should be more nervous about getting German conditions in Germany.  

Last February, while riding her motorcycle home from work in suburban Tacoma, Washington, Aubrey Bowlin – a 24-year-old woman who weighs in at about 100 pounds, soaking wet – wound up in a fight fight for her life in a road rage incident with a driver considerably larger than her.

First, he tried to ram her with his car; when that didn’t work, and they were stopped in traffic, he jumped out and started beating and choking the young woman.

She had already started to lose consciousness when she remembered her permitted firearm, And shot her attacker. The man, Bruce Jones, died of his injuries.

Prosecutors didn’t press charges – it was clearly self-defense, right out of the gate.

Happy ending, right?

Well, no. Partly, it’s because that thing you’re taught in carry permit training about “using a gun in self-defense is the second worst possible outcome” is exactly correct:

Still, the past six months have not been easy for her. Post-traumatic stress disorder is constantly with Bowlin.

“The physical injuries have healed, but it’s now the emotional ones that are with me, every second of every day,” she said.

Therapy is helpful, but it is the “most expensive thing I’ve seen, to date,” she said. Because of this, her family and friends have set up a GoFundMe page for Bowlin to help with the costs of counseling.

And partly, it’s because gun-control advocates are such incredible, mindless, depraved ghouls.

…an anti-gun website, which puts up photos of people whose lives have been “lost to gun violence,” has put up a photo of this guy that Aubrey shot, Bruce Jones.

The comments on the anti-gun website page about Mr. Jones are pretty scathing; The owners apparently never got the memo from gun-grabber central about never engaging with or recognizing the existence of their opposition.

But this sort of behavior is nothing new; many of the “children” counted as “victims of gun violence” gang members under the age of 21. It’s still a tragedy, to be sure – as is every life lost to gang violence – and some of the “mass shootings” shown on websites purporting to track mass shootings are self defense shootings with three or more attackers killed or wounded.

Feminists have spent the last forty years convincing men thatn “no means no”.

So far so good.

They’ve spent a chunk of the last fifteen convincing first universities, then courts, that a “no”, even one applied retroactively and contradictorily, hours or days or months after the fact, really meant “no” even if it was an explicit “Yes” in the first place.

Feminist dogma has it than men are stupid – but some have developed a sense of self-preservation, and are starting to get affirmative consent on video immediately before, er, doing something that needs consent.

And, predictdably, feminists are bunged about that, too:

[Feminists] are not pleased with the idea of consent videos and their “problematic” ramifications.

In the case with [a woman complaining about the videos, idiot Brit feminist writer Rachel King] complains that the “implication” of a consent video “is that those in a position of power are the ones who need protection, and that’s just not true.”

I try to be polite.  I really do.  And I try to treat people they way I’d like to be treated.

Which is how I rationalize the following – because if I were being a complete dumbass like Rachel King, I’d hope someone pointed it out to me.

Rachel.  Dumbass.  Men don’t have the power.   When a woman has the ability to ruin a man’s life over a false, flighty or stretchy accusation, the idea of “male power” is as quaint as an episode of “Leave It To Beaver”.

King, who mocked that “it’s apparently ‘a scary time for young men,'”

(Love the patrohization, Rachel.  Also – eat s**t and die a painful death)

also emphasized that false accusations just don’t happen,

Duke.  Virginia Tech.  Every f****ng word out of Lena Dunham’s mouth.

pointing to a popularized hashtag on Twitter as evidence. “In reality, the vitriol that victims of rape and sexual assault are subject to is enough to put anyone off making a false report. If you don’t believe me, check out the #WhyIDidntReport tag on Twitter,” she wrote.

I’m done playing nice with these morons.

”

 

…in this world too sample for government bureaucrats to try to piddle on.

America has survived many external enemies – but “progressivism” is one internal enemy that has the potential to actually destroy it.

And the “Administrative State” – which, along with the Non-Profit-Industrial complex is where the regulatory rubber hits the road – is in many ways the spear point of the “progressive’ attack on everything that makes America worth living in. Nothing saps America’s resilience, vitality and prosperity like the Administrative State, which exists largely to transfer wealth from taxpayers to “progressive” stakeholders.

Recent weeks have been marked by the whining and caviling of “progressives” about the actions of the Republican-controlled Wisconsin state assembly, which acted to greatly reduce the power of the incoming Democrat governor.

Lost in all of the sore-losering – or intentionally concealed in it – is the fact that over the past eight years, Wisconsin has taken steps to curb the excesses of the Big Administrative State that the rest of the country, and the nation, would do very well to emulate:

In 2011, much attention was given Act 10, Governor Walker’s signature reform to public-sector collective bargaining. Less well-known was Act 21, which can rightly be considered the beginning of an administrative-law revolution in Wisconsin. In 2017, Acts 39, 57, and 108 added to those reform efforts. And this past summer, the Wisconsin supreme court issued a significant decision in Tetra Tech v. Department of Revenue, creating a stricter framework for courts to apply when considering the amount of deference to provide agency interpretations.

Much of what we now consider the standard rule-making process in Wisconsin was first set out in 2011 Act 21. At its core, Act 21 provides that no agency may implement or enforce any standard, requirement, or threshold (including as a term or condition of any license it issues) unless such action is explicitly required or permitted by statute or rule. Gone are the days of implied or perceived authority.

Additionally, for each proposed rule, the act required agencies to submit a “statement of scope” to the governor for review and prepare an economic-impact analysis relating to specific businesses, business sectors, public-utility ratepayers, local governmental units, and the state’s economy as a whole.

You should read the whole thing – and pass it on.

… But it’s not:

The head of politics at Cambridge University has called for children as young as six to be given the vote in an attempt to tackle the age bias in modern democracy.

Prof David Runciman said the ageing population meant young people were now “massively outnumbered”, creating a democratic crisis and an inbuilt bias against governments that plan for the future.

In the latest episode of his podcast, Talking Politics, he said lowering the voting age to 16 was not radical enough to address the problem.

But then again… maybe it is?

“What’s the worst that could happen? At least it would be exciting, it would make elections more fun. It is never going to happen in a million years but as a way of capturing just how structurally unbalanced our democracies have become, seriously, why not? Why not six-year-olds?

On the one hand, it seems like a terrible idea.

On the other hand, the rhetoric of campaigns like those from “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” wouldn’t need to be especially rewritten.

Comedian Kevin Hart was dropped from hosting the Oscars over a bunch of “homophobic” tweets from long, long ago.

Given the record of many Oscar hosts in recent years, it may have been the best thing to happen to him – but I digress.

Comic Nick Cannon – famously un-PC comic that he is – came to his fellow comic’s defense against, pointing out similar similar/worse transactions by three of the whitest women in the business:

A sample:

And I fucking love Wreck it Ralph!!! 🤦🏾‍♂️ https://t.co/6cHA1EQEkg

— Nick Cannon (@NickCannon) December 8, 2018

So as the left has shown us in the past year, an “entertainer” or politician can get away with groping women, verbally and physically abusing them, and the sort of homophobia and sexism that gets ushered firmly away from the mic at any GOP event – provided they bring the power or the visibility Big Left needs.

And armed citizen with a legally owned a firearm has shot and killed a wannabe spree killer a restaurant in Oklahoma:

An armed citizen shot and killed a mass shooter at a restaurant in Oklahoma on Thursday after the gunman walked in and opened fire, hitting several people.

“A man walked into the Louie’s restaurant and opened fire with a gun. Two people were shot,” police said, CNN reported. “A bystander with a pistol confronted the shooter outside the restaurant and fatally shot him.”

Oklahoma City Police tweeted: “ALERT: The only confirmed fatality is the suspect. He was apparently shot-to-death by an armed citizen. Three citizens were injured, two of whom were shot. A large number of witnesses are detained. There is no indication of terrorism at this point.”

If episodes like this got anywhere near the saturation coverage that “successful” spree killings did, we wouldn’t have spree killings.

And people like the Reverend Nancy Nord Bence would get booed and heckled off more stages.

Disclosure: the pieces from the , which may as well be a click bait site these days.

On the other hand, there is nothing about what we know about political correctness, especially in the modern school and academic systems, that smells wrong in any way.

The principal at a New York performing arts high school ordered all Nazi symbol is removed from the stage…

… of the play The Sound of Music. Which – if you’ve never seen it – was set in Nazi occupied Austria:

The principal at the elite “Fame” school, Lisa Mars, ordered Nazi flags and symbols removed from the stage set of the beloved tale of the Von Trapp family, who fled the Nazis from their native Austria as Adolf Hitler took power, students told the Daily News.

Now, there’s an old saying; “if something seems too good to be true, it probably is”. So this ext graf – In which a 15-year-old high school kid would seem to have gotten it right…:

“This is a very liberal school, we’re all against Nazis,” one sophomore performer told The News about the fuhrer furor. “But to take out the symbol is to try to erase history.

… is perfectly likely to turn out to be false. But I do hope kids are smarter about history than the adults who run most of the educational/industrial complex today.

I hope Dash indeed, I pray – that it’s true.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I can’t believe how self-centered and thoughtless Christmas shoppers are.

I’m trying to back out of my parking space and pedestrians walk right behind me! Don’t they see me backing up?

They’re as bad as the drivers who back out of their parking spot when I’m trying to walk to the store. Don’t they see me walking here?

Joe Doakes

If only there were…pedestrian lanes!