Bookeemonster: a voracious appetite for books, mostly crime fiction.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Current Events - December 19, 2012
PK's Note: I absolutely love this. I am so proud of that, it makes me cry. For once, flash mobs really do something:
Christians Stage Live Nativity in Protest Against Santa Monica’s Atheist-Led Nativity Ban
Throughout 2012, Santa Monica, Calif., has been home to intense debate
over the separation of church and state. Following atheist furor over a
traditional nativity scene, the city decided to ban religious speech
in Palisades Park. We’ve already reported about the live nativity loophole Christians
used to ensure that symbols pertaining to Jesus’ birth appeared in the
park — but some believers also resorted to another tactic: Staging a
“Nativity Flash Mob” inside of a local shopping center. In an effort to prove that celebrating the Christmas season in its true form is a societal right, Christians from Metro Calvary Chapel
in Santa Monica and others from around the Orange County area put on
an unexpected holiday show at the Santa Monica Place Mall on Dec. 16th. What started out as one woman caroling beautifully in the middle of the mall quickly evolved into a much larger spectacle (all captured on video, of course).
Within seconds, others joined her in singing traditional Christmas
hymns, while another woman placed an empty manger near the group. Then, just as “O Come, All Ye Faithful” began being belted out, Mary,
Joseph and Baby Jesus — in full costume — appeared near the
manger. Before long, other characters associated with the nativity
emerged, as a crowd began circling the spectacle with cameras. A video that captures the show, which extended for more than six
minutes, culminates with a round of applause from shoppers
and passer-byes who stopped to see it. Watch the “Nativity Flash Mob,” below:
PK's Note: Watch this video. Listen to Barack Obama's answer. It will astonish and hopefully appall you.
Jake Tapper to Obama: “This Is Not the First Incident of Horrific Gun Violence of your 4 Years – Where’ve you been?”
ABC’s Jake Tapper blasted Barack Obama today at his press conference
announcing a new gun control committee. Tapper pointed out that this
wasn’t the first mass slaughter under his watch,
“This Is not the first incident of horrific gun violence of your four years – Where’ve you been?“
Leading House Democrat Tells Americans: “Turn in Your Guns” From my cold, dead hands.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee wants Americans to turn in their guns. The Hill reported: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Wednesday afternoon
urged people to turn in their guns, arguing it would be an appropriate
response to last week’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. “I would personally just say to those who are listening, maybe you
want to turn in your guns,” Jackson Lee said on the House floor. “Oh no,
I’m not going to take your guns. But look at what Dick’s Sporting Goods
did … they wanted to be part of the solution and part of America.”
This was gross. During his press conference this morning Barack Obama used the masssacre
at Sandy Hook School to push Republicans to agree to his tax hikes.
“After what we’ve gone through over the past several
months, a devastating hurricane and now one of the worse tragedies in
our memory, the country deserves the folks to be willing to compromise
for the greater good.”
Team Obama still raising money--off Sandy Hook shootings
They won the campaign handily and even had
$14.2 million to spare, but the Obama-Biden campaign is still raising
money, this time off the president's comments about the Sandy Hook
Elementary School shootings in Connecticut.
In email from chief campaign advisor David
Axelrod that urges supporters to watch President Obama's moving address
to the community of Newtown, Conn., there are two links that open a
page with a video player featuring the president's speech and two donate
buttons asking for $15-$1,000 for his campaign. "The next chapter begins today. Stand with
President Obama for the next four years," headlines the donation and
video player page.
While he links to the donation pages in his
email, Axelrod did not mention donations with his words. Instead, he
expresses the horror the nation feels about the shootings. "Our hearts
broke on Friday as we learned of the tragic and senseless deaths of 20
children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown,
Connecticut," he wrote. "As we reflect on the lives lost last week, we
must also, as the president urged, consider how each of us can play a
part in making our country worthy of the memory of those little
children."
But above and below a picture of Obama giving his speech are two links to the donation and video player page. One reads, "Watch this speech." The other reads "http://my.barackobama.com/Newton". Clicking the picture also directs supporters to the video player and donation page.
Obama critic and blogger
Jeryl Bier wrote, "Not one, but two buttons - two opportunities to
donate to the Obama campaign. Not to the Red Cross, or to a memorial
fund for the children and adults killed in Newtown. How hard would it
have been to shift the focus, disable the buttons, for just one email,
just one blog post? But the show must go on."
America needs to re-embrace founding principles to restore economic health
The world’s becoming a more prosperous place. That’s good news for
many countries — just not the United States. According to the Legatum Institute’s
2012 Prosperity Index, America is no longer listed among the top-10
countries when it comes to economic success. Our neighbors to the north,
Canada, and the Scandinavian nations of Norway, Denmark and Sweden all outshined the Land of the Free. According
to the London-based group, the U.S. plight can be blamed on an erosion
of personal freedom and the entrepreneurial spirit. “This is due to a
decline in citizens’ perception that working hard gets you ahead, a
decline in high-tech and telecommunication exports, and an increase in
levels of unemployment,” the report explained. Instead of serving as a
beacon of liberty and free markets, we’ve slid down to No. 12 on the
list. The Legatum findings demonstrate the urgent need to return to our
founding principles. Legatum’s index uses 89 indictors to provide a
broad measurement of well-being that encompasses not only income, but
also intangibles like the stability of political institutions and the
strength of civil society. These categories build upon one another. Generally speaking, a strong civil society,
where social networks function well, allows for less (but more
effective) government regulation. Political and social institutions
provide fertile territory for entrepreneurship, the key ingredient for a
dynamic economy. A literate and physically healthy populace is not only
happier, but also more productive. The United States does well in a number of categories, scoring the No. 2 position for health, and No. 5 for education. Canada’s socialized medicine ranks a relatively low 15 for health. Canada
tops the chart on personal freedom, and is in the top 10 for
governance, personal freedom and social cohesion. It also beats the
United States on education, coming in at No. 3. America’s ranking for
social cohesion is 10, but we have dropped four places in personal
freedom, to 14. We’re down to an embarrassing No. 27 for safety and
security. Entrepreneurship, innovation and economic growth are
inextricably linked. When the “tax the rich” class-warfare message
prevailed on Election Day, it meant politicians would continue to vilify
successful job creators. By increasing their taxes, especially those
that apply to small enterprises, there will be less money around to hire
employees or conduct research and development. That means less
innovation and less prosperity for all. America is headed down the
same path as France, with heavy and ineffective regulation. To avoid a
continued erosion of prosperity, we need to start thinking now about
repairing the fraying fabric of civil society,
rather than going with the easy but ultimately ineffective path of
assuming greater government intervention and red tape can fix the
economy. Entrepreneurs are the critical ingredient for a prosperous
society, and by allowing them to enjoy the fruits of their labor, they
helped create the largest single economy in the world. We stand to lose
it all if we abandon the American dream that made it happen.
NYT Op/Ed: Tim Scott is a "Cynical Token," and No Symbol of Progress
Remember, it isn't "progress" unless the Left approves. On Monday, I wondered
how race-obsessed liberals would react to a conservative,
Indian-American, female governor appointing a conservative,
African-American product of a single-parent home to the US Senate. In
the South. To great fanfare and virtually universal applause on the Right. In short, not well. From today's repulsive New York Times column by Ivy League professor Adolph Reed, Jr:
When Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina announced on Monday that she
would name Representative Tim Scott to the Senate, it seemed like
another milestone for African-Americans. Mr. Scott will complete the
term of Senator Jim DeMint, who is leaving to run Heritage Foundation.
He will be the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction;
the first black Republican senator since 1979, when Edward W. Brooke of
Massachusetts retired; and, indeed, only the seventh African-American
ever to serve in the chamber. But this “first black” rhetoric tends to
interpret African-American political successes — including that of
President Obama — as part of a morality play that dramatizes “how far we
have come.” It obscures the fact that modern black Republicans have been more tokens than signs of progress.
Reed briefly acknowledges Governor Haley and Senator-designate Scott's
remarkable life stories before arguing that their inspiring biographies
aren't relevant:
Mrs. Haley — a daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab, India — is the
first female and first nonwhite governor of South Carolina, the home to
white supremacists like John C. Calhoun, Preston S. Brooks, Ben Tillman
and Strom Thurmond. Mr. Scott’s background is also striking: raised by a
poor single mother, he defeated, with Tea Party backing,
two white men in a 2010 Republican primary: a son of Thurmond and a son
of former Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. But his politics, like those of
the archconservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, are utterly
at odds with the preferences of most black Americans. Mr. Scott has been
staunchly anti-tax, anti-union and anti-abortion. Even if the Republicans managed to distance themselves from
the thinly veiled racism of the Tea Party adherents who have moved the
party rightward, they wouldn’t do much better among black voters than
they do now. I suspect that appointments like Mr. Scott’s are
directed less at blacks — whom they know they aren’t going to win in any
significant numbers — than at whites who are inclined to vote Republican but don’t want to have to think of themselves, or be thought of by others, as racist.
If you're struggling to keep your racial politics scorecard up to date,
Reed is arguing that Tea Partiers propelled Scott to his 2010 victory
over two white guys in order to mask their own "thinly veiled racism."
(Wouldn't this broad conspiracy at least qualify as thickly
veiled racism?) It doesn't seem to occur to this erudite professor that
conservative voters might simply support dynamic conservative
candidates, regardless of skin color. This would be the opposite of
racism, of course, so ulterior motives must be assigned. Allow me to
circle back to the "thinly veiled racism" line for a moment. I poked
fun at it above, but it's no laughing matter. Reed is casually smearing
millions of his fellow citizens via lazy, malicious assertion. The Tea
Party's primary messages are "we're taxed enough already," and "stop
bankrupting the country." Are these racist ideas? These Americans have
enthusiastically backed candidates -- ranging from Sen. Ron Johnson to
Sen. Marco Rubio to Sen. Ted Cruz to Rep. Tim Scott -- who share these
principles. They've also worked hard to support Rep. Allen West and Mia
Love, both of whom were defeated by white male liberals. Meanwhile,
their contempt has been directed at everyone from the president (black)
to the Senate Majority Leader (white) to the former House Speaker
(white) to some members of the Republican establishment (overwhelmingly
white). How these facts reveal some barely-concealed racial animus
isn't readily obvious, and Reed doesn't even attempt to explain himself.
In academia and the pages of the Times, it's just a given.
Reed goes on to imply that Republicans' House majority is illegitimate,
thanks to widespread gerrymandering -- apparently unaware of liberal analyses that have concluded that only a handful
of House GOP victories in 2012 can be chalked up to partisan
redistricting. (Republicans hold a 33-seat majority). He's also
curiously silent on what happened in places like Illinois, where aggressive gerrymandering by Democrats wiped five Republicans off the map. The professor concludes by writing that Tim Scott's "true test" will come in 2014:
For Mr. Scott, the true test will come in 2014, when he will presumably run for a full six-year term.
As Mr. Obama has shown, the question is not whether whites are willing
to vote for a black candidate, but whether black candidates can put
together winning coalitions (no matter their racial makeup) and around
what policies. I suspect black South Carolinians will not be drawn to
Mr. Scott. The trope of the black conservative has retained a
man-bites-dog newsworthiness that is long past its shelf life. Clichés
about fallen barriers are increasingly meaningless; symbols don’t make
for coherent policies. Republicans will not gain significant
black support unless they take policy positions that advance black
interests. No number of Tim Scotts — or other cynical tokens — will
change that.
For a distinguished political science professor who's taught at Yale,
Northwestern and Penn, Reed sure is sloppy. Scott will serve as an
appointee until 2014, when he will presumably run in a special election
to serve out the remaining two years in Jim DeMint's term. He wouldn't
be eligible to seek a "full six-year term" until 2016.
But Reed is too preoccupied by calling names and protecting his
racial-ideological turf to be bothered with such picayune details.
Perhaps soon-to-be Senator Scott believes that his policy positions
actually do "advance black interests." His principles and beliefs have
certainly advanced his interests, no? Does he not count, professor? And how have politicians in places like Detroit
managed to "advance black interests" over the decades? But then, those
people are black liberals, and therefore not "cynical tokens," which is
what truly matters -- governing outcomes be damned.
Professor Blames Mass Shootings on ‘White Male Privilege’
Some opinions only get attention because they come from people with
advanced degrees who make their living on the taxpayer dime. That’s
certainly the case for Hugo Schwyzer, a history and gender studies
professor at Pasadena City College.
He has a history of blaming white men for most of the mass killings
that take place in the United States. Friday’s tragic shootings in
Newtown, Connecticut gave him a great opportunity to spout his nonsense
once again.
Less than 40 minutes after the events – while (woefully inaccurate)
news was still breaking – he tweeted, “MEN committing acts of Mass
Violence is an epidemic that the U.S. needs to immediately address!”
About 16 minutes later, he re-tweeted a statement that came from his
children’s pediatrician: “If there is anybody on Twitter who thinks we
do not need gun control, go f**k yourselves.” Minutes later Schwyzer tweeted, “F**k You, Guns…”
What a professional way for an esteemed professor to express himself –
like a drunken sailor on shore leave or a two-bit punk on a street
corner.
In any case, Schwyzer has been on this kick for quite some time. We
have no idea whether he really believes this nonsense, or if he cooked
up the “evil white man” theory to please his radical friends on the
left. Back in July, just after the movie theater shootings in Colorado, he wrote:
“Are white men particularly prone to carrying out the
all-too-familiar mass killings of which last week’s Aurora shooting is
just the latest iteration? Is there something about the white, male,
middle-class experience that makes it easier for troubled young men to
turn schools and movie theaters into killing fields? In a word, yes.”
He then goes on to disprove his theory, by pointing out a Korean
student killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007 and a Muslim killed
several people in Fort Hood, Texas.
But never fear, those psychotic criminals were also men, so that’s close enough.
So what would drive the Aurora theater shooter, who actually is
white? Or the nut that nearly killed Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords
and did, in fact, kill several others at a grocery store in Tucson?
Schwyzer has some professorial answers, paid for with your tax dollars:
“White men from prosperous families grow up with the expectation that
our voices will be heard. We expect politicians and professors to listen
to us and respond to our concerns. We expect public solutions to our
problems. And when we’re hurting, the discrepancy between what we’ve
been led to believe is our birthright and what we feel we’re receiving
in terms of attention can be bewildering and infuriating. Every
killer makes his pain another’s problem. But only those who’ve marinated
in privilege can conclude that their private pain is the entire world’s
problem with which to deal. This is why, while men of all races and
classes murder their intimate partners, it is privileged young white
dudes who are by far the likeliest to shoot up schools and movie
theaters.”
Such taxpayer-funded rants do nothing to contribute to solutions to a
culture desensitized by video game violence and the media. Only in
academia can one make a theory, disprove it in the next paragraph and
still collect a paycheck from hard-working taxpayers.
For there to be a king there must be peasants. Peasants aren't defined by their wealth but by their belief that others should rule them.
Generally
speaking peasants believe as they do either because they have been
taught since birth that the King is better than they are or because
without the King they feel they would not survive in a dangerous world.
While America was founded by the antithesis of peasants, liberals have
been working to reestablish the peasant class because liberals view
themselves as the modern nobility; wiser, kinder, more knowing than the
folk in flyover country and obligated by their superiority to rule over
others. We see this when Obama complains about having to deal with
Congress, even a Congress run by his own party, or when Obama says he's
envious of how the Chinese leader rules China.
The
DNA of Americans is such that any attempt to produce a peasant class by
convincing folks that liberals are superior to the average Joe or Jane
is doomed to failure. As a result, liberals have taken the second path
-- frighten the people to the extent that they feel the government is
the only source of safety. The liberal social experiment began with
Obama's icon FDR. Like Obama, FDR inherited a very bad economy, and like
Obama FDR made the situation worse through poorly-formulated government
plans. But both men realized that the more that people depended on the
government for their daily bread, the more power the government could
wield.
A
bad economy worked in both FDR and Obama's favor because it put fear
into Americans; sufficient fear that they would turn to government
largess as a seemingly safe haven in a time of economic despair. Any
candidate who tried to point out that welfare only works until you run
out of other people's money stands little chance of getting the votes of
people convinced that lavish government spending is their only chance
to survive.
The
reelection of Obama is not surprising. FDR was reelected even though
the U.S. economy didn't recover until, and because of, WWII. Even FDR's
support of England -- which was very unpopular in the days before Pearl
Harbor -- couldn't get FDR thrown out of office. In the same
way, Obama's continued support for the war in Afghanistan and the Gitmo
detention facility didn't adversely impact Obama's reelection.
What
kept both men in office was the fear of Americans who believed that
without the massive government spending on welfare, jobs programs and so
on that Obama and FDR supported, they would starve. Prior to FDR, taking care of the poor was an exercise for private charities. And even in the depths of the Depression,
only a tiny number of people died due to poverty. But FDR started the
process of making it acceptable for people to live on the government
dole without being ashamed, a change that was crucial to making a new
class of American peasants.
The
momentum picked up under LBJ, whose "Great Society" made it acceptable
to spend one's whole life on welfare while having a series of
illegitimate children; destroying the black family in the process. While
one may argue that LBJ didn't intend to create a peasant class, by the
1970's it was obvious that the "Great Society" was creating an
underclass wedded to multi-generational welfare.
Yet
liberals fought tooth and nail to avoid reforming welfare. Bill Clinton
only agreed to welfare reform when it became clear he wouldn't get
reelected if he didn't. Obama gutted welfare reform in order to return
as many Americans to economic dependency as he could. He was
rejuvenating the peasant class. Having succeeded in making living off their neighbors through massive government transfers of wealth
socially acceptable, the next step liberals took to create the new
peasant class was to convince Americans that without government
intervention the average person would be exploited and even killed by
the private sector, the environment, or their neighbors.
How
often do we see the liberal culture and the government blame companies
for every ill of society? Guns kill people; letting killers out of jail
doesn't kill people. We need the government to keep people from having
guns or we will all be killed. Corporations rip everyone off and exploit
their workers. Without the government corporations would make us all
slaves while selling us carcinogenic food and destroying the
environment. We need a massive government to avoid death by global
warming. We need a massive government to prevent pharmaceutical
companies from selling dangerous products. If you're black whites are
out to kill you, and only the government can save you. If you're a union
member, conservatives want to reintroduce slavery -- only the
government can save you. If you're Hispanic, conservatives want to
exploit you and only the government can protect you.
It is not by accident
that liberals unleash an unending stream of scare stories in which the
only way to avoid a messy, early, and unpleasant demise is by giving the
government more control over your life. Even people who don't need the
government to pay for their housing and food can be convinced that
government should be all-powerful in order to protect the average
American from rapacious corporations and the unending list of new and
more horrifying dangers lurking around every corner.
A
third aspect of the liberal plan was their changes to immigration laws
that made it easier for people from countries where they had learned
that rights flow from the government not from God to enter this country.
Liberals support illegals because illegals are in a precarious
situation and massive government, so long as it views illegals as its
friends, is seen as a protector.
Liberal
efforts to break up the family -- so successful with Black Americans in
the 1960s and 1970s -- are based on the need to eliminate a familial
support structure. While Hillary believes we need a village to raise a
child, she's thinking in terms of government not in terms of extended
families. If you have no family to turn to allowing the government to
control your life in return for security becomes a more credible option.
Finally liberals have worked to make America a land of people, not of laws. The original
intent of the Constitution was that it should apply to all people
equally and that it should be based on the will of the voters. Liberals
have subverted both of those concepts in ways that make people more
comfortable with the creeping autocracy of the government. Hate crimes,
for example, are a way to allow favored minorities, usually members of
the new peasant class, to receive more protection under the law. A crime
against a member of a protected group can be prosecuted twice, with the
perp facing a harsher penalty. Similar discrimination against Blacks is
illegal, as it should be, but discriminating against whites and Asians
is in fact enshrined in current law.
Additionally,
the law has been taken out of the hands of the people's representatives
via the obscene concept of judicial activism. The Supreme Court is no
longer a court; instead it is a collective monarchy which feels
comfortable with remaking the law as it sees fit rather than
interpreting the law in light of the intentions of the elected people
who passed the law. From Miranda to Roe v. Wade to the latest ruling on
ObamaCare, Americans under 50 years of age have grown up seeing that the
Supreme Court can turn the legal system on its head with a single
opinion. Congress is nothing unless the Supreme Court approves and the
Constitution is a living document that the Court can reshape at will
based on the latest liberal trends.
Liberals
are not advocating a monarchy -- that pesky American DNA again --
because they have learned that elections are fine as long as the peasant
class is large enough. Once a sufficiently large percentage of the
population believes that they need to bow to the government in order to
survive, no politician who advocates self-reliance and independence can
hope to win.
The
new peasant class feels comfortable with taking money from their
neighbors via the government, with allowing government to control their
lives -- for their own good, of course -- with the courts having super
legislative power, and with a government based on people, not on laws.
They feel that way because they believe the alternative is literally
fatal.
Many
of those who voted for Obama did so more out of ignorance than because
they belong to the new peasant class but because they were affected, if
not controlled, by their fear of what would happen if they had to live
without the government being there. For a young single woman in a
culture that allows men use to women and then dump the woman and her
children it's not irrational to turn to the government to provide the
support that used to come from families and husbands especially if you
come from a broken family yourself. Over time many of these people will
fall into the peasant class especially as the economy worsens.
A
nation cannot exist half peasant and half free because eventually the
free will not be able to support the peasants. When that happens
societal chaos that often results in dictatorships and far more blatant
oppression than even Obama advocates is likely to occur.
The
challenge America faces is how to turn the peasant class back into the
independent people they can be. If we don't succeed in the near term it
will happen in the long term with the collapse of our economy. We can
see the future in Europe; the Europe of today and of the 1930s where
economic collapse lead to Fascism and the Holocaust.
PK's NOTE: Our wonderful country is being taken over. We're losing the battle. I'm almost at the point of going Galt. (ref. ATLAS SHRUGGED) Also Reads:
Urban gun violence is ignored because the Dems do not see a political opportunity in it. It's that simple.
And it is unfortunate that most in the black community continue to vote for them. They are being used through and through.
It's their choice to be used.Urban gun violence is a symptom of a perceived lack of value of human life.When you are more than willing to cast your vote to the highest
bidder and are more than willing to be used.....why would you expect
your people to value each others lives?The Dems have NO interest in curbing urban violence because
addressing the root causes of the issue might lead to the eventual
respect and value of life by these people.....and that might lead to
them thinking for themselves and straying off the Dem plantation.Can't have that now.
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