Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Oh, thank God. I was so afraid that my ongoing failure to comment on Black music was evidence of my exclusionary hatred of all things Black motivated by racism; but now it turns out I was simply being respectful of a culture that I don’t understand.
Separate but equal. Got it. Good to go.
Joe Doakes
I guess I’m an appropriator.
Tough.
I hold my nose and say “I’d vote for Trump if he were the nominee, if only because I don’t want Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton nominating Anthony Kennedy’s replacement for the Supreme Court”.
And I’ll stand by it.
But news like this means I’ll likely need to smear mentholatum under my nose before I plug it.
The Marines are storing pre-positioned equipment in central Norway again.
To deter Russian aggression.
How’s that new diplomacy working, again?
The Lightworker plans to skip Antonin Scalia’s funeral.
Today’s ear-worm:
…but only barely.
As of the February before the election, the North Dakota Democrat/Non-Partisan League (the ND name for “Democrat”) Party has no announced candidates for Governor or State Representative. The party very nearly could hold its convention at “Kroll’s”, a popular Minot diner.
How wonderful must it be, to live in a place where the peekaboo-socialists are virtually extinct?
It’s almost too wonderful to dream about.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Everybody knows the US can never retire its debts – we owe like 20 trillion dollars. More, if you count the value of unfunded promises like Social Security and Obamacare. But everybody also knows you can’t cut spending – can’t even propose a smaller increase in spending – because the media would bury you.
And with Bernie riding the “free stuff” horse into the White House, it’ll only get worse.
So – three possibilities:
- America is unique in history: we never pay the debt and nobody ever cares, it’s all imaginary money anyway, in which case, why not spend even more, give away even more, and everyone can be rich forever?
- Somebody calls the debt and the US Government can’t pay it. It’s happened before, after the Revolutionary War. The resulting economic chaos was mitigated because 90% of the citizens lived on farms where they were used to primitive life and had a chance at being self-sustaining. This time around, 90% of the citizens live in cities that will run out of food and water in days.
- We figure out a way to write off the debt and start fresh, but without a calamitous economic crash.
We’re living as if Option 1 was guaranteed and Option 2 cannot happen. I’m not convinced that’s true. Option 3 is never discussed. Is that because it’s not technically possible? Because it’s not politically feasible? Or because Americans are reluctant to give up the dream of a free lobster in every pot and a free Cadillac in every garage?
Joe Doakes
I’m starting to think Trulbert was optimistic.
…but we need a lot more of this sort of thing.
Is it satire?
SCENE: Mitch BERG is getting a cup of coffee. Aaron ROSTON, a writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, walks up behind him in the line, looking for a free refill. ROSTON is a crossing guard at a school in rural southern Minnesota, and is a bullying activist – mostly focusing on promoting bullying of children of conservatives.
ROSTON: Merg! The economy is doing great! Look at all the new jobs!
BERG: 2/3 of the new jobs are minimum wage. Times are OK, so far – provided you’re a college educated professional. If you’re poor, or black, or low-skilled, not so much.
ROSTON: So it’s time to raise the minimum wage.
BERG: Raising the minimum wage just rewards some workers by causing others to get laid off. Prosperity is the only real minimum wage hike. Here’s the alarming part; the best measure of an economy is how fast people move up and out of the lowest economic quintile. We used to be among the best in the worlds. Now, most of the Western world is better than we are.
ROSTON: Well, funny you should mention that. Income mobility was pretty good back under the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, when the tax rates were much higher. Hmmmmmmmmm.
BERG: Wait, what’s with the theatrical “hmmmmmmmm”?
ROSTON: It proves you have been outfoxed.
BERG: Well, no. It’s a false correlation. In the fifties and sixties, the US had the world’s only functional economy. Japan and Germany were still recovering from the war; Singapore and South Korea and Taiwan were third-world hellholes; China was an Orwellian dystopia; India was still at the bottom of its experiment with “democratic socialism”.
The US was the only place where things actually could get built; it was the world’s only functional market. We could afford high taxes, and cushy union jobs, because we were the only place actually building things.
Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Ascribing mobility to higher taxes is the same as chalking them up to the fact that “laws against sexual harassment and racism were more lax in the fifties”; they were facts that corresponded in time, but weren’t related.
ROSTON: What? You’re a racist!
BERG: Um, no. That was an illustration…
ROSTON: I will not interact with racists and sexists!
(ROSTON winds up and throws his coffee cup toward BERG from a range of three feet. And misses. ROSTON stomps away in a huff – grabbing a handful of sugar packets from the credenza on his way out).
BERG: (Sotto voce) Never let it be said that liberals suck at economics.
And SCENE.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Which of these Obama administration gun control proposals is NOT a thinly disguised money-laundering scheme to give federal dollars via grants to Liberals who will donate it right back to the DFL?
Joe Doakes
Is that a trick question?
I was bored the other night, so I started watching random old films on Youtube.
One of them was a documentary of sorts about an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam, from fifty (!) years ago.
And I thought I’d borrow a page from Lileks; I grabbed the first name I could actually read, and decided to see what the internet could find me.
The first name I registered on was the pilot of the last plane in this clip (an A4 Skyhawk) – Lt. Junior Grade Dave Griggs:
Sure enough, he’s out there. He went on to become an astronaut – and in April of 1985, conducted the first unscheduled spacewalk in history – accompanied by Utah Senator Jake Garn, the first sitting Congressman in space.
He was killed in a private plane accident in 1989.
I need more hobbies.
Jesse Hughes – lead singer of the band “Eagles of Death Metal”, the band that was playing at the Bataclan in Paris the night of the Paris Massacre – says what every gun rights activist already knows; the only response to bad guys with guns is good guys with guns:
“Did your French gun control stop a single [expletive] person from dying at the Bataclan?” Hughes said. “And if anyone can answer yes, I’d like to hear it, because I don’t think so. I think the only thing that stopped it was some of the bravest men that I’ve ever seen in my life charging head-first into the face of death with their firearms.”
The left’s answer, inevitably, is a series of academic postulates that wither as fast as the crowd at Bataclan under reasoned scrutiny, to say nothing of real-life events.
Dear MOA: With all due respect: QQQQ.
The only reasoned response? You, and you alone, are responsible for your and your family’s protection. And while the world is demonstrably safer than it was, 20 and 70 and 200 years ago, human nature means that evil, some time, some place, will be waiting for someone, somewhere – whether in the form of a lone mugger, a couple of rapists, a gang of terrorists, or a government full of gangsters.
By the way – there’s been four terror-related mass shootings, and ten terror attacks altogether, since the Charlie Hebdo massacre, with a total death toll of 152, and 388 injured.
In Zürich, where handgun carry permits are relatively plentiful? Holding steady at zero and zero. While correlation doesn’t equal causation, it fits a pattern that we see here in the US, and that they saw in Israel in the seventies; terrorists (like delusional mass-shooters in general) avoid places where there might be resistance.
I hate Twitter.
There. I said it.
Twitter is the most annoying social media outlet (at least among the ones I use; I’ve come to cordially detest “Vine” videos, but I don’t use them, either). Twitter has become a necessary evil for self-marketing; I use Twitter for promoting blog and show content and following pundits in semi-real time, in theory, except that I make about as little time to spend on Twitter as I can get away with. It’s nearly useless as a form of communication; it’s 300 million people shouting…
…and mostly doing it badly. The 140 character limit had been one of the greatest blows to literacy in history – and yes, I know, learning how to fit a coherent thought into 140 characters can teach a writer a lot about economizing, if they’re inclined to learn those lessons. But of 300-million odd Twitter users, perhaps three or four dozen are so inclined.
Twitter is a banal, but very urgent, wasteland.
And so if it were to collapse and disappear from the public discourse, I’d dance around the fire, myself.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
One of the keys to achieving a healthier citizenry is providing everyone with affordable (meaning subsidized) health insurance. Naturally, since the government is paying for most of it, the government needs the data supporting the billings. So all your medical records belong to the government. But it’s okay, the data is totally secure, just like the personnel records at the Department of Homeland Security.
Joe Doakes
In all things, we must reinforce failure and reward incompentence.
With government, anyway.
SCENE: Mitch BERG is at a large gas station in Minnetonka, MN. Having just bought gas, he’s looking for a new windshield wiper. He turns down the aisle marked “Windshield Wipers/Condiments/Magazines Showing People Getting Hit In The Groin”, and notices Gutterball GARY – a blogger at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, who describes his hobbies as bowling, heckling people, and shouting really loud – reading a magazine.
BERG tries to backpedal out of the aisle, but GARY notices him.
GARY: Hey, Merg! You’re stupid!
BERG: Nothing my mother doesn’t say.
GARY: The Second Amendment is not an individual right!
BERG: Well, the Supreme Court in the Heller and McDonald cases disagreed, and made it both a precedent and incorporated it to the states.
GARY: You’re stupid and you have no idea what you’re talking about! Justice Burger said the Second Amendment was “a fraud on the American public.”
BERG: So?
GARY: He was a conservative!
BERG: Maybe compared to Nixon, who appointed him, but not really. And he was really arguing a strawman; he was saying the Second Amendment doesn’t preclude regulation…
GARY: Burger disagrees with you! And he’s from Minnesota! It’s further proof you don’t know what you’re talking about! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
BERG: Um,…
GARY: …ha ha ha ha ha!
BERG: Say, Gary? In what case did Burger write that opinion?
GARY: Huh?
BERG: Was that statement from a Supreme Court, or even an appelate, case?
GARY: Huh?
BERG: The thing Burger said?
GARY: You’re stupid!
BERG: Right. It wasn’t part of a case. It was a personal opinion, in a 1990 PBS interview. It was of no more legal weight than you or me talking to PBS.
GARY: He was a conservative, and he disagrees with you, and he’s a Supreme Court judge, so you’re stupid!
BERG: Huh. So because a “conservative” SCOTUS justice had a personal, private opinion that dissents from conservative and libertarian orthodoxy, I’m stupid.
GARY: Yeah! Ha ha ha ha…
BERG: um…
GARY: …ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
BERG: So who said this: “Certainly, one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms. … The right of the citizen to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”
GARY: That sounds like Ted Nugent! Which means you’re an anti-semite! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…
BERG: Actually…
GARY: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
BERG: Actually it was Hubert H. Humphrey. A “progressive”, a former Vice President and Senator, and the greatest politician Minnesota ever produced. And it’d seem he disagrees with Justice Burger.
GARY: Who cares what an anti-semite thinks?
BERG: Oh, the Nugent thing? Pfft. I didn’t even like Ted Nugent as a guitar player all that much; I certainly never appointed him my spokesperson.
GARY: Nope! Nugent is on your side, so you’re an antisemite!
BERG: Ah. So if someone were to say “With Iraq no threat, why invade a sovereign country? The answer: President Bush’s policy to secure Israel. . . . [S]preading democracy in the Mideast to secure Israel would take the Jewish vote from the Democrats.”
GARY: Sounds like Nugent or some other ReTHUGliCON.
BERG: First – I’m always amazed to hear people actually talking in caps. Second – no. It was Democrat senator Fritz Hollings.
So – does that make you anti-semitic?
GARY: You’re stupid.
BERG: Natch.
And SCENE.
The Minnesota Legislature – and in this case, mostly the DFL caucuses in the legislature – are trying to figure out how to spend the roughly billion-dollar surplus.
Sound familiar?
There are bills to boost funding for Reading Corps by more than $5 million; $1 million to prevent tractor rollovers; and another $15 million to expand Head Start school programs. There are countless more without firm price tags. And Gov. Mark Dayton himself has requested $100 million for broadband Internet development and another $6 million to offer state employees paid parental leave.
It illustrates the political and financial reality that even a $1 billion-plus surplus can only go so far. And while it may be less painful than making cuts to close budget gaps, extra cash just leaves politicians with more to argue over.
And there’s this absolutely precious quote by former Senate majority leader and gubernatorial candidate Roger Moe:
“The average person who watches the process would think that it would be easier if you have a budget surplus … than shortfalls. It’s probably the opposite,” said Roger Moe, a former state senator and longtime Democratic majority leader. “That puts more pressure on the Legislature.”
Well, no, Senator Moe.
The average person who is remotely literate about government looks at that surplus and thinks “that’s money that’s been over-taxed; give it back”.
The DFL and media (pardon the redundancy), beholden as they are to the notion that money that people earn is government property first and foremost, never, ever put that out there…
I’m not sure whether to react to stories like this with compassion, or contempt.
I’m leaning towards contempt.
Note to all you clueless people who voted DFL: when you vote for socialism, government will act like… a socialist government.
Socialists gonna socialize!
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
In the mainstream media, everybody gets their news from Associated Press, farmed out to every newspaper, radio and television station. If AP doesn’t report it, you don’t see it.
Fortunately, there’s the internet. You can Google anything and come up with suggested websites taking you right to the truth.
Well, for some things you can. Google tweaks its search algorithm to omit objectionable content, being content they don’t want you to see.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss; we won’t get fooled again?
Joe Doakes
It’s gone way past “conspiracy theories”.
Justice Scalia, dead at 79.
Dear so-called GOP Senate majority; if you never deliver any other thing, you had better come through on this.
More tomorrow/Monday.
UPDATE: There’s hope:
Thin hope, but hope nonetheless.
UPDATE II: The NARN Curse? Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Terry Schaivo and now Scalia, all initially reported dead moments after the NARN goes off the air (after discussing them) on Saturday.
UPDATE III: Sean Davis of the Federalist:
“If Donald Trump wants to end this race tonight, he’ll vow that his first act as president will be appointing Ted Cruz to the Supreme Court.”
There’s something to that. As I noted today while the NARN was on the air, the sole reason I’d vote for Trump if nominated is because of the chance that Scalia or Kennedy would leave the court. Knowing that Scalia would be replaced by a solid conservative justice – as Cruz would be – would calm my conscience greatly.
Here’s now you can help push back on the daycare jamdown.
Or here – where you can also donate money.
Here’s the Tracinski piece on “Peak Left”
And of course, here’s ♫ today’s music 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 on the show,
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.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
Dawn hadn’t even fully broken over the small town of Taveta in British East Africa (now Kenya) when the artillery barrage began on February 12th, 1916.
By the standards of the Great War, the two-hour shelling of German Schutztruppe holding the small strategic lookout (Taveta was near Mount Kilimanjaro and had been seized by Germany early in the war) was little more than a pleasant morning wake-up call. But by the standards of the war in Africa, it was part of a full-blown massive offensive by a combination of Boers, Brits, Rhodesians, Indians and Africans – well over 73,000 men – to wrestle away East Africa from the Kaiser’s grip.
The 6,000 men of a South African brigade, supported by Indian-based artillery, charged at Taveta up Salaita Hill, where British intelligence had suggested that the artillery had been pounding the front-line of a few hundred black African German troops. In reality, the artillery had landed behind the front-line and instead of a few hundred defenders, 2,300 men awaited the Entente attack. Knowing discretion to be the better part of valor, the South Africans quickly retreated with minimal casualties.
Salaita Hill would be another reversal for the Entente in an endless campaign against the forces of German Gen. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck – a campaign that would last beyond the end of the First World War.
—
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck: The “Lion of Africa” – the picture is from his years after the war, but he’s still dressed in his distinctive uniform and slouch hat
The voracious appetite of the Entente for German colonies defined the earliest months of the war in Africa. German possessions in central and southwest Africa fell with relative ease as trained British regulars were able to beat German Schutztruppe (protection forces); often little more than ill-equipped black volunteers or aging white settlers. Coupled with the introduction of forces from South African Boers and British Indians, the conquest of German Africa appeared to be proceeding as a neat and orderly little war. Read the rest of this entry »
Want to to know the only thing that makes me happier than Chad Anderson winning the special election for Ann Lenczewski’s old seat in Bloomington?
Income: Anderson received $11,805 in individual contributions:
Carlson got $10,407:
So in terms of on-the-street fundraising from actual people, Anderson had a slight edge. The edge is especially notable in terms of non-itemized contributions – smaller contributions from regular people that don’t need to be itemized on state reports; 86% of Andersons contributions were from the little guy; with Carlson, 39% of his individual donations came from deep-pocketed suburban progressive grandées.
In terms of funding from political parties: Anderson got $500 from his local party unit- which, like most underfunded GOP party units in the city and the first ring of suburbs, no doubt had to dig really, really deep:
The state GOP doesn’t spend a lot of money on special elections in the city and the first ring, while it’s still getting its financial house in order.
Carlson got $9,158.40 from the always well-heeled local party unit ($2,000), as well as cleaning out Lenczewski’s campaign account to the tune of $3,000, and a generous $4158.40 gift from the state DFL:
Carlson received $9,700 from various union PACs.
Carlson also got a public subsidy of $6897.04:
Anderson got no direct PAC money, and he got no public subsidy.
Outgo: Here’s the fun part; in total, Carlson spent $25,122.67:
On the other hand, Anderson spent a total of $6324.32.
That means DFL’s Carlson outspent the Republican Anderson by roughly 4:1. And lost.
Apparently, people in Bloomington really don’t want their trash messed with.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Sanders clobbered Hillary in New Hampshire, but they wind up with the same number of delegates because Hillary knows how to play the insider game from long ago. The most hated woman in America could still ascend to the throne.
joe doakes
That’s the conventional wisdom.
My two cents? The Democrats need Sanders to win. Hillary can’t pardon herself.
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