Lie First, Lie Always: Lori Sturdevant, Bloomberg Parrot

In my sixteen years of writing this blog, punching bags have come and, mostly, gone.  Nick Coleman?  The MInnesota Monitor?  Mercury Rising?  Ken Weiner?  I’m still here.  They’re all gone.

But Lori Sturdevant?  She just keeps on ticking.

Maybe “ticking” isn’t the right word.  She keeps on scolding Minnesotans Republicans  for not acting like “Republicans” did (so says the myth Sturdevant pushes) in the sixties and seventies, where the MNGOP was basically Democrats in better suits, and in many cases ran to the left of the DFL.  This was, of course, at a time when Amerca, and Minnesota, had no competition; a time when the entire world was the US’, and Minnesota’s, market.    A time when business could thrive and pay confiscatory taxes and support hiring kids with high school diplomas to bolt headlight bezels onto Fords at the Highland Park plant for upper-middle-class wages with no worry about being uncompetitive – because there was no competition.

This is the world Lori Sturdevant pines for.

The “Good” Republican:   Dario Anselmo is the GOP rep from Edina.  As befits a Republican in a district that’s turning blue – clogged with refugees from Minneapolis’ accelerating failure, but who brought their brick-headed DFL politics with them – Anselmo is “purple”.  I get it – I get along with Rep. Anselmo OK, although I disagree with a bunch of his positions.

Including his very luke-coolness on 2nd Amendment issues.  Sturdevant points out that Anselmo is the son of Barbara Lund, a Duluth heiress who was murdered by her estranged husband in the early nineties.  His aunt it Joan Peterson, an erratic an impervious woman who has been one of the Minnesota gun grab movement’s leaders for a couple decades, now.

Anyway – Anselmo is a “moderate” Republican, which means “the example Sturrdevant wants the entire GOP to follow.   Now, I like Rep. Anselmo, and will hope he gets re-elected (he may actually be in line with Buckley’s Law, the most conservative candidate who can win in his district full of soccer moms and petty functionaries.

Reconstructive History:   But never let it be said Lori Sturdevant lets facts get in the way of her narrative – that the DFL is the same moderate party she grew up shilling for, and the GOP should strive for the same.

Anselmo says he likely would not be backing the universal background checks bill but for his family’s experience. He also sees gun violence from the perspective of a downtown Minneapolis property owner.

Which sounds good…

…until you remember that neither of Dave Pinto’s bills would have prevented Barbara Lund’s murder; the Gun Violence Protective Order bill would have done nothing; there were no domestic violence charges against Russell Lund.  From a PiPress article at the time:

Kim Lund would not say whether her father had ever flashed a violent temper or physically abused Barbara Lund. She said the slayings stunned her family.

“The problem is we don’t know what happened,’” she said. “We have to wait for the criminal justice system to do its role.”

And ‘Universal Background Checks” would have prevented neither the Lund murder nor the crime that vexes Anselmo around his Warehouse district bar, the “Fine Line”.   Criminals don’t take background checks now, and they won’t when they’re “Universal”.  .

Lori The Parrot:  The rest of the column is proof that the only things Lori Sturdevant knows about the issue, she was told over drinks at Murray’s by her friends in the Gun Grab “movement”, and seeks only to serve their ends:

The gun issue, too, seems to be swelling into something bigger than the perennial partisan wedge it has been for decades. Gun violence is so pervasive — especially when one counts suicides as well as homicides — that many Minnesotans now see it in personal terms.

Gun violence is down 50% in 20 years.  Gun violence is schools is down 75% in that same time.

In 2016, more than 38,000 Americans died gun-related deaths.

2/3 of which were suicides, not one of which would have been prevented by any of the DFL’s bills.

What’s more, a new generation is rising and — even in rural places — claiming a campaign to stem gun violence as its own.

Well, that’s the word the media is trying to get out – go counter the fact that the “new generation” may be more pro 2nd Amendment than mine. Which is saying something.

The Phantom Right:   Sturdevant trips into my new favorite topic:

They’re recasting the argument in personal and moral terms, asking whether someone else’s right to own a semiautomatic weapon should outweigh their right to go to school without being shot and killed.

They’re asserting a right to safety.

That may not be in the Bill of Rights. But woe be unto any democratic government that fails to secure it.

Which is a fraction of the woe that betides a “democratic government” that gets  this simple fact wrong:

There is no “right to safety”, 

No more than there is a “right not to get hit by lightning” or “right not to have a fire break out in your kitchen”, or “right not to get t-boned by a drunk driver” or “right not to get robbed”.   There is no right to t-bone people, and there’s certainly no right to rob people.    It’d be absurd as claiming that lightning or fire had a “right” to strike you.  And yet there is no “right” to be free of any of these things.

There is only a responsibility to protect  your family, your property, your community and your self from nature – natural and human.  And that includes a responsibility to protect the students that society has ordered be gathered in your care, or else.

Of course, Lori Sturdevant represents – shills and parrots for, really – a party and movement that has sought only to erode the notion of responsibility on every front, not just safety, for much longer than Sturdevant’s been in public life.

17 thoughts on “Lie First, Lie Always: Lori Sturdevant, Bloomberg Parrot

  1. The end of that first paragraph has given me a Springsteen earworm, thanks.

  2. “A time when business could thrive and pay confiscatory taxes …”

    it is worth noting that the DJI was slightly above 5,097 in March of 1970 and spent the 70s sliding down until it landed below 2,700 in January of 1981 – not quite the halcyon of memory

  3. “Your right to safety demands that I take your gun away.
    So you won’t give it up, eh? Then I’ll have to shoot you.
    Safety first!”

  4. Lori Sturdevant

    Every time the Strib files for bankruptcy (which it frequently does), an angel gets its wings.

  5. I think you are looking at the inflation adjusted DJIA, MacArthur Wheeler. In non-inflation adjusted numbers (which is, of course, how the numbers were reported at the time), The DJIA was essentially flat during the 70s. DJIA in Jan. 1970 was 744, and 860 in January 1980.

  6. There’s this thing about Sturdevant – and I can’t help but think she cultivates it – it’s that vapid look with the dopey smile and the frumpy clothes as a front for her job as spokesman for, well, to be honest, fascism. Liberal fascism.

  7. MP, you’re correct, my quick search spewed up sites with numbers that look like temperature charts after NOAA has “normalized” the data.
    The point is that the 70s was not a period of growth and was indeed a wasteland for the investor.

  8. The 1970s….ah, the halcyon days of stagflation, Communist insurgencies all over the world, polyester leisure suits, death-trap compact cars, and disco. That the left waxes nostalgic about those days tells us that yes, they did inhale, and repeatedly.

  9. Mick Anselmo is the GOP rep from Edina

    *Dario* Anselmo is the rep from Edina. Mick is the radio big wig.

    #Gatekeeping

  10. 38,000 gun deaths. Sounds like a problem. Is it?

    22,000 of them were suicides, mostly white male gun owners who killed themselves in despair at the path the nation is on. From Lori’s point of view, that problem is solving itself so what’s to complain about?

    11,000 of those gun deaths were young Black men shooting each other. From Lori’s point of view, they are invisible. Can’t be mentioned at all.

    There are about 5,000 murders, accidental discharges, cop killings, justifiable homicides and hunting accidents. That’s a lot, but in a nation of 300 million it’s not a giant crisis, not even top 20. It’s about the same number of people who die from the flu (3,000-5,000), slightly more than die from drowning (3,500). Even the fact checkers know it: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/aug/15/tucker-carlson/carlson-guns-dont-kill-people-bathtubs-do/

  11. I wonder how many of those suicides were actors, musicians or other artsy types, that offed themselves for any variety of reasons?

  12. Leftist reprobates are all about assisted suicide…they just don’t want you doing it without the government’s blessing and help.

  13. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 03.05.18 : The Other McCain

  14. Boss, I’m pretty sure most of the suicides are actually blue collar men who can’t get good work. Similar demographics to those dying from opioids, and quite frankly I have to wonder if a portion of those 50k+ opioid deaths each year are in fact quiet suicides.

    In other words, suicide hits Trump voters hard.

  15. Pingback: Play Progressive Games, Win Progressive Prizes | Shot in the Dark

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.