OK, I’m being hyperbolic.  David Frum is not an idiot.

But he is no more accurate than any other liberal on Second Amendment issues – as we see in his Daily Beast insta-opinion on the Navy Yard shooting, which is chock-full of enough ripe inaccuracy to be a Heather Martens piece.

He tries to diagnose gun violence in America:

Yet the gun enthusiasts do have one point on their side: for all the horror of these massacres, they are only a small part of the story of gun violence in America. Most casualties of gun violence will not die at the hands of a mentally disturbed killer seeking random victims. Most gun casualties occur in the course of quarrels and accidents between people who would be described as “law-abiding, responsible gun owners” up until the moment when they lost their temper or left a weapon where a 4-year-old could find it and kill himself or his sister.

It’s a convenient theory.  It fits nicely with the narrative – that it’s the presence of guns, not the people, that’s the problem.

It’s utterly wrong.

“Most” gun casualties, as in “the vast majority”, are suicides.  All of which are tragic; seeing to peoples’ mental health and preventing suicide is important.  But it is in no way the same as street crime.

Of those?  Most occur as a result of “quarrels”, all right – quarrels between rival gangs, or between drug dealers arguing over turf, or adolescent gang wannabees who feel “disrespected”, or small-time hoods who lose their temper or their control and turn crimes of convenience into crimes of passion. 

While Frum isn’t Heather Martens or David Bloomberg or Doug Grow, he does share some of their congenital illogic about the issue:

As David Hemenway notes in his study Private Guns, Public Health, Americans have experienced similar debates in the recent past. “Cars don’t kill people; bad drivers kill people,” could have been the slogan of the auto industry when it resisted safety regulation in the 1960s. The garment industry could have argued: “Flammable pajamas don’t kill children; careless smokers kill children.” And so on. Every accident has many causes, of course, and public safety progresses by addressing each one. To reduce car fatalities, we both installed seat belts and cracked down on drunken driving. Child deaths by fire have been reduced both because pajamas are safer and because adults smoke less.

 Are we supposed to believe that David Frum, a leading public intellectual of the center-center-center-sorta-right, doesn’t know the difference between “making a product do its main job – carrying people, clothing children – safer against the vagaries and tragedies of normal life” and “misuse of a product that is designed to violently poke holes in things”?

I’d certainly hope so. 

Likewise, better mental-health provision would contribute to the reduction of gun massacres. But America’s uniquely grisly record of gun death cannot be addressed without addressing guns.

“Addressing guns”, like “we have to doooooooooooo something”, is one of those vague, generalized blandishments that shows the writer is out of ideas. 

And after this past year, I suspect the anti-gun movement is exactly that.

Jerry by the Numbers: 12 wins, 4 seizures (and 16 losses)

The debate over the future of Jerry Kill’s tenure at the U of M gets seized by political correctness.

The scene last Saturday at TCF Bank Stadium was tragically familiar – the Minnesota Golden Gophers head coach lying down, surrounded by medical staff, the victim yet again of his epileptic condition.  It was the fourth such game-day incident since Jerry Kill inherited the mess of a program left by booster-in-chief Tim Brewster.  And as reports trickled in throughout the weekend, conflicting stories surfaced about how many off-field seizures Kill has had since joining the Gophers, with numbers as high as nearly a dozen seizures in one week being casually thrown about by sports radio talking heads.

Ever-present in the wake of Kill’s latest health scare was the maddening silence from Athletic Director Norwood Teague, or any official from the University of Minnesota.  Teague would eventually issue the standard press release of support backing his head coach, but not before Star Tribune columnist Jim Souhan did what most journalists and sports commentators have apparently found verboten to discuss – is Jerry Kill’s health a determinant to the football program?

Even those who admire him most can’t believe that he should keep coaching major college football after his latest episode. Either the stress of the job is further damaging his health, or his health was in such disrepair that he shouldn’t have been hired to coach in the Big Ten in the first place.

The face of your program can’t belong to someone who may be rushed to the hospital at any moment of any game, or practice, or news conference. No one who buys a ticket to TCF Bank Stadium should be rewarded with the sight of a middle-aged man writhing on the ground. This is not how you compete for sought-after players and entertainment dollars.

The reaction to Souhan’s comments showed precisely why few, if any, major media figures have dared to broach the subject.

Souhan’s column was deemed “ill-informed, dishonorable, and just plain nasty.”  Callers into Dan Barreiro’s KFAN radio show denounced the topic even being discussed, with one caller even comparing the questioning of Kill’s fitness to coach as a form of bigotry.  Multiple voices demanded Jim Souhan be fired.  And all this just for questioning the health of a coach whose had four seizures in 28 games.

Souhan’s harshest criticism was directed not at Jerry Kill, who has little control over the frequency and severity of his seizures, but at Teague’s combination of silence and dismissive attitude on the matter.  The lack of information from Teague allows speculation to run rampant (how many seizures has Kill really had since coming to Minnesota?) and fosters the concern that Kill’s health is a bigger hurdle to the program than assumed.  Such silence doesn’t help when there are legitimately poorly-informed commentaries on the issue, such as CBS Sports‘ Gregg Doyel who believes Kill is taking his life in his hand by continuing to coach.  But credit Jim Souhan for starting a conversation that needs to be taking place, if not in public, than at least in private within the University.

Removing Jerry Kill based solely on his health is almost certainly impossible, as the University would quickly run into Americans with Disabilities Act provisions.  But a negotiated buyout of Kill’s contract, right now at $1.2 million a year for the next five years, might be possible – if extraordinarily expensive.

The better question is should Kill step down?

Let’s dispense, if we can, with the obvious.  Jerry Kill is admirable for coming as far as he has with his condition and seems like an honorable man and a competent coach.  Stepping down from his job would be a major career reversal and disappointment for both Kill and fellow epileptic individuals from whom he rightly ought to be a role model.   But if stress is a major factor in Kill’s epilepsy, how exactly will that stress lessen as the coach of a Big 10 team on gameday?  What if Kill suffers another seizure while leading against a top-ranked team?  Or in a major bowl game?  Will fans be as accommodating with his condition if they believe, rightly or wrongly, that his health cost them a game?  Forget the opinion of fans, how will recruits react to Kill’s health?

If Kill’s condition worsens, even with the program reducing his day-to-day activities, at what point has the University reduced Jerry Kill to more of a figurehead than an administrator?  Given the trajectory of Kill’s health, with seemingly an increasing number of seizures, that point may be coming sooner than anyone wishes.

ADDENDUM: The Star Tribune editorial board, rarely a fount of wisdom, offers the definitive assessment of the impact Jerry Kill’s health has on the team – and it comes from the coach himself:

[Kill] confessed that a seizure he suffered during halftime of last November’s Michigan State game had been a low point for him because he realized “you can’t be the head football coach and miss half of the game.” If that were happening all the time, “the university wouldn’t have to fire me,” Kill said. “I’d walk away if I didn’t think I could do it.”

There’ve been more mass shootings on Obama’s watch than any other presidency except Clinton’s – and Obama’s on track to pass that dismal record.

And that’s even as violent crime has been plummeting.

It’s a factoid, and I don’t see that it’s necessarily a comment on the Obama administration itself…

…but both the violent crime rates and mass murder rates dropped during Dubya’s terms.

Go figure.

Aaron Alexis, the alleged Navy Yard shooter, originally hailed from Queens.  He spent some time in Seattle. 

But the BBC and NPR referred to him as a “Texan”.   And CNN went one further, calling him a Texan and a military contractor, for the lefty narrative bifecta. 

(He was a “military contractor”, inasmuch as he was working for a firm that was subcontracting with Hewlett-Packard…to work on the Navy’s intranet.  Think Blackwater, only for networking geeks). 

The narrative, above all, must be served.

Whenever there’s a big story involving firearms, you can be sure the media will be ready to provide comic relief.

Like Piers Morgan’s reference to Aaron Alexis and his “legally purchased AR15 shotgun“. 

Or the NY Daily News (“Like MSNBC, Only In Print!”) front page story about the AR15 Alexis owned…

…even though it appears that not only didn’t he have one, but didn’t – as was reported yesterday – steal one from one of the base police he murdered after all. 

The Media.  On Second Amendment issues, they are the real low-information voters.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Only a person obsessed with racial issues would worry about why there aren’t more people of color brewing craft beer.

I’m guessing the reason there are few Black beer crafters is the same reason there are so few Black start-up business owners: they don’t know anyone who ever did it so why would they consider it possible?  Instead, they look at the other choices they see patterned for them by the adults around them and that’s what they take up.  Entrepreneurship is a learned behavior but our First Black President’s administration is working vigorously to kill it.

Only a dog can hear a dog whistle.  Only a racist sees racism everywhere.

Joe Doakes

Technically speaking, there are two ways to be a “post-racial” president; when there is no more racism, and when racism is the norm.

Just remember:  when there’s a mass-shooting going on, and seconds count, you can depend on the authorities to respond in minutes:

D.C. police quickly deployed an “active shooter team” within seven minutes of reports of shots fired, Ms. Lanier said.

The Navy Yard – a “gun free zone” but for any security on the site – was as defenseless as Fort Hood. 

A carry permit holder would have reduced that time from “seven minutes” to “as long as it took to get his or her firearm out of its holster”.

There’s been a shooting at the Washington Navy Yard – headquarters for the US Navy’s procurement bureaucracy.  Recent experience shows us that nearly every first report on these sorts of things is wrong – but current reports indicate 4-6 13 dead.

And nobody remotely close to being an “authority” has even begun to speculate on who the shooter/s were and why they did it; one dead shooter is apparently a former Navy employee (Nope, NBC retracted that) 

I urge everyone to direct your prayers, or whatever thoughts your worldview admits, toward the victims, their families, and everyone involved in this tragedy. 

Now:  It’s time to place your bets.  We’re taking bets in several categories:

The Obama Pool:  How long until The One tries to link this shooting to the defeat of his gun-grab agenda? 

Bobblehead Roulette:  At what time will the first Twin Cities leftyblogger issue a post blaming the shootings on the NRA?

The Martens Parlay:  At what time will Representative Heather Martens (DFL-67A) release a statement blaming the shooting on the failure of the Paymar gun grab bills and/or the Colorado recall?  (UPDATE 6PM:  She did it!)

Black Gun Bingo:  At least one initial report says “assault weapons” were used in the shooting.  Who will be the first lefty pundit to claim that if only “assault weapons” were banned, this (apparently) multi-party, coordinated assault would not have taken place?

The Elephant In The Room Pool:  How many mainstream and left-leaning alt-media outlets will mention that a) the Navy Yard is in Washington DC, which retains among the most draconian anti-gun laws in the country, and that in addition b) the Navy Yard, like all military facilities, is a “gun free zone?”  (Note:  “Zero” is already taken.  Pick a different number).  Bonus question:  how many will blame the shooting on Virginia’s more liberal gun laws, without asking why the atrocity didn’t take place in Virginia? 

UPDATES:  Adding a few as I go here:

Tea For Three:  Current reporting says there may have been three gunmen  (Nope.  Just one gunman).  Which media outlet will be the first to blame the Tea Party?

Numb3rs:  How many reports will the major media have to retract about names of victims (1 so far), shooters (UPDATE 6PM:  At least once), number of shooters (UPDATE: Twice!) , motives, number of victims (UPDATE 6PM:  Many times)…

The “T” Word:  Some early reports claim this might be a workplace shooting – as in “disgruntled workers”.  But if there are indeed multiple shooters?  The idea of a “team of disgruntled workers” doesn’t pass the sniff test, does it? 

Place your bets!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

For SITD Junior Members needing college career advice, best and worst paid majors

Joe Doakes

The graph at the link is the usual link you see on the subject this time of year; engineering good, social “sciences” and humanities bad, at least in terms of money earned right after graduation.

Of course, there are some questions:  the graph counts people with degrees in a field who get jobs in that field.  Not all engineering majors get jobs directly in their fields (as we talked about a few weeks ago) – and not everyone with a degree in technology or engineering has a degree in the field (many of the best software engineers I’ve worked with had degrees in music).

And not everyone who goes into social “science”, humanities or even arts works in those fields after graduation, and fewer still do it for an entire career.  How many history majors do you know who became managers?   Most of us Twin Cities beer drinkers know the example of the CEO of Summit Brewing, who started out as a psych major.  And in my own field – which is a bastard child of engineering and psychology – I’ve worked with people who graduated with degrees in music, computer science, folklore, math, graphic design, education, and not a few English majors like me. 

Not a few very successful lawyers majored in theatre.

And the Elizabethan Poetry major who goes to work selling insurance, cars, real estate, institutional software, drilling equipment or a raft of other things can, with talent and hard work, make a ton of money – and never recite a single couplet. 

The mania for matching degrees with post-graduate salaries is completely understandable, as education costs are hitting a peak even as the higher ed bubble starts to implode with all the grace of a whoopie cushion. 

But it’s a little misleading, too. 

How many of you are working in the field in which you got your BA?

How many of you could have even predicted where you’d be now, given your undergraduate degree?

1013 years of the European map.

The official media narrative about the martyrdom – er, wait, that should be murder  – of Matthew Shepard has become part of the nation’s media folklore:

On the night of October 6, Shepard met “two strangers” in the Fireside Lounge in Laramie. The two men offered Shepard a ride home but instead drove him to a remote area, robbed him, beat him with pistols, and left him splayed on a fence.

Cops found the bloody gun along with Shepard’s shoes and wallet in the truck of the two men — Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.

McKinney and Henderson claimed the “gay panic” defense, that they freaked out when Shepard came onto them sexually and killed him in a rage. They made other claims, too, but were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Almost immediately Shepard became a secular saint, and his killing became a kind of gay Passion Play where he suffered and died for the cause of homosexuality against the growing homophobia and hatred of gay America.

Indeed, a Mathew Shepard industry grew rapidly with plays and foundations along with state and even national hate crimes legislation named for him. Rock stars wrote songs about him, including Elton John and Melissa Etheridge. Lady Gaga performed John Lennon’s “Imagine” and changed the lyrics to include Shepard.

But like many narratives, there’s more there than meets the eye:

But what really happened to Matthew Shepard?

He was beaten, tortured, and killed by one or both of the men now serving life sentences. But it turns out, according to Jiminez, that Shepard was a meth dealer himself and he was friends and sex partners with the man who led in his killing. Indeed, his killer may have killed him because Shepard allegedly came into possession of a large amount of methamphetamine and refused to give it up.

The book also shows that Shepard’s killer was on a five-day meth binge at the time of the killing.

Murder is bad, whether it’s a hate crime, a crime of passion, or just business.

And that should be the point; to a big chunk of our society, Shepard’s murder is worth less – his value as a human is less – if his demise can’t be chalked up to hate.

His worth as a human – to some people – is worth less than his weight as a cudgel

What do you think the Twin CIties media would say, and do, and write, if they found out that…:

• Power Line, the Twin Cities’ premier political blog (yeah, Hot Air is huge, but it’s not really based here.  Sorry, Ed), and…
• A hypothetical conservative “mainstream” news outlet – say, the Pioneer Press after a buyout – and…
• The National Rifle Association, the Gun Owners of America, and the Minnesota Gun Owners CIvil Rights Alliance…

…all got funding from, say, the Koch Brothers?

Take your shot at writing the headlines you’d see in the Strib, on WCCO and KARE, and on MPR (to say nothing of NPR), in the comment section.

Oh, wait – it’s not remotely hypothetical. 

More next week.

The Kenosha school district’s teachers vote to decertify their union in the third-largest district in Wisconsin:

Today, teachers in Kenosha, Wis., voted to decertify their union, the Kenosha Education Association, by a margin of nearly two to one. Only 37 percent of the teachers opted to retain the union in an election made possible by the labor reforms enacted under Gov. Scott Walker (R). The result goes to show that when workers have a choice on whether to join a union instead of being forced into one by law, they often choose to vote down the union.

It wasn’t even close; the margin of victory was very nearly as large as the “yes” vote total.

The Gun Grab Orc movement – led by DNC chairbeing Fran Drescher Deb Wasserman-Schulz – has been pleading “voter suppression” for their resounding defeat in Colorado this past Tuesday.

And they were right.  It was voter suppression that doomed the Senators Morse and Giron in the recall elections.

Their suppression of voters dissenting against them.  David Kopel writes at Volokh:

As it turns out, Morse and Giron sealed their fates on March 4, the day that the anti-gun bills were heard in Senate committees. At Morse’s instruction, only 90 minutes of testimony per side were allowed on each of the gun bills. As a result, hundreds of Colorado citizens were prevented from testifying even briefly. Many of them had driven hours to come to the Capitol, traveling from all over the state.

That same day, 30 Sheriffs came to testify. They too were shut out, with only a single Sheriff allowed to testify on any given bill. So while one Sheriff testified, others stood up with him in support.

Admirably, Morse had urged his Committee Chairs to be polite and courteous to all witnesses, and they were. But President Morse did not follow the standard practice of the Colorado legislature, by which any citizen who wishes to testify is allowed to be heard, at least briefly. The patient endurance of Colorado legislative committees which have heard hour upon hour of testimony on bills about gay rights, motorcycle helmets, and other social controversies is a tribute to our republican form of government.

This, Kopel argues, was a key facet in the recall:

When Morse shut that down, and Chairperson Giron went along, they crossed the double-red line of Colorado government. Had the seven gun control bills (one of which I testified in favor) been heard on March 4-6, instead of being rammed through committees on March 4, the recall might never have happened. It’s one thing to lose; it’s another to thing to lose when you didn’t even have the opportunity to present your reasoning.

Even Michael Paymar wasn’t that stupid. 

And Morse may have been an even bigger coward than Representative Heather Martens (emphasis added):

While the gun control bills were before the Senate in March, President Morse urged his caucus to stop reading emails, to stop reading letters from constituents, to stop listening to voicemails, to vote for the gun bills and ignore the constituents. Giron, presciently following this strategy, had allowed citizens to raise Second Amendment concerns at a single town hall meeting, and thereafter refused to discuss the issue at public fora.

The battle in Colorado turned on many issues;

• Blue-collar Democrats joining the GOP to flush the orcs – as they often do, even in Minnesota.  It’s hilarious; the Demcrats have always been the party of class warfare – but of all hot button issues, it’s the gun issue that is the most strongly divided by class, rather than partisan identification.  And the Democrats are the party of the patricians, every time.
• The Colorado GOP running a flawless campaign.  The Minnesota GOP needs to study this.
• The gun movement turning out the manpower (even as they were outspent by at least 7:1 – 8:1 in Pueblo).  As we’ve seen in Minnesota, passion and relentless work ethic defeats money – at least on this issue. 
• Outrage over the Democrats’ arrogant hijacking of the process to jam down an oppressive law that was against the spirit of democracy in Colorado – even a Democrat-led Colorado – at the behest of carpet-bagging east-coast plutocrats.

More of this.

I’ll be broadcasting live from Gander Mountain in Lakeville (I35 at the County 50 Exit). 

You’re going to want to make it out there; they’re having another of their big defensive firearm days; you can actually try out sample firearms from factory representative for free at the Gander range.  It’s fuuuuuun!   (And I’m looking at the CZ75 in a whole new way)

I’ll be talking with Mark Walters and Rob Pincus from Armed American Radio about the victory in Colorado and the battle we Real Americans face in the coming year. 

Come on out to Lakeville between 1 and 3PM tomorrow!

Governor Messinger’s Daytons’ approval ratings – the media says – have dipped.

Survey USA shows the Governor at a 47 percent approval rating:

Significantly, however, the September approval rating is down 9 percentage points since May of 2012. Back then, when Dayton was still grappling with a Republican controlled Legislature, the governor’s approval rating was 56 percent in the SurveyUSA poll.

The dip was particularly glaring among Democrats:

According to the SurveyUSA poll, Dayton went from an 80 percent approval rating among self-identified Democrats in May of last year and February of this year to 67 percent approval rating. The pollster said that segment of the poll had a plus or minus 6.7 percentage point margin of sampling error.

And naturally, the Strib poll – which has a long history of comical inaccuracy – differs: 

The Star Tribune’s polling over the past two years do not track with the SurveyUSA polling. The latest Minnesota Poll, which had a margin of sampling error ofplu sor minus 3.5 percentage points, was taken in June and found Dayton’s approval rating was 57 percent. That was up from 45 percent in February of this year and 53 percent in September of last year in Star Tribune polling numbers.

In the Strib’s poll, Democrats approved of Dayton overwhelmingly – which would appear to be a major difference in the two polls.

That, and SUSA having a track record of relative accuracy, or at least not being utterly comical.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Complaints about how the Obamacare Outreach contracts were awarded.

The complainers’ logic escapes me: only Blacks can reach out to to other Blacks to give them free stuff, they won’t accept it from Whites? Or do you fear White Minnesota Democrats are 1963 racists who will intentionally exclude Blacks from the free stuff, Jim-Crow style? Is this about race at all, or is it about who gets the taxpayer-funded make-work job?

———-

Obama says bombing Syria will prevent Assad from using chemical weapons again, which will deter everybody else from acquiring and using them, which makes our own children safer in the long run.

Condensed version: bomb Syria, for the children.

———-

New “study” proves federally funded early childhood education programs will save Minnesota 4.8 billion in prison costs.

Look for details on this – Dakota County Attorney Jim Backstrom is involved so we know it’s anti-gun.

———-

A guy with a sawed-off shotgun arrested in Burnsville.

You see, this is why we need universal background checks, to prevent guys like this from carrying sawed-off shotguns into banks and convenience stores. Because although he’s already a career criminal who ignored half-a-dozen laws to commit this crime, he’ll surely obey the next law. Or the one after that. Or the one . . . .

———-

Windmills kill eagles.

So is that too many dead eagles, or not enough? How many dead eagles is too many dead eagles, if the goal is to achieve energy independence? You want green energy or not?

———-

Car bomb explodes on 9/11 outside building formerly used as US Consulate in Benghazi.

 

It’s empty (except for FBI investigators still trying to figure out what happened there a year ago when a bunch of film critics chased us away) so no important American officials killed this time. But bombs are used to send a message (see: Johnson in Vietnam, Obama in Syria). The message Al Qaeda sent with this bomb: “And don’t come back!”

Joe Doakes

“Hit the road, Barack”.

By the way, as a tax-paying Minnesotan I have to hope that nobody in the Messinger Dayton Administration was reading the WaPo piece about the Mexican townspeople that are resisting the narcotraficantes with their illegal firearms; they might start getting ideas:

The area’s lime growers, for example, were taxed by metrics that included acreage, limes harvested and crates packed. The meager wages of the lime pickers were also taxed, along with the bus fares that they paid to get to the groves. Gang members taxed sacks of corn and the tortillas made from them. A man installing a floor in his house soon had a gang member at his door, demanding a fee. A man who ran a restaurant said the cartel began taking a cut of the coins in his jukebox.

“The DFL Majority:  Like cartel sicarios, in Priuses!”

Over the past year, we Real Americans were asked “Why do you neeeeeeed an ugly military-grade firearm?” – and before we could answer, were promptly told “You really don’t!”.

There are many answers, of course.  The best of them is “I’m a law-abiding citizen buying a legal product that will never be used to commit a crime of any kind, so it’s none of your business, and go piss up a rope”.  But “serving as the ultimate deterrent to government overreach” is right up there.

And somewhere down the list – for Americans – is this answer; deterring, and if necessary doing more, to the scumbags that prey on society’s honest and hard-working people

An audacious band of citizen militias battling a brutal drug cartel in the hills of central Mexico is becoming increasingly well-armed and coordinated in an attempt to end years of violence, extortion and humiliation.

What began as a few scattered self-defense groups has spread in recent months to dozens of towns across Michoacan, a volatile state gripped by the cultlike Knights Templar, a drug gang known for taxing locals on everything from cows to tortillas and executing those who do not comply.

Law enforcement – up to an including the Army – is of no use in protecting the citizen:

The army deployed to the area in May, but the soldiers are mostly manning checkpoints. Instead, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto is facing the awkward fact that a group of scrappy locals appears to be chasing the gangsters away, something that federal security forces have not managed in a decade.

They include a 63-year-old pot-bellied farmer mindful that he can run only 30 yards; a skinny 23-year-old raised in Oregon who said he had never used a gun before; and a man who wears a metal bowl stuffed with newspaper as a helmet. A 47-year-old bureaucrat, who is sure that she will be killed if the gang retakes her town, said of her decision to join the cause: “I may live one year or 15, but I will live free.”

“Hey, you can’t fight an army…” – and the narcotrafricantes are surely an army, if only an army of thugs – “…with your deer rifle!”

Volunteer fighters who have been using old hunting rifles and even slingshots are increasingly armed with silver-plated AK-47s, armored trucks and other bounty that they said they have seized from the cartel. And although the self-defense groups had been operating independently, they are coalescing under the leadership of a tall, white-haired surgeon who once worked for the Red Cross in California.

Read the whole thing.

Read the rest of this entry »

When politicians suffer reverses, they do their best to spin them into…well, not as bad a loss.  It’s human nature, and it’s Politics 101; never let them see you sweat.

For example, here in Minnesota, after Representatives Paymar, Hausman and Martens’ gun grab bills imploded (during a session in which the DFL had complete control of the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature), the gun grab orcs did their comical best to spin the results as a victory – with the criteria for “victory” all basically involving “doing the stuff people do in campaigns whether they win or lose”.

The Orcs – a term I used to refer to gun-control advocates, in the full sense that JR Tolkein intended for the word – are doing their best to spin Tuesday’s defeat in Colorado into something else.

It’s a lie, naturally.  Michael Bloomberg – the de facto leader of the Gun Grab movement in America today – bet big on this recall, spending $350,000 of his own money to try to keep the two seats.  The orcs outspent the Real Americans 6:1 in terms of officially-released spending numbers, and by some accounts that’s conservative; most of the orc money came from out of state, and much of that was laundered through local non-profits to make it look less lopsidedly carpetbaggy.

But make no mistake – for the Gun Grab movement, this was not just a defeat; it was a debacle:

…registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the two districts where voters cast ballots (though Morse’s district is more of a swing district than Giron’s more Democratic-leaning territory). And the anti-recall side easily outraised the pro-recall interests. The Democratic losses are a reflection of the fact that enthusiasm was squarely on the opposite side of Morse and Giron.

“The National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) is proud to have stood with the men and women in Colorado who sent a clear message that their Second Amendment rights are not for sale,” the NRA’s political arm said in a statement.

While the long-term significance of the election will assuredly be be debated, it’s hard to argue against the proposition that lawmakers in other states will have Colorado somewhere in their minds the next time a push to tighten gun laws begins ramping up.

In the larger debate over gun laws, Tuesday was another victory for the NRA and its allies, who earlier this year demonstrated the power they wield in the campaign to prevent the passage of tighter gun restrictions in Congress.

So let’s recap the year so far:  after being handed two grisly, horrible mass murders to exploit, the Gun Grab movement – on a raft of Bloomberg cash – managed to jam down some meaningless restrictions, none of which will have even the most obtuse effect on crime, on the law abiding citizens of a couple of coastal liberal cesspools, and Colorado.

In response, most of the rest of the country – including liberal cesspools (for the moment) like Minnesota – responded with an epic outpouring of grassroots dissent against the media narrative that Bloomberg paid for, leading to a raft of victories for freedom; sheriffs and legislatures throughout the country nullifying proposed federal laws in advance, the Illinois legislature facing down Orc governor Quinn, and finally Colorado.

UPDATE:  This has also been in the news; Public Policy Polling, the left-leaning polling firm that got the big kudos for being closest among the major polling shops in the 2012 election, suppressed its pre-recall poll that accurately predicted Giron’s stunning 12 point defeat:

Public Policy Polling (PPP) sparked controversy Wednesday after the left-leaning firm declined to release a survey it conducted last weekend that accurately forecasted the successful recall of a Democratic state senator from Colorado.

The survey PPP conducted, but did not release, showed Colorado District 3 Sen. Angela Giron (D) would be recalled by a 54 percent to 42 percent margin.

“In a district that Barack Obama won by almost 20 points I figured there was no way that could be right and made a rare decision not to release the poll,” Director Tom Jensen wrote in a post on the firm’s website. “It turns out we should have had more faith in our numbers because she was indeed recalled by 12 points.”

This is baked wind, of course.  It had nothing to do with “not being right”; it just didn’t sufficiently fluff the narrative – which PPP is still trying to get perked up:

“If voters made their decision based on the actual pretty unobtrusive laws that Giron helped get passed, she likely would have survived,” the firm wrote. “But the NRA won the messaging game and turned it into something bigger than it was- even if that wasn’t true- and Giron paid the price.”

Real Americans – the kinds from both parties that flushed Angela Giron on Tuesday – know the real truth; Chicago didn’t become Chicago overnight.  Every “unobtrusive” law that punishes the law-abiding and leaves the criminal untouched is just another step toward Michael Bloomberg’s dream.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

One of the early, successful examples, of drawing a line in the sand, from before President Obama got into the act.

The Light Bringer can’t pull this off because his words carry no authority.  When the Roman Consul threatened you, it wasn’t with a strike “just muscular enough to not get mocked” or one that would be “unbelievably small.”  When Barak Obama threatens you, it’s an international joke.

Joe Doakes

You don’t risk American lives and spend American money to “send a message”.

Say what you will about both of Dubya’s wars – Afghanistan went bad, and the unintended consequences in Iraq were worse than the war itself for all concerned, we get that – but when Dubya went to war, he didn’t “send a message” to the Taliban, or “punish” Hussein. He went to war to unconditionally defeat them.

Not to send a message.

“Messages” are why we have a State Department.  “Punishment” is why we have trade sanctions, Stuxnet and spooks .

(SCENE: MITCH is driving down Thomas Avenue in Saint Paul, heading for the glamorous part of the street, when his phone rings.  He looks; the Caller ID on the screen says “Avery LIBRELLE”).

MITCH:  (Sotto voce) Criminy.  Not Avery again.

(MITCH picks up the phone):  Hello?

LIBRELLE: Mitch?  I need you to come down to the courthouse and bail me out of jail.

MITCH:   Jail? Huh?  What happened?

LIBRELLE:  Well, Mitch, I shot a gun.  At a person.

MITCH:  Huh?  You hate guns.  You are a gun-control activist.  You don’t even own a gun…

LIBRELLE:  I know.  It was one of yours.

MITCH:  Back up.  What?

LIBRELLE:  It was your gun.

MITCH:  (Visiblly confused, pulling his car over to the curb in front of the “Prada On Thomas” boutique)  OK, this is getting weird.  How did you get a gun from me?

LIBRELLE:  I was at your house.

MITCH:  WHAT?

LIBRELLE:  I needed some coconut oil, so I used that key that you used to leave hidden outside for your kids.

MITCH:  What the…that disappeared years ago.

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, but you weren’t using it.

MITCH:  Well, not right at that moment, because I was at work.

LIBRELLE:  Well, it was for A Better Minnesota.  Anyway – we’re getting side-tracked here.   I was digging through your pantry when I saw a couple of people cutting through your neighbor’s yard.  I hate it when people do that, so I figured I’d send them a message.

MITCH:  (Pulled over to the side of the road)  You WHAT?

LIBRELLE:  I opened your gun safe and took out that little cowboy gun.  I figured I’d send a message.

MITCH:  Oh, for the love of…my .22 revolver?

LIBRELLE:  Whatever.  I figure that sending a message would punish them.  So I went out on your back stoop and yelled “NEVER WALK THROUGH PEOPLES’ YARDS AGAIN!”, and pointed the gun sort of at them, but not very close, and squeezed the trigger.

MITCH:  I…I…I can’t believe this…

LIBRELLE:   Either could I.  The “Kick”, I think you call it, almost broke my hand.

MITCH:  So to warn off someone walking through a back yard…

LIBRELLE:  Yep

MITCH:  …that was not mine…

LIBRELLE:  Yep.

MITCH:  …you broke into my house, took my gun, and shot at them?

LIBRELLE:  Yes.  But in my defense, it did look like an unbelievably small gun.

MITCH:  Criminy, Avery.  Lethal force is one of those things that you only use when the danger to you is immediate and and lethal.  And you never point a gun at someone or something you don’t intend to destroy. 

LIBRELLE:  But they crossed a red line!

MITCH:  What red line?

LIBRELLE:  The one I was thinking as I watched them cross into your neighbor’s property.

MITCH:  Using lethal force is something you can only do if your life is in immediate threat of death or great bodily harm!  Not to “send a message”.  And if the force you use is “unbelieveably small”, then – any County Attorney will tell you – the threat to you must not have been all that big in the first place.  There are other ways to deal with threats aren’t immediately lethal to you. 

LIBRELLE:   Bla bla bla.  Are you going to bail me out for A Better Minnesota or what?  Because we need to talk about the public health threat your guns pose to us neighbors.

(And SCENE)

If you had “within minutes” as your entry in the  “When will the Democrats blame their Colorado rebuke on GOP perfidy pool, you’re a winner.

Democrat National Committee chair Fran Drescher Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is blaming the crushing rebuke at the polls on “Vote Suppression”. 

“The recall elections in Colorado were defined by the vast array of obstacles that special interests threw in the way of voters for the purpose of reversing the will of the legislature and the people. This was voter suppression, pure and simple,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.

This has been part of the extremist Democrat playbook since 2000; things that go well for them are signs that democracy works; reverses, on the other hand, are signs that democracy is rotten to the core. 

It’s a play for the low-information voter that still gets their information from CNN – and giving her extremist special interest base an “out” for having been humiliated by Real Americans even after outspending them 3:1.