There’s a bit of a humanitarian crisis in Burma (the wonk class now call it “Myanmar”, but nobody cares, because it’s freaking Burma); the majority Buddhist population is carrying out ethnic cleansing against a small Muslim minority, with the blessing of the military (who worry about a Muslim population on the border with majority-Islamic Bangladesh).

And it’s ugly:

(Human rights activist Maung Zarni): Simply put, the military in Burma today uses what the Nazis used in the 1930s – that they have misframed the Rohingyas the way the Nazis blamed the Jewish people for everything that was wrong with the society, all the frustration and anger. So I think the military has cleverly diverted public frustration towards the Rohingya, who are completely unarmed and helpless. And they’ve been sitting ducks for the last 40 years.

More disarmed people at the mercy of their masters.   But I digress.

There are a couple of “unlikely” suspects in this crime against humanity, too.  Keep this one in mind when your dippy nephew says he’s experimenting with Buddhism because of its’ universal love for humanity:

ZARNI: Well, there is no someone else inside the country. Even Buddhist monks justify openly to the military, to the public that killing the nonbelievers, non-Buddhists, the Rohingyas does not amount to bad karma. It is not a crime.

And – “Surprisingly”, if you have not completely given into cynicism about the Mainstream Media’s take on the world – this suspect:

(NPR talking voice Kelly McEvers): And human rights groups have said that Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, is part of the problem here. This is a woman who of course won the Nobel Peace Prize. She’s considered a champion of human rights. Yet she will not say that what’s happening to the Rohingya is ethnic cleansing. Why? Why is she not getting more involved in their case?

ZARNI: Well, you know, I’ve known her personally, and I’ve supported her for the first 15 years of my activism. And simply put, she is anti-Muslim races. She is Islamophobe. I mean, she is a big part of the problem.

Why, it’s almost as if the Nobel Peace Prize is of no value…

The whole thing is worth a read.

Any…day…now:

That’ be Al Franken  – then an Air America host – and Leanne Tweeden, a radio newswoman from Los Angeles.

Expect to see breaking news that Arne Carlson called a page “toots”, combined with demands that he resign, any moment here…

QUESTION:  Any bets on whether all the DFLers who were saying “Always trust accusers!” last month will be humming a different tune this week?

UPDATE:  Oh.

We must address sexual harassment. Reforming arbitration laws will ensure survivors can seek justice in court. https://t.co/Rmuz4gnie7

— Sen. Al Franken (@SenFranken) October 11, 2017

Indeed.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Movie weddings have a scene where the minister says “If anyone knows a reason why these people should not be married, speak now or forever hold your peace.”  Everybody gasps as a pregnant blonde stands up saying “Wait . . . you’re marrying him?  I’m carrying his baby!”  The bride bursts into tears and the father of the bride demands: “Where’s my shotgun?”

I always thought it was a dumb scene.  What if the blonde is mistaken?  Or lying?  Or a paid actress hired by a groomsman as a practical joke?  Too bad – the wedding is off, the groom is dead and Dad is going to prison.  If there was a good reason to cancel the wedding, it should have been brought up long before we were watching them stand at the altar.

The real point?:

That’s the main reason I dislike what’s happening to Roy Moore.  He might be a perv but the timing is so obviously a political dirty trick that I don’t even care if he is.  Democrats and Establishment RINOs should have brought it up long ago.  By lying in wait to ambush him, they’ve forfeit the right to demand my moral indignation.

Joe Doakes

Same with the DFL’s charges against Tony Cornish.  They may or may not have been real – quite a number of women at the Capitol

…of this interminable excrescence of self indulgence is participating in exercise to see how badly he can make me loathe him, I will say he did a spectacular job.

As we head towards another round of off year elections – including an awful lot of Democrat-controlled cities – a piece of re-usable narrative that is rapidly becoming a hallmark of the Trump age is starting to break out again; the notion that voting – or more precisely, “expecting your vote to affect anything”-  is “irrational”.– where “irrational” is defined as “your vote may not be the single vote that decides the election.

An expectation that seems, itself, a tad irrational.

Bear with me, here.

It popped up over the weekend before last on Minnesota public radio, on NPR’s syndicated “New Yorker Radio Hour”

Big Left has thrown out that particular notion in a couple of election cycles now – the idea of that voting is irrational and to the point of bizarre because one single, solitary vote it’s not the one that will determine the election. Which, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, leads to the supremely undemocratic idea that the only vote that doesn’t matter it’s the one that negates all other folks – the “vote” to overthrow democracy, consent and elections, and seize power for its oneself. Which, if you’re cynical – also supremely realistic – about Big Left, which seem to be their goal..

So far, the narrative seems to be about trying to deflect away from the idea of illegal voting. Especially if it illegal immigrants voting.

The narrative goes like this; given the irrationality of a voting, why would one risk capture, prosecution, conviction and deportation over a vote that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t matter at all.

(Of course, it’s nearly impossible to convict anyone of illegal voting – and in the cities where illegal voting is most likely, illegal immigration is a pretty safe bet as well.

Which speaks to my theory – which is almost a Berg Law, I’ll have you know – that Big Left doesn’t even bother trying to tell the truth to its own people; the gobble up any crap that I slept in front of them. Because we all know it’s almost impossible to get arrested for voter fraud; it’s almost an unprosecutable crime, especially in any “progressive” – run jurisdiction – like Minnesota.

So there’s no need to tell all of those lavishly funded nonprofits that are busy getting out the vote, pushing to allow eagle illegal immigrants the right to vote, and to clear allA chance to win for us election integrity as “racist”. The people who run Big Left don’t believe it either.

It’s just aimed at people who take democracy, the franchise, and the notion of “government by the consent of the governed” seriously.

Glad we were able to settle that..

If you say “we don’t *dare* judge all Muslims by the activities of a few terrorists” [1], but you consider the NRA a “terrorist organization” due to the activities of “people” whose acts the NRA has done more than most to combat? I’m not going to call you irrational and illogical.
I don’t have to.
It’s a self-evident fact that doesn’t need me to state it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever wondered if the left is going to spin itself into insensibility with its recursive virtue-parsing?

The answer is very very yes.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Northam beat Gillespie for governor of Virginia.  The New York Times notes it was a racially charged campaign and that Gillespie dragged in the Confederacy.  Not one single word about the Confederate pick-up ad run for Northam.  Masterful job of projection – accusing Republicans of doing something they’re not doing, while completely ignoring  Democrats who actually are doing it.
Joe Doakes

Almost worth a new corollary to Berg’s Seventh Law.

Inflation on some key commodities over the past two decades:

Things with fairly inelastic demand that have been around forever – food and cars and the like – held fairly steady.

Technology in unregulated areas, driven by the free market’s desire to help people keep up with the technological joneses? In free fall (and that’s not even counting price per unit of performance).

Prices in areas heavily regulated by and/or dependent on government? Skyrocketing.

Questions?

“The sexual revolution morphed into the French revolution so slowly, I hardly even noticed.”

— Ed Driscoll (on Hollywood in the Weinstein era)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Venezuela has national health care, guaranteed free to all citizens.  Free that is, if you can get any.  The hospitals have no medicine, no money, no beds available.

But if you could get treatment, it would be free.  So that’s way better than our system in the US, right?  We should change to their system at once, right?

Joe Doakes

Give ’em time.

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Now. [2]

Read the rest of this entry »

I can not be the only one to have noted the jarring irony of the LA Times’ piece, almost two weeks ago, warning against gutting freedom over ugly, but rare, outrages – can I?

The gruesome terror attack that left eight people dead on a New York City bicycle path Tuesday afternoon spotlighted a troubling reality: Society cannot safeguard itself against every dangerous eventuality.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of people who will pretend that it can — and who will tell you they know how to do it. Already, those who oppose immigration are making hay out of the fact that the attack’s perpetrator entered the country seven years ago through what’s known as the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program. And President Trump pushed the discussion further into dangerous ground Wednesday when he seemed to urge that safeguards in the legal system be undercut in the name of swift vengeance. “We need quick justice and we need strong justice — much quicker and much stronger than we have right now,” Trump said.

The president’s insistence that the justice system in this country is a “joke” and a “laughingstock” built on political correctness is worrisome, given his authoritarian tendencies. The idea that constitutional protections should be gutted because Trump is upset is both legally and morally absurd.

That’s when the weapon is a car.

I’m wondering if there isn’t something about leftism that makes it impossible for people to detect logical inconsistency or irony.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Every day, new claims of sexual harassment against powerful men. Some are admitted and therefore true. Some are denied and may be true, may not be. All are possible only because powerful men spent time alone with women not their wives. Which brings us back to Vice President Mike Pence, who got a ton of grief for practicing the defensive policies necessary to avoid false claims of sexual harassment and avoid the temptation to engage in it. I assume an apology will shortly be forthcoming.

Joe Doakes

Of course it will be…

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

Today on the show:

• Sexual Harassment and Politics
• Gun control’s latest:  “Shut up”, they explained.

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
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
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• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
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Join us!

After about 32 years of trying to write music, a year of recording stuff, and a few months of frantic planning, it’s here:  the debut (and who knows, likely final) album by my band, The Supreme Soviet of Love.

See Red goes onsale today at your favorite music online music retailer:

The album includes a few songs that date back to the eighties – “Fourth of July”, “Chicago” and “Great Northern Avenue” are songs I used to play with bands back at the Seventh Street Entry way back when.

Others – “The Wonders Each New Day Brings”, “Almost Monday” and “Snake”, among others – are things I wrote in the past year, largely to prove to myself that the whole thing wasn’t just a nostalgia exercise.

And a couple others – “Shotgun”, “The Ugly LIghts” – split the difference; they’re lyrical reboots of ideas that’ve been knocking around my head for years, sometimes decades.

Anyway – the album is on sales as of today:

• iTunes
• Amazon Music  
• CDBaby (for CDs or downloads)

Coming soon (like, probably today) on:

• iHeart Radio
• YouTube Music
• Spotify
• Pandora

And hey – it’s priced to move!

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind y’all one last time:

Tomorrow (Saturday) Night:  Elephant in the Room (rock and roll covers, ’50s-’90s) at the Sundance in Maple Grove

8-12PM.  No cover.

Sunday Night:  Album Release Party; The Supreme Soviet of Love at O‘Gara’s in Saint Paul

5-9PM:  $5 cover.

Hope to see you there!

Twenty-odd years ago, when Minnesota and the nation were in the midst of the worst wave of violent crime since the Depression, quite a few jurisdictions – working with groups like the NRA – actually did something useful; they passed a raft of laws enhancing the penalties for using a gun in a crime.

The laws have had an effect; they are certainly part of the reason violent and gun crime dropped 50% in 20 years.

But in Minnesota, we have a congenital problem; our metro area legislators, courts and other jurisdictions just don’t like sentencing people.   It was said that three consecutive Ramsey County attorneys – Tom Foley, Sue Gaertner and John Choi – between them never once actually used those sentence enhancements, dealing them away on plea bargains every single time they had the opportunity.

And the pattern continues,

Earlier this year, we featured the story of a Good Guy with a Gun – an employee at a cell phone store who shot a robber with his permitted handgun.   The robber – once he got out of the hospitals – drew a raft of charges.   His accomplice should have as well.

Earlier this week, what do you suppose happened?

Charges have been dropped against a 32-year-old man who was a suspect in connection to an armed robbery at a Verizon Wireless retailer in Inver Grove Heights, according to court records.

Records show Jamaal Marquie had three charges dropped, including aggravated first-degree robbery, possession of a firearm by an ineligible person and possession of a firearm with a serial number removed.

Nothing new here; we’ve previously encountered metro-area prosecutors bending over backwards to avoid using enhanced gun sentencing.

Is it laziness?  Sloth?  Or not wanting to confirm the NRA’s line for it?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Why do Liberals hate Christ?

 

A couple of days before Jesus was crucified, he was in the town of Bethany visiting the home of Simon the Leper.  A woman dabbed expensive perfume on Him causing some of the disciples to object:  “Why has it been wasted?  We could have sold it to raise money for the poor.”  Jesus rebuked them, saying: “Leave her alone.  You’ll always have poor people, you can help them whenever you like; but I won’t always be with you.”

 

We’ll always have poor people?  Liberals hate that idea.  It’s intolerable!  We must eliminate poor people.  It doesn’t matter why they’re poor – the shiftless drunkard puking on his own shoes is just as deserving as his barefoot little girl in the torn dress, looking up with big brown eyes.  Jesus was wrong!  Jesus was a quitter!  We refuse to accept His reality.  God may have made the world in His image but we will remake the world in our image and there will be no income inequality, no reward for perseverance and no punishment for indolence, only perfect equality in all things.

 

Heinlein’s hinted at this in “Stranger in a Strange Land,” when the Man from Mars learns about religion and happily proclaims: “Thou art God. I am God.  All that groks is God.”  Well, Hell, if we’re all God, then we have a perfect right to alter creation, to demand perfection.  Forget the Garden of Eden, we can have paradise right here on Earth.  We’re entitled to it.  We are God.

 

That’s why Liberals hate Christ.  They hate having competition.

 

Joe Doakes

Katha Pollitt is sort of a gender affirmative action project; Big Leftymedia has Jonathan Chait, so the need a female version (pardon the redundancy).

She never disappoints, which is another way of saying if you have any hope that our coastal elite can be salvaged, she disappoints intensely.

In this case, Pollitt “writes” about the rage that’s been buiding in her since…well, that day last November:

Unlike my friend’s, my life has changed a lot in the year since Trump was elected. Not materially, except for the fact that my stepson and daughter-in-law moved to Canada partly because, as non-citizens, they worried for their futures here in the US.

Er, right.  That’s why they moved.  Not to be rid of their ninny mother in law. Nosirreebob.

I mean psychologically. I sometimes feel like I’m a different person now. I’m fidgety and irritable and have trouble concentrating.

I have little doubt that the affliction is real; she hands out straight lines like after-dinner mints; either she’s so addled by her rage, or so secure in never being challenged by her audience:

My work seems trivial: Given what we are facing, what difference does one more Nation column make? I might as well be an ancient Egyptian scribe logging production figures for cat mummies.

Katha:  your work is trivial.  Even when your guy was in power, you were a joyless scold who served only to fluff your social class’s sense of self-importance.

Today, you are the same thing, plus depression born of unrequited entitlement.  Mazel tov.

In the old days, the days before Trump, it bothered me that so many people loved things I thought were stupid. Now I just think, Go ahead, enjoy yourself. Maybe your Batman DVDs will comfort you when we’re wandering around in the ashen hellscape of whatever apocalypse Trump will bring down upon us.

Katha:  Sylvia Plath called.  She told you to buck up and quit being such a downer.

But the main difference is that I hate people now. Well, not all people, of course. Just people who voted for Trump.

Of course you hate people “now”, Katha.

People who do their own “research” on the Internet and discover there that President Obama is a Muslim and Michelle Obama is a man. People who use the n-word and can’t even spell it right, because—have you noticed?—Trump supporters can’t spell. Well-off people who only care about lowering their taxes. People who said they couldn’t vote for Hillary because of her emails. Excuse me, sir or madam, can you explain to me what an email server even is?

The real question, Katha, is can you?

No.  You can’t.

If you want to see example 25,695 on why Trump/Pence are going to win re-election in 2020, look no further.

…on when Donna Brazile “commits suicide”.

Go.

To:  The Mainstream Media, and the cops and prosecutors who are your sources
From:  Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant
Re:  World’s Smallest Violin

Dear Cops, Prosecutors and their Media mouthpieces,

Last week, a shooter at a WalMart in the Denver area killed three people.

Colorado being a shall-issue state, and WalMart being an almost-stereotypical hangout for Real Americans [1], a number of people reacted admirably, courageously and appropriately, by drawing their legal firearms and getting ready to engage.

And that just annoys all of you, doesn’t it?

But those who drew weapons during the shootings ultimately delayed the investigation as authorities pored over surveillance videotape trying to identify the assailant who killed three people, police said Thursday.

Let me put this as delicately as it deserves to be put;  f**k you, and your whining about being forced to do your jobs because people had the unmitigated gall to defend themselves.  And the media for carrying this whining as if it’s news.

If someone hears shooting in the room they’re in, and their first thought is “I hope my actions don’t impede the police investigating why I am dead”, rather than defending your life, your family and your community (whether by fight or flight, and I’ll never judge either one), then they are mentally ill; if you think that should be the normal response, then you’re a lot worse.

I used to wonder why the news media and officialdom wondered why people these days trust them less than used car dealers.  Now, I curse their gall for wasting my time asking why they wonder.

[1] Defined, in this case, as “people who take all ten amendments of the Bill of Rights seriously, jointly and severally.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Texas church shooter was an escaped mental patient so he was ineligible to buy a gun.  Really?  One reporter writes the story, every news outlet repeats it using exactly the same words: “Involuntary commitment to a mental institution would have been grounds to deny him . . . .”  Yes, it would have been, if that’s what had happened.  Was it?

Here’s the federal form to buy a gun.  Question 11f is the relevant question.  The instructions on the following page make clear that visiting a mental health institution, or working in one, or having a relative in one, or even being held in one pending trial, is NOT a disqualifying event.  There must be an adjudication by a court that a person suffers from mental illness and is a danger to himself or others.  “Adjudication” means a hearing before a judge with an opportunity to present witnesses in your own defense – a competency hearing.  At this point, I see no evidence that happened to this guy.

Reporters breathlessly scooping each other; commentators expounding upon the implications of false premises; politicians waving the bloody shirt as provocation; and not one of them actually knows what they’re talking about.  No wonder our national conversation on such a serious topic is indistinguishable from white noise.

Joe Doakes

And half the electorate thinks that the media is putting out intelligent, balanced “journalism”.

It’s pathetic.

Waaaay back last summer, when I  planned to release a Supreme Soviet of Love album, I picked a date:  November 12.  A Sunday night.  Few conflicts, start and finish times early enough to get everyone home for the evenings news – perfect!

My other band, “Elephant in the Room”, after taking taking a few months off to learn new material and change lineup, on the other hand, spent most of the year looking for a gig.

Any gig.

So between scheduleing a Supreme Soviet of Love gig for November 12 way back in July, and today, what happened?

Of course Elephant in the Room landed a gig for November 11.

So talk about this weekend!.

Saturday, November 11 – the Sundance in Maple Grove

Elephant in the Room will be playing at the Sundance in Maple Grove from 8 to midnight.  

EITR does classic rock covers from the 1950s through the 1990s – a grab bag of Elvis, the Kinks, Ian Hunter, the Cars, Bad Company, the Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Eagles, Steve Miller, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, Johnny Cash…

…well, pretty much anything that grabs you from that entire forty year period.

And the Sundance – which I just visited for the first time last weekend – is a nice place; bowling, golf (probably not much of that ’til spring), good pizza, decent beer selection, “Steak Night” on Saturdays ’til 8PM (just $10!), and, of course, live entertainment.  That’d be us, of course.  No cover that I”m aware of, which makes it even nicer.

It feels like it’s way out there – but it’s actually super easy to get to:

It should be a fun night and a fun gig.

Hope you can make it!

Sunday, November 12 – O’Gara’s in Saint Paul

This gets complicated, so stick with me, here:

“The Supreme Soviet of Love” will be having the album release party for its first (and wjho knows, maybe only) album, See Red this coming Sunday at O’Gara’s.

See Red includes a bunch of songs – a couple of them going back to the 1980s (we’ve encountered some of them here), and a whole lot more that I wrote in the past year just to prove to myself that the whole thing wasn’t a nostalgia exercise.

Who knows – it may have been both.  I don’t know.  And I don’t care!

The Supreme Soviet of Love will go onstage at 8PM, and come hell or high water we’ll be out of there by 9PM;  you’ll be home in plenty of time for the 10PM evening news, or the 10PM rerun of Walking Dead if that’s what you prefer.

There’s a $5 cover – 100% of which goes to pay the rest of the band.  Me?  I’m hoping to sell CDs (and they’ll be on sale there, as well as available for download on iTunes, Amazon or wherever you like to get your music from.

And by the way, the opening act, going on stage at 6:30ish, will be…

…Elephant in the Room.  Yep.  I’ll be opening for myself.    That’s one way to save money!

I’ll be hanging out after loadout until they kick me out of there, for anyone who wants to talk politics, music, beer, food, or whatever you got.

So I hope, in an ideal world, you can make both shows; the Sundance could become a regular gig if we draw a lot of people, and of course the album release party has been on my bucket list since Ronald Reagan was president.

Either one would be great, though!

Melvin Carter won a slight majority of first-round ballots in the election for mayor of Saint Paul last night.

A long-time friend of this blog, who is a resident of Saint Paul, writes:

“White privilege elects next St Paul mayor”

That’s a headline that is accurate, but we won’t see. From what I know of Carter, and I know people who worked closely with him in his role of council member, he didn’t do a lot for his constituents. Black families in Frogtown felt disappointed by him, told his aide that they wouldn’t even vote for him in the special election when Carter left his council seat.

When he was on the council, Carter had a reputation for yelling “Off what” when Kathy Lantry – the then-president of the City Council – said “Jump”.  He wasn’t what you’d call a leader – which, when you’re dealing with DFL politics, isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But it is what the DFL establishment wants in a city with a nominally strong-ish mayor system.

But, lots of white people supported Carter. They seemed to hand pick him as the token candidate of color who could represent those people in St Paul. They hand picked him as the candidate of color who would help bring whites and blacks together. “See? We are so progressive, we elected a black candidate for you. One whose father was a cop. Doesn’t that help with all your recent problems?”

There are many problems with that logic. Is this the candidate that Black people wanted? St Paul Black Lives Matter supported Pat Harris.

To be fair, they are surveys that show less than a third of African-Americans approve of BLM.

But the correspondent is right about the institutional virtue-signaling among honkey progressives that’s accompanied Carter’s election.  On a Saint Paul politics forum, one writer – a white woman with impeccable “progressive” credentials – wrote “I had personal friends who are Latino, Asian, Black, and White, all of whom voted for Melvin Carter”.

Can you imagine the howling if a white, Republican male had written “some of my best friends are minorities and voted for the minority?”

But, from what I know of Carter, he will look to the White people and ask, what do you want me to do? He will ask Chris Coleman to leave a check list so Carter can continue down the same path. Nothing that will help people in poverty in the city, though Carter will probably keep them in their place like Chris Coleman did. Which will help the Whites who elected him feel good about their decision.

It’s not that any of the candidates really had much different opinions, but at least some of them had independent thought and had the appearance of being able to make a decision based on reality versus the fantasy that all is well if we just declare the city to be liveable.

The PR bubble enveloping Saint Paul’s political class is impermeable to reality, reason and fact.

Of course, I have my own fantasy world. I keep thinking that at some point, the city will be degraded enough that a sensible, conservative candidate will bring out the angry voters in droves. And that a sensible conservative candidate will get fair media coverage so that those angry voters will be aware of the candidate.

I think that’s really the only hope for both cities.  it’s not a completely demented fantasy; it happend in NYC in the eighties with Giuliani (yes, he was a conservative, at least on money and crime), and in Jersey City in 1991 with Brett Schundler.

But like any mid-level addict, Saint Paul has a ways to fall before it hits bottom, yet.

Details are sparse as this is written, but it seems as if a citizen with a carry permit shot a would-be robber in downtown Saint Paul last night :

The shooting happened during an attempted robbery at Wacouta St and 5th St E in St. Paul just before 8 p.m.

Lindsers say the would-be robbery victim happened to be a conceal carry permit holder and shot him. He received non-life threatening injuries.

Was it a good shoot?  Well, if it was, we likely won’t hear any more about it.

Fingers crossed.