Harry Reid provides one of the enduring memes about The Light Worker’s regime;

Well, it’ll be an enduring meme if I have anything to say about it.

 When jobs that used to be done by a couple of guys in a government car are now done by SWAT teams in full battle rattle:

Miners in Chicken were surprised during late August by groups comprising four to eight armed EPA agents carrying Glock .40 S&W cal side arms in full battle rattle with signs in big letters loudly proclaiming POLICE who stormed into several mines near Chicken in a full out assault to . . . take water samples. The EPA gestapo, and that’s all one can term such a heavy handed goon squad were there to take water samples to see if the miners were in compliance with Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Something in past years that was done by one or two unarmed State of Alaska DEC personnel along with a representative of the EPA without rancor.

If the situation were not so serious, and the threat to the miners so real, this could almost be laughed off as a joke. However, armed goons with .40 cal Glocks in full battle rattle are not a joke. This event marks a new level of federal oversight on Alaska’s federal lands. Lands which the management of were supposed to be the responsibility of the State of Alaska under the terms of Alaska’s Statehood Compact. This event is an outrage and sets an extremely dangerous precedent for future regulation activities by the various federal agencies in Alaska.

It’s not just a “too many feds” issue. 

The bigger problem is that it’s also a “they think that they need to act, literally, like stormtroopers to carry out their daily business – or at least they want you to think so”.

It may not be the definitive image of the Obama regime – unionized government employees putting up barricades around the World War 2 memorial in the face of World War 2 veterans whose wheelchairs they are scarcely fit to push.

But if I have any say over it,  it will be

A new wave of veterans were forced to move barricades at the WWII Memorial in Washington Wednesday morning to gain access during the government slimdown, a spokeswoman from Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told FoxNews.com.

Bear in mind that these monuments and memorials are usually accessible 24/7, without the need for government workers to be standing around. 

But no matter.  Harry Reid’s passive-aggressive snit must be carried out – veterans be damned. 

The WWII veterans, from Ohio, Kansas and Missouri, arrived at the memorial one day after another group relied on the assistance from elected officials to move the barricades to allow access. Parks police did not prevent the first group from entering, nor did they interfere with Wednesday’s group.

Harry Reid’s kamikaze mission strikes again.

The veterans vowed to make the trek to D.C. regardless of the situation in Washington. When asked how they were going to visit the World War II Memorial when it’s closed, Ian Drake, a WWII veteran, told Fox4KC.com the group will “find a way in, one way or another. We might have to climb or something. It’s no problem. Well work it out when we get there.”

Heavy flak then, heavy flak now.

The veterans are traveling as part of Honor Flight , a program that enables World War II veterans to partake in an expense-paid trip to view the memorial.

“A lot of my old comrades were lost in World War II,” Ian Drake, a WWII veteran told the station. “Eighteen of 100 in my graduating class were lost in World War II, so it’s important for me to show my respect at the memorial.”

It’s not the first bunch of barricades they’ve pushed aside, after all.

Keep it up, Democrats.

…I’d look at the deaths of Vince Flynn and now Tom Clancy within a few months of each other…

…and connect it with all the other top-secret hanky-panky with the NSA, the IRS and the Justice Department…

…and figure there’s a government conspiracy to knock off conservativsm’s few iconic pop-culture figures.

Good thing I’m not paranoid, huh?

(Just in case, though?  Be careful, Gary Sinise, Ted Nugent, Joe Perry, Tom Selleck, Fred Thompson and Angie Harmon).

UPDATE:  Steven Green:  “Is it really possible that Larry King, who’s looked like day-old scrambled eggs for thirty years, outlived Tom Clancy? Stranger things have happened, but this one I’m taking a little personally. “

Bill Glahn – who you need to be reading, by the way – on the Minnesota Orchestra debacle as a bellwether for how Big Art gets funded:

I suspect we will see more of the Minnesota Orchestra-type of dispute in the next few years. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the business models of a whole range of industries are no longer viable. Until we collectively figure out what’s next, the irresistible forces of “we can’t go on spending like this” will be crashing up against the immovable objects of “we don’t want to give up what’s been ours for decades.” A new model will eventually emerge to bring the fine arts to patrons. In the meantime, the adjustment period will be painful for everyone involved.

If there is any good news, it’s that the institutions and industries that go through the adjustment first will be best positioned later on. Those that cling to the failing system loner will end up in liquidation, rather than reorganization.

If you support art (if not necessarily Big Art), it’s an interesting time, in the full Taoist sense of the term. 

For starters, the biggest institution supporting Big Art – Big Academia – is also on the bring of an epochal shakeout.  The era of Big Institutions Who Do Things For Your Own Good as a whole seems to be fizzling, slowly – up to and including that biggest Institution That Does Things For Our Own Good, Big Government. 

I can’t imagine it means good things for Big Public Media – one of the other key patrons of Big Art – either.

So what will the epic restructuring of Big Art mean for art?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Liberals claim conservatives are racists.  They might be right,  There is mathematical proof of it, viewed from the Liberal perspective.

For example, what’s 3 minus 3?  Zero?  That’s a racist concept, an Oreo Integer, an Uncle Tom Placeholder.  Black on the outside, White on the inside, valued less than any other number in society, invented long ago by a slave-holding society that ruthlessly oppressed women and gays.  Zero is racist.

But every fiscal year, what do Conservatives want the budget deficit to be?  Zero.  And how do Conservatives plan to implement their hateful agenda?  Zero-based budgeting.

I’ve got to admit, Liberals may have a point here.  No wonder they’re so careful to completely avoid any contact with mathematical reasoning when they make their budget proposals.  Can’t be too careful to avoid the taint of racism.

Joe Doakes

It’s Day One of the Government Shutdown.

 So as we watch society collapse all around us due to the lack of government, and await the hordes of crazed bandits, hungry for human flesh, that will doubtless be descending on society, people are asking me “what sort of collection of firearms do you recommend for a post-shutdownpocalyptic world?”

Let me make sure I’m clear here; I’m no expert.  Far from it.  But if I had to bet my life on it – and with the government shut down, I do – I’d bank on the following.

The Task At Hand

With the government shut down, we’re naturally all completely on our own.  There is no law enforcement out there; picking up 911 will at best get you a dead line, and at worst an insane reaver on the other end of the line shrieking for your intestines on a stick.

So what do you need?  Well, for my two cents, you really need four basics:

• An absolutely reliable battle rifle
• A solid combat shotgun
• A defensive handgun
• A “working” gun, useful for foraging as well as defense in a pinch.

We’ll go through each of the categories below.

Battle Rifle:  While this past year has brought a lot of attention to the AR15, this is (IMO) not an ideal weapon for a post-apocalyptic world.  The AR (like the M16 on which it’s based) is a fine rifle, but it is also widely known as an incredibly temperamental piece that is very prone to jamming if you don’t keep it immaculately clean, and sometimes even then.  And since you’ll be too busy scraping for food to keep your rifle clean, this might be a matter of life or death.

The point of a battle rifle is to never, ever, ever, ever jam, and to not run out of ammunition until  your oppponent runs out of attack.  No matter how many of them there are. 

So I recommend an AK-series piece:

The classic AK47

It’s a little heavy, and its accuracy drops off at 100 yards or so – but be honest, not only are you probably not that great a shot even at a rifle range on a clear day, but the odds that you’ll get a clean shot at a horde of bandits beyond 100 yards are pretty nil anyway.  And with the AK, you can dip the bullets in toothpaste and roll them in dirt, load the magazine, and the gun will still work.  And in a post-collapse world, that’s all that’s going to matter. 

Added bonus – its ammunition (7.62mm Communist) can actually be found, unlike the AR’s 5.56mm round.

Combat Shotgun:  One of the benefits of every police department in US being awash in DHS counterterror money is that they all went out and bought M4 Carbines and H&K MP5 submachine guns to replace their good old Remington 870 Express police shotguns. 

Which means they are on the market modestly cheaply these days.

It’s not as “tacti-cool” as an M4, but it’s short enough to use indoors, its reliability is every bit as legendary as the AK, and there is no better close-in weapon in the world for when a gang of cannibalistic bandits breaks into your family perimeter at 4AM and you need to, er, organize your community. 

Defensive Handgun:  Let’s call a spade a spade; for the time when you absolutely need a handgun to defend yourself against an immediately, lethal threat to your life, any gun you have is better than any gun you don’t have. 

But when you’re facing a ravenous cannibal in a dark alley while you’re dumpster-diving for oats, there is no substitute for the best man-stopper there is – any handgun in .45 ACP caliber. 

A Colt 1911, a Kimber Pro-Carry, an HK45, a SIG P220, or even a P250 with the conversion kit?  A Paraordinance 15/45?  Take your pick.  There is no substitute. 

Working Guns:  These are the guns that you use for dealing with varmints and foraging for small targets of opportunity to throw in the stew pot.  For this, I recommend the Taurus Judge revolver…

….which has the huge advantage of firing both the .45 Long Colt cartridge (not to be mistaken for the .45 ACP above) and .410 gauge shotgun shells – making it useful for dealing with large varmints like wolves and bears, as well as rodents and fowl that haven’t been already hunted to extinction and stripped to the bone by ravenous refugees. 

Your mileage may vary, of course – but this is intended as a starting point.

Except that with the government shut down and the ravenous mobs of bandits and reavers already dominating the streets, the time to start was yesterday.

Oops.  Sorry about that.

Read the rest of this entry »

(SCENE:  MITCH Berg is leaving the gym.  He runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is walking into a group Twerking class. MITCH tries to duck behind a shoulder press machine, but LIBRELLE sees him).

LIBRELLE:  ZOMG!   Tom Emmer did an ad for a remodeling company!

MITCH:  Right.  And his manager says it’s a mistake – a testimonial that was never intended for broadcast, that got broadcast!  And if you’ve seen the production value, it sure seems plausible…

LIBRELLE:  It ain’t the crime!  It’s the coverup!

MITCH:   What coverup?

LIBRELLE:  They had to wait for Aaron Rupar at the City Pages to cover it before they’d comment!

MITCH:  Aaron Rupar?

LIBRELLE:   Yes.

MITCH:  Aaron RUPAR?

LIBRELLE:  Yes…well…

MITCH:  Spill it.

LIBRELLE:  OK.  He’s just repeating what Sally Jo Sorenson writes.

MITCH:  And?

LIBRELLE:  Like usual.

MITCH:  We’ve talked about this before.

LIBRELLE:  I know.  Anyway – This probably violates campaign finance laws!

MITCH:   Says who?

LIBRELLE:   Sally Jo Sorenson.

MITCH:   Huh.  Well, on the one hand, pretty much everything you do, and everything you don’t do, violates one campaign finance law or another.  Campaign finance laws are mainly designed to protect incumbents.  They make campaigning a niggling, nonsensical regulatory maze, full of arbitrary restrictions on free speech.

LIBRELLE:  But it keeps money out of politics!

MITCH:  No, it doesn’t!

LIBRELLE:   Yes it does!

MITCH:  How?

LIBRELLE:  It’s the law!

MITCH:  Right.  So the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which alone outspent the GOP candidate in 2010, doesn’t spend money?

LIBRELLE:  That’s different.  Unions are The People.

MITCH:  Oh, for the love of…

LIBRELLE:  The laws keep big money from influencing campaigns.

MITCH:  Clearly they work wonders.

LIBRELLE:  Of course!

MITCH:  So here’s a question:  who’s paying Sally…

LIBRELLE:  …whoah, look at the time.  Gotta get to class! (LIBRELLE dashes into room).

(And SCENE)

I’ll be using this post to catalogue the observed problems caused by the government shutdown.

12AM:  …

Scenario 1:  Obama wants the shutdown.  

The government shutdown will be a bonanza to Obama.

Pro:  It’ll draw attention – with the aid of his Praetorian Guard, the media – away from the mounting disaster that is the Obamacare rollout, to say nothing of the IRS, NSA and Fast and Furious scandals.  With the aid of his lackeys in the media, he could actually play it into a big win, a la Clinton vs. Dole in 1996.

Con:  This isn’t 1996. Back then, this was a pretty trivial country, awash in a boom.  This country could still get away with fripperies like electing Jesse Ventura, for crying out loud.  Now, people are hurting, and seeing the way government behaves with the money it’s borrowing from our grandchildren is galling at least.  And the only people it’s going to affect are those who are never going to vote Republican anyway.

Scenario 2:  Obama Doesn’t Want The Shutdown

Pro: Remember “sequestration?”  Despite the best efforts of Obama’s Praetorian Guard, which tried to portray it like Operation Barbarossa gathering on the Atlantic seaboard, either do most of you. Obama counted hard on “sequestration” to do for him what the 1996 shutdown did for Slick Willie.

That didn’t work, did it?

Con:  John Boehner could screw up a third date with a drunk Lindsay Lohan.

And even if Boehner and the DC establishment don’t screw the pooch, the media will, will will be out there working overtime to represent, and misrepresent, for Obama at every turn.  If there’s a low-information voter to be convinced, the MSM will be there to carry whatever meme Media Matters and Organizing for America need carried.

Discuss.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

“College Enrollment Falls As Economy Recovers.”

Sounds as if young people are opting to skip college to go straight into the workforce, snapping up all those outstanding jobs at great pay and benefits.

Except the article doesn’t say that.  The article talks about sky-high tuition and student loans, it talks about demographics, it talks about colleges that overbuilt, but the notion people are working instead of studying is handled with this line:

“But the number of Americans turning 18 hit its recent peak in 2009, and will continue to decline through 2016. High school graduation rates appear to have leveled off, and job prospects have improved, making school a less attractive option.”

Really?  Where are all these great jobs?  Why isn’t Obama getting more credit for creating them?

Joe Doakes

I think it qualifies as a “Dead Skunk Bounce”.

Remember the spring of 2009?  Obama and his hope’nchange had just been inaugurated – so everyone was still blaming Bush for everything. 

And at the Humphrey Center, a conclave of journalist fanboys attended a shinding with Village Voice journo Seymour Hersh, hosted by Walter Mondale at the Humphrey Center, to pimp Hersh’s upcoming book claiming that Bush and Cheney used Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) as their personal hit squad (while not noting that JSOC was a creation of the Carter Administration in which Mondale served as vice president). 

I’m thinking his next shinding in the Twin Cities might be a little sparser in attendance; Hersh is now claiming that Obama used JSOC to falsify the narrative of the Bin Laden raid. 

And Hersh isn’t that impressed by his fanboys in the media, either:

The book will also discuss Hersh’s view that the U.S. media hasn’t committed enough resources to investigative journalism.

Hersh tells The Guardian that the ‘pathetic’ U.S. media ‘is afraid to pick on this guy (President Obama).’

“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious,” Hersh said of the American media. “They are afraid to pick on this guy (Obama).”

“It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight,” he said.

“Now that doesn’t happen anymore. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.”

Now, we need to be clear about a few things up front; Sy Hersh is as a rule no more based in reality than Minnesota Progressive Project. 

And yet liberal media types revere him, along with Bob Woodward, as the acme of the craft.

 I’m guessing that’ll change, and the US media will start devoting resources to investigating…

..Seymour Hersh

Just a hunch.

I’ve found that this is even more true…

…with womens’ cars.

I don’t care if it is a Photoshop. In fact, it’s almost too good not to be.

I don’t care. It may be the ultimate metaphor for Obamacare’s rollout.

And you too, MNCare!

It’s easy to be cynical about humanity. The capacity of humans for crass, base, depraved behavior is splashed before us daily; relating it to other people is one of our booming industries; from TMZ to Mixed Martial Arts to “Protect” Minnesota, it’s made a lot of entrepreneurs fabulously wealthy.

But every once in a while, if you look carefully, you find examples of humanity – of individuals, and small groups of people, and every once in a very rare while significant mass movements – putting our base, depraved nature aside and not just doing the right thing, but doing it in ways that stagger the imagination.

One of those episodes entered its final, fearsomely risky, climactic phase seventy years ago tonight.

———-

When it comes to warfare, Denmark got the short end of the stick. A nation with a small population on a low-lying peninsula that abuts a strategic maritime byway, the nation’s topography is virtually indefensible.

And they knew it. Denmark’s main defense in the years after it split from Norway and Sweden in the early 1900s was a strict, absolute neutrality. Like many European nations – Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands – the Danes figured that eschewing all sides in a conflict would buy them some safety. The theory’s record was spotty at best – especially during World War 2.

Controlled Collapse: Denmark fell to the Blitzkrieg in about two hours, the same day Hitler invaded Norway in 1940. Whatever resistance there was – some units along the German border, the royal guards – lasted about two hours, leaving sixteen Danes dead.

Danish soldiers, before World War II

The government gave in to reality; Denmark had virtually no military, and unlike mountainous Norway, the terrain was nearly worthless for defense.

The Danish government negotiated a controlled surrender, in the hopes of preserving as much of Danish society as possible.

A German light tank on the streets of Copenhagen, 1940.

They had a friendly negotating partner in Hitler. While Germany had only limited strategic interest in Denmark – the only thing of military value was the airbase at Aalborg, on the northern tip of the country, which covered the strategic Skagerrak straits, the western entrace to the Baltic Sea – the Germans had some less concrete interests in Denmark. Danes, according to Nazi racial orthodoxy, were considered every bit as Aryan as Germans. Hitler was interested in preserving Denmark as a showcase of Nazi occupation – what could happen if a country cooperated. King Christian X was allowed to remain on his throne; moreover, the Parliament remained not only in session, but kept most of its powers.

King Christian X, riding through the streets of Copenhagen, in the 1930s.

Denmark’s army was largely demobilized, and its tiny Navy kept in port (but in Danish hands) – but the Parliament refused to turn over its ships and troops to German operational control, refused a German demand to institute the death penalty, and declined to join in a trade and customs union – essentially a Nazified European Union – with the Germans. The Germans even allowed free parliamentary elections as late as 1943 – and the four traditional Danish parties spanked the tiny National Socialist Party of Denmark.

Among all the nations conquered by the Nazis, Denmark was the only one to get away with such impudence.

And one other thing.

North Star of David: Unlike many Central European nations – and Scandinavian ones, for that matter – Jews were highly integrated into Danish civil, commercial and social life.

Danish King Christian X had ascended to the throne in 1910. He’d presided over a turbulent period in Danish history already; the Depression, the aftermath of World War I, the rise of European Communism and the realignment of Denmark from a small global empire into an even smaller European state (including the loss of Norway and the 1916 sale of the “Danish West Indies” to the US, which became the “US Virgin Islands”) had all challenged the Danish monarchy’s stability and even existence. Christian wasn’t an especially popular king by the late 1930s – but the monarchy was slimmed down but secure.

But in 1933, Christian X had been the first European monarch to visit a synagogue. It seems downright mundane to 21st-century Americans – as indeed it should. But it was a major statement. It was made all the more trenchant by the fact that Christian made the visit over the objection of his advisers, and even of Copenhagen’s head rabbi; the Nazis had just come to power in neighboring Germany, and such a visit was thought to send a less-than-accommodating message to Denmark’s powerful neighbors. To which Christian (possibly apocryphally) responded to the rabbi “all the more reason to do it”.

At any rate – under occupation, surrounded by Germans, the Parliament refused to accede to German demands to register, ghettoize and deport Denmark’s Jewish population.

All of these measures were thumbs in Hitler’s eye – but the regime allowed them all. Denmark’s value as a propaganda piece was greater than the insult the tiny nation could offer Germany, who had bigger fish – including the UK and the USSR – to fry by this point.

The Schizophrenic State: So it could be fairly said that the Danish government as a whole “collaborated” with the Nazis. It’s true; in exchange for concessions, the Danish monarchy and parliament – including the major political parties (except the Communists) – played along.

And yet resistance started early.

The day after the surrender, some Danish Army units, who had not yet been contacted and inventoried by the occupiers, stashed extra firearms in secret cashes around the country, for later use by a resistance movement to be named later. And Danish intelligence officers made covert contact with the British embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, the beginnings of an intelligence pipeline that was the conduit for a wealth of information sent to the Allies during the war.

And so a resistance movement began.

The Savage Canary: The Danish resistance started with all sorts of strikes against it.

In most nations that had large, powerful resistance movements during the war, the guerillas had some natural or geological feature to conceal them; Poland’s forests and the urban warren of Warsaw, Byelorussia’s swamps, Norway and Yugoslavia’s mountains all hid and provided bases for huge guerilla movements.

Denmark, though, was tiny, and flat, and dotted with small towns and a few sizeable cities; nature would provide little cover for any resistance movement. Danish guerillas’ only concealment was social. Denmark’s small, highly homogenous society, imbued with the sort of stoic passive-aggression that marks all rural Scandinavians, presented the resistance with a form of social concealment that was riskier than hills or trees – there were plenty of Danes who sympathized with the Nazis – but eventually nurtured one of the craftiest, fiercest resistance movements in Europe.

The resistance was fairly passive, early in the war; strikes against German-controlled and German-leaning businesses, publishing anti-German newspapers and handbills, gathering of information to send to England via Sweden, and smuggling of contraband – escaped POWs, downed Allied airmen and the like – to Sweden. Many Danes were in fact tolerant of the occupiers – given the alternative presented them in every direction.

Some Danish resistance was more brazen. Danish machine shops covertly manufactured weapons and explosives. And Bang and Olufsen – known for much of the last 70 years as producers of ultra-high-end sound and recording systems – according to a source on the subject, spent the war years making clandestine radios for the resistance.

And so Denmark was caught in a dichotomy; a government that collaborated – albeit imperfectly, and with signifcant political resistance on the details – with the Germans, and a resistance movement that, as the war ground on, started making life more difficult for the Nazis.

Decay: In the war’s early years, the Nazis tolerated – more or less – the Danes’ most galling ideological transgression, their protection of the Jews. Denmark was the only German possession where Jews were never required to wear the Star of David.

The Germans were frustrated by the Danish foot-dragging on the Jews – and tried to goad the government into action. Danish Nazis published slanderous anti-Semitic tracts; there were other provocations. And in 1941, arsonists tried to set fire to Copenhagen’s main synagogue.

The arsonists were caught. And then they were prosecuted, and sentenced by the Copenhagen civil authorities – very much against the wishes of the occupiers.

As the war ground on into its fourth year, things finally started going badly for the Germans – and as things started to decay, the accommodation between the Danish government and the German regime began to sour. Several labor stoppages resolved into armed battles between Danes and German occupiers; sabotage of goods and equipment intended for Germany (especially ammunition, boats and ships, and electronics) became more and more common, as did eventually the murder of overt collaborators. This was starting by this point in 1943. We’ll come back to that.

The resistance was growing more effective – German economic output from their Danish conquest was dropping. And more and more overt collaborators were turning up dead – or not turning up at all.

The Nazis – angered by the resistance, stung by the sabotage, and looking ahead to an imminent invasion of Europe from the West – began to lower the boom. On August 28, the Nazis presented the Danish government an ultimatum; impose a curfew, institute a death penalty for sabotage, and be ready to give up the Jews. The following day, the Government resigned in protest. The Germans immediately imposed martial law.

The Good Nazi: George Ferdinand Duckwitz had spent a career as a German shipping executive, working for various cargo and passenger lines. He’d joined the Nazi Party in 1932. As the war approached, the Party brought him into the Foreign Service; in 1939, he was given the shipping attaché position in Copenhagen. He remained there after the 1940 occupation.

Among his social and professional circle in Denmark was Werner Best. Best, an early Nazi, had been one of Heinrich Himmler’s deputies in organizing the Gestapo. He’d lost a political scuffle earlier in the war, and became an occupation administrator, first in France, and then in Copenhagen, where he served as the Reich’s plenipotentiary – key representative – to the then-still-extant Danish court and government. With the resignation of the government and the imposition of martial law, Best became the top Nazi civilian official in Denmark.

On September 11, 1943, in a meeting on commercial issues, Best confided in Duckwitz that the Gestapo, finally free of Danish government interference, was putting the finishing touches on its plans to round up and deport Denmark’s 8,000 Jews.

Duckwitz, privately horrified, travelled to Berlin to try to forestall or cancel the roundup on economic grounds; Jews occupied many key positions in Danish society, and losing them would put a crimp in Denmark’s economy. He was rebuffed.

Two weeks later, on September 25, Duckwitz flew to Stockholm, ostensibly to discuss access to Swedish waters for German ships with Swedish Prime Minister Per Albin Hanssen. Sweden, nervous about being almost completely surrounded by Germany, its vassal states or allies, had been very tacitly taking in Jewish refugees from Norway, provided they could supply some Swedish connection, however laboriously constructed. But they were in no hurry to agitate their Nazi neighbors.

But in a few days of closed-door meetings, Duckwitz got Hanssen to commit to giving asylum to Jews who made it ashore in Sweden. Then, quietly, he returned to Copenhagen, where he quietly informed Danish Social Democrat party chief Hans Hedtoff of the upcoming roundups.

Hedtoff in turn informed the leaders of Denmark’s Jewish community, including acting Chief Rabbi Marcus Melchior.

And it was seventy years ago this morning – a Saturday – that Denmark’s rabbis, briefed by Melchior, warned their congregations at synagogue to go immediately into hiding and await further instructions.

What those instructions would be, Melchior knew only very abstractly. Everyone was winging it at this point.

Hearing the news, other sympathetic Danes pitched in, grabbing phone books and calling every Jewish-looking name to warn them to go underground.

And so almost overnight, by means that sound like they were borrowed from a Spanky and Our Gang movie the vast majority of Denmark’s 8,000 Jews disappeared into the woods, into hiding places in small coastal towns, and into the charity of thousands of Danes, resistance members and plain concerned citizens, who took the fugitives in and waited for what came next.

It was a half-measure. The Jewish community, and the Resistance, were banking on the fact that the Gestapo in Denmark was very short-handed – but with an entire population of Jews disappearing from view, it couldn’t last.

7,000 people hiding in attics and barns couldn’t stay invisible forever.

The Øresund Express: Several things happened in rapid succession next.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry instructed its offices in Copenhagen to start issuing Swedish passports to Danish Jews. The document would grant them safe passage – if they could get to Copenhagen without being caught.

The Resistance also undertook two massive operations; first, to locate boats to carry refugees (and, equally important, safe routes to coastal towns where the refugees would meet the boats), and a fund-raising operation to raise money to pay the boatmen for the trip. Wealthy Danes ponied up a fairly huge amount under the circumstances – as did many, many others. According to some reports, Christian X also contributed heavily to the effort through a variety of intermediaries, to conceal the money trail.

Finally, in early October, Sweden issued a statement through its foreign ministry, and finally on Swedish state radio, that they would accept Jewish refugees.

All they had to do was get to Sweden.

And so over the course of the next month or so, small parties of Jews, guided by locals and resistance members, made their way from hiding place to hiding place, to the coast, there to board boats to make the short voyage across the Øresund strait – about 2-3 hours’ voyage by fishing boat. Others went across in small sailboats, rowboats, even kayaks.

Still others – especially the old, and families with very young children – were smuggled into rail cars headed for the rail ferries that shuttled trains to Sweden. The Resistance broke into rail cars that’d been sealed after inspection, put the Jews aboard, and re-sealed the cars with forged inspection seals.

Not everyone made it. A few dozen were known to have died when less-seaworthy craft sank en route to Sweden. A few more were captured by German patrol boats – although it was noted that the Germans pressed the search for the Jews without much vigor. Partly it was because intercepting Jews was the least of the crews’ worries; raids by the British Royal Air Force Coastal Command’s maritime strike planes made life brisk and dangerous for German craft in the west Baltic. Beyond that, it’s considered likely that at least some German officers took a pass on getting overly involved with the search out of worries about Germany’s prospects in the war.

Other Jews were picked up as they waited to be evacuated – at least one group was betrayed by a Danish girl who wanted to curry favor for her German soldier boyfriend.

But they were, blessedly, the outliers. By the end of October, 86% of Denmark’s Jews – some 7,000 – had been evacuated to Sweden. Among them were physicist Niels Bohr, who was flown almost immediately via the UK to the US to start work on the Manhattan Project – but not before demanding that the Swedish government announce that Jews were welcome (a decision which had already been made, although Bohr frequently is credited with inspiring the action).

Aftermath: The few hundred Danish Jews that didn’t escape were largely rounded up – although a few did remain in hiding for the rest of the war. Most were shipped to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt, in Czechoslovakia.

There, the Danish government exerted themselves to try to look out for their welfare – incredibly, getting additional food supplies through to the Danes, via pressure on the Swiss Red Cross. Although many Danes died at Theresienstadt – especially the very old – incredibly, the majority were alive at the end of the war. Denmark’s Jewish community escaped the war with the lowest Jewish death rate in Europe; Yad Vashem records a little over 100 Danish Jews who died in the Holocaust.

(Norway, which started with much smaller population of around 2,000, saved about 3/4 of its Jews, mostly in ones and twos and families. Those who were caught and deported, though, went to Auschwitz, according to the B’nai B’rith’s Black Book. The Black Book reported that none of them were ever seen again).

After the war the Israeli government, in building their Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem solicited the former heads of the Danish resistance for information. The surviving leaders of the Danish Resistance insisted that no single member of the Resistance be credited; it was a team effort.

And so the Israeli government recognized Christian X and the entire Danish Resistance collectively among the Righteous Among The Nations.

And they were joined in 1971 by George Duckwitz, the German bureaucrat and Nazi Party member who quietly sounded the alarm.

I’m not aware if there are other Nazis recognized at Yad Vashem. I’d think it highly unlikely.

Here’s Cam Winton’s website.  You don’t have to live in Minneapolis to help Cam shock the world.

Here’s my piece about Daniel Henninger’s piece saying we should just let Obamacare collapse from its unwieldy incompetence.

And since it was “Springsteen Cover Saturday” in honor of Bruce’s 64th birthday last Monday – here’s my series on why Springsteen resonates with conservatives.

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 in the second hour with Cam Winton, candidate for mayor of Minneapolis.  Also – last Monday was Bruce Springsteen’s birthday.  We’ll be using covers of Bruce songs for all our bumpers and breakbeds today.  There are some interesting ones.
• Don’t forget the King Banaian Radio Show, on AM1570 “The Businessman” from 9-11AM this morning!
• Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” from 1-3 tomorrow. Tune on in!

(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 (The ‘net is running very slow downstairs today – so the video is probably touch and go…)
• 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!

Last week, when the first news of the Washington Navy Yard shooting broke out, I thought to myself “let’s sit out these first reports – because whatever the mainstream media reports for the first 4-6 hours will be not just wrong, but hysterical and the result of templates being filled in from the MSM/Democrat narrative”.

I wasn’t the only one:

In watching the coverage of the Washington Navy Yard shooting as it unfolded last Monday, I had to remind myself that most of the reports I was hearing would surely turn out to be incorrect, in some cases wildly so. And indeed this turned out to be the case. We were told, for example, that there was more than one gunman, and that one of them was armed with an AR-15 rifle. Even worse, both CBS and NBC identified the wrong man as the shooter before issuing retractions.

The first of these errors is the most understandable. In the rush to beat their competitors, the editing filters ordinarily in place are often put aside in favor of greater speed. Reports from the scene, no matter how unverifiable, are broadcast live so as to be first on the air. Again, understandable and even forgivable in most cases.

Less so is the misidentification of the shooter’s weapon.

I’m going to guess that the writer (PJM’s Jack Dunphy) and I aren’t the only ones.

I’d love to ask a mainstream media figure – is your industry’s adherence to Democrat narratives (and in some cases money) worth the damage your credibility is taking among people who pay attention?

Tomorrow on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, I’ll be talking about the DFL’s absurd endzone happy dance over the state’s Forbes ranking, and the onset of Obamacare.

And in the second hour, I’ll be talking with Minneapolis mayoral candidate Cam Winton about his quixotic campaign – with an emphasis on how you can help, and on how very possible it is for the good guys to shock the world in November.

The DFL chanting-point bots were out in force yesterday; a Forbes survey put Minnesota at number eight nationwide in terms of “Best States for Business“.

Recapping MN’s economy under DFL-led #mnleg: 8th best state 4 biz, unemployment falling, credit rating upgraded, thousands of jobs created.

— Matt Roznowski (@MattRoznowski) September 26, 2013

So look at the rankings.  And read Forbes‘ blurb:

Minnesota’s overall rank jumped 12 spots on the strength of an improved economic outlook. The Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area is home to 62% of the state’s population. It also serves as the state’s economic hub, with companies such as Target, U.S. Bancorp, General Mills, 3M and Medtronic headquartered there. Minnesota has the second highest percentage of adults with a high school degree at 92.5%. With its good schools, low poverty rate and healthy populous, the state also scores well on quality of life measurements.

We’re reminded that the state jumped from #20 in last years’ rankings.

Two things to say about this article.

For starters:  everything the article measures about state business climate is directly related to changes made under GOP control of the legislature.  Everything.  What – you think Minnesota’s business climate is going to have a radical jump in business climate in the eight months since the DFL got the keys to the car?

Business climate changes slowly.  It improved under GOP control – for two years.  It was imperfect, but it was an improvement over 2006-2010.

And what’s the other thing this study tells you?

Look at the factors it measures:

• Business Costs (Minnesota is 34th)
• Labor Supply (18th)
• Regulatory Environment (22nd)
• Economic Climate (9th)
• Growth Prospects (13th)
• Quality Of Life (5th)

What do these factors tell you?

Labor Supply and “Quality of Life” are primarily issues for big businesses – the Targets and Best Buys and Medtronics, the big Fortune list titles that have their headquarters in Minnesota.  And we know – it’s a great place to be a CEO!

But how about small business?  What are the important measures?  A good economic climate is useful – but business costs and regulation are life and death.

And they were merely adequate over the past year – and have gotten much, much worse.

But we know that, since Minnesota has become the worst state in the nation for entrepreneurship measured in small business starts per capita since the DFL took control.

Which is not something the Forbes study visibly measures (or at least gives much weight to), and has little effect on the big Fortune 1000 companies that the DFL is most concerned with.

The big test will be how the state ranks next year and the following year.

Any bets?

http://onforb.es/1dM1Fz3

The political battle against Obamacare failed.  Twice, actually – in the ’08 and ’12 elections.  And it’s going to fail again; the Senate and the President will likely succeed in blocking any effort to defund it, if by no other means than calling in markers from their praetorian guard in the media to make sure any shutdown is catastrophic to the GOP.

Which will blink.

Dan Henninger says the time has come to exploit Obamacare’s key weakness; Obamacare:

As its Oct. 1 implementation date arrives, ObamaCare is the biggest bet that American liberalism has made in 80 years on its foundational beliefs. This thing called “ObamaCare” carries on its back all the justifications, hopes and dreams of the entitlement state. The chance is at hand to let its political underpinnings collapse, perhaps permanently.

If ObamaCare fails, or seriously falters, the entitlement state will suffer a historic loss of credibility with the American people. It will finally be vulnerable to challenge and fundamental change. But no mere congressional vote can achieve that. Only the American people can kill ObamaCare.

I just finished watching Ken Burns’ Prohibition – which is all about how big social engineering goes terribly awry when it runs into contact with social reality.

I don’t like indulging in historical parallels – they’re seductive drugs that convey little real knowledge.  But Obamacare is one of the greatest social engineering measures ever attempted – and “great social engineering” is almost invariably a synonym for “failure”.

Obamacare hasn’t even been fully inflicted, and it’s already a disaster.

Maybe the best thing that can happen is to have the American people look all of that Hope and Change in the face, and take it.

They asked for it, after all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Pioneer Press article says this federal government shut-down could be worse than the last. They’re right, but for the wrong reasons.

There are more people dependent on the federal government than ever before, so more will be harmed, so more will complain and there will be more heartbreaking news stories about how bad the shut-down is and how wicked the Republicans are, for causing it.

To President Obama and Congressional Democrats, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

To me, it’s evidence how much farther the system has gotten out of whack. The underlying premise of the tearjerker stories will be the federal government cannot fail because people will be hurt. But “too big to fail” only works if there is someone to bail you out.

Who will bail out America?

Joe Doakes

Smug self-satisfaction will be a medium of exchange by that point.  It will be legal tender.

Hahahaha Merg!  You said armed guards wud stop mass merders!  And yet the armed guards at teh Navy Yerd didn’t stop the mass merder!  You are Pwn5d!”:  Er, for starters, I never said that armed guards were a panacaea – any more a guarantee than wearing a seatbelt guarantees everyone will survive every car accident.  They improve the odds.  Maybe by a lot.  And at any rate, armed guards in schools are a partial solution at best – the last thing schools in particular need is to feel more like police states than they already do.  No, I advocate allowing law-abiding citizens with carry permits to defend themselves.  Because it works.

After the killer at the Navy Yard shot the armed guard, I’m gonna guess at least a couple of the sailors in the building might have wished they’d have had access to some sort of firearm.  Just saying.

Hahaha, Merg!  Bradlee Dean’s ministry has gone belly up!  Hahah!:  Yeah, I see that. 

Why don’t you try to get Tom Mischke on the NARN someday as a guest?:  Hey – not a bad idea. 

Hahaha!  You and Bradlee Dean were BFFs!:  Well, no – his show was on after mine.  Then it wasn’t.  He’s a nice guy in person.  I disagree with a good chunk of his theology.  End of story.

Well, almost.  As I showed over the past couple of years, whatever you want to say about Bradlee Dean’s organization and theology and beliefs – and I might agree with you about some of it – a huge chunk of what Andy Birkey and the late Karl Bremer wrote about the guy was unvarnished bullshit. 

There.  That’s the end of story. 

Why did you block me on Twitter and Facebook?  Can’t you handle an argument?:  I don’t go on Facebook to argue. Sometimes they come to me, but what are you gonna do?  Seriously.  Anyway – as re Twitter?  I love a good debate.  But here’s the catch – you weren’t debating, you were harangueing and arguing without logic, fact or reason.  To the extent you had an argument, it was boring, trite, illogical, a collection of chanting points I’m pretty sure you don’t understand, and a waste of time.  Sorry.  I’m sure you’re a fine human being in some corner of your life. 

Hey, Bergbrain!  Hahahaha!:  Oh, isn’t that special?

Hey, Merg!  Why are you complaining about Mark Dayton and the DFL?  Elections have consequences!:  Right. You’ll recall how the Alliance for a Better Minnesota shut up and walked away as a consequence of the 2010 Legislative elections, right? 

One vote that had consquences was the one that led to the First Amendment.  I know that annoys you.

The Obamcare and Defunding debate shows that the DFL is just as bad as the Democrats!  Ron Paul was right!  I’m going to protest by…by…going OFF THE GRID!:  So you’re going to migrate from Dante’s Third Circle of irrelevancy straight through to the Sixth?  

I mean, us “establishment” Republicans did warn you that politics was a marathon, not a sprint.  Right?  I’m pretty sure I did. 

You continually disagree with me in arguments.  You’re mentally ill:  Eureka.  You have brushed the scales from my eyes.  There is no response to your ineluctible logic. 

You’re right in every possible way, and always will be. 

Doesn’t it bug you that Jack Tomczak and Ben Kruse started a “hey gang, let’s do a radio show” thing just like the NARN did, but they’re on morning drive on a major station?”:  Not at all!  They’re great guys, and they certainly earned their shot.  

For me?  I love being on the air – more than just about anything in the world, actually – but the radio business is just about the worst thing in the world.  Salem Twin Cities, by the way, is a huge exception – they’re great people, and I’m not just saying that because they’ve put me on the for almost ten years now.   Anyway, unless a major-market station or network throws a good contract at me for enough money to leave the IT business, I’m perfectly happy doing weekends for the fun of it.

Not that I’d turn down that big honking contract, y’understand.  But I enjoy where things are; I get all the fun and none of the misery.

Despite four years of demonization, the public largely doesn’t see the Tea Party as demons:

Considering the multi-year war on the Tea Party by Democrats, many Republicans, and the media, it is astounding that the Tea Party continues to stay more or less even in its support over the past two years.  A 2% drop is hardly meaningful, and could just be variations within the margin of error in the poll, which was +/- 3%.

So what we’re saying is there’s a chance.

Women can’t follow directions!

Criminy.