To: Heather Martens
From: Mitch Berg, Your Longtime Nemesis
Re:  Apology

Ms. Martens,

For most of the past decade and change, I’ve been running down your accuracy, your knowledge of Second Amendment issues, and the extent to which you confused “purchased lobbying power” with “fact”.  Whenever you’ve opened your mouth about anything gun-related, I’ve snickered, comparing  your command of logic and fact with, say, Jessica Simpson or Jeanne Kasem.

But Rolling Stone’s Krystyn Gwynne has certainly qualified for a job on “Protect MN”‘s executive committee. 

That is all.

Progressives, awash in worry about income inequality, will barber on and on over whether the minimum wage should be $10, or $11.50, or even a Seattle-sized $15/hour.

Conservatives know that the real minimum wage is zero. 

“Diggity”, a new fast-food restaurant concept in Coon Rapids, gets a jump on McDonands, does away with the server:

Diggity functions on an elaborate and expensive system of self-serve, touchscreen kiosks and software that allow customers to place orders directly from smartphones or tablet devices. Diners watch monitors (or their phones) to track the progress of their order and pick it up at the counter when ready.

 Customers can also order takeout online, drive into a designated spot in the parking lot and check in using the restaurant’s wireless Internet connection, which will ping the staff with a request to bring the order out.

“You don’t even have to make a telephone call, which is one more convenience factor,” Cary said.

The system cost six-figures (Cary wouldn’t be more precise), but he said he has no doubt it will pay for itself. The setup from Michigan’s Nextep Systems allowed Hemipshere to hire half the staff a restaurant of Diggity’s size would normally need.

But wasn’t it just the “wow” factor that led to the innovative design? 

Cary and Managing Partner Anoush Ansari said the new model was inspired by Minnesota law mandating a gradual bump in the minimum wage.

Thanks, DFL!  The teen unemployment rate is going to take another hit.

Beating up Paul Krugman – a Nobel Prize-winner who is a poster-child for “narrow expertise” – is a little like fact-checking Heather Martens; it’s easy, and there will never be a shortage of material.

Rich Karlgaard at Forbes spells out yet another reason Krugman is jumping from Princeton in disgrace:

Krugman says the rich sock their money in low-yield bonds. But he fails to consider the obvious. Stocks have almost tripled since March 2009. Urban real estate is in a boom. Art is in a boom. If you believe Krugman, it must be the poor folks who are feeding these asset bubbles. Because the rich, Krugman says, are stuck in low-yield bonds.

This is utter nonsense. The excess liquidity created by U.S. monetary policy does not wind up in the hands of the poor. It winds up in the hands of the rich. The rich then put it into stocks, real estate, hedge funds, and art.

It’s actually the poor and lower middle classes whose wealth — such as it is –lies fallow in no-interest bank accounts (or wealth-eroding cash if they have no bank account at all). It’s not the rich, but middle-class retirees that try to eke out a living on low-yield interest rates.

Krugman has it exactly, 180-degrees wrong. Cheap money is a transfer payment to the rich. It is a tax on the poor. The rich-poor divide grew vast under the cheap money policies of Ben Bernanke. This trend will surely accelerate under Janet Yellen.

Wonder what it’ll be like, someday – maybe decades from now, maybe in the afterlife – when “progressives” realize they’ve been squeeeeeing like a bunch of teenager grrrls at a One Direction concert over the permanent destruction of the middle class.

Photoshop out the football and you’ve pretty much recreated Chris Kluwe’s latest press conference

The most famous (or is it infamous?) punter in modern history tries to pin the Minnesota Vikings against their end zone.

Well, in his defense, he no longer has a job to be so focused on.

Chris Kluwe may possess a number of less-than-desirable qualities, but the former punter’s media savvy remains arguably his strongest suit.  Since leveling accusations against the Minnesota Vikings, in particular special teams coach Mike Priefer, of fostering an atmosphere of homosexual hatred which led to his firing by “two cowards and a bigot,” Kluwe has remained relatively quiet.  Perhaps partially motivated by a press corps seemingly less willing to believe him, or realizing that his legal strategy depended upon him dragging many of his former teammates into the mix, Kluwe and his representation had said little about the Vikings’ independent investigation in the past seven months.

That changed Tuesday as Kluwe charged that the Vikings’ investigation has concluded and that the lack of public disclosure over the findings proved Kluwe’s allegations of bigotry:

The onetime punter said Tuesday the team is “reneging on a promise” to release a copy of its completed investigation of alleged anti-gay sentiments expressed by special teams coach Mike Priefer during the 2012 season.

Kluwe and his attorney, Clayton Halunen, announced at a morning news conference that they will file suit against the Vikings alleging discrimination on the grounds of religion, human rights, defamation and “torturous interference for contractual relations.”

The move is self-aggrandizing and potentially premature (the Vikings said the independent investigatory group would provide a report this week).  Had the press conference included accusations of the team of being “lustful c**kmonsters,” it would have been vintage Kluwe.

It was also a somewhat smart public relations ploy.  Now, whenever Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P release their findings, Kluwe can claim his pressure forced the team to do so.  And Kluwe’s willingness to forgo a lawsuit for a monetary settlement that goes towards an LGBT cause also assists both the Vikings, in helping the issue go away faster, and Kluwe himself as even old media allies questioned the punter’s motivations (the KFAN Morning Show, who often gave Kluwe free-rein to voice his opinions on all matter of subjects, openly wondered if he was making a money grab this morning).

But “somewhat smart” isn’t the same as “smart.”  Kluwe’s strategy only truly works if the independent investigation proves some or all of Kluwe’s anecdotes, in particular his claim that Mike Priefer suggested moving gay people to an island and hitting it with a nuclear bomb.  Not unlike the current Jesse Ventura defamation suit, Kluwe’s case ultimately comes down to a “he said/he said” legal battle.  Even if Kluwe is 100% accurate in quoting Vikings’ staff, he would still have to prove a correlation between comments like Priefer’s and his cutting in 2013.  The Vikings can respond about Kluwe’s declining skills and (for the position) high salary – reasons that even Kluwe cited…when cut last summer by the Oakland Raiders.

The outcome of the investigation – or any following legal action – may be pointless.  Kluwe’s defenders will continue to insist the end of his career was due to his gay rights activism, and not his next-to-last finish for punts inside the 20-yard line while making $1.45 million.  Kluwe’s detractors will continue to be maligned as being bothered by his politics rather than his penchant for vulgar name-calling to anyone who doesn’t share his views (on gay rights or other subjects).

Other than attorneys or an LGBT charity, it’s hard pressed to see who benefits from this continued fight.

To: Progressives
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Your Only Intellectually Honest (heh) Choice In 2016

Dear Progressives,

Your only intellectually honest choice for President in 2016 is Elizabeth Warren. 

Please, please please please nominate her. 

Let me know what I can do to help.

Thanks.

That is all.

The completion of the “Green Line” has the urban planning dorks dreaming big again. 

Next up for Saint Paul – an “urban village” on Snelling by University, where the old MTC Bus Barn used to be.  It’ll be 4+ stories, the usual dog’s breakfast of “mixed-use” buildings a minimum of four stories tall, full of all of the “new urbanist” fads like “pedestrian friendly” spaces and “open spaces” that scream “crime-friendly!” to anyone who’s been paying attention. 

The refreshing part?  The consultants who are, er, consulting on the project admit up front it’s going to be exquisitely expensive:

The verdict? Those plans may be doable, but they won’t be cheap.

The report by Urban Investment Group, RNL and KHO Consulting examined potential development arrangements for the Snelling-Midway “SmartSite.”

The consultants found a $22 million to $31 million gap between today’s market value of the site and the cost of necessary new infrastructure, including $40 million in needed structured parking, as the land is redeveloped in phases.

The report encourages a mix of building types and uses, most of them at least four stories tall, with open spaces and pedestrian amenities to create the feel of an urban village.

It suggests a variety of approaches to close the funding gap, including tax-increment financing and grants and loans.

They’re suggesting a “public-private partnership”, which inevitably means large, rent-seeking “private” companies that are deeply in bed with government, building to a plan that has nothing to do with what the market demands but merely tries – at immense taxpayer expense – to skew the market toward the government’s (politically-driven and ultimately futile) plan. 

Think Galtier Plaza, Riverplace, Saint Anthony Main, The Conservatory, Mississippi Live…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

My practice is real estate title law – what individual natural person owns this particular patch of land?

My job didn’t exist in olden times because The King owned all land (or “nobody owns the land” in aboriginal cultures).

My job still doesn’t exist in Cuba or North Korea, where the answer remains “the king, however he’s titled” or in places like Somalia where lack of a functional government to enforce a rule of law leaves the answer as “whoever can defend his occupation of the land at the moment.”

Even in many modern countries, most of the land is held by a few wealthy families (France, Germany, Russia) and everybody else lives in public housing (English council estates) or apartments (Hong Kong).

And in almost all the science fiction stories I can recall, the answer in the future is “the government” or sometimes “huge corporations.”

Mass individual home-ownership exists in Canada, Australia and the USA. It’s a uniquely Colonial thing and when these countries eventually fall (as all nations do), the concept may vanish with it.

We’re living in a bubble of rights not seen before, and not to be seen again. What an amazing privilege. What a shame that our leaders are risking it all.

Explaining to Americans “it doesn’t have to be like this” is like explaining to a spoiled teenager (or a liberal) where money comes from.  It’s a revelation to them that it could ever be different. 

(Bonus:  Explaining to self-styled “anarchists” that lack of government doesn’t mean freedom; it pretty much inevitably means a much worse form of authority will fill the gap)

…for this story, obviously, is racism.

But what difference does it make, at this point?

To:  African-America
From: The Democrat Party
Re:  Can We Still Be Friends? (Meaning: Please Keep Voting For Us)

 Dear African-America:

We – the Democrat Party – know, we know, we know:  Fifty years of the “War on Poverty” have left Afro-America poorer, but has immensely enriched the political class.  Fifty years of “Affirmative Action” have left you underrepresented in general society, but been great for transferring wealth to our lawyer friends.  Thirty years of “War on Drugs” have left your neighborhoods scarred and a disproportionate number of your male population in jail.  14 people weren’t killed last weekend in the white parts of Chicago!  Of course, the economy under President Obama has been vastly worse for African-Americans than any other segment of society. 

And now, the current wave of illegal immigration is hurting your corner of the economy worse than anyone else’s. 

Why is this happening? 

Because African-Americans are no longer the biggest minority, and we Democrats have to be planning for the future.  And Latino votes count as much as yours do, except, of course, there’s more of them, so…

…anyway, hope you keep voting Democrat!

Thanks,

The Democrat Party

Longtime friend of the NARN and this blog, Katie Kieffer, send this:

I’m holding a book signing TONIGHT (my only signing for the month of July) from 5-7 pm at the Starbuck’s Coffee located at 3450 Pilot Knob Road in Eagan, MN. Thank you and hope to see you if you can make it! 🙂

Anyone who doesn’t have a copy of “Let Me Be Clear” yet can pick up the book up at a local Barnes&Noble and brink it to Starbuck’s and I’ll gladly sign it. Here is the address.

Thank you!

Katie

The book is a good read – especially if you have some under-30s in your life who are struggling with the way things are in Obama’s America.

Longtime friend of the blog “Barry” emails in regard to my muted rip on the Monkees last week (which, in my defense, was less a rip on the Monkees than an example of how pop culture likes to follow up success with as many copies of the successful as they can paste together):

In defense of the Monkees I offer the following article from CNN, a source I know you regard as unimpeachable:
My opinion that the Monkees are underrated is suspect, however, because when you go to the dictionary and look up “nerd” you find my picture. FWIW.

barry

Barry and the CNN piece are right, of course – and there’s a big potential series of music posts in the whole story.  The Beatles were among the first superstars to write their own music; the Monkees were among the later products of an entertainment industry that had specialized trades to do that sort of thing.

Anyway, read the whole thing…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

President Obama wants to get tough on immigration but those darn Republicans won’t let him.  He has asked Congress to let him borrow an extra $3.7 Billion to beef up border patrols and speed up deportation cases.

No mention of the President’s career-long opposition to immigration reform, his decision to sue Arizona in 2010 to stop the state from getting tough on illegal immigrants, or his decision four weeks ago to stop deportations and give work permits to millions of student-aged illegal immigrants.  Here’s where the money goes, 90% for resettlement and public defenders so illegal immigrants can stay in the country.

I wonder why Republicans don’t believe this latest offer is sincere?  They must be racisssssssssssssss

Joe Doakes

What other answer could there be?

No, seriously – after almost six years, you’d think they could come up with another defamatory deflection…

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’m in the studio today from 1-3.  I’ll be talking with Hollee Saville about the ongoing Union SCOTUS-proof Union Homecare Jamdown.  Plus a look ahead to next week’s Carcraft Summer Nationals, and a look at white privilege.
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Tomorrow, Brad Carlson is on “The Closer”!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. 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!

For every Beatles, there’s gotta be a Monkees.

For every New York Dolls, there’s a Kiss.

For every Springsteen, there’s a Meat Loaf.

Indeed, for every Madonna, there’s gotta be a Martika or a Keedy or a Regina.

For every artist in popular music that makes changes by him or her or themselves, there’s going to be some record company’s attempt to create the same thing only bigger and better. 

And so for Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer, there was Billy Idol.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brian “Saint Paul” Ward over at Fraters has the analysis of the Democrat battle in District 60B that the mainstream media just won’t do. 

That’d be Phyllis Kahn versus Mohamud Noor. 

Of course, I do strongly urge all our Somali brothers to vote for Abdimalik Askar, rather than trade one petty sinecurist for another. 

But read Brian’s piece anyway.

UPDATE: Fixed the link.

A Conservative media outlet (blogger, talk host, writer, etc):  Sees a story about a two-bit Democrat candidate whom even fellow Democrats shun at the polls making an over the top depraved statement.  He briefly considers posting it as a sign that it’s truly Democrats who are waging a “war on women” – but notes that the guy is so fringe that even most Democrats refudiate the guy.   Decides that writing about the guy would give him just a little more unjustified publicity, opts to do his little bit to return the creep to obscurity by ignoring the story.

A Liberal media outlet – say, “Think” Progress, gets a story about an obscure GOP candidate who’s running third in the primary for a city council seat in Brackwater Alabama saying “AIDS is God’s revenge on gays”.  Within 12 hours, every liberal media outlet from MSNBC all the way down to Dim Tim Sweeney’s twitter feed, and thence further to AM950, bleats “PROMINENT REPUBLICAN SAYS GOD HATES F**S!”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

On Monday, the Police Chief of Minneapolis visited North Minneapolis and made a speech telling criminals to put down their guns.
On Tuesday, criminals responded: “Sure, as soon as we finish shooting these people.”
That solution didn’t last long.
Joe Doakes

The “state as nagging mom” approach never really works.

To:  Open Carry Activists
From: Mitch Berg, Longtime Second Amendment Trench-Fighter
Re:  A Modest Request

All,

The Minnesota carry permit does, indeed, allow one to carry one’s firearm openly.  But most people who have them don’t do it – partly because there’s no sense in letting potential criminals know who they need to take down first, and partly because we are, indeed, surrounded by hysterical ninnies. 

So in a sense, you are to the gun movement what guys with waxed chests and buttless chaps cavorting about a Gay Pride parade are to the gay movement; the fringe exception that confirms the stereotypes in the minds of the undecided. 

But that’s the least of the things I’m writing to complain about. 

Over the past month or so, your “protests” have given a bonanza of free chanting points to Michael Bloomberg, and backed a number of corporations up against a wall; while they’d always been “live and let live”, “don’t ask, don’t tell” about guns, and followed state laws, now they’re being pressured into taking individual (and sometimes illegal) action against gun owners. 

In other words, you’re forcing people and businesses to take sides on the issue.  And when people go from “no information or interest in an issue” to “being forced to take sides NOW”, what side do you think they’ll come out on?  Think about who runs the media before you answer that. 

Now, I’m not talking about groups like the one in the Twin Cities that hosts open-carry events at businesses that agree to host them.  Those are good things. 

I’m talking about using businesses’ private property to host your protests against their will.  You’re no better than Occupyers when you do that. 

May I suggest you stop using unwilling private businesses for your protests.  Maybe switch to City Hall,  or the State Capitol?

They’re the ones you need to reach, anyway.

That is all.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is walking through the downtown branch of the Saint Paul Library.  He’s way back in the stacks, deeply engrossed in a book, when Avery LIBRELLE pops around the corner.  LIBRELLE notices BERG, and tiptoes up to him.]

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!

BERG:  (Startled)  Huh?  Oh.  It’s you.

LIBRELLE:  Bar Louie is Racist!

BERG:  Oh, the story about the dress code?  That’s kind of a stretch. 

LIBRELLE:  They bar people wearing clothing that only black people wear. 

BERG:  You’ve never worked in a bar, have you?

LIBRELLE:   I’ve been to a few.  I love the Lurcat. 

BERG:  Naturally.  But I meant a bar.  A hangout.  A dive.  I worked in bars – places with pool tables and brawls on Friday and Saturday nights.  Some of them barred people wearing “colors”.

LIBRELLE:  Because they were racist!

BERG:  Well, no – it applied to motorcycle club colors just as much as gangs.  Our bouncers kept ’em all out. 

LIBRELLE: Yabbut Bar Louie’s dress code pretty much applied only to black people. 

BERG:  Like Vanilla Ice, Robin Thicke, Ad-Rock and Eminem?

LIBRELLE:  Exac…hey, wait ! Those are white guys who dress like…

BERG:  …like what?

LIBRELLE:  Like you’re a racist!

BERG:  Naturally.  So here’s a thought experiment for you.  Let’s say we started a club.  We had a dress code; guys have to wear suits with ties.  Is that racist?

LIBRELLE:  Of course! 

BERG:  Why?  Black people don’t wear suits and ties? 

LIBRELLE:  Of course they do.

BERG:  I thought they wore sports jerseys and flat-billed baseball caps? 

LIBRELLE:  Well, not all of them…

BERG:  …what’s that?  Not all black people are identified by their clothing?  

LIBRELLE: [stares blankly, jaw slowly undulating up and down]

BERG:  Let’s try this on for size.  Pick a bar. 

LIBRELLE:  The Lurcat!

BERG:  OK, sure, the Lurcat.  Let’s say as you’re walking toward the Lurcat, you see a group of burly white guys in biker leathers wearing motorcycle club colors.  They’re drunk, they’re looking aggressive.  Do you go in? 

LIBRELLE:  That’s silly. 

BERG:  Or a bunch of intoxicated white guys in grubby jeans and “wife-beater” tank tops waving pool cues about….

LIBRELLE:  Don’t be silly. The Lurcat would never…[pauses, stops]

BERG:  They’d never allow people in biker gang colors in their joint, much less set up pool tables to draw the blue-collar crowd?  Because they’re racists? 

LIBRELLE:  Because…[head slowly rolls about]

 BERG:  Because social cues have meaning.

LIBRELLE:  Stereotyping people!  That’s just so typical of you bitter gun-clinging Jeeeeebus freaks in flyoverland!

BERG:  Sure.  Later!

(And SCENE)

Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, in debate with John Thune of South Dakota.

That’s South Dakota.  The one to the south:

A smart fence which is what Senator McCain and I want to build – since he’s from Arizona, I think he knows more about this than the Senator from South Dakota, who only has a border with Canada that is quite different.

Leave aside the logical fallacy -border state congresscritters are just as clueless about our sovereignty as anyone else – huh?

I was apparently born in Canada, and not one of the lower 57.  Who knew?

Remember – they’re the smart party.

Victor Davis Hanson has as detailed an accounting of the chickens Obama has sent forth, foreign-policy wise, that are now coming home to roost, as any I’ve seen.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If we establish a national park to let people see Nature as God intended but then it rains, who decides what repairs are required to raise God’s handiwork to Federal standards? If you want a sanitized wilderness with handicapped-accessible pathways, go to Disney World.

Joe Doakes

Yet another reason to get jet packs built sooner than later.

Screenshots from the “Red Alert” app – an Israeli civil defense application for smart phones.

That’s a lot of rockets.

Good thing all that “smart diplomacy” is in place. Heaven knows how bad it’d be otherwise…

When I worked in bars, many of them had dress codes that explicitly barred “colors” and other gang-wear from the bars. 

This, by the way referred equally as much (sometimes moreso) to motorcycle club colors as to urban “gang” colors. 

Here’s the thing; when you work in bars for a while, you realize that trouble comes in all shapes and colors and even genders – but there are some traits across colors, genders and social classes that let you know that trouble might be likely.  Drunk guys in Packer jerseys; drunk rednecks in t-shirts and worn-out jeans; drunk guys in Marine greens (yep, I had that once); drunk bikers in their club colors; drunk urban youth in gang colors. 

It wasn’t a “race” thing; it was a “trouble” thing. 

The local (and to some extent national media) has been all a-swirl over the claim by Michelle Horovitz, leader and likely sole member of “Menu for Equity” or “Forks Against Racism” or some other such “group”, that h Bar Louie’s dress code is “overtly racist”:

A Minneapolis woman says a sign she found outside Bar Louie in Uptown was shocking, and she’s not shy about speaking out on the controversial dress code that has many saying they’ll no longer spend money there.

“It’s the new Jim Crow being enforced in a colorblind way,” Michelle Horovitz told Fox 9 News.

If it’s color-blind, Ms. Horovitz, then how is it “Jim Crow?”

“What is ‘excessively baggy?'” Horovitz asked. “Who’s going to judge that? Are you going to have Grandma B sitting by the door saying, ‘That’s too baggy’?”

Grandma B?  That seems a little ageist of Ms. Horovitz, who looks – if I may profile – like an upper-middle-class white humanities graduate who’s trying to score a grant. 

Horovitz considers the dress code to be both appalling and racist.

“You might as well say, ‘No black folks allowed,'” she said. “It’s ridiculous.”

She’s not the only one who is disgusted by the dress code either. Sean Tierney told Fox 9 News he believes it’s “totally racial profiling,” and Imani Vincent said the real message is clear.

Mr. Tierney is at least onto something.  It’s definitely profiling.  Not racial – social. 

Bar Louie doesn’t want people coming in dressed like thugs and gang-bangers.  Being in uptown Minneapolis (and Minnetonka), I’m gonna take a wild guess that they don’t get a lot of drunk bikers, drunk rednecks or drunk Packers fans; what trouble do  you suppose they’ve had? 

Let’s be honest;  everybody profiles.

Let’s try a thought experiment:  let’s take Michelle Horovitz – suburban upper-middle-class humanities or social “science” major (there, I’m profiling again) and check her reactions around, say, a group of drunk white guys with ZZ Top Beards and biker leathers, and blue-collar rednecks in white t-shirts and grubby jeans hanging around the pool tables? 

Think she’s going to “discriminate” deep in her heart of hearts?   Use her “profile” of drunk bikers and rednecks to guide her actions? 

Based on clothing and visual cues? 

Think Michelle Horovitz might be a “we-ist”, feeling more comfortable around people like her? 

Place your bets. 

(But when you’re placing your bets, I’ve got “she’s a publicity hound shooting for a grant from some progressive organization” taken already).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Two shots, two hits. Nice shooting, especially as he was taking fire at the time.

This being Chicago, I’m amazed the citizen wasn’t arrested too.

The good guys won one, anyway.