LIBERAL:  “Why do you conservatives argue about ‘slippery slopes’ so much?”

CONSERVATIVE:  “Because some issues are, indeed, slippery slopes:

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

If you’re starting to wonder if every American life spent saving Europe from totalitarianism was wasted, I really don’t have the energy to argue the point.

But only barely.

Being of mostly Caucasian descent makes me a beneficiary of “white privilege”. So I’m told.

However, the terms of that “privilege” are entirely defined by those who purportedly don’t have it; indeed, we are told as people who “have” the “privilege” that we can’t possibly understand it.

Apparently we benefit from something we can not only sense or define ourselves, but can not describe.  Because privilege.

If can neither sense it nor know what it is, because of our privilege, how are we supposed to deal with it (other, of course, than shut up and contribute to Nekima Levyi-Pounds, of course)?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

New York Times headline: Republicans are worried White House disarray undermines Trump.  But read the article and you find Republicans are placing the blame squarely on Congress where it belongs, except John Kasich who hates Trump and a lobbyist for immigration amnesty who hates Trump’s immigration stance.  The rest of us still aren’t tired of all the winning, we wish the rest of the GOP would get their act together and start winning some, too.

Fake headline.

Joe Doakes

The conservative activists who – correctly – ask us to reject Triump on the basis of principle would do well to present a GOP alternative that practices ’em too.

I caught the movie Dunkirk the Saturday before last.

I’ll be reviewing it in a separate piece later this week or early next.

In the meantime – this “Feminist” review of the movie is enough to make you wonder if we really saved western civilization at the end of WW2, or merely delayed its demise.  It’s from “Marie Claire”, and it’s as bad as you might expect. 

One extracted bit of foul written effluvia – by no means the worst:

But my main issue with Dunkirk is that it’s so clearly designed for men to man-out over. And look, it’s not like I need every movie to have “strong female leads.” Wonder Woman can probably tide me over for at least a year, and I understand that this war was dominated by brave male soldiers. I get that. But the packaging of the film, the general vibe, and the tenor of the people applauding it just screams “men-only”—and specifically seems to cater to a certain type of very pretentious man who would love nothing more than to explain to me why I’m wrong about not liking it. If this movie were a dating profile pic, it would be a swole guy at the gym who also goes to Harvard. If it was a drink it would be Stumptown coffee. If it was one of your friends, it would be the one who starts his sentences with “I get what you’re saying, but…”

The “writer” – one Mehera Bonner – is so tied to pop-culture cliches, I was tempted to think the whole thing was a McSweeneys level parody of “feminist” writing.  Indeed, the title suggests “parody” with all the subtlety of a “Real Housewives” makeover: “I Think ‘Dunkirk’ Was Mediocre at Best, and It’s Not Because I’m Some Naive Woman Who Doesn’t Get It”

If that’s not parody, Ms. Bonner, then yes – your are precisely a naive, cossetted, hot-house flower “feminist” who does not, in fact, “get it”.

Kyle Smith at NRO simultaneously gives Bonner more respect than she deserves, and savages her “writing” even more brutally:

Feminists have a habit of obsessively dividing the world into teams — us, them. Ideas and even facts get considered in the light of whether they are good for Team Woman or not. Instead of seeing men and women as close collaborators in the human project, feminists often suppose that the sexes are rivals, opponents. This is sheer tribalism. Bonner looks at Dunkirk and is irritated that men like the film. She sees it as a celebration of manly courage and bravado, or at least manly endurance and grit, and this repulses her. Feminism means constant maintenance of an imaginary set of scales, and she fears Dunkirk adds weight to the masculine side, tipping the culture away from women. If Dunkirk — “Christopher Nolan’s new directorial gift to men,” she calls it — shows men at their best, it must therefore be bad for women.

There’s a much larger column involved here.

Saint Paul representative and attorney general candidate John Lesch has been given a $25,000 fine for irregularities in handling his campaign finances.  One little smidgen of emphasis is added:

After working with Lesch, his treasurers — one of whom is the representative’s wife — and investigating the situation for more than three years, the campaign finance board fined the lawmaker $25,000 for the violations.

Incumbent Legislator John Lesch, DFL, has been 66B’s rep. at the capitol for ten years. Lesch is challenged this election season by Republican candidate Ben Blomgren.
The board found that Lesch generally transferred money from his campaign account to his personal account at times when there otherwise would have been “insufficient funds” without the campaign cash.

“Rep. Lesch’s immediate need for resources in per personal accounts at or close to the time of the unexplained transfers further supports the Board’s conclusion hat the transfers were for personal use,” the campaign finance board’s report says.

The emphasized “DFL” reference?  It wasn’t in the original story.

Imagine that.

2/3 of Ameirca’s firearm fatalities involve suicide.

Half of America’s suicides involve firearms.

Suicide is generally a matter of available means – and so gun suicides tend to be concentrated in rural areas.  The victims are generally older, frequently socially isolated, often depressed, frequently ill.

In short, they’re the sort of people a lot of coastal progressives want to see killing themselves off.

But for people with working senses of humanity, regardless of politics, suicide prevention is an important thing.

A study has shown that suicide prevention presented in a way that respects gun owners’ beliefs, values, worldview and culture is much more effective at getting across to people than – this  may come as a shock – studies that insult the audience and assault their beliefs.

Which almost seems to strike the researchers as a surprise:

“There is robust knowledge and wisdom about solutions to gun violence which exists within communities that have high levels of gun ownership and gun violence,” Marino said. “Our findings firmly assert that the solutions to gun violence in America might be best explored by linking scientific investigations with community knowledge.”

Hard to believe, isn’t it?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Senator Amy Klobuchar is withholding a blue slip to block the Senate from taking up consideration of President Trump’s nomination of Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras to the 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Why?

Yes, yes, Class Clown Al Franken is withholding his too, but we all know he’s a big, fat idiot.  Nobody cares what he does.

But Amy was Hennepin County Attorney, she knows prominent Minnesota lawyers including some on her side of the aisle who would approve of Stras, she has a better reputation for being sensible than her ‘colleague.’ So what’s her excuse?

Joe Doakes

Following orders.

I’ve been seeing it all over the place; “Progressives” objecting to President Trump’s new policy on transgender servicepeople by claiming that there is a veritable swarm of transgender servicepeople.  One study that ban opponents are bruiting about, from UCLA (or, rather, from a GLBT group whose data a UCLA GLBT-law focus group accepted – claims that there are as  many as 15,500 transgendered people in the armed forces today.

Let’s think about that for a moment.  15,000 people out of 2.2 million – the number of currently-serving people in the military – comes out to roughly 7/10 of a percent, or 7 out of every 1,000 – roughly one out of every 140- people.

That means in every Army and Marine rifle company, there’s a transgendered, er, rifleperson.

In every flying squadron in the Air Force, Navy and Marines, that’s a couple of transgender people.

That’s 3-4 on every SEAL team, 2-3 in every Ranger battalion, and 12-15 in every US Special Forces (“Green Beret”) group.

That’s one on every submarine, and one or two on every Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, and 35 on every aircraft carrier.

That’s about 160 at the Pentagon – and right around 1,500 at Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Hood and Fort Lewis – each.

It’s a rate of transgender dysphoria that means that there are fully a quarter as many transgender people as there are gays.

I dunno.  It seems like…an overestimate.

To:  Betsy Hodges, Mayor, Minneapolis
From:  Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re:  Problem-Solving

Your Highness,

This is a problem that calls for decisive action.  Like banning plastic bags, building “green roofs” and banning idling cars.

I know we can count on you.

That is all.

Guy writes to Village Voice advice columnist “Andrew W.K” complaining his father is a “right wing a****le”.

Mr W., K’ answer is both the last thing I expected and one of the  best I’ve ever seen, and worth reading in its entirety.

One of several potential pullquotes:

When we lump people into groups, quickly label them, and assume we know everything about them and their life based on a perceived world view, how they look, where they come from, etc., we are not behaving as full human beings. When we truly believe that some people are monsters, that they fundamentally are less human than we are, and that they deserve to have less than we do, we ourselves become the monsters. When we allow our emotions to be hypnotized by the excitement of petty bickering about seemingly important topics, we drift further and further away from the fragile and crucial human bond holding everything together. When we anticipate with ferocious glee the next chance we have to prove someone “wrong” and ourselves “right,” all the while disregarding the vast complexity of almost every subject — not to mention the universe as a whole — we are reducing the beauty and magic of life to a “side” or a “type,” or worst of all, an “answer.” This is the power of politics at it’s most sinister.

Everyone on all sides of “the divide” could stand to absorb a bit of it, in spirit anyway.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Canadian Mormon convicted of polygamy, faces 5 years in prison.  Isn’t having 25 wives punishment enough?

 

It’s Canada, so American law doesn’t apply; but I wonder how this case would come out using the principles of law explained by Justice Kennedy in the gay marriage decision, Obergefell v. Hodges.  I’ve excerpted his analysis, changing ‘gay’ to ‘plural.’

 

“The first principle is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.  The second is that the right to marry is fundamental because it supports a union unlike any other in its importance to committed individuals.  The third principle is marriage protects children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.  Finally, the nation’s traditions make clear that marriage is a keystone of the nation’s social order.

 

The interlocking nature of these constitutional safeguards means a law against plural marriage abridges the central precepts of equality.  The marriage laws at issue are in essence unequal: plural marriage partners are denied benefits afforded to dual marriage partners and are barred from exercising a fundamental right.  Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial works a grave and continuing harm, serving to disrespect and subordinate [religions that celebrate polygamy such as Mormons and Muslims].”

 

Seems to me that the ‘legal reasoning’ adopted by the Supreme Court in striking down all laws preventing gay marriage, apply with equal vigor to striking down all laws preventing plural marriage.

 

Aside from the court precedent, I object to this case as a violation of sound societal organizational principles.

 

The prohibition on polygamy stands in mocking contrast to the reality that the same guy can have sex with all those women and conceive all those kids out of wedlock and, under the modern welfare system, the state will pick up the tab for every kid and the baby mommas too.  The anti-polygamy law doesn’t stop fornication, adultery or bastardy; it spreads the cost of those societal ills across all of society.

 

So on the one hand, we can have the father donating seed to 25 baby mommas while taking zero responsibility for the kids or the breeders, and the state will provide for all of them and that’s perfectly acceptable to Liberals.  It’s his right.

 

Or we can have the man who, under the tenets of his sincerely held religious belief, is allowed to marry as many women and have as many kids as he can support; but he has a moral and binding obligation, enforced by his peers and answerable to God, to actually support all of them.

 

As a taxpayer, I find Option B more appealing.

 

Joe Doakes

Wait – moral obligations are binding?

To:  “David Smalley”
From:  Mitch Berg, irascible peasant
Re:  Your article on, ahem, “Patheos”.

Mr. Smalley,

I”m not going to bother dispensing with the bulk of your “seminar caller”-stule, utterly and intensely illogical assault on “gun culture”.

But there is one line that I want to call out, by way of accelerating its demise from conversations among the smart people.  It’s this oldie-but-goodie:

So even today, with the 2nd Amendment in full effect, we don’t have the rights to be “armed as well as our government.”
Secondly, what if you were? I could hand you 50 M-16s, give you 1000 illegal bombs, steal you a couple of tanks, and smuggle in some bazookas, and even let you fully train 500 of your closest friends.
If the government wants your shit, they’re going to take it.
You still wouldn’t be a match for even a single battalion of the United States Marine Corps. Not to mention the Air Force, Army, Navy, National Guard, Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and Seals.
So stop acting like your little AR-15 is going to stop tyranny.

This makes perfect sense, Mr. “Smalley”, since as we know the military – especially the “combat arms” people – infantry, armor, artillery, combat engineers and cavalry,, as well as special forces – are drawn from families with two parents who have masters degrees in poli sci from Oberlin, work for social justice non-profits, shop at Whole Foods, drive Subarus, listen to NPR and practice vegan lifestyles.

Right?

Wrong.

The families – fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins – of those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, and generally by extension those troops themselves – are drawn from the caste of our society that owns guns, for ideological as much as practical reasons.

It’s culturally almost impossible to separate the “gun culture” and our military.  :

Your little cultural genocide tale  only exists in lefty fantasy.

That is all.

The Times uses Chelsea Manning as a spokesperson for transgenders in the military.

Up Next:  NYTimes  runs op-ed by Martin Bormann on all the reasons to take your next vacation in Germany.

Pew study shows Democrats get more stressed out over cognitive dissonance over politics than Republicans:

Democrats feel more negatively about talking politics with people who have a different opinion of the president than do Republicans. A large majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents – nearly seven-in-ten (68%) – say they find it to be stressful and frustrating to talk to people with different opinions of Trump. Among Republicans and Republican leaners, fewer (52%) say they find this to be stressful and frustrating.

White Democrats and Democratic leaners are more likely than black and Hispanic Democrats to say it is stressful and frustrating to talk to people with different opinions of Trump. About three quarters of white Democrats (74%) say it is frustrating, compared with 56% of black Democrats and 61% of Hispanic Democrats.

And if you thought the worst offenders were shrieking middle-aged single Whole-Foods-shopping Subaru-driving women with degrees in Political Science from Saint Olaf?

Of course you were right:

Overall, more women (64%) than men (54%) say talking to people with a different opinion of Trump is stressful and frustrating. And adults under 30 are more likely to say they find these discussions interesting and informative than do those 30 and older (42% vs. 33%).

Which proves that my anecdotal observations are just as accurate as science.

Well, no.  Not usually.

But this time, yes.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’d love to lose weight on this new breakfast diet but I can’t make the math work.  6 plus 6 plus 18?  That’s a 30-hour day.  Where do these people live?

Joe Doakes

And do they get paid by the hour?

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air!

Today on show – I’m off on assignment, so Brad Carlson is hosting both today and his regular Sunday show.

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
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• 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!

A bunch of journos are apparently getting ready to sue the President for blocking them from his Twitter account.

I’m about ready to send money to their plaintiff’s fund.

Wny?

Because the journos are right.  Why should pols get to decide whose speech to restrict, and from whom they can restrict access to their public speech?

It’s downright un-American.

And I’ve got quite a little list of DFL pols who’ve done exactly the same to me, and I’d guess most every conservative pundit in Minnesota.

In some cases – like Kim “Profile in Courage” Norton – it was because I publicly called out her lies over “criminal protection” laws.

And yes, I may have actually broken the story of Alondra “The Industrial Engineer” Cano distributing personal information on Twitter about people who’d criticized her privately  (or so they thought() on the City of Minneapolis website to try to bully them into silence.

Both of these politicians blocked me almost immediately after I publicly ate their lunches.  Waah waah waaah.

Likewise, the Twitter accounts of “Alliance for a Better Minnesota” and “Protect MN” have long since blocked me – because I crush them every time I turn my attention to them.

But others – Rep. Melissa Hortmann, Senator Tina LIebling, as well as several DFL-xupporting non-profits – already had me blocked before I ever attempted to write/tweet about them.

I know that there are apps that can systematically block all social media from authors matching some lists or algorithms – which is why I suspect the blanket block from DFL pols.

But I don’t care.  If it’s fair for CNN, it’s fair for me.

Remember that in all cases, while I am a stone-cold purveyor of unassailable fact, I am also scrupulously polite to a fault.    Anyone who wants to claim otherwise is welcome to prove it – and yes, there I AM more than willing to file a test case.  I’m not the sharpest tool in the box, but I’m way smarter than that.

So yes, “journos”.  Sue Donald Trump.  I beg of you.  Indeed, there’s some legal grounding already starting to happen:

So let the courts court, and the juries jurr.

Then get it incorporated onto all the states.

And hurry.  Some MN Pols need some freaking free speech already.

And we’ve got some lost time to make up for.

In the wake of passing registration and magazine limits during the orgy of victim-disarmament legislation in 2013, Baltimore’s crime rate has steadily risen, and stands at twice Chicago’s catastrophic rate.

But when they finally “debate” a measure that can actually work – mandatory sentences for using guns in a crime –suddenly there’s an animated, even violent, debate?

When California secedes, maybe they can take everything on the east coast from DC through Massachusetts, too…

CalExit petitions can start gathering signatures.

To accelerate things. They should ask the rest of the country.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Journalists and actors and leaky politicians love to claim they’re part of The Resistance, as if Trump were Hitler and these schmucks were the French Underground.  So Brave.

Except members of The Resistance were summarily executed.  Lined up and shot.  That was the price they agreed to pay when they decided to join.

Trump should reinstitute the policy, for the sake of verisimilitude.  Put some skin in the game or drop your claim to stolen valor.

Joe Doakes

The number of “progressives” who know more about history than they learned in 11th grade would fit into a Prius with room for a load of (Whole Foods* groceries in the front seat.

“Police Reform” is suddenly the hot ticket in Minneapolis’ mayoral “race”:

State Rep. Ray Dehn has called for police to be “disarmed.”

Mayor Betsy Hodges just ousted her embattled police chief.

Nekima Levy-Pounds is demanding a “paradigm shift” in police culture in Minneapolis.

Police reform is suddenly moving to the forefront of the race for mayor in Minneapolis, propelled there most recently after an officer on July 15 shot and killed an unarmed woman, Justine Damond, who had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her home. Candidates for mayor, a job directly responsible for the police department, are scrambling to explain to voters how they will change the Minneapolis Police Department and prevent civilian deaths at the hands of cops.

My two cents:  empty fairy-land gestures, “sending messages” and organization-speak are what they amount to now, and all they’ll ever amount to.   It’s DFL politics.  The message is the medium.

Keith Ellison may be a democratic – but, at least in a classical sense, he is far, far, far from a liberal.

The fifth district congressman says twitter should block President Trump:

"The problem is he’s been doing it and he’s never had to pay a price for it,” Ellison said. “I personally think that Twitter should treat him like any other social media harasser and snatch his account.”

If saying corrosively stupid things without consequence is actionable, Keith "The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" Ellison is facing multiple life sentences. Including this statement.

I’m not sure what I like most about the proposed plan to save KFAI Radio – the long- running ‘Publicly-Supported” Pacifica affiliate in the west bank (where, I note in full disclosure, I was a volunteer news guy 25 years ago, trying to find a way to infiltrate the MPR Borg).

Is it the idea that a plucky underdog might survive against the MPR juggernaut (MPR’s former generalissimo, Bill Kling, spent decades trying to extinguish small community stations, the better to snarf up their funding sources)?

Could be.

But I think it’s the fact that the plan involves actual radio people bringing some actual radio programming common sense to the station, which endlessly cheeses off the sort of people who’ve been killing off these sorts of “community” stations.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

John Scalzi summed up Liberals’ worldview when he quipped “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is.”

 

The problem with any quip is that it contains a kernel of truth so it can’t be denied completely.  But only a kernel, meaning it should be denied in part.  The difficulty lies in determining which part.

 

In Rome in 400 AD, Straight White Male was undeniably the lowest difficulty setting.  Women and minorities had it tougher, no question.  In South Africa in 2017, Straight White Male is a death sentence.  The validity of the quip depends on Where you are.

 

Limiting the quip to the United States, it’s still not universally true.  In Virginia in 1800, sure.  In Minneapolis in 2017 with its commitment to diversity and affirmative action in education and employment, it’s definitely not so.  The validity of the quip depends on When you are.

 

Liberals continue to act as if today was November 1, 1959; as if Eisenhower was still the President; as if drinking fountains were still segregated, women had coat-hanger abortions, welfare was non-existent and the Klan enforced Jim Crow laws.

 

It takes a special kind of wilfull blindness to ignore the progress America has made, to continue to blame everything on the past, insisting on new and better solutions to problems that already have been solved.

 

Joe Doakes

“Willful Blindless” – or consistent strategy?