Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – we’ll be taking the Christmas holiday off.
I’ll be running a “best of”.
Brad will be live tomorrow, and his guests will include Jim Abeler, who is running against Andy Aplikowski in the primary leading up to the special election in Senate District 35.
Enjoy your time with your familes, and we’ll see you next week!
…please remember to spare a prayer for people who are celebrating Christmas in places where people of faith live under the daily jackboot of repression::
Seasons Greetings to you and yours from all of us here at SITD!
Even the Strib has noted that real people are not amused about Alonda Cano’s abuse of power yesterday.
As I had hoped, one of the people she doxxed – Mr. Dent – is filing an ethics complaint with the city:
Stephen Dent, who said he had previously contributed to Cano’s campaign, wrote to her and told Cano she was unfit to serve on the council by “closing private property” and “supporting illegal actions.”
Cano then tweeted Dent’s email address and phone number to her roughly 2,000 followers.
“What she did to me and others put a huge chill on our democratic society,” Dent said in a phone interview early Thursday. “It has broken my trust with public officials in the city of Minneapolis.”
Attempts to reach Cano Thursday morning were not successful.
Oh, I just bet they weren’t.
First things (ahem) first: Jay Furst, the top editor at the Rochester (MN) Post-Bulletin, and I go way back, more or less. He was working at the Jamestown Sun back when I was at my first radio job, during the tail end of the Carter administration. When I moved to the Cities, he was working as a PR guy, and gave me some useful advice for breaking into the big city. I’ve always known him to be a good reporter.
And like any good reporter, he’s not to be denied a story that he has every right to cover:
Rule No. 1 for public meetings: Don’t tell reporters they can’t be there…A new local group called the Coalition Against the DMC had an organizational meeting at VFW Post 1215 Thursday night. One of the organizers, Diana Friemann, put a public notice in the Post-Bulletin calendar of events last week, for print and online, to announce the meeting…The item said where, when and what the meeting was about, and Friemann was listed as the contact. It said, “Help stop the tax-and-spend agenda of DMC.”
That sounded like an interesting meeting, so a P-B reporter contacted her to learn more. Friemann told him the media wasn’t welcome at the event and wouldn’t be allowed to report on it, and she asked not to be identified…
Well, that’s not the way America works. You can’t call a public meeting and then tell reporters not to show up. You can try to keep us out — you can put a guard at the door, frisk me for my reporter’s notebook, take my camera — but all you’ll do is assure that a story will run. We might not get all the information, but we’ll report that something happened.
As long has Hillary Clinton or Mark Dayton have nothing to do with it…but I digress.
Seriously – bully! Kudos! That is, in theory, what the Fourth Estate is supposed to do! It’s their First Amendment right – not to get censored by government – and it’s their job!
So let’s fast-forward to this past Monday night. Furst organized – as he has, monthly, for about ten years now – a public forum at a Rochester library to discuss Kim Norton’s Bloomberg-issued gun grab proposals. Oddly, although a number of people at the forefront of Minnesota’s 2nd Amendment movement offered to come to Rochester to speak for the good guys, Furst declined, preferring to have people from the Rochester area. Oddly, representing the 2nd Amendment movement at the event was…a Twin Cities area gun trainer who is apparently a great guy but not necessarily a public speaker, and Representative Duane Quam – one of the good guys in the Legislature who has earned his “A” ratings from every rights group that matters, but not someone whose rhetorical style is compared to Jeremiah Wright.
Anyway – if we Second Amendment supporters have learned anything over the years, it’s “control your narrative” – which means control your sources. Which means get your own sources; your own video, your own copies of numbers, everything. Trust no-one, least of all government, even less of all media, to tell a true, accurate story.
And so the various Second Amendment freedom groups urged their supporters to videotape the presentation, to capture for ourselves all the inaccuracies and fabrications Rep. Norton was sure to issue.
And they did . Which is where Furst picks up the story, in a piece from this past Tuesday in the Post/Bulletin.
The guy sitting next to me at the front table had a pistol on his hip, and I’ll assume there were other guns in the room as well. Nobody who wanted to carry a gun was turned away from our Dialogues event. Nobody got kicked out. I just asked in advance that people choose not to carry. I’ll assume a number of people ignored that, and certainly one of our panelists did.
Yeah, Mr. Furst – the Second Amendment is on a par in every way with the First Amendment. And if you tell us we can’t exercise our rights in a place – a public one! – where we have every right to, we’re going to practice it twice as hard.
Sound familiar?
There were Rochester police officers on hand to check permits to carry, though I don’t know that any were checked.
Because most cops know that law-abiding citizens with carry permits are safer than law-abiding citizens without ’em.
Nobody’s rights were infringed, but the library — our host for the event — appreciated my request that people leave their guns at home.
So let’s get this straight; we’re utterly absolutist about some civil rights, but extremely casual about others?
Anyway – by way of “controlling the narrative”, some of the Civil Rights activists came with cameras:
Interestingly, when I arrived that night, a man had set up a video camera in the front row, intending to tape it (as was recommended by a Minnesota gun rights lobby)…Then I learned that in fact the library has a policy not to allow videotaping for privacy reasons, which is their right,
Precisely as it was the right of the group in Furst’s first piece to request no media be present; i.e., not at all, if they’re in a public place.
They can ask. Should they be asking the public to park their civil rights at the door, in a place where they have every legal right to be?
though the library in fact videotapes the Dialogues events (and makes people aware that videotaping occurs). They asked him not to use his camera; he refused.
Which brings us back to the “control your content” bit. When the DFL power structure wants evidence to disappear, then voilá, it disappears.
I asked him myself and he said it was a library policy, not a statute or higher law, and he’d videotape if he pleased. He was fairly cold and crisp about it.
As any reporter would be when asked not to to their job, in a public place, at a public event, at a place they have every right to be at.
It’s a simple fact; we can not trust the media or this state’s public institutions to tell the people the truth about this issue. It’s not necessarily due to bias (although there is plenty of that out there too); most reporters in this state don’t know the difference between a magazine and a clip. When Kim Norton says something like “we need to ban exploding bullets”, most reporters will nod and write “Kim Norton addressed the plague of exploding bullets”. They don’t know any better.
Now, just about every blogger, talk show host and activist has had this conversation with someone in the media; the media figure will respond “but you’re not a reporter”.
To which we, the people, need to respond “On this issue, yes I am. I can actually tell the story to the people who weren’t here and don’t know, accurately and fairly (and “fairness” and “bias” aren’t necessarily incompatible). People reading/watching my account will get a more accurate, more knowledgable, more complete, and fairer picture of what happened here than they will from reading/watching yours. There is nothing about your tin ‘journalist’ badge that gives you a first class seat on the First Amendment plane”.
After the event, he thanked me and said he didn’t intend to create a stir. I thanked him for attending. But as the videotape incident suggests, absolutely nothing is easy about this issue.
Well, some things are; Rights are rights. Upholding them takes work. Even the ones that aren’t fashionable.
And in that, Kim Norton is in league with the plantation owners in the old South.
Minneapolis City Councilwoman Alondra Cano makes no bones about the fact that she’s a progressive. Her Twitter bio begins “Daughter of the Third World Feminist movement”, which may or may not be true, but she’s certainly a product of the sort of unbridled prosperity that First World free-marketeering has wrought; it takes a lot of prosperity to make a public life like hers sustainable. And thank goodness for that prosperity – since her future as an industrial engineer looks dim indeed.
At any rate, she spent a good chunk of yesterday on social media rooting for Black Lives Matter’s protest at the Mall of America. And while Ms Cano seems as confused about the distinction between public and private property as the rest of the City Council usually does, I’ll certainly defend her right to protest in favor of or against anything she wants.
Provided, of course, she doesn’t abuse her office to do it.
And we’ve got a problem, there.
Chicago-y: On her Twitter feed yesterday, she went around and around with some of her critics.
Including, as it happens, some who’d written to her on her City of Minneapolis feedback form – the one people use on the City website to send her feedback.
She took to posting some of the responses she disagreed with. Note: While I redacted personal information, including phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses, from the screenshots, Ms. Cano did not:
And this condescending little jape:
When people tried to call “foul” on Twitter, Cano responded:
Emails may be public – but one might ask why a public official is posting citizens data on Twitter, when they contacted her via the City’s contact form. Because she expects them to be reading Twitter? Seems unlikely.
And while she pleads “public data”, you’ll note that she only published the names, email and home addresses of detractors, not supporters.
In short, Cano used her city social media presence and city-supplied data to try to intimidate constituents who disagreed with her. Furthermore, she used city-supplied data to stump for Black Lives Matter. While Cano has every right to believe what she wants, and protest on their behalf, using data from a city web form to intimidate citizens is grossly inappropriate.
It’s hard out there for a member of a major urban political elite.
So while Ms. Cano – an elected officeholder and high-ranking member of a power structure that has boundless power over a major American city – may try to eke out a shard of victimhood out of the fact that anyone would ask…:
I haven’t seen the term “womyn” used unironically in twenty years. Minneapolis is truly a commemorative museum of progressivism.
…I’m going to ask anyway.
I posted four questions to Ms. Cano – although I suspect I’ll be blocked from her Twitter feed long before she reads them, even if she did. But for the record, here they are:
If you live in Minneapolis, I urge you to ask Ms. Cano exactly that.
And maybe tell her to check her urban liberal privilege.
Want to show a kid today what a real leader is? Because God knows our current President isn’t teaching them anything.
Tell them what happened in Poland in 1981. Read this bit from a few years back, about the defection of the Polish ambassador to the US in protest against the Communist repression in his country).
(See around 4:10 as Reagan begins to speak about Poland. Between there and the “yellow ribbon” moment, around 11:00)
Reagan did more than just have people light candles – read Jay Nordlinger’s excellent “Yellow Ribbon Culture” for all the reasons the “symbolic message” has become meaningless today – he followed up the symbolic message with a mountain of work in public and behind the scenes to undermine the Polish and Soviet regimes, and build up Solidarity and other resistance in the Eastern Bloc, work which eventually brought Communism crashing down.
This, children, is how leadership was done.
Compare that with the wan empty suit that is frittering away his last year in the White House today, and lament.
Rep. Kim Norton – the Rochester legislator who will be serving as Michael Bloomberg’s bag-woman in the coming session – has decided to try to put some numbers behind her increasingly strident and faith-based posturing on guns. She posted these “survey” “results” on her Facebook page.
How did it work? I did say it was a liberal trying to do numbers, right?
The results, to date-12/22/15, of a survey sent out by my office to 3 precincts in my district:
Three precincts? A whole three precincts?
Now, a legislative district has dozens of precincts. I don’t know exactly how many precincts there are in Kim Norton’s HD25B, but there are a total of 56 in the city of Rochester, and Norton has roughly half the city. Let’s be (what else?) conservative, and say she’s got 24 of ’em.
Her district also includes a grand total of 39,762 people, over 21 square miles. It’s a cozy district.
So Norton sent out a “survey” to three precincts – maybe 1/8 of her district. Which three precincts? What are their demographics? Do these three precincts represent her district? More importantly – why does Rep. Norton think these three precincts represent her district?
Anyway. So Rep. Norton mails out a survey to three selected precincts. And here’s what she got back:
1. Are you in favor of background checks for gun show sales, private gun sales, and gifts?
Yes (73) 78%
No (21) 22%
Total 94
Forget the actual question for a moment. There were 94 answers.
Out of nearly 40,000 people in her district, and out of maybe 3-4,000 (I’m estimating) in the three precincts she favored with her survey, she got less than 100 answers.
That’s one quarter of one percent of her district.
And do you suppose those people are a representative sample of the precincts, much less the district? Or might they – just possibly! – have been an intensely self-selected sample of people who are motivated not only to pay attention to bulk mail from their DFL Representative, but also driven to fill out an utterly symbolic survey about an issue that Rep. Norton is wrapping herself around?
Remember – most people just don’t care that much. And if most conservatives are at all like me, they don’t open junk mail from legislators, especially legislators they disagree with.
So I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that of the .25 of 1% of Norton’s district that opened the mail, read it, were motivated to complete it and send it back to the Representative’s office, a pretty disproportionate chunk were motivated by supporting Rep. Norton’s agenda.
But I’m no professional…
…well, no. Wait. I am. I design samples for research as part of my job. So I may be a little harder to BS than the average bear.
(Am I wrong? Please, Rep. Norton; have your people call my people and set me straight. You have my number. Operators are standing by).
Sadly, Kim Norton’s typical supporter may not be so lucky.
2. Do you support requiring gun owners to register their guns with the local government?
Yes(66) 71%
No (27) 29%Total 93
You know what’d be interesting? If Rep. Norton had thrown in a question about whether the respondent was a gun owner.
I’m gonna take a flyer, here, and guess the answer would be about 30%.
3. With the goal of reducing suicides and impulse shootings, would you support extending the current seven day waiting period between a gun purchase and receipt of the gun?
Yes (64) 69%
No (29) 31%
Total 93
By law, of course, there is a seven day waiting period.
In practice? Every store, federally licensed dealer and gun show in the state requires a “Permit to Purchase” issued by the police, or a Carry Permit issued by the state, to sell a handgun or “assault weapon”; they won’t sell without one, waiting period or no. The very idea of waiting periods is statistically dubious, to the point where even the Ninth Circuit has asked what’s the purpose, especially with someone who already owns firearms.
And the idea that “waiting periods” affect suicides is just a wierd fantasy, of course. Gun suicides – 2/3 of gun deaths – don’t occur at the end of the waiting period. They are disproportionally older, usually white males, usually socially isolated, usually depressed – and they’ve owned their guns for decades.
3a. If yes, how many days should the waiting period be?
10 Days (8) 13%
14 Days (18) 28%
28 Days (38) 59%
Total 64
By this point in this exercise, I’m actually wondering why she didn’t put “eleventy-teen years” as an option.
5. Do you support a ban or restriction of sales on:
High Capacity Ammunition Clips of 10 or more bullets? (66) 69%
Exploding Bullets? (68) 72%
Assault rifles or Semi-Automatic guns? (59) 62%
Total 95
Exploding Bullets?
EXPLODING BULLETS?
Y’see, this is why so many Second Amendment activists have such contempt for their opponents’ arguments.
Imagine if you will someone arguing for regulation of healthcare, who proposes banning phrenology clinics, adding standards for blood leeches and healing crystals, and licensing sexual healing practicioners. Now, people who actually work in healthcare know that Phrenology was debunked 120 years ago, that leeches and crystals are irrelevant, and Sexual Healing was a Marvin Gaye song – and they get annoyed that someone is not only wasting their time arguing BS, but just a little disgusted that the legislator is finding people incurious enough to get on board to try to logroll the legislation.
10 rounds is not “high capacity”. “Semi automatic” does not equal “assault” (you awake yet, hunters and skeet shooters?). “Assault” does not mean “likely to be used in crimes”.
And…exploding bullets.
(Shaking my head, at a loss for civil words, awaiting a line about “guns that go pew pew pew”)
6. Do you believe gun safety and usage training should be required by all gun owners – even those who do not have a hunting license or permit to carry?
Yes (73) 81%
No (17) 19%
Total 90
And even a lot of shooters will aver that that sounds reasonable.
Of course, in Chicago and DC we see the whammy of this approach; in Chicago, you have to take a range test to get a permit – but there are no firing ranges in Chicago.
It’s not a stretch to imagine Minnesota’s government requiring training – and forgetting to issue trainer’s licenses.
7. Given these two values, is it more important to:
control gun ownership?
(49) 56%
protect the right of the people to own guns? (39) 44%
Total 88FYI – These survey results generally mirror those share by scientific polls done across the country.
I’d be interested in seeing the “scientific polls” Rep. Norton is referring to. But I am under no illusion she knows anything beyond “tacking ‘scientific’ onto a dubious assertion will gull a few of the gullible”.
She’s wrong, of course. Not that that matters to her, or to the audience she’s trying to reach.
Black Lives matter is planning to protest against a police killing in North Minneapolis via the logical outlet of protesting at the Mall of America. In Bloomington.
The Mall’s management, remembering the chaos during BLM’s protest the Saturday before Christmas last year, has obtained a restraining order against the protest.
BLM, naturally, is having none of it. Walter Hudson:
Black Lives Matter has responded with typical victim posturing, claiming that the restraining order would violate their constitutional right to free speech. This proves particularly rich given that the group has deleted comments on their Facebook page and blocked this author from commenting. Apparently, their loose interpretation of free speech only applies to their own.
It’s worth noting that when he dismissed previous charges against BLM protest organizers, Hennepin County Chief Judge Peter Cahill signaled that a restraining order such as the one currently sought was necessary to secure the mall’s property rights.
Of course, property rights are on an equal plane with speech rights (or are when courts and legislation haven’t perverted both outside their original intents). BLM seems to have trouble distinguishing between public and private property.
Perhaps staging a counterprotest on Nekima Levy-Pounds’ lawn would get the point across.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Grandma, what a big passport printer you have. The better to vet you with, my dear.
I’m sure it’s no problem, the authorities will just cross check any person coming in from those countries against the court records from there. They (Syria, Libya, Pakistan, …) have computerized, up to date, accurate records of every criminal and suspected terrorist online and available to the TSA don’t they?
Joe Doakes
As the US gets more fussy about American citizens showing their papers on demand, it’s funny – funny weird, not funny ha ha – that they’re getting less so with foreigners.
Oh, yeah – I didin’t much care for synth-pop.
No, I did not. Not much at all.
Part of it was that synthesizer-based pop tended to sound like an electronics class experiment:
OK, so that’s the artsy, German, “now is ze time on Schprockets when ve dance!” strain of the form.
But let’s be frank; even synth-pop that emphasized the “pop” largely sounded like it’d traded in what passed for “souls” for circuit boards.
Now, of course there was synth-pop that sounded like it was written and performed by humans, that used all the cool electronic beeps and squawks as vehicles for the sorts of emotional stimuli that music, left alone and in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, actually elicits a human response.
But it was all largely academic, because I just didn’t care that much. While the late seventies and early eighties were the heyday of synth pop, they were also the glory days of a lot of genres that I unabashedly liked: Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhodes were ushering in the air of the guitar hero with panache; post-punks like Big Country, the Alarm and U2 were showing the world that a couple of guitars, a bass and drums and a singer with some balls could still rip the roof off of any room in the place. Prince and a lot of his compatriots and imitators put rock and pop and funk and electronics into a big blender and hit “puree”, with glorious results.
And so it came to pass that I didn’t listen to Berlin a whole lot. Oh, I heard them, of course; you couldn’t escape “Take My Breath Away”, when Top Gun was the biggest movie in the world. They had a few other songs that mostly came and went in my consciousness, mostly in college or working one bar or another back in the day.
And I’m not exactly sure what it was that caused me to listen again. But it occurred to me – unlike the vast, vast, va-ha-ha-haaast majority of synthesizer pop, Berlin at its best had that immutable, utterly subjective quality that makes music migrate from my frontal lobe, where I appreciate music on an intellectual, techical, logical level, as a musician (or, more often, don’t appreciate it, to be perfectly honest) and migrate back to a deeper level; to my hypothalamus, or medulla, or heart, or liver for all I know; the part of me that says “this music has soul“.
And at their best, they did:
I’ve seen a few synth-pop bands over the years – I mean, I was in the Minneapolis music scene in the eighties, right? And the thing most of them had in common was that they’d bury their noses in their electronics, and treat the act of creating music – the most evocative of art forms – like they were playing a video game. Being tied to a keyboard, generally, implies being more or less stationary (Jerry Lee Lewis notwithstanding) and, at least in a sense, hiding behind an instrument; it’s a very different stance than playing the guitar.
And in terms of performing music live? Most synth-pop bands were hapless, stiff, dismal. On the other hand, at the height of their game, Berlin could take synth-pop and make it sizzle live:
Most of it had to do with the lead singer, Terri Nunn, who had a knack for throwing in little asides into her performances that filled what could have been dry, soulless electronic beeping and squawking with blood and flesh and passion; she was no Levi Stubbs, but her knack for the loaded interjection filled the same role in Berlin’s very different medium as Stubbs’ did for the Four Seasons. A better comparison, perhaps? Terri Nunn and Chrissy Hynde could do each other’s stuff at Karaoke night and have one of those “OMG, we sound just alike!” moments, and the comparison is about a lot more than just vocal timbre.
And it took me – kid you not – 33 years to discover it.
Because I was just too damn cool for it.
Speaking of too damn cool – it was exactly that, discovering (in this 2003-vintage VH1 epi of “Bands Reunited” – that Berlin grew up to be…
…pretty much a bunch of workadaddy, hugamommy schlubs like the rest of us:
Well, most of them did. Not Terri Nunn.
I think it’d be useful to document, from an almost anthropological standpoint, what happens in a “progressive’s” mind when they talk about “common sense gun laws”.
For example, when Virginia attorney-general Mark Herring – a Democrat, natch – says “let’s implement a common-sense measure ending reciprocity in carry permits with other states”, what he really means is “let’s make sure that people from other states who have documented histories of being reliably law-abiding citizens can’t carry their guns legally in Virginia“.
Criminals remain free to carry whatever they want, as always.
Seems commonsensical to me.
You know what else sounds like common sense? Minnesota should refuse to honor Virginia driver’s licenses until they honor our carry permits.
Because we wouldn’t want dumbass Virginians on our roads, now, would we?
Just so we make sure that I am either very clear, or very unclear – I fully support welcoming refugees to United States. I even more fully support being very very careful about the ones we admit.
What I would like to ask ISIS is, instead of wasting perfectly good passive aggression on the docile, bovine Swedish Lutherans, that they try this little stunt with some of the people in America who are getting so very, very smug and self-righteous about their sense of tolerance.
Thanks in advance.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Driving SUVs burns fossil fuels gives off carbon, which causes a greenhouse effect, which heats the planet, causing global warming.
Except the planet isn’t getting warmer, according to temperature measurements.
Ah, but that’s because driving SUVs burning fossil fuels also gives off sulfate aerosols which cool the local area where they’re generated and therefore causes artificially low temperature readings, masking the extent of heating elsewhere around the world.
End result: global warming is worse than we thought because it’s hidden. Secret Global Warming. So hand over your money, quick!
I preferred “epicycles,” that was a more elegant solution to explain why the theory was correct in spite of the evidence.
Joe Doakes
I have a hunch Hunter S. Thompson’s legendary Samoan Lawyer is behind it all. “It’s not necessary for you to understand the theory, or even that it be legitimate. Merely that you keep the checks coming”.
I rarely if ever endorse candidates, per se. I figure it’s not my job – who am I, after all? I inform; you decide.
But I live in Saint Paul. The Fourth Congressional District; Senate District 65; House 65A. I’m “represented” by Betty McCollum, Sandy Pappas and Rena Moran. And while I do my best to get involved in politics in my own neighborhood, let’s be honest; I probably have a greater impact elsewhere.
Of course, Andy Aplikowski is a longtime friend of this blog. And of mine, for that matter. One of the co-founders of True North, one of the smartest political numbers guys I know, half of one of the genuinely nicest couples I know. Andy’s running to replace Brandon Petersen in the Senate. And I hope he wins.
Andy’s got the endorsement of the SD35 party apparatus. But he’s gotta get through a primary against long-time former rep. Jim Abeler.
Now, I’ve interviewed Abeler a few times. He’s a great guy; there are those who choose to demonize those they disagree with, and neither Abeler nor I are them. And in his interviews, Abeler makes a solid case for some of the votes he’s taken. Not solid enough to convince me, but nothing to brush aside, either.
But one vote that concerned me, as someone who’s gone around and around with the public school system, is a vote he took that ended up denying vouchers to students in Minneapolis and Saint Paul schools. Did Abeler have his reasons? I’m sure he did – but they pale against the opportunity that arises when you allow the free market, personified by giving the parents the fiscal clout to say “no” to the district system, to have its effect.
So while I’m not sure what Abeler’s policy reasons are, I know that the vote did earn him some powerful friends. No, I mean some very powerful friends, friends with deep pockets and heavy-duty outsized clout in Minnesota politics.
Anyway – if you’re in SD35, or have friends there, by all means let ’em know where the School Choice vote goes.
Steve Harvey announces the wrong Miss Universe, and had to move the crown from runner-up to winner as the crowd jeered.
Next move up for Brad?
I’m not sure why I bother with Heather Martens anymore. I mean, she was never a worthy opponent – for lil’ ol’ me, much less the Human Rights activists that actually matter – and she has yet, in all her years of plumping for gun control, to utter a single, substantive, original true fact.
And she’s on her way out over at “Protect” Minnesota!
But Heather Martens is a little like Nick Coleman; beating up on her has become so ingrained, it’s hard to know when to stop.
Anyway – this is what’s currently on “Protect” MN’s homepage. Good luck.
Dear Friend,
Protect Minnesota board president Joan Peterson testified against legalizing silencers in Minnesota in 2015. Men openly carrying guns heckled Protect Minnesota representatives during their testimony. Click here to donate.
Lie #1. No, they didn’t. Ask the Capitol Police, who constantly commend the state’s Freedom activists’ impeccable behavior.
Fact: Joan Peterson has a long, grotty history engaging in perfectly civil conversations with perfectly civil freedom advocates – and then turning around and telling people the freedom advocates were abusive or nasty. There are witnesses.
Now, back to Heather:
The recent gun tragedies underscore how essential it is to work for a future where our kids won’t live in fear of gun violence. In 2015, we made progress toward that future, and with your support, we can build on our momentum in 2016.
Lie #2: Well, sure – “we” did. But not “Protect” MN or the “Gun safety movement. Oh, crime dropped fast, as millions of new firearms entered circulation. But the gun grabbers lost every legislative battle in Minnesota, even with Michael Bloomberg’s millions lavishly backing them. And “Protect” Minnesota was so impotent, even the Bloombergs cut them loose, and whomever calls the shots is in the process of cutting Heather loose after years of ineptitude.
Please make a year-end donation today to help us continue our work.
In 2015, we held off efforts to allow people to carry loaded guns in public without first having to get a permit and background check.
Lie #3; No, they didn’t. While a “constitutional carry” bill was submitted, “Protect” MN had virtually nothing to do with its death in committee. The push for it was largely symbolic, since with a DFL governor and Senate it was never going to pass anyway.
We successfully advocated for a state law prohibiting the “straw” purchase of guns, in which a person with a clean record buys a gun for a prohibited person.
Lie #4: Right. They did. With the full cooperation of all the gun rights organizations that matter in this state. The existing law was inadequate. And it was the gun rights groups – not the hapless Martens and her impotent organization – that did the heavy lifting.
In 2016, a critical election year, we need your support to get the word out about the extremism of the gun lobby,
Lie #5: The human rights movement, as shown in recent polls, is the mainstream. The grabbers are the extreme, supported only by a thin residue of crazies and a bunch of money from “progressives” with deep pockets.
and about the effectiveness of gun safety policies — such as background checks before all gun sales.
Lie #6: While “gun safety” policies like putting criminals in jail work wonders, nothing “Protect” MN advocates, least of all “universal background checks”, will.
Next year, we can expect the gun lobby to propose:
1) A Minnesota constitutional amendment to nullify all gun laws by declaring guns, and carrying them everywhere, a “fundamental” right.
Lie #7; While “Consitutional Carry” is a fine idea, and works wonders in most places it’s been tried (currently five states), not to mention in Minnesota before 1974, it’s not really on the agenda while we have a DFL Senator or Governor.
2) Repealing Minnesota’s background check law,
Lie #8: Huh?
arming teachers,
Lie #9: While there’s no rational reason that teachers who are legally entitled to carry firearms shouldn’t be able to in school, nobody can seem to find where “arming teachers” is on anyone’s agenda.
and allowing any permit holder from anywhere to carry a loaded gun in MInnesota.
Not So Much A “Lie” as Really Stupid: If someone has a permit to carry in another state, why should they not be recognized here?
But with your support, we are here to raise our voices for common sense at the Capitol and beyond.
Lie #10: Nothing about “Protect” MN is “common sense”. They’re calling for a return to the policies in effect when crime was double what it is today.
We spread the word about what the gun industry is doing, and how we can stop them. We appear regularly in the Minnesota media to push back against extremists.
Lie #11: Well, no – “Protect” MN doesn’t appear “regularly”. They may come out of hiding when they can control the agenda, or when they know a reporter or interviewer is utterly uninformed or just doesn’t care that much. If they don’t, they – meaning Heather and Joan Peterson, usually – invariably look like idiots.
They don’t appear with media figures who won’t promise to paint Heather’s toenails on the air.
Protect Minnesota is the only Minnesota-based non-profit organization dedicated to ending gun violence.
Mostly A Lie #12: They are, by default – Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown”, after swallowing up the local chapter of “Moms Want Action”, closed up shop after the last session. They’ll be back – and they’re the dangerous ones – but they’re saving money during the off-session.
We have been here since 1991 to advocate for better gun policy, organize our communities, and educate the public on gun issues.
Lie #13: As Heather Martens, again, has never made a single original, substantial, true statement about the issue, it’d be more accurate to say they’ve been here to “miseducate” the public.
We envision a future in which our kids are safe to play and learn in every community.
Lie #14: No, they don’t. Gun control kills – and is rooted in the sort of racism that the better elements in this country strives to cast off.
We reject the world view promoted by the gun industry that exploits fear to boost profits — no matter what the human cost.
Lie #15: Heather is putting the cart before the horse. But to be fair, it’s just a chanting point she’s been given by her superiors.
We don’t have the deep pockets of the gun industry, but we have you.Thank you for all you do,
Lie #16: They have the deep pockets of some of the biggest “progressive” donors out there; the Joyce Foundation and other liberals with deep pockets. They fund “Protect” MN to the tune of $300K. GOCRA, which eats “P”Ms lunch every year, operates on a fraction of that budget, almost every penny of it in nickels and times from real people.
Lie #17: When she says “We have you”, she may mean it in the singular sense of the term. “Protect” MN’s membership would fit in a booth at Perkins, if they ever met.
Heather MartensExecutive Director
Not So Much A Lie As Pointless: She’s kinda a lame duck.
17 lies, and that wasn’t even a very long press release.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
These are the people the Obama Administration wants Israelis to reason with: people who buy their kids terrorist dolls so they grow up hating Jews.
Joe Doakes
One of liberals’ great handicaps is that they always act like everyone is “like us”, as if all humans have the same motives as MPR-listening, Subaru-driving, Whole-Foods-shopping Carleton grads do.
Here’s the site for “Between Lambs And Lions” Mark Sutherland is the producer.
And of course, ♫ today’s music playlist
Special Programming Note: Salem Twin Cities’ business station, with King Banaians show, is now at 1440 AM.
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 1-3PM.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
Jon Gabriel:
.@exjon @instapundit Cruel Prank: Area Man Dresses In Pig Costume To Mock Islam pic.twitter.com/Wz7SDGTN55
— John Rivers (@JohnRiversToo) December 17, 2015
The president of Oklahoma Wesleyan says what’s needed to be said:
“This is not a day care,” Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, wrote in a fiery blog post on the school’s website last week.
“This is a university!”
His critics will no doubt home in on the fact that OWU is an evangelical school, and that Piper has spoken out in favor of Kim Davis, against transgender activism and gay marriage.
To which I reply “put on a helmet, bucko – that’s the point. In real life, you’re going to encounter things and people you disagree with, and – scariest of all – who disagree with you. And some of them are going to be smart – even smarter than you, maybe. And you will have to learn how to deal with this cognitive dissonance. Or – if you’re one of the students that’s whinging about “safe spaces” these days, I guess not to learn to deal with dissonance – like, for example, pretty much every liberal in the Twin Cities under the age of 70″.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
There’s always a lunatic fringe, people who refuse to believe the official story. The CIA killed JFK. The moon landing was faked. Fire can’t melt steel. Obama was born in Kenya.
Now there’s a fringe who suspect the existence of a small, fanatically dedicated team – possibly mercenaries – that President Obama calls upon when he needs to whip up support for gun control measures he can’t get passed by calm logic (and also to distract voters from his foreign policy and economic disasters). The very notion would be ludicrous . . . except that it looks as if this administration has been caught red-handed doing it before.
Candidate Obama campaigned in 2008 on banning assault rifles but there weren’t enough crimes committed with assault rifles to convince the public. The administration intentionally let a bunch of assault rifles walk across the border into Mexico during Fast and Furious, eventually finding their way back to the US to kill a border patrol agent and who knows how many others? The plot was discovered and the outrage fizzled but the suspicion remains that this President was willing to give assault rifles to narco-terrorists to pump up the body count so he could panic the public into banning guns.
President Obama ran for reelection in 2012 again on his standard campaign to ban assault rifles. December 12, Adam Lanza shoots up Sandy Hook school in Newtown using assault rifles but the initial reports are contradictory and the photos are sealed, which creates suspicion Team Obama has done it again. Public outcry and lots of energy to ban guns except by 2013 there were more Republicans in Congress and the ban couldn’t pass.
2017 is Obama’s last year in office, his last chance to get guns banned. Also, Paris makes a mockery of his foreign policy. He needs outrage and distraction. Viola! A shooting in California whips Democrats into a frenzy for gun control, the suspects conveniently dead. More frenzy, more demands . . . but questions about the Third Shooter remain and thus suspicion lingers. When will the next attack come? And who will benefit?
Joe Doakes
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