I’ll allow that it’s possible that between David and I, Minnesota might get a little over-covered here at Hot Air.  

But I’ve got a theory:  national Democrats are trying out a lot of their national strategies and tactics in Minnesota; conservatives following Minnesota politics got a fair amount of deja vu during the ’24 presidential campaign, and that was even before Tim Walz got the (inexplicable but providential) nod to run for VP.   The accession of Minnesota DFL chair Ken Martin to the head of the DNC supports the theory.  So hear me out. 

The DFL in Minnesota has a bit of a crime problem:  their one vote majority in the State Senate (until Senator Eichorn is expelled for his arrest) hangs in the person of Sen. Nicole Mitchell, who is accused of multiple counts of burglary; the Walz administration is mired in a persistent series of non-profit fraud scandals, one of their elected representatives was tossed from office when it was revealed he didn’t live in his district (with the full knowledge of the DFL’s former Speaker of the House), and there’s the usual assortment of DUIs, not to mention the DFL taking the “20%” side of a lot of 80-20 issues (“stand your ground”, boys in girls sports, and so on).  

The response appears to be…

…slander all Republicans.  

State Senator Erin Maye Quade is a long-time progressive activist – think of her as a home-grown AOC.  Her terms as a state representative and state Senator from the south Twin Cities suburb of Apple Valley were interrupted by a brief run for Lieutenant Governer, along with current Minnesota Senate majority leader Erin Murphy – who, significantly standing next to Maye Quade outside the Senate chamber as she said (read the thread, via Tom Hauser at KSTP-TV):

She said this with the Majority Leader standing right there.  You can see it. 

That’s about as close as you can get to declaring all Republicans potential sex criminals in advance, just to save the trouble.  

So I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy limb and predict that Democrats nationwide are going to embark on a colossal campaign of name-calling.  

It must be a tough time to be Erin Maye Quade – Senator from Apple Valley, and Big Left’s attack poodle in the Senate.

In the past couple of years, she’s voted for a thoughtcrime data base, and openly fantasized about using government power to keep parents from teaching their kids about abstinence…

…and about “Eminent Domaining” and bulldozing the crisis pregnancy centers try to keep people out of the Planned Parenthood clinics that spend so much on her campaigns and will presumably be her post-politics career.

Because suddenly, she’d discovered that big powerful government can be scary, when you’re not at the controls.

Even if you have to conjure those threats out of thin air:

Further evidence of Berg’s Seventh Law; QAnon was a fantasy, but BlueAnon is very, very real. 

Among Big Left’s great crimes against history is the complete devaluation they have achieved against the term “Fascist”. To much of the parts of society that routinely use the word, it now means “anyone not on board with today’s left’s narrative”.

No, really:

And Big Left knows what it’s doing, since the other options have also been hijacked. Call someone a Nazi, and you’re overwrought. Call someone a Communist, and people start jabbering about the Red Scare.

“Authoritarian” works, but it doesn’t have quite the same emotional impact – and Big Left has been diluting that one by associating it with Trump – a demonstrably less authoritarian president than Obama or The Potato.

So given the options, what does one call a political figure or party that:

• Their ends justify their means – including the use of government force to secure compliance
• Tries to co-opt the institutions of society to further their political ends, starting with government and schools and ending with the family itself?
• Aggressively “sorts” society into “good guys” and, especially, “others” to use as scapegoats and deflections from one’s own actions – up to and including creating an official version of “reality” that may or may not have much in common with the real thing.

Let’s take a thoroughly educational look at a politician who seems to check off all the boxes for…well, the “A” word. And maybe some definitions of the “F” word.

The Real Authority

Maye Quade is a fully-fledged creation of leftist institutions – and pays obeisance to them:

But she certainly has no love lost for society’s actual institutions.

Like parenthood.

She wants to nullify parents trying to teach their children morality and ethics, so her side doesn’t have to work quite so hard to uproot them. j

This is, of course, on top of her very casual relationship with telling the truth if it’s not in her political interest.

Might Makes Right

Maye Quade may not actually have the executive power to sicc government and its monopoly in the use of force on her political (and finanncial?) enemies.

But she sure thinks about it:

“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.”

Aggressively Sorting

Maye Quade has a staffer who’s got a bit of a “virulent anti-Semite” vibe.

This is, of course, shocking in that the aide is more antisemitic than Maye Quade’s own equivocating weasel-word-larded antisemitism:

Your tax dollars are paying for this.

It should go without saying Senator Maye Quade, like all leftists, is more aggressively yet casually racist about “othering” apostates – in this case, Senator Tim Scott, a Republican and African-American:

…which is a perfect invocation of Berg’s 11th Law.

And, like every good gaslighting abusive partner, it’s all really your fault:

Hard to miss the fact that the “consequences” in her “culture” are entirely one-sided. But that’s the nature of the abusive gaslighter. But then, I did mention creating an alternate, “official” reality, didn’t I?

No, really – an actual alternate reality…

…deviance from which is considered heresy.

I mean, a Republican with a similiar record of shilling for naked authority, advocating the co-option of instutions and relentlessly cutting out “others” to use as enemies would be called an “authoritarian” at the very least.

And yet it’s Senator Maye Quade that walks the walk

“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?

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”).

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. :

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• obsession with identity politics
• eternal environmental lobby-driven sandbagging of the mining and timber industries
• their hatred of and contempt for law-abiding gun owners and their firearms
• open-border activism on the taxpayers dollar
• nudge-and-a-wink toleration for physical assault on political dissenters
• Funding and legislating education in such a way as to ensure that the consolidation of rural schools into ever-larger, pseudo-urban high schools, with all the attendant educational and social rot that entails, only accelerates.
• the starving of much-needed highway money – money for the roads that actually pay the bills in the Minnesota economy – to pay for more, more-expensive transit, especially endless rail boondoggles
• …and I’m sure I’m missing more than a few

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

“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:

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.

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.

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:

https://youtu.be/4tXVfldIHAA

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.

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”.