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.  We’ll start with Brian Strawser and Mark Okern from Minnsota Gun Owners PAC, talking about the look ahead to the session and their endorsement of Julianne Ortman for US Senate.  Then – Stewart Mills, candidate for the US House seat in the 8th Congressional District!
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Tomorrow,  Brad Carlson is on “The Closer” from 1-3PM!

(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 Facebook page!

Join us!

You go into these tastefully-appointed homes in Crocus Hill and Highland Park, and, like a lot of comfy urban-but-not-too-urban neighborhoods full of college-educated middle-aged academics and non-profiteers and mid-to-upper-level government and institutional employees, the sense of their historical invincibility has been gone now for 2-3 years and nothing’s replaced it. And they felt invincible, like a historically-deterministic event, through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna achieve the utopia that their entire education said they would, and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to rote activism or Volvos or blind ideology or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or their posh education or anti-faith sentiment or anti-White-Republican-Male-Cliché sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Bring me the Baha Men and the dogs they helped escape!

Are the Kims just crazy or crazy as a fox?

If there’s any regime on the planet that’s been only a Turkish Angoran cat and a monocle away from being a James Bond villain, it’s been the Kim dynasty of North Korea.  From the regime’s nuclear weapons program, to attacking the South Korean navy, shelling a South Korean island, and even declaring a “state of war” with their southern neighbors last March, North Korea has created a reputation as a teetering, despotic dynasty constantly on the verge of either collapse or thermonuclear genocide.  Or perhaps both.

Such an image has been cultivated, in large part, by the cult of personalty surrounding the Kims – and nourished by the reputation of them engaging in downright theatrically outlandish acts of evil.  So it is any wonder that news reports have surfaced that Kim Jong Un didn’t merely executed his purged uncle Jang Song Thaek, the number 2 North Korean official, but fed him alive to 120 dogs? (skip ahead if you’re squeamish):

“Then 120 hounds, starved for three days, were allowed to prey on them until they were completely eaten up. This is called ‘quan jue’, or execution by dogs,” according to the Straits Times of Singapore. The daily relied on a description of the execution in a Hong Kong newspaper that serves as the official mouthpiece of China’s government.

“The entire process lasted for an hour, with Mr. Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader in North Korea, supervising it along with 300 senior officials,” the Straits Times said in a piece published Dec. 24, 2013, but only now getting traction in the United States.

There’s no report yet if when Jang Song Thaek asked Dear Leader if he expected him to talk, Kim Jong Un replied “no, Mr. Thaek, I expect you to die.”

All terrible Bond jokes aside, if the accusations sounds far fetched, it’s because they likely are:

The source is questionable, too. If the Chinese knew about how Kim’s uncle died, why didn’t they talk about it sooner and why did the story only leak out through a Hong Kong news outlet? The incident was first reported by the Wen Wei Po newspaper on December 12, yet it’s only now that The Straits Times has commented upon it – and only now that the Western media has started to take notice. The Straits Times is a respectable and widely read publication, but it’s often been accused of being the mouthpiece of Singapore’s ruling party and is staunchly anti-communist – so political bias is possible. Finally, we can’t dismiss the possibility that China itself has fabricated or at least encouraged the story to send a message to Pyongyang. Kim’s uncle was the architect of closer economic ties between the China and North Korea and there is thought to be a lot of anger about his death.

The story exists because it serves the purposes of all parties involved.  Kim Jong Un needs to maintain the aura of “crazy” that his grandfather and father created, for both foreign and domestic opponents.  Kim was reportedly the target of an assassination attempt last March by rival factions, perhaps being the impetus for Kim’s declaration of “war” later that month as an effort to put the country on a heightened security footing without exposing the weakness of his grip on power.

China loves the story because it gives them a further excuse to distant themselves from the hermit state after having lost their greatest internal political champion in Jang Song Thaek.  The South Koreans love the story because Pres. Park Geun-hye has taken a much harder line against the North, abandoning the “Sunshine Policy” of the 2000s in favor of a more Reaganesquse “trust but verify” approach (billed as “trustpolitik“ by some foreign policy pundits).

The “Kims-as-crazy” story angle ensures no sizable shift in policy on the Korean peninsula, even though there has been a massive shift away from the reconciliation that the Sunshine Policy (1998-2008/9) attempted.  In an effort to extort South Korea and drive a wedge between them and the U.S., the Kims’ reckless behavior accomplished the exact opposite.

So perhaps the Kims are simply crazy after all.

As Minnesota’s anti-civil-rights movement ramps up for a lavishly-funded effort to try to paint infringing Minnesotans’ civil rights around the edges as “reasonable” and “responsible”, it’s worth noting that this past few weeks and months have seen a bit of a surge in actual evidence that we Real Americans have the stronger factual hand.

For starters, the Centers for Disease Control, in a metastudy commissioned by the Administration earlier this year, noted that…well, basically everything the Second Amendment Movement has said on every corner of the issue is right.

Then the National Institute for Justice – the part of the Department of Justice that does surveys and research and other hard stuff – concluded that assault weapons bans do nothing but make the banners feel good, and that closing the “gun show loophole” is more or less irrelevant since 71 percent of guns used in crimes currently come from straw purchases or theft.

And finally, a new study by Mark Gius at Quinnipiac released past few weeks shows (from the abstract) that…

… states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).

When you’ve lost the Obama CDC, you’re really in trouble.

So it looks as if Richard Carlbom, the Illegal Mayors Against Guns, and “Protect” Minnesota are going to have to fight the emotional case, since the factual case is even more against them that it was before.

In other words; same as it ever was.

It’ll just be a slicker emotional campaign.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It’s the start of a new year, when Christians remember The Flight Into Egypt.  Suppose President Obama were to read about it in the Bible.  He might notice modern parallels.

The Wise Men were looking for a New King, someone to fundamentally change the government.  Herod was already King and didn’t want to be replaced.  He ordered all sons under the age of two, to be killed.

President Obama, reading this, might realize Jesus was predicted to oppose government.  That makes Him a bitter-clinging-religious-terrorist.  Herod’s Massacre of Innocents was simply an Executive Order preemptively issued for National Security reasons.

Suppose President Obama, inspired by historical precedent, issued his own Executive Order that all White-Males-Two-And-Under should die.  But since there are so many sons and so few federal government employees to kill them, suppose the Order included an Employer Mandate: all employers are required to kill the White-Male-Two-And-Under sons of their employees, or be fined out of business.

Suppose some employers claimed that a government mandate to kill children of employees violated the employer’s religious beliefs under some ancient fringe religion, something about “Thou Shalt Not Kill.”  And not just churches that employ janitors, but businesses that employ people to sell fried chicken or woodworking tools or cabinetmakers, suppose they objected, too.

If a Supreme Court Justice stopped the killing until the Court could hold a hearing, would the New York Times tut about threatening the security of the nation?

If the Employer Mandate didn’t require Employers to actually kill the sons, merely to hire someone else to kill the sons for them, would that be okay?

If the Department of Hunting Sons (DHS) issued a rule saying certain employers were exempt from killing one-and-two-year-olds, they only need to kill unborn sons to comply with the law, would that make it all better?

What’s it going to take to get these fundamentalist whackos to see The Light?

Joe Doakes

I’m going to start calling Democrats “Obama Fundamentalists”.

Maybe “Bitter, Obama-Clinging Fundamentalists”.

Are “Avery Librelle” and “Moonbeam Birkenstock” guys or girls?:  Isn’t it perfectly obvious?  I think that’s pretty clearly answered here.  Or at least I think so.

You only attack the left?  Why don’t you go after the miscreants on the right?  Especially in the GOP?:  That’s a fair cop, sort of.  Partly because we have a state full of media, “progressive” groups, “watchdog” non-profits and bloggers (pardon the serial redundancy) who already watch the right.   I’m adding balance in my homespun little way.  And partly because I generally agree with the right.  Because I’m a conservative!

And I attack the left more than the right because I reasonably believe that “the right” – conservatism – is a generally better, more valid, more noble idea than the “progressivism” of “the left”.  And “the left” is currently on the ascendant in this state and the US.

You will note – if accuracy is what you seek, and I’m just sure it is – that the most-viewed post in the history of this blog is entitled “Note to Bill Frist:  You Suck“.

You know who Bill Frist was.  Right?

So that means you’re biased!:  Well, duh.  I am, and I make no bones about it.  Although another part is this; I don’t do much “reporting” on whatever’s going on in the GOP’s bureaucracy because, frankly, the subject – bureaucracy – bores me.  You’ll note I rarely write about the inner workings of the DFL, either, and when I do, it’s usually to link to someone else’s writing.

Covering bureaucracies is like watching paint dry, or watching writers from the oldMinnesota Independenttrying to meet people at bars; it’s slow, nothing much happens, and it’s pretty predictable.

Conservatism is dead.  Millennials are deserting the GOP.  It’s time to update your approach:  That’s not a question.  But it brings up two questions.

First:  Since when have people under thirty ever been Republicans or conservatives?    Good lord, I’m almost as sick of hearing society has to jump to the wishes of “Millennials” as I am about Baby Boomers.

Second:  Why?  One of conservatism’s beliefs is that new ideas face a fairly stern burden of proof.  Which isn’t sexy for, say, marketers to try to sell, and it’s not something “young people” are disposed to believe, but it’s true.   So put your “new” ideas out there, and let’s debate!  The kicker is, ideas in the world of society and politics are like pop music; there really are no new ideas.  They’ve all been around for a while, and most of them are untried for a reason.  Which isn’t to say that something new, or a new take on something old, isn’t possible; it’s just that you need to make the sale.

Can you make the sale?

There is no difference between Republicans and Democrats!:  Again, mostly statements, not really questions, here.  But if that were true, wouldn’t at least one Republican have voted for Obamcare? 

So what about your various stalkers?:  Oh, them?  One of them has been pretty tame for a while here, as far as I can tell.  The other – well, I’ve been ignoring him for over a year and a half.  I think he misses the attention – he’s reportedly gone quite over the edge recently but – here’s the kicker – I wouldn’t know.  I read “his” material less than I read the Strib. 

Who do you support for Governor and Senator?:  I’m starting to develop some preferences.  But I’d never talk about ’em publicly. 

Part of it is that I genuinely don’t have my mind made up completely, and all the candidates have a lot more questions to answer – some of the, many many many more. 

And part of it is that if I did come out and express a preference now, five months before the convention, it’d be kinda hell on bookings for the show, now, wouldn’t it?

Keep ’em coming!

Our labor force participation rate is such that employment, for all the jabbering about the current ~7% rate, is scarcely better than it was in 2009.  Investment is still glacial (except in the stock market – which is not the same as “investing in the economy”. 

Kevin Williamson at the National Review may be the single best writer in America on the subject of government and its effect on the nation, the economy, and The People.  He combines off-handed humor with blistering, airtight analysis. 

And as such, I highly recommend you read his New Years’ wrapup, “A Year of Fear“.  The whole thing is worth reading.  But I’m pulling out the conclusion, about the effect  uncertainty has in crippling an economy. 

“But wait”, lefties say; “my pension fund is going great guns!  The Dow is over 15,000!”

Yeah, it is.  And that’s a little like seeing your car idling at 10,000 RPM and assuming that’s because it’s raring to go. 

The conclusion is the big beef, here; I’m adding emphasis:

The Obama administration has achieved a special distinction here: Investors are faced with considerable uncertainty vis-à-vis how it might interpret rules as compared with the Bush or Clinton administrations — and also about how it might interpret rules as compared with the Obama administration the day before yesterday. Now you see a mandate, now you don’t. And as bad as it is in 2013, the seething hostility of Elizabeth Warren is ascendant on the left, a fact that offers very little encouragement to entrepreneurs and investors considering illiquid, long-term positions — things like factories, stores, and buildings, as opposed to easily liquidated investments in financial instruments.

Another common lefty complaint?  “Companies are too focused on profits!”

Many on the left complain about the “financialization” of the U.S. economy, while unwittingly helping to encourage that very phenomenon. Given a choice between dividing up his investments between a couple of hedge funds and financial firms or locking it up for ten years in an assembly line in Indiana, a sane man will consider the question of uncertainty and predictability. And under current conditions, the assembly line is a risky bet.

Perhaps 2014 will be the year in which we learn the value of predictability. Who can say?

Read the whole thing. 

Better yet, get an Obama supporter to read it.

Big week coming up Saturday on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, so I thought I’d start talking about it now.

First, I’ll have Brian Strawser and Mark Okern of the Minnesota Gun Owners PAC, talking about their endorsement of Julianne Ortman and the year ahead in the legislature (hint: it’s going to be another doozy).

Then – Stewart Mills, CEO of Mills Fleet Farm and candidate for the US Congress in CD8, will join me to talk about his race.

Hope you can tune in.  Or join the show at 651 289 4488!

Who were the people who allegedly robbed and beat former Minneapolis mayoral candidate Mark Andrew for his iPhone?

“Johnny Northside” runs down the yoots’ family tree.  The piece includes a couple of “I assumes” and at least one anonymous but “well-connected” source, but if you connect the dots the way Mr. Northside does, it looks like Mr. Andrew’s assailants are part of quite a family syndicate.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

As I predicted back when Obama first announced this, the military is watering down the standards so women can pass the test to serve in combat roles.

Can’t do 3 pull-ups?  For crying out loud, I can probably do 3 pull-ups and I’m 35 years older and 150 pounds heavier than these women. Hope to God we never need them do to anything strenuous to defend the country.

It’s a pretty sad day for the Marines when boosting your own fat ass over an obsticle is deemed a “team lift.”

Joe Doakes

 

All that’s true. But it could be worse. If the military adopts Common Core, Marines will be trained to run toward what they can reasonably infer is the sound of gunfire. And Naval Aviators will merely have to show they reasonably tried to get the hook onto the third wire…

It’s New Years Day, and as such it’s time for a tradition unlike most others – the Seventh Annual Shootie Awards, “honoring” the “best” in Minnesota blogging, talk radio, and social and alt-media in the same way D-Con Mouse Pellets honor the best in rodent culture.

The Nick Coleman/Brian Lambert Memorial Award For Broadcast Excellence: With the virtual demise of the Twin Cities’ liberal “AM950”, you’d think we’d be going begging for a recipient for this traditional honor.

Not so.

This year, the award goes to Minnesota Public Radio’s Keri Miller.

Don’t get us wrong; Miller is not a thud-witted radio pretender like Coleman was, nor a chuckling Uptown caricature like Lambert.  Miller has a multitude of approaches; one minute – say, when interviewing any Republican or conservative – she’s acerbic and aggressive, badgering and hectoring and interrupting to the point it’d be fairer to say she “occasionally allows her conservative guests to interrupt her interruptions” (Mike Wallace’s ghost reportedly wanders the miles of halls at MPR urging Miller to “dial back the cranky, toots”).  The next minute – when a DFL politician, dependent or employee is on the air, usually – she’ll sound as if she may be giving the guest a back massage.  The real show of Miller’s expertise?  As Bill Glahn notes, she’ll even do both during the course of the same interview!

So fear not.  The legacy of Brian Lambert, Nick Coleman and Andrew Colton lives on.  Whoever Andrew Colton was.

The Larry Jacobs “Most Overquoted Person in the Twin Cities Media” Award:  This award – which has also gone to Professor David Schultz of Hamline University, a relentless liberal who seems to be regarded as the only knowledgeable source on Minnesota conservatives – is rarely a huge surprise.

But let’s give a nod to tradition; the award this year goes to none other than Larry Jacobs himself, especially in honor of his NYTimes piece declaring Minnesota the winner over WIsconsin in the blue vs. red economic battle, even though Minnesota’s experiment with spendthrift liberal government hadn’t really taken effect yet.

The John Najarian Memorial Award for Surgically-Precise Sarcasm:  This award goes to this blog’s good friend John Gilmore at his blog Minnesota Conservatives, who satirized with a brilliantly straightened face the ideal of reading Twin Cities liberal bloggers in a piece which, tart tongue notwithstanding, is an essential read, even down to its ingeniously snarky title “On It:  Reading Minnesota’s Liberal Blogosphere“.  The mark of Gilmore’s pithy genius?  He mixes in some sincere, legitimate, deserved compliments; to the excellent if equally snarky Tony Petrangelo, and the City Pages’ Aaron Rupar (Gilmore says he has ” a large measure of personal style that’s impossible to pick up in any journalism class”, which is true; while Rupar punches his ticket as a DFL water-carrier, we must give credit where due; Rupar isn’t the onanistic panty-sniffer his colleague Kevin Hoffman is) and Sally Jo Sorenson, who can be annoyingly juvenile but is a capable reporter with – improbably – a sense of integrity).

But then comes the payoff – “compliments” that, to those who’ve followed Minnesota’s liberal ‘sphere for any time at all, are just howlers; Eric Austin has “an admixture of deadliness and humor” (only his logic is funny; his “deadliness” is against those who can’t fight back).  And attorney Gilmore must be paying some intra-professional respect to Steve “Spotty” Timmer, calling him an essential read notwithstanding Timmer’s very dubious grasp (or misleading explanation) of the law.

But the true mark of Gilmore’s genius?  In a piece ostensibly urging people to read liberal blogs, he directs people to read Minnesota Progressive Project, which is a little like introducing people to French cuisine with a tastefully-arranged Merde au Vin Flambé   – a cunning double-cross if there ever were one.

Anyway – bravo, John!  Oscar Wilde applauds from the great beyond!

The George Santayana Memorial “He Who’s Forgotten History Is Condemned To Be A Liberal Academic” Award: This year, it goes not to an academic,per se, but to a blogger.

Sally Jo Sorenson – who, I take pains to note, is one of those rare Minnesota liberal bloggers who doesn’t seem to deserve police surveillance – is a perfectly fine writer.  But one might assume that she skipped a few history classes to concentrate on the Poli Sci, if  you catch my drift, not that I have a “drift” or anything.

The “Minnesota Nice” Award:  Minnesotans are an accomodating bunch.  If one of us needs some help, someone will no doubt be there to pitch in (see also:  Rep. Martens, above).

And so last year when Governor Messinger Dayton announced his budget, it was a natural assumption that Carrie Lucking – Executive Directrix of “Alliance for a “Better” Minnesota” – would be there to tweet about the picayune details found deep inside the Governor’s big, thick budget.

Notwithstanding the fact that the details were buried deeeeeeeeep inside a budget that had supposedly been available to the public for precisely 13 minutes when Lucking wrote the tweet.

Some cynical wags said it had to be because Lucking had to have gotten a copy from Bob Hume, a senior staffer for Governor Messinger Dayton and, rumor and innuendo and a rogue Strib article had it, either Lucking’s boyfriend or spouse.

Me?  I think Hume and Dayton got their copies from Lucking, after Messinger dictated it.

Anyway – all that cooperation?  It’s just nice.

The “The Media, The Media, The Media’s On Fire! We Don’t Need No Water, Let That Liberal Institution Burn!” Award: This one goes to the entire mainstream-media “Fact-Checking” racket, which seems to have morphed more into a “Democrat Ministry of Truth” than it even started out.

The Just Remember, Libruls are Teh Smrt Award: I’ve noted it before; the Democrats should have been able to impose some kind of gun control law this past session.  They controlled the legislature, and they have a governor who does whatever his ex-wife tells him to do.  They couldn’t have asked for a more favorable situation – other than the whole “Minnesota is closely divided between the GOP and DFL” bit.

But the DFL House Metrocrat caucus’s gun-grab brain trust – Representatives Paymar and Hausman – not only introduced a raft of draconian assaults on the Bill of Rights (all of them crudely copied-and-pasted from other state’s bills) guaranteed to inflame the peasants.

Alice Hausman, introducing a resolution declaring Steven Colbert funny

Best of all?  When it came time for Hausman (who represents Saint Paul’s House District 66A in the same way Prince Charles of Wales “represents” the Welsh) to introduce one of her gun-grab bills to the House Judiciary Committee, Hausman was nowhere to be found.  So Chairman Paymar, likely in violation of House rules, allowed Martens – a registered lobbyist – to do Representative Hausman’s job, reading the bill into consideration.

Rep. (apparently) Heather Martens (DFL 66A) exploiting the victim of an earlier tragedy

Rumor has it the DFL will just let Alida Messinger, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros sit on the house floor and cast their votes for them in 2014.

The Cicero/Demosthenes/Socrates Award For Excellence In The Advancement Of Keen-Eyed Rhetoric:  The gun control movement in Minnesota hired Richard Carlbom, PR-chitect of the Gay Marriage law, to help them try to jam down anti-rights legislation in the next session.

One of the reasons was the comedic ineptitude of the Minnesota gun movement’s current leadership.

And while Representative Heather Martens has earned plenty of brickbats for her tone-deaf, unintentionally comic performances over the past decade or so (and a Shootie award or two, including this year, which see), the breakout performer was Jane Kay of “Moms Want Action”.  It’s a safe bet that a big part of what will no doubt be the gun-grab movement’s push toward calming, “reasonable” talk about “responsible” laws and “sane” approaches is to try to counter the Jane Kay’s legacy as a purple-faced hate-clogged caricature who, notwithstanding a slopped-on coat of feminist sloganeering, managed to simultaneously make her message cheaply sexist (while utterly un-sexy) and self-marginalizing at the same time.

If Richard Carlbom spends his first three months doing damage control, Kay is part of the reason.  And for that, she earns the award, and earns it well!

The Walter Duranty Award:  Among Minnesota’s “Libertarian” “movement” – which coalesced around the Ron Paul campaign in 2012 to seize a disproportionate control of the MNGOP – were quite a few one-time, there-and-gone “activists”, a gratifying number of very sharp people who did a good job in bringing solid, needed libertarian politics to the MNGOP, and – at the very core – a group of smirking, preening, frat-boy-esque self-styled “Anarcho-Libertarians” who really were only there to pee in all the peasants’ Wheaties and then slap themselves on the back and laugh at the complaints.

Now, if the question is “is our government too powerful” and “do we need to limit the power of government over the individual”, I’m with you.  Government is too big.  We need to carve much of it out and toss it away.

But just as the “peace” movement 30 years ago wasn’t about “nuclear weapons” but “US nuclear weapons”, the Liberty Fratboys rose as one to applaud Edward Snowden’s assault on big intrusive government (qualified yay)…

…as Snowden applauded Vladimir Putin’s human rights record.

The “Every Junior High Impressed-With-Himself Chess-Club Prig” Award For Intellectual Rigor:  After a long absence from this award, it almost feels like old home week, as we award this to a man who was once a candidate for a Shootie Lifetime Achievement award.  That’s right – Nick Coleman, gone from the Shooties for years, is back, and he shows that he’s still at the peak of his game, where “his game” means “autoerotic and homoerotic japes delivered with all the grace of a Danish jazz band”, and “peak” means “same crap, different year”.  This piece – which laces Coleman’s usual oeuvre of erection jokes with a long train of outright fabrications – was almost a return to the Nick Coleman of his Strib Columnists’ Row glory days, except including the fact that nobody with an IQ above plant life read it.  And for that, we salute Coleman.  It’s not like we give these things away.

Well, actually, we do.  But what I mean is…

…well, anyway, congrats!

The Nancy Pelosi “You Won’t Know What It Means Til You Do It!” Award For Wishful Planning:  MNSure.  Duh.

The Claudius Caesar Award For Excellence In Praetorian Guardsmanship:  This is always a hotly-contested award – and getting moreso every year, as the “objective” media slides ever-more into the bag for the left.

This year it was a tight, tight race, nearly a coin toss.  Both of the contenders in the final two exemplify the trend of “objective” “mainstream” media allowing (left-leaning and/or pro-big-state, pardon the redundancy) groups to underwrite “journalism” and “news coverage”.

At the end of the day, we decided to give the runner-up spot to Minnesota Public Radio News – a news organization that has not just any arm of government, but MNSure, perhaps the most controversial executive-branch project in the state this past year, as a sponsor for Keri Miller’s Morning Circuit – an MPR News production.   A casual reader might note that this is a conflict according to the Society of Professional Journalists’ “Code of Ethics” (while the pros know, of course, that the SPJ code is nothing but a framework by which journalists evade all accountability).

The prize, however, goes to the MinnPost, whose coverage of Second Amendment issues this past year, while posited as “journalism”, was delivered with five-figure annual grant from the “Joyce Foundation” – which, the MinnPost never bothered to tell the reader, also sponsors most of America’s major gun-control groups, as well as “Take Action Minnesota”.  So not only was there a never-explicitly-stated imperative for the MinnPost to slant its coverage – but the coverage itself was shoddy and risible, ranging from historically myopic to ludicrously badly-reported to just-plain-false and propagandistic, devolving eventually into an extended rhetorical tongue-bath for Minnesota’s incompetent gun -grab movement.

The capstone of the whole year?  Accompanying one of the MinnPost’s pieces (citing a long-obscure and generally-debunked theory that the Second Amendment was instituted to defend slavery), the site decided to use this as an symbol for Second Amendment support:

Yep. Confederate soldiers. Because that’s what all of you law-abiding gun owners are – to the Joyce-Foundation-supported MinnPost.

In a just world, a news organization with integrity would apologize, not only for the post-hoc slander, but for its misleading, slanted and, frankly, bought-off “journalism”.

The world, of course, is not a just one.  Does the MinnPost have integrity?

Oh, it’s a new year, full of promise, isn’t it?

The Charles Townsend Award – In 1765, British parliamentarian Charles Townsend, in noting the Colonies’ protests against the Stamp Act, said:

“And now will these Americans, Children planted by our Care, nourished up by our Indulgence until they are grown to a Degree of Strength & Opulence, and protected by our Arms, will they grudge to contribute their mite to relieve us from the heavy weight of that burden which we lie under?”

Townsend’s statements sum up the arrogance of the professional bureaucrat, the institutional utopian, the Masters of the Universe who believe they were sent here to keep us peasants from crapping in our beds.

And for the first time in the history of the Shooties, the Townsend award goes not to a stupid statement by a politician, but a photo that gloriously sums up Minnesota under DFL rule in 2013:

Governors Zygi Wilf and Mark Messinger Dayton

Yes, it’s Zygi Wilf in a paroxysm of glee over all those taxpayer dollars he’s going to be marinating his tush in – but it could just as easily be Javi Morillo, or Elliot Seid, or Greta Bergstrom or Carrie Lucking, roiling in glee and amazed that they’ve been able to put one over on the rubes, as our “Governor” wonders what this thing on a long stick is and hopes Alida doesn’t take away his driving privileges.

You have to give them the money to know what the money is!  Or something!

Or we’ll lose the Vikings!

Anyway – as long as there’s a New Years in Minnesota, there’s a Shooties.  See you next year!

(Here are the previous Shootie winners, going back to 2006)

The Wombat reminds me that I used to do this sort of thing all the time.

Self-indulgent?  Sure.  Why not?  It’s my blog, and I can do what I want.

1. Was 2013 a good year for you?:  All in all, sure.  Notables:  I got a new job that was a real step forward.  When you’re a contractor for a long time, you find that each year is pretty much a rerun of every other year you spend as a contractor.  I’m an employee for the first time in a while, I’m leading a group, and it’s been a lot of fun so far.

2. What was your favorite moment(s) of the year?:  Seeing my niece Sniperbaby for the first time.  (She’s six, and while Sniperbaby isn’t her actual name, she actually does get hits on prairie dogs at 100 yards with a .22 Magnum).

3. What was your least favorite moment(s) of the year?:  We’ll talk about that over a drink sometime.  If we have a drink sometime.

4. What did you do in 2013 that you’d never done before?:  Went to the east coast of Florida.  Ate scallops.  Played a ukulele.  Kicked one of my demons in the groin.

5. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?: I never do them.

6. Where were you when 2013 began?:  At home.

7. Who were you with?:  A dog, two cats, and my guitar.

8. Where will you be when 2013 ends?: About the same.

9. Who will you be with when 2013 ends?:  A dog and two cats and my guitars.

10. Did anyone close to you give birth?:  Other than some Facebook friends, no.

11. Did you lose anybody close to you in 2013?:  No, thank God.  It’s been a while.

12. Who did you miss?:  Nobody, really.

13. Who was the best new person you met in 2013?:  No one person.  Lots of new co-workers.  The guy who works for me is a great fella.

14. What was your favorite month of 2013?:   I can’t imagine ever having a favorite “month”.  May was kinda fun.

15. Did you travel outside of the US in 2013?:  I haven’t been outside the US since college.  That kinda depresses me.   I may just drive to Canada this year for the hell of it.

16. How many different states did you travel to in 2013?:  North Dakota, Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio.

17. What would you like to have in 2014 that you lacked in 2013?:  Time for a project I’ve been noodling with for over a year.  I’d like to have something ready to go by April at the latest.

18. What date from 2013 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?:  Plenty of days; no dates.

19. What was your biggest achievement of the year?:  I’m finally managing  people at work.  It’s never been a goal, but it’s an achievement.  Sorta.

20. What was your biggest failure?:  Not finishing the project I mentioned above.

21. Did you suffer illness or injury?:  So far so good.  Knock wood.

22. What was the best thing you bought?:  This is weird – nothing.  I don’t actually recall buying anything all year.  Some books, some music, groceries.

23. Whose behavior merited celebration?:  My kids made some good progress.  Long story, and you’ll have to know me  pretty well to hear the story.

24. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?:  Our government at all levels.

25. Where did most of your money go?: The mortgage from hell. I live with it, but it’s the bane of my existence.

26. What did you get really, really, really excited about?:  Music.  Long story.

27. Did you drink a lot of alcohol in 2013?:  I haven’t drunk “a lot” of alcohol since about 1990.  I haven’t had “a lot” of alcohol at one sitting since 2008, and that was only once.  I drink so rarely – seriously, the MOB parties and a couple of semi-regular happy hours with some college and work friends are about it.

28. Did you do a lot of drugs in 2013?:  Ibuprofen.  Which, other than the odd antibiotic, is the only drug I ever use…

29. Did you treat somebody badly in 2013?:  Er…not that I remember?  I usually try to treat people well…

30. Did somebody treat you badly in 2013?:  Nothing I couldn’t not only handle, but mock with style.

31. Compared to this time last year, are you:  A little happier, about the same weight, a little richer.

32. What do you wish you’d done more of in 2013?:  I wish I’d had an actual vacation.  I have been a contractor most of my career, so I have little concept of or skill at down time.

33. What do you wish you’d done less of?:  Worry.  Same as last year.

34. Did you fall in love in 2013?:  Yeah, Kate Mara.  But don’t tell Scarlett Johannson.

35. What was your favorite TV program(s)?:  This is the first time in decades I’ve watched first-run television or cable.  I loved House of Cards and Breaking Bad.  And I hate to say it, but Walking Dead is really good.  And the final episode of “The Office” was really really excellent, in an absolutely absurd way.

36. What song will always remind you of 2013?:  One of my own.  Maybe I’ll let you hear it someday.

37. How many concerts did you see in 2013?:  It occurs to me that I haven’t been to a concert of any kind since Springsteen in 2002.  Pathetic, huh?

38. Did you have a favorite concert in 2013?:  Asked and answered, indirectly.

39. What was your greatest musical discovery?:  Mark Knopfler’s been hiding in plain sight for thirty years.  I’ve always been aware of his most notable stuff, but I’d never really done the deep dive into the Knopfler/Dire Straits catalogue.  I did this year.

40. What was the best book you read?:  “The German Invasion of Norway” by Geir Haar.

41. What was your favorite film of this year?:  I saw some good ones – more than usual.  I used to go to actual theatres maybe once every two years or so. It’s been more frequent this past year.  Best one, though, is probably Lone Survivor.

42. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?:  Nothing interesting, and none of your business.

43. What did you want and get?:  A birthday without having to deal with someone else’s crisis.  And for the first time in six or seven years, I got it!

44. What did you want and not get?:  I never want much.

45. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?: Having Premiere start lining me up to replace Limbaugh when he retires.

46. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2013?:  Personal fashion concept?  “No beards without mustaches”

47. What kept you sane?: Same as every year; having an outlet.

48. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?:  Kate Mara was giving Scarlett Johannson a run for the money.

49. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2013:  Stay hydrated.  Persevere.  Let it turn to something else.

50. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:   OK:

Heel y’ho boys, let her go, boys

Bring her head round into the weather.

Heel y’ho boys, let her go boys

Sailing homeward to Mingulay!

Anyway – Happy New Year to you and yours!  I hope 2014 is a good year for all of you!

If you read this blog, you know that “Politifact”, the WaPo’s “Fact-Check” column, accepted as the sine qua non of political fact-checking by many in the industry (and more of the less-informed outside it).

Those people might not know that “Politifact” has been carrying President Obama’s water on the key claims about the Democrat’s flagship Obamcare legislation since the  beginning.  What they might not know is that : “Politifact” and its editor, Angie Drobnic Holan, have not only completely flip-flopped on the story, but are burying the fact that what they called the “Lie of the Year” in 2013, they called “True” with a side order of “you are an ignorant redneck for even asking” in 2008:

The highlight of Holan’s 2013 “Lie of the Year” article was that it completely ignored Holan’s own “True” rating of the “keep your plan” claim back in 2008. A sidebar to the article listed as “related rulings” Holan’s 2013 articles about Jarrett and Obama, and Jacobson’s 2012 article rating the claim as “Half True.” The text of the article cites also the 2009 “Half True” report. But nowhere does the “Lie of the Year” piece even acknowledge that its author once gave Obama’s promise its 100 percent “True” seal of approval.

Now, if you’re a conservative, you know “Politifact” is a Democrat propaganda machine.

The only real question is; do the media – especially those that call themselves “no rant, no slant” objective journalists – know?

James O’Keefe and his merry band of prankersters are able to fraudulently obtain ballots 97 percent of the time:

New York City’s Department of Investigation (DOI) has just shown how easy it is to commit voter fraud that is almost undetectable. Its undercover agents were able to obtain ballots for city elections a total of 61 times — 39 times using the names of dead people, 14 times using the names of incarcerated felons, and eight times using the names of non-residents. On only two occasions, or about 3 percent of the time, were the agents stopped by polling-place officials. In one of the two cases, an investigator was stopped only because the felon he was trying to vote in the name of was the son of the election official he was dealing with.

Clearly, O’Keefe has overstepped the bounds of…

…wait.  I said O’Keefe, didn’t I?  What did the article actually say?

The New York Department of Investigation’s report doesn’t address the serious issue of absentee-ballot fraud, where at least a paper trail to catch fraud can be created. But it does highlight a troubling case indicating that voter impersonation Chicago-style is still with us.

Oh. 

Um…

Fox News!

Scott Gillespie of the Strib editorialized about the one-year anniversary of Sandy Hook.

At least he ended the piece constructively:

Those 26 faces will stay frozen, though. The children and their teachers, lost forever except in photos and home video. At least — if you believe it will help — say another prayer for them and their families. If we offer nothing else, at least say a prayer.

Other than that?  Gillespie foreshadows what will, I suspect, be the anti-rights movement’s two big hooks in Minnesota this year; guilt, and the vague need to “do something”, even if the “something” is completely useless at preventing actual crime, with both of them always, always, wrapped in the memory of people who would not have been saved by anything that they’re proposing.

But practical responses aren’t the issue, here.  This is about emotions:

You see those faces frozen in time on your TV screen now. They are angels, every one of them. You would like to look away, turn the channel and move on. Our Congress did, and most of our state legislatures. One year later, little has changed.

It’s not the Sandy Hook kids’ faults the were all white and upper-middle-class, and that the media focused on them and not the many, many more children slaughtered in ones and twos in Barack Obama’s Chicago – who are almost entirely black.  But it is Scott Gillespie’s fault that he ignores, or doesn’t know, that not a single law proposed in any state legislature, or in Congress, would have prevented Sandy Hook – but that the City of Chicago has “done something”, a near complete civilian gun ban, that is closely correlated with a skyrocketing murder rate in Chicago.

But those kids are black, and in a Democrat stronghold.  As always, they go unmentioned.

The emotions that Gillespie – and the anti-rights movement whose water he’s carrying – aren’t just about sympathy.  No, there’s gotta be ninety seconds of hate: 

Wayne LaPierre is on the screen now. You can hear the anger in his voice. If he feels any pain, any regret, he hides it. The perfect man for the job. Raise more money and spread more lies. Intimidate. Bully. Threaten. Win at all costs, from coast to coast. Not undefeated, but close.

Scott Gillespie, I hereby challenge you; where was LaPierre wrong?  What are the “lies?”  Let’s talk about that.  Preferably face to face, but I’ll do email.  Let’s hash this out.

No, it’s not that LaPierre lied; he didn’t, and doesn’t have to.  He was right.  His opponents were wrong.  And they – in this case Gillespie, but it could be any lefty columnist – are attacking LaPierre with the dim ad-homina and the scurrilous accusation – the “lies” – because it’s all they have, and a boogeyman, a Goldstein, is what they need.

And then there’s the murderer. We should ignore him and his story, right? Make him as abstract as possible because it’s too hard to answer the why question without that research. There are more like him, but how could we possibly know how to find or stop them? So we move on, trying not to say his name.

Now Gillespie is just making things up.   This is where LaPierre – and all of us on the human rights side of this battle – have been focusing; Adam Lanza.  The current system worked, in that it denied him a gun.  He killed his mother – already illegal in fifty states – to steal her legally-purchased firearms to use in the rampage.

And it’s on the crazies, like him, James Holmes, Harris and Klebold, Seung-Hui Cho and the like, that Wayne LaPierre – and, incidentally, all of the rest of us on the human rights side of the argument – are focused.

And not a one of them would have been affected by any of the laws that were passed in places like Colorado, New York, Pennsylvania or California.

So when Gillespie plaintively asks…:

The anniversary show is over now. Will there be another one next year, or the year after that? Why wallow, right? We are Americans. We press on. We buck up and never look back. Like LaPierre.

…the answer is “maybe, but nothing you’re proposing would change a thing”.

But Gillespie is part of a wave of mainstream media that are working to pave the way for the anti-gun movement’s next big campaign in Minnesota.

More – much more – in coming days and weeks.

Minneapolis has a car idling law:

We caught about a dozen Minneapolis residents idling their cars past the legal limit this morning, and none of them knew they were breaking the law…15 minutes is all the time you have if you’re within Minneapolis city limits. In below-zero temperatures, drivers in Minneapolis can leave their car idling and unattended for up to 15 minutes. When the temperatures warm above zero, the idling limit is just three minutes.

 

“Maybe half an hour,” said Kissel, on how long she lets her car warm up. “But I wouldn’t know the difference. It’s the morning. You forget time!”

And yet they have no idle politician law.

It’s not a “green” thing; it’s about preventing auto theft – by making it illegal to leave a car in a condition where it can easily be stolen.

Honestly?  I’d almost prefer the “green” law; at least it’d be stupid, rather than  stupid and insulting.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Leftists despair when their own principles collide, leaving it impossible to decide who to hate.  Example:

We all want clean energy.  Windmills seem like the perfect answer, opposed only by Conservatives who love Big Coal.  Hate Conservatives, right?

Except birds fly into the blades and are killed, including protected species like the American Bald Eagle.   In November, Duke Energy was fined a million dollars for killing birds at its wind farms.  So hate Progressives who promote wind farms?  Or hate companies that produce clean energy?

On December 9^th, Obama’s Interior Department released new rules giving wind farms a 30-year permit to kill birds, including bald eagles.  So hate President Obama?

Imagine if a Republican president had done this.  No wonder Liberals are distraught these days.  It’s just so hard to know who to hate.

Joe Doakes.

When it’s the only thing you actually create, you can understand why they get touchy about doing it right…

The Vikings are shuffling the Head Coaching deck chairs.

For the full story, I turn the mike over to Howard Cosell:

The old video is a lot more interesting than the actual story.

In 2013, the grassroots of the Minnesota human rights movement – pro-Second-Amendment groups like GOCRA, the Twin Cities Gun Owners and other genuine grass-roots organizations – dealt the gun-grabbers a humiliating defeat.  Even though the anti-rights groups were lavishly funded, were supported by a purchased media narrative, and controlled the entire apparatus of Minnesota government, they were unable to jam down any of their useless legislation.

Zero.

It was an epic victory of an army of Davids over a phalanx of obese, arrogant Goliaths.

But 2014 is a whole new year.

Since the last session, the anti-gun movement has made some roster changes.  In place of last year’s leadership – “Protect” MN’s credibility-free Rep. Heather Martens, Moms Want Action’s shrill, self-caricaturing Jane Kay, and the hysterical, deranged Joan Peterson, a flood of Joyce Foundation and Bloomberg money has enabled the anti-rights movement (in this case, “Mayors Against Illegal Guns”) to hire Richard Carlbom, the architect of the campaign to torpedo the Marriage Amendment, and then to pass Gay Marriage in Minnesota.

And this is going to change the game here in Minnesota.

Unlike the Minnesota gun grab movement’s previous leadership, Carlbom is a smooth, polished PR fixer with great talent at running a nuanced, effective campaign – and he’s already got one improbable win against (at face value) longish odds under his belt.

As a result, this is going to be a different campaign, unlike any that Minnesota’s Second Amendment movement has ever faced.

My hunch?  Carlbom will replace Kay/Martens/Peterson’s club-footed yapping, and Michael Paymar’s wide-front legislative bludgeoning, with a more subtle attack:

• Emotional cruise missiles replace carpet-bombing:  the anti-rights movement has long bludgeoned their audiences with a ham-fisted appeal to emotion.  To be fair, it’s their only argument; to be honest, they haven’t done it well.  Carlbom won the gay marriage debate in part by personalizing the gay marriage issue – showing that gay couples were Just Like The Rest Of Us.  I think you can expect the emotional assault to be much more focused and personalized than in the past; fewer “schoolrooms full of children”; more “let’s talk with this mom, whose son was…[fill in tragic shooting].  Expect those attacks to be far harder to undercut – Carlbom is less likely to focus on the story of a “child” who turned out to be a gang thug than were the hapless Martens or Kay.
• The friendly face of “reasonable” authority:  The anti-gun movement lost a lot of credibility points by using as its public face the scolding, unctuous, unfluent Martens, the hectoring and red-faced Kay, and irrational Peterson.  Expect those faces to be replaced by Minnesota’s very definition of “reasonable”; lots of Lutheran ministers (ELCA, natch), with their Saint Olaf-bred diction and their carefully-trimmed beards, and liberal-but-not-too-liberal, Jewish-but-not-too-jewish rabbis, carefully and calmly asking for “common sense” measures to “prevent violence” and “promote safety”, and lots of other carefully-focused terms calibrated not to alarm tens of thousands of phone calls and thousands of protesters.
• Trying to build the “reasonable” brand:  Expect less (overt) talk about attacking puffy-faced white suburban caricatures, and more about how “gun safety” and “violence prevention” appeals to our better natures; the things that make us human, and Minnesotan.   This campaign has, in fact, already begun, with Strib columns by Lori Sturdevant and Scott Gillespie (see this space tomorrow morning) that stake out this emotional, intellectual space (in a campaign that just can’t be coordinated, and I’m sure is just a fluke that won’t, no, won’t get re-iterated in turn by every other Minnesota mainstream media outlet, nosireebob).

It’ll be a campaign calculated not to alarm, and to appeal on at least a shallow level to the conceit most Minnesotans have that we’re a thoughtful, deliberate people, not given to unseemly rash emotionality and open to “reason”.

Underneath and obscured by it all, of course, will be the facts; that none of the measures they’re proposing will affect actual violence in any way.  Nor are they intended to.

But it’ll be done in a way intended to gently gull the gullible, and lull at least a part of the crowd that rose up to repudiate Representatives Paymar, Hausman and Martens in the last session.

So it’s almost time for a new session – one that may be the most dangerous yet for Minnesota’s Real Americans.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

CORRECTION:  This past session was 2013, wasn’t it?

The gun-grabber movement is going to make a particularly insidious push to attack your second-amendment rights in the upcoming session.

The Minnesota Gun Owners PAC is launching an opening salvo, getting on the endorsement board for the upcoming Senate race and backing Senator Julianne Ortman:

 “Throughout her time in the Minnesota Senate, Julianne Ortman has been an energetic and consistent advocate for Minnesota’s gun owners, “ said Mark Okern, Chairman, Minnesota Gun Owners PAC.  “She has demonstrated a strong commitment to policies that protect the rights of Minnesotans to hunt, enjoy the shooting sports, and protect their families from violent criminals.”

The gun-grabbers are going to be doing a lot of talk about “common sense”. Ortman gets it – there is no “common sense” to the idea of the gun-show background check:

As a Minnesota State Senator, Julianne Ortman consistently opposed gun control measures that would have impacted the rights of law-abiding Minnesotans while having no impact on violent criminals.  Senator Ortman supported the Minnesota Citizen’s Personal Protection Act in 2003 and 2005.  She also supported Stand Your Ground legislation in 2012 that was later vetoed by Governor Mark Dayton.  Most recently, she was a strong and vocal advocate for gun owners as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during several days of hearings.

 “As United States Senator, we are confident Julianne Ortman will continue her strong support for Minnesota’s gun owners and be a leader on this issue not only for Minnesota but also for the nation, “ said Okern.

Ortman has gotten a mixed rap – but, I maintain, has done a good job of earning conservatives’ support, especially that of the communities that support the Second Amendment. She was vital in pushing the “Good Gun Bill” last session – a finger in the eye of the “Let’s Just Ban Something!” crowd.

I think it’s a good call .

Liberal-talk radio outlets in major – liberal! – markets are flipping formats:

2014 will mark the beginning of a massive change for liberal talk radio across the country. In New York, WWRL 1600 AM will flip to Spanish-language music and talk, throwing Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, and Alan Colmes off the air. In Los Angeles, KTLK 1150 will be dumping Stephanie Miller, Rhodes, Bill Press and David Cruz off the air in favor of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. In San Francisco, KNEW 960 will leave Miller, Hartmann, and Mike Malloy without a radio home in the market.

Liberals – among them the Daily Kos – are trying to portray the flip as a “demotion” for Limbaugh; he (and Beck and Hannity and the whole Premiere Radio rogues gallery) are moving from a 50,000 watt station to…another 50,000 watt station (albeit one with a little less range, but one which still amply covers all of Los Angeles with plenty of oomph to spare).

The real demotion?  In LA, liberal talk is moving from one station to…zero.

And New York.

And San Francisco.

Not Minneapolis, so far.  But how long can Janet Robert afford to keep her long-marginal station on the air with nothing but ads from community coffee-house collectives, unions and non-profits?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Leftists despair when their own principles collide, leaving it impossible to decide who to hate.  Example:

Poor people can’t afford to buy their own homes, so they rent.  Renters don’t own the building so they can’t make improvements.  Landlords have little incentive to make improvements that reduce profits.  So poor people live in crappy housing until they can afford to move somewhere nicer.  We should hate the landlord, right?

Except in St. Paul.  Here, the City requires rental properties to be nicer than owner occupied.  I’m not kidding; I was a landlord here for 15 years and earned Class A ratings for my rentals.  I know the codes and how they’re applied.  The truth is the City set the standards for rental properties so high that landlords can’t afford to maintain them.  And when they don’t, the City tears down privately-owned rental properties and partially replaces them with publicly-owned low-income apartments, otherwise known as “Projects.”  Every renter I ever met preferred a dingy rental house with a bit of yard over the city housing Projects.  But if the City is tearing rental houses down, where else can poor people go?

The policy has the effect of eliminating low-density rental housing stock scattered in neighborhoods and herding poor people into high-density housing projects in centralized locations.  The policy mostly impacts people who receive welfare and in St. Paul, that’s mostly people of color.  So the City’s policy causes disproportionate harm to poor Black families.   Under federal Fair Housing Law, that’s called “disparate impact” and it’s a form of illegal discrimination.  Racists discriminating against welfare recipients . . . we should hate Mayor Chris Coleman’s crew?

A group of landlords sued the City on exactly that legal basis and the case was all set for hearing at the United States Supreme Court when the City backed down rather than lose the case.  The City tried to spin it as worry that Conservative justices on the Supreme Court would overturn the civil rights law that the City was violating.  So now what: hate the Supreme Court?

The City is being sued again, for the same policies that have the same racist impact.  The City Attorney assures us the landlord is a big poop so the policy is justified.  But the City is still tearing down private rentals and still pressing ahead with Projects along the Light Rail line.  Despite everything, the City continues discriminating against poor persons of color, in the name of helping poor persons of color, under cover of media blackout.

Can’t really blame the media.  The want to do the right thing.  But it’s just so hard to know who to hate.

Joe Doakes

They’re just following orders, not entirely confident that headquarters really knows what it’s doing.

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 Year in Review, plus PR Stunting 101, the MNSure collapse, and much more.
• 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 new UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

…I’ve always wanted to headquarter my talk radio network, cluster of regional radio stations, and social micromedia empire out of a project just like this.

The legendary Swiftee is back blogging again.

And there was rejoicing.

On the right.