Representative government requires trust – above all, trust that everyone, king and commoner alike, is equal in the eyes of the law and “the system” – and everyone follows more or less the same rules.

But we’re not doing that anymore.  Marc Rich scammed people, and got pardoned for being a Democrat bigwig; Bill Clinton did things that would have gotten a dozen Republicans like Bob Packwood thrown out of Congress; Hillary’s email server issue alone is vastly bigger than the transgression that destroyed David Petraeus’ career (to say nothing of the passive-aggressive institutional arrogance protecting her).   And Obama?  From nominating a budget chief who owed enough taxes to get a dozen mere middle class mortals jailed, to an Obamacare consultant that tittered like a pajamaboy about lying to the rubes about the costs of the program, to changing the rules and running around the Legislative Branch when Obamacare went up on the rocks, to the lies about the Iran deal, Obama has trampled the rules in a way no citizen ever could ream about.

And as Glenn Reynolds notes in one of his most scathing commentaries ever, that’s a problem, if we care about the kind of society we plan to have:

Being law-abiding for its own sake is a traditional part of bourgeois culture, and our ruling class has lately treated the bourgeoisie with contempt as well. Which raises the risk that this contempt will be returned.

Back in the midst of the financial crisis, Gonzalo Lira looked at how people were responding to the mortgage meltdown and warned of a coming middle-class anarchy. He wrote:

“A terrible sentence, when a law-abiding citizen speaks it: Everybody else is doing it — so why don’t we? … What’s really important is that law-abiding middle-class citizens are deciding that playing by the rules is nothing but a sucker’s game.”

America has been — and, for the moment, remains — a high-trust society. In high-trust societies, people extend trust to strangers and follow rules for the most part even when nobody is watching. In low-trust societies, trust seldom extends beyond close family, and everybody cheats if they can get away with it.

Try life in Romania, Somalia or the Congo if you don’t believe it.  Get back to us on that.

High-trust societies are much nicer places to live than low-trust ones. But a fish rots from the head and the head of our society is looking pretty rotten. As Lira says, “I’m likeWayne Gretsky: I don’t concern myself with where the puck has been — I look for where the puck is going to be.” Where will our society be in a decade if these trends continue? And what can we do to ensure that they don’t?

How long can a society stay free without trust?  It’s not like trust goes underground or anything…

Detroit Free Press article calls for the murder of Republicans…

…for voting for school choice.

What was it that Gandhi said?  First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they attack you.  Then you win.

Or, in the case of Detroit, “win”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Illegal alien injured on the job, confessed to using false documents to obtain employment, was put on unpaid leave until he could prove he was eligible to work in the United States, sued employer for retaliation, Minnesota Court of Appeals takes his side.

 Court says the purpose of federal law is to prevent employers from hiring illegal aliens.  But once you’ve illegally hired them, you can’t fire them when you find out about their illegal status – at least, not if you discover it during a worker’s comp case.  That would be retaliation against the employee for bringing a worker’s comp claim and retaliation is illegal under state law.  So in order to uphold state law, the employer is required to continue to violate federal law by continuing to employ the illegal alien.

 That’s idiotic. Putting the illegal alien on unpaid leave isn’t retaliation for the worker’s comp claim – the worker’s comp claim was merely the mechanism by which the employee’s illegal status was brought to light.  Stopping the illegal employment merely brings the employer into compliance with federal law where it would have been all along, but for the employee’s illegal use of a fraudulent social security number.  And even if putting him on unpaid leave were retaliation for bringing the claim that got his crime discovered, illegal aliens who aren’t supposed to be here shouldn’t be entitled to keep their illegally obtained employment.  Firing the employee for perpetrating a fraud and a crime is perfectly sensible as it deters others from committing the same fraud, the same crime.

 Of course, this is Democrat-dominated Minnesota where all the jurists are Democrat appointees.  The first sentence of the court’s opinion sets the tone:  “Appellant Anibal Sanchez immigrated to the United States in December of 1998.”

 Immigrated?  No, he didn’t.  “Immigrated” would entail a legal process of entry and regularization of status.  What he did was he sneaked in, he slipped across a porous border, swam the river, hid in a fruit truck, stole someone’s identity and committed fraud.  He’s a criminal and should not be allowed to profit from his crime. 

 The entire case would be moot if the Federal government was performing the core function for which we pay taxes: to defend our borders.  If, now that his status and location are known, the feds were to deport him, this entire case would go away, as it should.  The time and money spent taking the case to the Court of Appeals is yet another cost of President Obama’s willful disregard of his duty to uphold the law. 

 Joe Doakes

Laws are for little people.

More later.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline on former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne’s book on life in the Clinton White House; I’ve added some emphasis:

Secret Service agents are, of course, charged with protecting the physical well-being of the president. Byrne says they had discussions about the possibility of having to protect Bill Clinton from Hillary’s physical attacks. He recalls that the couple had one “violent encounter” the morning of a key presidential address to the nation.

Byrne also remembers arriving for work one day in 1995 following a loud fight between the Clintons the night before. He says the dustup resulted in light blue vase “smashed to bits” and left Bill with a “real, live, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.”

Don’t let anyone tell you that Hillary isn’t a fighter.

Mirengoff also adds, after noting the many, er, social provocations Bill presented her during those years:

For Hillary, her options regarding Bill may have seemed like “fight or flight.” Flight, apparently, was out of the question, given her ambitions.

But if it were the other way around (and the subjects weren’t the Clintons), if a husband found a wife in flagrant delicto and decided to take “direct action”  against her?  Society has a term for that; “domestic abuser”.    It doesn’t matter if one’s wife is sleeping with the entire staff at Jiffy Lube, in your bed, without changing the sheets after; you call a lawyer (and an STD test provider); you don’t hit her.

That there’s a double standard for women is obvious; that there’s a triple standard for Hillary is – assuming the accuracy of Byrne’s account – a new one.

And it should be damning – but for Democrats, it won’t be.

…that the left is trying to get traditional western culture treated as a thoughtcrime, it‘s really not hyperbole:

Kathleen Taylor, a neurologist at Oxford University, said that recent developments suggest that we will soon be able to treat religious fundamentalism and other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society as a form of mental illness.

Big deal.  Breshnev was claiming the same thing 50 years ago.

Bonus:  art imitates life!  Kathleen Taylor of Oxford:

Suzanna Hamilton in the movie (or was it?) 1984:

Accidental?  I think not.

…they really need to get some perspective.

The Philippine president-elect has encouraged the public to help him in his war against crime, urging citizens with guns to shoot and kill drug dealers who resist arrest and fight back in their neighborhoods.

In a nationally televised speech late Saturday, Rodrigo Duterte told a huge crowd in the southern city of Davao that Filipinos who help him battle crime will be rewarded.

“Please feel free to call us, the police, or do it yourself if you have the gun — you have my support,” Duterte said, warning of an extensive illegal drug trade that involves even the country’s police.

If a drug dealer resists arrest or refuses to be brought to a police station and threatens a citizen with a gun or a knife, “you can kill him,” Duterte said. “Shoot him and I’ll give you a medal.”

That’s more than a wall.

This is getting very very close.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

My health insurance company requires me to take an annual health assessment and participate in a well-being program, to get a discount on my co-pay.  They are at the forefront of trendiness, of course, and Sitting Is The New Smoking, so getting me up and moving is all the rage.  Some thoughts:

 We can’t all be rail-splitters.  Some jobs require patient, focused, concentrated examination of documents.  That’s an activity not well-suited to bouncing on an exercise ball. 

 Labor-saving devices were invented precisely to avoid having to move, lift, bend or exert physical force over inanimate objects.  How far down must civilization devolve to suit the Phy Ed fanatics?  Is it enough if I make my wife scrub our clothes by hand in a tub or must she also carry the water in a bucket from Lake Como while I forage for dandelion greens in the park across the street?

 Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, is fond of saying “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who claim it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”  That’s a handy way to poke fun at global warming alarmists flying private jets to exclusive conferences.  But I can go one better:

 “I’ll believe Sitting is the new Smoking when Democrats tax it to fund a stadium.” 

 Joe Doakes

Look for people with sedentary jobs to get hit with fees via Obamacare.

Today’s jokes are tomorrow’s policy.

Today, on the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings, I’m genuinely pessimistic that this nation learned – or can learn – one of the most important lessons of the war.

Indeed, it seems that there are those in our society who really don’t want this country to learn it.

Words like “Fascist” and “Brownshirt” have been overused, mainly but not quite exclusively by the left, over the past 4-5 decades  One might even say they’ve been devalued, if you’re conspiracy-minded.

In light of events this past week, they need to be re-valued, and Americans need to get a quick education in political history.

Alliance Für A Better Deutschland:  With the collapse of the Weimar Republic, German politics returned to a state that hadn’t been seen since the chaotic late teens and early twenties; political parties retained private groups of thugs to harass, intimidate, and attack political opponents’ demonstrations, meetings and events.

And it wasn’t just eggs and water bottles; in the ’20s, German parties enlisted Freikorps, groups of armed World War I veterans who fought gangland battles and, in some cases, pitched military engagements in the streets of German cities.

The biggest participants were the Communists and and, to a lesser degree, the Socialists on what’s conventionally called “the left”, and their opponents (called “the Right”, although the sought to govern scarcely less as authoritarians and totalitarians than did their opponents), of whom the National Socialists (the Nazis, of course) became the leader.

Like I said, it got bloody . On July 17 1932, “Bloody Sunday”, Communist “direct action” activists attacked a Nazi rally in Altona, Germany, killing 18; revenge and counter-revenge played out across Germany afterwards, as it had before.

Altona in the wake of Bloody Sunday

This was one of many events that framed the Nazis final ascent to control of the country six months later.

“Brownshirts” – the official name was Sturmabteilung, or “Assault Detachments” – and members of Stahlturm (Steel Helmet, a Nazi veterans group) burn Weimar flags as the Nazis assume control of the Reichstag, or Parliament. The evening, and the coming months, saw more pitched battles in the streets between party thugs, before the government moved on to more decisive means.

Not only have Americans living today never seen such a thing – groups of thugs acting as a direct action wing of political parties – but in fact the little information they have about this is pollyannaish in the extreme.  It wasn’t just Germany, it didn’t end 80 years ago, and it can happen here.

In Poland in 1980,

Polish “riot police” – thugs with shields – take down an enemy of the state in 1981.

In Panama in the late eighties,

Manuel Noriega’s “Dignity Battalions” – a make-work program that put thugs to work attacking dissidents and protesters.

in Iran in 2008,

Basiji assaulting Tehran University, putting down the uprising in 2008 (with the tacit support of Barack Obama).

And here in the US, today:

Thugs, likely with the support of liberal plutocrats with deep pockets, attack a Trump rally last week in San Jose. As usual.

There’s precious little difference between the people above and the people below:

And I don’t know that I trust Americans to know this anymore.

Politics + force = where horrible things come from.

Bing – a search engine I rarely use (mostly out of habit) has this as its cover today – June 6, a rather significant date in world, especially Western, history:

Don’t know your historical geography? It’s Pointe Du Hoc- the German strongpoint overlooking Omaha Beach, captured at immense cost by American Rangers who climbed a sheer cliff under fire 72 years ago today, with 64% casualties in a matter of hours.

Google – which, two weeks ago, honored America-hating radical and Bin Laden supporter Yuri Kochiyama with a Doodle – has this:

Not that Microsoft is a saint in the whole “undercutting America” thing, but it’s getting a little insane.

(Via commenter JustPlainAngry)

Reagan, speaking 32 years ago at Pointe Du Hoc, above Omaha Beach:

“The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades.

And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing.

Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe.

Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.”

– Ronald Reagan, 1984

Leave.  And take your husband.

#ProblemSolved.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Mayor of Paris says they can’t have little shanties and camps scattered around, they need one big camp to concentrate the refugees in one place.  A concentration camp, lovely idea.  But that’s a temporary solution to a temporary problem.  Aren’t refugees supposed to go home, eventually?  Or is she talking about establishing another permanent refugee problem, like the Palestinians after the Israeli war, and like America without a Southern Border?  In that case, shouldn’t we be talking about long-term solutions?  The French don’t have a Third Amendment – maybe the government can require citizens to open their homes to immigrants, which would set an international precedent so President Obama could require it here. 

 Joe Doakes

“Another permanent refugee problem” – the Frogs are still paying for the way they handled refugees from Algeria 50 years ago.

And if it’s good enough for the French, Secretary du Etat Kerry will wanna know more.

Despite rough seas, the HMS Hampshire was making good time on June 5th, 1916.  Having left the main British naval base in Scapa Flow, Scotland, the cruiser was easily outrunning its destroyer escort.

With the wound of Jutland fresh in the minds of the admiralty, the HMS Hampshire had been assigned a circuitous route through the Orkney Islands to avoid German U-boats and yet another British naval casualty.  Besides, the HMS Hampshire was carrying precious cargo – the Secretary of State for War, Lord Herbert Horatio Kitchener.  The man whose image had called millions of Britons to service in the Great War, had seen his political star dim by 1916, as his support of tertiary British fronts and efforts just short of conscription hadn’t produced his promised results.  Still, Kitchener maintained some of his pre-war aura as the heroic pragmatist with a golden touch.  His dire warnings on British manpower – that the war would be won by the nation capable of finding the “last million men” – had echoed in the halls of power only months earlier.

Kitchener’s mission aboard the HMS Hampshire had him en route to the Russian port of Arkhangelsk, where the Secretary was charged with negotiating yet another agreement for supplies with the Tsar’s failing government.  He would never arrive.

At 7pm, an explosion tore through the hull of the HMS Hampshire – the victim of a U-boat placed mine.  The ship starting listing immediately, on it’s way to sinking within 15 minutes.  As sailors scrambled towards the few lifeboats that were being lowered, a figure caught their eye.  Standing calmly on the starboard side of the vessel, casually chatting with fellow officers was the War Secretary himself.  It would be the last time anyone would see Lord Kitchener again.

Kitchener the Recruiter – the War Secretary’s call to patriotism swelled the ranks of Britain’s armies (at first)

“We hoped against hope, but no doubt now remains. A great figure gone. The services which he rendered in the early days of the war cannot be forgotten…He made many mistakes. He was not a good Cabinet man. His methods did not suit a democracy. But there he was, towering above the others in character as in inches, by far the most popular man in the country to the end, and a firm rock which stood out amidst the raging tempest.”

–Journalist Charles Repington upon Kitchener’s passing

With the passage of 100 years, the reputation and impact of Herbert Horatio Kitchener is difficult to relay without invoking the comparison to another titan of war-time Britain just a conflict later – Winston Churchill.  Like Churchill in World War II, Kitchener was an aging war hero; a walking anachronism that nevertheless personified the English ethos of their eras and inspired a generation’s trust and admiration.  Unlike Churchill, Kitchener would never live to see his legacy repaired by victory.   Read the rest of this entry »

The days might have been getting longer across Europe in June of 1916, but in the capitals of the Entente, the second summer of war only appeared to be getting darker.

France was bleeding to death in the trenches of Verdun.  Italy was reeling from an Austro-Hungarian offensive that threatened their main army at Isonzo.  Even the vaunted British Royal Navy had suffered a tactical defeat days earlier at Jutland.

Yet perhaps nowhere did the Entente’s fortunes look worse than in Tsarist Russia.  Malnourished, under-trained, and overwhelmed with anti-Tsarist/anti-war propaganda, Nicholas II’s armies (now directly under his command) had suffered devastating blow after blow.  After losing nearly five million soldiers by the fall of 1915, the Russians had failed to advance against the Central Powers just months earlier despite an overwhelming advantage in men and material.  On June 4th, 1916, they were being asked to assume the offensive once more.

Near the Galician city of Lutsk (now in modern Ukraine), the Russians would yet again attack – only this time without a significant advantage in manpower.  Nor would they be aided by a massive artillery barrage.  In fact, their commander had specifically requested that artillery not pound the Austro-Hungarian line for days in advance.  Even the Stavka, the Russian High Command, saw little chance of success.  To them, the offensive was being conducted for political, not military, reasons, in order to shore up Russia’s support of the Chantilly Agreement of inter-Allied coordination.

Within 72 hours of the first shots being fired, the entire complexion of the Great War would change – and Russia would emerge victorious from one of the largest offensives in history.

Gen. Aleksei Brusilov – an under-rated general, Brusilov’s offensive would temporarily change the direction of the entire Great War

After nearly two years of war, the recipe for offensive warfare could have easily been viewed as numbingly rote, if not for the horrible carnage.  Lined in trenches, forces would advance in human-wave conditions after a sustained barrage of heavy artillery.  Gaines and losses could be measured in meters, not miles, and even in victory, the cost in lives were high.   Read the rest of this entry »

Glenn Reyholds’ piece on the fish of society rotting from the head.

Powerline’s videos of the fascist mobs in San Jose.

And, of course, ♫ today’s NARN playlist.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today!

Today’s show?  We’ll talk about the new American fascism (hint – it’s not the usual suspect) and loathsome ghouls who exploit other peoples’ tragedies for political gain.

Also Paul Thissen.

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

• 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!

I attended not one, but two gun-grabber “rallies” yesterday – June 2, which the gun grabbers are trying to turn into a national event.  It’s the birthday of the girl who sang at Obama’s first inauguration – and then was killed weeks later.

Killed by whom?  How?

Well, that never popped up at any of the rallies.

More on that later.

The Mean, Leafy, Bucolic Streets Of Eagan:  I went to the first rally at Blackhawk park – in the midst of a particularly tony,well-to-to, violence-free  subdivision in Eagan,

30-odd very south-suburban looking people showed up – 8 or nine of them kids.

They did have a whole bunch of professionally-printed banners…

Although the person in charge of bringing the hot dog buns was half an hour late.

The speakers – a couple of younger, non-profit-y looking women, one of whom identified herself as the “south suburban director” for Moms Want Action, spoke.  Or at least recited some anti-gun chanting points (mostly “cities that enact gun control get results!”, and “background checks would prevent suicide” and the like).

Anna Olson – I think I got the name right – the South Metro Coordinator for Moms Want Action.

“We are definitely part of a huge movement”, one of the non-profit-y-looking dreamsicle girls said to the sparse crowd.

Miss Non-Profit pointed out what a number of shooters had suspected; the orange shirt theme – which served to make everyone present look like Dreamsicles – is intentionally a play on “Blaze orange”, the hunter’s color that says “don’t shoot me”.  She also noted that the Dreamsicle Festival had been endorsed by Governor Flint-Smith Dayton, Mayors Coleman and Hodges…and the mayor of Eagan.

Another man – he didn’t speak very loudly, and so I suspect his name is not “Bob Mucus”, although as God is my witness that’s what it sounded like – gave the keynote speech.

Bob…somebody or other.

Mr…er, Bob, introduced himself as a man who’d spent his life around guns; not only a hunter, but someone who was “qualified to carry a gun in the cockpit” for some reason.

He also introduced himself himself as someone who had someone in his life who had “died at the hands of a gun”.  His sister – a 46 year old divorced mother of four who worked as a nurse at an inner-city hospital, was apparently shot by a gun as she was getting out of a car.  He also noted two junior high classmates – one who’d been murdered, and one who’d commited suicide.  Apparently both by guns that had nobody controlling them.  (He also noted that “91% of people want background checks”).

I was, indeed, tempted – as, no doubt, many of you are now – to ask “so, did they ever find a perp?  Did he/she have a criminal record?  Did they ever ascertain a motive?” but it didn’t seem like the time of the place.

While no state legislators attended, Representative Masin’s campaign manager appeared; after introducing herself as Representative Masin’s campaign manager, in the segment of the presentation apparently reserved for legislators, she noted that she didn’t speak for Rep. Masin, whose campaign manger she was.  She recited the shopworn myth that “gun violence” rates are higher in rural western states due to more suicides.

About this time, I wanted to get up and ask “So why are you having this ‘rally’ here, rather than on the North Side, Dayton’s Bluff or along University Avenue?”

But I left.  I’m not going to say these people live in a world of their own – but I could have sworn I saw, sitting on a branch of a nearby tree, a grin, not attached to any sort of cat at all.

Down By The River, I…Well, You Know:  Next, I drove to the mean streets of North Minneapolis.

Not an orange shirt in sight.

So I checked my phone – and found that the Dreamsicle Rally was being held at the south end of the Stone Arch Bridge.  Alongside the Guthrie, the Mill City Museum, the Whitney Hotel, and blocks of upper-middle-class condos.

You count ’em. 150? 200? GOCRA turns out 2-3 times this many on a freezing January night for legislative hearings, without breaking a sweat.

I caught the end of what looked like Betsy Hodges’ speech – which was, point for point, the same speech that the non-profity-looking women in Eagan had given.

As in, they’d memorized the same chanting points from New York, down to the inflection.

Coverage. Probably the Uptake, or perhaps Moms Want Action’s own video stream. Not sure. All I know is, there’s a reason they were getting only close, tight shots.

If you follow this subject, you know that gun grabbers rarely know the subject all that well.  Councilman Frey shouted “we’re not talking about taking grandpa’s hunting rifle – we’re talking about background checks – because nobody needs to unload 30 rounds before they reload!”

But that had nothing on the schizophrenia of the City Council’s resolution – which, on the one hand, had plenty of moderate-ish sounding language about the Second Amendment being a right (which drew a few boos, including from the dreamsicles I was standing next to), but on the other hand “gun violence” being a “public health issue”.

Then there was a proclamation from Governor Flint Smith Dayton declaring June 2 something or another, and declaring that the 35W bridge would be Dreamsicle Orange:

“What can we do about violence in North Minneapolis?” “Change the light-bulb filters on the 35W bridge?” “Booyah! You’re a genius!”

No word on whether the Lowry Bridge would be lit up orange, I thought as I left.

Absent:  Two things the two rallies had in common?

Almost every single chanting point.  Seriously – it was like they were reading off the same teleprompter.

And in no rally, ever, not once, was a perpetrator mentioned.  All of the guns used in all of the violence were apparently self-animated!

You have never heard a single gun-grabber, not a single dreamsicle, refer to a murderer (with the occasional exception of Adam Lanza or Jared Loughner or the Boulder guy, who were motivated by insanity rather than being just the garden-variety criminals that commit 90% of this nation’s homicides.

One other thing you never heard?

“Hey – let’s take this to North Minneapolis!”.

I wonder why?

…or are coming up for renewal, this is gonna be fun.

GOCRA is doing a fundraiser tomorrow – a Carry Permit training class conducted by Professor Joe Olson, the guy who wrote Minnesota’s carry permit law.

You will get, officially, the very best legal training on carry permit laws available – straight from the metaphorical horse’s mouth.

Proceeds go to the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – the people who’ve pretty much single-handedly beaten the orcs in Minnesota for the past three decades.

Oh, yeah – registration ends today!  Get on it!

To:  The Reverend Nancy Nord Bence, “Protect” MN
From:  Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Suggestion

Last night, you had your “Orange” events around selected parts of the Metro – or at least Eagan (a snug little suburban enclave) and the Stone Arch Bridge, the heart of the gentrified waterfront.

And yet in all your communications, you decry violence…where it’s happening, North Minneapolis.

So why didn’t you (plural) hold your march / event / vigil up there?

That is all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

New Rasmussen poll says 50% of Americans think Hillary should continue to campaign for President, even if charged with a crime.  Of course the answer is slightly suspect poll uses push techniques to set up the answer; but still, that’s a high percentage.  Survey questions here.

 Oddly, I agree – she should keep running, same as any Republican being “investigated” during the campaign.  Law suits brought against candidates by partisans have become so common that if candidates stepped aside for every one, nobody could ever be elected and the government would be paralyzed, unable to impose new taxes or impose any new regulations . . . wait a minute . . . .

 Joe Doakes

Heh.

Today’s the day all the gun-grabbers have planned for their big…day.  They’ll be having their little events, wearing their orange t-shirts, looking a little bit like human Dreamsicles.  And they’ll be marching their marches, doing their speeches, yadda yadda.   I wouldn’t be surprised if the huge papier-mache heads turned up.

To pimp the event, The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence sent this out yesterday:

Dear Heinrich,
According to the Star Tribune, “In the first five months of 2016, 123 people have been shot in Minneapolis–97 of them on the North Side–compared with 65 during the same period last year. At the current pace, north Minneapolis will eclipse last year’s total of gunshot victims by late September.”

Let’s let that sink in.

At a time when Minnesota’s murder rate outside North Minneapolis has sunk to levels half that of Norway, and competitive with the rural west, the North Side is turning into Beirut.

Could we perhaps have a crime problem?

Why, of course we do.  Seems like common sense, doesn’t it?

What’s to be done about escalating gun violence in the urban core? How are we to protect the families and children living in communities where flying bullets and wailing sirens are becoming ever more commonplace?
There has been a lot of finger pointing: at the gangs, at the police, at the legislature. As I stated in a letter published in the Star Tribune yesterday, the problem is multi-faceted and requires a multi-faceted response.

That sounds almost reasonable!   Of course the problem is “multi-faceted”.  Everyone knows this.

And in fact, for a brief, shining moment, Rev. Nord Bence almost sounds like she’s aiming for “reasonable”.   She comes sooooo close…:

And everyone who understands that we can protect gun rights…

…before making the inevitable detour into loopdieland:

…without handing over our right to live in safe communities to the gun lobby, and that common sense gun regulation is absolutely necessary and long overdue, and that what is really lacking is not the knowledge of how to solve the problem of gun violence, but the courage to do so.

And right there, my bemusement and, let’s be honest, mild mockery turned into toxic disgust.  Behind that Dreamsicle Orange is a toxic hatred.

People are dying.   Children are afraid to play outside.  Near North is a shooting gallery.

And after disclaiming “finger pointing” at gangs, cops or politics,  The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence wants to blame it on “the gun lobby?”

What she’s saying is “people – mostly (but far from all) who live in places where the crime rates are plummeting as the number of legal gun owners soars – standing up for their Second Amendment rights is what is killing people in North Minneapolis”.  

The Rev. Nord Bence is using those bleeding, broken, largely black bodies to take a smug, dim whack at the “gun lobby” – which, in Minnesota, is “Minnesotans”.  

In her own way, The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence may be an even more toxic, irrational figure than Heather Martens; behind Heather Martens’ comical uninfored bumbling was a non-profiteer who really didn’t know what she was doing;  behind the Reverend Nord Bence’s ELCA hair and veneer of reason is toxic bigotry.

… that the most fiscally sound and best managed states in the union are controlled by Republicans, while all of the worst marriage states are controlled by Democrats.

[…while] Mercatus makes no mention of the states’ political leanings, every state in the top 10 except for Florida is solidly red, meaning those states voted for the Republican in each of the past four presidential elections (see table). And Florida has had a Republican governor since 1999, and the state House and Senate are both controlled by Republicans.

At the other end of the spectrum, except for Kentucky, the 10 worst states are all solidly blue. And all but two of the governors since 1947 have been Democrats.

I said it should surprise nobody. But you know it will.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

On the one hand, the Americans with Disabilities Act was more than a kind-hearted gesture, it was an acknowledgement that America is rich enough to be able to afford to make its public spaces accessible to everyone, including the handicapped. If the law says you have to make accommodations, then by God you have to make them; and if it takes a lawsuit to force you to comply, then you’re jerk and we don’t feel sorry for you. .

Except when the bureaucrats and building inspectors and disability lawyers get ahold of the kind-hearted gesture and turn it into a nit-picking, mountain-out-of-a-molehill tangle of impossible and conflicting regulations, compliance is not simple. The comments show how clueless the public is about the law. “It only requires that the business make the stuff from the second floor available by catalogue, or the disabled person can be met off site, and old buildings are exempted, grandfathered in.” They may be exempt until some minor change is made, then suddenly the entire place needs a major overhaul. Meet a client offsite? Portable temporary ramps? Not likely. The coffee shop with the temporary ramp will be sued because the wheelchair bound person can’t get inside to tell the store they need the ramp.
Now we’ve decided it’s time to rein in the lawsuits and make it tougher for people to force businesses to comply with the kind-hearted law.
The whole problem is another example of Liberals at play. It would feel good to do something nice for those sad victims and it doesn’t cost us anything because we’ll make somebody else pay for it, so pass the law to signal everyone how virtuous we are for Doing Good. But when people we know have to start paying real money to comply, well, that’s not so much fun anymore. Blame the nasty lawyer for bringing all the lawsuits. Make him stop forcing us to comply with our feel-good law.
It’s not so much the hypocrisy that annoys me: it’s the notion that virtue is good if it’s free; but if we have to pay for it ourselves, then it’s too much bother.
Joe Doakes

Want to start a fire?  Ask a flaming committed “progressive” what they think about private charity.  Hold kindling to their ears.

To:  The Media
From:  Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Journalistic “Standards”

Dear Media

Katie Couric lied to the viewing public by maliciously editing her piece on “Gun Violence” to show a group of human rights activists as speechless when asked a fairly elementary question about gun control (when, in fact, they had several minutes of on-point, articulate response).

Kevin Williamson – a long-time newspaperman (who presumably knows the secret handshake you journalists have that determines whether you’ll take their criticism seriously or not) notes that…:

This kind of thing is the stock-in-trade of faux journalists such as Jon Stewart and crude propagandists such as Michael Moore, but Katie Couric is, in theory, something else: an actual journalist. There are things we permit among comedians that we do not permit among journalists: I doubt very much that every anecdote Richard Pryor ever shared actually happened.

I believe I’ve heard a journo or two whimpering about “Censorship”.  (“On The Media”, NPR’s media criticism program Media Über Alles-fest, hasn’t yet, but I’m sure they will – if they deign to address the story at all)

The usual idiots are rallying to Couric’s defense for the usual reason, which has absolutely nothing to do with principle and everything to do with a deep disinclination to allow anything to happen that might be considered a victory for conservative critics of the mainstream media. This is not a First Amendment question: No one is arguing that this film should be censored, the way films critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton were subject to government censorship before Citizens United; rather, this is a straightforward question about journalistic standards and Yahoo’s adherence to or wanton abandonment of them. Journalists are not supposed to tell lies to their audiences.

Fearless prediction:  “Serious” journalists will throw their hands up in the air, declare “it’s the new media, what are you gonna do?” and let it aaaaaaaall slide.