Tag Archives: Erin Maye Quade

Show Me The Pro-Lifer, EMQ Will Show You The Crime

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“Pregnancy Resource Centers” attempt – and succeed with gratifying regularity – at convincing women and couples considering abortion to carry their children to term. In many/most cases, they offer post-birth financial and emotional support.

It’s in stark contrast to Planned Parenthood, which aborts the fetuses, collects whatever money they can, and sends the patient on their way.

In other words, heretical desecration of the secular religion’s most holy sacrament, abortion.

Erin Maye Quade, DFL Senator from Apple Valley, wants only to feed more flesh into the maw of the One True Faith:

“I would love to eminent domain all 98 of these crisis pregnancy centers and turn them into affordable housing for people who do have children,” said Sen. Maye Quade. “I would love to turn them into food banks and diaper banks and formula banks. Like, these are things that actually support people having children when they decide they would like to have children, and everything that crisis pregnancy centers are doing is not that. None of it is that.”

It’s downright disturbing, the hatred the pro-infanticide mob feels for these centers:

Honestly, Apple Valley – what’s your problem?

Retirement Planning

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I think this’d be what the kids today call “saying the quiet part out loud”…

…except it’s really saying the part they keep yelling at the top of their lungs, even louder, really.

Senator Erin Maye Quade thinks parents shouldn’t be bringing their children up with any sense of basic morality when it comes to sex:

That’s right – just cast them out into the world, and let the teachers and Planned Parenthood do the teaching for you.

Which will help keep the meat coming through the doors at Planned Parenthood, who most generously supports her political career (and, one suspects, will be providing amply for her when she one day “retires from politics”).

Berg’s Seventh Law Comes Screaming Back From The 1930s

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I was warned that if I voted Republican, there’d be an explosion of Fascist sympathizers.

And they were right.

Berg’s 7th Law is called a “law” for a reason.

Senator Ron Latz – an anti-gun zealot about whom I’ve never, not once, said anything good or complimentary – came out in support of Israel finishing the job of removing a terrorist group that has spent decades training its children to hate Jews, and is currently not only deliberately using civilians as human shields, but bragging about it.

And his DFL colleagues were not amused:

The DFL responded “Nuh-uh” in defense of a group that has created a generation that in fact is trained to venerate killing Jews. Because the truth about “Palestinians” is to DFLers what sunlight and garlic is to vampires.

The Senate DFL Caucus went full-on fascist symp in response:

CAIR is trying to put the squeeze on.

I’d say this makes a good electoral “hit list”, although of this entire list of genocide symps, the closest to one to a “contestable” seat is Erin Maye Quade. One hopes Apple Valley does better. I, for one, am going to do my bit to make sure they remember this.

Just to be clear, this is what the MNDFL supports. It’s a long thread.

If you happen to know a “progressive” who supports this mob, push their snout to the screen and make them read the whole thing. :

Erin Maye Quade Props Up The Overton Window With Berg’s 24th Law

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Senator Erin May Quade assumes DFL voters aren’t that bright, critical or well-informed.

She was commenting about the GOP Debate from Wednesday:

Now, if you haven’t been in a coma or getting your news from the Strib for the past 20 years, you know:

  • It’s families of color that use most vouchers, because they want them, because public schools most often fail their kids, and b)
  • it’s the Left that’s re-segregating society – including with public schools.

Maye Quade is counting on reaching “voters” know don’t know and wouldn’t care if they did.

Four Out Of Five Red Sox Fans Say “The Yankees Suck”

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Senator Erin Maye Quade continues to confirm my thesis that DFL politicians count on their voters being – let’s be diplomatic – smug, but uninformed and uncritical.

The Alliance Defending Freedom is “literally” “designated” as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is – and I know 95% of your readers know this – paid to defame conservative groups, leaders and thought.

It’s high time this behavior be commemorated in a Berg’s Law.

Common Cause

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A friend of the blog emails:

Reading this news report at Alpha News, I am struck by this question: Why don’t conservatives make common cause with the local Muslims?

They want good educations for their children, just like Moderates, Conservatives, and Christians do.

Muslims by and large are much more puritanical about these sorts of things and very specifically do not want infidels teaching this spiritually debasing poison to their daughters.

What if Senator Wesenberg and Rep Walter Hudson were to personally approach Imams in their district and statewide for their input on this issue. The Qur’an highlights the community of faith between followers of monotheistic religions (Jews, Christians and Muslims), and refers to them collectively as Ahl al-Kitab ‘People of the Book‘, a phrase that is used frequently in the Qur’an and Prophetic hadith. 

Maybe the fastest way to do this would be for the GOP to amend the education bill with a requirement that ALL MN schools, public, private, and charter be required to have these four books available for their students; “It’s Perfectly Normal,” “Sex is a Funny Word,” “It’s So Amazing,” and “It’s Not the Stork.”. I’ll bet that would shake some peaches out of the trees.

Better yet, someone tell Erin Maye Quade or Leigh Finke to push the amendment.

I bet they’d do it.

As to making common cause with Muslims, especially ones that aren’t tied at the hip to the DFL? The time is long overdue.

The New Democrat Strategery

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2018: afraid that the hyper-progressive Erin Murphy/Erin Maye Quade ticket will lose the governor‘s office, the coterie of progressive plutocrats that bankroll the DFL prop up retrofitted “moderate“ Tim Walz as a sort of Danish-monarchy-style figurehead for the hyper-progressive troika of Peggy Flanagan, Ryan Winkler and Melissa Hortman (all of whom are essentially mouthpieces for Aleta Messinger And Michael Bloomberg). With the help of the invariably subservient Minnesota media, they retain the governors office.

2020: Fearing the electoral consequences of nominating socialist Bernie Sanders, progressive cabal appropriates elderly, addled Joe Biden as their “Moderate“mouthpiece and, in effect, Trojan horse. They win a bitter election, and go on to drop all “moderate“ pretenses even before the inauguration.

2024: I don’t want to keep seeing the same hands, here.

Urban Progressive Privilege Means Never Needing A Moral Compass

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Erin Maye Quade – who, you may recall, came within an epic suck up to the progressive movement of being Minnesota’s lieutenant governor – had this to say about Tim Scott’s rebuttal to the presidents… whatever that was Wednesday night:

This, on top of Ryan WInkler’s “Uncle Tom” jape at one of the most accomplished jurists of any race in US history, and of course the “Uncle Tim” slur earlier this week, is enough to make any moral creature ask…

…what is the Democratic Party going to do about its racism problem?

UPDATE: I’ve “cloned” this post from yesterday. You’ll see why in a moment.

To Recap

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We had a thorough discussion about Ryan Winkler’s tweet and established
that Democrats have a strong personal belief, perhaps even a moral
conviction, that public safety is a government responsibility.

We had a thorough discussion about a lawsuit against the City and
established that when citizens suffer because government abandoned its
responsibility, the citizens have no recourse against the government
under existing law.

So the obvious question is: Will Ryan Winkler introduce legislation
creating a right for citizens to sue the government for failing its
responsibility to protect them?  And will the new law be retroactive to
cover the riots?

Ryan Winkler talked the talk, but will he walk the walk?

Joe Doakes

There may be no more superficial person in Minnesota politics than Ryan Winkler.

Other than Erin Maye Quade. And Ilhan Omar.

OK, and probably a few others.

But you get the point.

Civil Society And Its Abusers

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One of domestic abusers most insidious forms of brainwashing is telling, and eventually convincing, their partners that the abuse is partly, or all, their own fault. “You provoked me”. “You shouldn’t have said __“. “You’re as much to blame as me. Maybe more”.

We’ll come back to that.

Years ago, I was at an event – political convention, election night coverage, something along those lines [1], in my capacity as a blogger and talk show host. I was hobnobbing with Big Minnesota Media.

As I was walking back from a concession stand, one of the Big Media people, someone who doesn’t have a byline or get seen on camera, walked up to me, and furtively whispered “Hey – PLEASE don’t tell anyone, but I’m a huge fan of you guys’s show. I’m a conservative. But I gotta keep it quiet. Anyway, keep up the good work”.

And then, as suddenly as the exchange began, it ended. The person peeled away and went back to work, making sure not to be seen talking to me. I felt like a Western reporter in East Berlin or Warsaw, in the seventies, getting a furtive, samizdat message from a covert dissident who was on the lookout for the Stasi or ZOMO.

This person – a successful media professional – was worried about being “canceled”. For being a conservative.

This was years ago – long before “Cancel Culture” was a term.

Last week, Erin Maye Quade, a former state rep and Lieutenant Governor candidate, tweeted this:

We covered this last week.

“People who rail against “cancel culture” are actually just upset about a culture of consequences.”
Is this just an isolated example of a person with an invincible sense of Urban Progressive Privilege #progsplaining people (“actually…”) to accept some premise that flies directly in the face of what they see with their own eyes?

Sadly, no.

A few weeks back, “progressive” theology site Patheos posted this article: “No, You’re Not Being Canceled Because You’re Conservative“

The article makes one plausible but misguided point – “conservatives and Christians do it too” – using the examples of John McCain (who got attacked for bucking conservative orthodoxy, and got a political response from people in a political party that has political stances they argue about – seeing a theme, yet?), and the Dixie Chicks (an example they undercut later in the piece). Nothing about non-political people losing non -political jobs, oddly enough.

The other points are worse.

The author posits “Either you’re for the free market or you’re not” – thereby cutting his own “Dixie Chicks” argument off at the knees. And he finishes with a slightly more elegant version of Maye Quade’s bit of #progsplaining – “the stuff you’re being canceled over is neither Christian nor Conservative”, holding that everyone that’s been “canceled” has gotten it because they peddle QAnon theories or are Kloset Klansmen.

And the author doesn’t even address the notion that dishing out consequences to a person’s personal and vocational life over political differences is appropriate “consequences” for any mainstream political view. Indeed, the Patheos article makes the “hear no evil / see no evil / speak no evil” monkey face and ignores the real issue entirely. To this “progressive” Christian author, it’s a non issue.

Which must’ve come as news to the conservative professors, and in the past 20 years teachers and school administrators who’ve been hounded into silence, or out of academia, as a “consequence” of having a considered worldview based on Friedman rather than Alinsky.
Or to the conservative students who are bullied into silence or exile as a “consequence” for dissenting from academia’s oppressive leftist slant.

Or the actors, artists, journalists and other soft-skills professionals and craftspeople who worry, legitimately, about the “consequences” to their career of being “outed”. Like the person in my story at the top of this piece. They worried about being slandered, pilloried and ousted from a decent job in their field, for *being a mainstream Republican and conservative” , albeit not even an activist – something that wasn’t considered “thoughtcrime” 20 years earlier, when that person entered the field.

Or Gina Carano, whose views leading to her defenestration from Disney have been misrepresented by the Left’s noise machine to the point of slander. Carano did *not* say Republicans today were like the Jews of the 1930s. She said – quite correctly – that tyrants succeed by turning neighbor against neighbor. That is Totalitarianism 101 , a point made in fiction by Orwell and in history by Solzhenitzyn, among many others.

Or…me.

I get some flak for my blog and my show – the occasional demented stalker, no big deal. But I’ve also gotten harassed by ex-co-workers who learned about my alter ego life [2]. And there’ve been two jobs in the past ten years where managers with highly progressive views that they were (significantly) unafraid to espouse in the office gave off muted but pointed indications that my contracts were ending because while my work was just fine, even superlative, my views – which they had had to expend some significant effort to find, since not even a whiff of them came out in the office – were not.

So yes – “cancel” culture is about consequences. In most cases, consequences for principled, but not infrequently silent, dissent from a dominant world view.
And the current narrative – from Erin Maye Quade, Patheos, and much of the rest of the dominant culture in media, academia, education and Big Tech – that “you got canceled because you provoked it and have it coming?”

That’s gaslighting. It’s a key tactic of abusers – among many others that have become commonplace weapons in today’s culture war:

Is it any different from the tactics that abusers use to shut their partners up?
Convince me.

Good luck.

[1] I’m profusely concealing this person’s identity, to this day. Don’t even ask.

[2] Which I keep scrupulously out of the workplace – literally, I’ve never mentioned my radio or blog lives once over the past 19 years. In that time, I’ve had two people, both fans, ask me “aren’t you the Mitch Berg that’s on the radio”. And my response, every time, is “There IS a Mitch Berg who does that. But he’d never talk about that on company time”. Every single time.

UPDATE: Jenn at Redhead Ranting has a personal take on the whole thing.

This Is What Urban Progressive Privilege Looks Like [1]

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Every spousal abuser in history: “Yeah, sure, I hit you. But you provoked me – again. So you’re at least partly to blame. Maybe mostly. I mean, actions have consequences, baby…”

Big Left’s latest line – through one of its local mouthpieces, former Reprentative and Lt. Gov. Candidate and Urban Progressive Privilege poster child, Erin Maye Quade:

This statement ticks off nearly half of the traits one associates with someone with a serious personality disorder.

And before anyone stars a’yappin’ – I’m not saying Ms. Maye Quade suffers from any psychological illness.

Merely the movement she’s part of.

[1] Not to mention a culture of abuse, and a serious collective group personality disorder.

2+2=Road Salt

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Got any questions?

Don’t bring ’em to Erin Maye Quade, former MN state representative, 2018 Lieutenant Governor candidate, and (along with former commenter Dog Gone and William Davis) one of the Minnesota DFL’s most imortant intellectual thought leaders.

Because, being a thought leader, she’s got the answers:

So a trans woman, having experienced none of growing up as a bio-female, can not only appropriate a lifetime of bio-female experience, but in so doing scoop up all the scholarships – which, I hasten to add, are what put a lot of working-class bio-girls a shot at a higher education (for what little that seems to be worth these days)?

Seems a little…misogynistic?

My daughter grew up playing basketball in elementary school and junior high with, and against, a bunch of very talented, largely black girls from Frogtown, the Midway and the North End.

Some of these girls, even at 10-13 years old, were already working hard on their games, in hopes of getting scholarships.

I’m dying to see how Ms. Maye Quade would explain to those working-class girls how not only were their scholarships going to bio-boys, but they’d best shut up about it if they ever wanted to do lunch at the Saint Paul Grill again.

I’m just waiting for a bunch of bio-guys who couldn’t quite make the NBA, and are tired of playing in Italy and Poland, to “transition” and dominate the living s**t out of the WNBA and Women’s Soccer.

Misleading Advertising

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In a state with functioning truth in advertising laws, the DFL would be forced the change its name from the “Democrat Farmer Labor” to the “Democrat Public Employee” party.

The DFL’s numbers among private-sector labor unions have been eroding for decades. That’s the subject of another post.

But the DFL’s support in rural Minnesota has pretty much collapsed. The DFL lost the First CD, and likely will not get it back anytime soon. The 7th – aka “East Dakota” – has always been a positive GOP district for every office other than state Representative; Trump took the district by nearly a three-digit margin. And if Colin Peterson ever retires, it will never vote DFL again. Ever.

And the reversal in the 8th – as the DFL, a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the Metro public employee/big progressive money/environmentalist racket, continues its generations-long stomping on the mining industry – appears to be nearly complete; the district, a DFL sinecure up to the last decade and blue enough to toss Chip Cravaack for Rick Nolan’s re-animated head in a jar, went for Trump by two digits and sent Pete Stauber to Congress.

So in the parts of Minnesota where people respond “the Met what ?” when the Met Council is brought up, the DFL is about as politically current and on point as a Beach Boys tour.

Which perhaps is behind Speaker Melissa Hortman’s faintly desperate-sounding kumbaya op-ed last week in the Strib, “Minnesota’s Urban-Rural Divide is a Myth“.

Minnesotans have a lot in common with each other. We care about our neighbors and our shared future. We want to see everyone succeed in our communities. No matter our differences, including where we live, we all want good jobs that can support our families, good schools for our children, clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and affordable, high-quality health care.

MIners in CD8 might well be wondering when that concern for their “good jobs” is going to materialize.  

And given that Democrats in Minnesota as nationwide are quintupling down on the same identity politics that performed so well for HIllary Clinton three years ago, this next paragraph should insult the intelligence of even Hortman’s base, to say nothing of readers with critical thinking skills:

There are those who seek to divide us. Some people seek to score political points by contending that there is an “us” and a “them” in Minnesota. Some people focus on what they contend divides us — whether that’s geography, race, religion, national origin or some other characteristic — rather than focusing on the values that unite us. (“Minnesota’s urban-rural divide is no lie,” July 28; “I’d like to expand on my thanks to the president,” Oct 15; “The Twin Cities don’t speak for the entire state,” Nov. 11.)

Now, I’m not going to say that the DFL has spent the last decade or so trying to create a cultural civil war between the Blue and Red parts of Minnesota, with its:

But if the D”F”L were trying to wage a cultural red-blue civil war, I’m at a loss to think about what they’d be doing differently.

But as our friend Gary Gross at Let Freedom Ring points out, the proof of the DFL’s urban-uber-alles philosophy isn’t just in their numbers, their policy, their legislative priorities or their results.

It’s in their org chart:

Of the 7-person DFL Senate leadership team, 1 person is from northwest Minnesota (Kent Eken) and another person (Tom Bakk) is from northeast Minnesota. The other 5 people (Susan Kent, who is challenging Bakk for Minority Leader, Jeffrey Hayden, Carolyn Laine, John Hoffman and Ann Rest) are from the Twin Cities.

And that’s the Senate – where the DFL has to “moderate” their approach, being in a slight minority.

And I eirect you back to their 2018 state convention, where the activists in the party advanced a “crazies-only” slate; Erin Murphy, Erin Maye-Quade for Governor and Lieutenant Governoer, Matt Pelikan for Attorney General and the rest. It remained for the DFL’s statewide voters to opt for the – this is rich – more “moderate” Tim Walz and Keith Ellison in the primaries.

Nope. No catastrophic urban focus there.

Denied!

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Last week, when a middle-aged white man was arrested for waving a gun at some Somali teenagers at a gas station, you could fairly hear the panting fro the anti-gun crowd:  “Please let it be a permit holder!  Please let it be a permit-holder“, they prayed in fractured Unitarian.

Alas, they were denied:

Investigators with the Eden Prairie Police Department applied for a warrant to search Johnson’s property and motor vehicle last week.

The application said investigators have learned Johnson applied for and was granted a firearms permit to purchase in 2011, but as of last week, he does not have a permit to carry in Minnesota. The application also states that he was the suspect in a 2011 assault in which an individual alleged Johnson threatened him with a knife and a gun.

But that case was cleared exceptionally due to lack of victim cooperation.

Now – we can allow for the fact that there is going to be some “he said / they said” in a story like this.  But if this story is accurate, it’d seem Johnson is qualified to be a great example of how not to use a firearm in lawful self-defense (emphasis added)

According to the application, several of the teens reported seeing Johnson pull out a black handgun during the altercation, and begin waving it around during an incident captured on both surveillance video and cell phone video. One reported he felt threatened and believed Johnson was going to begin shooting at him…He too reportedly recorded part of the incident on his cell phone. The application states that video does not show Johnson removing or displaying the handgun, but that he can be heard yelling at the group of teens.

“Just give me a reason,” he can allegedly be heard to say. “Just give me a god damn reason.”

If you’re asking them to give you a reason, a jury’s gonna look at that “immediate danger of death or great bodily harm” requirement for a self-defense claim, and laugh out loud with the judge’s tacit blessing.

But – let’s watch for Nancy Nord Bence and Erin Maye Quade to claim he is a permittee.

Lie First, Lie Always: Nancy Nord Bence Goes Full-Bore Ghoul (CORRECTION: It Was Erin Maye Quade)

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I went to a League of Women Voters’ panel forum on “Gun Violence” in Burnsville last night.

It was actually a fairly even-handed forum; the LWV volunteer who did the initial setup of the topic, “Emily” (didn’t catch the last name) gave an incredibly even-handed presentation on the facts of the “gun debate” – most of which made Reverend Nord Bence visibly hot under the collar, as an even-handed factual appraisal makes her look completely detached from reality.

The forum included Rev.  Nord Bence and soon-to-be former legislator and no-doubt soon-to-be non-profit exec Erin Maye Quade, against Bryan Strawser of the MN Gun Owners Caucus and Rep. Steve Drazkowski of Mazeppa, one of the stronger pro RKBA voters in the legislature.

It went about as expected:   Nord Bence’s record of never having made a statement about guns, gun owners, gun laws, gun facts or gun history that is simultaneously original, substantial and true remains undisturbed.

And she showed the sense of entitlement during the forum, repeatedly interrupting Strawser and Drazkowski, so often and flagrantly that she LWV organizers had to chide her (to a round of audience applause).

But at one point, Bence’s Maye Quade’s bully-girl fabulism collided with her inner ghoul:   when Rep. Drazkowski noted that the best response to a bad guy with a gun was a good guy with a gun,, Bence Maye Quade responded by telling a story about a man who’d responded to a violent attack, and gotten shot for his troubles.

I had to go find  that story    Here it is.    And as usual, it shows that Bence and Maye Quade, like all gun control activists, is lying, wouldn’t know context if it bit them, and are a ghouls to boot.

When police arrived after reports of a shooting over the weekend at a bar outside Chicago, witnesses say Jemel Roberson, a 26-year-old security guard who worked there, had already subdued the alleged assailant, pinning him to the ground.

Adam Harris, who was at Manny’s Blue Bar in Robbins at the time of the incident on Sunday, told WGN-TV that Roberson was holding “somebody on the ground with his knee in his back, with his gun in his back” when officers from neighboring Midlothian got there early Sunday.

Midlothian Police Chief Daniel Delaney said that’s when one of his officers “encountered a subject with a gun” and shot him, according to a statement given to the media.

But the “subject” was Roberson, not the suspect in the bar shooting.

It’s every carry permittee’s worst nightmare – being mistaken for the bad guy when a cop,  arriving at an incident they’ve only heard about on the radio,  under life-or-death stress, decides any gun is a threat and shoots you.

Which happens.

And is vanishingly rare.

And appears not to have even been the issue in this incident – the gun wasn’t Roberson’s so he wasn’t the good guy with the gun; he was the good guy who seized the gun from the actual perp.

For Bence Maye Quade to use this episode to try to impugn the “Good Guy With A Gun” idea is loathsome.  Clearly “shame” is a lot to ask after a career as a serial liar.

I guess we should expect no better for this used car saleswoman in Lutheran minister’s robes.

CORRECTION:  I was wrong.  It was Erin Maye Quade.  Doesn’t change the point.

October – But No Surprise

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From his initial eledtion in the Democrat wave of 2006, until the 2016 election was all over but the shouting, Tim Walz got, and earned, an “A” rating from the NRA, and good marks from state 2nd Amendment human rights groups as well.

You could see the change, though, as the 2016 campaign wound down; he started cuddling up to the gun grabbers.

Tim Walz, cuddling up to the Dreamsicles and Moms Want action in 2016.
Pass this photo around.

It made no sense – until you remember he was starting his gubernatorial run.

And for any DFLer, the road to the governor’s mansion starts with convincing the bat-splittle crazy Metro DFL that you hate guns worse than rape.

He tried to play both sides, of course; while he spooned with the gun grabbers, even picking lifetime F-rated Peg Flanagan – one of the most “progressive” reps in the House – for a running mate, he also claimed to the press that he, given his shooter bona fides, could serve to “bring both sides together”.

Which did not amuse the Real American movement.   I think we’d rather negotiate with Erin Maye Quade; she’s at least honest about wanting to destroy our ultimate guarantee of liberty.  Also she’s out of office.

But that’s not going to prevent the Media/DFL Complex from trying to flog the charade for the uninformed (aka “Most Democrat Voters”).

The PiPress got smokescreen duty, apparently, this week, and ran this puff piece about Walz:

Tim Walz, the Democrat with the “F” grade from the NRA, wants to ban bump stocks, expand background checks and give courts the authority to temporarily take away someone’s guns if the person is deemed a threat, as well as ban “military-style assault rifles” in Minnesota.

Jeff Johnson, the Republican with the NRA’s “A” grade and endorsement, wants none of that. He opposes any tightening of gun laws.

Election 2018Guess which of the two candidates for Minnesota governor owns more guns.

Walz. He owns three today. The Nebraska native and former Mankato High School teacher grew up with guns and was given his first at age 11.

Unmentioned:  in addition to “expanded background checks” (in reality, a gun registry) and taking guns with no due process on accusation and after ex parte hearings, he also supports an “Assault Weapons” ban.

The article is part of Walz’ effort to appeal to what Real Americans refer to as “Fudds” – people who are dovish on gun control, since nobody is talking about taking their hunting rifles or duck guns or whatever their hobby is.

Yet.

Walz is yet another “camel’s nose under the tent” DFLer – only worse, since he still tries to parlay his revoked NRA cred to appear “moderate”.

He’s the worst form of traitor.

 

As They Pour On The Vinegar, They Add A Splash Of Honey

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California proposes a “no buy list” for guns, for people who fear they might commit suicide:

Assembly Bill 1927 would allow at-risk individuals to put themselves on a voluntary no-buy list, which would prevent them from purchasing guns from a licensed dealer. The bill was approved by the Assembly on Wednesday and is now in the state Senate.

Often, people at risk of suicide are well aware of their vulnerability, especially if they have chronic mental illness. Research shows that suicide is almost always an impulsive act during acute distress. A no-buy list, which recently passed in Washington state, allows suicidal crises to pass without a gun nearby. Once the crisis passes, individuals can take themselves off the list.

How to respond?

  1. While suicide may be an impulse, I’m going to guess buying a gun on impulse to check out is rarer than Erin Maye Quade going to a NASCAR race.  People who commit suicide by firearm tend to have owned them for  years, decades, without incident.
  2. Any bets on how long it’ll stay “voluntary” if it’s passed?  I say two years, outside.

My Weekend In Duluth, Watching The Weekend In Rochester

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This past weekend was all about political conventions; for the first time in a long, long time,

The Gales Of November Came…In Spring:   When I left Saint Paul on Friday morning, it was up around 80 degrees.  When I got to Duluth two hours later, it was 47 with a wind howling off the lake.

But the cold on the first day of June was just about the only surprise.   Every one of the front runners – Jeff Johnson for Governor, Karin Housley and Jim Newberger for Senate – got the endorsement.

It wasn’t completely uneventful, of course.  All weekend, there were rumors that the Pawlenty campaign had voting shenanigans afoot – getting his delegates to vote No Endorsement, and then flip to Parrish.  There were signs early – the first ballot showed 7% “No Endorsement”.  That faded to 2% by the second ballot.

More surprising was Mary Giuliani Stevens’ showing.  The Woodbury mayor had a large, enthusiastic showing on the floor.  Scuttlebutt had it that if Johnson didn’t win on the first ballot, there’d be a huge Giuliani Stevens surge.   It didn’t pan out – Johnson won the first ballot 45/26 (with 20 going to Parrish), and extended his lead to 50/25/16 on the second ballot.  Dock a point from the rumor mill.

So given that the whole thing is going to a primary with Pawlenty, it’s probably just as well we didn’t waste a lot of effort on convention dramatics.

Especially since the other convention was providing plenty of that.

Crazy In Clinic Town:   We knew it was going to be a doozie when we read Rep. Jamie Becker Finn’s endorsement statement for Tim Walz:

With a sendoff like that, what could go wrong?

The first signs that the crazy train had pulled into the station came early in the afternoon Saturday, when the first ballot came in in the DFL Attorney General race.  Lori Swanson won the ballot – by four points, 52/48, over left-wing extremist Matt Pelikan.  Then, reportedly, Pelikan spoke to the delegates, telling them that Swanson had an “A” rating from the NRA (for all of Swanson’s liberal interventionism, she has always been solid on 2nd Amendment rights).  She reportedly dropped out of the endorsement race, leaving Pelikan to get endorsed by acclamation.

Rebecca Otto – one of the most disagreeable people in Minnesota politics – went out early, after one ballot, with 18 paltry percent.  The conversation in the press pit turned to What IT All Meant for the DFL Governor endorsement.  The conventional wisdom had been calling for a Tim Walz win, early and fast.

But after six ballots, extremist Saint Paul prog legislator Erin Murphy was pulling ahead.  After six ballots, not wanting to fight against the endorsement, Otto and Walz came out on the floor, urging a “No Endorsement” vote.  But Murphy was not to be denied.   She took the endorsement after, I forget, six or seven ballots.

And so two vital DFL seats were decided, in large part, because of current or former stances on the Second Amendment.   Let’s put a pin in that.

But we’re not done yet.

Upshot;  The DFL convention continued until Sunday – when Murphy made her big announcement; her running mate was…

…Erin Maye Quade.  A left wing extremist, whose wife is a paid organizer for Michael Bloomberg.

So the message from the DFL convention: “Don’t be silly, nobody’s coming for your guns. But we’re coming for your guns”.

DFL endorsed gubernatorial candidate Erin Murphy has never minced words about her antipathy toward civilian gun owners; her platform is a dog’s breakfast of every terrible, ineffective bit of security theater that *can not* affect crime rates *or* mass shootings. And Erin Maye Quade’s wife is a paid “Everytown” employee. Long on snark, short on reasoning, Maye Quade never saw any pointless theatrics she didn’t like.

And long-time DFL Attorney General Lori Swanson lost the DFL’s endorsement, almost like flipping a light switch, when challenger (and extreme gun grabber) Matthew Pelikan mentioned that, as liberal as Swanson is on every other issue, she’s a solid defender of the law-abiding citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. And Tim Walz lost what had been considered a sure-fire endorsement in large part because he *used to be* a strong 2nd Amendment supporter (before throwing Minnesota’s law-abiding gun owners under the bus to unsuccessfully woo the increasingly extremist DFL delegate base; even that wasn’t enough to save the endorsement.

The DFL reflects a base that is more afraid of law-abiding citizens than they are of society’s actual problems. Don’t take my word for it; look at their endorsements.

Every last one of them.

This Is What “90% Of Minnesotans” Looks Like

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After the Strib released their  propaganda poll earlier in the week, the Bloomberg-funded anti-gun criminal-safety clicque swung into gear.

As anti-gun mean girl  Erin Maye Quade (DFL Apple Valley)  staged a faux “sit in” for the cameras, “Protect” MN put out a call to action to get people down to the Capitol to support the DFLers’ little “spontaneous” tantrum,

And here’s what they did:

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“Protect” Minnesota calls in the fury! Photo courtesy Brent Armsden.

Simple fact about these polls – when you ask people who don’t know the issue a hopelessly broad question, most will say “yes” because doing something sounds better than doing nothing.

Right?

But broad questions and “Um, maybes” don’t translate into action on election day.

Or on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon:

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Photo courtesy Brent Armsden.

Now, gun rights advocates aren’t big protesters.  But hopefully we all make an exception Saturday.  The state’s gun rights groups are joining forces to hold a rally on the south steps of the Capitol.

I’m pre-recording a show so I can be there.  Hope you can make it too.

Details here.

 

Events Of A Feather

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Six years ago, Venezuela banned private firearms ownership,  via a piece of legislation that had to have sent a tingle down Linda Slocum, Erin Maye Quade, Jamie Becker-Finn and Dave Pinto’s spines.   It was done to consolidate and reinforce the control of a government that, one might suspect in concept had to have sent a tingle down Linda Slocum, Erin Maye Quade, Jamie Becker-Finn and Dave Pinto’s spines.

Of course, we know the results; socialism degenerated “unexpectedly” into thugocracy (which, being “haves” in a socialist society, wouldn’t not send a tingle down Linda Slocum, Erin Maye Quade, Jamie Becker-Finn and Dave Pinto’s spines, necessarily – socialism is a wonderful thing for the kommissars).

And here we are today.

The left would like you to consider them separate events.

They are not.

Lie First, Lie Always: Why Is Erin Maye Quade Lying?

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Last week, after the collapse of the DFL effort (for now) to ram through a couple of gun control bills (including Rep. Linda Slocum’s gun grab bill, HF 3022), the names of several DFL legislators quietly disappeared from the “jackets” – the cover sheets that accompany the bills and list the signatures of Representatives who are “co-authoring” the bills.

We’ll come back to that.

Honesty Is For Non-Patricians!:   We’ve encountered Erin Maye Quade before.  Before she was an ultra-left DFLer from Apple Valley, she worked for “The Uptake”, the far-left media outlet.  There, she got busted years ago for giggling about her ability to edit video footage to make people appear to say things they hadn’t .

She squeaked into office – where she’s become a fixture in the DFL’s shrill Gang of Four – along with Peggy Flanagan, Jamie Becker-Finn and Ilhan Omar.    She’s also married to a “Moms Want Action” paid organizer – so her anti-gun credentials would appear to be solid.

Maybe too solid.

Last week, her name disappeared as a co-author of Slocum’s gun grab bill.    When quizzed about it, she responded that her inclusion was a clerical error by House staff.

The DFL Memory Hole:   Rob Doar of the MN Gun Owners Caucus went down to the Capitol to resolve the mystery.  Was it clerical error?

He shot a video.  And unlike the younger Maye, there was no editing involved to get the truth out:

Here’s the signature (reversed from the video):

So many questions, here:

  1. Why is Erin Maye Quade lying to her constituents?
  2. Why is she distancing herself – and badly – from Rep. Slocum’s gun grab bill?
  3. Will the people of Apple Valley put up with this kind of duplicity?

Stay tuned for more.

Bad Information

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Rep. Erin Maye-Quade sent this bit out to her constituents earlier this week:

Looks familiar, doesn’t it?

It’s the same, precise set of fallacious claims made by The Reverend Nancy Nord Bence a few weeks ago.

Neither of the bills would “eliminate” the permit to carry.  That’s not the point, of course, so we’ll let that slide for now.

 

Neither bill will eliminate background checks for purchasing firearms.  Having a card saying you’ve got a clean background is more or less irrelevant; if a cop has time to see a card, they’ve got time to run your driver’s license or car’s license plates and make sure you’ve got a clean record themselves.  The carry permit does nothing but price the right to self-defense out of reach of working-class people.

And the last paragraph is gibberish.  Guns sold online have to go through a licensed firearm dealer, lest they break a slew of federal and state laws on both ends.  Every firearm sold at a gun show in Minnesota gets a background check already.  And the only thing separating a legal and illegal personal transaction is the participant’s honesty and willingness to tell the government what they’re up to.  Criminals don’t, and never will.  It’s not that complicated.

For most of us.

Rep. Maye Quade is either:

  • Grossly ininformed
  • Taking part in a disinformation campaign.

Given that Maye Quade’s wife is a field worker for the Bloombergs, I suspect the answer is “both”.

Judge, Jury And Executioner (UPDATED)

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We don’t know much about the man who shot two people at a dollar store on the mean streets of Burnsville yesterday.

And by “we”, I mean everyone but Erin Maye Quade, who promptly tweeted that the shooting proved the need for background checks.

Before any details were known.

Not only before the investigation had started, much less turned up any information, but before an arrest had been made.

She wants to represent you in the Minnesota House.

If you live in HD57A, please bring some friends to the poll and vote for Ali Jimenez-Hopper.

UPDATE:  Early, unofficial report:  the shooter is a registered sex offender who is legally barred from having guns.

Yep. That background check sure woulda done the trick.

Lie First, Lie Always: Ninnies Gonna Ninny

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Guns are a public health crisis.

Not the way anti-gun advocates claim they are, of course; gun deaths are down 50% in twenty years, and further still in places with more guns (not so much in Democrat-addled urban cesspools).  If cancer or heart disease deaths had dropped 50% in twenty years, “public health” advocates would declare a miracle.

But there is a public health problem related to guns.

It’s the mental health of uninformed, emotionally-supercharged gun haters that would seem to be the crisis.

The Bryght:  Bryan Strawser runs Bryghtpath, LLC – a business consulting firm that works with corporations on disaster preparedness, recovery, communications and security.   Strawser is also a leader of the MInnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee – which gets involved in political campaigns – and the Minnesota Gun Owners’ Caucus, which lobbies the legislature (along with the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance).  It’s a good business.

His company has an office in the Northrup King Building (NKB) complex – a 100-year-old group of warehouse and light-manufacturing buildings that were turned into offices a while back, when Northeast became hip again.  The complex rents to a number of businesses – and a warren of artists, who keep their studios in the shabby-chic-yet-affordable space the NKB offers.  The complex is not an arts collective – it’s a bit of commercial real estate – but with nearly 200 artists, studios, and small galleries, the NKB is one of the lynchpins of Northeast’s art scene.

Strawser briefly listed the Coalition and the PAC alongside Bryghtpath on his office mailbox.  He also allowed a friend (a mutual friend, as it happens) to use the space to conduct a few carry permit classes (which, for those who haven’t been, consist of lectures and Powerpoints; the actual guns used for qualification are used at the firing range).

Anyway – Strawser has run his business out of that space for a little over a year now.

Along the way, a few of the artists who rent space took notice of Strawser’s affiliations, and took umbrage.  Strawser, being a communications guy, dealt with the issue the way he usually does; inviting people down to his office to talk.  Many of them did.  Conversations were had, agreements to disagree were reached, nerves were salved to the point where Strawser and a few of his artist neighbors threw an open house to discuss the issue with the rest of the building.

And that shoulda been it.  Right?

Not Bryght:   Please.  This is Minneapolis.  A city that elects Alondra Cano to office.

Howard Christopherson is an artist in the NKB; in addition to building picture frames, he runs one of the many small studio/gallery spaces that the NKB hosts.

And last summer, he started casting aspersions about Strawser on the building’s tenant page, as well as his own Facebook account.

And he was displeased:

For 13+ years I have proudly described this building as a great place. A giant Art Building, filled with artists, creators, furniture makers and sellers along with jewelers, painters and photographers etc. I guess we now add Pro Gun People who will for some money, teach you how to conceal and carry and they will lobby the St. Paul Capital to keep the gun pipeline flowing and easy to obtain.
I am disappointed, confused and dismayed that a Gun Proponant has a studio in the same building.

And, social media being what it is, a few of the building’s other artists started kibitzing amongst themselves.

Around this time, the building’s management pointed out the obvious; Strawser was a law-abiding person, running a perfectly legal business, doing something he had every legal right and qualification to do.  Not only that, but he’d agreed to keep all carry permit training out of the building.

Not good enough for Christopherson who, to protest against the indignity of sharing a building with people who saw the world differently than he, decided to fight back with the only weapon he had; to deprive the world of his deathless and eternal art.  He sent out a mass email to his list promising to refrain from displaying during any of the building’s constant stream of arts events.  One other building tenant, Sharra Frank, has apparently opted to break her lease because of Strawser – after spurning with Victorian theatricality Strawser’s offer to sit down and discuss.

And that’s where things sat for a while.

Layers and Layers of Gatekeepers:  Enter Sheila Regan, the “arts” “reporter” for the City Pages and fairly well-known left-wing activist in the Twin Cities (including, according to some reports, a member of an anti-gun organization – something a real journalist might have felt the need to disclose in reporting this sort of story).

She  took a statement from Strawser.  (I can’t speak for Bryan, but I know that when dealing with today’s City Pages, I’d never consent to a verbal interview without recorders rolling.  I’d prefer to do it entirely in writing; that way there’s a paper trail to correct the inevitable inflammatory inaccuracies.  Of which there were plenty; the online story went through three rounds of corrections as Regan repeatedly referred to Strawser as a “lobbyist”.  He’s not).

She did, however, end the story with a charming little editorial coda; she posted this bit of “art” (I prefer the term “artiness”, but nobody asked me):

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It’s “Journalism” AND “Art!”   It’s called “NRA Aphrodisiac”, 2015 Tom Quinn Kumpf, “Love in 2016.”

Speaking of public health crises – why is it that antis are so obsessed with shooters’ genitals, sexuality and bodily fluids?

Oh, yeah – it’s just another way that bullies try to shame dissidents; by sexualizing the non-sexual; a simultaneous deflection into meaninglessness and an attempt to humiliate.  It’s the visual version of what Donald Trump said, and Bill Clinton did.  It’s a stupid person’s substitute for knowing things.  It’s why anti-gunners love to fall back on tropes like “shooters are compensating for something”, and “gun fondler” – because it’s easier than knowing what you’re talking about.

And, given how prevalent the left uses it as a substitute for knowing anything about the subject, it may be another one of those public health crises we’re talking about.

Heroes Are Hard To Find: Anyway, Regan apparently interviewed Christopherson, and Christopherson gave his side of the story.  And in so doing, while wrapping himself in the “peace” label that artists supposedly spend their creative lives marinading in 1, let slip some interesting factoids (emphasis added):

Christopherson says his vocal opposition to Strawser being in the building was instinctual. Many of his heroes have been shot or killed by guns, including his father (in WWII), President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, Che Guevara, and Dian Fossey. He also lost his brother, Jimmy, and his good friend Eduardo Blidner recently to gun suicide.

Mr. Christopherson:  you can not simultaneously wrap yourself in “peace” and lionize Che Guevara, a racist, homophobic, totalitarian mass killer.   Sorry about your father and brother, but it wasn’t a “gun” that killed either of them; it was an enemy soldier and a mental illness.

Robert Kennedy and John Lennon were murdered in a place where civilian guns are illegal.  And not to nitpick – that’d be kinda ghoulish – but Dian Fossey was not shot; she was bludgeoned to death.  

The other tenant, Sharra Frank, also had a complaint (again, I’ve added emphasis):

Around that time, Frank had been helping to arrange a field trip for her son’s school, where they would tour the Northrup King building. “When I discovered this tenant was there, I felt so conflicted,” she says. “I thought this was such a family-friendly safe space.”

When she brought her concerns to the manager regarding whether guns were allowed in the building, she learned that by state law, landlords can’t restrict their tenants from having guns or carrying guns in a space.

So Frank decided to leave. “I know I can’t invite people into a space where I’m hiding info that might make them uncomfortable,” she says. She adds that she doesn’t feel safe bringing in youth and people from marginalized communities into the building. “Also, I didn’t feel I could creatively make work because I would feel distracted.”

So many questions, Ms. Frank.

Since when are artists “family friendly?”   I love artists – I am an artist, for chrissake, and most of my family two generations before and after me are to one degree or another too – but I will scout out any gallery before I bring kids inside.  Some of those folks are seriously twisted.

“Youth”, who grow up playing “Red Dead Redemption” and “Grand Theft Auto”, will be distracted by a genial, law-abiding guy sitting in an office, believing different things than you do?  Do tell.

And “marginalized youth” are in plenty of danger from guns…

…owned and carried illegally by the people in their communities who are doing the marginalizing.

And if demonstrably law-abiding people doing legal things in a legal way that is a minimum of two orders of magnitude less likely to get you hurt than the general public makes you and your clients uncomfortable – well, I think I found our “public health crisis”.

So Where Are We Now?:  Mr. Christopherson is apparently still mortified that someone in his building is doing a legal thing he’s allowed to do, and, operating under the assumption that the Northrup King building is an arts collective (it’s not), mobilize a campaign of shaming and bullying against someone…doing perfectly legal stuff that makes him unconmfortable for utterly irrational reasons.

Ms. Frank has apparently broken her lease.  Since space in the NKB is both inexpensive and in immense demand, I’m sure that’ll work out well for her.

Both would seem to have turned Bryan Strawser’s presence in “their” building into a neurotic obsession, which they’re manfesting in bullying, shaming and gaslighting, apparently seeking the thing that all “artists” seek; absolute ideological and personal conformity. 2

So all you gun-grabbers who jabber on about guns being a “public health crisis”?  You’re right.

Oh, yeah – Bryan Strawser continues to be a law-abiding citizen doing things he’s legally entitled to do.  No trail of bodies seems to have ensued from this.

Sheila Regan still hasn’t disclosed her political bent in covering the story.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:  Join the backlash!  If you’re an artist – or just value freedom – “like” “Artists for the Second Amendment” on Facebook.

Continue reading →

All About The Ugly

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Opposition researchers are pretty much paid to be ugly, catty and anal-retentive.

The City Pages would have you believe that the oppo-research battle in the House race in Apple Valley is worse than most.  And in its way, it is – although not for the reasons the City Pages wants you to believe.

It’s a battle between two younger women – Republican Ali Jimenez-Hopper and DFLer Erin Maye-Quade – and the oppo researchers working with both of them.

Everybody’s Doing It:  Maye-Quade – who the City Pages’ Mike Mullen notes is a “biracial, married lesbian with impeccable credentials [although no details about the “credentials” are given – more on that in a moment] who worked to get Barack Obama elected and gun control passed”, although no gun controls have passed in this state in decades – was the first target.  Says Mullen:

Maye Quade’s persona became the subject of scrutiny last week when conservatives dragged out a number of posts meant to throw her qualifications into question. “Macy Gray wrote a love song to a vibrator,” Maye Quade tweeted last year, “shocking no woman who has ever used one.”

It’s a good line. But not the kind DFLers want to see parading across the screens of suburban voters.

Other posts show her pissed off (“today can blow me,” she once wrote) or turned on (actor Rob Lowe is “masturbate in public sexy,” according to a January 2013 tweet).

I can give Maye-Quade a break for that.  I’ve long lamented the idea that anyone who wants to get into politics basically needs to spend every waking moment of their lives from childhood on guarding against any hint of impolitic impropriety if they ever want to “serve” the public in elective office.

Of course, the name rang a bell with me – and it brought us back to this episode, in 2010, where Maye, then employed by “The Uptake”, giggled ““I’m Editing.  I feel important because I can make people say things they may not have said.  Muhahaha”   It gave her a kick that she now had the power to use her job editing news content to affect the political process.

Which reminded me that there are many, many better reasons not to vote for Erin Maye-Quade.

So Where’s The Bad Part? – The DFL responded by digging out this bit of “dirt” against Ms. Jimenez-Hopper:

On June 14, two days after 49 people were killed in a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Jimenez-Hopper told her Facebook followers she’s armed and ready to defend herself. She’s not going to die “in a helpless blubbering heap on the floor begging for my life or my child’s life.” Hardly the requisite “thoughts and prayers for the victims’ families” that Republicans like to trot out.

Anyone who doesn’t agree that one is better fighting back against violence than being a passive victim is beyond moral help.

And have you noticed the gotcha – Republicans who ask “thoughts and prayers for the victims’ families” are condemned for not supporting the right response, while those who don’t get hit for…well, not?

By the way, Ms. Jimenez-Hopper?  Don’t change a thing.

Another post seemed distinctly anti-feminist. Jimenez-Hopper shared a meme that stated women “weren’t created to do everything a man can do.” The candidate added: “Men and women are not equal… what we are is equally different.”

The horror.

I love that last bit.  Democrats – most of whom haven’t taken a hard science since high school at the latest – jabber about their respect for empiricism, and snark down their sleeves about the evolution-denying “young earth creationists” they think all Christian Republicans are.

And yet faced with the ineluctible fact that evolution has equipped men and women differently, for remorselessly empirical reasons, suddenly they go all faith-based – in this case, out of faith that the left’s social dogma is the one real truth?

I endorse Ms. Jimenez-Hopper, by the way.  Hopefully the good people of Apple Valley can smell the difference between reason and dogma.