Monday, December 31, 2012

5 Reasons God Allows Tragedies Like the Sandy Hook Massacre To Occur

5 Reasons God Allows Tragedies Like the Sandy Hook Massacre To Occur
By John Hawkins
1/1/2013

As a Christian, it can be difficult to reconcile all the evil that happens in the world with an all knowing, all powerful loving God who could stop it if He wants, but chooses not to do so. If our hearts break for the innocent children who were senselessly murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary, how can a God who loves us not feel the same way? If any of us had known what Adam Lanza was going to do, we would have done anything in our power to stop him, so why didn't God? All too often we tend to quote some arcane scripture, chalk it up to God "moving in mysterious ways" and shrug our shoulders. While none of us have the authority to speak for God, there are plausible explanations for why God would choose not to intervene to prevent a tragedy.

1) He gives us free will: God didn't make robots who were designed to execute His will. Instead He gave us the freedom to make our own decisions. He lets us choose between being right and wrong, good and evil or wise and foolish. We can follow Him or scorn Him. We can obey Him or ignore Him. We can take His advice or go our own way. It's our choice...and sometimes choices have terrible consequences. But, of course, how could it be otherwise and still be a choice?

2) It's a necessity for faith: "If God wanted to remove all doubt about his existence, He could do so — but, He doesn’t because the cornerstone of Christianity is faith. Imagine what would happen if bad things DIDN’T happen to good people. What if when an airline crashes, only the non-Christians die while all the believers walk away unscathed? What if the moment someone becomes an atheist, he is immediately struck by lightning and killed? What if every rape, murder, robbery, and painful illness only happens to non-believers? If that were the case, then no faith would be required to be a Christian."

3) He has a different perspective: Our God gave "His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Imagine being in his place as Jesus was jeered, whipped and had to suffer and die in agony on the cross. What would run through your mind as your Son was crucified and uttered the words, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" when you had the power to free Him, heal His wounds and strike down His tormentors at will. Our God made that sacrifice for each and every one of us so that we could be saved. That's how much He cares for us. Yet and still, God has known the hopes, hurts, loves and secret dreams of all of us who've come into this world, lived our lives and passed on. After watching billions of people He cares for die and shouldering responsibilities we can't even begin to fathom, God doesn't see the world through the same eyes as we do.

4) We often turn to God in times of tragedy: One of the sad truths of human nature is that when we're happy, healthy, loved, secure and our pockets are full, most of us think we already have all the answers and don't turn to God. As C.S. Lewis wrote, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." It's not that God wants us to ache, causes it, or wishes for it to happen, but He realizes that's often what spurs us in His direction. A long pleasant existence full of leisure, contentment and pleasure that ends with a trip to Hell because there was never a need to reach for God is a failed life.

5) Ultimately it's about Heaven, not earth: What we do with our lives is no small matter. We should try to make the most of our talents, do what we can for others and make the most of what we have. But, it's worth remembering that Billy Graham was right when he said, "My home is in Heaven. I'm just traveling through this world." Our lives seem long and crucially important because it's all we can see, hear, and touch, but God knows there's an eternity that stretches beyond our time here. It can be incredibly painful when our time here ends with those we care about, but God gets to see the reunions in the next lifetime.
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To read another article by John Hawkins, click here.

David Gregory's Slobbering Obama Interview

David Gregory's Slobbering Obama Interview
By David Limbaugh
1/1/2013

NBC's David Gregory interviewed President Barack Obama on "Meet the Press" Sunday, and a conversation ensued that would have been more fitting for a show called "The President Meets One of His Many Mainstream Media Enablers."

Let's take a look at just some of the exchanges and fantasize how different the nation's political and electoral climate might be if the liberal press were doing its job as watchdog instead of taking sides.

Obama said, "We're seeing signs of recovery ... in employment numbers improving."

Might Gregory have asked Obama how he can continue to put an unrealistically positive spin on such persistently dismal numbers? If this were a Republican president, do you think Gregory wouldn't have pointed out that the only reason these numbers appear to be slightly improving is that more people have actually given up looking for work altogether?

Obama said, "(Republicans) have had trouble saying 'yes' to a number of repeated offers."

Why didn't Gregory remind Obama that he has been the most intransigent in these negotiations? Why didn't he ask him about the Wall Street Journal report that he told House Speaker John Boehner he would give him nothing in return for the $800 billion in "revenues" Boehner had put on the table? "I get that for free."

Obama said that if no deal were reached, people might say, "We haven't seen the kind of deficit reduction that we could have had had the Republicans been willing to take the deal that I gave them."

Gregory should have said that if Republicans had accepted Obama's deal, there would have been barely any deficit reduction but that if Obama had accepted the Republicans' deal, especially Paul Ryan's plan, we would have seen serious progress on the deficits and debt.

Obama said, "Congress has not been able to get this stuff done -- not because Democrats in Congress don't want to ... cooperate but because ... it's been very hard for Speaker Boehner and Republican leader McConnell to accept the fact that taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit as part of an overall deficit reduction package."

Why didn't Gregory pointedly ask Obama whether his plan was actually to go over the cliff and blame Republicans for it? What evidence is there that Democrats want to cooperate? How could he claim to be serious about deficit reduction when he is demanding tax increases that would produce little revenue; is resisting reform of the main debt drivers, entitlements; is demanding authority for new "stimulus" spending and to exceed the budget ceiling unilaterally anytime he desires; and has resisted serious spending cuts of any kind?

Obama said, "I cut spending by over $1 trillion in 2011."

Why didn't Gregory laugh out loud?

Obama said, "I negotiated with Speaker Boehner in good faith and moved more than halfway in order to achieve a grand bargain."

What if Gregory had pressed Obama: "Mr. President, how do you define 'halfway'? Isn't it true that you've repeatedly rejected Boehner's offers as DOA and that he's been bidding against himself and infuriating congressional conservatives? What movement have you made, and how reasonable is it for you to be sabotaging the entire negotiating process with divisive class warfare rhetoric by obsessing on 'fairness' instead of addressing the issues that really matter -- the deficit and debt? But since you keep talking about fairness, is it fair that the bottom half of income earners pay no income tax at all and that the top 10 percent pay an extraordinarily disproportionate amount? How can you possibly say they're not paying their fair share?"

Obama said, "I also have an obligation to middle-class families to make sure that they're not paying higher taxes when millionaires and billionaires are not having to pay higher taxes."

Why didn't Gregory tell Obama there has never been any GOP plan on the table proposing that middle-income earners pay higher taxes while millionaires and billionaires don't? Why didn't he tell him that his new Obamacare taxes are also going to hit the middle class?

Obama said, "If folks can't say 'yes' to good offers, then I also have an obligation to the American people to make sure that the entire burden of deficit reduction doesn't fall on seniors who are relying on Medicare ... (and) that families who rely on Medicaid to take care of a disabled child aren't carrying this burden entirely."

A true journalist would have replied: "Well, Mr. President, then why don't you quit resisting the types of entitlement reform the Republicans have offered that would best ensure that seniors don't lose their Medicaid and Medicare instead of continually obstructing reform and guaranteeing that all of our entitlement programs and the United States itself will go bankrupt in short order? Are you unconcerned about the Heritage Foundation projections that within 12 years, in the absence of major structural entitlement reform, 'the major entitlement programs and net interest together will eat up all tax revenues collected'? In view of your steadfast refusal to do anything about this, just what are we to make of your intentions? Indeed, what is your endgame?"
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To read another article by David Limbaugh, click here.

Another Report on Benghazi Attack Finds State Department at Fault

Another Report on Benghazi Attack Finds State Department at Fault
By Leah Barkoukis
12/31/2012

It’s the second report to come out about the Benghazi terrorist attack that left four Americans dead and not surprisingly, the second report to be highly critical of the State Department. The Senate homeland security committee’s bipartisan report, ‘Flashing Red,’ obtained by Fox News, outlines 10 key findings about the attack.

A scathing Senate committee report on the Benghazi terrorist attack faults the State Department for failing to adequately respond to mounting security threats in the lead-up to the assault. The report says the facility was woefully under-protected at a time when the region, according to a top department official, was "flashing red" -- yet security was not improved, and nobody recommended the compound be shut down. […]

The Senate report noted the "large amount of evidence" in the months preceding the attack that Benghazi was "increasingly dangerous and unstable," with an attack on Americans becoming "much more likely."

"While this intelligence was effectively shared within the Intelligence Community (IC) and with key officials at the Department of State, it did not lead to a commensurate increase in security at Benghazi nor to a decision to close the American mission there, either of which would have been more than justified by the intelligence presented," the report said.

The report said it was "widely understood" that the Libyan government could not adequately protect U.S. personnel, yet the State Department did not move to fill the "security gap." The Senate committee said "no security standards" applied to the Benghazi post -- there were "few meaningful physical barriers," according to the report.

Despite the increasing threat in the region and the apparent vulnerability of the compound, the Senate committee said it appears nobody recommended closing the facility or even temporarily shutting it down. "That was a grievous mistake," Lieberman said.

The investigation turned up details that show "a shocking irresponsibility to protect American diplomatic personnel in Benghazi," Lieberman added.


And what did Obama have to say about accountability in the Benghazi attack? In an interview with NBC’s David Gregory on Sunday he said, “there was just some sloppiness, not intentional, in terms of how we secure embassies in areas where you essentially don’t have government that have a lot of capacity to protect those embassies.”
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To read more about Benghazi-gate, click here.
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To read another article by Leah Barkoukis, click here.

50 Shades of Bush Blame

50 Shades of Bush Blame
By Shawn Mitchell
12/31/2012

Our topic today is how George Bush destroyed America. Or, more precisely, how the Left says he did. Naturally, their solution is for America to join the ranks of European social democracies. It’s the only way to not to repeat “the mistakes that got us here in the first place.”

The Left and their Old Media amplifiers tell a simple story: George Bush inherited frrm Bill Clinton a strong economy and a balanced budget. He proceeded to commit national arson by deregulating Wall Street, cutting taxes for the rich, and fighting two needless wars.

The long fuse of Bush’s fiscal folly finally struck dynamite in late 2008, blowing Clinton’s Camelot economy to bits. President Obama has struggled boldly—against Republican obstruction-- to fix problems so bad not even a modest genius like Bill Clinton could have fixed them in a single term. Clinton modestly admitted this in his convention keynote. So, steady on the transformational path. It’s the only way Forward to redistribution paradise and state allocated happiness.

It’s a measure of the current mood that this narrative has yet to get much pushback from battered conservatives. They’re suffering post traumatic stress from the election, and pre-traumatic stress, bracing for the preordained blame if America dives off the cliff a gleeful president seems to be gunning for.

It’s a shame, because the tidy Bush tale is mostly false and grossly incomplete. It’s little more than a team shout for Democrats, media cheerleaders, and partisan supporters. For that purpose, it’s quite effective, smearing conservative economic positions and providing perpetual cover for the cascading failure of Obama’s liberal policies: The worse things are, the more it will prove how badly Bush screwed things up. Forever, says Madeline Albright.

The fog of national amnesia and unreason hides a lot, and denies the complexity that obviously exists. A nation’s—and president’s--economic success depends on many variables, including business climate, currency and credit strength, a reasonable fiscal balance of taxing and spending, and more. The president doesn’t exclusively control any of the variables. He jockeys for influence among other factors, including Congress, the Fed, the business cycle, and unpredictable world events.

Viewing the big picture, Clinton was very lucky; Bush was very unlucky; and Obama is making it worse.

Clinton’s record can’t be assessed out of context: six of his eight budgets were Republican documents (recall the pre-banana republic era, when Congress actually passed national budgets, and the media would have savaged congressional leaders who refused); his economy and tax revenues were buoyed on the twin bubbles of early dot.com euphoria and Alan Greenspan’s loose exuberance; and after his ’94 rebuke by voters impelled him to declare big government dead, he generally governed moderately, playing strategic small ball, promoting global trade, and keeping largely out of the way of industry and the economy.

Also important, Clinton famously lamented he missed the kind of earth-shaking events that can lend presidential “greatness,” but his economic record plainly benefitted from serving in a relatively uneventful decade.

This is not to deny Clinton political “credit” for the prosperity America enjoyed. That’s how the game works. Presidents gain and lose stature for serendipitous reasons. But in debating policy choices, the Clinton years are no endorsement of the Obama agenda, far from it.

Too, if the charge is irresponsible deregulation, Bush deregulated very little. It was Clinton who signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall, allowing depository banks to participate in commercial banking and equity ventures. This broke firewalls that had protected depositors for decades.

Perhaps most critically, Clinton pumped risk and volatility into the finance and housing sectors. He pushed hard on banks to loosen standards and expand home loans under Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act. He authorized government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to buy subprime securities. That created a market for bundled mortgages. Thus, Clinton greatly expanded lucrative incentives for “predatory lending” that critics would in time blame fully on the private sector.

All of this contributed to the dynamite that exploded in 2008. The smoke and soot are on Bush, but the fingerprints are Clinton’s.

Far from the simple epitaph “tax cuts and two wars,” Bush presided over an extraordinarily turbulent and challenging time for America. The economy endured severe blows quite well. The early internet mania was already tapering, when, months into his term, Bush was called to lead the nation from the smoldering ruins of September 11. The consequences included economic convulsions. Travel and tourism stopped cold and were choked for months. The first surge of the internet bubble popped for good. IPO’s that had pumped out garage-based millionaires dried up. Economic activity and tax revenues dropped sharply. Airports and travel resumed slowly and warily.

It’s surprising that jobs and the economy were as resilient as they were. Critics charge the Bush tax rate cuts didn’t create jobs. But there was job growth, and in context, they may have offered vital incentive for an economy reeling from so many body blows. They certainly have as fair claim to the Obama phrase of “jobs created or saved.”

Bush was not a significant deregulator. Apart from a prow-growth tax policy, he wasn’t a fiscal conservative. Movement conservatives chafed at his big spending, big government initiatives. Importantly, though, Bush and some congressional Republicans raised concerns about the growing risk of Fan and Fred. For their trouble, they were bitterly denounced by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and others.

If Bush wasn’t a limited government conservative, neither was he a credit balloonist. The fury hit in 2008, on Bush’s watch. He, and his party, understandably answered for it at the polls. But the disease that hit us was not mainly a symptom of the deficit spending liberals denounce Bush for. Rather, the infection flowed from bad loans, inflated portfolios, inflationary fed policy, and the moral hazard of a tax-backed safety net for bad bankers.

The stigma for our credit crisis and slow recovery now falls not on fiscal moderates like Bush, but on tea partiers, populists, and free market advocates who just want government to tax and spend less and take its boot off the economy. Meanwhile, the banker friends of Bill and now Barack, the Bob Rubins, Jon Corzines, Tim Geithners, and Goldman Sachs of the world are covering for, and slapping each others’ backs, and laughing all the way to the tax-payer backed bank.

The mistakes that got us here, indeed.
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No really, blame the democrat's, click here.

Video: The hottest movie gun violence from celebrities against gun violence

Video: The hottest movie gun violence from celebrities against gun violence
posted at 7:01 pm on December 31, 2012 by Allahpundit

Via Red State, the sequel to this should be “Highest personal carbon footprints by celebrities against global warming.” The defense here will be that it’s all just make believe and has no influence on the culture generally or on degenerate lunatics like Adam Lanza specifically. That’s fine by me, but it sure is funny how eager Hollywood is in other circumstances to boast about how much influence over the culture it has. Oddly enough, it’s only the good outcomes that are attributable to them, not the bad.

Michael Moore once made a movie puzzling over the fact that while other countries have plenty of guns too, none of them has as much gun violence as America. Well, none of them has a glamour industry as sophisticated as America’s either, and there’s nothing that that industry likes to glamorize more than violence, especially violence involving guns. Even the people who start out opposed to it seem to get sucked in. I remember a college prof marveling at how real and sordid the killings looked in “Taxi Driver” vis-a-vis how stylish and cartoonish they seemed just 15 years later in “GoodFellas.” Note to Hollywood: If you’re scoring images of guys hung on meat hooks to the piano part of “Layla,” you should probably hold off on lectures.

These people are going to be awfully disappointed when their hero gives up on the cause early next year. He’s already preparing the ground to blame everyone except himself.

Watch some Hollywood hypocrisy here:

Celebrities - nobody gives a crap what you think! If you want to be slaves or subjects, you just go ahead. Personally I don't think you are anything but a bunch of dumbass sheep. Go to Hell!
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To read more about gun control, click here.

Constitutional law professor calls for trashing the Constitution

Constitutional law professor calls for trashing the Constitution
By: John Hayward
12/31/2012 11:36 AM

Louis Michael Seidman, a Constitutional law professor at Georgetown who has evidently grown very unhappy in his field, penned a New York Times editorial for New Years’ Eve entitled “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.” Seidman is very frustrated with the “fiscal cliff” drama, and blames that rotten old Constitution for setting up a clumsy system that gets in the way of well-intentioned Maximum Rulers with really swell ideas:

As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.

Consider, for example, the assertion by the Senate minority leader last week that the House could not take up a plan by Senate Democrats to extend tax cuts on households making $250,000 or less because the Constitution requires that revenue measures originate in the lower chamber. Why should anyone care? Why should a lame-duck House, 27 members of which were defeated for re-election, have a stranglehold on our economy? Why does a grotesquely malapportioned Senate get to decide the nation’s fate?

Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse. Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago.


Seidman then offers a long dissertation about how people mostly ignore the Constitution anyway, culminating in a howler that suggests he doesn’t pay much attention to current events: “In the face of this long history of disobedience, it is hard to take seriously the claim by the Constitution’s defenders that we would be reduced to a Hobbesian state of nature if we asserted our freedom from this ancient text. Our sometimes flagrant disregard of the Constitution has not produced chaos or totalitarianism; on the contrary, it has helped us to grow and prosper.”

It’s strange that Georgetown university professors would require remedial education in civics, but I have an efficient suggestion for educating Seidman: just have Hobby Lobby forward their $1.3 million per day fine for defying ObamaCare to the good professor, and let him pay the fine out of his own pocket, until he gains a new appreciation for “chaos and totalitarianism.”

I’ve noticed many online reactions to Seidman’s column along the lines that he must mean it as a joke, but I see nothing to indicate that he isn’t serious. Quite telling is his assertion that some parts of the Constitution meet his approval:

This is not to say that we should disobey all constitutional commands. Freedom of speech and religion, equal protection of the laws and protections against governmental deprivation of life, liberty or property are important, whether or not they are in the Constitution. We should continue to follow those requirements out of respect, not obligation.

Nor should we have a debate about, for instance, how long the president’s term should last or whether Congress should consist of two houses. Some matters are better left settled, even if not in exactly the way we favor. Nor, finally, should we have an all-powerful president free to do whatever he wants. Even without constitutional fealty, the president would still be checked by Congress and by the states. There is even something to be said for an elite body like the Supreme Court with the power to impose its views of political morality on the country.

What would change is not the existence of these institutions, but the basis on which they claim legitimacy. The president would have to justify military action against Iran solely on the merits, without shutting down the debate with a claim of unchallengeable constitutional power as commander in chief. Congress might well retain the power of the purse, but this power would have to be defended on contemporary policy grounds, not abstruse constitutional doctrine. The Supreme Court could stop pretending that its decisions protecting same-sex intimacy or limiting affirmative action were rooted in constitutional text.


This is a very old, very tired lament from “enlightened” authoritarians. “The world is grown sick of parliamentary politics,” H.G. Wells lamented in 1932, in the course of a speech in which he would explicitly endorse fascism – headed by wise and benevolent socialist liberals, rather than militaristic madmen, of course – as the best way to organize society.

“What has preserved our political stability is not a poetic piece of parchment,” writes Seidman, ”but entrenched institutions and habits of thought and, most important, the sense that we are one nation and must work out our differences.” Doesn’t he understand that every single totalitarian ruler from the blood-soaked Twentieth Century has justified tyranny in exactly those terms? Hugo Chavez and the Castros believe they possess a keen sense that Venezuela and Cuba are “one nation” whose people “must work out their differences,” too. The same sentiment rings from loudspeakers across North Korea and Iran.

What Seidman has actually penned is a powerful defense of the Constitution, whose words and intent he correctly accuses our bloated, insolvent, dysfunctional, and increasingly totalitarian government of ignoring. Freedom is not, and never can be, adequately protected by the current passions of the electorate. The idea that the possibility of getting voted out of office would be, almost entirely on its own, an adequate check against ambitions of political leaders is hilariously naive and ignorant. Constitutional order is a recognition that free people should not be ruled by anyone’s whims - neither those of the ruling class, nor those of their fellow citizens.

The American people have, for decades, been programmed with the belief that government power should not suffer “arbitrary” limits – if a majority (or really, a determined and politically cohesive minority) think something should be done, then it should be doable. But this is just another way of saying that if a determined minority wants something, everyone else should be compelled to provide it. If a strong political coalition wishes to impose some edict upon the rest of the populace, everyone else should be forced to obey. The removal of Constitutional limits to this process – yes, including those “clumsy” legal structures that seem to function as speed bumps – produces a bloody feeding frenzy, not enlightened statesmanship and national unity.

One major reason for the ultimately anarchic nature of “unrestricted” democracy is that the State itself has interests, and in the absence of rigid Constitutional controls, it’s not difficult for it to cobble together agreeable coalitions of voters to press those interests upon everyone else. Virtually no one outside of Washington really wanted ObamaCare, for example. It was created by politicians with an appetite for power, and they secured just enough political clout to impose it on the rest of us, and protect it through an election that was also preoccupied with countless other issues. The sort of unrestrained utopia envisioned by the liberal fascisti is populated by groups of citizens who dream up great ideas, then petition the government to make them happen. In reality, the exact opposite is what generally occurs: political elites have ideas, which they enlist targeted groups of citizens to promote, and they don’t usually need 51 percent popular support to make them happen.

Another reason for the importance of Constitutional order – and one of the reasons we’re suffering so much from our lack of fidelity to it – is the driving principle behind “progressivism.” Progressives believe each new usurpation of individual liberty is permanent; the growth of the State can never be reversed. Each new appendage of the State quickly accumulates a large body of dependents who will act aggressively to protect it. Thus far, history has proven the progressives generally correct… in the process making a powerful case for the Constitutional order we’ve lost, but may someday regain. Because the Constitution provides the ultimate protection for the rights of future generations. It should be extremely difficult to create programs that tomorrow’s children will never have a realistic chance of voting against. It should be hard to take steps that can never be retraced, or to implement “solutions” that can never be neutralized, even when they collapse into intractable problems.

The parts of Seidman’s argument that make sense are the scary parts, because they remind us how close to an “enlightened dictatorship” we have already come. The Constitution is not rigid and inflexible – it includes a mechanism for amendment. Accumulating the political capital to make such amendments should be difficult. But we already suffer beneath many disastrous errors that were imposed upon us without regard for the proper use of that mechanism. We should have long ago been firmer on insisting that Big Ideas incompatible with the checks, balances, and protections of the American system should be revised, rather than seeking to short-circuit the system. Those who prefer life under a benevolent dictatorship have plenty of other citizenship options to choose from. Warning: once you have relocated to such a nation, you will probably find further relocation options extremely limited.
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To read another article by John Hayward, click here.

Obama Announces Plans to Go For Guns in America

Obama Announces Plans to Go For Guns in America
By: Jim Hoft
12/30/2012 02:19 PM

Back in 2008 Barack Obama promised supporters:
“I’m not going to take your guns away. That just ain’t true.”

Fast forward to 2012…

Today Barack Obama announced that he hopes to pass new restrictions on gun ownership in America.

The Hill reported:

President Obama on Sunday said he would make gun control a priority in his new term, pledging to put his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on firearms in 2013.

“I’m going to be putting forward a package and I’m going to be putting my full weight behind it,” Obama said in an interview aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m going to be making an argument to the American people about why this is important and why we have to do everything we can to make sure that something like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary does not happen again.”

In the wake of the Dec. 14 mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., school, the president has launched a White House task force led by Vice President Biden to present proposals in January to help stem gun violence. Obama has said that he would seek a broad approach to the problem addressing the role of violence in entertainment and measures to improve mental healthcare.

But he has also called on Congress to move quickly to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban and a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines.

Obama on Sunday repeated those calls and said he would meet with lawmakers on both sides of the aisles to see action.

“I’ve been very clear that an assault-rifle ban, banning these high capacity clips, background checks, that there are a set of issues that I have historically supported and will continue to support,” the president said.

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To read more about gun control, click here.

Defense train wreck or reshaping opportunity?

Defense train wreck or reshaping opportunity?
By: Robert Maginnis
12/31/2012 02:34 PM

We can’t afford to wait years to decide whether the dire predictions associated with the latest round of defense cuts are more than political hyperbole. If those predictions prove true then the money we save by cutting national security in order to service the debt will pale in comparison to the high future costs to repair the damage. That is why we must use this time as an opportunity to reshape our armed forces to address future threats.

For more than a year some administration, congressional and uniformed leaders expressed dire warnings about the consequences of significant additional defense cuts associated with sequestration – the automatic spending cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 – that take effect January 2, 2013. Those dire predictions indicate the deep defense cuts will “destroy the military,” “It invites aggression,” may force the reintroduction of the draft, and be “very high risk” for our national security.

Those are sobering warnings coming from our elected officials and senior generals who caution that the new cuts alone are not the whole problem. The new reductions follow President Barack Obama’s other annual defense cuts and his revised defense strategy that assumes major new risks.

Sequestration will cut $55-$62 billion from defense for each of the next ten years but those reductions come on top of $487 billion already implemented last year. Then there is the matter that in FY 2012 defense was cut $41.3 billion relative to the previous year and FY 2011 suffered a three percent cut from the prior year as well – that’s a reduction of $776 billion over the next decade before accounting for sequestration, according to the Foreign Policy Initiative, a Washington-based think tank.

Further, Obama’s 2012 defense strategy makes room for these cuts by assuming far more risk in spite of an international environment that is becoming more, not less, challenging. For example, Obama dropped the military’s “two-war” planning concept which suggests we are entering an era of decreased conflict; he downsized our nuclear arsenal, is radically cutting ground forces and is willing to let more conflicts run their course, like Syria.

But General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified our threats are not decreasing as Obama’s strategy suggests. “In my personal military judgment, formed over 38 years, we are living in the most dangerous time in my lifetime right now,” Dempsey testified.

Not everyone agrees the defense cuts will eviscerate our national security. A 2012 report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) labels such warnings “fear mongering.” CBO’s Winslow Wheeler said the allegations that the Pentagon’s recent budgets are “a catastrophe is consciously constructed, misinforming hysteria.” Wheeler states recent defense budgets are well above Cold War averages and should be sufficient.

Peter Singer with the Washington-based Brookings Institution is also skeptical about the officials’ dire predictions. He argues after sequestration America will still account for 38% of all global military spending. He agrees sequestration is a “terrible mistake” because it is “un-strategic to hack away at the defense budget in a generalized manner” but the U.S. military after the cuts will not fundamentally change.

In spite of Singer’s no fundamental change view we are already seeing evidence of military deterioration which supports the “prophets of doom” perspective. Specifically, our 285-ship Navy could decline to 230 given sequestration, the smallest level since 1915, according to the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).[x] Meanwhile, the Pentagon states China’s rapidly growing navy “is now venturing into the global maritime domain, a sphere long dominated by the U.S. Navy.” And Admiral Michael Mullen, the then-chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, stated in June 2010 that “I have moved from being curious to being genuinely concerned about China’s military programs.”

Our Air Force will lose 200 more airplanes in 2013, according to General Philip Breedlove, the Air Force vice chief of staff. He testified that the average age of our fighters is 22 years; our bombers average age is 35 years; and tankers, the oldest of the fleet, their average age is 47 years.

A shrinking and aging air fleet is especially dangerous for American security because, according to a 2009 Rand study, the U.S. could lose an air war with China simply because we do not have enough fighters to compete with overwhelming Chinese numbers.

General Joseph Dunford, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, reported the Marines are deteriorating. We are making “some hard choices inside to extend some of our equipment out past what might have been its normal service life by service life extension programs,” Dunford testified. He added that “67 percent of our units at home station were in degraded readiness.”

The HASC published a memo entitled “The Catastrophic Impact of Sequestration” that indicates America is losing its technology edge as well. “Precisely at the moment when advanced military technology is spreading around the world, America would be forced [by sequestration] to make severe cutbacks, eroding our technological advantage,” according to the HASC.

Those cuts, according to the HASC, could include termination of the Joint Strike Fighter, termination of a new strategic bomber, delaying new submarines, shrinking our aircraft carrier fleet, and termination of the littoral combat ship essential to defeating anti-access threats from nations like Iran and China.

The long-term strategic consequences of sequestration on top of the other Obama cuts, such as reductions in weapons procurement and research that slow or stop entire programs will be subtle at first. The true impact might not be evident for years. However, if the dire predictions are correct our forces will inevitably be outmatched and recovering could be at an incredible cost.

Meanwhile, in response to the current austerity, the services will go into a holding pattern of sorts cutting back on readiness, furlough and/or layoff civilian workers, let fewer contracts, and scrutinize all expenditures.

We saw this approach after Vietnam and it led to a hollow force. That approach was wrong then and it is wrong today. The administration and Congress must use this period of austere defense spending as an opportunity to reshape our armed forces to optimally address 21st Century threats.

That requires answering tough questions such as the president already addressed in his new strategy. How much defense do we really need? Obama’s decision to scrap the “two-war” standard creates considerable savings because it says we need not resource forces to fight two simultaneous operations like one in the Persian Gulf (Iran) and one in northeast Asia (North Korea).

Many experts will disagree with Obama’s strategy but it is a starting point for a serious reshaping effort that should create armed forces we can afford and one that addresses our emerging threats.

This reshaping must not be left totally to the services because they are too close to the problem and have equities to protect, as do their industrial base. We need a fresh look at our emerging threats and available resources. Nothing – not current structures, weapons systems, forces, roles, or missions – should be exempt from the knife.

A non-ideological and totally objective look at what kind of armed forces we really need for the 21st Century would be a very positive outcome of these fiscally challenging times. We might actually tap into American creativity to produce a plan that breaks lots of tea cups but gives America improved and more affordable armed forces.
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To read another article by Robert Maginnis, click here.
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To read more about Sequestration, click here.

The Worst of the Worst

The Worst of the Worst
By Doug Bandow on 12.31.12 @ 6:08AM

A new report from Freedom House on the world’s most repressive societies in 2012.

Americans live privileged lives. So do Europeans. And Japanese. As well as the citizens of a handful of other states. We all live in nations that are prosperous and democratic, that enforce the rule of law and protect human rights. Many other people around the world are not so lucky.

Freedom House has released a depressing report, “Worst of the Worst 2012: The World’s Most Repressive Societies.” According to the New York-based organization, “Autocratic rule remains widespread and persistent” even in what is supposed to be a new, enlightened age. Nearly a quarter of the world’s population, more than 1.6 billion people, “live in countries with the worst records of political and civil rights, and these countries have suffered under brutal dictatorships for decades.”

The good news is that nothing is forever. Even communism largely disappeared, other than in Cuba and North Korea. China has morphed into something more akin to a fascist system, with much greater personal autonomy than before. Moreover, noted Freedom House, “events in several countries during the last year have raised further prospects for greater freedom.”

Still, today, at least, one-fourth of humanity suffers under severe oppression. These people, observed Freedom House, “have no say in how they are governed and face severe consequences if they try to exercise their most basic rights, such as expressing their views, assembling peacefully, and organizing independently of the state. Citizens who dare to assert their rights in these repressive countries typically suffer harassment and imprisonment, and often are subjected to physical or psychological abuse.”

The Worst of the Worst are a motley crew. Eleven governments and territories are at the bottom, where “political opposition is banned, criticism of the government is met with retribution, and independent organizations are suppressed.” The miscreants: Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tibet, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Western Sahara.

Another eight rate just a bit higher, but nevertheless “severely suppress opposition political activity, impede independent organizations, and censor or punish criticism of the state.” This depressing group is made up of: Belarus, Burma, Chad, China, Cuba, Laos, Libya, and South Ossetia.

There is no unifying feature of the 19 other than ruthless repression of liberty. In Somalia the oppression occurs in a failed state. In the others brutal dictatorships enforce their will. Explained Freedom House: “The common thread among these countries is an individual or collective dictatorship that rests on a very narrow elite and uses extreme forms of repression to hold on to power.”

Most of the oppressors have been busy for a very long time. “North Korea has stayed at the very bottom of the ratings scale” since the institute began its Freedom in the World survey. Somalia has been at or near the bottom over the same period. Nearly three-quarter of the others have spent more than 25 years on the list.

The ruling elites in these states have proved to be deeply entrenched: “These regimes have endured on average for 37 ½ years without any transfer of power between competing political parties or forces.” Such longevity could be achieved only through repression which “is integral to their survival. These regimes have managed to stay in power for decades by eliminating effective political opposition, severely circumscribing civil society, and silencing their critics.”

The prospects for change remain cloudy. Historically, repression is down. Noted Freedom House: “From a peak of 38 such countries in 1984, the number declined to 15 countries in 2003, and stood at 16 in 2011.” This process was driven by the collapse of communism and move away from authoritarianism in the Third World. Over the last year progress was evident in Burma and Libya, though in both the ultimately outcomes remain in doubt.

On the other hand, there is substantial bad news. China “has committed increased resources to internal security forces, engaged in systematic enforced disappearances of dozens of human rights lawyers and bloggers, and enhanced controls over online social media.” It is even worse in Tibet, where “authorities have continued to restrict basic freedoms and impose harsh security measures.” Cuba responded to the impending visit of Pope Benedict XVI by detaining dissidents. Sudan “launched a harsh crackdown on any sign of dissent.” Worst of all was the brutal attempt by the al-Assad regime to retain power in Syria.

The Freedom House report includes a summary of the 19 countries and territories. In Belarus dictatorial President Alyaksandr Lukashenka responded to public protests over another stolen election with “an extensive crackdown on all forms of dissent.” Prison was meted out even to protesters who stood wordlessly clapping their hands.

Burma was a relative bright spot, with the release of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, and relaxation of controls over the media. Whether the military is prepared to accept genuine civilian rule, and end its brutal campaigns against ethnic minorities, is as yet unknown.

In Chad fraudulent elections maintained control by the ruling party. Moreover, “Freedom of expression is severely restricted, and self-censorship is common.”

China, the world’s most populous nation with the world’s second largest economy, is regressing. The ruling Communist Party, which just moved through its long-awaited leadership transition, has increased its “efforts to restrict public discussion of political, legal, and human rights issues.” At the same time, Beijing “stalled or even reversed previous reforms related to the rule of law, while security forces resorted to extralegal forms of repression.” The latter included the disappearance of human rights lawyers and bloggers.

Although the Cuban government released some political prisoners in an agreement with the Catholic Church, Havana also detained a number of human rights activists in advance of the Pope’s visit. The government separately has relaxed some economic restrictions.

Equatorial Guinea long has been one of Africa’s most oppressive nations. The country held a fraudulent constitutional referendum. When it hosted the 2011 African Union summit, the government launched a crackdown, with “security forces reportedly detaining hundreds of suspected dissidents,” reported Freedom House.

Eritrea is another state known mostly for its brutal repressiveness. The rulers have never held elections in the almost 20 years since the country’s successful secession. Unfortunately, “The Eritrean government’s suppression of the basic political rights and civil liberties of its citizens continued.” Independent media is not simply restricted; it is banned.

Laos remains a communist throwback in which there is no political or media freedom. Libya, in contrast, improved with the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, though the country’s ultimate fate remains to be decided.

North Korea probably is the most repressive, misgoverned nation on earth. So far the death of dictator Kim Jong-il has led to no relaxation of the regime’s totalitarian controls. The only reform might be the issuance of designer hand-cuffs in prison. The North is an issue for more than its own oppressed people because it is developing nuclear weapons and threatening South Korea with war.

Saudi Arabia is a totalitarian Muslim state. Supposedly an important U.S. ally, Riyadh grew more repressive with “new restrictions on the media and public speech as well as the severe treatment of religious minorities, including crackdowns on Shiite Muslim protests.”

Somalia may be the closest example of anarchy on earth today. Noted Freedom House: “The Somali state has in many respects ceased to exist, and there is no governing authority with the ability to protect political rights and civil liberties.”

South Ossetia has declared independence from Georgia but has not implemented democracy. Rather, the outgoing president “jailed and threatened opposition figures and changed legislation to prevent the registration” of opposition candidates.

Sudan has never been a free society. Unfortunately, there was “a surge in arrests of opposition political activists and leaders, the banning of a leading political party, the violent response to public demonstrations in Khartoum and other cities, and a crackdown on the activities of journalists.” The situation could worsen with the potential of conflict after the secession of South Sudan.

Syria saw a significant deterioration with increased government repression and the slide into civil war. Beijing continued to maintain its harsh rule in Tibet. Turkmenistan “took greater repressive measures against human rights activists inside and outside the country.”

Uzbekistan is another Central Asian dictatorship. That nation’s government “suppressed all political opposition and restricted independent business activity.” Moreover, “the few remaining civic activists and critical journalists in the country faced prosecution, hefty fines, and arbitrary detention.”

Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony conquered by Morocco, saw a decline in liberty “due to the inability of civil society groups to form and operate, as well as serious restrictions on property rights and business activity.” Unfortunately, native “Sahrawis continued to be denied basic political, civil, and economic rights.”

It would be comforting to believe that the world was steadily and inevitably moving toward greater liberty. However, while there are moments of great progress—such as the collapse of communism—there also are moments of great despair.

Some day freedom may come to the Worst of the Worst. However, so far repression has proved to be brutally resilient. While the U.S. cannot turn into a crusader state attempting to liberate all these peoples by force, Americans and other people of good will around the world should do what they can to embarrass and challenge regimes which oppress.
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To read another article by Doug Bandow, click here.

MSM Gives Us the Mushroom Treatment on HHS Mandate

MSM Gives Us the Mushroom Treatment on HHS Mandate
By David Catron on 12.31.12 @ 6:09AM

The media are keeping us in the dark on Obamacare’s legal woes and feeding us Hobby Lobby.

In December, there were five federal court decisions relating to Obamacare. Chances are, however, that you will have heard about only one of them. If you do a web search for recent news stories on Hobby Lobby, whose long-shot request for a Supreme Court injunction against the HHS contraception mandate was denied last week, you will get thousands of hits. Virtually every establishment media outlet has posted at least one story on that decision, and most offer several for the edification of their readers.

Now, using precisely the same parameters, do a search for recent stories on Wheaton College. You will get fewer than a dozen results relating to the December 18 decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule a lower court dismissal of Wheaton’s lawsuit against the government pursuant to the HHS mandate. You will find a similar paucity of stories about December rulings against the government in suits brought by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, and American Pulverizer, Inc.

The irony here is that Justice Sotomayor’s Hobby Lobby opinion was utterly predictable and, in the long run, probably far less significant than any of the other four decisions. The Wheaton College ruling was not merely a rebuke for the lower court, which naively dismissed the lawsuit last August based on a non-binding government promise “to revise the mandate to accommodate some religious institutions before it goes into effect,” it demolished an argument that the Justice Department has been making in all the anti-mandate lawsuits.

The Obama administration has been arguing, in the many lawsuits it is fighting over the HHS mandate, that the plaintiffs have no standing to sue because they have not yet been injured by the contraception rule, and that HHS apparatchiks are revising it to make it fairer. But federal judges are increasingly reluctant to accept that line of reasoning. As U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan phrased it in his decision involving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, “There is no ‘Trust us, changes are coming’ clause in the Constitution.”

The most recent victory against HHS and its egregious anti-conscience mandate came last Friday, when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued an injunction preventing the government from enforcing the mandate against an Illinois company called Korte & Luitjohan Contractors. And it delivers a potentially deadly blow to the administration’s most pernicious argument — that secular, for‐profit employers are not entitled to the same First Amendment protections enjoyed by strictly religious institutions like churches.

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which represents Korte & Luitjohan Contractors, also represents a company called American Pulverizer. Upon securing a similar injunction for that company’s owners on December 20, ACLJ issued a statement that neatly sums up the effect of the HHS edict: “By January 1, 2013, at the latest, Paul and Henry Griesedieck face a stark and unavoidable choice: abandon their beliefs in order to stay in business, or abandon their businesses in order to stay true to their beliefs.”

The ACLJ isn’t the only public interest law firm fighting the HHS mandate. Another leader is the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented Wheaton College in its recent victory. The Becket Fund, a law firm “dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions—from Anglicans to Zoroastrians,” also represents Hobby Lobby. But, despite media insinuations to the contrary, this is no group of fundamentalist lightweights. The Becket Fund was behind the landmark 9-0 Supreme Court victory in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC.

And, unlike most of the media, Becket’s general counsel puts the Sotomayor opinion in perspective: “The Supreme Court merely decided not to get involved in the case at this time. It left open the possibility of review after their appeal is completed in the Tenth Circuit.” So, why have the “news” media made such a big deal of the Hobby Lobby ruling while virtually ignoring the other December decisions? The answer is obvious. That the Obama Justice Department batted one-for-five in December is not to be advertized.

In their ongoing effort to emulate Pravda, the media are doing their best to prop up Obama administration propaganda. Just as they exaggerated anything resembling good news about the economy during the run-up to the recent election, they are now echoing the administration’s talking points on Obamacare and the HHS mandate. The party line on the “Affordable Care Act” is that it has survived all significant legal challenges and full implementation is inevitable. Stories that don’t fit that line don’t get past the editor.

Thus, we get thousands of stories about the Sotomayor opinion with headlines that suggest it constitutes the demise of all serious challenges to the HHS mandate. Meanwhile, we see and hear almost nothing about 80 percent of the rulings handed down by federal courts during the same month on the same issue. But the lawsuits continue to plod forward. Moreover, the HHS mandate is by no means the only provision of Obamacare still being litigated. And the utterly corrupt MSM does not get the final word on any of these lawsuits. Thank God.
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To read another article by David Catron, click here.

Former Navy SEAL: America arms its enemies against its allies

Former Navy SEAL: America arms its enemies against its allies
By: Benjamin Smith
12/31/2012 10:34 AM

Would we finally get it when the titles on our favorite magazines or websites read: America arms Egypt and and allies itself with Islam against its former ally Isreal?

How about: “The Constitution and anything Christian-Judeo are comdemned and punishable by sharia law”in the afternoon?

Or: Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaida, Hammas, Hezbolah, Iran, Egypt amongst others are all our friends now……… Now we can arm them”. Upon first glance, something would tell you that that headline is Obsurd, wrong and that is just something that would never happen. THE GOVERNMENTS WORDS DO NOT MATCH THEIR ACTIONS! We are arming the enemy! Pay attention to this, its Important.

PLEASE LOOK AT THESE FACTS, WHAT DOES THIS SAY TO YOU?

The Leader of Egypt IS Mohammad MORSI. He is in the Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood is the parent group that created Al-Qiada (the violent arm of MB).
Mohammad Morsi declared Dictatorial Powers over his people. Morsi advocates Fundamental Sharia Law.

This year Egypt is receiving 200 M1A1 Main Battle Tanks FROM THE US. Our U.S. Marines only have 150 that are in service.

Egypt is run by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The muslim Brotherhood believes in a World under Islamic Sharia law and wants the state of Israel DESTROYED.

Egypt has the 7th largest tank force in the world.

Egypt has the population of California or Texas or New York but the 4th largest fleet of F-16s on earth. The f-16 is a great fighter/attack jet.

Egypt has 240 F-16s and another squadron is already on the way from the US.

In a recent speech MORSI said, “The price will be high if the aggression continues, Egypt is different from yesterday,” he added “We assure them [Israel] that the price will be high for continued aggression, and [we tell them] you have to bear the responsibility.” During Morsi’s speech, worshipers chanted: “Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews, the army of Mohamed will return,” this is the same as chanting “Auschwitz, Auschwitz,”

Israel only has 350 Attack Jets in their inventory and an aging tank fleet that is mostly classified as Obsolete.

THESE FACTS SAY THAT ISRAEL IS GOING TO TAKE A BEATING! And its our fault.

Isn’t the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Quiada who we are at war with called theWar on Terror? This is when a part of the Muslim Brotherhood called Al-Quieda killed 3000 of our peole in one day just in case you forgot. I would say that we have forgotten or is the fact more to the point that we, AMERICA, are now playing on the side of our enemies in this war. WE ARE SUPPLYING TERRORIST NATIONS that have already called for the destruction of ISRAEL, an Ally. OUR IGNORANCE IS SHOWING…. We have ignored these issues enough to call ourselves IGNORANT. The next step of IGNORANCE for us would be called SLAVERY or if you feel like looking it up, its called DHIMMITUDE! Get Smart People!

Attention should be brought to the fact that Egypt and Israel have a fundamental disgust and hatred for each other. The religion of Egypt and their leaders, the Muslim Brotherhood, do not allow for the existence of the jews and the legitimacy of Israel. They have even crucified non muslims recently…. All with religious tones and quoting the Koran or calling the usual “Allahhhh oh ohawkbwardt” (sound that out, that’s what it sounds like). Egypts leaders want to eradicate the Jewish religion as did HITLER (and they are not shy about it either), except now its sanctioned by Allah in the Koran, look it up! These Idealistic groups don’t see this as anything other than what they were put on this earth to do……. Kill non muslims and dominate the ones who you choose to let live…. (look it up) DON’T LET THE NAMES OF COUNTRIES MAKE YOU THINK THIS IS NATIONALISTIC …… THIS IS AN ALL OUT RELIGIOUS WAR THAT WILL MAKE THE CRUSADES LOOK LIKE A WARM HUG. They have plans for the future and we are not in it folks. The second World War was only a distraction in their global war with Non-Muslims…. Dar al Islam – (LOOK IT UP!!!). Now they are learning to work together and understanding that if they work together they can rid the world of an antithetical ideology and they can have relative peace if their followers are unified in the GRAND JIHAD ordained by ALLAH in the KORAN. They will ultimately have PEACE in the muslim world all the while finishing off the rest of us, the Keffir, the INFIDEL!

Now its their war and they are going to be standing front and center ARMED BY THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT with nobody holding them back……. ARE WE ON THE WRONG SIDE or right and wrong. Are we to be Lucifer against of GOD HIMSELF in the name of Allah? What have we become?

From: Benjamin Smith [mailto:bsmith@warfighterscience.com]
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2012 8:03 AM
To: ‘nmccabe@eaglepub.com’
Subject: CT Shooting, Gun Control and political reflexivism…………………………………………………….

Wrote this one about a week ago after the shooting…… here was my take a few days ago but still applies to the greater issue. I have been busy and not in that issue as much as I should be. What is your take on this one because this is a big issue and really important that we stay on it and keep the people as informed as possible.

Do you have the links to any writings you put up? I never got them and would like to see the argument directions and reaction trends upon the reader.

It disturbs me to hear more about this man that has killed so many for no apparent reason. A moment of violence by a very sick evil man. We are all emotional at this horror perpetrated upon innocent children but this is how they are going to slip by legislation that can take another swipe at your GOD GIVEN RIGHTS ordained by the Bill of Rights. I feel for all involved but we also have a country to defend and tyrannical despots to offend.

I would be damned if I gave my child to someone who is to have custody of MY FLESH AND BLOOD for 8 hours a day who couldn’t protect my child and lead them to safety. That teacher or school administrator should be able to look me in the eye and say “I got him (her)” with the conviction of someone who is aware, ready, willing and able to kill or sacrifice themselves (honor to Victoria Soto) for the young if need be. They would have to understand the importance and fleeting nature of life itself. It is imperitive that Parents know their Teachers and school staff intimately and make sure they believe in the same values and safety parameters… this is why Education is supposed to be a LOCAL ISSUE not federal. I would prefer a proactive, provocative, alert role model to be the teacher of my kids, someone who has discipline and experience amongst the world. Teachers deserve respect only if they have earned it, not through tenyer or a union. Teachers are accountable to the student and the parents and not big government or big unions. I would want someone who proficient in techniques of how to prevent, avoid or (god knows) know how to fight fiercely to the death for them if need be…… I KNOW I WOULD!!!! WOULD YOU? TRY AND GET IN MY WAY! Why is this not done yet and what are you doing to help?

LETS BE LOGICAL FOR A MINUTE ……. PLEASE…… Why are laws made? So law abiding citizens can follow them and be safer.

GUN FREE ZONE laws mean that you cannot carry a gun into a school area. Does the man who KNOWINGLY steps into this zone with weapons and the intent to kill have any intention of follow them?He knows that the people in this zone are unarmed because they will follow the rules … THEREFORE ….. He knows the Laws that are in place will let him achieve maximum carnage? Who are those laws for? Laws are made to safeguard the innocent but in this case they worked in the Criminals favor because he knew the rules. His quarry would be weak.

Here again we also have a the Aurora shooting and the conditions there. They were in GUN FREE ZONE where the people who could have done something couldn’t because they were following the laws that are supposed to protect them. there were VETERANS in that audience that turned into a MAXIMUM LOSS.

It is the Criminals fault for doing it. That is logical. Should the governments that restrict your right to protect yourself be held just as accountable when it is proven that their logic is faulty and they forse their laws upon you. As I have a right to hit you in self defense DO I NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO SHOOT YOU IF YOU POINT A LOADED GUN AT ME OR ANY OF MY FAMILY or FRIENDS? These two issues are the same.

Only you can save you. Laws are words that criminals don’t read or understand because even the severity of the penalties will never stop someone hell bent on doing evil. It is your instinct as an animal. It is your God given Right to be able to fight back or to prevent these things from happening. Have we lost our ability to be responsible or judiciously violent, when need be, in the short years that our country has existed? I suggest you look to the Settlers, Founders and the Greatest generation and research what has made us a strong country….. you will see what I am talking about….. Sometimes you might have to pull a gun and kill someone the same way you might get your ass kicked or shot if you do nothing. AT A CERTAIN POINT YOUR ENEMIES REALITY BECOMES YOUR OWN.

You have to be ready for adversity always! That is what America was Founded upon. We are judicious people and believe that You get what you deserve, nothing more, nothing less. You might have to die if you are an evil man with a gun and have the intent to kill one of mine or an innocent. Bad day for you. Simple as that.

Nick Meli from the Mall shooting recently had his pistol and a license to carry when it happened and THANK GOD HE DID. Because he took cover made his family safe and raised his gun to the KILLER. When this happened THE KILLER TURNED THE GUN ON HIMSELF and shot himself. Needless to say there were to be more killings that day if this GUN TOTING RADICAL CITIZEN WITH A LISCENCE TO CARY wasn’t there.

People who have their License to carry are usually the people who know how to use the guns the best, can out shoot the local law enforcement, which is not to hard – just look at their qualification standards, and usually have better judgment in using them. This is not to knock Law enforcement but its pretty obvious the Officers who understand the importance of their job….. it shows, we respect you and America thanks you but WE GET TO DEFEND OURSELVES AS WELL.

Think logically again as if you were the criminal and you wanted to kill as many people as you could before you decided to take your own life. Where would you go? A GUN FREE ZONE or a place where there could be GOOD LAW ABIDING CITIZENS WHO KNOW HOW TO KILL YOU IF YOU GET OUT OF LINE?. You would probably go to where there is less threat and no one who can protect themselves……… I KNOW, I WOULD PROBABLY CHOOSE A SCHOOL OR A MOVIE THEATER WITH A GUN FREE ZONE…… Wouldn’t you?

WAKE UP PEOPLE!
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To read another article by Benjamin Smith, click here.

Speed Limiters, Too?

Speed Limiters, Too?
By Eric Peters on 12.28.12 @ 6:07AM

From gun control to car control and more.

Most people — including people who favor what they call “gun control” — would probably not support the idea of fitting all cars with speed governors. But why? Isn’t the principle exactly the same?

A car is a machine that’s capable of being used for “illegal” purposes. It can be used to cause harm, even to kill. Why should anyone be allowed to own a car with more capability than they need?

Most people would rise back on their heels and defend their cars. But why not someone else’s gun?

Because thoughtless Americans do not discern the commonality of interest — because they have been conditioned to never think in terms of concepts. They have been reduced to a state of bipedal animalism — because they have lost (or never developed) the distinctly human capacity to focus on principles rather than particulars. This, in turn, makes it easy to convince them that a given particular, invariably something of no great interest to them (such as a gun), is “bad” — based on childish arguments that would be washed away in an instant if their brains operated on the conceptual rather than the animal level.

If, for example, the argument is that a given item could be used in a harmful way, and for that reason must be banned — it inevitably follows that any potentially harmful item is also in principle subject to being banned. Guns today. Cars tomorrow. Soda pop the day after. Actually, make that yesterday — because it’s already happened. And more will happen — precisely because there’s no reason for it not to happen.

But the human cattle out there do not see the principle at issue, so it is easily surrendered by them to people who have much more in mind than merely that particular thing (“bad” guns).

The only thing preventing the wholesale banning of literally everything (because almost anything could, in the hands of a malignant person, be used to cause harm) is the subjective feelings of the majority — or rather, whomever controls the levers of organized force and can plausibly claim to be acting in the name of the majority.

The concept of rights disappears as the concept of principles slips beneath the waves. Human existence devolves into a high school popularity contest — with all the nasty outcomes of such a contest.

At the moment, guns are Not Popular. All the “cool” people are against them. But it’s not really guns they’re against — even though most of them don’t understand this.

Yet.

If a sufficient number of people can be emotionally hectored into supporting a ban on “bad” guns, then guns will be banned. People who’ve done nothing to warrant it will be transformed by legislative fiat into “criminals” for the non-crime of owning or possessing a “bad” gun. Probably, this will be cheered by a certain segment of the population — the herd animals who see the particular thing they happen not to like — in this case, guns — but cannot see the principle they’ve just surrendered.

But the herd will get its comeuppance when the principle swings around and something they do like — such as their cars, for instance — becomes the object of a popularity contest. Perhaps it will be decided that “society” cannot abide too much horsepower. People should not be allowed to own a machine they don’t really need. Perhaps they will find themselves punished for the actions of others — like the soldiers in Full Metal Jacket, who were punished because fat boy ate a jelly donut.

It’s not conjecture. It’s not hyperbole. It is inevitable. Because it is logically necessary. One thing follows from the next. Particulars are largely irrelevant.

It is principles that matter.

This is understood perfectly well by the people at the apex of the pyramid. They are not stupid people. They merely depend on the stupidity — the intellectual animalism — of the thoughtless masses at the base of the pyramid. Get them to accept A — and when the time comes, they will have no choice about accepting B. Because they have already accepted the principle. Which means they no longer have a principled defense. All that remains is the Popularity Contest. They will be allowed to continue driving for only so long as the herd regards driving as within the bounds of acceptability. The moment it is no longer sufficiently liked — that’s the moment after which it will no longer be allowed.

And the same goes for anything — for everything — else. Whatever it may be, whether its enjoyment by you causes any actual harm or not — it will not matter the moment a critical mass of your fellow herd-animals decides, in their bovine manner, that they no longer like whatever it is. That you no longer need whatever it is.

And therefore, whatever it is must be banned.

That’s where we’re headed.

Hell, we’re already there.

Video: Who Am I?
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To read another article about gun control, click here.
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To read another article by Eric Peters, click here.

The day that Albert Einstein feared may have arrived

The day that Albert Einstein feared may have arrived...

Having coffee with friends.

A day at the beach.

Cheering on your team.

Having dinner out with your friends.

Out on an intimate date.






Having a conversation with your BFF.

A visit to the museum.






Enjoying the sights.


Sunday, December 30, 2012

Do Dogs go to Heaven?

Do Dogs go to Heaven?

Absolutely unreal that this actually happened! These two churches face each other across a busy street.










How can you tell when a Catholic is driving too fast...

















Jewish Olympic Swimming...

















We should've gotten rid of the Woodpecker...






























Amen!