They Didn't Use Guns, So??

The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So? - Megan Garber - The Atlantic

The pain of finding the bombers were Muslim Immigrants as opposed to home grown anti-government "Right Wing Extremists" is palpable. It feels for the media as feels for me seeing the snow fall again here in MN on the 21st of April.

If this had been another shooting tragedy, the Atlantic would be pointing to the OBVIOUS problem of "guns in America". Come on, you KNOW that to be true!! How can one be rational at all, even with leftward views and not see that???

Why?

To be left thinking is to completely lack the capacity for self reflection. Here are some of the reasons I surmise, written in my "lefty guise".  No real lefty even seems to care, they simply treat Islamic Terrorism and Gun Violence as completely different things.

1. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Islamists hate Christians. Christians tend to vote "the wrong way" and have moral ideas "incompatible with modern thought", so I'm OK with Islamists, at least for now. (Note: Major problem, Islamist thinking is FAR more incompatible with "modern thought" than Christian theology and practice ... but as a lefty, I ignore that)
2. Immigrants are "Unregistered Democrats" -- a little violence, even mass violence from a few immigrants is acceptable. 
3. Guns are personal, bombs are corporate. If someone is shooting at me or those I love with a gun, I might wish I had one to try to protect myself or them. If a bomb goes off, I won't be bothered by any thoughts like that.
4. I don't like the foreign and independent thought of the "right wing" -- the government is my god, and those guns are an obstacle to the kind of control that we may need to apply to insure that our nation is "fair". It may be important to forcibly transfer assets from "conservatives" to the rest of us as the situation continues to decline. Guns make that harder. 
5. I get really sick of having to listen to "the right". I boycott all their media, unfriended any I can both virtually and physically, but I know they are still out there. Knowing they tend to be armed makes me VERY nervous. I don't really trust myself with a gun, I'm not sure why they trust themselves. I find both the guns and the conservaties very scary, together I completely can't stand it! I have a RIGHT to not have to feel this way!

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A Spineless Perspective

The Spineless Gun Vote - NYTimes.com:

As I read this article I was again very glad that the MSM and BO didn't get their wish of the Boston Bombers being "White Right Wingers". Now the calls will all be for "caution and no rush to judgement" ... don't blame Islam, don't blame immigration ... no need to blame at all. Well, maybe we aren't welcoming enough ...  if the poor misguided children had gotten a hug at the right time?

No calls for the banning of anything.  When bomb goes off, the bomber is responsible. When there is a shooting, it is the guns fault! Bombs are inanimate, guns are evil daemons that capture the hearts of man. Maybe the progressive psyche feels an affinity for the annihilation of the bomb in carrying out the act? The gun is somehow evil since it survives the violence. Sort of a French Revolution view -- the country was destroyed, but the revolution was a great success!

I remember so well when 9-11 happened and some called the Terrorists "cowards". The left took a dim view of that right away ... "they gave up their lives, how can you call them cowards"? For the left, as long as the attacker is "anti-american", the hackles rise if one tries to label their actions negatively.

The Ft Hood shooting that killed 13 and injured 32 is classified by the BO Administration as "Workplace Violence", not terrorism. It seems surreal, Islam is WAY more "homophobic", "at war with women", and "anti science" than Christianity, yet the standard "left elite" in America are very reticent to label Islamic acts as "terrorist".

The only reason that I can come up with for that is "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". The elite left hates Christians and Constitution supporting Americans ... "conservatives", so much that much as with the old USSR, they feel a certain kinship with the attackers.

Why DO they hate guns so? They need to be goaded to even mention the Gosnell house of horrors. A live baby delivered into a toilet splashing around that is taken out and slaughtered. Gosnell  has a good shot at being the biggest mass murderer in US history just counting the babies delivered alive -- not counting what? Thousands that were viable, but were "properly" murdered before exit from the mothers body? The MSM and the left absolutely do not care! Abortion, or even infanticide is something they are happy to allow, they DEMAND it! no matter the numbers, no matter the "collateral damage".

Again, it is hard for me to even fathom the reasoning. Bombs are indiscriminate. They kill en-masse, is that why they are so much less angered by the use of a bomb? But then not really -- McVeigh, the fortunately very rare nut-job with some "right leaning" was certainly demonized and the Clinton administration and MSM were chomping at the bit to get out and "infiltrate right wing groups", and to "put the muzzle on the hate filled voices of talk radio".

It is clear that at the moment the left wants the constitutional republic replaced by mob rules ASAP. BO's disdain for the 60 vote filibuster capability in the Senate was palpable in his tirade this week. How did "The Republic for which it stands" become so lost that standing against the majority (at least according to the right polls) is "spineless". How comforting to write for that bastion of divergent thought, the NYTs, where even their house "right winger", David Brooks, supported BO for president.

Ah yes, the "courage" of it all.

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The ‘Co-exist’ Bombers

The ‘Co-exist’ Bombers | National Review Online:

Steyn hits a goodie. Definitely worth the read. I found the following to be especially adroit -- we humans REQUIRE comparison to understand what is going on around us. As a believer in God, I find that the universe is basically shouting at us about good and evil from every corner -- and the "Co-exist" bumper stickers are essentially Lucifer saying "plug your ears".

In America, all atrocities are not equal: Minutes after the Senate declined to support so-called gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre, the president rushed ill-advisedly on air to give a whiny, petulant performance predicated on the proposition that one man’s mass infanticide should call into question the constitutional right to bear arms. Simultaneously, the media remain terrified that another man’s mass infanticide might lead you gullible rubes to question the constitutional right to abortion, so the ongoing Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia has barely made the papers — even though it involves large numbers of fully delivered babies who were decapitated and had their feet chopped off and kept in pickling jars. Which would normally be enough to guarantee a perpetrator front-page coverage for weeks on end. 

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NPR, April, "Right Wing" Terrorism

ViralRead » NPR’s Dina Temple Raston Blames Boston on ‘Right-Wing Individuals’:

Your tax dollars at work, on "ALL THINGS (from a lefty nut job perspective) Considered".

Boston was "Right-wing extremism", got that?? Cuz April is a huge month for it!!

HITLERS B-Day. Let's see, was he Libertarian? Anarchist? or just basically a Republican? RIGHT is LESS GOVERNMENT ... yes, you will find some totally anti-government folks over there that are Anarchist who MAY do some forms of terror, but Hitler? Sure, during WWII, there was the propaganda of calling the National SOCIALISTS (Nazis), "right wing", since we were allied with the communists from the USSR. Hitler was just another STATIST. Left to right is "Maxwell Smart" on the old "Get Smart" TV show, "Control vs Chaos". Left believes in the power of the state over the individual, right believes in less state, and at the far right side, NO GOVERNMENT == chaos.

Branch Davidians???  The CLINTON administration chose April as the month to attack them. Was the Clinton administration (or maybe just Janet Reno?) somehow liberty and individualism oriented??  Man, they sure hid it well.

Columbine? Who knows what all those kids really thought ... if they did think, but they were younger than the Boston Bombers.  Just watch the media thinking shift switch on Boston now "Can't rush to be blaming ISLAM just because they may have connections there". It would be TERRIBLE to allow the actions of a couple looneys to besmirch the "religion of peace".

McVeigh. There we finally have a nut job with some "right wing", meaning anti-government thinking. But notice, we don't hold the Uni-bomber up ... also to some degree "right wing" in that he was anti-technology and anti-corporate, but not really anti-government, so what is focused on there is that he was a nut -- not his thinking.

FREEDOM means that it is possible to have different views without being slandered by the PU|BLIC media!! It is just barely possible that when total government spending is about 40% of GDP, it MAY be just barely possible to be relatively sane and think that LESS, say maybe "1/3 or 1/4" of GDP would be a good direction vs MORE. One would still be a very long way from "no government" even at 25% of GDP.

Note: The MSM often confuses people buy using US **FEDERAL** tax rates and spending in comparison with Sweden, Germany, etc to claim that "US taxes and spending are LOW in comparison".  Don't look now, but those countries are basically the size of major US "Blue States"(BS) US BS Spending, and especially urban spending -- like NYC, LA, SF, Chicago, etc EXCEEDS 50% of of GDP. True, the people that make any money that live in those cities (or even work there) pay though the nose, but even so, without vast transfers from the states the cities are in and the Federal government, their lavish spending to purchase close to 100% democrat votes would still not be "viable". Even that is a complete fiction -- given the financial condition of the BSs, our cities, and the Federal deficits.

But you must be carefully taught to hate the "right wing" ... meaning anyone that might hold a different opinion on the advancement of Statism. There were a number of "breakouts" on the Boston Bombing where we see just how anxious the MSM and the BO admin is to get a good old fashioned witch hunt for "Right Wingers" going. BO was struck by it being "Tax Day" -- somehow I really don't think that meant much to the Chechens.

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I Support Universal Background Checks

Opinion: Gun control fight just beginning - CNN.com:

The level of misinformation after the defeat of the Manchin - Toomey bill is insane. This is SIMPLE folks.

The current check system is NICS (National Criminal Background Check System) and the form an FFL (Federal Firearms License holder) has you fill out and keeps for 20 years (minium) is a 4473.

There is no gun show or internet sales loophole. Less than 10% of gun sales are private transfers. If you buy a gun and transfer it that is already an illegal straw sale -- it says that right on the 4473!

The 4473 has your name and the serial number of the firearm. **SO**, although that gun is not officially "registered to you", it effectively is, since all that is required for the federal government to find 90%+ of the firearms legally sold since '98 is to collect the records from the FFLs. That is ASSUMING that the Feds have no kept the information from all the calls to the NICs center.

If the feds come to my door and say "we want your guns" today, I can say "I sold them", and if due process is still in force, they can't prosecute me for not having them. If background checks in the way they are talking about become "universal", then there are no transfers that are allowed without going through the NICS, and I will either have to claim them "stolen" or "lost", both of which can easily be made into crimes ... that I would be required to report my "missing firearms", and if I filed that falsely, then I would be also guilty of a felony.

So, private sales today are a "safety valve" and the source of very few sales to criminals.

However, I too am in favor of "Universal Background Checks" if done reasonably. It could be very simple:

1. Everyone that wants to purchase a firearm must obtain a "Permit to Purchase(PP)", which you already need to do in MN  for pistols or "Assault Weapons" (Modern Sporting Weapons). This causes a more through NICS check, and ought to be provided freely to citizens. 
2. At an FFL, it works just like buying a pistol in MN today ... show your PP or Permit to Carry,  fill out the 4473, FFL does a NIC check, and you get your gun. 
3. The add would be that when a private citizen does a sale, they are required to see the PP/PC + picture ID. A retention requirement of keeping the PP/PC and Driv Lic #s  for "2-5 years" seems not unreasonable  as well ... indicating "I sold this person one or more firearms". 

For those that want to have all legal transfers of guns have a background check, this accomplishes that task without defacto registration or the threat thereof. Those of us "wackos" that have concerns about future confiscation could cross execute a couple "sales" to buddies that COULD have sold our whole collections in case confiscation ever comes to pass.

However, based on attempting to read the bill, and making it most of the way through http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/345845/problems-toomey-manchin, I can ONLY conclude that current "background check" people are FAR more interested in collecting data on legal gun purchasers than they are in insuring background checks for legal gun sales.





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BO Knowingly Lies In Calling NRA Liars

Obama Takes Senate to Task for Failed Gun Control Measure - ABC News:

If you can stomach listening to this sob-fest, you will hear BO directly lie about two points.

1) He will claim that "60% of the gun purchases go though background checks". The real figure is 90-95%, He has gotten 3 pinnochios from the Post on this before http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-continued-use-of-the-claim-that-40-percent-of-gun-sales-lack-background-checks/2013/04/01/002e06ce-9b0f-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_blog.html he KNOWS this is a LIE!

2). Since he knows 1, he knows there is NO "Gun show / Internet loophole". You as private individual MAY sell one or two guns, but they had better have been in your collection for over a year, or it is a STRAW SALE! If you are an FFL, which you BETTER BE if you are going to sell guns, you have to do a background check on EVERY gun you sell. Thus about 5% of gun transfers are between family members, and about 5% more are between sporting gun users like USPSA shooters which may well sell a gun to a fellow shooter -- BUT, everyone that I know gets a copy of their drivers lic and Carry Permit or Permit to Buy, which IS a background check, just not one with a federal paper trail.

NOBODY says that the bill that went down would have prevented Sandy Hook. To have those folks there as props is simply and emotional lie. It is shamelessly using a horrible event in an attempt to get pure political gain -- it is callous and cowardly beyond what one would believe possible in a human, but BO continues to surprise in how low he can really go.

I tried to read the bill, I'm not sure WHAT is in it! It sure as hell isn't "common sense gun legislation".

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Hoping for White

Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American - Salon.com:

The left tends to be quite racist on things like the Marathon Bombing -- sort of like the old boxing public, they have the "Great White Hope". Some of the less thoughtful will say "it's different, RACISTS want whites to do GOOD things, and blacks to do BAD / LOSE / etc." Yes, please just think a tiny bit about all those "equals" signs out on the web over "gay marriage" meant and apply it here.

I just watched the "White Supremacist" narrative run and die on CNN as I worked out at the local club the last couple weeks, wow, those White Supremacists are some BAD dudes, oops, small problem, they have nothing to do with the crime that CNN already had them convicted for http://twitchy.com/2013/04/15/white-supremacist-narrative-collapses-in-texas-da-murder-case/

I'm expecting this to change anytime soon about as much as I'm looking for a ban on pressure cookers; "Pressure Cookers Kill!!".

This article is worth reading painfully. "Salon" is not far in thought process from HuffPo and is a good example of the kind of "journalism" on the rise with the ascension of the left since '06.

At the core of this thinking is a total hatred of anything "right", which of course means a hatred of liberty, since the right is libertarian and the left is statist. "Thou shalt not question the state" (except to the extent that Republicans are in control) ... to question the state means that you are, or are very close to being a "hate group", and only shills like Laura Ingraham would think that you ought not be investigated by the Feds. Who knows, you may actually own a scary gun -- or a pressure cooker!

The other is extremely selective relativism. The 9-11 attacks, Bin Ladin, the clearly heavily organized and over 20 year old Al Qaeda become "equivalent" to Timothy McVeigh, who might have been to a "militia meeting" a time or two ... or maybe just had friends who had. The American MSM is ALWAYS waiting with baited breath to jump to a charge of "Right Wing Terrorists" ... every shooting we have is initially at least floated as "due to the hateful rhetoric of the right wing", or did you know Sara Palin had used the term "targeted" (along with every political group in the US, but no matter).

Quite commonly the operative problem, uni-bomber, Aurora movie shooter, certainly Gabby Giffords shooter is that they are "mentally unstable" (at best). In the mentioned cases, they also happened to have very left leaning writings, thoughts, etc, BUT, I'm perfectly OK with what I see as the real problem being that they were "unstable". Had Timothy McVeigh had similar political thoughts, call me a wacko, but I'm betting that his political leanings would have been a complete non-issue.

I'm going out a real limb here I know, but I here predict that if Boston or any other future killer turns out to have ANY connection that can even be STRETCHED to be "Right Wing", that will be a big big story. If George Zimmer voted Republican vs Democrat (which he did), then I'd guess THAT angle would be getting A LOT more play in the Trayvon Martin saga.

Oh yes, and hitting a government building in OK with a rented truck is "equivalent" to flying commercial airliners complete with passengers into the WTC, Pentagon, and crashing in a field in PA.  It's all relative -- and the relative lefty brains get to massage that relativity as they see fit.

This counts for "thought" on the left. These people can get seriously worked up believing that their world view is an accurate reflection of reality. Think about that the next time you watch BO talk!

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IT IS NOT 40% !!!!!!

Obama’s continued use of the claim that 40 percent of gun sales lack background checks - The Washington Post:

MPR is using the 40% number regularly today and Al Franken used it on the Senate floor last night. It is NOT correct!! I sent e-mail to both MPR and Franken's office today. I suspect they don't care -- if the number was "as many as 5% of gun purchases" (as close to the correct number as we can get today unless an unbiased study is done), the vote in the Senate against further legislation would have ben 70-80 against!


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Thatcher Spared Scent of BO

The lady’s not for mourning | Power Line:

I'm actually pleased that the BO admin chose to sit out the Iron Lady's funeral. After electing him twice, we are a nation that no longer has enough standing to be present at her funeral. I'm voting we make the Reagan Library  (which I've been to and MUCH enjoyed) it's own nation kind of like the Vatican.

He gave us a 2nd chance, we chose to squander it.

Maybe we can call it "Waserica" ... the America that once was great!

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Right Wing Mind Control

Opinion: Why terrorist bombings have been rare in U.S. in past decade - CNN.com:

From time to time we get treated to an indictment of Fox News, Talk Radio and "The Right Wing Echo Chamber" ... the absolute horror that some in the MSM feel "compelled" to carry some "fabrication" that got started in the "not-real news", oh I forgot, the "Blogsphere" is another part of that irresponsible media.

Here we have an article that has been out on CNN for a few days now explaining to us why there are relatively few bombings in the US. CNN is a "trusted news source" ... no bias there.

Of the 380 extremists indicted for acts of political violence or for conspiring to carry out such attacks in the U.S. since 9/11, 81 were able to obtain explosives or the components necessary to build a bomb, according to a study by the New America Foundation. Of those, 51 were right-wing extremists, 23 were militants inspired by al Qaeda's ideology, five have been described as anarchists and one was an environmentalist terrorist.

Wow, 51 of them were "Right Wing Extremists", wonder how THAT classification is reached?

The critical thinker ... of which the US has few remaining, would go look at "The New America" foundation, which Peter Bergen is a leader of, and which it is clear is properly named -- they don't like the "old America" much, the democratic republic one, with freedom, liberty, rule of law, and ESPECIALLY things like individual property rights.

One element that is NOT mentioned is that GUNS are more commonly used in the US by attackers, and BOMBS are more commonly used in European countries. The IMPRESSION is given that "since 9-11", explosives have been "too hard to get". Indeed. Very serviceable bombs can be made from LOTS of common household items, propane, and other chemicals easily manufactured. Has METH been controlled in the US??

Or there is black powder How to make Black Powder and how to get the parts ...

I know that "Right Wingers" are too stupid to figure out how to make a bomb, so the "better government control" MUST be the reason. Terrorists are just smarter in Europe ... so they build bombs.

I'm also not going to go into the selective nature of this article very much. Environmental Terrorists seem to like sabotage and especially arson. The animal rights types like to wreck labs and turn loose animals.

Can you list the 51 "right wing extremists" apprehended for plotting bombs in the US since 9-11? Whenever there is a SINGLE case that can somehow be labeled as "right wing", even though the important part of the perpetrator is that they are NUTS, we hear LOTS about it! Whereas when you have someone like the Unibomber -- who was totally lefty / anarchist, there is VERY little covered about him other than the NUTS part! (he was also a certifiable math genius, which is obviously why he would lean left!)

If you only read the MSM, it is pretty easy to see how one thinks as the majority of our population does. You have been carefully taught!

North Korea, Life Without God

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un offers many faces, many threats - The Washington Post:

When Nietzsche exclaimed that "God is dead", it was a cry of despair. Without a believable ultimate moral power that included the potential of eternal joy or punishment, man was "free" in this life.

Nietzsche thought that science had "killed god", because it had "proven" that creation had no use for him -- it all happened randomly with no divine "watchmaker", running in "simple", understandable by humans and repeatable laws. Or at least the last few hundred or thousand years had.

I'm not going to go into the fairly obvious problem with inductive reasoning, other than to mention the Thanksgiving Turkey Problem -- confirmation bias of repeatability rises to a plateau and then there is an "oops", often quite painful or terminal to the inductive reasoner.

I'm completely happy with God creating the universe any way he desires. I tend to allow the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent the freedom to act in the manner they see fit, I feel it is the least I can do! From what I can see, it certainly DOES have "the appearance of age", although God capabilities allow creation to proceed in a number of ways that would be beyond even our imagination. I have no problem with "going with what we see", so it LOOKS like things have taken a very long time.  (I'm also fine with going with 100% fundamentalist, it's 6k years old.

Let's assume that I'm wrong. My faith is foolish, there is no God, all is random. In that case, it would seem that the "very long time" forces that have acted on our selves, morality, society, etc would be even MORE important -- since there is no potential for intervention by an eternal god, being very conservative with cultural, social and even religious (major part of "culture") rules, practices, heuristics, etc would be vital. Screw it up and everyone -- or at least 100's of millions are likely to die (as they did in the "moving toward godless" 20th century).

This is the point at which I wonder if I must be especially evil. Take God and the potential for eternal joy or punishment away, and I'm not very sure of what **MY** actions might be. WORSE, I'm not very sanguine about the potential for action by other godless people -- Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, etc come to mind right away.

So why is it that Kim Jong Un ought NOT nuke Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, or whatever it is that he thinks would make him the most eternally remembered???Let's face it, barring something of that nature, we are not going to remember any of the "Kim Jong's" at all.  While Hitler is going to be hard to beat, even a relative fizzle nuke ought to get him remembered over Osama, Oswald and guys like that in the historical pantheon.

Doing something GOOD to be immortal is a hell of a bar --- Einstein, Gandhi, Newton, Lincoln, DaVinci ... I'm not going to go look up top ten good and bad recognized names world wide, or maybe recognized after having been dead 100 years ... a criteria that a number of mine don't even make. Without any hope of real eternal life, the only sort of "immortal" available is in future generations, and I'd argue they have more of a bias for remembering the BAD then the good. (Quick, which character do you remember from Star Wars?).

Let's face it, "Un" has ZERO chance of making that list for good, but kill 5-10 million people?  Pretty much a shoo in, and if there is no God, then what is it that makes us all calm that there won't be more people that think that way? True, "all gods are not equal" --- Allah is apparently OK with exterminating infidels to bring about "peace" (rubble tends to be very "peaceful"). But to be truly certain there is no "eternal collateral damage", it is hard to beat no god at all passing judgement before you fry a few million of your fellow man.

"Choosing poorly" on an eternal question isn't the kind of mistake the less than fully faithful in the "big nada" after death are likely to feel good about. We humans have a tendency to practice what we actually believe in order to help assure ourselves we really believe it. For the believer in God, the religions all provide regular actions -- prayer, worship, study of sacred works, sacrifice, communion, acts of contrition, love, etc.

What about the atheist? Well, after you are done abusing Christians (usually they don't particularly worry about abusing other faiths), maybe posting lots of nasty things on the web, what are the godless to do? They are "completely free", but just how do you really really let people know that you are so very and completely not held hostage by any "old tired many thousands of years old religious moral kinds of thinking"?

Perhaps that is the reason that atheists are less trusted than believers. It is completely up to them -- especially since becoming an atheist usually already means some level of leaving family and other "roots" behind. You have netted yourself a lot of "freedom", but it could be that a lot of humanity isn't all that trusting that the "soul-less free" are all that likely to be "good" ... and certainly completely unconfident that "soul-less good" is likely to have much overlap with the few thousand year old versions of good.

An environmentalist looks at anything that man does -- carbon, fracking, habitat changes, diet, etc and says "we have to be really really careful because the earth is very fragile". This is an earth that they believe has had completely random life continuously for over 3 billion years.

In contrast, human culture has been recorded for less than 10K (with exception of a few cave paintings that look to be 30K years old). The Roman Empire that lasted for 500 years 1500 years ago is still the champion for longevity. Right now, the US has a decent claim to being the longest continuous Democratic Republic on the planet. One can have long discussions on this ... Greece, first but not continuous, New Zealand if you aren't really democratic unless you have "universal suffrage". So I assume that "Undocumented Democrats" (formerly "Illegal Aliens") might have to be allowed to vote before maybe the US even COUNTS as "democratic"?? ... and on it goes.

The POINT is that the systems of government that we now consider to be the most "advanced" are not all that old -- and all of them are in MAJOR trouble for having promised more in benefits than they can provide. One of the reasons that democracies have historically failed, so our founders tried very hard to avoid the government having enough power to bankrupt itself. Nice try!!

So man is GOING to have something that is effectively a  "religion" -- "a practice", a "highest good".   Communism is one of the atheist attempts, and China is the current likely replacement to the old "advanced" world leadership. Can a democratic republic survive without a transcendent religion, or will be the result be what the founders of the US and guys like Toqueville thought?? That the representative democracy could not exist without the majority of the people being practicing Christians.

Or worse -- will some Kim Jong "whatever", like figure be the "final immortal" for mankind by mass killing, maybe via germ warfare or eventually nano-tech? One might have thought that the "experiment" with god being dead in the 20th century and man being "free" to slaughter 100's of millions on the alter of the state would have been enough to give more people pause, but apparently not.

I've never been clear on God intervention. I have a strong thought that the Jewish people will survive, although they always have been, and will remain the leading targets for extermination by others. They have a direct promise for their survival from God.

The gift of free will is a very dangerous gift. We currently seem especially bent on testing the limits of mankind hanging around, at least with any actual freedom, except maybe "freedom from god".


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Benghazi Scooter Libby

700 Retired Military Special Ops Tell Congress to Form Select Committee on Benghazi:

We certainly celebrated Seal Team 6 when Osama was killed. Nearly as much as BO was celebrated.

Remember Scooter Libby and Valerie Plame?? The media was OBSESSED with the question of wether a CIA "secret agent"  that lived in Virginia and drove into Langley every day was "outed". As part of her "deep cover",  her husband had written an article for the New Yorker that was critical of the administration. (were there any articles in the New Yorker that were not critical of the W administration?).

We got a Special Prosecutor, reams of ink, tons of time on shout shows devoted to "investigating" this supposed "crime". Turns out that Richard Armitage, a state department functionary that was anti-Iraq invasion, was the sort of the source. Well, that and the fact that her name was listed next to her husbands, Joe Wilson, in "Who's Who in America", no doubt further evidence of just how "covert" she was. Scooter Libby? Oh, he was prosecuted for PERJURY for LYING, because he got a date wrong for when he had talked to Tim Russert. Another case where the standard for "lying" is much stricter when one is a conservative.

Does anyone see any difference in the media treatment of these two incidents?

Does anyone actually believe that if W had lost an embassy under similar circumstances, the timeline, who was involved, who was making the decisions and at least all the questions included in this letter would be known by every American because they would be on the news every single day with suitably ominous overtones of the only two reasons that something like this could happen in a Republican administration? Gross and prosecutable incompetence, or deep political intrigue, manipulation and coverup. Most likely lots of both!

Now?

SEVEN HUNDRED retired Special Ops folks sign a very well done letter asking some very obvious questions that need to be answered. Are they ALL some sort of cranky right wingers?? Maybe they are a just a bit concerned of damage to the Esprit Decor of Special Forces when 2 of their own are left to die with no support in Benghazi.

The US military, and ESPECIALLY the Special Forces have a very strong commitment to their own to do all in their power to assist and extract even against very long odds. Damage that, and the effect on our ability to do raids like getting Osama may be damaged irreparably.

The Jimmuh Carter Desert Classic (Operation Eagle Claw, the failed Iran hostage rescue) can EASILY come again. We worked 30 years to return the American military to the capability that we were at prior to BO taking power --  we are already "back to the '70s" in number of people working and income, must we also go there with our military?

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15 Infants Killed with Assault Rifle

Rep. Chris Smith: 'If Gosnell Had Shot Seven Infants with an AR-15, It Would Be National News':

Oh, wait, it was scissors and knives and it was done in the protected confines of an abortion clinic. They were alive, and viable outside the womb, so there may still be a conviction in this rare case, but it doesn't follow a popular lefty narrative, so we will see very very little of it.

Killings with Assault Rifles,  ALL forms of rifles account for < 3% of gun deaths, fit the popular narrative of a "preventable national tragedy, a shame on the US". When such a rare killing happens we are hammered by the MSM 24x7 on how it is "preventable", even though, as in the case of Sandy Hook, none of the laws being offered would have prevented it. We just have to BELIEVE!

Narrative! Follow the narrative!!!

Reality is entirely narrative free, at least from a human perspective. I'm perfectly willing to assume that God has a divine plan at some level of detail -- the Bible says that "not a sparrow falls" without his knowledge, I'm completely willing to believe that he has both knowledge and control at every Quantum Event, infinite powers is, well, infinite.

Man? We are masters at imagining narratives are real from every angle -- just like we easily "see" human and others forms in rocks, clouds, etc. Our FAVORITE activity is creating narratives that give a semblance of order to the vast and (from our perspective) quite chaotic universe around us.

What used to be "critical thought" is being aware of this bias and be slow to buy in to nearly all narratives -- especially those less than a few hundred years old that have stood some testing of effectiveness at the mapping of reality.





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Understanding "Liberal" Popularity

Why Aren’t More People Repelled by the Left? | Power Line:

So there are raucous celebrations of Thatcher's death in England? The simplest answer to the question posed by this column is that although I'm completely unsurprised, who knew? The coverage of bad behavior on the left is minimal at best.

The big reason though tis that worship of the state is the modern pagan religion. It is "moral" because it declares itself to be, and it has it's own set of "sacraments" -- abortion, gay marriage, environmental fetishism and legal pot. Someday I need to do a whole "Stations of the Statist Cross.

Certainly Popularity would be one, liberals love that above all else. "Democracy" makes them feel so moral compared to "Mob Rule" -- but they like Mobs as well. Their mobs are just "just mobs", and since the chattering classes are always going to lean left,  both the entertainment and "news" media are always going to worship the Statist totem.

The line from the column that I completely disagree with is "liberals are often reviled as vile, vulgar, hate-mongers." They are? On what planet is that? It is CONSERVATIVES that are "often", in fact, nearly universally cast in that light. In fact, based on media reporting I'd say there are only two reasons for one to be a conservative -- they are stupid, they are evil, most commonly both!

The station of "intelligence" definitely is one ... to be a "liberal" is proof of at least "not being stupid". An intelligent liberal is above all an excellent parrot. Whatever the hot item of the day that needs to be praised or derided, they are locked to the party line. Why would they not be? They are daily presented in every form from entertainment to news with exactly what is to be applauded and what is to be smirked at. John Stewart and his "Daily Show" are currently an excellent flavor of this -- just the right smirk, just the right condescension, even an occasional jibe at the lefty home team just to give the snide impression of being "even handed". We are cooking in a left wing information pot -- and all one needs to do to be "moral and smart" is to be a parrot!

I'm not going to keep going for today, but it is completely unsurprising to me that people can get out and be joyful over the death of Maggie Thatcher and not be considered "bad" in any form -- don't "smart and just people" have a right to their "fun"???





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Outrunning Jackasses

Rebuttal to the attack on Dr. Don Easterbrook | Watts Up With That?:

I had never heard the Galileo quote at the end that I alluded to in the title -- it is priceless.

I also love his comment on theories that explain everything: "The theory that explains everything explains nothing." Exactly! 

The column is EXCELLENT in that it deals primarily with the combination of fake hubris, fear and the desire to be "one of the in crowd" that permeates the warmist movement. Humans love to be liked -- it is in our makeup, but part of the maturity of reason is to realize that the "liking" is often completely fatuous. Being fact based and having faith in something larger than ones self (and certainly the popularity thereof) is MUCH preferable for both the self and the society one lives in. 


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