To: Bank Of America
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Just Right To Fail

Dear Bank Of America,

When you spent much of the past four years currying favor with the Obama Administration, and feeding the hand that fed you (not to mention buying up Countrywide, which was cozier with the left than most), I merely shook my head; it reinforced the “plutocrats are the biggest liberals” pattern.

But this?

Bank of America has reportedly frozen the account of gun manufacturer American Spirit Arms, according to its owner, Joe Sirochman.

In a Facebook post dated December 29, Sirochman wrote the following:

“My name is Joe Sirochman owner of American Spirit Arms…our Web site orders have jumped 500 percent causing our Web site e-commerce processing larger deposits to Bank of America. So they decided to hold the deposits for further review.

“After countless hours on the phone with Bank of America, I finally got a manager in the right department that told me the reason that the deposits were on hold for further review — her exact words were — ‘We believe you should not be selling guns and parts on the Internet.’”(emphasis added)

According to Unlawful News, this isn’t the first time Bank of America has targeted a customer involved in the firearms industry.

McMillan Group International was reportedly told that its business was no longer welcome after the company started manufacturing firearms – even after 12 years of doing business with the bank.

I had no choice in becoming a customer; my mortgage got sold to you.

I spent years boycotting stores in Minnesota that posted that law-abiding carry-permittees weren’t welcome – and ten years later, the signs are mostly gone.

What do you think five million of us nationwide can do?

That is all.

The answer? “Gérard Depardieu est Jean Galt!”

Few Frenchmen are more recognizable at home and abroad than the movie star Gerard Depardieu. Last week, Depardieu caused a great controversy in his native land by moving to Belgium – partly to avoid the 75 percent income tax on the wealthy that was introduced by the socialist President of France,

What was it that Gandhi said? “First they ignore you, then they mock you, then you win?”

(more…)

To: Dick’s Sporting Goods
From: Mitch Berg, Law-Abiding Gun Owner, Occasional Customer
Re:  Your Cowardice

Dear Dicks,

I’d be lying if I said I shopped at your chain much, even for firearms and ammo.  Your prices are adequate (Frontiersman in Saint Louis Park is much better, Fleet Farm and Joe’s clobber you on ammo prices, and even Gander Mountain is better than you are on sale prices), but I’ll stop by and grab the odd purchase once in a while.  Indeed, a trip to the neighborhood Dick’s for some camping gear was on my noontime agenda today.

But no more.

Crises come and go. And while the Democrats vow not to waste them, they do pass.  The vast majority of the American people – Real Americans, not the “elite” media, who are nothing but Frenchmen in Lexuses – aren’t fooled.

I’m done with you.  And I urge all Real Americans to follow suit.

That is all.

UPDATE:  You too, Cheaper Than Dirt.

To:  Dave Mindeman
From:  Mitch Berg, Non-Physicist
Re:  Elementary Logic

Mr. Mindeman,

I had yogurt, oatmeal and orange juice for breakfast this morning.  Then the sun rose.

Clearly, the yogurt, oatmeal and orange juice caused the sun to rise.

Thus, I owe it to humanity to have yogurt, oatmeal and orange juice tomorrow, lest the world be plunged into darkness.

You might respond “but Mitch, your breakfast didn’t cause the sun to rise!”.

To which I’d reply “No, it is a FACT!  I had my yogurt, oatmeal and orange juice.  And then the sun rose!”

You might reply “Mitch, that’s just stupid.  You’re taking a correlation between two factoids and claiming causation.  You’re ignoring the fact that the earth is rotating on its axis once a day, giving the sun the appearance of rising in the east…”

“Dave, Dave, Dave.  Bubbeleh.  You’re rationalizing.  And clearly afraid of something.  Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go play “Moby Dick” on the tabletop with pencils, to prevent the volcano from blowing up under Los Angeles.  Again”.

That is all.

(more…)

To: Speaker Boehner
From: Mitch Berg, Unruly Peasant
Re: Another Stupid Decision

Speaker Boehner,

You really are hell-bent on pissing away whatever power you and your caucus have, aren’t you?

Hint:  You’re going to need more support than just Hugh Hewitt and Lori Sturdevant in 2014.

That is all.

To:  Dog Gone, Chanting Point Congruency Analyst, “Penigma”
From:  M Berg, overly patient guy
Re:  “Crap Legislation”

Ms. Gone,

Last  legislative session, in the wake of Governor Messinger Dayton  vetoing the “Stand Your Ground” Bill – which had just been passed by a bipartisan majority of legislators – you insisted volubly that the bill was “crap legislation”.

When asked repeatedly to please elaborate with details as to exactly how the bill – which, I remind you, was passed with a convincing bipartisan majority, and was largely identical to similar laws that have been roundly successful nationwide – was “crap”, you begged off due to time commitments.

Fair enough.

But you’ve not only found time since then to…

• leave dozens of your, er, long comments in my comment section
• indulge in a bit of unearned name-calling
• trumpet your own dearth of information on the subject (complaining, for example, that Minnesota didn’t share the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s information with the federal NICS database – a shortcoming the Cornish bill would have fixed)

So enough equivocating, dodging, and smoke-screening.  Why, exactly, was Cornish’s bill “crap?”  Please be specific; attempt to submit actual facts that logically connect to a thesis, so we can debate the issue. 

I don’t think you can.  I think you were reciting the chanting points the left put out on the subject – which I have spent years patiently, laboriously, factually and completely debunking on this blog, and will no doubt do again after 2014 – and you don’t really understand the issue.  In fact, if I were a gambling man, I’d bet serious bank on it.

But by all means go to it!

That is all!

To:  NBC
From: Mitch Berg, guy counting down the days ’til pitchers and catchers report
Re:  “Sportscasters”

Dear NBC,

Yesterday, Bob Costas used your “sports” air time to babble an uninformed, utterly wrong anti-Second-Amendment screed.

Now, don’t get me started on sportscasters and sportswriters and “sports radio” people; for the most part, they are at the cutting edge of everything that’s wrong with America.  They glorify a sports culture that once at least paid lip service to the best our society had to  offer, but today mostly glorifies all that is base and stupid in our culture.  And let’s not kid ourselves; whatever they glorify, it’s all about making bank for the people that own the teams that give the Sports Media a market, which in turn allows you, NBC Sports, to make bank yourselves.

And when they get into politics?  Forget unions and welfare; sportswriters, sportscasters and the drooling baboons and chattering lemmings that take them seriously were the ones that badgered the Legislature into giving Zygi Wilf a billion-dollar spiff to his investment.  Just as they did in turn for the owners of the Twins, the Wild and the Woofies before them. Sports America is the biggest welfare state there is.

And now we have Bob Costas – a guy who wants to be his generation’s Frank DeFord so badly you can smell it on the wind – using your “sports” airtime to prate and gabble about the Second Amendment.   As if taking an troubled boy with a talent for running or blocking or tackling or catching a ball, glorifying his talent from the age of eight on, allowing him to grow into a rich, spoiled, entitled adult with no education or sense of perspective to feed the system that has made him, his team owners, Costas and all of you obscenely wealthy along the way, didn’t have a role in creating someone so unstable he thought he was justified in killing another human being.

Let’s put this another way; after a career spent making America’s sports industry (and, incidentally, himself) rich, what caliber of handgun did OJ Simpson use?

Or is there a Bob Costas riff against butcher knives out there that I’m not aware of?

Oh, yeah – I don’t watch NBC Sports, and haven’t for decades, so any threat to boycott will be an empty one.  But you get the picture.

That is all.

To: The GOP Leadership In The Legislature, Whoever You End Up Being
From: Mitch Berg, Schnook Peasant
Re:  Upcoming Session

All,

It’s two months ’til what is going to be a couple of very grueling sessions.

Now, Governor Dayton is an addled bobblehead who is nothing but a marionette for Alida Messinger and the unions that bought the office for him.  Tom Bakk and Paul Thissen are not much but capos for two bodies that are, let’s be honest, more of the same.  Our entire legislature will be owned and operated by Messinger, the “Alliance For A Better Minnesota”, the unions, the non-profits, and the media that serves as their PR wing.

The calls will go out; “time to be “bi-partisan””.

Don’t do it.

The DFL will be trying their best to give an air of “bipartisan” legitimacy to what is going to be an orgy of tax-hiking and spending.

Resist the temptation to try to go for the Lori Sturdevant seal of approval.

They are going to plunge this state into an orgy of spending, an taxation to support it.  Major Minnesota business are going to ship jobs outstate or overseas as fast as FedEx can jam them onto the plane.  Minnesota’s medical device industry is already evacuating; there will be more to follow.

You need to keep your fingerprints away from the scene of the crime.

If the Minnesota GOP has proven one thing, it sucks at messaging.  You’ll need to learn it, and pronto – because the media will try to portray the upcoming disaster as “a result of GOP intransigence”, notwithstanding their complete control over government for the next (sigh) two years.

To: America
From: Mitch Berg; taxpayer, private-sector worker, concerned neighbor
Re: Us

Everyone,

You are not better off than you were four years ago.

That is all.

Ahem.

1. My God, who cares.  It’s a %#$@#^@! game.  Get a @$#@^@ grip.  Life goes on.
2. This is what you get for changing the national pastime away from Baseball.

That is all.

I’ve always wanted to create a new word for the English language [1].

And I think that word is going to be “Inshgoogle” (pronounced “Insh-GOO-gle”).

It’s a corruption of the Arabic “Insh’allah”, meaning “If it’s Allah’s will”.  Its meaning, essentially, becomes “If my Google information is correct…”

That is all.

(more…)

To: Insurance Agents
From: Mitch Berg
Re: New Business

I’ve had my car insurance with Geico for probably eight or nine years now.

And if you’re an agent who can underbid them, I’m very open to switching right about now.

That is all.

To:  Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, and the ACLU of Minnesota
From: Mitch Berg, mere peasant
Re: SCOM Decision

All,

Suck it.

That is all.

(more…)

To: Mitt Romney
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Budget Talk

Dear Governor Romney,

The next time the media asks you “what’s the difference between your budget and the Ryan budget”, you need to response “unlike the Obama budget, it exists”.

That is all.

Governor Romney,

I supported you in the caucuses – as the conservative alternative to John McCain, no less – and I’ll vote for you this November as many times as Mark Ritchie will allow me to.   If I go into the polls smelling like hemp and wearing Birkenstocks, it might be quite a few times.

But I digress.

My friend Hugh Hewitt the other day broke down your VP choices like this:

• If your internal polling shows you comfortably ahead, you’ll go Pawlenty.  He’s safe, he gives you a shot in Minnesota and the upper midwest, and he’s got the technical part of the job down.
• If it shows you ahead but close, go with Rob Portman.  He’ll help you clinch Ohio, and he’s a safe, competent choice.
• If they show you a little behind, you’ll go Ryan.  He’ll cinch up the base and give you some “zing” for the final stretch.
• If you look way behind, you’ll go for the long ball to Chris Christie.

Maybe it’s my Scandinavian roots.  Maybe it’s a lifetime as a Bears and Cubs fan.  But I say always play like you’re behind.  Pick Ryan.

Oh, I know – you’ve got the same people who gave us McCain telling you it’s just too risky.

It’s really not:

Too risky, goes the Beltway chorus. His selection would make Medicare and the House budget the issue, not the economy. The 42-year-old is too young, too wonky, too, you know, serious. Beneath it all you can hear the murmurs of the ultimate Washington insult—that Mr. Ryan is too dangerous because he thinks politics is about things that matter. That dude really believes in something, and we certainly can’t have that.

All of which highly recommend him for the job.

…

The case for Mr. Ryan is that he best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election. More than any other politician, the House Budget Chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest-group dominated decline.

Against the advice of every Beltway bedwetter, he has put entitlement reform at the center of the public agenda—before it becomes a crisis that requires savage cuts.

While jobs and the economy are the killer issues this election (or should be; the media in its role as Obama’s Praetorian Guard is doing its best to avoid that happening), entitlement reform is going to the the issue that decides whether this nation remains viable or not.

And unlike most liberals’ and “moderates'” approach to the issue, Ryan’s all about fixing it the right way; through vigorous growth:

 And he has done so as part of a larger vision that stresses tax reform for faster growth, spending restraint to prevent a Greek-like budget fate, and a Jack Kemp-like belief in opportunity for all. He represents the GOP’s new generation of reformers that includes such Governors as Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and New Jersey’s Chris Christie.

As important, Mr. Ryan can make his case in a reasonable and unthreatening way. He doesn’t get mad, or at least he doesn’t show it. Like Reagan, he has a basic cheerfulness and Midwestern equanimity.

And the fact is that even if Romney doesn’t pick Ryan, the Dems are going to try to use Ryan as a negative anyway:

As for Medicare, the Democrats would make Mr. Ryan’s budget a target, but then they are already doing it anyway. Mr. Romney has already endorsed a modified version of Mr. Ryan’s premium-support Medicare reform, and who better to defend it than the author himself?

In for a penny, in for a dollar.

Republicans are likely to do worse if they merely play defense on Medicare and other entitlements. The way to win on the issue is go on offense and contrast Mr. Romney’s patient-centered reform with President Obama’s policy of government price controls and rationing medical care via a 15-member panel of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.

That, right there, is huge.  It’s a message that can resonate with both conservatives (who are sick of playing prevent defense) and moderates (who will, I suspect, respect a candidate who actually clarifies and personalizes the vague, too-big-to-process jeremiads they’re hearing about the issues facing this country.

And Romney needs to cement the base behind him.  Ryan would whip up the mass of Tea Party and western-conservatives that have been, to say the least, tepid on Romney so far.

If there’s anything that’d disturb the narrative on this election, it’s people getting “whipped up” by Romney.

Personalities aside, the larger strategic point is that Mr. Romney’s best chance for victory is to make this a big election over big issues. Mr. Obama and the Democrats want to make this a small election over small things—Mitt’s taxes, his wealth, Bain Capital. As the last two months have shown, Mr. Romney will lose that kind of election.

To win, Mr. Romney and the Republicans have to rise above those smaller issues and cast the choice as one about the overall direction and future of the country.

Americans have shown they will come together for the good of the country.  Pearl Harbor, 9/11, hatred of the Dallas Cowboys  – all have brought this fractured nation together.

Our very existence as an economy and a society?  That should count, too.

If we, as a party and a ticket, have the guts to make it an issue.

And if we don’t, then why bother trying to run for President, anyway?

So Gov. Romney – please pick Ryan.

Thanks.  And that is all.

First, a little background:

Now, let’s decide which matters more to a nation that’s been squeezed to death by four years of spendthrift incompetence:

• That Candidate Romney inadvertently insulted the locals in the UK (in exactly the same way they’re currently insulting themselves) or…
• that whole “turning deficit into surplus” and “making things work” bit?

That is all.

Senator Sean Nienow explains his votes on the Vikings stadium – and its half-billion-dollar infusion of public money –  in the Isanti-Chisago Star

It wasn’t just the price tag that compelled me to vote against sending the bill to the governor. It has a structurally unsound funding mechanism and it ignores and belittles the expressed will of hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans.

Not just belittled us, but insulted our intelligence.  I’m not someone who’s built a lot of “cherished family memories” around our underachieving football franchise – and I feel sorry for those that have.

Beyond that, though?  The Vikes’ strategy – ratchet up the sentiment, and then threaten to pull all of that out and go to LA (without threatening it directly, since it’d be a stupid idea for the NFL, and anyone who isn’t blinded by sentiment knows it) – was a masterpiece of cynical PR arm-twisting.  Also loathsome.

Nienow repeats some of the fiscal cautionary notes that many of us have been sounding for months:

In order to pay for the stadium, charitable gaming will need to more than double. To raise enough revenue, charitable gambling will have to increase about 130 percent over current levels. That increased level of charitable gambling will then have to be maintained for 30 years. Put that into the context of reality: Charitable gambling decreased 31 percent over 10 years.

You can see we are bucking a negative trend with hopes that we will reverse the trend, increase gambling by much more than double and then keep up that level of gambling for three decades. When this mechanism proves unsustainable and short on revenue, you the taxpayer will be on the hook to pay the stadium bills.

When that happens, it will be money taken directly from education, health care and other services we provide, to pay for the stadium.

Oddly, the governor and mainstream media were very, very quiet about this “feature” of the stadium “deal”.

Another provision in the law is not even for the Vikings stadium-refurbishing Target Center. Minneapolis residents recently added a requirement to their city charter requiring a public vote before the city spends more than $10 million fixing a sports arena. This law eliminates that expressed will of the people.

If today we can ignore their will, tomorrow it can be yours. That’s a dangerous precedent.

And it’s just a matter of time before the next major league franchise will be wanting new digs.

XCel is over fifteen and pushing twenty, after all; Target Center is twenty and change; “renovations” aside, both of those clubs will be demanding new stadiums before too long.

And their idiot fans will put on their jerseys and their wolf masks and mob the capitol and demand that the next bunch of gullible weak-kneed “moderate” saps do the will of the team and the Strib.

My question was always “If we don’t stop this organized larceny of the public largesse, who will?  If not us, who?”

Nienow, and most of the freshman class of Republicans, voted to let the 1% pay for their own real estate upgrade, and this blog thanks them.

Read the whole thing.

And get ready.  Because I figure we’re less than a decade away from the next such campaign.

(NOTE:  Kudos to Mr. D, who – to the best of my knowledge – coined the term “Helga Braid Nation”).

To: Minnesota Vikings
From:  Mitch Berg – Bears Fan
Re:  Your Fiscal Plans

Dear Mr. Wilf,

if having “Mitch Berg” come to your new bit of political swag stadium and spend money on user fees, or going to some pull tab machine to lose a pre-planned amount of money to pay for the stadium improvements to your investment on the public dime is in any part of your plans, please subtract from your plans appropriately.  Not going to happen.  You will not see one voluntary dime from me.

(I was going to add “If any of my legislators vote for this bit of legislative larceny, I’ll work tirelessly to remove their lame asses”, but I think you know I’m “represented” by Sandy Pappas and Rhea Montgomery, so I’ll be working tirelessly against them anyway).

I’ll be at Alary’s with the Bears fans.  That’s a private sector business.

Unless they demand money from the state to pay for improvements to their real estate.   Then I’ll tube them too.

The Vikings may suck, they may in the Super Bowl.  But you, Zygi, will never voluntarily get a dime from me.

That is all.

To: The Entire American Left
From: Mitch Berg, non-spokesman for The Entire American Right
Re: Kudos

Dear Entire American Left,

No, no, I absolutely beg of you all – please, please please…:

• Don’t ramp up your recent re-declaration of the war on the law-abiding gun owner!  Please don’t parade an endless, well, parade of long-discredited chanting heads in front of your compliant media to throw rocks at guns and gun laws.  Don’t keep attacking “Stand Your Ground” so long that we have to wheel out the stats that show that “Stand Your Ground” has been, lefty narrative aside, a national success.  Please don’t keep doing this.  Please.
• Indeed, whatever you do, don’t double and triple down on your push to roll back advances in civil liberties in re the law-abiding citizen’s right to bear arms.  If there’s anything that will destroy the conservative movement in this election, it’s having the Ira Glasses and Bob Garfields and Keri Millers of the world mobilized against the Second Amendment.
• Whatever you do, I beg you, please don’t keep alienating males of all ethnic backgrounds!  That “war on women” that all men are supposedly fighting?  That’ll be electoral gold for ya!
• And please, please, don’t keep making your “vision for America” something that makes more sense as a “Vision for France”.  Americans love that kind of thing.

Please, lefties.  Don’t keep doing any of that.  It’ll just destroy us this November.

That is all.

To: Ron Paul Supporters, especially in the 4th Congresisonal District
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Your Shot At Making A Real Difference

All,

Some of you know me.  I’m Mitch Berg.  And long before I had a blog, and even longer before I hosted a talk show, and longer-still before I got heavily involved in “establishment” party politics, I was a Libertarian, with a big “L”:.  I even ran for office as a big-“L” Libertarian  – and won a moral, if not literal, victory.

I support liberty.  I also support being in a position to actually affect policy, rather than being an eternal protest-voter.  All of your chanting and zeal witthin the GOP are of no value – zero, nada, zilch – if you don’t have the ability to actually affect policy in the world outside the party.  And while having your guy win the presidency would do that, you also need to push candidates with your worldview into the US House and Senate, Governors and state constitutional offices, state Legislators and Senators, the county commission, city hall, the school board – the stuff you actually have to win if you want the government to, y’know, audit the Fed and stuff.

Which is why I endorsed Paul – Rand Paul, that is – last winter.  Libertarian purism, like any kind of purism, is a fun self-indulgence – and like any self-indulgence, it will have no affect on society around you.

So I have no beef with libertarianism.  I don’t even have so much a beef with Ron Paul, either.  I approve of many of the issues he runs on.  The stuff he wrote 30 years ago is a big problem – don’t kid yourself.  But I want to support him, or at least what he stands for.

The problem, I’m sorry to say, is many of you, his supporters.  Part of it is that so many of you do in fact propose using the power of the executive branch in a way not a lot different than liberals propose using the judicial branch – as a cudgel.

But the bigger part is that, for too many of you, Ron Paul is a personality cult.  I’ve run into too many Paul supporters who support Paul, but can barely articulate what he stands for; indeed, I do a better job of speaking for what Paul believes than they do.

Worse?  Just like four years ago, you flooded GOP precinct caucuses, and are in the process of flooding the BPOU Conventions, and trying to push your delegates on to the CD, State and (you hope) National conventions.  And that’s fine; that’s how the process works.

What’s “worse” is that, like four years ago, so very very very very very many of you will never be seen again after your next round of conventions.  You’ll show up, do your bit for Ron Paul – but not the GOP – and disappear, likely not to be seen again.  There are some exceptions – but they are rare.  Your commitment is to Ron Paul, not to the GOP, even in the context of “Changing the party into a more-libertarian institution in the long term” – with which I’d be completely on board.

And so those of us who have committed to the party – some of you call us “the establishment”, which makes me laugh, since I’ve been a libertarian insurgent in the party for 12 years now, and being “the establishment” means “campaign after campaign of door-knocking, phone-calling and lit-dropping – do feel a bit of resentment, like when you cook a big dinner and some stranger eats the whole thing and doesn’t even say thanks.

Anyway, I’m not here to bag on all you Ronulans.  I’m here, actually, to propose a win-win solution; you get to push liberty, the GOP gets to make inroads in the arena of actually changing policy in a meaningful way.

We have a big opportunity in the Fourth Congressional District.  I’ll take a moment to remind you what the Fourth CD is, since a disturbing number of you Paul supporters have little concept of politics down-ticket from the Presidency.  It’s Betty McCollum’s Congressional District:

It’s been controlled by big-government stooges from the DFL for over sixty years now.

But the latest round of redistricting made it a lot more competitive.  It used to be pretty much Saint Paul – a 70-30 statist-DFL district.  But redistricting added in a bunch of the more-conservative, more liberty-friendly East Metro, including thousands of people who moved to Lake Elmo, Woodbury, Stillwater and Afton to get away from the DFL and the rot they bring.

Now, Tony Hernandez is currently the candidate running for the GOP nomination in the 4th CD.  I’ve interviewed him a couple of times – and the language he uses is the kind of thing that should make you Paul supporters (and me) happy to support him.  Big on liberty, shrinking government – most of the Ron Paul elevator pitch is in there.   Before redistricting, he might have been looking at a 65-35 campaign, if he was lucky.

Now?  The odds are not nearly so quixotic.  With a little luck and a ton of work, it’s doable.

So here’s the deal, Paul supporters; if all of you turn out between now and the election with as much enthusiasm and whiz and vinegar in support of Tony Hernandez – who likely will get nominated, as opposed to Paul – and work your asses off alongside all us “establishment” Republicans?  We might just pull off a miracle.

No, bigger than that.

And not just a miracle in terms of sending Betty McCollum back to work as a receptionist at Alliance for a Better Minnesota; not just a miracle in upending sixty years of statist big-government representation in the 4th CD.

It’ll be a miracle in terms that matter much more, both to you Paul supporters and to the GOP; you’ll have done some real, palpable good in bringing your beliefs to bear in a way that can actually affect policy.

If you’re interested in helping out?  I’ll see you at the conventions.  We’ll have a great time. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and we’ll have fun doing it.

If you’re not? If you’re one of those dolts who believes that by staying home on election day because your candidate didn’t get nominated you actually “send a message” anyone will care about?  It’s not true, by the way – politics, especially at the grassroots level, reflects the will of those who show up.  Not just once, mind you, but every month, every election.  Anyway – yeah, I’ll be working against you.  Totally.

Whaddya say?

That is all.

To: News Department, KMSP-TV (“Fox Nine”)
From: Mitch Berg, very occasional viewer
Re:  A Warning

To whom it may concern,

I don’t watch a lot of TV news – but for whatever reason, I do wind up watching your morning news; it does carry a fair amount of local news, and yeah, I like Marler’s weather.  So sue me.

But I had your 9PM news on last  night.  I noticed that you had jumped on the national “Trayvon Martin” bandwagon with both feet.  That’s understandable – it bled, so it led.

I could go over some of the points of your coverage that were, er, squishy – but that’s really not why I’m writing.

I noticed that you were very prominently using Heather Martens as a source for your coverage.  Martens, you note, is the “Executive Director” of “Protect Minnesota”.  If you check a little bit, you might also find she may very well be the sole member of “Protect Minnesota”; if there are half a dozen members, you might want to try to vet them, because I’ll lay odds that most of them are ringers from the Second Amendment movement.   The late Joel Rosenberg used to tell stories of going to Heather Martens’ meetings and finding that every single person at the gathering other than Martens was a Second Amendment activist.    At any rate – it’s not a “group”; it’s a checkbook advocacy front.  It’s also the third name Martens has been through in the past ten years.  For most of the past decade, “they” were “Citizens For A “Safer” Minnesota”; before that, they were something like “Gun-Free Minnesota” or “Minnesota Without Guns” or something like that; I’ve forgotten, but let’s be honest, so have you.  They keep getting shredded in the marketplace of ideas;  they keep having to change their name.

Anyway, my point is this – if Heather Martens says it, it’s most likely wrong.  I was going to say “it’s most likely a lie”, and that is the truth, but I’m trying to be all calm and measured here.

No, seriously; have me on one of your debate segments – if she’ll agree to come on against me.  I’ve shredded everything she’s said and written for a decade now.  There is not even a faded patina of fact in a single utterance she makes.

Just saying – while there are lots of things to be written about the Trayvon Martin case, and even some about Minnesota’s proposed Stand Your Ground Bill (although most of your other sources on that subject are also lying hacks), Heather Martens is not the one you should be going to to find them.

Presuming, of course, “covering the news” is your goal, rather than “fluffing the narrative”.

I just thought you should know.

Have your people call my people – or the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, of course – if you ever want the whole story, complete with real facts.

That is all.

To: Certain leftybloggers who’ve appointed themselves as “FACT CHECKERS”
From: Mitch Berg, the most factual blogger there is
Re: Cough it up.

To…well, you know who  you are.

You’ve posited yourself as a “FACT CHECK”-er.  Fair enough, we all have our niche.

So let’s see if you can fill “your” niche, here.

During the debate over the “Stand Your Ground” bill, you repeatedly called the Cornish bill “crap” legislation.  You said that it’d lead to all sorts of problems.   You said it not once, but several times.

I asked, every time, for you to elaborate.  You didn’t.  I’m sure it’s an oversight.

So in your capacity as “FACT CHECK”-er, please tell us:

1. How, exactly, “Stand Your Ground” is “crap” legislation.  And by this, I mean, in which of the 30 states that have “Castle” laws, “Stand Your Ground” laws, or both, has the crime rate risen as a result of the passage of the law?
2. What, in legal terms, does “Stand  Your Ground” mean?  I mean, in your own words.  This one shouldn’t be difficult; I’ve explained it numerous times in this blog.
3. In your own words, what are the real, real-world and legal consequences of these laws?  Please cite examples – don’t just quote from chanting-point blogs that you agree with.
4. You ascribed the bill to the American Legislative Exchange Commission”, aka “ALEC”, AKA “the boogeyman”.  Please substantiate that this bill – which has been in the works in Minnesota in one form or another since 2006 – has any connection to ALEC.   (Thanks to Learned Foot for the reminder).
5. You also claimed that this bill was there to serve some un-named profit motive.  Please describe who “profits” from a change in the presumption of innocence int eh elements of a self-defense claim?  (The only financial impact would seem to be lowering the demand for defense attorneys).  (Thanks, again, to Learned Foot for the reminder).

To: Dave Senjem, Kurt Zellers and the rest of the Legislative GOP Caucuses
From: Mitch Berg, Conservative Pugilist Without Portfolio
Re: WTF?

I was talking with a fairly prominent GOP/conservative activist the other day.  He noted that some of you are getting squishy on some core conservative issues – specifically “Right To Work”.

You’re nervous about the amount of money the “labor” movement is going to spend against against you this fall if you pursue this issue.

My question:  If not now, when?  The “labor” movement is spread incredibly thin this year; they’re fighting “Right to Work” in a slew of states, all of them “must-wins” for them.  They have a lot of ill-gotten money, it’s true – but they’ll be playing whack-a-mole in a whole bunch of legislatures.  Next session, and 2014, they will not be.

You were sent to Saint Paul in an epic reversal of fortune from the previous two cycles; you went from plucky but almost irrelevant minority to solid majority in one election.

I’m going to suggest to you that the voters didn’t do that because of anything connoted with the term “Republican Party of MInnesota”, or because they wanted Lori Sturdevant to approve of you.  They threw out the Democrats because you took a courageous stance on the stump, and convinced the voters that they didn’t want Democrats passing the laws.

They did it because the Cauci proposed to change things in this state, and the voters believed them.

So deliver.

That is all.

To:  Chief Barney Fife, Dwight Schrute, Frank Burns, David Kolb, Champlin Police Department
From: Mitch Berg, Mere Peasant.
Re:  Do They Only GIve You One Bullet?

Chief Kolb – one of the Metro area DFL’s pet cops – had to say in testifying before the Senate’s bipartisan vote in favor of Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill yesterday:

“This bill provides a loophole for a defense of what I would call cold-blooded murder,” said Champlin Police Chief David Kolb of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association.

Kolb recounted being 10 years old and sneaking onto a neighbor’s south Minneapolis property to steal apples from a tree.

Based on the proposal, “now the property owner can use force, and even deadly force, against that 10-year-old apple thief,” Kolb said. “You can see the disconnect here with reality.”

Indeed, Chief Kolb, we can.  The disconnect with reality is like a rhetorical taser to the groin..

Would that 10 year old Davie Kolb have been a “Reasonable Threat of Death or Substantial Bodily Harm” to that property owner – where “Reasonable” means “a jury would buy it?”  If someone in Champlin shot a ten year old kid who was stealing apples, would the prosecution today hinge on the failure to retreat?  Or perhaps the fact that the property owner was under no lethal threat whatsoever, and that lethal force was utterly unjustified?  How, precisely, would that change with the passage of Cornish’s law?

Would that 10 year old Kolb lad’s actions have justified, to that reasonable cop, prosecutor and juror, the use of lethal force, notwithstanding the exact location of the incident?

If so, then why are you alive, not to mention a cop, today?

If not, then I think the citizens of Champlin might wanna do a quick review of their chief of police’s investigative skills, knowledge of the law, and – given his apparent willingness to misrepresent the law when the metro DFL asks him to – his priorities..

That is all.

MBerg

(Via regular commenterTerry)

To: President Obama
From: Mitch Berg, Mere Citizen
Re: Our Stature In The World

Dear Mr. President,

Maybe if you bowed deeper and more vigorously, you could fix this little mess.

That is all.

PS:  Please ask Rep. Ellison if he’ll call for not destroying all Jews now?  Just an idea.