Huh

An attack by a Muslim acting on behalf of ISIS, who was a registered Democrats, got this reaction at the New York “Pride” Parade over the weekend:

Screen Shot 2016-06-27 at 9.17.46 AM

The Democrat Party – and let’s be frank, it’s the Democrats who are behind banners like this – is all about ending the namecalling and anger…by Republicans.

Harbinger?

Off-year election results around the country were a mixed bag.

And by “mixed”, I mean generally good for conservative Republicans nationwide, and six of one, half a dozen of the other in Minnesota.

Tinkering With Leviathan:   Saint Paul’s elections yesterday, were a victory for DFL zealots over DFL extremists.

The City Council gained two councilors who ran on an agenda critical of Mayor Chris Coleman.   This can, in some ways, be read as a very mild moderate win – Jane Prince, who ran unopposed in Ward 7, and Rebecca Noeker (who is currently leading by a razor-thin margin as the “Instant Runoff” counting slogs on and on in Ward 2) ran in opposition to Mayor Coleman’s profligate subsidies of favored businesses via “Tax Increment Financing”, as well as his botched plan to install parking meters on Grand Avenue to try to chisel revenue out of shoppers in Saint Paul’s only successful mid-market retail district.

But I wouldn’t count on much change from the Council on the larger issues that are sandbagging Saint Paul; the stifling regulatory environment, the obeisance to the Met Council’s lust for 19th-century transit, and the crime problems that are percolating along University and out on the East Side.

Meet the New Boss, Same As The Old Boss:  The Saint Paul School Board election, as predicted, installed the four union-backed wholly union-owned candidates over the four formerly union-owned candidates. Whatever residue of independence from the Teachers Union that might have existed in the Saint Paul public schools will be hunted down and buried in concrete shortly.

While changing Superintendent Silva’s intensely unpopular disciplinary policies may be one of the upshots of yesterday’s elections, look for the fiscal profligacy and unaccountability to accelerate.

The election will be a great boon to charter schools – if Saint Paul parents are smart.

Schools Dazed:  The referenda in the various school districts around the east metro went about 50-50; the pattern seemed to be, broadly, that voters approved the bond levies for maintenance and repairs, but voted down the big additions to infrastructure and programming.

Which may show – who knows? – that voters are still manipulable by demands “for the children”, but they have their limits.

We’ll see.

The Gathering Storm?:  Around the country, the news was less ambiguous.  A Republican not only won the Kentucky governor’s race. but so did his black Tea Party Republican Lieutenant Governor.  In VIrginia, Michael Bloomberg, hoping in his ghoulish way to capitalize on the deaths of a couple of TV reporters, pumped a ton of money and a lot of agenda into a couple of key races, with control of the Virginia state senate on the line.  It flopped; just as in Colorado a couple of years ago, only in the most addlepated coastal hothouses can gun control get any popular traction.

In Houston, a referendum on gay rights got swept away in a vote that would be hard to see as anything but a backlash against the creeping fascism of the Social Justice Warriors and their waves of lawsuits and coercion against supporters of traditional marriage.  And even in San Francisco, the sanctuary-city-promoting sheriff got sent packing.

It’s a year ’til the next election.  Look for “progressives” with deep pockets to spend a ton of money to try to iron out the wrinkles in the narrative.

Ryan Winkler Should Thank George Takei

Because Winkler is no longer the most ineptly, tone-deafly racist commentator in recent American history.

I’ve had the odd chuckle as George “Mr. Sulu” Takei has oozed back into a wry, giggly mainstream prominence.  He can be a funny guy.  And he’s got an interesting story; growing up in an internment camp, building a career in Hollywood at a time when an Asian couldn’t get a break, yadda yadda.

But someone’s gotta slap him:

In a nasty, racist rant captured by a Fox affiliate in Arizona, former Star Trek actor-turned-gay rights activist George Takei lashed out at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, calling him a “clown in black face.”

Here, a man who became famous sitting on a TV set pushing fake buttons and saying “Warp Factor Five, Aye-Aye” and running a snarky but occasionally hilarious Facebook account, gaysplains to one of America’s most accomplished jurists…

…not only using terms that are groaning with racist baggage, but also legally full of Roddenberry dust.  Thomas is, unfortunately for Takei, correct.  The Obergefell decision was, like Roe V. Wade, conjuring up law from nothing – or, worse than nothing, pure emotion.

Back to snarking on Facebook, George.

Thoughtcrime

You’ve heard the stories of the betrothed gay couples who’ve scoured the market for test cases waiting to happen – Christian photogs, bakers, florists and other vendors who politely tried to opt out of participating in ceremonies they don’t believe in.  They were sued into compliance or bankruptcy, or both.

And now, in Canada – a Christian jeweler who actually made the rings for a lesbian couple, who were favorably impressed with his work…

…until they discovered he didn’t personally believe in same sex marriage.  The idea of having their finely-crafted rings made by someone with impure thoughts – thoughtcrime! – sent them running to Big Gay Inquisition to smite the infidels.

Rod Dreher narrates:

Were this a Monty Python sketch and not a horrifying power play, the tendering conversation would presumably have proceeded like this: Customer: We are a lesbian couple who would like you to make us a wedding ring. Business owner: Okay. I do not support gay marriage, but I will serve you as anybody else. This, I understand, is how it works. Customer: You can’t deny me service simply because you hold different views from mine. Business owner: Indeed. I have no intention of doing so. Society is better off when our differences remain private. Customer: Okay, let’s do business. Business owner: Great. Customer: Your private views are disgusting. You can’t make me do business with you. Give me my money back or I’ll unleash the kraken. If this is to be our new standard — and time will tell — it would be useful to know what legal protection our recalcitrant firms will reasonably be able to recruit to their side. In both Canada and in the United States there already exists a pernicious imbalance in the supposedly free marketplace. If a browsing consumer doesn’t happen to like the politics or the race or the religion of a given business owner, he is quite free to decline to associate with it. Thus do some progressives like to skip Chick-Fil-A, an openly Christian business; thus do some conservatives prefer to avoid Apple, whose owner Tim Cook irritated them during the Indiana fight. By that very same law, however, it is strictly verboten for a business to discriminate against customers they themselves dislike — even if they feel that by fulfilling their legal obligations they will be violating their consciences. Are we really going to add to this already lopsided arrangement a general right to break contracts after the fact? Are we going to hand the integrity of our signed arrangements over to the whim of the mob? And if we are not, what are we to expect the government to do about those whose consciences now demand that they renege on their word?

Granted, it’s Canada.

On the other hand, it’s Canada – the prototype shop for all the stupid bits of social engineering leaking into the Western Hemisphere.

Open Letter To The LGBT Community

To:  Big Gay
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Silence Is Golden

Hi,

Save your stereotypes; I’ve done more to combat real physical hatred against real gay people than most of you will.  Long story.  Takeaway:  I’ve got no beef with gay people.

So don’t be phoning it in as a “hate crime” when I say I’ll support this in the public schools when you support open displays of crosses on Good Friday and Easter.

Deal?

That is all.

Another Approach

People of faith Christians who own businesses in the wedding industry are trying to find a way to keep new social demands from forcing them to violate their faith in their vocational life via legislation, the courts, and adaptation.

But it would seem they missed a golden opportunity.

The next time a gay couple comes into their bakery obviously fishing for a “public accomodations” test case, they should phone it in to the FBI as a “hate crime”.

Dear Entire Gay Movement

To:  The Entire Gay Movement:
From:  Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re:  The Mote

Dear Every Gay In The World,

I’m Mitch Berg.  I’m a conservative – but I can’t say as I’ve ever hated gays.  Indeed, I’ve probably done more to fight the overt, physical hatred of gays than most of you have.  And the simple fact is, after over a decade as a single parent, I have barely had time or energy to put into my own sexuality, much less bother with anyone else’s.

Now, I’ve had my beefs with you all – the whole “if you oppose gay marriage, you are teh bigot!” campaign was a crime against logic.

And while I don’t believe anyone would “choose” to be gay, there’s actually nearly no evidence that it’s genetic, either.  Most of what I’ve read makes me think it’s an adaptation.

And y’know what?  I don’t care; God loves you all, and it’s not for me not to, even if I were so inclined, which I’m not.

I don’t care much for “identity” movements, since they tend to politicize things that ought not be politicized.  But I get it; decades of repression, yadda yadda.  I’ll call it square.

But I’ll just say your whole “want to be accepted” thing would sit a lot easier with real humans if Dan Savage hadn’t appointed himself your spokesbeing.  Emphasis added by yours truly:

A few days ago, Savage told the Family Research Council’s Josh Duggar of “19 Kids and Counting” to “go f**k yourself” after Duggar posted a picture with Rick Santorum. Savage then made a child molestation joke against Pope John Paul II, and now he’s going after the GOP. After Ben Carson said that he believes being gay “is absolutely a choice” in an interview with CNN March 4, Dan Savage tweeted out: “Being gay is a choice? Prove it: Choose it yourself. Suck my dick.”

Dan Savage; anti-bullying crusader.

Please pass the word to Mr. Savage (and I ask this not because I think y’all have a secret underground network, but just on the off-chance that someone out there knows that big arrogant trained chimp) that he would seem to find cognitive dissonance more threatening than does the most inbred redneck.

And that’s a bad thing.

That is all.