The Anoka County Sheriff’s office has announced, to some fanfare, that they are lowering the fee for carry permits from $75 to $10 for people on active duty in the military.

Which, on the one hand, is great.

But then I had two thoughts:

Rights:  I support our military – especially their right to not be as undefended as a pack of hamsters when not covered by Rules of Engagement overseas.

But are they more entitled to their civil rights and liberties than the rest of us?  Should government be deciding which citizens have easier access to their Second Amendment rights, any moreso than one’s First, Fourth, Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment rights?

This is, in a way, a throwback to the bad old days, pre-2003, when a law-abiding citizens’a access to their Second Amendment rights – their ability to get a carry permit – was directly related to their clout and access to local government officials. It’s more benign, of course – it’s the same shall-issue policy once the fee is out of the way – but $10 is easier to cover than $75, no matter who you are.

That’s the danger when government gets into the business of doling out our freedoms to us instead of us doling its power out to it; it starts picking winners and losers.  And that’s what this is, even if we generally support this particular group of winners.

The Sheriff’s Nest Egg:  Sheriffs charge a wide range of fees around the state; Ramsey County is up around $100, along with most of the other Metro counties, if I recall correctly; others are much cheaper.

But the fee covers the cost of a department employee taking an application (which the applicant fills out), filing it, and at some point entering the applicant’s data into one or more databases to see if there’s a disqualifying hit.  Then the state prints and mails a card.

What’s the actual cost of this process, in terms of government time and materials?  Estimates vary – law enforcement is pretty tight-lipped about it – but it’s somewhere between $5 and $20.  And I’m no expert, but I’d say Anoka County has just given us a “tell” about the actual cost.

Which means plenty of Minnesota counties are putting away huge nest eggs of carry permit application fee money.   It’s become a tax on law-abiding citizens exercising their tights – not much different than the poll taxes that got ruled out of existence decades ago.

Congrats, Anoka County servicepeople, and enjoy your new benefit in good health.

But think about it, everyone.

Joe Doakes from Como Park – who, let the record show, is an attorney – emails:

I don’t understand Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman’s legal analysis in charging the BLM shooter with assault with a deadly weapon.

When Black people protest, it’s a Constitutionally protected right.  If White people counter-protest, it should be just as protected, right?

Yes, I know, the White people said they were going to stir up trouble.  They know somebody who owns a Confederal flag.  They talked trash on video.  That’s bad manners, agreed.  But filming Black protestors and even calling them names is no less protected speech than burning a cross in somebody’s yard and we know that’s constitutional, decided decades ago in RAV v. St. Paul.  So going to the protest should be good.

If the White guys were racially offensive in implementing their counter-protest, does that negate the shooters self-defense claim?  The standard is:

1. Did not initiate the physical conflict, must be a reluctant participant.
2. Attempted to retreat by running away
3. Reasonably believed they were about to suffer great bodily harm at the hands of an enraged mob
4. Used reasonable force to repel the attack by firing a few rounds, only one of which injured anybody

I’m sure the prosecutor and the media will portray the White men as the aggressors, not as reluctant participants.  But that doesn’t sound right to me.  If you and I are having a heated discussion, the guy who throws the first punch is the aggressor, regardless how annoying the words are.

There might be such a thing as “fighting words” to justify a quick punch.  But there’s no such thing as “chasing-down-an-alley” words to justify a mob beating.  The Black mob initiated the threat of physical violence, the White men attempted to retreat and used reasonable force as a last resort.  I would think the shooter has a pretty good case for self-defense.  I would expect Mike Freeeman to see that.  I therefore conclude the assault charge is grandstanding to pacify the same mob that initiated the violence.  That’s not a good long-term strategy for maintaining public order.

Joe Doakes

“Progressive” politics is always a matter of balancing respective mobs of constituents, usually against each other.

The world is a constant churn of change; from style and music to mores and standards, nothing stays the same.

With one exception:  Markos “Kos” Moulitsas, ten years after saying “screw ’em” when four US contractors were slaughtered in Fallujah, is still a loathsome, wretched human being.

I’ve heard The Daily Kos called the cesspool of American media.  It’s half right.  The Daily Kos blog is the cesspool.  Markos Moulitsas and his contributors, and most of his readers, are the cess.

I’ve been offline for a bit, so I guess I’m just catching up, here.

My condolences to the victims of yesterday’s episode of workplace violence in San Bernardino.

Clearly, the avalanche of white-supremacist violence that the left, media and Administration (pardon the redundancy), and especially against the Planned Parenthood clinic just two miles away from the event, in our climate-change-afflicted nation, have been warning us about is coming rapidly to pass.

The real tragedy is this: if California merely banned magazines larger than ten rounds, as well as a much wider range of “assault weapons” than Federal law currently addresses, and instituted much more intrusive background checks than the rest of the country, none of this would have happened.

We can still be thankful that none of the victims, being in a “gun-free” government building, were able to resist, or who knows how bad it could have gotten?

UPDATE:  Oh.

A regular reader emails:

Gloria Steinem has a new book out. Someone told me about it, saying he wants to read it because it is about her life as a child, traveling with her father. I looked up the review of it and decided it would not be mainly about her life as a child, traveling with her father. It is more likely the same old grating antiquated feminist thoughts that she always spews. The review mentions that she touts ideas for education reform, a shift from competitive classrooms to more co-opting classroom learning. I scratch my head at that, since I think that the successful Gloria Steinem probably credits her own competitive nature more than any partnerships with people for her own success.

But, it also got me thinking about the Republican candidates, their diversity, and the language that Republican voters use when talking about the candidates versus the Democratic candidates and the language used when talking about them. In 2008, Democrats were focused on whether they’d have the first African American president or first woman president. That was basically what Obama and Clinton were reduced to. When Sarah Palin became the VP nominee, Steinem focused again on the candidate’s gender, saying that she was a win for feminism, but not the right woman. On the other hand, today’s Republican candidates are talked about in terms of their leadership skills, their experiences, their ideas. Gender and race play a minor role, at least when I talk to Republican voters. Which is how it should be. As a woman, I know when I’ve competed and won because of my skills and when I’ve won because I was a token. It is much more humiliating to win as a token than to fail because of lack of skills. The idea of taking competitiveness out of the classrooms is utterly frightening. How would children develop self worth? Develop skills to be marketable in jobs?

I did an Internet search for Gloria Steinem and Hillary Clinton and found more reasons not to read Steinem’s latest book.   Compare that rhetoric with what Carly Fiorina said in 2002 about labeling people by gender.

Obviously, the liberal Slate writer doesn’t agree with Steinem on this particular issue, but I think that the contrasting level of maturity seen between Steinem and Fiorina here epitomizes the general level of maturity seen in the Democrat voter versus the Republican voter.

I heard Steinem on “Fresh Air” a few weeks back, plugging the book – and was struck by how the author, who must be in her mid to late seventies, still sounded like a cranky junior high kid.

Russia bars George Soros’ “Open Society Project” from Russia.

A Berg Administration would recognize them as a bigger long-term danger to this country than ISIS or Al Quaeda.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Pacific Island cargo cultists, who believe that if they create the shape of an airplane, other airplanes will come, and American GIs will resume bringing them cigarettes and chocolate and good steel knives.

Liberals think if they create the shape of a ballot box – the bigger the better – democracy will come and it will create a prosperous society that can afford cigarettes, chocolate and good steel knives.  But Cuba has elections and so does North Korea, neither of which are democracies or prosperous.  And if Liberals get their way with voter ID laws, neither will America.

Joe Doakes

Much of liberalism – really, any politics designed to boil the universe down to simple changes and slogans and wants and needs – basically is the equivalent

UPDATE:  As always we follow the 24 hour rule here in SITD.

But – and I’m strictly speculating here – am I the only one who thinks it’s odd that the killer or killers (news reporters are conflicted on that point) didn’t stick around to go out in the usual blaze of media glory, but shot up the meeting and drove away in a “black SUV?”

Another mass shooting in California.

That is to say, a state that has every restriction that gun owners want (or admit to wanting so far):  magazine limits, background checks on private sales, the works.

A state that does its best to prevent a “good guy” from getting a gun.

How could this possibly be?

Watch for the media and the “President” to try not to waste the crisis – and for a lot of lies from both.  And above all, remember the 24 hour rule with media coverage.

Some years ago, an anti-gun group published a “study” showing that the rate of gun deaths was higher in red, square, stereotypically conservative flyover states where guns were plentiful and available to the law-abiding.

Of course, it’s a misleading point – in keeping with the gun control dictum to “Lie First, Lie Last, Lie Always”.  The vast majority of gun deaths are suicides – and this is especially true in the rural west, as a disproportionate number of people, usually older, male, depressed, often very ill, decide to check out via the most reliable means they have available, their firearms.  It’s tragic; it’s also not the same as murder, robbery, kidnapping, rape, aggravated assault or other violent crimes committed against others.   And it doesn’t take many suicides in a thinly-populated rural western county to send that per capita death rate soaring.

But no mind; fake as it is, this particular narrative made the usual rounds:

• Through the various far-left blogs that pretty much exist to recite the left’s chanting points
• To the various gun grabber groups, whose only real source of “information” is the chanting points they’re fed by their superiors in the “progressive” food chain
• And finally, mainstream “news” organizations.

And so – barely a decade after having been chastened to a fine sheen for using fraudulent sources, CBS News is still in the business of mindlessly parroting fake chanting points.

…when people were concerned about constant drumbeats of negativity creating “climates of hate?“

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama reminds me of the Wizard of Oz.

He claims to have God-like powers and therefore is entitled to do whatever he wants to do.

But he doesn’t actually have any powers; it’s all billowing smoke and scornful talk.

But people Believe he has the powers, so they let him get away with doing whatever he wants to do, just as if he actually did have the powers.

Until Toto pulls back the curtain; then, the fraud is revealed.

We need Toto around here.  The sooner the better.

Joe Doakes

The big difference?  The Wizard of Oz protested the truth of his powers until he couldn’t anymore.  Obama seems to have checked out even as the little yappy dogs swarm over his administraiton.

The Henco Attorney’s office hit the noon deadline on Monday to charge the suspects in last week’s shooting at the Black Lives Matter rally.

And the charges are interesting:

Allen Lawrence Scarsella, 23, of Lakeville, was charged with six counts including second-degree riot and second-degree assault. Joseph Martin Backman, 27, of Eagan, Nathan Wayne Gustavsson, 22, of Hermantown and Daniel Thomas Macey, 26, of Pine City were each charged with one count of second-degree riot-armed with a dangerous weapon.

Bear in mind that Macey was one of those rare Asian white supremacists.

Quite the melting-pot we have, here.

Anyway – as the media begins the process of trying this case in public, some people are going to be disappointed right out of the gate:

Freeman said the Minnesota hate crime law only moves a misdemeanor crime to a gross misdemeanor and a gross misdemeanor to a felony. The four men were not charged with that because the sentences for them, especially the suspected shooter, Scarsella, would be significantly longer for the riot and second-degree assault charges. However, Freeman noted he has been consulting with U.S. Attorney Andy Luger about this case and if federal hate crime sentences would draw a longer sentence, he would be willing to turn the case over to them.
There is no doubt, he said, that this attack by the four was racially motivated.
“The defendants’ own statements, their videos, show that these are sick people,” Freeman said. “Maybe I shouldn’t say that, but the language they use, and what they say about fellow Americans, citizens, are just not acceptable.”

Unlike every media outlet in the Metro, I’m not going to attempt to try this case on this page.  As we discussed the other day, there’s at least a chance that this could be tried as self-defense – although as I pointed out at the time, if one plans to try to plead self-defense, it’s best to go to the police, rather than having them come and get you first.

I wonder if Rep. Kim Norton, and NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, think these people should have their civil rights squashed because some bureaucrat put them on a terrorist watch and/or “no fly” list?

Or maybe this guy?

Yesterday, we noted that Rep. Kim Norton – the soon-to-be retired legislator from Rochester who’s going to be pushing the various gun-control bills that the DFL is copying and pasting from their benefactors at Bloomberg – accused people who oppose US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s “idea” of barring anyone on the government’s double-dog-secret “Terrorist Watch List” from buying guns, of “supporting allowing terrorists to have weapons”.

No, I’m serious.  In an incredible display of the kind of logic that most adults were shamed out of using back in fourth grade, Norton accused Bryan Strawser of the MN Gun Owners Political Action Committee of supporting guns in the hands of terrorists:

And this introduced an interesting question: what does it take to get on the list?

From that noted conservative tool, the HuffPo, we learn that this watch list is something of a roach hotel; easy to get in, impossible to get out.  I’m abridging the copy from the HuffPo, which you should read in its entirety:

1. You could raise “reasonable suspicion” that you’re involved in terrorism. “Irrefutable evidence or concrete facts” are not required.

In determining whether a suspicion about you is “reasonable,” a “nominator” must “rely upon articulable intelligence or information which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts,” can link you to possible terrorism. As Scahill and Devereaux noted, words like “reasonable,” “articulable” and “rational” are not expressly defined. While the document outlines the need for an “objective factual basis,” the next section clarifies that “irrefutable evidence or concrete facts are not necessary” to make a final determination as to whether a suspicion is “reasonable.” So how could intelligence officials be led to put you on the watch list?

Funny they mention that:

2. You could post something on Facebook or Twitter that raises “reasonable suspicion.”

 

According to the document, “postings on social media sites … should not be discounted merely because of the manner in which it was received.”

Someone who doesn’t like you reports you to a governnment bureaucrat, who thinks “what the heck, better safe than sorry!”, and will never be held accountable for it…

…and boom!  There you are!

(Whoops – can I say “boom” anymore?)

And if you think government wouldn’t do that?  Do you really think Lois Lerner was the only bureaucrat to abuse her authority for political ends?

3. Or somebody else could just think you’re a potential terror threat.

The guidelines also consider the use of “walk-in” or “write-in” information about potential candidates for the watch list. Nominators are encouraged not to dismiss such tips and, after evaluating “the credibility of the source,” could opt to nominate you to the watch list.

In other words, there are no checks and balances.

And these next two…:

4. You could be a little terrorist-ish, at least according to someone.

(Given the liberal fad of “Swatting” conservatives – calling the police to report a conservative is dealing drugs and child porn and guns out of their houses, to draw a swat team, it’s not an idle threat).  Or…

5. Or you could just know someone terrorist-y, maybe.

…should make your blood run cold, when you remember #6:

6. And if you’re in a “category” of people determined to be a threat, your threat status could be “upgraded” at the snap of a finger.

The watch-list guidelines explain a process by which the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism can move an entire “category of individuals” to an elevated threat status. It’s unclear exactly how these categories are defined, but according to the document, there must be “current and credible intelligence information” suggesting that the group is a particular threat to conduct a terrorist act.

And the Obama Administration has designated vast swathes of people who disagree with him as potential terrorists.

If you’re a pro-lifer?  Second Amendment activist?  Tax protester?  Land rights, Tenth Amendment, open-government, anti-war?  You name it – you could find yourself on the watch list for any reason.

Or…no reason at all:

7. Finally, you could just be unlucky.

The process of adding people to the terror watch lists is as imperfect as the intelligence officials tasked with doing so. There have been reports of “false positives,” or instances in which an innocent passenger has been subject to treatment under a no-fly or selectee list because his or her name was similar to that of another individual. In one highly publicized incident in 2005, a 4-year-old boy was nearly barred from boarding a plane to visit his grandmother.

And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.  There’s no due process; there’s noplace to file an appeal.

You’re screwed. Your liberties can be held hostage by any petty bureaucrat, any ex-spouse, anyone who really, wants to mess you up in the most passive-aggressive yet damaging way possible.

So I’d like to ask Kim Norton (if she takes questions, which she does not) – how many of our civil liberties does she believe should be subject to a secret list with no due process or accountability?

The biggest news this past year is the general consensus (among those who are paying attention) that Barack Obama is worse – much worse – a president than Jimmy Carter.  He’s more along the lines of Woodrow Wilson or LBJ.

Ed Driscoll on how apt the LBJ parallel actually is:

Between the race riots, the campus riots, the massive expansion of the federal government and the concurrent belief in its infallibility, the military debacles overseas, a feeling in general that the nation was out of control and now this latest call for the wise men to bail him out, it really does feel like we’re living out the last year of the Johnson administration, doesn’t it? Funny, when Democratic operatives with bylines were submitting Tiger Beat-style articles in 2007 and 2008 dreamily forecasting which Democrat presidencies Obama’s would most closely resemble, LBJ’s rarely made the list. Wonder why?

Joe Doakea from Como Park emails:

Democrat gun control advocates have a new idea: ban anyone on the No Fly List from buying a gun. The rationale is that the only people on the list are terrorists and terrorists shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns so closing the No Fly List loophole will keep America safe from gun violence.

 

Of course, nobody knows if the people on the list actually are terrorists because the feds refuse to say how your name gets on the list – it could be something political or religious that you said, or someone you visited, or a place you went that makes you a suspected terrorist. And that assumes the No Fly List is honestly administered by the Obama Administration which, after Joe the Plumber scandal, IRS scandal, Fast and Furious scandal, and internet-video-caused-Benghazi scandal, is an assumption that’s open to question.

 

But setting minor objections aside, if the basic idea is good, shouldn’t we expand it to other Constitutional rights? Shouldn’t we change the law so people on the No Fly List can’t get a driver’s license to drive other suspected terrorists around, vote in elections, attend worship services where they might pass messages to other suspected terrorists, obtain tax refunds or welfare benefits, travel by bus, train or auto between states to confer with other suspected terrorists, get a job, enroll in school (especially not flight school or essential services such as nuclear power, water plant operation, electrical power generation, computer technology) . . . after all, we don’t want terrorists doing any of those things, right? We should ban them, right?

Don’t wait for conviction, ban on secret accusation!

I call on Congress to close the Due Process Loophole.

Joe Doakes

we will be talking a lot more about this in the coming days.  A lot of Democrats are making themselves look very stupid.

Liberals hate civil rights.

Oh, not the civil rights that involve snarking at religion or aborting babies or waving ones’ privates about in public.  Those are pretty sacrosanct on the left.

But actual rights that matter?  Life, liberty, personal property, economic freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom from dependence?  Not so much.

And whenever The People get more of those freedoms, the left – Chicken Littles, all – get very, very nervous.

A change in Kansas law now will allow students and staff with carry permits to bring their legal firearms to school.

Some folks get it:

As Kansas moves toward a time when guns will be as welcome on university campuses as laptops, students are starting to take notice and talk about how they’ll handle that day when it comes.

For many, it’s no big deal. For students who grew up in a largely rural state, surrounded by guns, having the student at the next desk carrying one in pocket or purse doesn’t feel particularly unfamiliar or uncomfortable.

And others – following in the tradition of generations of legislators, pundits and non-profiteers – insist that, notwithstanding thirty years of such predictions

Others are predicting disaster when any student or employee over 21 can carry concealed on campus, without a permit or training in how and when to deploy a deadly weapon…Kennedi Grant, a junior from St. Louis who also is involved in the group, said marginalized students feel danger on campus already without concealed weapons and that “adding that to the mix will only cause more chaos.”

Grant, a journalism student [no cigar for guessing that – Ed. ], said allowing concealed firearms on campus increases the likelihood of a shooting. “It’s not even a matter of if anymore, it’s become a matter of when,” she said.

See also: Every single jurisdiction where the law-abiding citizens have won the right not to be defenseless sheep, and their solons wet their collective (heh) pants.  I’ll direct you in particular to Minnesota’s own “debate” on the subject in 2003, where Senator Wes “Lying Sack of Filth” Skoglund predicted gang-bangers getting carry permits and shooting people up at random (because they weren’t doing that before, and aren’t doing it now, and it’s because they can’t get carry permits, clearly).

(Has anyone noticed how very afraid of Black people our Democrat legislators seem to be?)

Of course, it never happened; it didn’t happen in the idiot Twin Cities, and it won’t happen in sane, sensible Kansas.

But we knew that.

We’ve gone around and around with Representative Kim Norton of Rochester.  Norton, who is retiring from the Legislature after this coming session, is going to be carrying Michael Bloomberg’s water; she’ll be sponsoring, so we’re told, a number of gun control bills.

Not that you can get a straight answer out of her; although she went into great detail in the Rochester Post-Bulletin in which she called for a “conversation about guns”, she also told anyone who wanted to engage in dialog (as opposed to echo-chamber monologue) that she really had no idea what she was going to put into any bill, and had nothing to talk about.

Which is kind of hilarious, if you think about it.

Of course, on Twitter over the holiday weekend, she found a specific proposal to support – from Bloomberg’s chief streetwalker in the Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand.

And her response (below) to MNGOPAC leader Bryan Strawser is one for the record books, and one that every Rochester voter should take up with Ms. Norton:  That’s right – for opposing denying civil rights to people who wind up on a non-transparent, easily-abused, unsupervised grab bag of names collected so willy-nilly it’s become the stuff of folk legends, for which the Feds don’t have to tell why, or even whether, you’re on it, Rep. Norton, one of the DFL’s inner circle thought leaders, equates you with a terrorist.

Remember when Democrats were opposed to mysterious starchambers handing down secret lists of enemies, with no transparency or accountability?  I’ll bet Rep. Nortdon does.

This is today’s DFL.

Question:  Do you suppose anyone in the media will question Rep. Norton on this?

…where our media fear to tread.

Go here to donate to the South Washington County recount.

Steve Timmer’s piece in LeftMN.  I give Timmer kudos for this piece – which, as you know, doesn’t happen often.

Here’s the video that might provide some fuel to the “Self-Defense” case:

And 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,

• We’ll be talking about your chance to help with the South Washington County recount

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, 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:

• 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!

(SCENE:  Major Thomas ASHTON and Sergeant Major Iain MACTAGGART, members of the British 22nd SAS Regiment – Britain’s premiere Special Forces unit – are standing by a helicopter pad.  Both are suited up for a mission that nobody will confirm is a hostage rescue mission deep into ISIS territory; guns, ammunition, grenades, radios, and survival gear)

ASHTON: Should be a bit of a dustup, eh, MacTaggart?

MACTAGGART:  Aye.  Not the first bloody time, Major.

ASHTON: True.   All right, Sergeant-Major.  Let’s check the men’s kit.  This is going to be a nasty one.

(An orderly – Royal Air Force communications specialist Aircraftman Sheila O’RIORDAN – jogs up to ASHTON with a piece of paper.  She stands at attention and salutes the Major)

ASHTON (taking the paper):  Yes?

O’RIORDAN:  Flash message from Ministry of Defense, sir.

ASHTON:  Thank you.  Dismissed.

(O’RIORDAN salutes.  ASHTON returns the salute.  O’RIORDAN jogs back to the radio tent)

MACTAGGART:  So w`hat’s MOD say, Major?

ASHTON:  President Obama has declared a climate conference.  ISIS has surrendered.

MACTAGGART:  ISIS couldn’t face the onlaught of Powerpoint, eh?

ASHTON:  Sounds like the mission’s off.

MACTAGGART:  Peace has broken out?

ASHTON:  Yes, Sergeant-Major.

(Both men stand for a beat – and then erupt in laughter)

MACTAGGART:  I’ll tell the helos to spool up.

ASHTON:  Right.  Wheels up in ten.

(And SCENE)

SCENE:  Abu Bakr AL-BAGHDADI, leader of ISIS and self-proclaimed “caliph” of the new “Khelifa” or Caliphate, is in a conference with a group of his lieutenants, including Sheikh Abu Ali HABIB.

AL-BAGHDADI:  Reports from the front look good.  We’re holding the Kurds, we’re gaining ground in Syria, and the Iraqis are folding like  a Salafist end-table.

LIEUTENANTS:  Allahu Akbar!

AL-BAGHDADI:  And the Great Satan is reacting as we expected; with dithering disguised as grand pronouncements.

LIEUTENANTS:  Insh’allah!

HABIB:  Caliph, I have some bad news.

AL-BAGHDADI:  What is it, Sheikh?

HABIB:   Little Miss Satanette – President Obama (group snickers) is holding a…

(HABIB pauses, catches breath)

….climate change conference.

(Entire group cringes in horror)

AL-BAGHDADI:  That does it.  Let’s give up.  Find an evangelist; I’ll devote my life to Christ.

(Entire group pauses for a silent beat – then breaks into uproarious laughter)

And SCENE

(SCENE:  Two Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Ali and Sayid, are manning a Russian-built machine gun, scanning a valley warily, watching for ISIS movement.  Suddenly, the radio crackles)

RADIO:   Kebab Six to all Kebab.   President Obama is holding a climate change conference.  Six out.

ALI:  (scanning with binoculars)  Well, I’ll be.

SAYID:   What?

ALI:   (Hands Sayid the binoculars)  Look!

SAYID:  (Looks through binoculars)  Wow.

(Cut to scene through binoculars.  ISIS troops are climbing out of foxholes, hurling their weapons, ammunition and webgear into the distance, and running away, leaving a cloud of dust behind them)

ALI:  Huh.  Don’t see that every day.

SAYID:  Like I’ve been telling you, Ali – it’s all about the climate.

ALI:  Gotta hand it to you.  When you’re right, you’re right.

And SCENE

Just thought I’d drop a quick line; posting will be light today and, likely, tomorrow.

I’m thankful today for all the usual stuff – family, friends, a job, a home, the means to provide; my kids, my granddaughter, and the opportunities we all have.

And speaking of opportunities, I’m thankful for the chance I get to talk to you every day on this blog, and once a week on the air.  Thank you all for that!

Have a great weekend.  I’ll be on the air Saturday.