In previous years, I’ve given way to gusts of logorrhea and come up with “100 Reasions…” to vote (for the most part) for the GOP slate.

I don’t need 100 this year.    If you’re a thinking person who cares about having a Representative Republic with checks and balances, you shouldn’t either.

The notion of Angie Craig, Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, Dean Phillips and Dan Feehan “representing” you in DC should terrify you, if you care about living in a representative republic that believes (as imperfectly as the GOP practices this belief) in rights and powers enumerated to the states and the people should terrify you.   They’re the party that is actively taking not only about eliminating the Electoral College, but in some circles applying the Popular Vote on a national level to the House of Representatives (because winning a share of the nation’s districts by 40 points and losing most of the nation by 11-3 points isn’t enough of a verdict for them).

And the Dems’ rhetoric this cycle has been the greatest, most systematic violation of Berg’s Seventh Law I hope ever to see; jabbering about white right wing conservative violence (that never happens) while studiously ignoring the steady drizzle of attacks by their people; yakking about “voter suppression” while benefitting from decades of gerrymandering (hello, CD4 and 5).

And they’re barely bothering with the pretense that “Gun Safety” and “Gun VIolence Prevention” isn’t about disarming the law-abiding anymore.

And if the though of Keith Ellison being the state’s chief law enforcement office doesn’t fill you with thoughts of heading for the woods and going off the grid, the notion of a Governor Walz driving the 2020 redistricting as the state loses a Rep and yet another DFL-leaning judicial committee gerrymanders the state to give Metrocrats yet another ten year stranglehold on your pocketbook should.

I’ve said it before; while I have voted for Democrats, even in the 35 years since I became a conservative, it needs to be said:  while Ronald Reagan would be a tad to the right of the mainstream national GOP today, a DFL party that rejected Lori Swanson would pelt John F. Kennedy with rocks and garbage – and Kennedy governed to the right of Erik Paulsen.

So I’ll be #resisting the Democrats, and the DFL, by voting a straight GOP ticket.  Not because I think the GOP has done the job I wanted them . (and voted for them) to do, but because the Democrats are actively working to destroy what this country is  supposed to  be about.

….you see it in black and white:  Big Left’s “elites” really, really don’t understand the Constitution, federalism, checks and balances…representative republican government.

I don't think people are ready for the crisis that will follow if Democrats win the House popular vote but not the majority.

After Kavanaugh, Trump, Garland, Citizens United, Bush v. Gore, etc, the party is on the edge of losing faith in the system (and reasonably so).

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) November 5, 2018

There are times the idea of complete national divorce – preferably peaceful – sounds almost dreamy.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The King in the old joke says: “I know I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?”  In this election, I don’t think Conservatives are paranoid enough.

We know from history that Liberals routinely cheat in elections.  Why shouldn’t they?  The integrity of the process is secondary to obtaining the correct result.  The ends justify the means.  And if they can’t win by cheating at the polls, Liberals litigate before Liberal judges to steal elections (looking at you, Al Franken).

Liberals cheated in 2016 to get Hillary the nomination, to spend other candidates’ money for her, and to spy on the Trump campaign.  They stuffed enough ballot boxes that some districts had more votes than voters.  But they were shocked to learn they hadn’t cheated enough.  Trump still won.

I doubt that will happen this time.  The polling places in Miami ran out of ballots on Monday.  I suspect those ballots are already marked, sitting in trunks of cars, waiting to be counted.

No need for you to stand in line, we’ve already cast your ballot, several times.  You can thank us later.

Satire?   Yes, but the line between satire and fact these days is almost nonexistant.

When “Babylon Bee” is a better source of news than CNN, you know we’ve got a problem.

Is another stealth “red wave” about to break?

Well, being a fundamental pessimist, I’d say “probably not” –  but I’ve been wrong before, most noticeably two years about tomorrow.

But according to Rasmusson, there might just be something sneaking out of the fog.: I’m adding emphasis:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 60% of Likely Democratic Voters say they are more likely to let others know how they intend to vote this year compared to previous congressional elections. This compares to 49% of Republicans and 40% of voters not affiliated with either major political party. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

In August 2016, 52% of Democrats were more likely to let others know how they intended to vote in the upcoming presidential election, compared to 46% of Republicans and 34% of unaffiliated voters. Some analysts before and after Donald Trump’s upset victory suggested that most pollsters missed his hidden support among voters fearful of criticism who were unwilling to say where they stood.

I can’t tell you the number of people who voted for Truimp who’d have never admitted it in public, fearing ostracism and reprisals.

Happening again?

We’ll know tomorrow.

Syndicated talk show host Michael Savage once had a huge hit with the book “Liberalism Is A Mental Illness”.

The implication was inflammatory – as Savage fully intended, being Michael Savage.

But science shows he was incorrect; new evidence shows it may be more a matter of brain damage:

A joint team of American and British scientists have discovered that powerful magnetic pulses to the brain can temporarily change people’s feelings on a variety of subjects…researchers have now found that by targeting the part of the brain that deals with threats, they can temporarily change people’s beliefs and views…

Amongst those who received the strong magnetic dose, 32.8 per cent fewer had decreased beliefs in God, angels and heaven compared to the control group who received no dose.

And 25.8 per cent more of those who had received TMS [Transcranial magnetic stimulation – magnetism applied to parts of the brain] had a more positive response to the immigrant who had written a negative letter about their country.

What this nation needs is commonsense magnetism control.

Remember this when Democrats coo condescendingly about how all they want is “common sense reforms”:

Not saying I believe this is the Democrat mainstream, per se.

Just that the notion that the end justifies the means is underneath every single “progressive” policy, from the income tax to the Gulag.

Dave Hughes has a strong shot at shocking the world up on the Minnesota Seventh.  Every dollar helps.

Shane Mekeland is running for MN House in 15B . He’ll be replacing Jim Newberger up in the greater Becker area.

Jason Lewis is running for re-election in MN CD2.  He could use a hand.

Pam Myhra is running for State Auditor – the only auditor among the two major-party candidates.  She could use a hand.

Jim Newberger is running for US Senate against Amy “The Kavanator” Klobuchar – rated as the worst boss in the US Senate.   Please help him out.

And yes, you can help Doug Wardlow usher Keith Ellison out of public life.   Please do.

I’m doing something tonight I should have done 35 years ago – going to see Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul at the Ames in Burnsville.

“Who?”

He’s better known as Steve Van Zandt – aka “Miami Steve” from the E Street Band, or Silvio Dante from The Sopranos.  And as I wrote in this space six years ago, the band’s debut album Men Without Women is one of my three favorite albums.  Ever.

Ever!

Men Without Women was a horn-driven “white soul” record reminiscent of Stax/Volt, that reminded some critics of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street.   It was recorded with an all-star cast of New York / New Jersey artists – Dino Danelli and Max Weinberg on drums, Felix Cavaliere and Roy Bittan on keys, Jean Bouvoir on bass, and the horn section from the Asbury Jukes (and, later, the Max Weinberg Seven and, today, the E Street Band).

And it was glorious. This was from two years ago:

This? Probably more like thirty years back, with the Asbury Jukes:

And from Mw/oW, for my money my favorite:

Van Zandt didn’t follow up with retro soul; his next album, Voice of America, was garage rock delivered with all the subtlety of an Angie Craig ad.  His nest three records all descended into worldbeat and a concomitant shrill far-left politics.  His sales reacted accordingly.

He was able to fall back on The Sopranos, his gig in the E Street Band, and Little Steven’s Underground Garage, one of the best syndicated music radio shows in the business.   But somewhere along the way he got the message; people liked the original Disciples.

And so that’s what he’s put together for this tour – not quite the original, but close:

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/BjOmE-45Abk” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe>

So my phone’ll be off from 7PM til further notice tonight…

Last week, the Pioneer Press did a comical dive into the shallow end of the journalism pool, digging up – Sorry, no. They “dug” nothing up about Doug Wardlow’s purported junior high days.   A DFL operative spent weeks shopping the story to every local news outlet.  Only the increasingly loathsome PiPress would take it.

But while the Twin Cities media digs back a couple of decades to find dirt to prop up the increasingly unviable Ellison campaign, the rich journalistic vein that is Keith Ellison’s past remains untapped.

Which is why we had these things called “blogs” 15 years ago.

Thanksfully, some have kept the faith.  Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson just keeps  shining the light down the memory hole – in this case, to 25 years ago, after the murder of Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf:

Ellison publicly supported the Haaf murder defendants. In February 1993, he spoke at a demonstration for one of them during his trial. Ellison led the crowd assembled at the courthouse in a chant that was ominous in the context of Haaf’s cold-blooded murder: “We don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace.” Ellison’s working relationship with Sharif Willis finally came to an end in February 1995, when Willis was convicted in federal court on several counts of drug and gun-related crimes and sent back to prison for 20 years.

Now Keith Ellison seeks Minnesota’s top law enforcement job. In the video below, Doug Wardlow does the job that the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune refuse to do. He tells the highly relevant truth about Keith Ellison.

Oh, there’s more.

–

The Minnesota 7th CD is the great long-term hope for the MN GOP; someday, when Collin Peterson finally leaves office, the district – I call it “East Dakota” – will never elect another Democrat again.  Ever.

But incumbency is everything in a rural district like the 7th.

But maybe lightning can strike.  I’ve had a few friends tell me “Watch out for Dave Hughes”, the second-time candidate against Peterson.   The district went for Trump by 30 points in 2016, and Hughes is a likeable and hard-working guy.

And today’s news makes for intrigueing reading.  Here’s John Hinderaker at Powerline:

Until now, hardly anyone has taken seriously the chance that Republican David Hughes can upset longtime Congressman Collin Peterson in Minnesota’s 7th. But, in a stunning move, Real Clear Politics now rates the contest a tossup.

Peterson has represented the 7th in Congress for 28 years, and has been personally popular in the district. But his vote totals have been slipping with each cycle, and the 7th went for President Trump by 30 points. Peterson has gotten less energetic over the years, and one suspects that he would like to retire. I liken him to Ruth Bader Ginsburg; the Democrats no doubt are pressuring him to stay on, knowing the seat will flip as soon as he retires.

Personal aside:  I listened to Hughes debating Peterson on MPR a few weeks ago.  Peterson sounded tired, like he was literally phoning it in.   If it were a boxing match, Hughes would have won by call.

But maybe the voters don’t want to wait that long. As a practical matter, Peterson, like all House Democrats, is little more than a vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. David Hughes has essentially no money, but door knockers in the 7th report that they are seeing five or six Hughes lawn signs for every Peterson lawn sign.

Hughes has no money to speak of – so if you have a few bucks to spare, it could go to much worse causes.

A friend of the blog writes:

Looking at the video footage of the “Caravan” I was reminded of the Carter tenure when the Mariel Boatlift happened. Then as now a compliant MSM was thrilled at the prospect of capturing all the touching, even heart-wrenching, human interest stories of photogenic brown-skinned people being pulled from the drink while the likes of Dan Rather or David Brinkley uttered cliched platitudes in the voiceover.It was campaign gold for the Democrats who could burnish their bona fides with the non-white voting block they wished to keep on the plantation.

The Marielitos were the solution to a few problems for Castro too. In the process Castro dumped 127,000 of his citizens;  all his mentally ill, incorrigible criminals, homosexuals, anti-socialists, and political disidents onto the US. He was also able to smuggle, according to one congressional hearing source nearly 7,000 intelligence agents and drug running logistics experts into the US for long term intelligence gathering, while locking up and exploiting the burgeoning drug market.  At least 300 of the spies were rolled up in the 1st couple years which lead to “The Year of the Spy”. The NYT addresses the Marielito spies in this article(paywall):

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/01/us/cuban-ties-boatlift-to-drug-trade.html
here’s a pull quote:
“The Cuban Government used the 1980 Mariel boatlift to send as many as 7,000 spies to the United States, some of whom were ordered to help drug smugglers ”flood” this country with illegal narcotics, one such spy said today.
The Cuban agent, Mario Estevez Gonzalez, testifying at a United States Senate hearing here, said some of the spies travel freely in small boats between their Communist homeland and the United States. Mr. Estevez, who has been convicted of drug smuggling, said some agents were in this country for propaganda purposes and others were to create ”chaos” in the event of war.”
The Miami Herald from the same date had this story;
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/drugs/testimony.htm
this pull quote underscores the issue
“The U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Thomas Boyatt, was more blunt.
“I’m telling you that it happened,” he insisted during an interview before his testimony. “The Cuban government, as a matter of policy, for a long period of time, until exposed, was involved in drug smuggling.
“It was a [Cuban intelligence] operation with the blessing of Fidel,” he said. “

Leftists suffer from severely retarded imaginations (just look at Hollywood’s output for the last 10 years) but when they hit on something that seems to work they do it over and over. The Mariel Boatlift worked and would have been even more successful had Jimmy Carter not lost his re-election bid. Reagan wasn’t having any.

There is no reason to believe that the current Caravan is not another form of the Mariel Boatlift, already another Caravan has formed in El Salvador,  soon there will be another. The Socialists(Communists)and Castro proteges, Maduro, Castro and Ortega, all recognize that the Mariel Boatlift was a hugely successful intelligence operation and they profited enormously from the spy networks established in the 80s by Castro that survived Reagan’s spy hunt.

This Caravan solves a problem that the Tyrannical Troika has been struggling with; how to get identities and access to the US for their agents. The Caravan made up seemingly of compasinos with little or no documentation show up “seeking asylum” and the first thing the US govt does is generate identity paperwork for them, those who survive the asylum vetting process are embraced without further suspicion and best of all in 5 or 7 years when they become active they’ll have USA passports and identities. That’ll all work out well.

Now am I just a cynical bastard for thinking that 300-400 of these Caravanistas are actually intelligence agents from Venezuela, Cuba, and El Salvador? Time will tell.

Keith Ellison is trying to paint Keith Ellison as…

…soft on guns?

We’ll come back to that.

Klieglightitis – When I was in high school, my dad – a speech teacher – used to run this exercise where he’s give out clippings from newspaper articles and magazines, and give us thirty seconds to come up with a short speech on the subject.

I got a TV Guide article about Forrest Tucker, TV star of the sixites and seventies (famous for the original Ghostbusters, which unknown to most was actually a Saturday morning kids show before it was a movie).

As I walked up to the front of the class, I had the name “Forrest Tucker” roiling through my head, reminding myself not to make the uttelry obvious error…

…that, iI”m sure you guessed, was the first thing out of my mouth.   I was so busy concentrating on not pronouncing “Forrest Tucker” as “F****er”, it was pretty much inevitable.

A Slip Of The Lip:  And so when I saw Doug Wardlow say in his last debate on 10/22 that he “supported universal background checks”, I attributed it to nerves on a TV set in the midst of a high-pressure debate.

To read Ellison and the Strib describe it, they apparently don’t.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison hit his Republican opponent for attorney general, Doug Wardlow, on Wednesday for shifting his stance on background checks for gun sales, and Wardlow lobbed a new ad digging into Ellison’s past links to controversial figures.

Ahem.

There was no “past stance” on background checks.  There was a slip of the lip under pressure.

Of course, Keith Ellison is getting desperate:

Ellison pointed to Wardlow’s response during their Oct. 22 debate, where he said he would support criminal background checks on all gun sales.

Keith Ellison, holding conservatives to conservative stances on the Second Amendment, something Ellison wants to repeal?

We’ve slipped through the looking glass.

But look who pops up (emphasis added):

He later rejected that position when asked to clarify it by the Minnesota Gun Owner’s Caucus and during a conservative talk radio interview.

“Just to be clear, I absolutely do not support background checks for private sales,” Wardlow told Northern Alliance Radio’s Mitch Berg on Oct. 27. “I do not support a gun registry. I don’t actually support any new gun laws.”

I asked the question straight up.  He answered it straight up.   There was no reversal; merely a correction of a slip.

But in case that wasn’t clear enough: I’ve known Doug Wardlow a long time.  I did my first fundraiser for his first House race in 2010.    I did it again in 2012, and have done a few for his Attorney General campaign in the past year.

And if I had ever had the faintest whiff of a hint that Doug Wardlow – or any candidate – harbored “moderate” opinions on the Second Amendment and the law abiding American’s God-given right to defend their lives, property, community and freedom, I would never, ever do a fundraiser for them.

Ever!

I”m going to soooo enjoy watching Ellison flame out on Tuesday.

Don Lemon pulls off a rhetorical triple Salchow:

It took me a couple of reads to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

I missed this over a very busy winter; Arkady Wajspapir, one of the prime movers in the Sobibor Uprising (which I covered on its 70th anniversary) passed away last February.

He was 96 – 75 more than he had any reason to expect on the day when a train dropped him off at the death camp in rural eastern Poland.

There, he linked up with other Soviet military inmates of Jewish descent, and made common cause with the Polish, Dutch and German Jews who had also been spared the gas chamber to work endless days under brutal conditions.

There – over the course of a few weeks after Soviet soldiers arrived – they plotted their desperate escape:

The uprising began in the late afternoon of Oct. 14. Mr. Wajspapir and another Jewish prisoner, Yehuda Lerner, armed with axes, hid behind a curtain in the shop until their target, Siegfried Graetschus, the German SS officer in charge of the Ukrainian guards, entered. While Graetschus tried on a coat that had been made for him, Mr. Wajspapir, by his account, emerged and attacked him with his ax, striking his head.

“Graetschus let out a scream, did not immediately fall to the ground but tumbled head first because the blow was obviously not forceful enough,” Mr. Wajspapir said in a 1975 article on the website Sobibor Interviews. He and Mr. Lerner then finished off Graetschus.

Here, he tells his own story:

Reading stories like this – as I’ve been doing since I was a teenager (I was familiar with Wajspapir, if only by name, from reading about the Sobibor Uprising as a kid) periodically remind me of a couple of eternal truths:

1. People calling themselves “#Resistance” today Because Trump are pathetic hamsters.
2. You will have my gun when those behind you step over your body to pry it from my cold, dead hand.

That is all.

And a belated RIP to Mr. Wajspapir.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

You have a choice of shipping company.  FedEx just dropped its NRA discount.

Given FedEx’s performances this last couple years, the NRA might be getting the better end of that deal.

But while I haven’t used FedEx in quite some time, I am never using them again.

Yesterday, I started telling the story of Dr. Massoud Amin – a man who came to the US as a teenager with his parents after the Iranian Revolution, became a citizen, and rose to the highest levels not only of academia, but of national security, as one of the nation’s foremost experts in cybersecurity.

And then, in the middle of a rancorous divorce with more than a whiff of academic backstabbing mixed in, an overzealous prosecutor turned a paperwork discrepancy in a civil divorce filing into, literally, a criminal case.

Pursuant to that case, the prosecutor and the police searched Dr. Amin’s house, and confiscated Dr. Amin’s firearm collection,  planting the story of “The Iranian professor who collected a bunch of guns and swindled his soon-to-be-ex” – simultaneously defaming him to the left (“Serves the gun nut right!”) and the less-bright parts of the right (“Probably a terrorist!”).

The trial?  It was a comedy of errors – but not remotely funny.   All exculpatory evidence was suppressed, and that was just the beginning.   The ending?   A conviction – aided  by bizarre courtroom antics and some sketchy lawyering on both sides.

The prosecution is asking for a ten year prison sentence for a conviction that normally carries a years’ suspended sentence and probation for a first-time offender – which Dr. Amin, who held a top-secret security clearance until the conviction, most assuredly was.

Why so much irregularity in what started as a typical ugly American divorce?

We’ll be talking with Dr. Massoud about that this Saturday on my show.   Tune in, and call in if you havre questions.

I’ve long held, correctly, that Red America understands Blue America – its culture, society, ways, mores and the like – better than vice versa.   Red America gets New York and LA in a way that neither of them gets, and I’d suggest don’t believe they need or care to get, the rest of the country.

And it seems it’s not merely geographic:

In his remarkable book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Haidt recalls a telling experiment. He and his colleagues Brian Nosek and Jesse Graham sought to discover how well conservative and what Haidt terms ‘liberal’ (ie: progressive) students understood one another by having them answer moral questions as they thought their political opponents would answer them. “The results were clear and consistent,” remarks Haidt. “In all analyses, conservatives were more accurate than liberals.” Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse. Rather, they seemed to put moral ideas into the mouths of conservatives that they don’t hold.

That would explain why liberals are so very prone to arguing the straw man; it’s the only way they perceive conservatives.

To put it bluntly, Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don’t understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives. This he calls the ‘conservative advantage,’ and it goes a long way in explaining the different ways each side deals with opinions unlike their own. People get angry at what they don’t understand, and an all-progressive education ensures that they don’t understand.

It’s been my observation that liberals, at large, can not effectively debate conservatives, because at no point in their education have they ever had to see conservatism and conservatism as anything other than cartoons.

I’ll urge you to read the whole thing.

I’ve become convinced that the greatest ever in rotation of Berg’s 7th law has been this past two decades’ drum beat of promises that there is “an avalanche of right wing terrorism” just around the corner.

Any day now.

Honest.

Actor James Cromwell predicts – I would say it’s more like “calls for” – “revolution” if the Republicans win the midterms:

Speaking to Variety at the event, he warned of the turn that he sees America taking and cautioned there will be “blood in the streets” if Republicans remain in control.

“This is nascent fascism. We always had a turnkey, totalitarian state — all we needed was an excuse, and all the institutions were in place to turn this into pure fascism,” Cromwell said. “If we don’t stop [President Trump] now, then we will have a revolution for real. Then there will be blood in the streets.”

The star, who previously played George H.W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s “W,” echoed these sentiments during his acceptance speech, where he warned that he believes the country is headed toward the possibility of a violent revolution.

“We’re living in very curious times, and something is coming up which is desperately important to this country and to this planet, and that is an election, in which hopefully in some measure we are going to take back our democracy,” he said. “We will have a government that represents us and not the donor class. We will cut through the corruption, [and] we won’t have to do what comes next, which is either a non-violent revolution or a violent one, because this has got to end.”

I don’t think members of the “elite” Realize how many Americans are ready to take him up on that. I don’t think it’s going to go nearly as well as they – Cromwell – think it will.

Last year, a story broke that had a little something for everyone – where by “everyone” you’re referring to “incurious, uncritical consumers of shabby information”.

It involved a professor from the University of MInnesota, Dr. Massoud Amin.   Amin was convicted of “Theft by Swindle” for, it was alleged, concealing funds from his soon-to-be ex wife during a nasty divorce.

We’ll come back to that.

The story got liberals exercised because Amin was a gun collector (with, dare I say, a penchant for finding bargains).   That is a classic dog whistle for the left.

And for the, shall we say, less bright on the right?   A middle-eastern sounding name like Amin’s is enough to get the “WATCH FOR TEH SHARIA” crowd into a froth.

And the media coverage of his divorce proceedings – including the swindle allegations – were decidedly unsympathetic.

Sentencing in his trial is scheduled for November 9.

The client is obviously guilty – right?

Not so fast.  And according to sources with close knowledge of the case, the charges and conviction are well beyond a miscarriage of justice; they were the tip of an iceberg of shenanigans – borne of malice up against incompetence at best, cynical ambition at worst, all  slathered with a layer of legalism.

And when you peel back the onion, you still have something for everyone – among critical thinkers, this time:

• A divorce from hell
• City bureaucrats hamfistedly persecuting a law-abiding gun owner
• A legal process that reads like something between Michael Crichton and Franz Kafka, tainted by racism and amoral careerism
• And, at the end of the day, an American who has done decades of groundbreaking work defending this country from cyberterrorism, facing ten years in prison for something that, even if it were a legitimate conviction.
• Which, given the evidence I’ve encountered, it was not.

More tomorrow.

A good dad with a gun ends a potential mass shooting at a McDonald’s:

The unidentified father was leaving the restaurant around 10:45 p.m. on Sunday when the suspect walked into the Birmingham, Alabama fast-food restaurant and started shooting.

The father then opened fire on the gunman, fatally wounding him. The dad and one of his children were also struck and suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Authorities do not know if the gunman was intending to rob the store or targeting a particular person. The father will not be facing charges, WBRC reports.

The motive – robbery, or a gang execution – isn’t clear at the moment to investigators…

And, thanks to one good guy with a gun, it doesn’t have to be.

Some Jews are learning the right, prudent lesson from the PIttsburgh Pogrom.

Indianapolis talk radio host Tony Katz describes his epiphany:

What happened in Pittsburgh is my nightmare scenario. For a few years now, on my radio shows in Indianapolis, I have said as loud and as clear as I can that any Jew who attends religious services without a firearm is risking their life and the lives of the ones they love.

But, in truth, I’ve never said it so kindly. I’ve said that nothing in America is more of a soft target than a synagogue on a Friday night or a Saturday morning. I discuss all houses of worship; synagogues, churches, mosques – they are all soft targets. I have argued that laws that prevent carrying a firearm in a house of worship where there is also a school are wrong, and should be changed (and, if necessary, ignored.)

The purpose of being trained and carrying a firearm is to protect yourself AND the ones your love. That means children: your children. Why would you ever put yourself in a position not to protect them? Why, as a society, would we ask this of any parent or guardian?

Read the whole thing.

The logical disconnect among the anti-gun crowd in view of episodes like the massacre in Pittsburgh – “helplessness is strength” – is frankly bizarre.

Via Gary Gross at LFR – two unions have broken from the DFL borg and endorsed Jason Lewis:

The carpenters’ union and International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49, both of whichendorsed Hillary Clinton, will support the first-term congressman in the midterm elections in his rematch against former health care executive Angie Craig. Labor leaders praised Lewis’s record in Congress, highlighting his support for domestic energy development as well as his willingness to buck his political party. Lewis has supported Davis-Bacon, which favors union wage levels in federal projects despite the push in the conservative movement to abolish wage mandates.

“In Jason’s time in Congress he has cast repeated votes in support of Davis-Bacon prevailing wage and has led on the issue of changing school curriculum to encourage more people to look at careers in the construction industry,” carpenters’ spokesman Adam Duininck said in a release.

Both unions also praised Lewis for focusing on local issues and maintaining a relationship with labor leaders. Local 49 business manager Jason George said that Lewis and the union were not in lockstep on every political issue, but the congressman had supported the issues that help support the building trades and traditional blue-collar workers.

There has been a slow, fitful trickle of private-sector unions coming over to the GOP – accelerated by the Trump Effect, it needs to be said.

And it only makes sense; the public sector unions that control the Democrat party have interests that are largely inimical to those of private-sector labor – indeed, the public ones, left with their own way, will eventually strangle the private ones.

Here’s hoping that the private unions still pack enough clout in places like Newport and Sourth Saint Paul, where Angie Craig will likely run strongest, to make a difference.

The welfare state – in the US, the state that was put in place by Lyndon B Johnson’s “Great Society” – isn’t so much about “solving poverty” as it is about “making poverty a permanently sustainable state that can be exploited for political gain”.

We can argue the specifics, and maybe even the conclusion.

But let’s say that was not the case; if the Democrats weren’t trying to build a permanent underclass beholden to them with the welfare state, how would you better design such a thing as one would with the Great Society?

Because that’s how it worked.   Poverty in the US was in free fall until the nation “declared war” on it.:

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The recent synagogue shooting has Jews thinking about buying a gun.  Fine with me; but a gun is not a rabbit’s foot.  Simply having one in your possession doesn’t avert bad luck.  You need to know how to use it.

I’ve been shooting for more than 40 years.  I am a member of a gun club that lets me bring guests, for free.  I offer to teach any new gun owner the basics: how to load your new firearm, how to shoot it, how to clean it, how to store it so it’s quickly available if you need it but not accessible to those who shouldn’t have it.

No politics, no religion, no lectures, and no charge.  Safety and accuracy.  Leave your contact information in the comments.

Joe Doakes

And I’ll do the same.