To: Representative Ryan “Beavis” Winkler”
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Your Minimum Wage Thing

Rep. Winkler,

Here’s what technology has to say about your minimum wage hike.  Read it and think. 

That is all.

PS:  No, it’s not.  I know you’re not paid to think about these things; yours is not to reason why.  But those who support you?  Maybe not in your stu-foresaken district, but in the rest of Minnesota?  There might be hope.  And so I write.

To: American Psychiatric Assocation (APA)
From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant
Re: Cyberphrenia

To whom it may concern,

Please accept the following submission for the sixth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-6), whenever you release it:

Cyberphrenia: a personality disorder which presents with a complete dissociation between the subject’s “online” and offline personalities.

This usually (but not uniformly) manifests as a subject developing an “online” personality that manifests as negative ideation ranging from mild impulse-control and conduct disorders to symptoms resembling full-blown sociopathy or narcissistic personality disorder.

Keep me posted.

That is all.

To: Rep. Ryan “Beavis” Winkler
From: Mitch Berg, uppity non-Harvard prole
Re: Uncle

Evasive action, stat!

That is all.

I got this letter from “Protect Minnesota” recently.  “Protect Minnesota” was what Rep. Heather Martens (DFLiar – HD66A) had to rename “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota” when it turned out her constant lying had damaged whatever credibility the old brand had.

For those who’ve missed earlier installments of my coverage of Ms. Martens, here’s what you need to know; every single substantive thing she had said about gun issues, ever, throughout her career, has been a lie.  Every.  Last.  Word. 

Here’s her letter:

Dear Heinrich ,

It’s been several weeks since the Minnesota legislature went home. Despite passing one bill to fund improvements in Federal gun background check data, the legislature left gaping loopholes in the law that still allow people who shouldn’t have guns to get them easily.

Well, no.  A bipartisan majority of the legislature realized that Martens’ various bills – copied and pasted as they were from New York and California – wouldn’t change criminals’ ability to find guns; they’d just register the guns of the law-abiding, for further targeting by law-enforcement when and if the political winds swing that way. 

We’d never tolerate that sort of treatment of the First Amendment.  Why the Second?

Martens:

We can’t afford to wait for another mass shooting, so we are not letting up in the push for change. We need your help to have one-to-one conversations with voters about what is at stake, and how they can push common sense state and Federal laws. Can you join a phone bank tomorrow? Click here to help phone on Wednesday, July 10, at TakeAction in St. Paul. (Pizza and air conditioning provided!)

Not that there was any doubt that “Protect MN” was part of the ultra-left hive, but the fact that TakeAction – which, like “Protect MN” is an astroturf group funded by unions and liberal plutocrats – just happened to lend “Protect” a phone bank should tell you something.

With more than 75 percent of Minnesotans supporting universal background checks for gun sales,

…according to a push poll whose results have been reported with flagrant disregard for the context of the original survey question; tomayto tomahto, I know…

we had great success engaging voters all over the state, generating thousands of phone calls and emails to legislators.

Martens has been showing an interesting pattern since her bills got tubed by solid bipartisan majorities (which included a bipartisan majority of all House members signing on to co-author a bill that was a direct repudiation of Martens’ bills (channeled via the likes of Michael Paymar and Alice “The Phantom” Hausman); she’s been reduced to trying to turn defeats into victories, at least in the minds of her utterly uninformed followers.

“Thousands” of calls?  By all accounts, calls ran 50:1 against Martens’ bills.  Even the MinnPost’s Doug Grow, who gets at least part of his paycheck from the same place Martens does (the anti-gun Joyce Foundation contributes at least five figures to both “Protect” MN and the MinnPost, which I suspect is in major part behind the MinnPost’s atrociously ignorant and ludicrously slanted coverage of Second Amendment issues this past year), said it was more like a thousand, as if that was a major accomplishment.

In 2013, we didn’t have time to build the power it takes to reverse the long-term effects of gun-rights extremist propaganda. But we have the public on our side, and we can make the change we need, as long as we keep at it!
Click here to join us and our friends at Mayors Against Illegal Guns for the first in a series of summer phone banks!

And there you go.  Two astroturf groups sponsored by liberal plutocrats and government unions (fluffed by a “news” outlet sponsored by those same plutocrats and their plutocrat-supported foundation) are joining with a group of liberal politicians in another astroturf group funded by another liberal plutocrat to try to keep all us unruly peasants in line.

I’ve said it for twenty years, now; the extreme left has always led with the class-warfare rhetoric – and yet on this, the most populist issue of them all, it’s the left who are the patricians, and the gun rights movement in all its bipartisan and non-partisan millions who are the uppity peasants demanding real freedom. 

I might just have to sign up for that phone bank.

To: “Badge-Carrying” Journalists
From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant
Re:  Here’s My F***ing Badge

Two whom it may etc etc,

Over the past 11 years or so, not a few journos have asked “citizen journalists” to show you their “journalist badges”.

I haven’t eaten Cracker Jacks in years, so I don’t even know how I’d get one.

But as a blogger, here’s my “badge”:  In the SCOTUS case of Lovell v. Griffin (1938), Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court:

“The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our own history abundantly attest. The press in its connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.”

Given that we uppity bloggers are the ones that actually “defend liberty”, I think that settles that.

That is all.

To: Jim Graves, ex-candidate
From: Mitch Berg, uppity peasant
Re: Personal!

Mr. G,

I want to start a hotel chain.

It’s main goal is to knock off Marriott.

What’s its concept? Who cares! I don’t care if people are sleeping on rows of cots under oil light, as long as I kill off Marriott.

Seems dicey? Well, duh. When one says “I wanna knock off Marriott, one can fairly ask “with what?” It’s an important question.

It’d be a stupid business plan!

So when you withdrew from the CD6 race – daunted by the district’s Romney +15 showing (14 points better Han Rep. Bachmann) and what’ll no doubt be a national funding drought – you said you’d accomplished your mission – removing Bachmann. By implication, you seem to mean “whether by a Republican or a DFLer”.

Really?

So the day after the election, your mission would have been accomplished? The rest of your two years in DC would have been a tabula rasa?

(Well, duh, no. You’d have danced with the ones that brung you;youd have been little more than Betty McCollum with supernatural hair).

Did “my considered agenda ends on Day 2 in office” ever pop up in your campaign material?

That is all.

To:  The Twin Cities “Independent” Alt-Media
From:  Mitch Berg, uppity peasant
Re:  Terminology

All,

“Lamestream Media” is so 2007.  For that matter, saying something “is so…” a year is so 1998.

The term we now use is “in the bag for the DFL”.

That is all.

To:  Speaker of the House Thissen
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Vote NOW!  For the Children!

Speaker Thissen,

You’re taking a lot of flak for pulling Rep. Paymar’s gun grab bill from the agenda.

Representative Paymar

You’re getting the flak from the usual crowd; astroturf checkbook advocacy groups whose executives are also their entire membership; “faith” groups of the type PJ O’Rourke once described as “having faith the same way some people have halitosis”, the smug preening “faith” of the church that has adopted government as a sort of Executive Assistant to God.

A group of anti-gun zealots.  They’re frowning because someone – I bet it was the second guy from the right, in the glasses – forgot to invite anyone that wasn’t a white, Volvo-diving, NPR-listening, alpaca-wearing pre-1970 Saint Olaf graduate.  Courtesy of the Joyce-Foundation-supported MinnPost.

The Minnesota Gun Violence Prevention Coalition, which encompasses the main people and organizations working for firearm regulation in Minnesota, staged a rally/press conference on Friday to demand Thissen allow the measure to come up for a vote.

 “It seems to me that Speaker Thissen is trying to protect the caucus,” said Sami Rahamim, whose father, Reuven Rahamim, was killed in the Accent Signage shooting last year.

Rahamim posed a tough question for Thissen and the rural Democrats who tanked the gun-control bill: Does the DFL House caucus need protecting, or “hardworking citizens like my father?”

I know – the Accent Signage shooting both takes attention away from the fact that violent crime (outside North Minneapolis) has been in free fall for 20 years.  And the anti-gunners are using Rahamim and the searing images of that horrible shooting to distract from the fact that nothing in any of the bills that the DFL has been pushing would have prevented the Accent shooting in any way whatsoever – that, indeed, the only thing that might have would have been a guy in the plant with a gun and the will to resist, whether a guard or just a regular schnook with a carry permit.

But never mind that, Speaker Thissen; the real point is coming up:

Advocates for more regulations stressed that polling shows the public supports such measures as universal background checks, which would regulate the private sale of firearms at gun shows and over the Internet, among other avenues.

That’s right, Speaker Thissen.  Ignore your lying eyes, which showed you Greater Minnesota hates your bill.  Ignore the polls that show support for your bills was an uninformed mile wide and an inch deep (gun control is a vital issue to 4% of the voters); never mind the historical fact that the last time the MNDFL crusaded against the law-abiding citizen’s right to keep and bear arms, you lost the House.

But no.  The people who carried the water

 “With the will of the majority behind us, we believed our state would pass a universal background check bill” this session, said Jane Kay, of Moms Demand Action [heh heh] for Gun Sense in America. “That has all been swept aside.”

Heather Martens [DFL Rep. HD 66A], executive director of Protect Minnesota, which lobbied lawmakers extensively on the issue, said Thissen should bring the measure up for a vote, even if it is doomed to fail.

“I think he has a responsibility to reconsider that decision,” she said.

And for once, notwithstanding the fact that she has not uttered one substantive word of truth in her public life, I agree with Representative Martens.

You need to bring this to a floor vote, Speaker Thissen.  And you need to do it immediately.    Because it’s the right thing to do.  Do it for the children.  You owe it to them.

And you need to bust some knuckles in your caucus to make sure they vote the party line too.   Get everyone in the DFL caucus to vote the Metrocrat conscience, and do it this week.  None of this “voting their constituency” BS;  make sure Joe Radinovich and Zac Dorhold and Steve Howe vote the most enthusiastic “yea” they can manage.

And smile for the cameras when you do.  Thanks.

That is all.

To: GOP Senators Thst voted for the DFL’s Cash Grab
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re: Your vote

Take a Mulligan.

ASAP. Plead diminished capacity if you need to.

That is all.

To: President Barack Obama
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Optics

President Obama,

You made a big show of flying the “Newtown Parents” – white, upper-middle-class suburban Americans all – to the White House on Air Force One.

I have nothing but sympathy for the parents of Newtown.  Losing a kid is the worst thing I can imagine.  And God willing, imagining is all I have to do so far.  Knock wood.

But I’m wondering – were there any bereaved parents from Chicago on the plane?   Any standing with you in the Rose Garden yesterday?

No, Mr. President.  You surrounded yourself with bereaved parents who looked like NPR producers and CNN reporters, rather than residents of projects and parents of “working families”.  Why was that?

Because it looks to me like you’re trying less to make America – including the parts of it where black people are being gunned down daily – safer, and more like you’re trying to get white, upper-middle-class people to dig deeeeeep for the next Congressional election.

That is all.

To: Sen. Feinstein
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re: Reid’s Punt

Sen. Feinstein,

Suck it.

That is all.

To:  Everyone in the USA
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant who’s been through it all before
Re:  “Sequestration”

Hey, everyone,

You may not remember this, but we’ve been through all this before.  Remember the “partial government shutdown”, back in the nineties?  It was a whole big nothing-burger.

Oh, the Clinton Administration tried to make sure that the people felt whatever pain was generated – closing parks, cramping down on the voters.  But as a rule, the whole thing affected nobody.

And here in Minnesota, we had a “complete” shutdown two years ago (which, again, wasn’t – the courts kept most of the government going as “essential”).  It lasted a few weeks.  Then Governor Messinger Dayton abandoned it, when he realized Minnesotans, for all his efforts to squeeze and scare them – shutting down state parks and highway rest areas, threatening to lay off teachers – barely noticed any difference.  While the media did its best to prop up the Messinger Dayton line, the people of Minnesota heard the gales of calumny but saw and felt a big fat nada burrito.  Even Governor Messinger Dayton – as cosseted and isolated from reality as his staff keeps him – noticed; on his trip around the state to whip up support for the DFL budget, he saw tepid crowds of union droogs, and a few professional protesters, and realized he had nothin’ (which may be why Dayton makes so few public appearances these days).

So it’s time for “sequestration” – the “radical” budget cuts that Obama and the super-di-duper commission agreed to as a stick to lead everyone to the “carrot” of an actual federal budget.  We’ve been waiting nearly 1,400 days for a budget from the Democrat-addled Senate, so Washington figured a “stick” was needed.

By the way – how radical and drastic are those cuts?:

Yep. They’re not even cuts.  They’re reductions in the increase.  Indeed, almost completely worthless, if cutting spending is your goal, but really nothing but a fart in the wind; sort of like “dropping HBO” in your family budget, even though your gas bill is rising and your teenage kids are costing more and more.

Obama will try to make “sequestration” hurt; he’ll slow down the TSA lines, he’ll gundeck some ship overhauls and clamp down some military maintenance budgets, he’ll inveigle some big cities to lay off a few cops and teachers, he’ll shut down Yellowstone as the cameras record photos of crestfallen children.  Hell, Joe Biden may even personally try to close the gates at Disney World.

But there is no there, there.  It’s a scare tactic, engineered by Obama and his compliant media.

It needs to be ignored.

That is all.

To: Rep. John Lesch, HD66B and closet authoritarian
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  “Local Control”

Rep. Lesch,

Last week, at the House Public Safety Finance Committee hearings on the DFL’s various gun grab bills – the one that’d funnel all carry permit applications through the local police chief, if applicable, rather than the county sheriff – you kept repeating “it’s about local control”, as if you were one of those old pull-string toys with the little tape recorder inside.

Little story for ya, here, Leftenant.

Perhaps you recall; back in the bad ol’ days before the Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act, when we had a discretionary-issue system where getting a permit depended entirely on ones’ connections, one of the metro-area police chiefs – I think it was Bloomington – said he’d never, ever, ever, ever give out a permit to a common peasant (although he issued one to his wife, as memory serves).

Now, if citizens wanted to voice their displeasure at the transparent unfairness of the system, they had to organize a battle to win the mayor’s office – at whose pleasure the chief served.  Not the citizens’ – the mayor’s.   Which means you need to go a couple of levels of government removed from the citizen in the street to voice any meaningful dissent from the system.

But then the MPPA got passed. And the Sheriffs’ offices got the job, statewide.

And perhaps you remember this, Rep. Lesch:  your old buddy Bob Fletcher got caught denying three times as many permits as any other sheriff in the state, including Hennepin County.  And a huge percentage of those denials, when contested, were coming back losers for the County, costing Ramco a ton of money.

And it was us shooters – of all races, genders and social levels or, put briefly, the people – who were part of the coalition that tossed Fletcher from his job at the polls.

That – a law enforcement official who answers directly to us, as opposed to the local machine and bureaucracy – is what “local control” is.

That is all.

To:Ron Paul, Personality Cultist and Former Presidential Candidate
From: Mitch Berg, Crabby peasant and former big-L Libertarian
Re: Dumb

Mr. Paul,

Y’know, I try. I really do.

But when I see things like this on Twitter…:

Chris Kyle’s death seems to confirm that “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” Treating PTSD at a firing range doesn’t make sense

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) February 4, 2013

…I’m more than a little tempted to say that the best thing you can do for your libertarian cause, and those of us who subscribe to at least parts of it, it so shut up and find yourself a little piece of pasture to go out to.

And go out to it.

Please.

That is all.

Posting this on Facebook yesterday caused a bit of a kerfuffle.  Some Paul supporters asked me why I was attacking Libertarianism.

I’m not, of course; I am a libertarian-conservative, and have been since long before it was cool.  I was – and am – criticizing Ron Paul.  But it’s a little discouraging how many of his supporters conflate the two.

To: Minnesota DFL Pundits, Politicians, Academics And “Journalists”
From: Mitch Berg, Mere Peasant
Re: Put Up Or…

All,

I’m going to take a moment to publicly reiterate a challenge I’ve posted in the past.

I challenge you – any of you – to debate the Paymar and/or Feinstein gun-grab bills.  In public.

Only ground rules:  We’ll do it in public, at a neutral location.  We’ll have actual debate rules – we can gnosh those out when we set things up.   Bring your “A” game.  You’ll need it.

Have your people call my people.

I am my people.

That is all.

To: Rep. Betty McCollum
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Mission Accomplished!

Rep. McCollum:

You had a “Town Hall” meeting deep in the heart of DFL-addled Oakdale yesterday.   MNCD4 Conservative was there to shoot video.

And even there, even you couldn’t dodge talking about the Second Amendment .

Video below the jump, so that the rest of the page can actually load:

(more…)

To: His Holiness, Pope Benedict
From: Mitch Berg, Protestant
Re: None Of Your Business

Your Holiness,

With all respect due to your eminence in your church on spiritual issues, and to your predecessor’s stances in defense of freedom, I must confess that when I see you and your various ecclesiastical bureaucrats saying things like this…:

In an editorial aired yesterday on Vatican Radio, Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the press office of the Holy See, called “initiatives announced by the United States government in view of limiting and controlling the diffusion and use of arms … a step in the right direction.

 

“Forty-seven religious leaders of various confessions and religions have issued a call to American politicians to limit firearms, which ‘are making society pay an unacceptable price in terms of massacres and senseless deaths,’” Lombardi stated in his address. “I’m with them.”

…and especially twaddle like this (I’ll add emphasis)…:

While acknowledging “that arms, throughout the world, are also instruments for legitimate defense,” and even admitting “No one can be under the illusion that limiting their number and use would be enough to impede horrendous massacres in the future,” Lombardi nonetheless asserted “it is necessary to repeat tirelessly our calls for disarmament, to oppose the production, trade, and smuggling of arms of all types.

“If results are achieved, such as international conventions … all the better!” he proclaimed.

…it fills me with protestant pride.

Your line, it seems, is “sorry about all the dead innocents who won’t  be able to defend themselves, but let’s hear it for those great guardians of the sanctity of human life, the U F****ng N”.

Sorry, Fr. Lombardi.  We fought a war in this country at least in part to be free of the rule of monarchs, whether secular or ecclesiastical.  And when I read your church’s official word on self-defense (again, emphasis added)…:

“According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, individuals have a right and a duty to protect their own lives when in danger, and someone who ‘defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow,’” CNS concedes, but offers a significant caveat. “According to the catechism, the right to use firearms to ‘repel aggressors’ or render them harmless is specifically sanctioned for ‘those who legitimately hold authority’ and have been given the duty of protecting the community.”

…it puts me in mind of the fact that functional representative democracy came much, much later to the Catholic than the Protestant world for a good reason.

In other words, Fr. Lombardi, your assistance is not needed here.  Thanks.

To:  Everyone in the media and alt media that lionizes “PolitiFact”
From: Mitch Berg, person who actually cares about the truth
Re:  Suck It.

All,

Politifact’s “Lie Of The Year” was in fact true.

Please go reassess the tragedy that is your life and career.

That is all.

(Via Bill C)

To:  Governor Messinger Dayton
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  A Time For Choosing

Governor Messinger Dayton,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s declaration that legal gun ownership by the law-abiding citizen is a dangerous condition that needs monitoring?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. If you support it, please make sure everyone knows.  You’ve never been shy about using the media that serves as your praetorian guard, and the lavishly-funded apparatus that your puppeteer ex-wife owns, to get the message out before; please don’t stop now.
3. If you support the President, could you please prevail upon Minnesota’s DFL legislators to publicly declare their support as well?  Very, very publicly?  Maybe in a big press conference on the Capitol steps?

You ran as a “pro-2nd-Amendment” candidate in the 2010 election.  I’ve always suspected that you did it more out of memory of what happened to Ann Wynia (and the rest of the Democrat majorities) in 1994, or to the DFL’s majority in the House in 2002, than out of any sincere care for civil and human and rights…

…but I’m willing, if not expecting, to be surprised.

I mean, one way or another, it’s time for a big profile in courage, isn’t it?

That is all.

To:  Senator Amy Klobuchar
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Sen. Klobuchar,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you join President Obama in the belief that the law-abiding, legal gun owner is a public health risk and manifesting a mental illness?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. Could you please make your reasons for this support as public as you can, if applicable?  You’ve never been shy about using the media that serves as your praetorian guard to get the message out before; please don’t stop now.
3. If you support the President, could you please prevail upon Minnesota’s DFL legislators to publicly declare their support as well?  Very, very publicly?

You’ve spent the past six years in a calculated effort to create a public image of studied innocuity.  But given your massive victory last November, surely you feel secure enough politically to be honest about your stance and motivations.

I mean, you just know you’re bulletproof come election time, don’t you?

That is all.

To:  Senator Al Franken
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Sen. Franken,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s executive order saying law-abiding gun ownership is mental illness?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. If so, please make your support very, very public.
3. Again if so – please do what you can to make MN DFL legislators “come out” publicly on their support, would you please?

I mean, you just know you’re bulletproof come election time, don’t you?

That is all.

To: Rep. Colin Peterson (DFL MN-07)
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Power, Power, Power!

Rep. Peterson,

If you’d be so kind, I’d love it if you answered the following:

1. Do you support President Obama’s decree, yesterday, saying that law-abiding legal gun ownership is a form of mental illness?  Yes or no, please.
2. As you’ve always claimed to be a pro-Second-Amendment guy, then – if you don’t support Obama, what do you plan to do to fight this usurpation?

Your attention to this matter will be appreciated.

That is all.

To:  Rep. Tim Walz (DFL-MNCD1)
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Rep. Walz,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s executive orders trying to equate legal, law-abiding gun ownership with mental illness? I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. If so, are you urging DFL legislators in the 1st CD to do the same?
3. If not, how do you plan to manifest this dissent politically?  Concrete terms, please.

Please make your stance on this issue as public as you possibly can.  Tell the Strib, if you’d be so kind.  Failing that, at least inform Sally Jo Sorenson; she’s always been a reliable steno.

That is all.

To:  All Minnesota State Legislators
From: Mitch Berg, Peasant
Re:  Powers

Dear Esteemed State Representative Or Senator,

I have  a couple of questions for you.

1. Do you support President Obama’s decrees, especially the ones trying to turn legal, law-abiding gun ownership into a public health issue?  I’ll ask you not to equivocate; yes, or no?
2. Are you supporting legislation this session to “control guns” in Minnesota?
3. If so – how do you plan to publicize your approval for the Administration’s actions?
4. If not, how do you plan to manifest this dissent politically?  Concrete terms, please.

Please make your stance on this issue as public as you possibly can.  It does need to be part of voters’ decisions in this next election.

As it was nationwide in 1994, and in Minnesota in 2002.

Thanks for your attention to this matter.

That is all.

To: General Stanley McChrystal (USA Ret)
From: Mitch Berg
Re: The Founding Fathers Had It Right

General,

Before I begin – thanks for your decades of service.

And, truth be hold, this post is less for you than it is for the rafts of liberals who’ve signed on as famboys this past 24 hours.

But the founding fathers knew that the military (as an institution, not as individual soldiers) is one of the things we needed to guard against to preserve our clvil liberties.  The standing army was every bit as big a boogeyman to the framers as the AR15 is to Andrew Cuomo.

And just as a cop or a county attorney or a federal prosecutor would love to toss the Fourth Amendment into the scrap heap (to the extent, let’s be honest, that it hasn’t  been), let’s just say your input is appreciated, but not really needed.

It’s not really against type, let’s just say.

That is all.