Dennis Prager is fond of describing cases of especial daftness by saying “It takes an elite education to be this stupid”.

I couldn’t help but think of that in reading about this “Human Rights Law” professor

Daniel Kovalik, who teaches international human rights law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, argues in a recent op-ed for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that U.S. media coverage of Venezuela “ignores the fact” that the U.S. is the “greatest impediment to democracy” in Venezuela and “throughout Latin America.”

Kovalik asserts that the “true patriots” of Venezuela “resent” the “devastating economic sanctions” imposed by the U.S., claiming that a vote for current socialist President Nicolás Maduro “was a vote against U.S. meddling” in the country’s affairs.
“Venezuela’s electoral system…is an inspiring process that guarantees one person, one vote, and includes multiple auditing procedures to ensure a free and fair election,” Kovalik claims.

Liberalism:  Credulity wrapped in illogic dunked in outrage disguised as virtue .

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

In the late 1700’s, people protested to win their independence.  In the 1850’s, people protested to free the slaves. In the 1920’s, people protested to get votes for women. In the 1960’s, people protested to get civil rights for Blacks. In the 1970’s, people protested the Vietnam War.  The people who protested in those Great Causes got to brag to future generations about how they changed the world.  But notice how the causes got smaller, less significant, as we ran out of great evils to protest.  How does this generation validate itself? What’s left to change? Global warming?  Transgender bathrooms?  Hate Trump?  Russian influence on social media? Trivia.
We need a Cause.
Joe Doakes

“Hate Trump” seems to be serving for the moment.

There was another mass shooting the other day

One dead, 21 wounded – pretty ghastly, and could have probably been much worse.

But there are no marches; Alyssa Milano is nowhere to be found; David “Boss” Hogg is silent about it.   No celeb has soiled themselves with outrage.  Even Minnesota’s gun control groups, always hovering like ghouls looking for any hint of gunny ugliness, have kept mum.

There’s a reason for that:

This was gang warfare. And it’s probably the most common form of gun violence seen in major cities on a yearly basis. But nobody is talking about it the way they will if a deranged white guy with a rifle commits the far more rare mass shooting of that type. There’s a gun violence problem here that could be addressed, making a serious difference. But places like Baltimore, Maryland and Chicago, Illinois still have municipal leaders who can’t bring themselves to pass harsher laws to put away first-time offenders who commit gun crimes. They prefer to focus on justice reform, emptying the prisons more quickly and blaming the police.

One dead, 22 injured. But that’s not even a drop in the bucket compared to the death tolls in Baltimore and Chicago just this year alone. Background checks aren’t going to solve this. Enforcing the laws we already have on the books and getting illegal firearms out of the hands of criminals will.

But nobody seems to want to talk about that.

The victims don’t look like the children of NPR executives.

The community (Trenton, New Jersey – where strict gun laws ensure this sort of thing can’t happen, donchaknow) doesn’t look like Crocus Hill or Kenwood.

The violence isn’t telegenic enough to really manipulate people all that well.

And so I’m gonna guess most of you haven’t heard of the shooting.  I’d only caught a snippet somewhere – and it wasn’t on NPR.

Bruce Willis’s remake of Death Wish got panned. Flamed. Excoriated. Racism, sexism, gun-ism, failure to recycle, the works.

Now comes Peppermint, starring Jennifer Garner.

And what’s the theme, you ask?

“What do I want? I want justice,” Garner warns in the trailer’s opening seconds. From there, we see her spending quality time with her family before tragedy strikes. She retreats for a while, licking her wounds and turning herself into a living weapon.

Why? To take out the trash.

And the media the skinned Willis alive? Silent.

This is nothing new, of course; about ten years ago, Hollywood released a couple of movies where sympathetic characters went on vigilante sprees, where “sympathetic” meant suitably left of center; most noxious was Jodie Foster as an NPR host who went all Charles Bronson on her husband’s killer.

The lesson?

The only thing consistent about out culture’s misbegotten “elites” is ther hypocrisy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center loses a $3 million defamation suit:

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, has apologized for including the Quilliam Foundation, a counter-extremism group, and its founder, Maajid Nawaz, in its Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. “Mr. Nawaz and Quilliam have made valuable and important contributions to public discourse, including by promoting pluralism and condemning both anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism,” the SPLC wrote in a statement. The SPLC will also pay a $3.375 million settlement to Quilliam that will be used to fight “anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism,” according to a Quilliam press release.

But…what made the SPLC refer to them as a “hate group?”

“We were able to fight back against the Regressive Left and show them that moderate Muslims will not be silenced,” Nawaz said in the release.

Aaaah.  It all makes sense now.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Chicago PD needs to get guns off the streets of those neighborhoods.  You know what would get guns off the streets?  Stop-and-frisk.  Don’t even bother to arrest the people in possession – that raises all the Fourth Amendment defenses and exacerbates racial disparity in convictions – just take the guns from people who shouldn’t be carrying them, and auction the guns to lawful buyers to fund midnight basketball programs.  Who could possibly object to that?

Joe Doakes

No rational person.

But then, I’m tacitly repeating myself, here.

So why did Trump win the ’16 election?

Was it the Democrat party’s rocket-ride to the extreme left?

The “Elite” condescension toward the great American geographic, political and economic middle?

Donald Trump’s facility at seeing the above and appealing to people to whom it mattered?

Or was it simple crass vulgarity?

Wisconsin Democrats are picking “D”:

Democrats are convinced that Wisconsin is primed for a Trump-backlash-inspired “blue wave” come November, and potential Walker challengers have joined the race in droves. With so many bodies in the race, a fringe candidate could conceivably win the primary with 15 to 20 percent of the vote and move on to face the vulnerable Republican incumbent in November. And just as Candidate Trump used vulgarity, insults, and half-cooked media stunts to differentiate himself from his primary opponents two years ago, so, too, are Walker’s Democratic challengers in 2018.

And they are quite the cast of himbos:

Mike McCabe, a former “good government” activist who suggested he would rent the governor’s mansion out to travelers on Airbnb, began his campaign by promising to end Walker’s “golden-shower economics.” Businessman Andy Gronik, who received a settlement of more than $6 million in a lawsuit he filed claiming a house he had purchased had given him an inflammatory-bowel disorder, told a debate crowd that he couldn’t wait to “hit” Walker. And on the same rainy day Mahlon Mitchell dropped his scatological stylings on the transportation group, state school superintendent Tony Evers joined a group in Madison protesting cuts to the state’s university system and told the group Walker’s cuts were “bullsh**.”

And just watch – if they win, “being crude, crass and impolitic” will suddenly become a virtue among Dems.

If there is a favorite in the Democratic field, it is Evers, a buttoned-up 65-year-old former teacher who has won three statewide elections as school superintendent. Nearly a decade ago, Evers beat cancer after having his esophagus and part of his stomach removed; today, he can’t eat a full meal and has to sleep at a 45 degree angle. However, even though the avuncular Evers has appeared on three statewide ballots, he is still relatively unknown in areas outside heavily liberal Madison. One recent poll had Evers leading the primary field with a flaccid 20 percent, which may explain his sudden foray into campaigning’s dark arts. In one January interview, he referred to Walker as an “idiot,” and he recently told the state Democratic convention that he was “goddamn sick and tired” of Walker’s policies.

And just when you thought nothing could be…loonier than this past DFL convention..

Fathers Day greetings from the world’s social justice pimps:

I have seen at least three businesses lately that have signs or t-shirts in the window that boldly state: “The Future is Female,” probably placed there by someone (male or female) who thinks they are a good and altruistic person who doesn’t hate. But they are wrong. Advertising, whether it be in the Washington Post or a storefront window, that men are to be hated or excluded from the future of America is hate in its rawest form, plain and simple.

I have but five words for these social justice warriors who think that they are just speaking truth to power: “Hate Has No Home Here.” It never will; as long as you hate men and innocent boys in this country, you are the problem, not the solution. And the rest of us will treat you as such.

Y’know how you can tell those sort of contempt is catching on?  The market is reacting to it.  For thirty years, now, advertising for products and services largely bought by women have increasingly portrayed men as incompetent, bumbling overgrown children (inevitably and inexplicably married to gorgeous, accomplished women).  The market caters to things it sees people actually believing.

“But men do it too!”

Nah.  Look at ads for products catering to men – women may be portrayed as objects of juvenile desire, but the contempt just isn’t there.

The ads – like the signs – are the symptom.  The illness is “Feminism” as a politicla and social identity.

An armed citizen, whom police are calling a “Good Samaritan”, ended a shooting spree at a Walmart in Washington state.

If only we cared about our school children as much as we do about our Walmart customers.

Yaaaaawwwwwwwwwn.

Oh, whoops.  Didn’t see you there.  I was just dozing at the big news.

As opposed to a legal defense fund, I mean?

Because I’d love to donate.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

People who don’t understand Trump, don’t understand what he’s doing with Korea. There’s no written agreement. There’s no procedure for verification. We gave away too much and received too little. It’s a disaster!

Calm down. Trump is a real estate developer. This is standard operating procedure. Say anything, promise anything, to get the customer committed to the deal. After that, we hammer out the details. The final agreement may look nothing at all like the initial offer, but it’ll fly because we’re all committed to the deal.

Same technique as selling a used car. Go ahead, sit in it. Drive it around the block. Look at the great tread left on the tires. Feel the cushy seats. You look good in that car. You want it, don’t you? Why not, you deserve it. And the payments, so affordable. Can we do this? Sure, we can.

Trump took the first step at getting North and South committed to a deal, some deal, any deal, something to break the stalemate, something to take to their own people and claim as a victory. Hey Kim, maybe you’d like to own a hotel on the beach? Put your name up in lights? Sure, we can do that, as part of the deal. Ever eaten at McDonalds? Come on, every major city has a McDonalds. We’ve got to get your city into World Class, we’ve got to get you a McDonalds. Can we do this? Sure we can. All part of the deal . . . .

Give the man time to do his thing.

Joe Doakes

The left calls Trump “not presidential”.  And they’re not wrong.

But the big problem seems to be that he’s “not like a politician”.

Which can be both a feature and a bug, of course.

Join me from 1-3PM today on the NARN!

Today on the show:

• SchadenfreuDFL.
• Lt. Col Tony Shaffer on the realities of the North Korean summit.
• Prof. Richard Sander author of Moving Toward Integration
• Bill Doherty of “Better Angels”, on trying to bridge this nation’s social and ideological gap.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• FM107.5 in the West Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narnshow)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

The link to the book Moving Toward Integration by our guest Prof. Richard Sander (along with Yana Kucheva and Jonathan Zasloff).

And here’s the website for “Better Angels”, if you’d like to learn more, or even participate.

I’ve been pondering how to address this for a while – what it’s liek to be an actual conservative in the Trump era.

John Hawkins takes a run at it with the five werdest things about being a conservative Trump non-fan.

Here’s one that some of my liberal friends have a hard time wrapping their brains around:

I can understand Democrats writing off a conservative like me because even if Alex Jones is duking it out with Todd Akin one day, I still won’t vote for whoever the latest socialist is that they run. That being said, there are roughly 8 million Americans who voted for Obama AND Trump and the general attitude Democrats have toward them seems to be, “Rot in Hell with your orange god.” No political party can appeal to everyone, but it’s so strange to see a political party that treats millions of voters they are going to want support from in the next election like pariahs simply because they voted for the other side. This would be like an NBA team saying, “If you didn’t show up to support us at yesterday’s game, then we better never see you again! Oh, and if we catch you wearing our merch, we will MURDER YOU.”

It’s part and parcel of the Democrats becoming an extremist cult.

A friend of the blog writes:

Saw this on Twitter. Tweeted from someone living in San Francisco. But, retweeted by someone living in St Paul.

Funny thing- I think both cities have most of those things.
I doubt either the original poster or the retweeter choose to live near those places.  Just like public transit, this list seems like a Yes in somebody else’s backyard.

That’s the thing about creeping socialilsm; it’s always inflicted on someone else.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Two boys won the Connecticut state track meet.  The Girls track meet.  It’s “controversial.”  It shouldn’t be.

A human being having two X chromosomes is biologically Female, while a human having one each X and Y is biologically Male.  This is Sex, it’s science, it’s universally agreed to be true.

Over the last 5,000 years, human civilizations developed acceptable roles for members of the sexes.  Women raised children, men hunted and fought.  These were Gender Roles.  Until very recently, these were universally agreed to be sensible and appropriate.

The biological difference in chromosomes results in physical differences in reproductive organs, musculature, and hormones, Male and Female sexes.  Then societal difference results in differences in behavior, Masculine and Feminine.  Sex led to Gender but they are not identical and not interchangeable.  An individual biologically Female human may reject playing with dolls (training to raise children) preferring to roughhouse with boys (training for war) but being a Tomboy doesn’t change her from being a Girl.

All human attributes are distributed on a bell-shaped curve so yes, some women are stronger than some men; but at the competitive end of the curve, women simply cannot physically compete against men.

And everybody knows it.  That’s why there are two leagues, Men’s and Women’s.  That’s why Anika Sorenstam competing in the PGA was a publicity stunt.  That’s why John McEnroe was entirely correct to say Serena Williams is a great women’s tennis player but wouldn’t stand a chance against the top men’s tennis players.  She wouldn’t.  You can see the difference for yourself – watch Boy’s state championships in any sport, then watch the Girls’ championships in the same sport.  Boy champions are always stronger and faster than Girl champions.

Boys claiming to be pre-operative transgender Girls have been winning athletic contests in the Girls division for the last few years, in Alaska in 2016, in Connecticut last year, and two of them came in first and second in Connecticut this year.  They are defended by LGBTQ activists who point out transgender people have hard lives because of societal expectations on dress, behavior and even bathroom use.  Maybe so, but that doesn’t address the biological advantage of being born Male but competing against Females.  Defending against Biology using the defense of Societal Role is bait-and-switch.  People who refuse to acknowledge biology are science deniers.

If biological differences justify having two different leagues, then gender preference is irrelevant and those boys should go back to being losers in the Boys’ State meet.  Otherwise, if we let them compete against Girls, then there are no Girls’ sports anymore, there are only Boys’ sports – some won by boys who admit it, and some won by boys who pretend not to be.

Joe Doakes

I look for the quality of WNBA basketball to improve a lot in about a decade…

Posting is going to be a little light today.

What is it about Thursdays, lately?

It’s 2018.  Anyone can do anything they want…

…with the exception of stepping off the plantation in any way, if you’re black, Latino, gay or female.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Screenshot from this morning.

 

Tommy Robinson put in deadly peril for protesting Muslim child-rape gangs who sexually abused thousands of real girls; Congress about to ban child sex robots used by perverts who hurt no living person.  Protecting evil while punishing fantasy.  Insane.

Hard to know who to want to smack, some days.

False rape accuser headed to prison:

Last year a young woman from Long Island who was attending Sacred Heart University in Connecticut came to the police with a harrowing tale. Nikki Yovino told the authorities that two football players from the school had trapped her in the bathroom at a party they were attending and raped her. Police immediately began investigating the horrible crime and quickly identified the suspects. They claimed that the sex was consensual but the victim was adamant. Or at least she wasadamant until others came forward to testify that the football players were telling the truth.

Eventually, Yovino retracted her story and admitted that she had engaged in sex with the boys at the party willingly. Later she decided to make up the rape story to win the support and affection of a different boy she had wanted to date. Then, in a shocking turn of events which we rarely if ever see in such instances of false accusations, Yovino was charged with a crime over her lies. Now, following a very generous plea deal, she’s heading off to prison. (Legal Insurrection and the College Fix)

Swine like this deserve, and should get, exactly the same sentence as the rapists themselves.

The mayor of London has clearly solved all of their real problems:

If I lived in London, I would start by writing a biography of every woman that was stabbed in the past year, now that London’s violent crime rate has surpassed New York City’s for the first time in history.

Happy to help, Mayor Khan.

Lena Dunham on Twitter:

I’d honestly rather fall into one million manholes than have one single dude tell me to watch my step

— 💎 Lena Dunham 💎 (@lenadunham) June 8, 2018

Your wish is my command, Ms. Dunham. Blunder away.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’m skeptical of the present suicide media craze.

There were a couple of high-profile celebrity suicides.  Nobody knows why.  But the CDC used the occasion to rush out a study showing a massive rise in suicide rates, then used that study to justify demands for restrictions on “lethal means.”  Since both celebrities hanged themselves in hotels, about which nobody proposes to do anything, the CDC is engaging in politicized research again.  Its demand is just code for “gun control” based on a supposed crisis of suicide.

And is there actually a crisis?  I question the data set.  Notice that it ran from just before the real estate crash until the end of the Obama administration.  Everybody bought real estate to hop on the escalator of wealth – we were all going to get rich.  Then it crashed and millions of families lost their life savings.

Who commits suicide?  People who have lost hope.  People engulfed in despair.  And during those years, who were those people?  Middle-class, middle-aged White men in flyover states.  The people society insisted didn’t build anything, hadn’t earned any respect.  The people mocked in every commercial and television show as bumblers when they weren’t portrayed as evil.  The people society couldn’t wait to die so the world would be a better place.

Lost your home. Lost your job.  Wife was unfulfilled in the marriage so she took the kids and family court stripped you of access to your own kids.  The President scorns you as a bitter clinger.  The queen-apparent thinks you’re deplorable.  Immigrants are swarming into the country having more rights and benefits than you, who spent your entire life working to better this nation.  What’s to live for?

But then, Trump.

The economy has flipped.  The nation has jobs.  People are daring to have hope.   People are glimpsing a better world, one worth living in.

Do we still have a suicide crisis?  Or was that a temporary problem caused by Obama and his Liberal allies?  Maybe we’ve not only started to make America great again, maybe we’re making ourselves proud again, making life worth living again?  Now THAT would be an astonishing Presidential legacy.

Joe Doakes

The timing is awfully convenient…

…in exactly the same was as gun control addresses crime.

Not at all, but for the sinecure-mongering and virtue-trumpeting:

The study, led by the University of California, Irvine economist David Neumark and published by the business-backed Employment Policies Institute, finds that, over the course of decades, higher minimum wages don’t reduce poverty in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Rather, the analysis finds that a $1 increase in the minimum wage raises poverty rates and government dependency by about 3 percent.

The report also finds evidence that cash welfare fails to lower poverty.

To be fair, none of them were intended to do any such thing.

If you look at the effects of minimum wage hikes on communities of color and low income, you’d almost think they were intended to be racist.

And it’d be hard to prove you wrong:

Take, for instance, the minimum wage. The founding fathers of progressivism at the University of Wisconsin, but also such figures as Sidney Webb, saw the discriminatory aspects of the minimum wage as among its chief selling points. “Of all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites,” Webb said of the “unemployables,” “the most ruinous to the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners.” E. A. Ross, the extremely influential progressive intellectual and author of the “race suicide” thesis (who was particularly bigoted against Chinese labor), explained the benefits of a minimum wage pithily: “The Coolie cannot outdo the American, but he can underlive him.” In other words, if you force employers to only pay a white man’s wages, he will only employ white men. Royal Meeker, a Princeton economist and adviser to Woodrow Wilson, explained: “Better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.”

Coates doesn’t mention the words “liberal” or “progressive” or “conservative. His indictment is aimed squarely at “America.” And as a collective matter, America surely deserves blame for the mistreatment of African Americans in the past. But it’s also worth noting that the more immediate authors of the “half-assed social contract” Coates rightly denounces are today counted as champions of the progressive movement.

As in all other things progressive – it’s better to appear to be doing good than to actually do good.