On national Dreamsicle  day,”Protect” Minnesota proved they have a sense of humor.

That’s Betsy Hodges, mayor of Minneapolis – a city with a murder rate 4-5 times that of the rest of Minnesota, and getting worse fast. A city who’s crime rate stands out as a national disgrace.

And she’s lecturing the rest of us – the people who live in the parts of the state with extremely low crime, where perhaps a majority of adults own firearms – about “gun safety” and – Seinfeld’s writers couldn’t have made this up – preventing violence.

Who said they were a bunch of humorless dullards?

Bravo, “Protect” Minnesota!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Garrison Keillor wrote a column for the Washington Post about taking down historical monuments to “declutter” the nation.

History has nothing to teach us.

Everything in the past was done wrong.

We are the smartest, funniest people who ever lived.

Joe Doakes

Keillor’s got a way of talking…about himself.

Connecticut – a state that has done everything the Minnesota DFL wants to do to the Minnesota economy, but put it on a turbocharger – is about to pay the proverbial piper; Aetna Insurance is pondering leaving Connecticut and its confiscatory taxes behind.

Governor Malloy, after an entire administration spent pilfering the coffers of Connecticut businesses and entrepreneurs to benefit his stakeholders, is wondering what all the moving trucks are for, and he’s oh, so sorry:

“As a huge Connecticut employer and a pillar of the insurance industry, it must be infuriating to feel like you must fight your home state policymakers who seem blind to the future,” Mr. Malloy wrote in a May 15 letter to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini. “The lack of respect afforded Aetna as an important and innovative economic engine of Connecticut bewilders me.”

Now he tells us. Gov. Malloy has spent two terms treating business as a bottomless well of cash to redistribute to public unions. Now that his state is losing millionaires and businesses, he has seen the light. But the price of his dereliction will be steep.

Sound like any other governors and minority caucuses in state that this blog is written in that you can think of?

Last month the state Office of Fiscal Analysis reduced its two-year revenue forecast by $1.46 billion. Since January the agency has downgraded income-tax revenue for 2017 and 2018 by $1.1 billion (6%). Sales- and corporate-tax revenue are projected to fall by $385 million (9%) and $67 million (7%), respectively, this year. Pension contributions, which have doubled since 2010, will increase by a third over the next two years. The result: a $5.1 billion deficit and three recent credit downgrades.

Minnesota’s current tax climate is survivable by Fortune 1000 companies – for a while (small business is another story).   But Connecticut shows us that even big-business inertia has its limits.

(By the way – the DFL jabbers a lot about the “meltdown in North Dakota” and “Wisconsin’s disaster”.  What are the respective unemployment rates as of this week?

Oh, my.  Earlier this year, amid the “oil industry melteown, North Dakota was a full point lower than Minnesota, and Wisconsin pulled even.  Today, North Dakota’s rate (driven by more exploration, thanks to the impending impact of the Dakota Access Pipeline) is 1.1% lower than Minnesota’s.   And Wisconsin, which Minnesota’s DFL and media (ptr) have been calling a “disaster” for six year?  It was tied at the end of last year; it’s a half a point lower today.

Look waaaaaay down the list to find “high tax, high-service” Connecticut.

The people of London are a lot more courageous than their city’s government.

Stories are filtering out of London about people resisting their attackers during Saturday night’s terrorist attacks around London.

This from John Holbrooke, a Brit lawyer who’s been covering not only terror, but the way the Brit poltical establishment has been bending over backwards to not, y’know, call it anything of the sort.

And at least we – the people who think Western Civilization, not to mention innocent human life – is with defending have something to be  proud of today.

Good thing the people of London are disarmed, and have to resort to pint glasses (the waste of Brit beer alone is inhumane) and chairs to protect their lives.

Of course, that’s why the attacks aren’t happening in Dallas or Memphis or Bismarck or Jacksonville.

The fact that Ben Carson got mocked in the media, while Maxine Waters isn’t considered a national laughinstock, will be prime evidence when we finally have Nuremberg-style tribunals about media bias:

And yet she’s taken seriously.

UPDATE:  Ooops.  Parody account.

I plead “long day at Grand Old Day”.

To be fair, the measure of great satire is that it could be the real thing…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is why I will die a bitter and frustrated old man.  I cannot write like Wretchard:

 

” It would be ironic if a generation of politicians who never built much of anything destroyed nearly everything for the privilege of ruling over the wreckage.”

It’s as much about relative power as absolute power.

Clearly more of that right-wing workplace violence.

P.S:  I’m about ready to call this the second Battle of Britain.

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

Today on the show:

• Governor Dayton – Minnesota’s Erdogan
• We’ll Never Have Paris

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!

To:  Kathy Griffin, Comedian-Turned-Not-Very-Intelligent Political Satirist
From:  Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  I Don’t Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

Ms. Griffin,

I say this as someone who actually used to enjoy your standup routine, until you decided you had to be Culturally Important.  Please take it in the spirit intended.

You are not being “bullied”.   The people you (and people like you, including your former employers and most of your fellow A-through-D-list “entertainment” figures) have been bullying punched you back.

Like most bullies (cultural or physical), you don’t like it.

Waaah, waaah, waaah.  There.  That’s my sympathy for you, like all bullies.

That is all.

(P.S. to those of you who call yourselves “the Resistance” to Trump:   While you are a demographic minority, you have vast, disproportionate control over this culture’s news, entertainment, culture, style, and national conversation.  You were the occupiers; the Trump voters were “the resistance”).

Learned Foot has re-activated Kool Aid Report to comment on the Governor’s line-item veto abolishing a branch of government.

It feels like Keith Moon and John Entwistle rose from the dead, corralled Daltrey and Townsend into a bar, and started playing “The Who, A to Z”.

Joe Doakes emails about something I’m noticing in regard to the Paris “treaty”, political violence, economics, race, crime, human and civil rithts…

…well, just read it:

Liberals say Trump people are doing just what Clinton people did, but we’re not calling to lock him up, therefore, Republicans are shameful hypocrites.

William F. Buckley, Jr. once explained that the problem with Liberal analysis is shallowness.  One man pushes a little old lady into the path of a bus, a second man leaps in front of the bus to push her back to safety, but a Liberal says the men are identical: they’re both pushing around little old ladies.  Well, yes, at the most superficial level of analysis, that’s true; but a thinking person ought to be capable of looking deeper to see the moral difference in their actions.

Hillary ignored security warnings to set up a private email server which she used for official government business including classified information that ended up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.  Members of the Trump administration have a private email system which they use solely for non-government communications such as Republican party fundraising.  Liberals now claim the situations are identical but the first system violated the law whereas the second system upholds the law which prohibits using government property for private political purposes.

Hillary set up the Clinton Foundation to provide aid to hurricane ravaged Haiti, and received $2 billion in donations from corporations and other nations seeking access to her.  She used 90% of the money for personal expenses.  Ivanka urged the World Bank to set up a Women’s Entrepreneur fund to help women achieve economic independence.  Saudi Arabia just donated $200 million, no doubt hoping it will get them access to her as a key figure in her father’s administration.  Liberals claim the two situations are identical but the first situation was merely Hillary’s personal slush fund whereas the second situation is managed and administered by the World Bank, not under Ivanka’s control and from which she receives no money (why would she, she’s already rich, she doesn’t need to steal from the poor).

It’s going to be a long four years.

Joe Doakes

Some days, it feels like it already has been.

There are times I’m glad my son never took to playing football.

This, though, is a fascinating piece by former Packer Jermichael Finley about coming back from five career concussions.

Six Baltimore schools have zero kids pass state standardized assessments.

Submitted without comment:

Well, “without” in the sense that I’ll add nothing new.  I‘ll refer you back to my actual thoughts on the subject.

…is about ten years behind us.

And it’s government’s fault.  As usual.

The City Pages, 1997:   Solid (if solidly-left-of-center) reporting, a keen eye on local events (at least in Uptown, Downtown and Dinkytown), and some investigative reporting that shamed the local dailies.

The City Pages, 2017:  Creeping on Facebook pages, calling it “news”.

Mike Mullen – who we’ve encountered before – found a Facebook post which he opted to not only turn into a story, but one that is misleading to the point of fiction.  Here’s the headline:

It’s in regard to a rally on June 10 by “ACT for America”, an anti-immigration group.

Go ahead.  Read the text of Mullen’s little excrescence.  Find any reference to the NRA being involved?

Only an unlinked blurb of dubious provenance about AFA referring to itself as “the NRA of National Security”.

I’m loathe to quote from the piece – it’s dumb enough to be on Minnesota Progressive Project, which is a terminal condition.    But this piece caught my wary eye:

These cowboys won’t be alone at the Capitol. Liberal protest groups like the local Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) call ACT a “racist hate group,”

Well, there’s a shock.

If a conservative orders a pizza in the woods, and “SDS” (“Antifa”, the SPLC, Media Matters, Alonda Cano, Tina Liebling or Ken Martin, etc, etc, etc)  aren’t there to hear it, is it still “hate speech)?

Our state’s governor, Tina Flint Smith (acting through her front, Mark Dayton) line-item-vetoed the funding for the state’s legislature out of existence.

From Blois Olson’s “Morning Take” yesterday:

[Tuesday’s] move by Gov. Mark Dayton to line-item veto the appropriations for the legislature creates a new dynamic that lawyers, legislators, lobbyists and media will try to unwind in the coming days.

And where do we go from here?

There are basically three scenarios.  First, legislators and Dayton find some wiggle room and there’s a short special session to tweak teacher licensure, immigration driver’s licenses and tobacco taxes.

I’m gonna guess this is what Lori Sturdevant wants.

Second, GOP majorities go to court, challenge the Governor’s attempt to defund the Legislature.

I suspect this is what the DFL wants.  DFLers like Tina Liebling are already leading the media toward where I predicted they’d be by July 1 – blaming this on the GOP:

Should have used his veto pen. Gave in to hostage-takers instead. Paid the ransom & there’s no refund. https://t.co/dYwlVJVh0D

— Tina Liebling (@TinaLiebling) May 31, 2017

And third:

Third, there’s a push from the right on the GOP caucuses to call Dayton on his bluff and declare they won’t meet in 2018 – making Dayton potentially a very lame duck for the last year of his term.  That would mean no supplemental budget, no bonding bill and no campaign year gamesmanship – for either side during the session.

On the one hand, the DFL’s noise machine would explode into full deranged mode.

On the other, they’d do the same if a Republican helped a kid across the street.  There is literally nothing to lose.

But wait!  There’s  more!

Republicans are analyzing the line-item veto to see if Dayton did it correctly or if he only took away the specific appropriation to the House and the Senate.  If he didn’t veto the entire pool of money, the funds are still in State Government bueget and it would be easy for GOPers to make the case that the money exists.  The longer the issue plays out – the advantage is to Republicans.  However, should the state have a natural disaster, or an economic issue Dayton would have the executive leadership power to take charge.

I have a hunch we’ll see a proposal to declare Tina Liebling a natural disaster, to allow the Governor to take control.

When I was a kid, having a tattoo meant that you were either a veteran or had been in prison; it was fairly easy to tell which by the content and quality of the “art”-work.

That’s probably one reason I’ve never succumbed to the trend.

In a just world, this would be prosecutable as a war crime – in the war between taste and tastelessness, beauty and ugliness. That war is, thus far, undeclared; it’s an insurgency. The Charlies are, unfortunately, winning.

But many have; some stats say over a third of all adults below the age of 40 have some kind of tattoo or another.   Some have gone completely overboard; men and women with “sleeves” (tattoos running up their arms), college age women with huge obnoxious tattoos covering vast swathes of skin.

Look – a clever, tasteful tattoo here and there can be fun. Don’t get me wrong.  It’s not my style, but knock yourself out.

But there are few things in the world quite as depressing as sitting at the pool and seeing a gorgeous woman in a bikini, looking hand-tooled saddle from neck to waist, shoulder to wrist, hip to knee.

An aesthetic atrocity?  I don’t think I’m overreacting, here.

But let’s forget about aesthetics for a while.   Let’s focus on science.

One thing that’s always skeeved me out about tattoos is that you are puncturing one of your body’s most fragile yet essential organs – one that is designed to protect the rest of your body – thousands of times, and impregnating it with chemicals containing God only knows what.

No, seriously.  We just don’t know what’s in those tattoo inks.

Hey, baby. I’m covered in toxic chemicals, applied by someone whose big goal in life was to be a staff artist at “Heavy Metal” magazine.

FDA has not approved any tattoo pigments for injection into the skin. Tattoo parlors are regulated by the state and city, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require manufacturers to release their ink’s ingredients; doing so could supposedly give away trade secrets.

One yuge takeaway?

An alarming research study recently published by Dr. Bob Haley and Dr. Paul Fischer at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas uncovered that the “innocent” commercial tattoo may be the number one distributor of hepatitis C.

And it gets worse.

If you have some bobbleheaded Millennial or X-er in your life who’s contemplating getting this systematic scarring and contamination, send ’em the link.

The media are barely covering the political and human catastrophe unfolding in Venezuela:

Out of approximately 50,000 total evening news stories on ABC, CBS and NBC combined in the last four years, just 25 have covered the ongoing crisis in socialist Venezuela, according to a Media Research Center study published Tuesday….

…and they certainly aren’t slopping the blame over to…well…you know…:

…out of the 50,000 total evening news stories on the three networks, just 25 covered Venezuela, and only seven mentioned “socialism.”

For many journos, it’s the “ideal” they were raised to revere (minus all the misery and bloodshed;

And for others ? Free markets are a lot harder to cover than planned ones; covering a free market would involve learning, rather than talking with highly-placed planning officials.

The Orwell parallels are coming so thick and fast these days, it’s hard to keep up.

Ahem;  Lou Reed has gone from a pioneer of LGBT-friendliness forty years ago, to “transphobic today.

The left is eating itself.

Jeremy Joseph Christian kills two in an anti-Muslim rampage on a train in Portland, Oregon.

Word gets out that Christian was a “white supremacist”.  Media assume that means “Right Wing Pro-Trump Hate Criminal” – and brows are furrowed as our  high priests of knowledge obsess over What It All Means.

Then, it turns out Christian is actually a Sanders guy.

Writing for Willamette Week, Corey Pein said he interviewed Christian during [a “Free Speech” march in Portland], and the alleged killer chanted the n-word and threw Nazi salutes. Pein writes that amid Christian’s rants about Jews on Facebook, he expressed support for Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein for president. The Willamette Week writer describes that as a “distraction” others will seize upon as they contradict the narrative of Christian as a real white supremacist.

Simple fact – and Berg’s 19th Law has controlling legal authority, here – is that Christian was a nihilist, if you want to credit it as an actual train of thought, and apparently deeply mentally ill if you don’t.

Either way?  The mainstream media promptly lost interest.

The DFL wants to kill the budget bill and shut down the state government to…

…well, just guess why (emphasis added)?

“I am urging our DFL leader and my friend, Governor Mark Dayton, to veto the Public Safety Omnibus Bill. It is long overdue that Minnesota do the right thing and lead on this important moral issue. The language inserted at the last moment by the Republicans will make it harder for the State to grant drivers licenses to all people working in Minnesota. As an ally of Minnesota’s diverse immigrant communities, I want to bring awareness to how devestating (sic) this policy is to immigrant families throughout our state…I am sharing this letter from the DFL Latino Caucus who very movingly capture the importance of this issue to their community and the broader immigrant community here in Minnesota…

In other words, drivers license for illegal immigrants.

“But Mitch – he just said “immigrants”.  Why do you infer “illegal” into that?”

Because when the DFL refers to “immigrants”, they pretty much always mean illegals.

And why is that?

“Given demographic trends, earning the Latino vote is critical to the DFL’s future success. According to DFL Chair Ken Martin’s recent report to the DFL State Central Committee, although many other demographic groups didn’t turn out to vote in large numbers in the 2016 presidential election, Latinos in Minnesota greatly increased our voter turnout and helped keep Minnesota blue. We are the fastest-growing community of color in Minnesota, and will progressively represent a larger portion of the electorate. Signing this bill in its current form could damage the bond between immigrant communities and the DFL, and could depress Latino voter turnout in future elections.”

Bones are being thrown.

…at a level ahead of what your typical college kid learns..

…or there’s some brainwashing going on out there.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Students walked out of Pence’s speech.

“The move was not totally unexpected, since the student organization WeStaNDFor had shared their plans ahead of time. They believe that the politics Pence, the former Indiana governor who was raised Catholic, represented contradicted the Catholic social virtues Notre Dame extols.”

“Our members lived in South Bend when Mike Pence was governor,” the group said in a statement. “We know all too well how his policies endangered or caused direct harm to public education, health care, women’s rights, the environment, LGBTQ individuals, immigrants and refugees, reproductive rights, local infrastructure, the economy of our state, and more.”

Hang on – reproductive rights?  That’s Liberal code speak for “abortion” which Pence opposes but so does the Catholic Church.  Doesn’t Notre Dame oppose it, too?  Isn’t protecting innocent life a Catholic social value?

Are these kids heretics, Protestants or simply idiots?

(Ahem, Joe – might wanna pick some better comparisons – Your Pro-Life Protestant Editor)

Notre Dame used to stand for something.  It could again.  If you walk out on the Vice President of the United States during commencement, that indicates you failed to learn the values of inclusiveness, of open-minded discussion, of discovery and examination of issues from all points of view, of basic human respect AND respect for his office; it’s an insult not only to him but to this entire campus who you embarrassed.  In consequence, you don’t graduate from Notre Dame.  Take your credits someplace where that behavior is tolerated.  We’ll share your transcript same as anyone else, you can take your credits over to leftist U and get their diploma but you won’t have one with our name on it.  You failed the final exam, and there is no do-over.

Joe Doakes

If only.

Although suffice to say I will never hire any of them, if it’s my call…

I got this from a high school friend of mine..  He lives in a major city in the Southwestern US.  I’m concealing his identity for obvious reasons.

He had a close encounter with a couple bad guys over the weekend.  Or, should I say, a couple bad guys had a close encounter with him:

 

I love a happy ending.

Of course, that happy ending was brought to you by the Second Amendment of the US Constitution.

And who knows?  Maybe the two miscreants will take their close call with having their brains splattered over a granite countertop to get their “lives” back on track?

Several happy endings!