The serious answer – so the good guy doesn’t run out of bullets before the bad guy runs out of attack.

Homeowner in Houston repels a violent, armed home invasion…

…by five men with “big guns”:

One man was left dead in front of the house, at least one wounded man took off on foot and the others left in an SUV, police said.
The car crashed into a pole nearby at Harrisburg Boulevard, where a man was found dead inside, according to police. Police say another person in the car fled, collapsed down the street on Capitol Street and later died. 
The fourth and fifth suspects were also injured and taken to a hospital, police said.
Outside the house, homicide investigators are combing through the crime scene where it appears there was a shootout; several dozen shell casings have been found. 

No word yet on charges for the defender. Fingers crossed.

Tom Knighton at Bearing Arms notes:

No, five bad guys coming to your house may not be a common thing, but we can’t pretend it hasn’t happened. Not now.
Now, let’s imagine how someone in a situation like this would fair under a 10-round magazine limit. Oh, they could change magazines in theory, but with that much lead flying around? More rounds in the weapon at the start is always a better place to be.
Of course, if a 10-round limit is bad, imagine what they’d go through if they were stuck with Oregon’s proposed 5-round limit. This man would’ve never had enough ammo on his person to have survived this one.

Hey, just surrender and hope that your attackers don’t cut you into long thin strips…

Academic writing on foodie site:  “Foodie authenticity-snobbery is racist“.   The concept was good for a masters’ thesis, apparently, which is further evidence of the free fall of the modern academy.

Which occurs to me –  I’d like the writer and so-called “academic” – Sara Kay, which may be the most Brooklyn-hipster nom ever put to plume – to meet Twin Cities author and so-called “journalist” Sara Vogel, author of perhaps the most vapid-yet-vicious bits of autheticity-signaling I’ve ever read ,to get together and hash this out.

They can’t both be right, unless you’re a “progressive”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails a movie review:

I saw “Mary Poppins Returns.”  Sold out show.  Herewith, my movie review.  Don’t go.  Wait for Netflix.  SPOILER ALERT: Mary Poppins wins in the end.  Sorry if I ruined it for you.

First off, let’s be clear.  The original Mary Poppins movie is one of my childhood favorites.  After 50 years of listening to the songs on my mother’s phonograph and watching the reruns on television, I know it by heart.  The movie is better than the book, by the way.  The theater was full of old people my age – it’s clearly a nostalgia movie, not targeted at kids like all the modern Disney princesses.

Mary Poppins Returns clearly was intended as an homage to the original.  They rebuilt Cherry Tree Lane perfectly.  It’s a musical: the singing and dancing is spectacular.  It’s a Disney movie: the human-animated scenes are incredible.  Emily Blunt as Poppins is excellent: not a Julie Andrews mimic, but believable.  Stern and smart-alecky, but playful and softhearted, too.  She slides up the banister, her parrot umbrella talks, her carpet-bag-of-holding is still bottomless, same shoes, same quips about Michael being stubborn, Jane inclined to giggle, Mary being practically perfect, same mirror trick, music from the first movie plays in the background at opportune moments.  All scenes to bring a touch of the old into the new because the audience knows the inside jokes and expects to see them.  In that, the movie does not disappoint.

Having said all that, this version isn’t as good as the original.  Not just because sequels never are, but because the film makers misunderstood the first movie.  They saw the elements and thought they could repeat the success by using the same elements.  They forgot that the original story made fun of the parents for their human foibles (a classic Comedy).  This story is a Comedy only in the sense that the Good Guys win in the end.  The story itself is no fun.

In the original, Mr. and Mrs. Banks are so preoccupied with adult concerns, they have no time for the kids. The bankers are such a stiff bunch they can’t understand a simple joke. The whole theme of that movie is “lighten up, be more childlike.”  Splurge on feeding the birds.  Go fly a kite. Mary Poppins leaves the Banks family when the parents are focused on the family again, as they should be.

This movie is darker.  Jane and Michael have grown up. Jane is modern feminist: unmarried, activist for labor unions.  Michael is a pajama boy:  works a meaningless day job to support his real life’s work as an artist whose pictures won’t sell.  He lives in the family house with his three kids but no wife – she recently died – and he’s losing the house to foreclosure.

The bankers in the first movie were starched shirt, upright, careful investors but they weren’t wicked, evil, cheats.  They didn’t try to steal Michael’s tuppence, they wanted him to prudently invest the tuppence in railways to India instead of wasting his money feeding the birds.   The banker in this movie is a crook who intentionally tries to cheat Michael’s family to steal their house.

The big difference between the films is the first was a Comedy but this is a modern Liberal movie.  Crooked banker. Exploited workers.  Dead Mom.  Heartless lawyers.  And, of course, the obligatory 18% Black characters and one Admiral in a wheelchair, historical accuracy be damned.  Yes, Mary Poppins and the Banks family win in the end but even that is annoying [HERE’S THE SPOILER, SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH]: the tuppence the banker got from Michael in the first movie was indeed prudently invested which, with interest, is now worth enough to pay off the mortgage in the second movie.  The bankers were right – adult prudence over childish frivolity – which destroys the theme of the first movie.  Did the film makers even realize they were stabbing the first movie in the back?

The film makers dutifully included all the elements from the first film:  animation, penguins, Dick Van Dyke, singing, strange words, dancing, a cannon, bankers, a country fair, a horse race, one of Mary’s weird relatives, flying a kite, even a shaggy dog.  But the movie is a jumble as if it was made by cargo cultists who saw the images but didn’t understood what they stood for.  The songs have nothing to do with the action.  Crooked bankers and a dead Mom don’t make a lighthearted, uplifting story.  The characters themselves don’t grow in wisdom, Mary Poppins swoops in to save the day. She’s not a nanny, she’s a superhero.

Mary Poppins Returns made me want to cry.  No, not for the exploited workers or dead Mom Banks, couldn’t care less.  I wanted to cry for what’s been lost.  Disney didn’t understand why the first movie was beloved so their remake is a swing-and-a-miss.  Not Jar Jar Binks bad, but certainly Ewoks bad.

A friend argues that the first movie was just as political as the second, but the first movie reinforced my political beliefs so I liked it.  Feminists are air heads.  Prudence is boring.  Kids are the most important people in the family.  This was the dogma of the 1950’s so it’s no wonder I liked the first movie but not the second. I’m a relic.  Times have changed.  Move On!

I wanted to cry because I miss London. Not the actual city but the London I know in my mind from Ebeneezer Scrooge, Constable Grant, Sherlock Holmes and especially, from Mary Poppins.  I miss the London of my imagination.  It’s dead and Liberals killed it.  That, most of all, is their unforgivable sin.

Joe Doakes

At least they didn’t make Mary a lesbian.

Er – they didn’t, did they?

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Your opinion of what happened at the March for Life last weekend largely depends on your point of view on the Trump administration. You either…:

• Watched the full two hours of video (or take the counsel of those who did) and have come to believe that that CNN edited the video maliciously, with full intent to defame a bunch of MAGA hats ahd the kids they were sitting on, or
• believe that in abeyance of all the actual evidence, MAGA cap + white + Catholic private school = smug racist, evidence be damned

That’s Robby Soave’s conclusion over at Reason – the Covington Kids are a Rohrschach Blob that says more about the viewers and their opinions than they do about themselves.

But the most frustrating and worrying reactions have come from those who have convinced themselves that the extended video footage confirms their initial impressions. Of all the myriad examples of this, perhaps none is more contemptible than the effort by Deadspin‘s Laura Wagner, who writes, “Don’t Doubt What You Saw With Your Own Eyes.” Wagner accuses the Covington kids’ defenders—me among them—of “siding with some shithead MAGA teens and saying that 2+2=5 in the face of every bit of evidence there is to be had.”
But I know what I saw, and I think I know what Wagner saw, too. She saw a group of white teens wearing MAGA hats who had just engaged in partisan political activity on behalf of a cause she opposes (this last detail is more than sufficient on its own to convict the teens, according to several prominent progressive feminists). And that was enough.

Of course, this country – and by “This country” I mean “mobs of entitled bobbleheads spurred on by the agenda-driven parts of our idiot media” – have a dismal record of seeking truth:

In writing and speaking about this, I have drawn parallels to the Rolling Stone/University of Virginia gang rape hoax of 2014, which provides a powerful example of mainstream media getting a story very wrong in ways that permanently damaged the magazine’s reputation.
But in the less insane media world of 2014, at least the Rolling Stone debunking was accepted by pretty much everyone. When friends of “Jackie,” the alleged rape victim, came forward to help clarify that her alleged attacker did not exist, and was in fact a persona she had invented in order to catfish them, I don’t remember many major pundits sticking their fingers in their ears and pretending not to hear this.
The ongoing effort to pretend that videos of boys doing pep rally type cheers in opposition to a hate group is in fact evidence of deep-seated racism makes me wonder whether Rolling Stone truther-ism would have been much more common had the story come out in 2019.

Things are getting much, much worse out there.

The SCOTUS will be taking on serious Second Amendment issues for the first time in almost a decade:

The court granted a right-to-carry case out of New York that that pits the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association against the City of New York. New York bans transporting permitted handguns outside city lines, even if the gun is not loaded and is locked in a container. The guns currently can only be taken to the handful of shooting ranges within city limits.
Supreme Court Revives Trump’s Ban On Transgender Military Personnel, For Now
The case could have wide ramifications for gun rights and gun restrictions across the country, depending on how broadly the court rules.
Conservative justices have been champing at the bit to take up gun rights cases. Justice Clarence Thomas in 2014, for example, criticized the court for not taking up more gun cases, calling it a “disfavored” right.
“The right to keep and bear arms is apparently this Court’s constitutional orphan,” Thomas wrote.
With a newfound majority after the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, conservatives may have their chance to make a broad ruling, holding, for example, that the right to own a gun means the right to carry one, or it could rule more narrowly, saying New York’s law is overly restrictive or something in between.

And if the conservative majority issues a broad opinion – and Real Americans hope they do – the reaction is going to make the Kavanaugh hearings look like a Taylor Swift concert.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em.

Woman defies the odds in robbery attempt in Chicago.

Not by driving off a robber…:

A man in Hyde Park was in for a surprise when the woman he was trying to rob pulled out a gun and fired.

Just before 6:30 p.m. Saturday near 56th and Dorchester, Chicago police say the woman took out the gun and shot at the man.

Police say she has a valid concealed carry license.

The suspect drove off in a dark-colored SUV.

…although I love a happy ending.

But no, she beat the odds by getting her permit in Chicago in the first place.

David Brooks wrote this piece – “The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture” – almost a solid week before the Covington kerfuffle, in which a dishonest media led a pack of bovine keyboard commandos to a high-tech lynching of a MAGA hat and the kids standing around it.  But the episode brought it back to mind for me.  

Brooks details a fascinating – and by “fascinating”, I mean “terrifying” – episode involving a chain of online “denunciations” that seem reminiscent of the sort of thing that got millions killed under Mao and Stalin.   And the chain led back to one, er, man:

The guy who called out Emily is named Herbert. He told [NPR podcast] “Invisibilia” that calling her out gave him a rush of pleasure, like an orgasm. He was asked if he cared about the pain Emily endured. “No, I don’t care,” he replied. “I don’t care because it’s obviously something you deserve, and it’s something that’s been coming. … I literally do not care about what happens to you after the situation. I don’t care if she’s dead, alive, whatever.”
When the interviewer, Hanna Rosin, showed skepticism, he revealed that he, too, was a victim. His father beat him throughout his childhood.
In this small story, we see something of the maladies that shape our brutal cultural moment. You see how zealotry is often fueled by people working out their psychological wounds. You see that when denunciation is done through social media, you can destroy people without even knowing them. There’s no personal connection that allows apology and forgiveness.

My theory? The Covington social lynching, like the paroxysm of gleeful hate around the Kavanaugh hearings, are the result of an awful lot of people who’ve never learned to see political differences as anything but “hate” being told to “punch a Nazi” – and they can’t find any actual Nazis, because there are bowling leagues in Cincinnati with more people and political clout than the Nazi party in the USA today – but then again, to them pretty much everyone they disagree with is a Nazi…

…and they can’t punch, anyway. So they use the only weapons they have; the social media mob.

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it at least once a month until “Protect” MInnesota finally gets laughed out of polite company in this state: the local gun grab group and its arious leaders – the “Reverend” Nancy Nord Bence today, Rep. Heather Martens before her – have never, not once, made a single statement about guns, gun owners, gun laws, gun crime, gun history or the use of firearms that is simultaneously

• Original
• Substantial
• True.

You get plenty of statements where one might be the case, and a few with two out of three. But never, not once, have they made or will they hit all three.

Ever.

This meme from last week is different, in that it doesn’t even get one out of three completely correct.

They’re fantasizing:

So let’s make sure the stage is set: you’re in a mass shooting, and the shooting is underway.    “Several people have already been shot”, although the writer doesn’t see fit to mention that you could be one of them very, very shortly, here.

The writer doesn’t know much about exposition.

They know less, naturally, about gun laws: when they write “you pull out your gun and rush off to be a hero”, they apparently think Taken is a documentary. For better or worse, it’s bad legal (and, likely, tactical) form to go rushing to the sound of the guns.

Shooters know this.

The “Reverend” Nancy Nord Bence apparently does not.

Of the four resolutions they list?

The shooter sees you and shoots first: you mean, they do what the shooter will likely get around to doing, anyway, given that they’re a spree killer?

Do they really think the would-be “hero” is any worse off under this scenario?

Another good samaritan shoots you by mistake: That’s right – two good guys with guns, both seeing an active shooter, shoot the wrong person. It could happen, in the same sense that Nancy Nord Bence could make a coherent point. Again – given that one is likely going to get killed by the active shooter – which they seem to keep forgetting – I’m hard-pressed to see how the “heroes” are any worse off than if neither was armed.

Police see you “running around” and shoot you anyway: If the “hero” is “running around”, they’re doing it wrong.

You, the hero, shoot an innocent bystander: It could in theory happen. And if it does, the would-be hero would be in deep trouble, if the spree killer in the room doesn’t kill him first.

Thing is, you can look long and hard and never find an example of this happening, because good guys with guns tend overwhelmingly to do the right thing.  

Indeed, except for the cops shooting the “Hero” (it’s happened), neither I nor, let’s be honest, the “Reverend” Nord Bence can think of any examples of any of those happening – certainly nowhere near as many as the heroes who’ve ended mass shootings.

Apparently the “Reverend” Nord Bence thinks it’s better to die quietly.

Why does the “Reverend” hate innocent victims?

Democrat (what else?) California (where else?) state assembly committee chairbeing  bans the use of gender-specific pronouns:

[California State Senator and Senate Judiciary Committee chair Hannah-Beth Jackson] said that new committee rules recognize California’s designation of “non-binary” as a gender. The words “he and she” will now become “what my grammar teacher would have had a heart attack over,” the senator said. The committee will use the word “they” instead, because it is gender-neutral, Jackson said.
“Basically, that’s the primary reforms and revisions to the committee rules,” she said.

Jackson also said that as the chair, she will now be known as “they,” to keep in line with “the spirit of gender neutrality for the rules of this committee.”
“So, the world is a different place. My grammar teacher’s long gone and we won’t be hearing from her,” Jackson said.

Wait.

Back up.

What was that?

She then corrected her use of the word “her.”

Of course she did.

Arizona man saves a state trooper’s life after an ambush on I-10 following a “shots fired’ radio call that led the officer to a crashed car and a mortally-injured woman:

[Arizona Department of Public Safety director Col. Frank Milstead] said as the trooper began blocking off lanes of traffic and laying out flares, he was ambushed by the suspect.
The suspect shot the trooper in the right shoulder, and was “getting the better of the trooper” in a fight that immediately followed.
Milstead said the suspect was on top of the trooper striking his head on the pavement.
According to Milstead, a man traveling westbound on I-10 with his wife in the car, pulled over to help the trooper.
The man retrieved a gun from his car and fired at the suspect after the suspect refused to stop attacking the trooper, Milstead said.
The suspect died as a result of the shooting and the man called for help using the trooper’s radio, according to Milstead.
In a news conference from the hospital where the trooper is being cared for, Milstead thanked the man who stopped to help.

If Nancy Nord Bence had her way, they’d still be scraping the trooper’s brains off the pavement.

I collect great speeches. I’ve got a whole slew of big ones; Churchill’s “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” and the “Dunkirk” speech, Reagan’s “Shining City” and “A Time for Choosing” and the Brandenburg Gate speech, Kennedy’s “To The Moon!” and his Little Rock speech, “I Have A Dream”…

…and about a year ago, I finally got a copy of Martin Luther King’s “I’ve Been To The Mountain“, made the day before he was assassinated. And while I’ve been hearing about the speech for decades, it’s amazing to listen to. Some speeches inspire you; some make you angry; “I’ve Been To The Mountain” is a little of everything, but also draining. It is almost emotionally exhausting to listen to.

But it’s worth a listen; it’s one of the greatest speeches in American history.

It ends with an account of a near-death experience when a woman tried to stab him, years ago in New York.   

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.” She said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”
And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, been in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.
And they were telling me, now it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”
And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”

The whole thing is very much worth a listen.

This post originally published on MLK Day 2010.

I’m not the only one that figures that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is setting back feminism half a decade or more:

In mere minutes, Ocasio-Cortez managed to affirm nearly every negative stereotype about the female sex, from the trope that we’re no good at math to the notion that you shouldn’t trust us with a credit card. If all you saw was her example, you’d think we’re all just emotional dreamers who need to be reined in by reality

Ocasio-Cortez is not the feminist hero most media coverage has made her out to be. If anything, her time in the spotlight has set women in politics back.

Not just women. I have a hunch after a few years of her (and Reps. Omar and Tlaib), millennials outside the safest of coastal loonie bins are going to have a harder sell to get into office as well.

…what Ashley Simpson was to “live performance”.

Last year, we talked about Minneapolis “it” restaurant Hell’s Kitchen which, after years of virtue-signaling its approval for things like mandatory #FightFor15 minimum wage hikes and compulsory sick time, had had to eliminate the equivalent of five full-time, $15/hour jobs – partly due to bad management, partly due to hikes in bottom-line expenses, and partly due to bad management encouraging the hikes to bottom line expenses.

It’s not just Minneapolis. New York City restaurants are taking it right in the blintz:

A New York City Hospitality Alliance survey of 574 restaurants showed that 75 percent of full-service restaurants reported plans to reduce employee hours this year in response to the latest mandated wage increase. Another 47 percent said they would eliminate jobs in 2019. Eighty-seven percent of respondents also said they would increase menu prices this year.
These types of cost-cutting moves coincide with a U.S. Labor Department report released last Friday showing full-service restaurants in December raised prices the most since 2011, to cover soaring labor and food costs.
“The money has to come from somewhere, and we found that unfortunately, as a result, businesses are making some really tough decisions which don’t only impact them, but have a negative impact on their workers as well as their diners, too,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which represents restaurants and nightlife venues throughout the five boroughs.
But shaving workers’ hours and killing jobs limits restaurateurs’ ability to offer employees opportunities for growth and development. It also can kill owners hopes of offering a fine-dining experience that delivers both good food and good service.  

Let them eat platitudes!

Join Minnesota Citizen Lobbyist right here.

Soccer won.

…that if Ilhan Omar were a white, Presbyterian, Christian, humble, quiet-spoken conservative with an actual record of public service who said crap like this, I’d be mocking, taunting and condemning him – er, her, or whatever – with just as much schadenfreudy glee as I am today.

Because they’d both have it coming.

First – the rumor mill:

Rep. Omar: "Lots of Americans" agree with me that Trump is blackmailing Sen. Graham over his homosexuality pic.twitter.com/xPMAUHSLYE

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 17, 2019

I’m starting to get the feeling that whole “accepting gays” thing Democrats jabber about is just a ploy…

And, yes, there’s the whole “antisemitic” bit:

Another Omar tweet from 2012 has drawn accusations of anti-Semitism against the congresswoman, who was appointed to a seat on the House Foreign Relations Committee by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Wednesday. 
“Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel,” Omar tweeted during an Israeli military offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 

Given that the DFL is the party of intersectionality, it’s nothing she can’t fix among Democrats by declaring herself a lesbian and using it to shame any (white, Jewish, Democrat) critics that might pop up.

Which they won’t.

The only response to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

It helps when the good guy is a long-serving member of one of the world’ premiere special forces units.

A British Special Air Service (the original model for US Army’s Delta) trooper in town to train Kenyan special forces apparently intervened personally in the Nairobi hotel shooting:

Amid the carnage – orchestrated by terror group al-Shabaab – a lone SAS soldier got tooled up and went in after a request for help from Kenyan security forces, sources said.
Incredible images showed the operator in jeans, trainers and body armour storming through doors and aiding injured, his face covered by a balaclava.
He was pictured operating at the hotel alone. But he was joined in the mission by US Navy Seals, sources said.
An insider said: “UK Special Forces always run towards the sound of gunfire. He was there training and mentoring Kenyan forces when the shout went up, so they went in.
“During the operation he fired off some rounds – it’s a safe bet he hit his target – the SAS don’t miss.
“He is a long serving member of the Regiment, there is no doubt his actions saved lives.”
The incident was today declared over by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and all the attackers “eliminated”.

It’s kind of amazing how often good guys with guns – who as luck would have it happen to be elite British soldiers – wind up involved in these sorts of stories.

It’s close to becoming a Berg’s Law: terms like “White Privilege”, “Misogyny”, “Bigotry”, “Hate” and “Mansplaining” are rarely anything more than ad homina that one can use without being accused of trafficking in a logical fallacy.

Yet.

Maybe after CNN “Legal Analyst” Areva Martin’s performance yesterday on Sirius XM’s David Webb show, we could start talking about changing that:

The embarrassing moment occurred during a discussion about experience being more important than race when determining whether or not someone is qualified for a particular job.
“I’ve chosen to cross different parts of the media world, done the work so that I’m qualified to be in each one. I never considered my color the issue, I considered my qualifications the issue,” Webb said.
“That’s a whole, another long conversation about white privilege, the things that you have the privilege of doing, that people of color don’t have the privilege of,” said Martin – who also hosts CBS’ “Face the Truth.”
A dumbfounded Webb asked, “How do I have the privilege of white privilege?”
Martin responded, “David, by virtue of being a white male you have white privilege.”
The Fox Nation host then explained that he was actually black.
“I stand corrected,” Martin said.

Of course, if Webb had been white, the proper response would have been “Ms. Martin, you’re not just illogical, you’re a bigot and get the hell off my show”.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I gave up my landline years ago. The only people who called me were telemarketers. It was nice having a cell phone, because nobody bothered me. But lately, I’ve been deluged with telemarketers robocalling recorded announcements about health insurance. This would be illegal on landlines, but for cell phones, there seem to be no rules

I’d pay extra for a cell/data service and media apps that actually kept my data private.

But I don’t suspect that’s the point…

Beto O’Rouke – flirting with the idea of running for president with all the grace of an elementary school choir singing a medley from Les Miserables – discusses his take on the Constitution.

Caveat: I did not make this up. Emphasis added by me.

“I’m hesitant to answer it because I really feel like it deserves its due, and I don’t want to give you a — actually, just selfishly, I don’t want a sound bite of it reported, but, yeah, I think that’s the question of the moment: Does this still work?” O’Rourke said. “Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships . . . and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?”

More and more, I’m starting to believe those who do believe we can, and must, govern ourselves by those principles should seek an amicable divorce from those who can’t.

…is that you can be a corrosive, giggly bigot, and nobody will ever, ever call you on it.

I add the emphasis:

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle implied without evidence Tuesday that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) has something to hide and the president is blackmailing him over it.
Graham has become one of the President Donald Trump’s staunchest allies in the Senate, although he has criticized him for some key decisions, such as the military pullout from Syria. Ruhle seemed to imply there’s more to their relationship than politics, however, during a discussion about Graham with former Rep. David Jolly and professor Eddie Glaude.
“Before Don got elected, Lindsey Graham called Donald Trump a racist, xenophobic bigot. Those are Lindsey Graham’s words,” Jolly said. “I doubt Lindsey Graham could tell you Donald Trump has had a change of heart in the last 24 months, I bet the change of heart has been with Lindsey Graham, not the president.”
“Or it could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham,” Ruhle replied. “We’re gonna have to leave it there.”
The smirk Ruhle produced when she spoke suggests she was referring to rumors about Graham’s sexuality, which some Democrats have been trumpeting anew recently. Jon Cooper, chairman of the Democratic Coalition super PAC, explicitly accused Graham on Saturday of letting himself be blackmailed for “some pretty serious kink.”

Did I say “Nice thing?”

I meant “horrible, Orwellian, evil” thing.

Let’s talk social fashion in the mainstream media.

Out: “Violent Home Invader”

In: “Unwanted house visitor”.

No, I’m not making this up:

Rape is “a bad first impression”, too.

The Metrocrats dropped “House File 8” (HF8) this past week. The bill will institute “Universal Background Checks” for all firearms transfers in Minnesota.

The bill:

• Expands background checks to all firearms. Current law requires the for pistols and “assaault weapons”.
• Raises the age to purchase a firearm to 21.
• A permit to purchase is good for one firearm, and expires immediately. They are currently valid for a year. And you’d need to get one to possess or receive any firearm at all, and it includes transfers between private parties. We’ll come back to this part.
• A permit to carry is no longer usable as a permit to purchase or transfer.
• Chiefs of police will no longer be able to process transfers.
• All private party transfers are covered; you’ll need to get a background check. Even/especially if you’re a straw buyer!
• Getting rid of all exemptions in current law.

Anyone notice what that third bullet does?

Every legal transfer includes a background check.

For making those checks useful in tracing crime weapons, they need to keep those on record.

And in IT, we have a term for “pieces of data that contain pointers to new pieces of data”. That term is “database”. HF8 would create a registry of guns in Minnesota – or at least of the guns owned by law-abiding citizens.

This is today’s DFL.

If you’re not a member of the MN Gun Owners Caucus, you need to be.

It was thirty years ago today Ronald Reagan gave his farewell address after two of the most defining terms in 20th Century politics.

And while he was his usual upbeat self, he had a question and challenge for Americans – one that may have seemed abstract-ish back then…:

But for all of his optimism, Reagan did leave his audience with one clear warning for the future. He said the country needed “an informed patriotism.” He greatly feared that we were not doing enough to foster it.
“Are we doing a good-enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” Reagan bluntly asked.
When he was young, the nation’s youth “were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American,” he noted. “And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.” Young people learned those lessons from family, in classrooms, and through popular culture.

…in a way that seems definitely concrete as hell today.

And I don’t think that’s been remotely accidental. If mainstream America doesn’t know what it’s got, how will it know how / whether to defend it? What, indeed, to defend it from?

A generation of our “best and brightest” are being raised in an academy that actively disparages the values Reagan espoused. The lowest form of life on the intersectional pecking order is “the conservative supporter of the American tradition”.

Is there any hope?

This’ll be a big topic this weekend on the show.