Fact-Free Crusades

From: Town Hall Magazine

by - Thomas Sowell - Apr 16, 2013

Amid all the heated, emotional advocacy of gun control, have you ever heard even one person present convincing hard evidence that tighter gun control laws have in fact reduced murders?


Think about all the states, communities within states, as well as foreign countries, that have either tight gun control laws or loose or non-existent gun control laws. With so many variations and so many sources of evidence available, surely there would be some compelling evidence somewhere if tighter gun control laws actually reduced the murder rate.

And if tighter gun control laws don't actually reduce the murder rate, then why are we being stampeded toward such laws after every shooting that gets media attention?

Have the media outlets that you follow ever even mentioned that some studies have produced evidence that murder rates tend to be higher in places with tight gun control laws?

The dirty little secret is that gun control laws do not actually control guns. They disarm law-abiding citizens, making them more vulnerable to criminals, who remain armed in disregard of such laws.

In England, armed crimes skyrocketed as legal gun ownership almost vanished under increasingly severe gun control laws in the late 20th century. (See the book "Guns and Violence" by Joyce Lee Malcolm). But gun control has become one of those fact-free crusades, based on assumptions, emotions and rhetoric.

What almost no one talks about is that guns are used to defend lives as well as to take lives. In fact, many of the horrific killings that we see in the media were brought to an end when someone else with a gun showed up and put a stop to the slaughter.

The Cato Institute estimates upwards of 100,000 defensive uses of guns per year. Preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves can cost far more lives than are lost in the shooting episodes that the media publicize. The lives saved by guns are no less precious, just because the media pay no attention to them.

Many people who have never fired a gun in their lives, and never faced life-threatening dangers, nevertheless feel qualified to impose legal restrictions that can be fatal to others. And politicians eager to "do something" that gets them publicity know that the votes of the ignorant and the gullible are still votes.

Virtually nothing that is being proposed in current gun control legislation is likely to reduce murder rates.

Restricting the magazine capacity available to law-abiding citizens will not restrict the magazine capacity of people who are not law-abiding citizens. Such restrictions just mean that the law-abiding citizen is likely to run out of ammunition first

Someone would have to be an incredible sharpshooter to fend off three home invaders with just seven shots at moving targets. But seven is the magic number of bullets allowed in a magazine under New York State's new gun control laws.

People who support such laws seem to blithely assume that they are limiting the damage that can be done by criminals or the mentally ill -- as if criminals or mad men care about such laws.

Banning so-called "assault weapons" is a farce, as well as a fraud, because there is no concrete definition of an assault weapon. That is why so many guns have to be specified by name in such bans -- and the ones specified to be banned are typically no more dangerous than others that are not specified.

Some people may think that "assault weapons" means automatic weapons. But automatic weapons were banned decades ago. Banning ugly-looking "assault weapons" may have aesthetic benefits, but it does not reduce the dangers to human life in the slightest. You are just as dead when killed by a very plain-looking gun.

One of the dangerous inconsistencies of many, if not most, gun control crusaders is that those who are most zealous to get guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens are often not nearly as concerned about keeping violent criminals behind bars.

Leniency toward criminals has long been part of the pattern of gun control zealots on both sides of the Atlantic. When the insatiable desire to crack down on law-abiding citizens with guns is combined with an attitude of leniency toward criminals, it can hardly be surprising when tighter gun control laws are accompanied by rising rates of crime, including murders.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Ninety days of destruction from the Obama White House

From: Fox News

 

By Wayne Allyn Root - April 15, 2013

The economic news in America has gone from bad to worse. 

First, we found out the jobs numbers are collapsing. Then retail sales figures were released- they show across the board contraction. 

Next, we found out U.S. business inventory figures were a disappointment. 

Finally, consumer confidence not only collapsed, but it was the largest miss from expectations in U.S. economic history. 2 words explain it all: "Ninety days."

Ninety days is all it took to put the U.S. economy into a coma, to destroy any chance of recovery. 90 days defined by the Obama "Axis of Evil” -- Taxation, regulation, unionization, litigation, IRS intimidation, demonization, and government strangulation. The last 90 days of this Axis of Evil have sealed our fate.

There are no new jobs. There will be no new jobs. Creating jobs in Obama's America is like trying to grow healthy plants in a nuclear blast zone. Obama has turned the U.S. economy into a “Hostile Work Environment.” I call it Obamageddon. 

Look at the toxic results of what has happened in the last deadly 90 days. Last month we added a miserable 88,000 jobs. 660,000 Americans dropped off the job rolls...in one month. 

Ninety million working-age, able-bodied Americans are no longer in the workforce. The workforce participation rate is the lowest since 1979. For men it’s the lowest since 1948 (when record keeping began). Disposable income in January was the lowest since 1959 (since record-keeping began). Under Obama we’re truly back to the future.

Twenty-percent of eligible adults are on food stamps. Fourteen million on disability. Record-setting numbers of Americans are breaking into their own retirement accounts just to survive. Student loan debt is a disaster -- with defaults up 36% from a year ago. 16.4 million Americans live in poverty…in the suburbs.

You’re on your own as the American economy descends into darkness, overwhelmed by debt and entitlements. 

Obama and the mainstream media have been blowing smoke for months, but the gig is up. No recovery is coming.

Let’s take a look at what Obama did to “save us” in the past 90 days:

- Federal income taxes went up dramatically on business owners (ie jobs creators). 

- Payroll taxes went up. 

- Exemptions and deductions were taken away. 

- ObamaCare taxes took effect. State and local taxes went up across the USA. 

- Gas prices went up drastically -- even as we learned Obama’s EPA wants new gas taxes.

- Grocery prices soared. 

- Health insurance soared. For many small businesses we learned it will double next year. 

- Electric rates went up -- as we learned that Obama’s EPA doubled biofuel taxes, while also trying to eradicate the coal industry and ban oil drilling. 

- IRS audits went up dramatically on business owners (which means higher accountant and legal bills).

Add it up: There’s no money left. Even “the rich” feel poor. The middle class is drowning. Small business is under attack. How can anyone spend if they have no money left after Obama's relentless taxes? Where is the money coming from to start a business?

But it gets even worse. In those same 90 days, the government created 6,118 new rules and regulations. That’s 68 per day. 

To produce that many job-killing regulations, Obama must have sweatshops populated with  slave labor, whipped and kept in chains, working in shifts 24 hours per day. Obama is literally killing the spirit of business owners and taxpayers.

Obama is like a drug addict with giant bills to pay and no income. He has to find a way to pay for his food stamps, disability and unemployment society. 

The bill to keep this Ponzi scheme going gets bigger by the hour. But with 90 million adults no longer working, and everyone who is willing to work being robbed to pay for a nation of deadbeats, who is left to jump-start the economy? Who is left to create jobs? The answer is…clearly…no one.

Even more shocking and depressing are Obama’s priorities. He claims we desperately need to raise all these taxes. 

Yet, our president had no problem giving away $250 million to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, $500 million to the Palestinians, $1.5 million in grant money to study why lesbians are fat (I’m not kidding), and billions of dollars in income tax credits to illegal aliens (who never paid income taxes in the first place). And you wonder why people are angry and disillusioned?

This has been 90 days for the history books. Ninety days that have made an economic collapse much more likely than a recovery. Ninety days that has put capitalism and American exceptionalism on life support.

Ninety days of the Obama "Axis of Evil” showcasing what one man, supported by a blind, adoring liberal-biased media, can do to snuff out ambition, drive, work ethic, creativity, inspiration and enthusiasm -- all in the name of equality, fairness and social justice.

Ninety days that will live in infamy.


God bless,

JohnnyD

'We're being inundated': Arizona group documents border battle with revealing audio, images

From: Fox News

 

By William La Jeunesse - April 12, 2013

For all the talk in Washington about border security, the one agency charged with providing it isn't sharing a wealth of details. So a group of volunteers -- called Secure Border Intelligence -- has stepped in, working around the clock in Arizona to keep a thorough record of the front lines of the border battle. 

Using tiny, motion-activated cameras hidden in the desert along known smuggling routes, the group captures images of illegal immigrants streaming into the U.S. Some carry water, others bundles of drugs slung across their shoulders. SBI also records conversations between Border Patrol pilots and agents on the ground. Excerpts from those conversations, obtained exclusively by Fox News, suggest the border may not be as secure as frequently portrayed by the Obama administration. 

The following is one exchange recorded by the group: 

Drone Operator: "We haven't been in that area for hours... we're being inundated where we're at." 

Fixed-wing Pilot: "This is Night Owl on air four. You guys got targets out there?" 

Drone Operator:  "Are you kidding me? We just broke the record." 

Helicopter Pilot: "We're going to need another person over here, we've got about 50 bodies out there." 

Fixed-wing Pilot: "What's your plan on the group of 20 or so that's outstanding?" 

Drone Operator: "Working a group of 37." 

Helicopter Pilot: "Left side of the bird, left side of the bird ... bodies and bundles." 

Each day, the group posts an audio track taken from the previous 24 hours. The conversations are intercepted off un-encrypted U.S. Border Patrol channels -- it's not unlike people who listen to police and fire department scanners. After listening to agents' back and forth, much of it laced with GPS coordinates, mile markers and known landmarks, the group compresses a 24-hour day into a 10-minute compressed audio file. 

On Tuesday, the group noted agents caught three Chinese illegal immigrants. The next day, agents identified 223 immigrants either in or trying to enter Arizona illegally, according to Wednesday's audio download. 

The material is distributed as part of an effort by SBI to '"document the porous US/Mexico border (and)  to expose the 'lie' by fostered the current administration that our borders are secure," one of the founders told Fox News. "This documentation is being offered to you and any other news organization without any copyright, distribution, or other restrictions with the stipulation that credit be given." 

Customs and Border Protection insists the administration is cranking up border security efforts. 

"Under this administration, DHS has dedicated historic levels of personnel, technology, and resources to the Southwest border," the agency said in a recent statement to Fox News. "CBP has more than doubled the size of the U.S. Border Patrol since 2004.  In FY 2012, CBP employed over 21,300 Border Patrol agents, keeping staffing levels along the border at an all-time high.  Additionally, CBP continues to deploy proven, effective surveillance technology tailored to the operational requirements along the highest trafficked areas of the Southwest Border." 

The SBI group also uses trail cameras to document the flow of illegal immigrants. Because the video cameras are motion-activated, batteries last for weeks. The latest pictures were downloaded and provided to Fox News on Sunday. They show groups of illegal immigrants nonchalantly walking through the desert on their way to Phoenix and Tucson, and pick-up points in between. The cameras appear to have been placed at a position that is a one-to-four days walk north of the border. 

However, it's possible not everyone on the video actually escapes the Border Patrol, since the agency uses a layered approach to security. Agents do not always interdict illegal immigrants at the border -- sometimes apprehensions take place five to 10 miles north after several shifts. So it is impossible to know whether all immigrants captured by SBI camera's successfully escaped the Border Patrol. 

Asked more about their membership and means, the group's founder said they  preferred to remain anonymous for fear of being targeted. 

"Due to the sensitive nature of our endeavor, further disclosure of the mechanism of our efforts cannot be disclosed," he said. "We would prefer that the story be about the 'smoking gun' information provided rather than about the 'messenger' providing the information."


God bless,

JohnnyD

If Religious Liberty Helped Create America's Greatness, Can We Really Survive Without it,

Christian Origins of Essential American Doctrines

by -  Kelly OConnell - April 8, 2013

From,: Canada Free Press

In midst of the modern, mindless battle to drive religion completely from American life, a small and inconvenient fact has been ignored: Virtually every important, original American idea is a product of Christianity. Further, had these doctrines never been developed, the US would arguably not been nearly as productive, free or happy. These ideas involve property, liberty, and the rule of law.

Today the government bears down upon the Constitution, menacing the Bill of Rights and our entire way of life, offering to trade our freedoms for the supposed security of state control. Our very life, liberty and pursuit of happiness hang in the balance. We would do well to remember that the source of our original constitutional doctrines come from natural law, common law and our profound biblical heritage. For once we lose our freedoms, liberties and economic vitality, we are unlikely to taste these ever again. And do we not owe our children and the subjugated of other countries a duty to protect this irreplaceable inheritance? This article surveys some of the more important American doctrines which came down from a biblical antecedent.

  

I. Magna Carta

Magna Carta, or the Great Writ, is considered the centerpiece of Anglo-American liberties. It is fascinating to therefore discover that this great work was negotiated and drafted between King John and the lords by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury who interpolated biblical ideas into the final draft. (Langton was the same person who introduced chapter and verse into the modern Bible.) Magna Carta offers the biblical idea of putting the law above the king. (see Why Separating Church & State is a Fool’s Errand: Consider Magna Carta’s Origins)

II. Property & Natural Rights

The emergence of modern expressions of Natural Law and Natural Rights is traced by Brian Tierney in The Idea of Natural Rights, to a debate between The Franciscans and Pope John XXII. The argument concerned whether the followers of Saint Francis had a right to declare themselves to be in a property-less state. This debate was famously joined by William of Ockham.

Natural Law itself is defined by Ockham as law “in conformity with a natural reason that never fails.” An example would be the Ten Commandments prohibitions against lying and adultery, being a kind of enlightened understanding of law. Pagans also had a lesser natural law with which to reason, such as that described by Cicero.

Ockham argued that while anyone could give up any rights they had through Christian liberty, an immutable law was the right to self-preservation which could not be taken from anyone, nor could it be relinquished. Further, God had given mankind the right to property after the Fall and this could not be arbitrarily taken away from mankind. Beyond, Ockham claimed the Pope could not take away the Christian liberty of his subjects, whom he also gave the right to choose their own rulers. These conclusions made Ockham a lifelong enemy of the papacy, needless to say.

III. Democracy

A. Foundation of Democracy in Reformation

Modern democracy is not from the ancient Greeks. According to GP Gooch in The History of English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, modern democracy is a child of the Protestant Reformation. The medieval Catholic Church tended towards sympathy to kings and kingdoms. Contra, the Reformation, with its emphasis on the individual choice of each Believer, inevitably embraced democratic principles. Writes Gooch,

The Reformation largely owed its origin to the enunciation of two intellectual principles, the rightful duty of free inquiry, and the priesthood of all believers. Its justification could be found in no others. Free inquiry… led straight from theological to political criticism, and the theory of universal priest-hood indicated the general direction of the investigation. The first led to liberty; the second to equality. The importance of the fact that the principles of modem democracy, however mutilated by a theocratic bias, advanced under the wing of the Reformation, is difficult to exaggerate. In the emancipation of the people, the Reformation played a part it is impossible to overlook.

Gooch singles out the Huguenots, the French Protestants, as being particularly important in this history. This was elucidated in the anonymous Vindidae contra Tyrannos, A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants, which for its first three questions which give rise to a Natural Law democratic political impulse:

1. Whether subjects are obligated to obey rulers who issue commands contrary to the law of God.
2. Whether it is lawful to resist a ruler who violates the law of God, or ruins His Church; by whom, how, and to what extent it is lawful.
3. Whether it is lawful to resist a ruler who is oppressing or ruining the country, and how far such resistance may be extended; by whom, how, and by what right or law it is permitted.

Here, the concept of the sovereignty inherent in the people is well expressed. But it was the debate over the Divine Right of Kings which brings forward the debate over where the locus of sovereignty lies.

B. Democracy as American Popular Will

By the time America was founded, the notion of popular sovereignty of the people was well-established. The Anti-Federalist Paper #1 states,

In every free government, the people must give their assent to the laws by which they are governed. This is the true criterion between a free government and an arbitrary one. The former are ruled by the will of the whole, expressed in any manner they may agree upon; the latter by the will of one, or a few.

James Madison, who researched, conceived of and drafted the Constitution decided that a mixed state of a democratic republic would best push off the danger of tyranny by either the few, or the many, according to Lutz.

IV. Constitutionalism

A. Medieval Constitutionalism—Jean Gerson

Quentin Skinner, in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, The Age of Reformation (Vol. II) explains how the beginnings of modern constitutional ismare associated with the Gregorian papal reform of the 12^th century. As the papacy’s power was maximized, scholars and high ranking members of the Church began to ask what remedies would exist if the Pope became power mad. This resulted in the Conciliar Movement, according to Skinner.

Jean Gerson, a talented scholar during the Great Schism summed up this notion, being that the Church should be properly conceived as a constitutional monarchy. Skinner writes:

In defending the authority of the General Councils over the Church, Gerson in particular committed himself to enunciating a theory about the origins and location of legitimate political power within the secular commonwealth. And in the course of setting out this particular argument, he made two major and deeply influential contributions to the evolution of a radical and consitutionalist view of the sovereign State.

Skinner goes on to explain there were two independent kingdoms—the religious and secular. This idea wasthen amplified into the thesis that, under the law of nature, no leader of a free people can assert a power greater than the people have in themselves. Puritan influenced John Locke developed this conviction in his own theory of constitutional government.

B. Modern Constitutionalism—John Locke & America

Hans Aarsleff calls John Locke, “the most influential philosopher of modern times.” Locke wrote, “that all government in the world is merely the product of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules than that of the beasts, where the strongest carries it…” His theory of constitutionalism greatly impacted the Founders. Locke wrote about the proper role of limited government, in The Second Treatise of Government in Chapter XI:

The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.

The United States boasts the first modern constitution ever composed. Donald S. Lutz, in The Origins of American Constitutionalism, describes the development of this work. The earliest American expressions of law, the Mayflower Compact and Pilgrim Code, helped develop the later notion of our Constitution as a kind of church covenant. (see America’s Constitutional Foundation of Biblical Covenant.) In other words, our Constitution is modeled upon the early American covenants which were themselves taken from a biblical model.

V. Freedom of Religion

The greatest work in the history of the Freedom of Religion is John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration. His position was that it was the very nature of religious belief to be a free will choice. Further, Locke’s views agreed with his Puritan upbringing which accepted that only God could cause a person to have faith. It was under the mighty preaching of the Vice-Chancellort at Oxford, John Owen, that Locke would have been acquainted with this idea. Says one writer,

“We have a right to religious freedom because the nature of faith itself is contradicted by compulsion.” Locke correctly observed that the mind “cannot be compelled to the belief of anything by outward force,” but laws, ultimately, are upheld by force. However, such coercion is not reconcilable with authentic religious belief. As Locke concludes, “The magistrate’s power extends not to the establishing of any articles of faith, or forms of worship, by the force of his laws. For laws are of no force at all without penalties, and penalties in this case are absolutely impertinent, because they are not proper to convince the mind.”

VI. Common Law

The British Common Law is arguably the greatest and most influential legal theory in modern history. It was not simply the law behind the justice system in England, but also the driving ideology of society itself. It was also deeply influenced by biblical mores. James R. Stoner, in Common-Law Liberty, Rethinking American Constitutionalism, explains how the English Common Law theory arose upon a background of pagan philosophy, and built a jurisprudence to a great extent upon biblical revelation. It is notable that constitutionalism and the Bill of Rights theories are both prominent products of this school of thought.

VII. Rule of Law

It is a religious understanding of law which places the law above the king. For example, Saul in the Old Testament loses his kingdom when he breaks the law. This ideal was articulated by the writer and divinity professor of Saint Andrews, Samuel Rutherford, in his Lex Rex, or Law is King. He wrote,

Assert. 1.—The law hath a supremacy of constitution above the king:—1. Because the king by nature is not king, as is proved; therefore, he must be king by a politic constitution and law; and so the law, in that consideration, is above the king, because it is from a civil law that there is a king rather than any other kind of governor.

VIII. Federalism

The very root term for federalism is the Hebrew word for covenant, foedus. When James Madison studied world history he found the ancient Jewish government the most efficient, and so instituted their theory of rule. This is how the US ended up with federalism, the most efficient type of government ever conceived. (see Sources of American Federalism: Founders, Reformers & Ancient Hebrews.)

Conclusion

Does God really want Americans to totally remove all vestiges of the Bible from public life? Even if it was the Bible that created our core beliefs and practices, so successfully used these many years? Why should Americans stand aside as our great republic is plundered and our rights canceled when the entire world needs us for leadership and support? If this battle is not worth fighting, then nothing is worth going to war over. Let us stir ourselves to resistance over our incomparable biblical and American heritage before it is too late, and the world suffer a fatal blow to freedom, faith and liberty.


God bless,
JohnnyD

Angry atheists, history and America's future

From: Fox News

By Jay Sekulow - April 08, 2013

Millions of Americans know the story of the Ground Zero Cross, the twisted steel beams that fell from the wreckage of the World Trade Center on 9/11, beams in the shape of a cross.  Fewer, however, know that this cross is now at a different “Ground Zero” – Ground Zero of an atheist attack on our religious past, and our religious future.

Found by excavator Frank Silecchia and consecrated by Father Brian Jordan, a Franciscan Priest, it grew to become a symbol of hope and comfort in a very dark place and in a very dark time.  The Washington Post explained:

"Each week, Father Brian held services there. He became the chaplain of the hard hats. Whenever crews working to find the dead needed a blessing or a prayer or absolution, Father Brian would offer it. Sometimes victims’ families came to pray. The congregations grew from 25 or 35 to 200 and 300.

"Men cut replicas of the cross out of ruined steel and carried them in their pockets. Even Rich Sheirer, then New York’s director of the Office of Emergency Management [and Jewish], appreciated the cross. “Intellectually, you knew it’s just two pieces of steel, but you saw the impact it had on so many people, and you also knew it was more than steel,” he says." 

In other words, the Ground Zero Cross is a real object, with real – indisputable – historic meaning in the aftermath of 9/11.

And that brings us to perhaps the less-famous and undoubtedly more bizarre part of the story. In 2011, a group called American Atheists sued the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in an effort to keep the cross out of the Museum. 

Hurling invective at Christians, Christianity, and faith in general, these extraordinarily angry atheists even claimed the  mere existence of the Cross in the Museum caused them “dyspepsia” and “headaches.”

After more than a year of litigation, a federal judge dismissed American Atheists’ lawsuit, with the court noting: "The Museum's purpose is to tell the history surrounding September 11, and the cross … helps tell part of that history."  

The court properly concluded that the cross did not violate the constitution. "No reasonable observer would view the artifact is endorsing Christianity," the court said. The fight isn’t over, however, with the atheists vowing to appeal.

To those who follow constitutional law, the judge’s ruling was both welcome and expected.  After all, museums screen their collections for historic significance, not for religious content, and their highest and best purpose is to educate Americans about our heritage, not to serve as instruments of secular propaganda.  No reasonable person views religious art in a museum as a sign that the museum endorses any particular religious message.

Yet as important as the past is, this case is also about the future. Unless this lawsuit is defeated resoundingly – not just defeated in court but also thoroughly rejected by the public and politicians – future museum curators will think twice about telling the truth about America’s religious heritage. 

Even worse, as even more public spaces are cleansed of religious symbols – perhaps out of fear of lawsuits – future generations will receive a loud and clear message: There is something inherently offensive about faith.

In fact, sending that message is a key goal of these extraordinarily angry atheists.  Sure, they want legal victories, but the lawsuits are a means to an end.  The goal is nothing less than the secularization of American culture, the shaming and mocking of faith right out of the American heart.

Resisting this atheist agenda isn’t merely a matter of litigating in court – though that is of vital importance – it’s also a matter of personal and public perseverance.  Never respond to invective with invective, but also do not reward condescension and outrage with silence and acquiescence. 

Americans are a religious people, perhaps the most religious in the developed world.  And it is because – and not in spite of – of our faith that we have grown to respect and preserve individual liberty, including the liberties of our atheist fellow citizens.

Our Creator has endowed us with our liberty.  It would be a deep and lasting shame if fear of lawsuits caused us to reject those God-given liberties and drive our Creator from the public square.


God bless,

JohnnyD

Obama’s 1 percent lifestyle hits a nerve

From: The Washington Times

By Joseph Curl - April 7, 2013

President Obama had another tough week in a second term filled with bad news and blunders — and he’s only 10 weeks in.

While the White House suddenly decided to drop its budget Friday in an effort to control the news, there was no covering up the disastrous jobless numbers: 90 million Americans out of the workforce, the highest level since 1979; another 663,000 joining the ranks of the long-term unemployed; a measly 88,000 jobs “created.”

But what seems stuck in the craw of a lot of you readers out there was last week’s column on the Obamas’ 1 percent lifestyle — the endless ski and beach vacations for the couple and their daughters, Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s nights in London and Paris that cost you more than $1 million, even the president’s 118th round of golf while in office.

“My kids asked me a couple of years ago why we never went on family vacations,” wrote Steve Gibson. “I told them that we had to pay all of our expenses first and there wasn’t any money left over for a family vacation. Then I keep seeing … stories about the administration taking trips everywhere and I don’t know what to think. I have been laid off twice in the past year and am currently in the job search mode again.”

Eric Zundell is in the same boat: “As someone who has not been able to afford a vacation for my family in the last 12 years (but pays his taxes ;)), I highly applaud the message delivered by your article.”

Ron Kaye agreed that “this is not about the girls, it’s about the money, which looks worse and worse every month. But the Obamas don’t care what it ‘looks’ like. They ARE the first family and by G-d they’re going to go when and where they want on as many planes as it takes; taxpayers be damned.”

Charlene Sanders echoed Mr. Kaye — with a Marie Antoinette twist. “He doesn’t give a damn about us. He’s the president and by god he’s going to do what he wants … to hell with whatever anybody else thinks. Seems like a ‘Let them eat cake’ attitude to me.”

Tim Mascara was puzzled by the sudden media silence. “I vaguely remember Michael Moore calling Bush out for golf and vacations. Where is the outcry now [for] this guy?”

Barry Kahn juxtaposed the first couple’s lavish lifestyle with the president’s decision to cancel all White House tours. “Their extravagance boggles my mind. Why is it that they can get away with this stuff? The White House is closed to tours for supposed security reasons and they can globe trot with security in tow and the media says nothing?”

Scott Hord was flat-out disheartened. “I used have to some measure of respect for the Office of the President, regardless of who was in command, but this current President has truly left a bad taste in my mouth.”

Jason Lockwood also sounded fed up. “Thanks for pointing out the Obama/Biden high falutin’ lifestyle. I’m continually amazed that our country continually allows these narcissistic ***holes to live such lavish lifestyles at the expense of the rest of the hard working ‘Joes.’ I’m printing off a copy and sending it in with my quarterly payment to the IRS.”

Steve Hunt was succinct: “Obama and his wife are grade A hypocrites and no friend of the poor they say they represent.”

Yet Johann Ritter took issue with the column: “Aren’t you being a little rough on the first family? I mean, if you were running a company that is losing about $114 million an hour, wouldn’t you need some really serious vacation time? I would have given up on fixing the problem and find a reason to stay out of the office.”

Funny, two days later, Mr. Obama decided to forgo 5 percent of his salary. Coincidence? Of course not. Americans are fed up with the royal lifestyle the Obamas live while they work double shifts to get by. Like Amy Jett.

“People like to say how hard the man works and how he deserves his vacations, blah, blah, blah. Such nonsense only insults hard-working taxpayers all over the country — of which I am one,” she wrote. “I am a nurse, mom to a large brood, teacher, wife and caretaker for special needs children. We are just trying to scrape by, while this administration and our politicians have just hiked our taxes and health-care costs up and made life that much harder. We have not been on a single vacation in almost ten years. You know where we go on the few days we take off from work? Doctor’s offices is our most constant destination (although with Obamacare even that may have to be somewhat curtailed). We can’t afford a vacation. We have to pay a mortgage, hospital bills, car repairs, etc., etc., etc. We have to pay for the Obamas to go on trips, have parties, and so on. And then they pretend to understand our pain while they lecture us about ‘shared sacrifice’ and ‘fairness’? Disgusting.”

God bless,

JohnnyD

Guns Responsible for Global Warming

Their assaults on guns are driving the liberals batty.

From: The American Spectator

By Jed Babbin - 4.8.13

Frustration is taking its toll in the liberals’ war against guns. President Obama, pushing his broad gun control agenda, said we should be ashamed if we’ve forgotten the Newtown shooting so soon. The New York Times opined that Obama is being shouted down by the “gun lobby,” even though he and Biden had been crisscrossing the country “…making a forceful case for a package of laws that would reduce gun violence.”

That, of course, is the media narrative on gun control. For every issue there is a narrative: a set of assumptions and boundaries of thought with which every story (and editorial) is tailored to agree. False narratives usually serve the left well. For over eighteen months, American politics was forced into as media narrative tat ignored everything else and focused on Obamacare which, we were told, would make healthcare cheaper and more available, the precise opposites of its effect. For months before that, we were told Obama’s “stimulus” would create tens of thousands of jobs and get our economy growing. It did no such thing, but the media narrative helped it become law.

Now the gun control narrative is equally false, and borders on the insane. It has become so wacky that it resembles the left’s hysteria on “global warming.”

Start with Obama’s first premise: that his agenda would prevent more school massacres like the Newtown shooting. But we’ve already seen the centerpiece of his agenda fail: there’s no evidence that there was a drop in crimes committed with so-called “assault weapons” during the ten years the earlier ban was in effect. And for all the burgeoning sales of “assault weapons” for almost a year, where’s the outbreak of crimes and mass murders they cause? Maybe someone needs to draw a “hockey stick” curve to “prove” to Chris Matthews that the “assault weapons” really are the problem. (We know global warming – if it ever existed – ended sixteen years ago but there’s no arguing facts against the liberal narrative.)

Maybe the libs want to tie gun control to global warming. Firing a gun creates heat, but so far no one has claimed that they emit atmosphere-destroying carbon. Maybe the lefties don’t want to tie two losing causes together for fear of each dragging the other down. Or maybe it’s because, despite the libs’ efforts, the NRA is more popular than Mayor Bloomberg and Chuckie Schumer.

And that’s not even the craziest disconnect between the media gun control narrative and reality. If you go back through the horrific mass shootings of recent history – from Charles Whitman in the Texas tower in 1966 to Adam Lanza in Newtown last December – each of these people was clinically insane. We know, for example, that a Dr. Heathy knew of Whitman’s fantasy of going into the University of Texas tower to shoot people with his deer rifle. And we know that Dr. Lynne Fenton, treating Colorado movie killer James Holmes, notified university police that Holmes was dangerous to society. The campus cops did nothing and we don’t know if the real cops were even told.

And there is nothing in the Obama gun control agenda, nothing in the Senate bills to be voted on this week, to do anything to take people like Whitman, Holmes, Lanza off the streets. That’s what you’d do if you really wanted to reduce gun violence and massacres. But the liberals aren’t interested in that: they just want to control gun ownership.

There could be legislation requiring states, cities and schools to share with police information indicating someone like Whitman, or Holmes, or Lanza or any of the others were dangerous. There could be legislation requiring states to either legislate that people such as these be involuntarily committed or the states would lose their federal subsidies for highways or such. But while they war against guns the liberals insanely leave the dangerously insane undisturbed.

But to liberals there’s no problem here. These are the same people who can claim that the global warming “problem” can be solved by closing coal-fired electric plants in the U.S. without even mentioning what’s going on in China and India. You have to conclude that whether it’s gun control or global warming or whatever the left is most fervently pitching, facts don’t matter: emotions do. And guns are a deep, emotional cultural issue for Americans.

Obama used to understand this, but his understanding was limited by his own ideology and context. Take this cut from a speech he made all the way back in April 2008, talking about why he wasn’t connecting with a lot of Pennsylvania voters. He said:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

He was partially wrong, of course. Yes, people are very frustrated with what is now his economy, not George Bush’s. The jobs numbers that came out last week are dismal: the economy isn’t growing, people are suffering and, according to reports I’ve seen, about 90 million unemployed people are so frustrated that they’ve given up looking for work.

But that’s not what’s causing people to dig in against gun control. Give a man a job, and he’ll still fight to keep his guns.

And that’s the real point here. You can pass a phony stimulus bill that costs almost $1 trillion and people will be angry about it, but they won’t really fight. When you get to socializing – and wrecking – our healthcare system people will fight, because it touches them much more directly and plainly than just spending does. We saw that in the townhall meetings across the country, the protests that gave birth to the Tea Party.

What the liberal media don’t understand – and what makes their gun control narrative fail – is the way people regard guns and gun control. It’s not, as the New York Times says, that the “gun lobby” is shouting down the president. Set aside for the moment the idea that there is a “gun lobby” that’s dominating the debate, because there isn’t. The NYT and other media have tried to Alinsky the NRA and the gun manufacturers, demonizing them at every chance. That doesn’t matter.

Their success in demonizing the NRA and the manufacturers doesn’t matter because the gun owners aren’t slick Inside the Beltway types. They’re not lobbyists or wealthy company owners or any of the people the liberals are trying to demonize. Instead, they’re the guy who keeps a snub-nosed .38 in his nightstand to protect his family. They’re the guys and gals who keep a couple of shotguns or deer rifles to hunt game. And they’re people who collect guns for the hell of it.

They’re not, like the NYT insists, crazies who think they may have to take arms against their government. Rather they’re people who have two things in common. First, they appreciate and insist on the freedoms preserved in the Second Amendment. Second, they have an abiding distrust of the government whenever it starts tinkering with gun control.

It was apt that Obama thought some people cling to their guns like they cling to religion or oppose illegal immigration. Opposition to gun control may be as deeply-embedded a belief as opposition to abortion. That won’t stop liberals from trying, again and again, for more gun control. But it will be the reason they’ll fail.


God bless,
JohnnyD