But only barely.

New York Governor Cuomo is popping off shots at the Bill of Rights no less than Gen. Beauregard at Fort Sumter:

The NRA accuses Cuomo of running a campaign of “selective prosecution, backroom exhortations and public threats.” It claims the government seeks to halt its defense of the Second Amendment.

“Simply put,” the NRA alleges, Cuomo and New York regulators “made it clear to banks and insurers that it is bad business in New York to do business with the NRA.

The Government of the state of New York; like the Medellin Cartel, only in cheaper suits.

Longtime friend of the Northern Alliance and this blog (and backup singer on my album) Julia Coleman has thrown her hat in the ring to run for City Council in Chanhassen.

She could use a few bucks – here’s her website.

And if you’re in Chanhassen, or anywhere in the area, she could use any other support you have to offer.

Let’s help get her into office!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It’s well documented that early gun control laws were enacted expressly to keep guns out of the hands of Negros, who were thought to lack either the ability or the willingness to conform their behavior to the dictates of civilized society.

Nowadays, Americans are much more enlightened.  We are told Blacks are not merely equal to Whites, they are morally superior.  But then how to account for this weekend’s spasm of gun violence in Chicago, which seems to have involved mostly Black youth?

Current empirical evidence appears to support the historical justification for racial restrictions on firearms ownership – Blacks are unwilling or unable to behave.  Liberals take it a step farther, saying the nation’s history of slavery means Blacks should not be obligated to behave, they should get a pass for breaking the law: not arrested, not imprisoned, certainly not shot, no matter how egregious the bad behavior.

Former President George Bush labeled that attitude “the soft bigotry of low expectations” because modern Liberals and old-time Klansmen held the same view of Black behavior, differing only in whether it is justified.

And obviously, not all Blacks act badly but the numbers show they’re likely to, out of all proportion to their representation in population.  That’s not proof every Black person should be denied firearms.  Race isn’t conclusive.  We can’t act on likelihood.

Similarly, young men aged 15-29 are most likely to develop mental illness, fail to take their meds, and listen to the voices telling them to kill.  Not all young men, but disproportionately so.  That’s not proof they should be denied firearms.  We can’t act on likelihood.

What if we could?

Imagine a scientist could devise a fool-proof and absolutely reliable test to predict which people have a propensity toward violence.  Might society desire a law to ban those people from owning weapons, similar to the way felons are barred from owning weapons?   And if two identifiable groups happened to dominate the pool – say, for example Scots and Blacks – would the ban pass muster under the theory that the Constitution is not a suicide pact?  Or would society lack the courage to admit the obvious – that some people are simply not capable of conforming their behavior to the dictates of civilized society and therefore for its own protection, civilized society must exclude those people from certain fundamental freedoms enjoyed by the rest?

Still don’t like it?

Now let’s talk about the Jake Laird Act.  Congress is asked to give grants to reward local law enforcement who can seize personal firearms on “probable cause” which the owner can only get back after six months have passed, and after the owner proves to the court that the owner is not dangerous.  It’s based on individuals, not groups, but it lets gun-hating-cops seize innocent citizens’ guns based on the slimmest rumor, gossip, undisclosed informants, and speculation, same as any search warrant application.  We don’t have to imagine the government could disarm the citizenry.  We’re already there.

Joe Doakes

They’re pretty sneaky.

You will practice your so-called “freedom” the way your betters decree you shall, peasant:

“Sure – indulge in your so-called freedom of speech.  The authorities will have you on record”.

Hennepin County doesn’t recognize the authority of the First Amendment, much less the ‘Supreme Court”.

A new ‘Study” by Salon paints Trump, and Trump voters, as “giving up on democracy“.

And it’s all part of an ongoing effort by Blue America to tell Red America what it really thinks; “gaslighting” is the term in vogue for this phenomenon.

Which, if you look on this list of behaviors of toxic narcissist and sociopathic personalities, is a technique used by psychological abusers to dominate their abusees.

Much more later this week.

Deaths from heroin have passed deaths from firearms for the first time ever:

Opioid deaths continued to surge in 2015, surpassing 30,000 for the first time in recent history, according to CDC data released Thursday.

That marks an increase of nearly 5,000 deaths from 2014. Deaths involving powerful synthetic opiates, like fentanyl, rose by nearly 75 percent from 2014 to 2015.

Perhaps what we need are…

…wait for it…

…commonsense heroin control laws?

A friend of the blog writes:

Marxist collectivism mixed with the egalitarian charm of Rousseau.

The MN Fringe Festival is the most natural child of The Blue Blouse (Синяя блуза) theatre troupes of early USSR.

Here you will find every SJW/Artiste that suckles at the teats of state government and the Foundation Hive.

The big buzzword in this year’s prospectus is the delivery of a limited number of Juried, Curated (read pre-censored) productions

I think that’s all true – at least in directly. Because the writer is correct – it’s impossible to calculate the damage that government subsidy of art has done to, well, Art. And the Fringe Festival is often a great place to see what happens when society pays for way too many mediocre terrible artist to create too much “art”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

While watching Family Feud with Steve Harvey, I saw commercials for the new Magnum, PI and Murphy Brown.  Magnum is updated with new people but Murphy Brown drags Candace Bergin out of the nursing home, just as Roseanne is shuffling back again.  What is it with 30-year-old programs?

 

***

So . . . are we winning?

 

http://abc7chicago.com/8-wounded-in-gresham-shooting;-at-least-30-shot-in-chicago-sunday/3886976/

 

***

 

This will end well.

 

https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1991557/anc-shocks-twitter-by-calling-all-white-people-murderers/

 

***

 

A gender-neutral sorority is literally a contradiction-in-terms.  The fact Harvard University can’t understand that is bewildering.

 

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/8/5/harvard-delta-gamma-closes/

 

***

 

Why remember the number of the amendment?  The number comes from a dead-letter document written by white male slave owner haters icky icky.  Asking this question is like the professional responsibility exam asking whether certain conduct is a conflict under Rule 1.8 or does it fall under 1.9.  Who cares?  We know we have rights, that’s enough.

 

https://ijr.com/2018/08/1114019-percentage-americans-first-amendment/

 

***

 

The City calls it the “Summit-University” avenue but that’s just the boundary streets, those two areas have nothing in common.  And this incident happened when police were called to multiple gunshots at 2:30 AM at 900 St. Anthony, which is the I-94 frontage road at about Lexington.  I think we can assume the dead guy was completely innocent, just turning his life around, the usual . . . and kudos to Mayor Melvin Carter for taking a neutral approach.  Nice for a change, unlike the ACLU, which jumped right in with accusations and demands.

 

https://www.twincities.com/2018/08/05/police-fatally-shoot-male-in-st-pauls-summit-university-area/

 

***

 

Wonderful news.  The state is laundering money to the school districts for security improvements, which will free up school district money to pay for more diversity coordinators.

 

https://www.twincities.com/2018/08/06/state-has-25-million-earmarked-for-security-but-schools-need-much-more/

 

***

 

Why is it any of Congress’ business what a retailer sells?  Why is Ellison involved?  And if they’re serious about banning products that “glorify hatred, violence or intolerance,” then Che Guevara t-shirts should go, too.  And nobody is more intolerant than Muslims, so stop selling Korans?

 

https://www.twincities.com/2018/08/05/amazon-removes-nazi-themed-items-after-complaints/

 

***

 

The differences between Minnesota Democrats running for Governor range from lefty to leftist to bat-shit crazy.  Hard to decide, with choices like that.

 

Ban guns, free health care for everybody, raise taxes to spend more, what’s not to love?

 

https://www.twincities.com/2018/08/05/heres-where-democrats-running-for-governor-stand-on-guns-legalizing-pot-health-care-and-taxes/

 

There’s something for everyone.

For every major combatant in the Great War by the mid-summer of 1917, the strategy seemed obvious – wait.

The Germans had reached such a conclusion months earlier, retreating behind the Hindenberg Line while waiting for their unrestricted submarine warfare and Russian collapse to change the dynamics of the conflict.  The French had just recently embraced a similar change – as the mutiny of their armies following the Nivelle Offensive brought Paris to the brink of defeat.  Even Russia, now reeling from their own failed Kerensky Offensive saw the relative wisdom of simply trying to hold on and wait for the American armies in France to save the war.

In London, the strategy of patience appeared to be favored as well.  The War Cabinet and David Lloyd George were ready to wait until enough tanks could be produced – and enough American “doughboys” had arrived – to restart serious offensive actions on the Western Front.  But the view was far from unanimous.  Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) continued to believe in the increasingly discredited belief that the German army was on the verge of collapse.  Another offensive, Haig believed, and the Germans could potentially surrender miles of territory as they had earlier in the year.  A well-timed strike in Flanders, Haig theorized, would also captured German naval bases on the Belgian coast, ending the damage Berlin’s U-boat campaign had done to British shipping.

Seemingly no one supported the concept.  Flanders was notorious for fall flooding, which would be occurring within weeks of the proposed campaign.  French soldiers were unreliable allies and the terrain was far from suitable for the tanks the British were willing to commit.  Yet seemingly no one was willing to say no to Haig.

On July 31st, 1917, one of the grisliest campaigns of the First World War would begin in Flanders.  David Lloyd George would later say that what would be known as the Third Battle of Ypres, or the Battle of Passchendaele, was a “senseless campaign” and “one of the greatest disasters of the war.”

Quagmire – Passchendaele would be defined by the endless mud

It was somewhat fitting that the Ypres would ultimately represent a turning point for the British strategy in France, for it had represented the beginnings of the static, trench warfare that defined the Great War.

The First Battle of Ypres in Flanders in October of 1914 had marked the end of the warfare of maneuvers, as both the Entente and Germany found themselves locked into battles of attrition – each side charging the other’s trench in desperate bids to break the newfound deadlock.  For the cost of over 100,000 men, the combatants discovered that the hope of a war colluded by Christmas was a fantasy.   Read the rest of this entry »

I noticed it a couple of years ago – whenever anti-gun groups trot out victim stories, one thing that never gets mentioned is the perpetrator – the person pulling trigger.    You can listen to “survivors” (they almost never survived violence themselves; they’ve almost invariably hijacked the legacy of a dead relative) for hours without ever knowing that the firearms involved hadn’t levitated themselves.

There’s a reason for that; talking about perps would confirm everything the good guys have been saying about the issue, forever:

Lawful gun owners accounted for just 18 percent of gun violence, according to a recent studyconducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh.

Researchers analyzed 762 cases in which a gun was recovered by the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Firearm Tracking Unit (FTU).

“Most perpetrators (79%) were carrying a gun that did not belong to them,” researchers concluded.

By the way, gun grabbers – how does that bode for “Universal background checks?”

Walter Hudson calls this the editorial cartoon of the year:

Walter’s a sharp guy.

I’ve been known to mock and taunt the likes of Sarah Jeong, Alondra Cano and Nekima Levy-Pounds for their comical take on “privilege” – including the implication that a guy driving a truck 70 hours a week out in Oil Country has “privilege” over people with elite educations and lifetime political / media sinecures.

Some might think I’m being hyperbolic, or exaggerating the moral dementia of this class of “Progressives”.

Oh, silly pollyannas.   I dion’t have to exaggerate anything:

A feminist professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada recently published a book chapter documenting the myriad ways homeless men allegedly perpetuate “hegemonic masculinity” while discussing their hardships.

The book chapter, “When a Man’s Home is Not a Castle: Hegemonic Masculinity Among Men Experiencing Homelessness,” was published last Wednesday by Professor Erin Dej, in a book she co-edited on patriarchy in psychiatric wards and homeless shelters.

The goal of her research, she explains, was to “assess the ways hypermasculinity is performed among men experiencing homelessness.” And to do this, Dej interviewed 27 homeless men and spent and additional 296 hours spying on them in homeless shelters.

Up next – how lab rats are part of the patriarchy.

A couple of gun-grabber groups scheduled a protest over the weekend.

The plan was to picket the Minnesota “NRA Office”. 

On the one hand, I say “protest away”.  Especially the groups involved in Saturdays plans – the David Hogg-affiliated student group, and “Survivors Lead”, a new-ish gun grabber group made up of people who found “Protect” MN too sober and rational.

But whatever side of the issue you’re on, whatever your sympathies, there was one…er, flaw with the protest plan:

Oh, not to say that one of the event’s “organizers” didn’t try to defend the plan:

And let’s be honest – when you’re in the echo chamber, all that echoing sounds pretty cool:

Thing is, what the “students” and their adult advisors wranglers had done was go out to the NRA website, and apparently find “Locations”.

And saw that Suite 200 at Spruce Tree Square was listed.

Without bothering to read the link that the office was actually the Minnesota Peace Officers Standards and Training office – specifically, an office that administers a federal program allowing retired law enforcement officers – the ones that most of your gun grabbers think should be the only ones with guns – to get carry permits.  The instructors for the permits are certified by…well, the NRA.

So – is it a wonder they can’t research the law, history, statistics or current events, when they can’t even click a link to find out what’s in an office?

Thug opens fire at a “Peace” event in Titusville, Florida.

Armed citizen with a carry permit returns fire:

The shooting occurred at Isaac Campbell Park on South Street shortly after 5:20 p.m. when the shooter, whom police have not identified, returned to the park after a fistfight and began firing.

A bystander licensed to a carry a firearm then shot the shooter, who was flown to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries, police said.

All signs so far point toward “he did the right thing”:

After consulting with the State Attorney’s office, detectives do not expect to file charges against the bystander since his actions were within the law, according to the preliminary investigation, police said.

More, please.

Wonder why Big Left is bashing so hard on race?

Because if the Democrat party ever drops below 90% of the African American vote, they can never win another national race.

Ever.

With that in mind – Trump is making noises about sentencing reform:

Attendees described Trump’s support for the initiative as a positive development for the effort to reduce mandatory-minimum prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

While getting a final bill to Trump would require a Senate vote and then winning House approval for the new package, a second source familiar with the meeting described it as “very successful.”

“It’s not done until it’s done, but we made a lot of progress,” the source said.

Grassley said afterward that he believes prison reform and sentencing reform can be moved in tandem.

And – unexpectedly, and I’m sure utterly unrelatedliy – we’ve got this news:

I’ve never been a Trump fan.  But more and more, I get the impression that while the Democrats are playing checkers, Trump is playing crude, crass-sounding chess.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I wonder if I can bring these to work, or if they violate the Zero Tolerance No Guns policy?

I’ll give you one guess on that…

 

Joe Doakes

Here’s the piece I was talking about during the show today – Shahida Arabi’s “20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You“.   Read through them and think if they apply to any major left-leaning news media  you know…

It’s a pet peeve of mine; whenever someone – usually a smug little twerp who’s beein trained to think of themselves as smarter than everyone else, regardless of actual merit – starts out a soliloquy with “Actually…”, I usually want to smack them.

Hard.

So with a piece from earlier in the week from the Washington Post, by Christopher Ingraham – who is, more or less, the person I described in the first paragraph.   But he’s at the WaPo, so I repeat myself.

And, er, “actually”,the article actually takes a radical departure – revealing a bit of the truth:

The study analyzed data on 221 gun homicides and 1,012 nonfatal shootings that happened in Boston between 2010 and 2014. On first glance, the numbers provided a confirmation of the depressing demographics of shooting cases: “Most gunshot victims and survivors were young minority men with prior court arraignments,” Braga and Cook found. “Most attacks occurred in circumstances where gangs or drugs played an important role.” Most occurred outdoors in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

This?  In the WaPo?

It seems too good to be true.  And it is exactly that, eventually.

But Ingraham thinks he’s onto something:

The results undercut the idea that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” That catchy turn of phrase is often used by gun rights supporters to emphasize the human role in gun violence rather than the gun itself.

And this revelation that “undercuts” the absolute truism – the notion that perpetrators, not hardware, is responsible for crime (emphasis added)?

Analyzing data on hundreds of shootings in Boston from 2010 to 2014, Anthony Braga of Northeastern University and Philip J. Cook of Duke University found that on a bullet-per-bullet basis, shootings committed with a large-caliber firearm are much more likely to result in a fatality than those with a smaller-caliber gun.

In other words – bigger guns are more lethal.

This is what you get from America’s most respected journalistic outlet.

No word on whether large calibers make a firearm self-animating.

Maybe that’ll be on NPR…

Satirical yet real:

Finland’s experiment with every wonks favorite utopian program, the guaranteed income, seems to have failed.

The reason? Hard as it may be to believe, if you pay people not to work, they won’t work.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

St. Paul and Minneapolis are considering raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour.  There are no studies on the effect of a $15 per hour minimum wage because it’s never been that high.  The studies of effects of prior minimum wage increases go both ways, depending on who you believe.  What to do?

This is where it helps to be conservative, because we have principles to guide our actions, not just feelings.  One principle is:  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  Another is:  “Don’t tear down a fence until you know why it was built.”  The core thought underlying these principles is to make changes cautiously, only when you’re certain they won’t cause more harm than good.  Since the evidence is equivocal, adherence to conservative principles would dictate that we not raise the minimum wage to $15.

But Democrats are not conservatives so they have no such principles to restrain them.  They’re going to raise it because it will please the mob and that’s the most important thing to them.  So if you’re going to raise it despite the evidence, why stop at $15?  Why not raise it to $100 per hour and we’ll all be rich?  Pikers.

Power is the principle.

There has been a wave of crime, including a fair number of drive-by shootings, in the lower reaches of Saint Pauls North End neighborhood this summer.

Saint Paul being a one party neosocialist dystopia, the city bureaucracy and political class is having the usual reaction; no reaction. It’s just the north end.

But the North End hasn’t gone full-blown Bernie Sanders – not entirely. Even the media is noticing that some North Enders are responding in ways that are completely pathetic and stupid:

Tin Cup’s Owner, Gidget Bailey, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS she’s obtained a permit to carry and half her staff has done the same so she can have two to three staff members armed with a firearm each night her restaurant is open.

“It is just a shame that it has come to this,” Bailey said. “But, when you have to do this to make sure of your own safety, in a life or death situation, while you’re making an honest living at work is pathetic, just pathetic.”

Mohr, faster, please.

If you live in the north end (Or, let’s be honest, anyplace else), and are interested in seeing to your own defense, holler. Will get you hooked up.

Support for stricter gun control is down sharply…

Public support for more stringent gun-control legislation has decreased significantly after surging in the wake of the February mass shooting that claimed 17 lives in Parkland, Fla., according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The number of respondents who support “stricter gun control laws” has fallen ten percentage points after peaking at 66 percent on February 20, just six days after the Parkland massacre.

…now that the media has moved on to misrepresenting other topics.

Mark Steyn on the twisted history, fractured English pop vernacular, and cheesy-yet-glorious music of ABBA.