NBC Declares War on Christians

Here is an article from Todd Starnes of FoxNews is suggesting that NBC treats Christians with contempt as evidenced by the network's SNL skit that showed Jesus Christ brandishing guns:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/19/nbc-declares-war-on-christians/

Does NBC hate Christians?
That’s what I was wondering over the weekend as I watched “Saturday Night Live” blaspheme Jesus Christ in a violent and bloody Quentin Tarantino parody – just three days after Ash Wednesday.
The fake movie trailer for “Djesus Uncrossed” featured the Savior brandishing guns and blowing away Romans in classic Tarantino-style. Blood and gore and profanity spewed across flat screens from coast to coast; at one point Jesus sliced a man’s head in half.
“Critics are calling it a less violent ‘Passion of the Christ,’” the announcer declared. “I never knew how much Jesus used the N-word.”
Offending Christians is apparently what passes for entertainment these days.
A few days before the SNL episode, NBC Sports blogger Rick Chandler wrote a scathing smear against a prominent Christian church in Dallas.

The First Baptist Church in Dallas had invited Tim Tebow to speak at an upcoming service. Chandler urged the outspoken Christian football player to reconsider.
“Tim Tebow to speak at virulently anti-gay, anti-Semitic Dallas mega-church,” read the headline on Chandler’s hit piece.
Sing Oldham, a spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention, told me he’s not surprised by NBC’s blistering assault on American Christians.
“It’s open season on those who profess personal faith in Jesus Christ and pattern their lives by biblical morality,” he said. “Evangelical Christians are treated with contempt and targeted for ridicule.”
And at the Peacock Network, the contempt and ridicule are on steroids.
NBC removed the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance during a produced video that aired during the U.S. Open.
NBC medical editor Nancy Snyderman infamously denounced the religious part of Christmas during an episode of Today.
“I don’t like the religion part,” said Snyderman. “I think religion is what mucks the whole thing up.”
The “religion” she was referring to is celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.
The network has also produced religion-bashing shows like “The New Normal” and “The Book of Daniel.” That particular show as so offensive it led American Family Radio Chairman Donald Wildmon to declare, “We are tired of NBC’s anti-Christian bigotry.”
I wish I could tell you that this sort of anti-Christian bigotry is an anomaly. Sadly, it is not.
We’ve seen the networks and national news publications denigrate the Christian faith with great flair -- from the “Good Christian B****es” of ABC to Newsweek’s Christmas essay about the “The Myths of Jesus.”
I find it interesting that the networks always mock and ridicule Christianity – but they give other religions a pass.
Why aren’t the writers at SNL churning out weekly skits about Islam – or the Prophet Mohammed? Where’s the mock movie trailer for “Jihad Undetonated?” Where’s the television show called “Good Muslim B****es?” Or the magazine essay about “The Myths of Mohammed?”
I suspect we all know the answer to why.
I’ve often wondered why the people at 30 Rock hold Christians in such contempt. Maybe they choose to attack Christians because we are easy targets.
Southern Baptist spokesman Oldham said it should come as no surprise that networks like NBC target Christians for ridicule.
“Jesus said, ‘the world will hate you because of my name,’” he said, referring to a passage in the New Testament.
As best as I can tell, the folks over at NBC are either ideological bullies or religious bigots.
Either one is enough for me to change the channel.

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Mark Kelly: Gun loophole makes no sense

Here is an article from Mark Kelly, husband of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, from CNN.com saying that some sort of action needs to be taken on gun control.  In January of 2011, Giffords was shot at a constituent meeting in Tucson, and a year later she was forced to resign to focus on her recovery.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/22/opinion/kelly-gun-loophole/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

(CNN) -- I served in the armed forces for 25 years, but until January 8, 2011, I didn't think about guns or gun violence that much. I had other things to think about -- my children, traveling between Houston and Tucson and Washington to see my wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and of course, flying the space shuttle.

Like lots of people, every time there was a mass shooting, with lots of news coverage, I watched, but I wasn't aware of the statistics and of how gun violence permeates our country.

Then Gabby was shot and six of her constituents were murdered during a "Congress on Your Corner" event in Tucson, Arizona. During her long and ongoing recovery, I started paying a lot more attention.

I'm a numbers guy, a statistics guy -- and what I've learned has shocked me. Almost 100 people a day die from a gun, 33 are murdered. We've got 20 times the murder rate of similar countries.

I've watched the globe spin past below me from the window of the space shuttle. And so my perspective has changed. I see this epidemic of gun violence as a crisis, because I know that every statistic is a citizen --- someone like my wife, or Hadiya Pendleton's mom, Cleopatra, who says simply about her daughter, murdered senselessly in Chicago, "a piece of my heart is gone." And, excuse the reference, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that while this issue is complicated, there are things we can do -- now, together -- that will reduce violence.

Like background checks. Right now, we have two systems. Some people, like me, when we buy a gun, we go through a background check. It takes about five minutes -- trust me, I'm not known to be a patient guy, and it didn't take more than a few minutes when I bought a rifle this past November.

Ninety-one percent of background checks are completed instantaneously, and they don't lead to a government database. And they work. I passed my background check and got my gun, and since 1994, more than 2 million folks -- among them, criminals and dangerously mentally ill people -- failed their background checks. But we don't know which of those millions just got in their car and drove to a gun show, or home to their computer to go on the Internet -- both places where anyone can buy a gun without a background check.

That doesn't make sense. It's like saying, hey, criminals, to board the plane, either go through a metal detector and be checked against the terrorist watch list, or, if you prefer, walk right down that red carpet and take a seat, no search necessary. Which would you choose?

That's why Gabby and I are so determined to get a universal background check in place. It's simple, it's not a Republican or a Democratic issue, and it closes a clear loophole that puts our kids and our communities at risk, and it does it in a way that respects the Second Amendment rights of people like me.

We aren't naive in thinking that expanded background checks will solve all our problems overnight, but they are a great first step that even gun owners support.

So, I'm putting everything I learned from my time in the Navy and at NASA -- 375 aircraft carrier landings, 39 combat missions and more than 50 days in space -- to working with Gabby and Americans For Responsible Solutions' more than 100,000 members to get this done.

When you're at the controls of a plane or the space shuttle, you rely on data. You analyze it methodically; you evaluate it objectively. The data around background checks is clear: Up to 40% of gun transfers are made without background checks, and a national survey of inmates found that nearly 80% of those who used a handgun in a crime acquired it without a background check. That tells me that criminals are getting guns, because we're making it too easy.

And 82% of U.S. gun owners -- including more than 70% of NRA members -- support criminal background checks for all gun sales. Ninety-two percent of all households in the country support universal background checks. That tells me that citizens across the country want Congress to get this done, because they know it will keep us safer.

That's a clear path, right there. We can get there if we all raise our voices.

Talk to your neighbors, your co-workers, the parents at your kids' basketball game. Talk to your elected representative.

Tell them you want one system, a universal background check that will keep all of us safer and respects our Second Amendment rights. Join Gabby and me at www.Americansforresponsiblesolutions.org.

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ROTUNDA: Blaming Hollywood for gun violence doesn’t work Attacking constitutional rights won’t save lives

Here is an article from Ronald D. Rotunda from The Washington Times saying that removing violence from movies will not stop gun violence and that there is very little anyone can do if someone is mentally ill and willing to risk their own life:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/feb/20/blaming-hollywood-for-gun-violence-doesnt-work/

After the carnage at a Colorado movie theater, timed to coincide with a massacre scene in a Batman movie, many people blamed Hollywood for glorifying gun violence. A few months later, we saw the horrible bloodbath of children at a Newtown, Conn. elementary school. Again, people complained that the entertainment industry glorified guns in movies, television and video games.
We all search for answers, but Hollywood is not one of them. After the Columbine tragedy, in 1999, where two teens killed fellow high school classmates and themselves, President Clinton ordered the Federal Trade Commission to study whether Hollywood was to blame. It found no causal link: “Whatever the impact of media violence, it likely explains a relatively small amount of the total variation in youthful violent behavior.”
Other psychological studies also show no causal connection between watching violent video games or movies and acting violently. The best one can find are minuscule effects, such as children making louder noises for a few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent game. Moreover, if juveniles shifted from televised gore to children’s literature, they would find no shortage of carnage. The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales (the book, not the Disney movie) tells us that after the wicked queen tried to poison Snow White, her punishment was that she had to dance in red-hot slippers “till she fell dead on the floor, a sad example of envy and jealousy.”
Commentators routinely criticize Hollywood for “aggressively marketing violence” to children. What does it mean to “market” to juveniles, anyway? MetLife markets its life insurance products using Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. Is MetLife trying to scare young children by talking about death? Perhaps Hollywood and MetLife are conspiring to get children accustomed to death so they will be less reluctant to attend scary movies.
Owens Corning features the Pink Panther touting, of all things, insulation. When Owens Corning uses the cuddly panther to publicize a forecast that winter heating bills could be 40 percent higher than last year, it must assume the little tykes will nag their parents to buy more Owens Corning insulation.
We have traveled this road many times before. For example, there was an effort to blame society’s woes on the entertainment industry in the 1940s and ‘50s. A psychiatrist named Fredric Wertham crusaded against violent comic books. The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency held hearings on how violent comic books (like Superman) were responsible for corrupting youth and causing crime. More than 2,400 years ago, Plato’s “Republic” complained of the “decaying” morals of the youth, who “riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions.”
It would be funny were it not for the important First Amendment principles at stake. The Supreme Court has made it clear that Congress cannot censor movies, CDs, video games or comic books unless they are constitutionally obscene — a term of art that the case law has defined in a very limited way. Violence, even gory violence, is not “obscene” in the constitutional sense. The government violates the First Amendment if it attempts to regulate simply because violent movies, video games or music lyrics are “marketed” to children.
Of even greater concern is the precedent set by government regulation. Will the government try to prevent children from watching violent portions of the evening news on television? Will we remove newspapers from classrooms if they contain pictures depicting violence?
Will plaintiffs’ lawyers jump into the fray, arguing that Hollywood should be liable if people see a movie and then engage in a copycat crime? If the plaintiffs’ lawyers succeed against Hollywood, what will prevent them from turning to the news media? That’s the problem when politicians start toying with the First Amendment. Once the genie is out of the bottle, it doesn’t want to return.
A study by the Secret Service after the Columbine tragedy found no easy answers. We cannot create a profile of these people. They rarely make direct threats before they act. Expelling students for minor infractions would not help Newtown, and, if the shooters are students, the expulsion may spark them to return to school with a gun. Metal detectors do not help because shooters usually make no effort to conceal their weapons. Newtown Elementary did not admit visitors until after an identification review by a video monitor, but the shooter shot his way through a locked glass door. When people are mentally ill and willing to die, laws do not help.

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MSNBC, a bastion of Obama advocates?

Here is an article from Howard Kurtz of CNN suggesting that, even though MSNBC is already a liberal counterpart to FoxNews, with the addition of two former Obama administration officials, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, it could potentially be very difficult to give objective opinions.  Additionally, he suggests that MSNBC could be slowly turning into a network that is "an Obama administration in exile":

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/21/opinion/kurtz-axelrod-gibbs/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

(CNN) -- David Axelrod is a smart guy who knows a heck of a lot about politics and the press.

Robert Gibbs is also a smart guy who knows a heck of a lot about politics and the press.

They will now be dispensing their wisdom as paid contributors at MSNBC, and I'll be interested in what they have to say.

But I have to ask: Is NBC's cable channel turning into an Obama administration in exile?

It's hardly a news flash that MSNBC long ago decided to be cable's liberal bastion, a left-wing counterweight to Fox News. But the more the studios are populated with people who worked for the president, the more the network may seem like an off-campus adjunct of the West Wing.

To be sure, MSNBC was already packed with former Democratic presidential candidates, from Al Sharpton to Howard Dean. Former party chairman and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell has also become a fixture, as well as former party spokeswoman Karen Finney.

But now that the president is into his second term, there is a growing band of alumni available for pundit duty. Jared Bernstein went from Joe Biden's chief economist to MSNBC talking head. Now the former senior adviser and former press secretary will be holding forth on their former boss.

Occasionally, the liberals on MSNBC criticize Obama from the left. The network's few conservative commentators, such as former Republican Party chairman Michael Steele, take aim from the right. But isn't that going to be considerably harder for Axelrod and Gibbs, who have devoted their lives to this president?

Gibbs tells me he sees his job "as a political analyst and as someone who has been in the room during important meetings and when big decisions are made who can convey what that's like to viewers. I don't see it either as being a cheerleader for the president or as a spokesman for the administration's point of view."

"I will be honest with my opinions and when I believe the White House has made a mistake I will say so. I'm sure no one in the White House thought my comments on Chuck Hagel's confirmation hearing were necessarily pro-Obama."

Axelrod also sees himself taking a different approach: "My role is not that of a surrogate, but an analyst and commentator. I'm proud of my work for and with the president. But in this role, I will offer observations, based on my experience over 35 years in journalism and politics, and will call them as I see them." He added: "I'd also note that NBC and MSNBC have, on their roster of analysts, both Republicans and Democrats."

MSNBC didn't invent this practice; Fox News is the model.

For a while, it served as the Bush administration in exile, with such loyalists as Karl Rove, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton and ex-press secretary Dana Perino. Fox also provided Bush with a spokesman when the late Tony Snow made the jump from Roger Ailes' network to the White House.

The Fox payroll was soon packed with potential 2012 contenders like Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, with the latter two jumping from Rupert Murdoch's team into the presidential primaries. There is no question that the high-profile platform gave them a boost. Now, Herman Cain, who left the race under a cloud after denying allegations of sexual harassment and an extramarital affair, has joined the Fox team. In his first outing the other night, Cain said 51% of Americans were "misled" into voting for Obama, prompting a dissent from Bill O'Reilly. Is this the kind of unvarnished analysis we can expect from Cain?

CNN is not exempt from this game, having provided a home for Pat Buchanan between his presidential runs and, later, hiring Bush 41 lieutenants John Sununu and Mary Matalin, Clinton alumni Paul Begala and James Carville, and W.'s press secretary, Ari Fleischer. The network also got into the disgraced ex-governor business through its ill-fated fling with Eliot Spitzer. But CNN, at least, makes a point of tapping partisans from both sides. (ABC, for its part, brought in George Stephanopoulos from the Clinton White House, and he gradually earned credibility in his new profession.)

When networks employ active partisans such as Rove, who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for GOP candidates in 2012 and has now launched a new super PAC, it's fair for viewers to wonder whether their commentary is subjugated to an agenda. That was the question with Dick Morris, who was recently dumped by Fox after acknowledging that his predictions of a big Mitt Romney victory were in part an effort to boost Republican morale.

Now that this revolving door is spinning like crazy, are current Obama staffers eyeing a television future? If so, might they be a tad nicer to a future employer? Former Time correspondent Jay Carney was a pretty good television guest before joining the administration; could he follow the well-beaten path to MSNBC?

And what if Hillary Clinton gets bored giving big-money speeches?

Maybe Axelrod and Gibbs will surprise me and show an independent streak as members of the commentariat. But having labored so long as fierce advocates for Barack Obama, that could be a tough transition.

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Reaganism After Reagan

Here is an article from Ramesh Ponnoru from The New York Times suggesting that conservatives have to adapt to the times instead of hanging on  to principles that worked in the Reagan era if they do not want to die out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/opinion/updating-reaganomics.html?_r=0

TODAY’S Republicans are very good at tending the fire of Ronald Reagan’s memory but not nearly as good at learning from his successes. They slavishly adhere to the economic program that Reagan developed to meet the challenges of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ignoring the fact that he largely overcame those challenges, and now we have new ones. It’s because Republicans have not moved on from that time that Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, in their responses to the State of the Union address last week, offered so few new ideas.

When Reagan cut rates for everyone, the top tax rate was 70 percent and the income tax was the biggest tax most people paid. Now neither of those things is true: For most of the last decade the top rate has been 35 percent, and the payroll tax is larger than the income tax for most people. Yet Republicans have treated the income tax as the same impediment to economic growth and middle-class millstone that it was in Reagan’s day. House Republicans have repeatedly voted to bring the top rate down still further, to 25 percent.

A Republican Party attentive to today’s problems rather than yesterday’s would work to lighten the burden of the payroll tax, not just the income tax. An expanded child tax credit that offset the burden of both taxes would be the kind of broad-based middle-class tax relief that Reagan delivered. Republicans should make room for this idea in their budgets, even if it means giving up on the idea of a 25 percent top tax rate.

When Reagan took office, he could have confidence in John F. Kennedy’s conviction that a rising tide would lift all boats. In more recent years, though, economic growth hasn’t always raised wages for most people. The rising cost of health insurance has eaten up raises. Controlling the cost of health care has to be a bigger part of the Republican agenda now that it’s a bigger portion of the economy. An important first step would be to change the existing tax break for health insurance so that people would be able to pocket the savings if they chose cheaper plans.

Conservative views of monetary policy are also stuck in the late 1970s. From 1979 to 1981, inflation hit double digits three years in a row. Tighter money was the answer. To judge from the rhetoric of most Republican politicians, you would think we were again suffering from galloping inflation. The average annual inflation rate over the last five years has been just 2 percent. You would have to go back a long time to find the last period of similarly low inflation. Today nominal spending — the total amount of dollars circulating in the economy both for consumption and investment — has fallen well below its path before the financial crisis and the recession. That’s the reverse of the pattern of the late 1970s.

Trying to boost economic growth through looser money is usually a mistake, as Reaganites rightly argued. They were right, too, to think that the Federal Reserve should make its actions predictable by adhering to a rule rather than improvising depending on its assessment of current conditions. The best way to put those impulses into practice is to require the Fed to stabilize the growth of nominal spending. That rule would allow looser money only when nominal spending is depressed. Keeping nominal spending on track is more or less what the Fed did from 1984 through 2007, a period that Republicans sometimes call the Reagan boom (since they see Bill Clinton as having largely kept his policies) and that economists generally call the Great Moderation. Relatively stable nominal spending growth promoted relatively stable economic growth, and it can again.

The Republican economic program of the 1980s also fought against government-imposed restrictions on economic activity: decontrolling energy prices, for example. Today we should target different restrictions. Software patents have become a source of unproductive litigation that entrenches large tech companies and inhibits creativity. Republicans shouldn’t support those patents. Economic growth has to trump corporate executives’ campaign donations.

Conservatives should retain their skepticism about government intervention, the preference for letting markets direct economic resources and the zeal for ending government-created barriers to economic growth that they inherited from Reagan. In his first Inaugural Address, Reagan famously said that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” The less famous yet crucial beginning of that sentence was “in our present crisis.” The question is whether conservatism revives by attending to today’s conditions, or becomes something withered and dead.

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Violent video games back in Newtown focus

Here is an article from Ed Morrissey of Hot Air suggesting that the Newtown shooting is an issue of mental health problems not violent video games or gun control.  It was reported that police believe that violent video games may have been responsible for his actions as they were believed to have found thousands of dollars worth of violent games:

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/02/19/violent-video-games-back-in-newtown-focus/

News reports yesterday about the Newtown shooting in December brought video games back into the spotlight.  The shooter, Adam Lanza, had collected “a trove” of violent video games, mainly first-person shooters that required kill shots in order to score points and advance through the levels of the game:

"Police investigating the Newtown school killings have been looking into the possibility that gunman Adam Lanza may have been copying a video game as killed 26 people in the massacre.

Two months after the horror at Sandy Hook Elementary School, little remains known about Lanza’s motive.
Before the killings, he had smashed his hard drive, making his online trail and habits impossible to follow, but police did reportedly find thousands of dollars worth of violent video games.
It is believed that Lanza played the games, which included the Call of Duty series, for hours on end."

Does that level of playing such games mean teens and young adults are about to become mass murderers?  CBS News threw a dash of cold water on that idea last night, emphasis mine:

Dr. Christopher Ferguson, department chair of psychology and communications at Texas A&M International University in Laredo, says he has not come across any link between playing violent video games and likelihood for violent behavior.
Ferguson, who presented for Biden’s task force in January, said many people understand at this point that most people who play violent video games won’t become violent themselves and that there is a mental health component at play. That’s different from after Columbine, he said, when many questions were raised about video games as motivations for violence. However, his studies, which have looked at people with mental health issues, including those prone to bullying violence, have found no added risk.
“We can’t find any evidence that those kids are affected either,” Ferguson told CBSNews.com, referring to children with mental health problems.
Ferguson argues that youth violence has been at a 40-year low, while violent video games remain popular. He finds it interesting how in the wake of Sandy Hook, video games have gotten a lot of blame, but when high-profile shootings involve older adults — like 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes, who shot a bus driver then kidnapped a 5-year-old and kept him in a bunker for days, or 62-year-old William Spengler, who allegedly shot and killed two first responders and injured two more firefighters in December after strangling his sister — people don’t look for similar sources to blame.

What don’t these cases have in common?  Violent video games — and that’s a good thing, because millions of people play them without becoming berserkers.  What do they have in common?  Mental health issues, whether manifested “at play” (obviously not the meaning CBS assigned to that phrase, but noteworthy nonetheless) or elsewhere.  As CBS’ John Miller reports, the mental-health component in the Newtown case was obvious even before the shooting, and had little to do with either the games or the guns.  It had to do with a mentally-ill young adult and a broken home, and some very clear warning signs that either got missed or ignored:

Before we begin attacking the First or Second Amendments in a rush to avoid the next act of unpredictable violence, let’s wait until we know what the problems actually are.

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Prof. bans Fox News: Classes not allowed to cite station

Here is an article from Effie Orfanides of Examiner.com discussing how a professor at West Liberty University in West Virginia bans students from citing Fox News in their coursework:

http://www.examiner.com/article/prof-bans-fox-news-classes-not-allowed-to-cite-station

A prof. bans Fox News at West Liberty University and tells her students that the "biased" station makes her "cringe." On Feb. 15, the Daily Called reported that Stephanie Wolfe, a visiting assistant professor, made her class rules loud and clear, making sure that her students did not cite the news station in any of their work for the semester.

"DO NOT use:

1) The Onion — this is not news this is literally a parody

2) Fox News — The tagline “Fox News” makes me cringe. Please do not subject me to this biased news station. I would almost rather you print off an article from the Onion (sic)," reads part of Professor Wolfe's syllabus.

A prof. who bans Fox News may or may not be a democrat, but given the fact that Fox News is known to support the republican party, it might be safe to say that Prof. Wolfe doesn't. At the same time, she could want her students to use unbiased sources -- and to learn the difference -- regardless of political stance.
So now this West Virginia college is on the news map of the day, thanks to Prof. Wolfe's requests. According to the report, there are plenty of upset students and parents who have called the school to complain... they feel as though Wolfe's "requirement" is biased, and in many ways, they could be right. Do you think Prof. Wolfe made a good decision?
The prof. who banned Fox News has not spoken to the media about this issue. And many people feel that she doesn't have to.

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Liberal Media: Obama's Front Line

Here is an article from David Limbaugh from Townhall.com stating that the media strongly favor Obama and do not cover his wrongdoings:

http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2013/02/15/liberal-media-obamas-front-line-n1512731/page/full/

It seems the liberal media are more concerned about Sen. Marco Rubio's midspeech sip of water than about President Obama's State of the Union commitment to double down on his disastrous policies.
What will it take for once-reasonable people to become alarmed at the state of this nation's fiscal condition, its stagnant economy and its egregious unemployment? Is there no number of irresponsible liberal policies from an extremist liberal president that will exceed their willingness to tolerate? Do liberal media -- and rank-and-file Democrats, for that matter -- believe that this recklessness can go on forever?
Knowing President Obama's capacity for fiscal folly and for scapegoating others for problems he's caused, even I find it hard to believe he could stand before the nation and masquerade as a Washington outsider -- as a crusader against the squalid conditions he is engineering and exacerbating.
Are these media people truly engulfed in as blinding an ideological fog as it seems? Or are they just cynical co-conspirators in Obama's deceitful self-depiction as a model bipartisan who is actually seeking a "balanced approach" to resolving our fiscal crisis -- as opposed to leveraging the crisis to further gouge the "wealthy"?
Balanced? We all know -- it's undeniable -- that we have a spending problem and that we are not taxed too little. Our government is bloated beyond belief, and Republicans have already joined Obama in raising the rates and reducing the deductions for the evil ones. Yet he continues to resist meaningful entitlement reform and real spending cuts and all the while deceives the American people with the scandalous whopper that he has already implemented more than half the cuts we need to "stabilize" the debt problem.
Shame on the media for allowing him to get away with this! Shame on them for not refuting his misrepresentations about the enormous cost and tax increases unfolding with Obamacare.
While Obama is obstructing solutions for real crises and manufacturing phony ones (gun control), he is accusing Republicans of conducting "business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next." No other occupant of the Oval Office has come close to such an adolescent level of projection -- of falsely accusing his political opponents of the very tactics he has employed. But his cohorts in the media and elsewhere gleefully give him a pass.
They sit silently as Vice President Joe Biden boasts that the administration will not permit the Constitution to get in its way of imposing further restrictions on guns. They say nothing as Obama proposes draconian solutions for mass shootings that violate the Second Amendment, downplay the real cause of the problems and outright ignore scientific research.
They are mute as Obama makes his dictatorial threats to take unilateral executive action if Republicans refuse to comply with his demands for more business-killing programs in service to the gods of global warming.
They dutifully disregard the inevitably negative consequences of Obama's calls for increases in the minimum wage. At what point do these self-congratulatory people feel a tinge of remorse for promoting policies that harm the people they promise to help?
Are they honestly unaware that there is a level beyond which you harm, rather than help, people by exploding our food stamp rolls, forcing employers to pay wages higher than they can afford, extending unemployment benefits and legislating other transfer payments?
Does it ever occur to them that we wouldn't need to have all these counterproductive programs of "compassion" if our most beneficent president would quit smothering the private sector with his onerous spending, taxes and regulations?
Apparently not, because we see no curiosity from them, much less any criticism, about Obama's grandiose plan for universal preschool for every 4-year-old in the United States, while he opposes school choice solutions to help free inner-city children from inferior schools. We see no economic analysis that would show the inverse relationship between the amount of money the federal government has poured into education and the results it has produced.
I don't expect the media to understand, let alone affirm, that it's free market competition, not government central planning, that has created wealth in this country, but how about a modicum of honesty from them about the utter waste and failure of Obama's stimulus package, which he promised would get the economy moving again?
Then again, how can we realistically expect the leftist media to hold the perennially unaccountable Obama to account for anything in his 2013 SOTU address when they have wholly ignored his broken promises from past SOTU speeches, such as his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, his assurance that his stimulus plan would save or create 3.5 million jobs in two years, his avowal that Obamacare would result in universal health insurance coverage and his declaration that he would create gazillions of green energy jobs?
America's liberty burns while the media fiddle.

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Message to Congress: It’s been two months since Sandy Hook. Act!

Here is an article from Patrick J. Murphy, former Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania and U.S. Army veteran, from MSNBC stating that after two months of the Sandy Hook tragedy Congress needs to take a stand on gun control:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/12/message-to-congress-its-been-two-months-since-sandy-hook-act/

This Thursday, Valentine’s Day, will be the two month anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre. Since that tragic day, more than 1,763 Americans have been killed by gun violence (@GunDeaths). The debate over assault rifles has led me to reminisce about my own experience with these weapons–which I’ll admit is more than most–and the continued inaction of the U.S. Congress.
When I was in the army, we spent so much time with our assault rifles that we sang about dating them (“Used to date a beauty queen, now I date my M-16”). When I was in boot camp, I learned how to take it apart and put it back together, practically with my eyes closed. By the time I went to Iraq, I could shoot “expert.”
So it’s fair to say that I’m comfortable with guns. But I’ve also seen first hand what an assault weapon can do the human body and I can tell you this: there isn’t a civilian in America who needs one. And if you do want to use an assault weapon, join the Army. I promise you’ll get plenty of practice.
Short of that, assault weapons have no place in our society and they certainly have no place on our streets. That’s why an assault weapons ban–even stronger than the one that expired in 2004–is both necessary and logical.
Like I said, I’ve operated weapons as a soldier. Now I own a weapon, have a permit to carry and believe in the Second Amendment. But I honestly cannot read another story about kids no older than my daughter being killed by some lunatic with a gun he has no business carrying. Can we finally say: enough? As the president has said, “If there is even one life that can be saved, we have an obligation to try.”
Congress must finally take action on a comprehensive approach to the issue of gun violence. An assault weapons ban, limiting ammunition magazine capacity, strengthening background checks for gun purchasers and expanding mental health treatment options–are four commonsense solutions that are supported by the majority of gun owners and non-gun owners alike. What is so difficult about starting there?
The answer is pretty obvious: the extreme–and well-funded–gun lobby. Contrary to what politicians and NRA officials often suggest, Americans know reasonable plans to reduce gun-related violence are consistent with the right for individuals to own a firearm.
A majority of Americans now support the individual measures proposed by the president and the House Democrats. With respect to increasing background checks and expanding mental health programs, the majorities are overwhelming. Americans simply realize that our constitutional right to bear arms can coexist with efforts to make our communities safer from gun-related violence.
And there is also no denying the extent to which gun violence is a problem in this country. Violence continues to rage in many of our cities. The murder rate in Chicago, for instance, is more than double that of Mexico City. My own city of Philadelphia–where the vice president spoke recently on this issue–has witnessed 331 murders last year. The number has risen each of the past three years.
Sandy Hook was an unspeakable tragedy. As a father, the safety of my children literally keeps me up at night. There is nothing more important to me and there isn’t a close second. So I join mothers and fathers across the country when I say: I don’t want to hear any more excuses from anyone. Republicans. Democrats. I don’t care. It is time to put safety above politics and get this done.

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Dr. Ben Carson shouldn't apologize to Obama --he simply delivered his diagnosis

Here is an article from Dr. Keith Ablow of FoxNews.com stating that Dr. Ben Carson should not apologize for his comments at the National Prayer Breakfast due to the fact that his profession, a neurosurgeon, requires him to be fully honest with his patients:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/14/dr-ben-carson-doesnt-need-to-apologize-to-obama-simply-delivered-his-diagnosis/?intcmp=HPBucket

Ben Carson, MD, the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, has done as much with one speech to present his bonafides for president of the United States as a man can do—not least of all because he delivered that speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, in front of President Obama, with whose policies he obviously disagrees.
Carson’s ideas about how the flat tax mirrors the biblical notion of tithing, his mention of “ObamaCare” and how it has put America’s health care system on the road to ruin, how political correctness is stifling honest dialogue and the national debt being immoral could not have sat well with President Obama.  Many have mistakenly argued that the Prayer Breakfast was an inappropriate forum for such unadorned, challenging statements.

Well, let me tell you something about Ben Carson and other surgeons I was privileged to train with at Johns Hopkins during my medical and surgical rotations before I chose to become a psychiatrist:  They don’t pull punches when a battle needs to be joined, and they don’t hate the people to whom they have to deliver bad news.
Ben Carson has sat with many, many families and told them that their children had tumors growing inside their heads and that he would need to cut open their skulls and remove those malignancies.
He has told fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters that there was a chance that the people they loved the most in the world would not survive the next six or twelve hours in the operating room.
And, in 1987, Carson had to have told the parents of twins joined at the head that they both might perish under the knife, before he made history by walking into an operating room and separating them from one another, in a 22-hour procedure that left both alive.
So anyone who tells Ben Carson that he ought not tell the truth because his words will be heard in a traditionally “non-partisan” arena ought to reconsider.
What America needs is a great surgeon who doesn’t much care whether you ask him what ails you and how fix it even if that question comes in the hallway, the waiting room, in the cafeteria, in the street, over breakfast or in a chapel. Why? Because, for him, the truth is the only thing worth speaking, no matter the audience.
No mother wants to hear that her 2-year-old might die, no 11-year-old wants to hear that if he survives he might never walk again, and no president wants to hear that his policies are bankrupting a nation, both fiscally and psychologically.  But the truth is the truth, and there’s no sense withholding it when the patient is a kid who needs saving or a family that needs courage or a country that needs both.
Another thing about Ben Carson and other surgeons I scrubbed in with:  They like to leave clean margins. That means that when they see pathology—like cancer—they want to cut it away so that only healthy tissue is left behind.  They have to be willing to make people bleed, in order to make them live.
They aren’t afraid of fallout. No half-measures will do. And the specimens sent off to pathology tell the truth every time.  Either they got it all, or they didn’t.  There’s no spin involved.
So, Ben Carson need not apologize to President Obama. The surgeon made his diagnosis.  He enunciated a treatment plan that could save the life of this nation.  And anyone who argues that he should have held his tongue out of “respect” doesn’t understand that telling the truth to a man, however powerful, is still the ultimate form of respect.

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Obama, Rubio speeches: Highs and lows

Here is an article from David Gergen of CNN discussing what he felt were the good and the bad points of the State of the Union Address from President Obama and the Republican response from Florida Senator Marco Rubio:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/14/opinion/gergen-sotu/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

(CNN) -- Neither the State of the Union address by President Barack Obama nor the response by Sen. Marco Rubio will ever find a place in the anthology of best American speeches, but together they were important entries in the political dialogue. Before they fade into memory, perhaps a few words are in order about the highs and lows of the evening -- at least from this vantage point:

The most savored thought: Who could have imagined a decade ago hearing an African-American deliver the State of the Union and a Latino offering the opposition's response? No other advanced country in the world has so fully embraced diversity.

Yes, it is true that in 2009 an Indian-American gave the response, but still the country has needed to have more Latinos advance into political leadership. To have Obama and Rubio speak back-to-back was special.

The emotional highlight: After a rather pedestrian opening, the president's speech soared at the end as he called out the victims of gun violence and demanded a vote in their honor. It's hard to remember oratory that has worked so effectively in a State of the Union.

Cody Keenan, please join the president in taking a bow. Keenan is the 32-year old who just became chief speechwriter at the White House. He has been known there in the past as the deputy who had the account for eulogies and commencements -- and in those closing moments, we saw that the president chose the right person to succeed the highly respected Jon Favreau. And yes, the victims deserve a vote!

The biggest disappointment: For the president, this speech was probably his last opportunity to break open the impasse over federal deficits. Only a game-changing proposal had any chance of success -- putting a bold offer on the table of significant changes in Medicare and Social Security along with a tax overhaul in exchange for the GOP dropping the sequester and accepting near-term investments in infrastructure and the like.

But the president never stepped up. Indeed, without admitting it, he is in retreat from the original Simpson-Bowles proposal to lower the national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. That is a huge setback for the country.

The most pleasant surprise: In days leading up to the address, White House aides had been dropping broad hints to the press that a newly combative Obama would once again stick it to Republicans. Not an olive branch, reported Politico, but a cattle prod. Instead, Obama wisely chose to use tempered, constructive language in addressing the other side. That didn't change the atmosphere much in Washington -- but give the president credit. He didn't make it worse either. It would be good to hear the Republicans act in the same spirit.

he best idea: Among the many proposals Obama set forth, his argument that America should provide quality preschool for every child deserves special attention. Research shows that on average, a low-income child enters kindergarten with a much smaller vocabulary than a high-income child and will likely never make up the gap. Yet one wondered as the president spoke: Whatever happened to the promise that every child would also have quality K-12?

The worst idea: It is one thing for the federal government to intervene in early public education because the system is so deeply in need of reform. But it is another thing entirely to follow the president's notion that the federal government should begin regulating colleges and universities to ensure they are providing good education at affordable prices. Yes, schools must keep tighter control over tuition increases and provide more online courses at cheaper prices, but the last thing we need is for Washington to inject itself deeply into higher education. America has the best colleges and universities in the world; they are a crown jewel. If they ain't broke, Washington shouldn't try to fix them.

What was left out: Obama insisted that his many spending proposals wouldn't add a dime to the deficits. That was risible. Of course, they will cost lots of money -- he just forgot to tell us the price tags and how he would pay for them.

Rubio wasn't much better: He said where Republicans wanted to go on issues, but he rarely told us how they would get there. For example, how exactly would they now overhaul Medicare? And both men ducked conversations about some of our deeper, underlying problems.

Case in point: The United States is undergoing a dramatic shift in childbearing so that half the children born to mothers under 30 are born out of wedlock. We know as well that a child born out of wedlock is more likely to experience poverty and lack an adequate education. We don't need our political leaders to chastise single mothers -- they bear some of the toughest burdens in society -- but we do need our leaders to promote the values of marriage and to demand more responsible fatherhood. The president at least hinted at the problem, but neither man really wrestled with it.

State of the Union addresses might have become boring for many, but they are important. Since Woodrow Wilson, they have been an annual ritual, giving the nation's most powerful elected leader an opportunity to tell Congress and the country what faces us and what we must do as a people. This year's address and its response seemed middling -- some great moments, some clunkers. Sadly, they didn't seem to move us forward. The State of the Union that does that is the one that will make the anthologies.

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Cultural Deviancy, Not Guns

Here is an article from Walter E. Williams from Townhall.com stating that cultural deviancy not gun control is the problem in America today:

http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2013/02/13/a-minority-view-n1509825/page/full/

There's a story told about a Paris chief of police who was called to a department store to stop a burglary in progress. Upon his arrival, he reconnoitered the situation and ordered his men to surround the entrances of the building next door. When questioned about his actions, he replied that he didn't have enough men to cover the department store's many entrances but he did have enough for the building next door. Let's see whether there are similarities between his strategy and today's gun control strategy.
Last year, Chicago had 512 homicides; Detroit had 411; Philadelphia had 331; and Baltimore had 215. Those cities are joined by other dangerous cities -- such as St. Louis, Memphis, Tenn., Flint, Mich., and Camden, N.J. -- and they also lead the nation in shootings, assaults, rapes and robberies. Both the populations of those cities and their crime victims are predominantly black. Each year, more than 7,000 blacks are murdered. Close to 100 percent of the time, the murderer is another black person.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. Coupled with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are also most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery. The magnitude of this tragedy can be seen in another light. According to a Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute study, between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites.
What percentage of murders, irrespective of race, are committed with what are being called assault weapons? You'd be hard put to come up with an amount greater than 1 or 2 percent. In fact, according to FBI data from 2011, there were 323 murders committed with a rifle of any kind but 496 murders committed with a hammer or a club. But people who want to weaken our Second Amendment guarantees employ a strategy like that of the Paris chief of police. They can't do much about hammers, clubs, fists or pistols, but by exploiting public ignorance, they might have a bit of success getting an "assault weapon" ban that will have little impact on violent crime.
There are other measures these people employ in an attempt to end violence that border on lunacy. Massachusetts' Hyannis West Elementary recently warned a 5-year-old's parents that if their son made another gun from a Legos set, he'd be suspended. Elementary-school children have been suspended or otherwise disciplined for drawing a picture of a gun or pointing a finger and saying, "Bang, bang." I shudder to think about what would happen to kids in a schoolyard if they played, as I played nearly 70 years ago, "cops 'n' robbers" or "cowboys 'n' Indians." Maybe today's politically correct educators would cut the kids a bit of slack if they said they were playing "cowboys 'n' Native Americans."
What explains a lot of what we see today, which politicians and their liberal allies would never condemn, is growing cultural deviancy. Twenty-nine percent of white children, 53 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of black children are born to unmarried women. The absence of a husband and father from the home is a strong contributing factor to poverty, school failure, crime, drug abuse, emotional disturbance and a host of other social problems. By the way, the low marriage rate among blacks is relatively new. Census data show that a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults from 1890 to 1940. In 2009, the poverty rate among married whites was 3.2 percent; for blacks, it was 7 percent, and for Hispanics, it was 13.2 percent. The higher poverty rates -- 22 percent for whites, 35.6 percent for blacks and 37.9 percent for Hispanics -- are among unmarried families.
Other forms of cultural deviancy are found in the kind of music accepted today that advocates killing and rape and other vile acts. Punishment for criminal behavior is lax. Today's Americans accept behavior that our parents and grandparents never would have accepted.

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The ‘Die Hard’ Quandary

Here is an article written by Joe Nocera of the New York Times suggesting that the gun violence portrayed in movies, video games, and other media have an impact on gun violence in America:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/nocera-the-die-hard-quandry.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Later this week, the fifth installment of the “Die Hard” movies is scheduled to open in theaters across the country. “A Good Day to Die Hard” stars, once again, Bruce Willis as John McClane, a too-stubborn-for-his-own-good cop who has to stop a highly trained army of bad guys out to wreak destruction and death. It will undoubtedly be a giant hit for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the owner of the “Die Hard” franchise.

In promoting the new movie, both the Regal and AMC movie chains are holding “Die Hard” marathons on Wednesday. Starting at noon, an AMC theatergoer can spend 12 straight hours watching all five “Die Hard” movies.

That’s a lot of “Die Hard.” Among the guns used — and used, and used, and used — in just the first “Die Hard” are a Steyr AUG assault rifle, a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun, and a Walther PPK pistol with silencer. McClane himself relies on a Beretta 92 semiautomatic pistol in the first three movies, and a Sig Sauer P220 in the more recent films. (He also favors the bald look in the last two movies.)

Of course, it is cartoonish violence, in the sense that rarely — in all the innumerable killings — is blood seen pouring out of the victims, or does anyone cry out in anguish and pain. Incredibly, the Motion Picture Association of America judges foul language to be more problematic for children than this kind of bloodless violence, which perhaps explains why the 2007 installment, “Live Free or Die Hard,” was rated PG-13: the normally foul-mouthed McClane barely swears in it. (The new one has reclaimed its traditional R.)

What got me thinking about “Die Hard” — and guns in the movies more generally — is, of course, the furious gun debate since the killings in Newtown, Conn. On one side are those who believe we can cut down on gun violence by, among other things, banning the assault weapons that always seem to be used in mass shootings.

On the other side are the Second Amendment absolutists, who argue that the real problem is the culture, soaked in so much violent imagery that it is virtually impossible to avoid. They add that a ban on assault weapons would be the beginning of a slippery slope that would ultimately lead to a ban on weapons of every kind.

It’s not that I don’t want to see a ban on assault weapons. I sincerely do. But after poking around the world of gun-crazed movies and other media, I have to say, the Second Amendment absolutists have a point. For instance, when you ask a spokesman for the M.P.A.A. about the real-world effect of gun imagery in the movies, he actually pushes back by claiming that “there is a predominance of findings that show there is no consistent or convincing evidence that exposure causes people to be more violent.”

This is, quite simply, untrue. “There is tons of research on this,” says Joanne Cantor, professor emerita of communications at the University of Wisconsin, and an expert on the effect of violent movies and video games. “Watching violence makes kids feel they can use violence to solve a problem. It brings increased feelings of hostility. It increases desensitization.” Every parent understands this instinctively, of course, but those instincts are backed by decades of solid research.

There is a second reason many people — indeed, many of the same people who would like to ban assault weapons — shrink from demanding changes in the culture’s tolerance for violent images. To do anything about it legislatively would likely violate the First Amendment. Just as an assault weapon ban is the slippery slope for Second Amendment advocates, efforts to restrict violent images — or pornography, for that matter — is the slippery slope for First Amendment absolutists.

Craig Anderson, a psychologist at Iowa State University, told me that children who watch even something as seemingly benign as Woody Woodpecker cartoons — in which Woody often pecks on someone’s head — can become temporarily more aggressive. “If you are going to start to ban media violence, where do you stop?” he asked.

Violent video games and movies, he went on to say, are certainly not the only factor that can lead someone to commit an act of gun violence. “If someone has no other risk factors, he can play Grand Theft Auto all day and never commit a violent act. But if he has a number of the other risk factors. ...” Anderson let the thought hang.

On Monday, I called an AMC spokesman to ask if his company was worried about its customers watching nonstop shootings for 12 straight hours.

“We are very excited about the ‘Die Hard’ marathon,” he replied. “It will be a great time for our guests.” He added, however, that the company had its “security measures in place.”

Just, you know, in case.

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Dr. Ben Carson should apologize to President Obama

Here is an article from Cal Thomas from FoxNews.com stating that Dr. Benjamin Carson needs to apologize for his comments at the National Prayer Breakfast regarding President Obama's policies citing the fact that the event is dubbed as one of the few non-political events of the year and that it was inappropriate to make comments in this kind of forum.  Dr. Benjamin Carson is a neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/12/dr-ben-carson-should-apologize-to-president-obama/?intcmp=HPBucket

Our politics have become so polarized and corrupted that a president of the United States cannot even attend an event devoted to drawing people closer to God and bridge partisan and cultural divides without being lectured about his policies.
Last Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., Dr. Ben Carson, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and a 2008 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, broke with a 61-year-old tradition and publicly disagreed with some of the president's policies, such as "ObamaCare," taxation and the national debt. Disclosure: I have attended this event since 1971 and host a dinner the night before for members of the media.
Several in the audience of 3,000 applauded Carson's remarks, which must have made the president feel even more uncomfortable.

I am no fan of the president's policies, but the National Prayer Breakfast is billed as one of the few nonpolitical events in a very political city. Each year, the co-chairs, one Democrat and one Republican from either the House or Senate, put aside their political differences, as they do in weekly gatherings, to pray for the nation's leaders.
Carson, who spoke at the same event several years ago, has a compelling and inspirational personal story. He and his brother grew up in Detroit. His parents divorced when he was three. His mother kept an eye on her children and made them turn off the TV and read books. Carson said he did poorly in school and was mocked by classmates until he later caught the learning bug. He retold part of that story, but it was overwhelmed by his criticism of the president's policies.
Carson is a great example of what perseverance can accomplish and his success is a rebuke to the entitlement-envy-greed mentality. By lowering himself to mention policies with which he disagrees, he diluted the power of a superior message.
His remarks were inappropriate for the occasion. It would have been just as inappropriate had he praised the president's policies. The president had a right to expect a different message about another Kingdom. I'm wondering if the president felt drawn closer to God, or bludgeoned by the Republican Party and the applauding conservatives in the audience (there were many liberals there, too, as well as people from what organizers said were more than 100 nations and all 50 states).
In 1996, radio personality Don Imus was the main speaker at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association annual banquet in Washington where he made sexually suggestive comments in front of President Clinton and the first lady. I asked White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers at the time if I was being too puritanical or did she also think Imus' remarks were inappropriate. She agreed they were. Whatever happened to propriety?
If Carson wanted to voice his opinion about the president's policies, he could have done so backstage. Even better, he might have asked for a private meeting with the man. As a fellow African American who faced personal challenges and overcame them, the president might have welcomed Dr. Carson to the White House. Instead, Carson ambushed him.
Carson should publicly apologize and stop going on TV doing "victory laps" and proclaiming that reaction to his speech was overwhelmingly positive. That's not the point. While many might agree with his positions (and many others don't as shown by the November election results), voicing them at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of the president was the wrong venue.
Organizers for this event tell speakers ahead of time to steer clear of politics, but Carson apparently "went rogue" on them. I'm told organizers were astonished and disapproving of the critical parts of Carson's keynote address. The breakfast is supposed to bring together people from different political viewpoints and cultures. It is supposed to bridge divides, not widen them.
If this and future presidents think their policies will be prey for political opponents at the prayer breakfast, they might decide not to come. That would be too bad for them and too bad for the country.

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Dr. Carson's Refreshing Jolt of Good Societal Medicine

Here is an article from David Limbaugh from Townhall.com stating that Dr. Benjamin Carson was right to challenge President Obama's policies at the National Prayer Breakfast and that it showed great courage to challenge his policies in public.  Dr. Benjamin Carson is a neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2013/02/12/dr-carsons-refreshing-jolt-of-good-societal-medicine-n1510008/page/full/ 

President Obama must have been stunned at the "audacity" of Dr. Benjamin Carson in challenging his core assumptions right to his face in front of thousands of people at the National Prayer Breakfast.
Obama is not used to being challenged, especially in public, even if indirectly and without being specifically named. From the look on his face, it was obvious Obama was none too pleased with Carson's message or with his "presumptuousness" in presenting it in that forum, while he had to sit still and -- remain silent.
I think we can best understand Carson's message in light of his opening statements, which laid the foundation for the thematic body of this speech.
He began citing scriptural passages that he said would put his upcoming remarks into context. Three of the passages were wisdom sayings from the book of Proverbs, admonishing that the godless destroy their neighbor with their mouths, that a man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor and that a generous man will prosper.
The final passage was God's promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that if his people will humble themselves and pray and seek his face and turn from their wicked ways, he will hear them, forgive their sins and heal their land.
Carson also decried the chilling effect of political correctness that makes people afraid to express certain opinions on important issues, lest they incur the wrath of society's thought and speech police -- those who presume to be the guardians of all moral and acceptable opinions. He then proceeded to boldly articulate a number of ideas that clearly fall in this category of disfavored speech.
Specifically, Carson offered a ringing endorsement of America's founding principles and its unique constitutional liberties. He decried the moral decay in our society and our government's grotesque fiscal irresponsibility.
He took aim on our ever-expanding welfare state, not only by championing hard work, self-reliance and personal responsibility but also in invoking his own personal experience as an example.
He related how his mother worked multiple jobs to provide for him and his brother and imparted critically important values to them. She made them read and improve themselves and absolutely refused to let them make excuses and claim victimhood for their plight.
Carson, I believe, was illustrating that we have a moral problem in this nation and that the instilling of good values begins in the home and is neither the responsibility nor the prerogative of a caretaker government.
He denounced the practice -- refined to an art form by President Obama -- of politicians employing class warfare to deride the wealthy with accusations that they don't contribute enough while treating the less fortunate as helpless and expecting no contribution from them at all. This, I think, is where he was dovetailing the scriptural texts warning against deriding one's neighbor. He was saying, in effect, that political demagogues who pit people against one another on the basis of income and wealth harm society, including the very people they pretend to help.
In a television interview, Carson expanded on some of these thoughts, explaining that the Founding Fathers were afraid of an out-of-control government that would "get to the point where it couldn't subsist without taking everything from the people." Next, he linked, though not expressly, the scriptural passage on generosity in challenging today's conventional wisdom that the wealthy are necessarily greedy. He pointed to the remarkable generosity of some of America's historically wealthiest individuals. America, he said, "has always been a very generous nation. Look at all the foundations that have been created for the purpose of taking care of people."
He also expounded on his comments on political correctness, apparently criticizing the president's selective assault on religious liberty. He said, "If the president would exercise anywhere near the sensitivity about religious freedom in this country as he does about Islam and offending them, we wouldn't even have these kinds of problems."
There is also no question in my mind that in citing the passage from 2 Chronicles, Carson was expressing his view that America has strayed from its godly roots and replaced God's absolute moral standards with those that seem right to a man but are wholly destructive of our moral fabric. We must turn back to God, reject this man-made ethic grounded in covetousness, envy and greed, and recommit ourselves to godly values and right living.
In his speech, Carson did not criticize President Obama by name, but he roundly condemned his philosophy of and approach to governance. He did so with abundant forcefulness but equally strong respectfulness.
It was an admirable display of forthrightness and courage and a virtual seminar in how President Obama's political opponents should boldly, directly and publicly dispute his wrongheaded message and block his destructive agenda.

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Doubling Down on Anti-Gun News

Here is an article written by Brent Bozell, founder and President of the Media Research Center, who suggests that anti-gun stories have dramatically increased since the Newtown shooting due to the fact that the major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, are attempting to push a liberal agenda:

http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2013/02/08/doubling-down-on-antigun-news-n1507893/page/full/

Everyone can imagine the horror of a madman shooting up an elementary school, especially the horror of losing your six-year-old in the melee. But at some point, the news media's wallowing in Newtown reminds one of Don Henley's satirical song "Dirty Laundry," and how the anchors' eyes gleam through plane-crash news because "it's interesting when people die; we love dirty laundry."
The "O" word that defines the media at times like these isn't "objective." It's "opportunistic."
To be sure, the "news" manufacturers aren't hoping for a school shooting. But that doesn't mean they aren't ready to exploit it. Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen was explicit back in 1999: ""Perhaps it will take one more school shooting to move the majority of Americans into a position more powerful than that of the NRA. Perhaps it will take one more school shooting to move us from people who support gun control to people who vote it."
A new Media Research Center study reviewed a sample of 216 gun-policy stories on ABC, CBS and NBC in the first month after Newtown, from the Dec. 14 shooting through the morning after President Obama's Feb. 16 speech pushing new gun control proposals. The number is instructive. That's not 216 stories in a month on Newtown. That's 216 stories just about the policy "solution" -- more gun control.
There are zero stories tilting toward a "solution" of curbing violence in TV and movies. That's because the TV networks show violent scenes nightly and are owned by companies with movie studios that profit from violent scenes. Try finding the word "violence" next to "movies" or "television" in a post-Newtown story on the TV networks where it isn't a casual afterthought.
The First Amendment is treated as sacred; the Second Amendment as profane.
As one might suspect, stories advocating more gun control dominated. But "outnumbered" is an understatement. They smothered stories tilting against gun control by 99 to 12, or more than 8 to 1.
It's easy to arrive at that results when anti-gun sound bites were aired almost twice as frequently as gun rights sound bites (228 to 134). When the Big Three network "news" operations sought out guests for interviews, the tilt was 26 to 7.
CBS won the month for being the most shamelessly tilted, with 44 anti-gun stories to just two with a gun-rights emphasis and 37 in the neutral zone. NBC was "best" with a slant of 26 to 5, and 43 neutral stories. Let's hope none of these people would assert that they're "fair and balanced" when absolutely everyone can smell the strong liberal coffee they're making.
No one at the networks waited to begin the campaign advertising disguised as "news." On the first night after the Newtown shooting, just hours after the grisly story broke, "CBS Evening News" anchor Scott Pelley was already pushing: "One wonders if the nature of this crime and the age of the victims might create the debate in Washington that could push legislation along?"
Over on NBC that night, reporter Tom Costello connected liberal dots: "In Colorado, still haunted by the Aurora and Columbine massacres, the governor of that western pro-gun state also said it's time to begin a discussion about sensible gun control. ... Tonight, with dozens dead, including so many children, the debate over guns is back."
The bias here is just loaded with urgency, because every politicized "news" advocate knows that the policy debate on guns operates on emotion, and not on facts. The facts might be the same in the first 10 days as they are three months later, but liberal journalists feel like they're going to lose the debate to the NRA's army of members in fly-over country as soon as the emotion subsides.
That's why the Senate launched an emotional gun control hearing on Jan. 30 starring former Democrat Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, a famous and tragic victim of a madman shooting. Even that Gabby story was a rerun, since the networks also promoted her saying "Enough" to the NRA on Jan. 7 on the anniversary of the Tucson shooting.
Six days before the hearing, a Senate staffer told Broadcasting and Cable magazine that the hearing would not be confined to gun control issues and could include mental health and media violence issues: "I think everything is going to come up." But while the witness panel was balanced, there was no panel of Hollywood executives to face tough questions, the way that Senators love lining up tobacco or oil-company CEOs.
After Newtown, the networks again demonstrated that there's no story on which they can't dramatically stack the deck. Liberal news stories lead to liberal legislation. They know it; and relish it.

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Former Marines share dramatically different stances on gun violence

Here is an article from Christina Zdanowicz of CNN posing gun control related questions to two former Marines.  Both Marines have extremely different views on the issue:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/10/us/marines-gun-control-ireport/index.html?hpt=op_bn1

(CNN) -- "No ma'am ... I will not register my weapons."

These passionate words from a former Marine sparked an insatiable conversation on CNN.com.

Since Joshua Boston posted an open letter to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, dismissing stricter gun control, on CNN iReport, his commentary has received more than 1 million views, almost 30,000 comments and even a response from Feinstein's office.

But one response stood out from the rest -- a reaction from another former Marine addressed directly to Boston. Nicolas DiOrio called Boston's letter an "embarrassment to those who've served."

The two views on gun control were as different as the photos adorning the letters, Boston wielding a firearm and DiOrio pointing a video camera.

Prompted by the firestorm of discussion the two have sparked, we interviewed both men with the same set of questions to further explain their opposing views on gun control. Read their responses and judge their arguments for yourself:

1. What do you think our founding fathers meant by the right "to keep and bear arms" mentioned in the Second Amendment?

Boston: They had just fought a war against a government that had overstepped its boundaries. You can only come to the conclusion that they put it there for us to have the same ability to do that in the future should the need arise. They use the terms people, militia and arms specifically. They differentiate between the United States, the states and the people elsewhere. I think they use the term arms because they mean any weapons that we might have to bear in such a situation.

DiOrio: I think that because we had a much smaller military at the time, it was more of an allowance that people could have weapons or muskets to raise a militia to defend the country from outside invasion. But in today's world, we have a much larger military and the weapons that are available are much more dangerous than the weapons of that time. I would think that the founding fathers would not make as broad of an allowance of individual possession of firearms if they knew what the state of firearms was today.

2. What if a new bill about banning assault weapons passes, say Sen. Dianne Feinstein's bill? What would it mean for America?

Boston: It's going to open a door that we, or our descendants, are going to deplore. It's saying it's OK to take away guns away based on the actions of a few. The next time somebody goes up the tower at the University of Texas Austin shooting people with a deer rifle, it will show our willingness to give away hunting rifles. And after the next Virginia Tech, handguns are going to be taken away. These shootings have happened before; they just don't have the same emotional weight as this shooting had.

DiOrio: I don't think it would really harm gun owners as they think it would. They would still have access to all sorts of hunting weapons and rifles. The bill only seeks to ban assault weapons. Unless we had a bill like the one passed in Australia in 1996, a retroactive ban, we would still have all these weapons out there. Unless such a ban is instituted, it will probably not be as effective as we hope. Nevertheless, I do support any step taken in limiting assault weapons.

3. What's the biggest misconception that you think people have about your stance on guns?

Boston: There's a few of them. They think I'm paranoid. I'm not. I just learned early on that you have to expect the worst while hoping for the best. Expecting that the best is going to happen when hard times show up you won't be prepared and you will fail. People assume because I own guns that I'm not educated or that I don't know how to think for myself. I own guns because I'm educated to the dangers and the reality of the world that we live in. I accept the reality that we live in and I don't accept that the police will always be there for me. I own guns because I'm very much attached to reality.

DiOrio: I think, based on what I've read, people just have the perception that I think that gun owners are evil or don't care about gun violence. I realize that's not true, but I just think that people are very eager to talk about their rights but not always so eager to talk about collective responsibility and safety. Also, I want to set straight that I don't think Josh Boston is a disgrace at all. I just think that his letter could have been more sensitive to the issues. I respect him and his service; I wasn't trying to personally attack him.

4. What should the U.S. do to keep guns out of the wrong hands (like criminals)?

Boston: Criminals are going to do what they want to do. We have to accept that. We can make all the laws that we want, but it's not going to stop [people] from breaking them. We have laws to prevent that from happening. Just as keeping drugs out of peoples' hands doesn't solve the drug war, gun control is not going to keep guns out of peoples' hands. The majority of crime is committed with illegally acquired weapons in the first place. What we can do is remove the restriction levels for law-abiding citizens who want to defend themselves. This idea of a gun-free zone has never stopped a shooting. People never walk up to a school and say, 'This is a gun-free zone, so I'm going to go shoot somewhere else.' It's never happened.

DiOrio: We need to enforce background checks, not just at commercial retailers but also at gun shows. We need to limit the sale of dangerous weapons to people who have no record of criminal history. We need to perhaps consider enacting some kind of mental screening or wellness testing before people are allowed to purchase weapons as well. It might offend people because it would infringe upon their rights, but we need to consider if that would outweigh the benefits brought to society by not allowing weapons to go into the hands of the mentally ill.

5. Why were there so many mass shootings in 2012 (Aurora, Colorado, Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and Newtown, Connecticut)? What do you think is to blame?

Boston: Humanity. We as a species have faults and we still have wars with each other. I can still hear atrocities happening around the globe. ... It's not because of a simple object that propels a projectile. It's because of us. We refuse to look at the root of the issue because it scares us. We give into fear and play to our emotions and we move to outlaw something that is not a cause, but just a means. I'm not a psychiatrist. I couldn't tell you why there are so many. There's a deeper problem here. These kinds of things, and not just mass shootings, happen all over the globe; it's not a problem specific to America.

DiOrio: Based upon just what I've read on the shootings, it appears that at least a couple of them are mentally disturbed in some way and they had access to these weapons. When the Assault Weapons Ban expired, people were allowed to purchase them again. When the mentally ill have access to them, it's inevitable that these tragedies are going to happen. It's very sad to me that not even Aurora took us to these discussions. It took the murder of 20 children before we were again willing to look at our gun laws and wonder whether or not we should make changes.

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This is not your father’s NRA

Here is an article from Chris Murphy from Politico suggesting that the NRA is steering away from its values:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/this-is-not-your-fathers-nra-86885.html

For years, Washington largely turned a blind eye to the epidemic of gun violence in America, and it’s no great secret why: Democrats and Republicans alike were scared silent by the perceived power of the national gun lobby. The National Rifle Association spent countless election cycles and millions of dollars casting itself as a political juggernaut that House members, senators and even presidents should defy at their own peril — and for the longest time it worked.
Not anymore. As it turns out, the tiger is made of paper.

The 26 lives that were lost in a sleepy town in my state, and the NRA’s bizarre conduct in the wake of this tragedy, have caused people to begin to see the NRA’s true colors. It is an organization fueled by fear and funded by those who profit from America’s increasing fascination with military weaponry. And it is an organization with rapidly atrophying political muscle. When it comes to policy or politics, this simply isn’t your father’s NRA any longer.

The NRA was founded as an organization to improve soldier’s marksmanship, and for most of its history, it supported regulations on gun ownership. But today, the organization has become a captive of the firearms industry, reaping millions of dollars each year from gun manufacturers. The NRA has even devised a program by which the organization receives a portion of gun sales from selected manufacturers, giving the NRA a direct financial incentive to promote policies that sell more guns.
Indeed, maybe these funding sources explain why the NRA, once a voice for sensible gun reform, now leads the fight to oppose criminal background checks for gun purchasers — even while a recent study shows three-fourths of its own members support this common-sense protection — and has fought for legislation to allow firearms in day care centers. The NRA, with its financial coffers lined by increasing gun sales, speaks less for gun owners and more for gun makers.
This disconnect from responsible gun owners may explain why the NRA’s long-heralded political power is significantly waning. In the 2012 election, the group put nearly all its resources into defeating President Barack Obama and focused on states with high gun ownership rates, like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It lost, badly, in nearly every state and race in which the group invested. In fact, the NRA won only 20 percent of the Senate races in which it spent money in 2012. That’s a pretty miserable success rate for an organization that was once feared by Democrats and Republicans alike.
The NRA’s downright disturbing behavior since the Newtown, Conn., massacre can possibly be explained as a desperate defense mechanism of an organization that has lost step with average gun owners and lost sway with the swing electorate. The NRA must know, deep in the recesses of its Virginia headquarters, that Newtown was a breaking point in America’s relationship with guns. Ours will always be a nation that values the private right of citizens to bear arms, but after the tragedy at Sandy Hook, we will no longer tolerate the ease with which dangerous people can possess and dispatch weapons of mass violence.
The NRA knows the gun control tide is ebbing away from their organization. Communities across America have watched us in Newtown, as we continue to convulse in grief over 26 innocents lost, and decided that they do not want to be next. And the first step toward giving them that assurance is to weaken the NRA’s hold on Congress by exposing them for the paper tiger they have become.

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It’s a man’s world? Tell that to the female troops who can now serve in combat

Here is an article from Goldie Taylor of MSNBC who states that as long as women meet physical and mental requirements, they should be allowed to fight in combat On January 24, Secretary of Defense removed the ban on women serving in combat. The services have until January 2016 to implement the changes:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/23/its-a-mans-world-try-telling-that-to-the-female-troops-who-can-now-serve-in-combat/

This is a man’s world.
James Brown, the undisputed Godfather of Soul, first laid those words down on wax in 1966. In the 46 years since, as a nation, we’ve made great strides toward greater gender equality. The winds of change continue to swirl through Fortune 500 boardrooms and other quarters traditionally reserved for men. Our collective power is felt from Wall Street to Main Street, from your statehouse to the White House.
This was in evidence on Wednesday when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat before Senate and House Foreign Affairs Committees—not only as a woman, but as America’s top diplomat. Uniquely qualified, surefooted and accountable. Her blistering candor, laced with a genuine empathy for those who served and died in our nation’s stead, was matched only by her expansive, almost encyclopedic knowledge of the issues at hand.
If this is a man’s world, nobody told Hillary Clinton.
As she lectured a predominantly male panel of lawmakers on the primary mission and responsibilities of the Marine Corps Embassy Security Group, one more barrier was falling.
Pentagon sources report that Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s ban on women in combat, opening more than 230,000 jobs once held by exclusively by servicemen. Women serving in our Armed Forces have long been frustrated with those restrictions, which often limit their access to military leadership roles—and the pay and benefits that come with them.
The reality is that women are already serving on the battlefield—on the ground, in the air and across the seas. They do so without formal recognition. Just ask Air National Guard Major Mary Jennings Hegar, a helicopter pilot. According to The New York Times, Major Hegar was “shot down, returned fire and was wounded while on the ground in Afghanistan.” Her efforts and experience were never formally recognized and rewarded. Consequently, according to the article, she could not seek a combat leadership position. It was as if the firefight had never happened.
Today, women comprise just 14% of the approximately 1.4 million active military personnel.  Twenty-seven years ago, I signed up to become one of them.  As an active duty Marine, I knew the restrictions well.  I also understood that because I was a woman I needed to prove my competence, my worth, my capacity and willingness to fight every day. For women who choose to serve, none of that is taken for granted.
Despite distinguishing myself as an expert marksman, acing the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), and exceptional physical fitness test (PFT) results, I was never considered for a combat role. Rather, I was trained as a Public Affairs Broadcaster. I have no regrets about that. The Marines gave me a career that lasted a lifetime. Some of my sisters were assigned to work in personnel and administration, supply and other military occupational specialties (MOS) most often populated by women. A young woman I trained with at Parris Island erupted in tears when she learned she had been assigned to become a baker in a mess hall. She had enlisted to fight.
As a former Marine, I also understand that progress takes time. Critical assessments must be made. The readiness of combat forces must be sustained, as we advance what will ultimately mean a monumental sea change in military culture.  Defense chiefs have until May 15 to submit implementation plans.
This is no time for Hollywood musings about the mythical G.I. Jane. Forget about Demi Moore doing push-ups in the rain. Special operations forces, including Navy SEALS and the Army’s Delta Force, will take longer to assess and even longer to integrate. However, if a woman meets every physical and mental criteria for a job, she should be allowed to do it and be formally recognized for it.
Over the last decade, the strain of multiple wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as other military operations have expanded the need for a larger ready force. As a consequence, women have been called to do more, to be more. We have expanded our roles as medics, military police and intelligence officers. We are often attached to front-line units.
And the lines of battle today are not so clear as they were in yesteryear. The enemy does not march in phalanx formation armed with bayonets and backed up by a line of canons. Although we still train troops to use bayonets in hand-to-hand combat, the enemy is more likely to be behind the wheel of a bomb-rigged car or carrying a rucksack packed with explosives. Enemy combatants do not subscribe to the Geneva Convention. They do not discriminate. And, when it comes to who we deem qualified to serve this nation, neither should we.
The truth is we do serve. We do fight. And it’s time we were recognized for it.
“This is a man’s world,” James Brown’s #1 Billboard hit said. “But it wouldn’t be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl.”

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