Saturday, December 22, 2012

Gun Control in Obamaland

Dec. 22, 2012

Posted by Daniel Greenfield
@ the Sultan Knish blog



FACTS ARE THE STUBBORNEST OF THINGS

Of the 5 worst shooting rampages, only one happened in America, and none were carried out by Americans.

Of the 5 worst massacres, two were carried out by Asians and one by an African constable. Only two were carried out by white men. The next man on the list was Latino. None were carried out by Americans.

Two of the killers, William Unek in the Belgian Congo and Woo Bum-Kon of South Korea were police officers.

The United States homicide rate doubled between the 1900s and the 1920s. It declined in the wartime and post-war period when most immigrants had been successfully integrated and it spiked again during the 1960s.

Two years after Ted Kennedy’s Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the murder rate rose sharply. Ten years later in 1975, the US murder rate had doubled.


IT'S ANOTHER YEAR IN OBAMALAND

The media is staging its alarmist panics over guns and the fiscal cliff. The Republican leadership still hasn't figured out that the calls for action are the football and Obama is Lucy.

Meanwhile in Japan, the right has won a major victory. In Israel, the right, the real right, is suddenly in ascendance. There's a pattern here and it helps explain why Republicans lost and are still losing.

This is not the year of the moderate. This is not the year of the centrist. This is not the year where you show how responsible you are and how willing you are to compromise. This is the year where you yell loudly, stick to your guns, throw together a half-baked program and take your chances on the voters deciding that you reflect their anger and frustration.

Newt Gingrich has said that he would have done better against Obama. I'm not too sure of that, considering that a lot of the victory came down to the organizing machine, and Gingrich's team was not very good even during the primaries, but I think a candidate that did what Gingrich did, or perhaps even Gingrich paired with people who knew how to run a campaign, might have done it.

Gingrich accuses the GOP of being risk-averse, and while sometimes risk-averse is the smart move, it wasn't this time.

This was the year of the "extremist" and I don't necessarily mean that in the pejorative sense. It was a year of low turnout elections where getting voters angry counted for more than getting them hopeful.

Our extremist was Barack Obama. He ran a narrow, angry and divisive campaign. And it worked.

Boehner has failed to draw the relevant lessons from this, just as it took Republicans a while to draw those same lessons after Obama's victory in 2008 when they were obscenely eager to roll over and play dead. They pay a great deal of attention to polls showing that the public will blame them for everything that goes wrong, without considering that this will occur irrespective of what they do because so long as the GOP goes moderate while the Democrats and their media complex yells, then the victory by default will go to the people who cast blame the loudest at those who are trying to compromise.

This is not a winning strategy. It's not even a strategy.

You want a winning strategy. Yell loudly. Blame Obama for everything. Focus in on personal issues and go after them hard. Talk about the price of gas, the cost of health and even the cost of a burger.

Consumers can expect to pay more for beef, poultry and milk, as the worst drought in 50 years spreads across the Midwest, destroying crops and sending corn and soybean prices spiking.

Livestock, poultry and food industry groups dismayed at the amount of corn used for ethanol have joined states in calling for EPA to back off the ethanol mandate. EPA also faced congressional pressure to ease the requirements.

But EPA tossed aside their arguments.


It's not pretty. It's not glamorous. It's not ivory tower stuff. This is a backyard brawl now. This is Chicagoland. This is Obamaland. Either fight or go home.


THE FIRST THING TO REMEMBER IN A CRISIS...

...is stop being afraid of the media.

A panicked reaction to a media smear following a "crisis" that they cynically play up is the worst possible reaction. While the NRA hung back, and even released an initial statement that almost seemed to flirt with accepting new restrictions, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America went into every outlet he could and challenged the narrative and made headlines.

After something happens too many conservative groups huddle and go into crisis mode trying to figure out a response that will not make the public turn on them. It doesn't work and it only makes them look guilty.

The things to remember about every crisis is

1. It will pass

2. If they are coming after you, come after them

The media creates villains. Turn the media into the villain.

The parents of a little boy who darted past the shooter just before his teacher and classmates were slaughtered put up a sign asking people not to ring their doorbell, CNN reported. Every time it rang, they said, their six-year-old son thought the gunman had found him.

If the media is accusing you of having blood on your hands. Accuse them of having blood on their hands. And the argument for that is better than their argument against the NRA.

Dr Park Dietz. America’s foremost criminal profiler – who has testified at the trials of such criminals as John Hinckley, Jeffrey Dahmer and Andrea Yates, twice appeared on CNN in the middle of a sensational murder case and warned the network that if it didn’t tone down their coverage it would lead to further crimes.

“Here’s my hypothesis,” he said. “Saturation-level news coverage of mass murder causes, on average, one more mass murder in the next two weeks.”


Is there any basis to this?

In the month after actress Marilyn Monroe’s naked body was found lifeless next to an empty bottle of Nembutal sleeping pills, the number of suicides among Americans jumped 12 percent (197 more deaths than normal). In fact, spikes followed 26 out of 33 suicides reported on the front page of the New York Times between 1948 and 1967 — a total of more than 2000 “excess” deaths.

A much better study was done by some German colleagues who looked at what happened in Germany after the airing of a four-part miniseries. Each part of the series opened with the same ten-minute segment in which a suicidal young man lay down in front of a train and got run over by it.

The German researchers were able to show that in the months after the fictional railroad suicides, actual railroad suicides climbed significantly. “And that was particularly true for young males.”


Does this apply to school shootings? Oh yes.

America’s “first” modern school shooting took place on Groundhog’s Day, February 2, 1996, at Moses Lake, Washington State. The Moses Lake killings set the pattern for what would follow in America--a student (not an outsider) killing other students and teachers.

On Groundhog Day, Feb 2, 1996, Loukaitis, a 14-year-old boy walked into his Moses Lake, Washington, Junior High School algebra class and started shooting. He killed his teacher, two classmates and severely wounded another student. Subsequent media coverage obsessed over the color of his clothes, his insidious planning and the inventory of his arsenal. In addition, they practically offered a how-to guide for concealing and deploying weapons in a coat. But what got the most attention was the fact that after shooting his teacher, he delivered a line from the Stephen King novel Rage with charismatic panache. Suddenly, the invisible adolescent was a cultural icon. Within a week, another shooting occurred that clearly echoed that of Feb 2. Then another on February 19. Another on March 11. Yet another on March 13. Along with other similarities, more than one of the apparent copycats also cited King’s novel as a creative resource.

Six months after the incident, a local 14-year-old broke into a home, yelled the name Loukaitis, shot off rounds from a hunting rifle, held a man hostage, and then gave up to the police.



And what was Rage about? Oh yeah, this.

Loukaitis had planned the shootings carefully, getting ideas, he said, from the Stephen King book Rage (1977). In it, a troubled high school boy takes a gun to fictional Placerville High School, kills his algebra teacher “Mrs. Underwood,” another school adult “Mr. Vance,” and takes the algebra class hostage.

Blood on your hands, you say?

But Stephen King has the answer. Ban guns.


SHOULD CAMPUSES HAVE ARMED SCHOOL MARSHALS?

Sounds reasonable enough. We have Air Marshals, since declaring planes a gun-free zone and subjecting passengers to every manner of indignity has been considered insufficient without also having armed personnel in place.

State Sen. Frank Niceley (R) told TPM on Tuesday he believes it’s time for that to change. He plans to introduce legislation in the next session, which begins Jan. 8, that will require all schools to have an armed staff member of some kind.

The current language of the bill — which is in its early form — would allow for either a so-called “resource officer” (essentially an armed police officer, the kind which most Tennessee high schools have already) or an armed member of the faculty or staff in every school in the state.

The choice would allow schools that can’t afford a resource officer to fulfill the requirement without having to pay for anything beyond the cost of the training and, presumably, the weapon. But Niceley said schools should use the wiggle room to train and keep on hand armed staff not in uniform.

Niceley said he believes trained staff could even be more effective than school resource officers, who wear uniforms, because potential attackers would not know who they are and they could keep their own guns concealed.

“The training would be beyond that required for carry permit holders and they would be subject to deep background checks and psychological testing. I don’t think we need to turn our schools into armed encampments, but clearly security is a concern and should be addressed,” Niceley said.


And armed teachers and employees have proven effective in stopping school shootings before.

Methodically Woodham began moving through the commons, shooting his victims as students and teachers hid or fled screaming. One of those hit was Lydia Dew, 17, killed with a bullet in the back.

Minutes later, Assistant Principal Joel Myrick chased Woodham down outside the school, held him at bay with a Colt .45-caliber automatic pistol he kept in his truck in the school parking lot. He forced Woodham to the ground and put his foot on the youth’s neck.

“I think he’s a coward,” Myrick said. “I had my weapon pointed at his face, and he didn’t want to die.”

Some hate mail in the Pearl File said he shouldn’t have had a weapon on school property and, even worse, should not have aimed the gun at a student.

Others, however, defended Mr. Myrick, quoting the law that his vehicle was an extension of his home, making possession of the gun justifiable.

“Some wanted me to become president,” he said.


We could have done worse. We did.

And then there's the Texas tower sniper shootings.

More than 300 feet below, at the base of the tower, Martinez found a civilian named Allen Crum, a retired Air Force tail gunner who had never fired a shot in combat. Together they worked their way to the top of the tower with another Austin officer, Houston McCoy, following them.

At the door to the observation deck, Martinez told Crum to cover him and point his gun toward the southwest corner.

“I said, ‘If the guy comes around the corner, shoot him,’ ” Martinez remembered. “Allen thought he heard him running, and he fired a shot.”

By then, Martinez had peeked around another corner, behind Whitman, and saw him crouching, looking for Crum.

“I saw him, but he didn’t see me,” Martinez said. “I opened fire and Houston McCoy was behind me with the shotgun. “I hit him probably on the shoulder. He was trying to shoot back at us, but we didn’t give him the chance.”



WANT A PREVIEW OF WHAT THE CHICAGO TEACHER'S UNION WILL BE DEMANDING IN 20 YEARS?

Tens of thousands of teachers are blocking highways and seizing government buildings across Mexico to protest a federal education reform ending their longtime practice of selling their jobs or giving them to their children.

They’re doing it for the children… literally. Their children.

“We’re fighting to guarantee jobs for our kids,” Oscar Miranda said as he helped teachers stage a protest in front of the governor’s office in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos. “Throughout history the sons of carpenters have become carpenters. Even politicians’ children become politicians. Why shouldn’t our children have the same right?”


Keep it up.



THIS SEEMS ABOUT RIGHT

Chief Islamic Judge of the Palestinian Authority, Who Said “Where Hitler Failed, We Must Succeed”, Wants to Run for President



SO GOOD THEY'RE HARDLY JEWS AT ALL

“For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave,” the introduction to the Hamas Charter states. That isn’t the right way to say it of course. It’s supposed to say Israelis or Zionists. That way there would be plausible deniability. That way Thomas Friedman and Roger Cohen could look at it and believe that Hamas doesn’t mean them.

Not them. Not the good Jews who go to work every day at 620 8th Avenue in Renzo Piano’s modernist New York Times skyscraper. Certainly Hamas might have issues with the bad Jews, the ones who cling to the hills of the West Bank, who walk the length of their farms and vineyards with assault rifles on their backs, but not with the good Jews. The Jews so good that they’re hardly Jews at all.


...from my article, Hamas Nazis and their American Supporters


FIRST YOU KILL THE GOLDEN GOOSE...

I was born in 1948, I started working at the age of 14 years as a printer, then as a warehouseman and as a dramatic artist. I always paid my taxes regardless of the rate under all governments…

I’m leaving because you consider that success, creativity, talent, actually and anything different must be punished…

I leave after paying, in 2012, 85% tax on my income... I paid 145 million (190 million US dollars) tax in forty-five years, I have 80 people working in companies that were created for them and which are managed by them.


And then you realize there are no more golden eggs.


ARAB SPRINGS ARE AN INVESTMENT

Egypt has announced that it has changed from a gas-exporting to a gas importing country based on a decision issued by the Petroleum Minister that went into effect on 17 December.

Petroleum expert Medhat Youssef said the decision was “unprecedented,” especially as Egypt would import gas from international companies in Qatar, not the Qatari government. The import price is expected to reach US$14 per 1 million thermal units, whereas the government sells gas to factories for no more than $4.

The Egyptian government exports gas to Jordan at $5.50 per one million units, while Qatar exports it at more than $9, Youssef said, arguing that Egypt administers its petroleum supply poorly and should reconsider prices.


And Qatar just sorta happens to be the biggest player in the Arab Spring. No blood for oil. Just regime change for gas.



IT'S OBAMA'S WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT

US Poverty Level Highest in 47 Years

The poverty rate now approaches 50 million people and comprises 16 percent of the population. This is the highest these numbers have been since the 1960s.

The poverty rate is worse than it was under Bush or Carter. It didn’t even get this bad under Jimmy I.


Two Pakistanis Plotted Christmas Bombing in Times Square

Qazi traveled to New York on November 24 and spent nights sleeping at a mosque, a restaurant and on public transportation. He was riding around on his bike in New York City looking for targets, trying to determine how big the crowds were in Times Square, on Wall Street and at theaters in the city,

Elementary School to be Named After California’s Most Notorious Mexican Bandit

With a rap sheet that extended back to his early teens, Vasquez stabbed a constable at the age of 14 and experts believe he actually murdered as many as six people.

Administrators tried desperately to paint Vasquez as someone worthy of an honor, as the school district’s superintendent called him “a revolutionary”


Los Angeles’ Gay Mexican County Assessor to Continue Receiving $197,000 Salary in Jail

John Noguez is many things to many people. Born in California but raised in Mexico, he is California’s highest elected openly gay official, who is also married to a woman.

He dropped out of the Los Angeles’ School of Finance without finishing his degree, but was elected to serve as Los Angeles’s County Assessor

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said until a court convicts Noguez of a crime, he should be allowed to stay on as assessor even though he cannot perform his duties while in jail because Noguez he has been “unable to make his $1.16-million bail.”

Antonovich said he personally believed that “Noguez has not abandoned his job by virtue of choice — he’s been incarcerated for allegations of corruption and until a court of law convicts him of a crime, he’s still the assessor of Los Angeles County.”


9 in 10 Palestinians Support Hamas Terrorism

Denmark Charges Iranian Woman with Racism for Criticizing Islam

AETNA CEO Warns Health Insurance Premiums Will Double Under ObamaCare

Grand Ayatollah Declares All Christian Women May be Raped

Obama’s Asia Team Busy Partying While North Korea Launched Rocket

The Obama administration’s Asia team was caught so off guard by North Korea’s Dec. 11 rocket launch, several of them actually had to put down their drinks and suddenly leave a holiday party being held in honor of the Japanese emperor’s birthday.

“A lot of the guys who do the Korea stuff both on the policy and intelligence side were at this thing. They were saying ‘We bought ourselves some time.’ People were hoping it didn’t happen before Christmas because they wanted to take time off.”


Forget the 3 AM phone call. This bunch can't handle a 3 PM phone call.


BUT AT LEAST THEY DON'T USE GUNS

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa – widely considered one of the world’s most dangerous countries.

The Tories said Labour had presided over a decade of spiralling violence.

In the decade following the party’s election in 1997, the number of recorded violent attacks soared by 77 per cent to 1.158million – or more than two every minute.

...Britons suffer 1,158,957 violent crimes per year, which works out at 2,034 per 100,000 residents. By contrast the number in notoriously violent South Africa is 1,609 per 100,000.

The U.S., meanwhile, has a rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, which is lower than France’s, at 504


...from National Review via Director Blue. The UK has an upsurge in knife crime and it's ever so much nicer to be stabbed to death than shot to death.


AND ANOTHER THING

Saberpoint has some thoughts on my column about surviving demographically


THE ISI IS STILL OUR PAL

India on Wednesday called a declaration that Pakistan’s intelligence service and former chiefs enjoy immunity in a case related to the 2008 Mumbai attacks a “serious disappointment”. The Indian government has long alleged that the Inter-Services Intelligence agency was behind the Islamist attacks which left 166 people dead – an accusation denied by Islamabad.

The Indian statement was in response to an affidavit filed in a US court earlier in the week in which the US government said Pakistan’s ISI and its former chiefs, Ahmed Shuja Pasha and Nadeem Taj, “enjoy immunity” in the Mumbai attacks.

The US affidavit is “a matter of deep and abiding concern”, the Indian government statement said, noting Washington has publicly said it is committed to bringing “those responsible for the Mumbai terror attacks to justice”.

“The decision of the US authorities in this case is a cause of serious disappointment,” said the Indian statement.


A little terrorism here, a little terrorism there and eventually it's still business as usual.


WRATH OF THE EXPERTOCRACY

The real problem we have is a deeply-embedded cultural delusion which proposes that if we simply get together a representative sampling of our best and our brightest, if we put our establishment elite to work, the calculative power of human reason applied by the agency of officialdom and the Leviathan state is omniscient and omnipotent, and planning and regulation can assuredly avert any possibility of the perverse operation of Fate. All undesirable and untoward events can be planned and regulated out of human existence. All we have to do is give our elite class of experts and government more power, and then we will perfectly safe. No more Kodiak bears, no more Adam Lanzas.

...from
Never Yet Melted


HOW LIBERAL IS THE MORMON CHURCH BECOMING?

Item 1.

Item 2.

I'm sure there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. The left has its way of working into the guts of an organization and then beginning to gnaw at it with the usual community organizing methods of grievance activists.



UNCHECKED RACIAL TRIBALISM

I'm not sure that this is nearly as new or unprecedented as Hanson suggests. It was arguably worse 40 years ago.

And some of this is actually colorism which was always present in the black community for obvious reasons that attempting to build an identity on skin color will lead to arguments over what black is.

No one in Hollywood used to be more admired than Morgan Freeman, who once lectured interviewers on the need to transcend race. Not now, in the new age of racial regression. Freeman has accused Obama critics and the Tea Party of being racists. He went on to editorialize on Obama’s racial bloodlines: “Barack had a mama, and she was white – very white, American, Kansas, middle of America … America’s first black president hasn’t arisen yet.”

Freeman’s racial-purity obsessions were echoed on the CNN website, where an ad for the network’s recent special report on race included a crude quote from three teen poets: “Black enough to be a n—–. White enough to be a good one.”

…ESPN sports commentator Rob Parker blasted Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III last week for admirably stating that he did not wish to be defined by his race rather than by his character: “He’s black, he does his thing, but he’s not really down with the cause.” Parker added: “He’s not one of us. He’s kind of black, but he’s not really like the kind of guy you really want to hang out with.” (ESPN suspended Parker for his remarks.)



CHUCK HAGEL'S CASTRO AFFINITY MAY BE ADDING TO HIS PROBLEMS

The office of Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) is threatening to place a hold on former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, should he be nominated for the post of Secretary of Defense.

In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, Rubio communications director Alex Conant said, “Promoting democracy in Latin America is a priority for Sen. Rubio, and he’s put holds on other administration nominees over the issue. If President Obama were to nominate Sen. Hagel for a cabinet position, I’m sure we would have questions about Cuba positions.”

The statement came in response to questions by the Free Beacon about Hagel’s past opposition to the trade embargo on Cuba.



And now a brief word from the past/future

Comrade Workers, Peasants and Welfare Recipients of America,

For four long years we have battled the economy, and now I am pleased to announce that the economy is finally ready to surrender. Representatives of the economy have met with the party leadership and signed a preliminary surrender agreement.
Throughout the long years of battling against the economy, there were many who thought that we would not prevail, that an economic recovery would somehow occur and the American people would be forced to return to their private sector jobs, instead of spending all day waiting in the unemployment line. But under the inspired leadership of the party, the collective organizers engaged in the people's struggle refused to accept handouts from the capitalist bosses. Instead they remained dedicated to bringing them to their knees. And they have. The American Economy is no more.

It is in the spirit of that glorious collectivism that the old capitalist American greenbacks will be replaced by shining red currency. From this day forward the American basic economic unit will no longer be the Dollar, but the Debit. As our annual interest on the national debt has long since surpassed our gross national product, the Debit is the people's way of repaying the great debts amassed by the party leadership on their behalf. As there is no more gold in Fort Knox, our national debt serves as the new basis for our economy. With each Debit you receive, you take on a greater share of the national debt and a heavier burden of taxation. Therefore it may truly be said that in America the rich are the poorest of us all.

Obama spends 10 minutes relecting on himself during Daniel Inouye's Funeral

Dec. 22, 2012




Published on Dec 21, 2012
Unbelievable - During funeral for Senator Daniel Inouye, Obama diverts remembering Inouye for by speaking of himself for about 10 minutes

source:  NewsNinja2012

Hat tip: lowbridge

10 Facts for Liberals: Why Gun Control Can't Stop Another Newtown Massacre

Dec. 22, 2012
John Hawkins

(Townhall.com) - There are now calls from the Left for gun control legislation in response to Adam Lanza's unconscionable mass killing of innocent children at Sandy Hook Elementary. However, very few people seem to be asking the most basic question of all before getting started: What gun control legislation could have stopped Adam Lanza?

The answer is "none."

Let's consider a few alternatives:

1) The school was already a "gun free zone;" so obviously that wasn't effective. Of course, the sort of people who would respect a "gun free zone" in the first place are the very ones you wouldn't have to worry about carrying a gun; so it's an almost useless designation.

2) What about closing the supposed "gun show loophole?" Well, since Lanza killed his own mother and used her legally acquired guns for his rampage, making it harder for googly-eyed loners to acquire weapons wouldn't have changed a thing.

3) Some people are calling for a ban on automatic weapons. Setting aside the fact that the regulation of fully automatic weapons is already tighter than Spandex, Adam Lanza didn't use a fully automatic weapon.

4) Then there are calls for the "Assault Weapons Ban" to be reinstated. One problem: the semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 rifle that Lanza used wasn't covered by the bill. So, his mother could have bought that exact same gun with a sheriff looking over her shoulder while the ban was in place.

5) We could, of course, pass a newly updated "Assault Weapons Ban" that covers the semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 rifle. Then, gun manufacturers would try to create weapons that can get around the ban. They would probably be successful. Even if they weren't, it's not as if Lanza was battling Marines. When you're a coward who's attacking unarmed children, any gun will work.

6) We could also ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, but given the 3-5 second reload time, that would have been a minor inconvenience to Adam Lanza at worst. After all, it's not as if a group of small children were going to be able to scamper away or gang up on him during a four second window.

So, what now? Well, let's step into the realm of fantasy and assume that there's no such thing as a 2nd Amendment that provides the public with a Constitutional right to "keep and bear arms." that is every bit as important as the right to free speech and freedom of religion. Let's also pretend that the American public would go along with the following laws and attempts to implement them wouldn't lead to wide scale violence and unrest.

7) Congress could ban the manufacture and sale of bullets and magazines. Given the massive number of bullets and magazines already owned by the public and readily available instructions for making them, this wouldn't stop any determined killer like Adam Lanza. On the other hand, it would lead to a massive black market with tens of millions of previously law abiding Americans buying bullets by the bucketful from back rooms across the country.

8) Congress could also ban the manufacture and sale of guns. Again, that would lead to the creation of a massive black market, but it would also leave roughly 300 million guns in the hands of the American people. In other words, if Adam Lanza had decided to wait until AFTER that law was passed to go on his killing spree, it would have been the same sad story.

9) Then, there's the most extreme step of all: Congress could ban the ownership of guns. One problem: In the vast majority of cases, the government has no record of who owns guns and who doesn't. In most places, those records are kept at the gun store level and are not updated. If the gun is lost, stolen, given away or sold by the individual, there is no record of it. This is a feature, not a bug, and it's designed to prevent exactly the sort of confiscation we're discussing here. So, even if all guns were made illegal, it would be very difficult to enforce, most people wouldn't turn their weapons in and there would probably be two hundred million guns left in the hands of the American public. Would a man like Adam Lanza still be able to acquire a weapon in that situation? Come on, he KILLED HIS OWN MOTHER for a gun; so you can be sure he'd have gotten one elsewhere.

10) Let's go Steven Spielberg on this problem and assume space aliens show up and use some bizarre technology to get rid of all guns. Well, even so, fire and explosives would still exist and as Brian Palmer has noted in Slate, those can be even more effective killers than guns.

Guns aren't even the most lethal mass murder weapon. According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed 4.52 people per incident. Fire killed 6.82 people per mass murder, while explosives far outpaced the other options at 20.82. Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20th century, only 52 percent involved guns.


If gun control advocates like Barack Obama, Michael Bloomberg and Michael Moore, all of whom have armed guards protecting their safety, succeed in making guns less available for law abiding citizens, it wouldn't stop another Newtown massacre, but ironically it would make it easier for rapists, gangs or even the next Adam Lanza to hurt innocent people.

USDA Inflated the Number of Jobs Created by Stimulus, IG Says

Dec. 22, 2012


(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. Department of Agriculture improperly inflated the numbers of jobs created or saved by the 2009 economic stimulus, according to the agency’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG).

“[We] identified job numbers that were inflated because award recipients reported cumulative job numbers instead of the number of jobs created or saved during the quarter being reported. In other instances, job numbers were underreported,” according to an OIG audit released Dec. 13.

The report claims that without accurate job figures, it is “difficult” to know whether the 2009 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was effective in creating or saving jobs.

“Without accurate data about the number of jobs USDA agencies retained or created through the use of Recovery Act Funds, it is difficult to measure how effective the Department was in accomplishing a main Recovery Act objective, which was to create and retain jobs.”

Individual reporting errors were not identified because of the inadequate “analytical tools” that USDA agencies were using to corroborate job numbers, the IG said. In addition to inflating job numbers, there were also instances of underreporting.

Before posting job data on Recovery.gov -- the government transparency Web site -- award recipients provide information via FederalReporting.gov, where information is verified by government agencies.

As of March 31, 2011, USDA agencies had posted 4,960 awards amounting to $9.29 billion to Recovery.gov.

However, USDA agencies did not properly verify information received by award recipients, who did not always provide accurate job numbers, according to the inspector general.

“OIG determined that inaccurate job numbers were reported to FederalReporting.gov because recipients did not always report correct information and USDA agencies did not adequately analyze the number of jobs that award recipients were reporting,” the report said. “Not all recipients were aware of the OMB-required methodology for calculating jobs; consequently, they made errors when they reported.”

Moreover, USDA agency representatives told the OIG that errors were overlooked and there was inadequate analysis to recognize errors.

The OIG told CNSNews.com that it is “possible” that some job reporting errors occurred in other quarters as well.

“It is possible: some of the recipients explained that the errors were caused due to their misunderstanding the requirements for reporting the number of jobs created,” the OIG said in a statement.

“If recipients incorrectly reported the number of jobs created in the quarter ending March 31, 2011, and they used the same process to compute the number of jobs created in previous quarters, then errors would probably exist in the reporting for previous quarters.”

The report analyzed a sample of 99 stimulus awards for the quarter between Jan.1 , 2011 and March 31, 2011 –which accounted for approximately 375 of the 1,200 jobs that were reportedly saved or created in that same quarter.

From the sample of 99 awards, 33 contained job reporting errors.

During the quarter ended March 31, 2011, USDA reported 10,600 jobs were created or saved due to Stimulus funding.

To properly review data analysis procedures, OIG interviewed USDA agency representatives, reviewed laws and regulations and then conducted a “detailed review” of the 99 awards in the sample.

The report recommends that USDA agencies ensure that job numbers correctly correspond to awards, and award recipients only report job numbers for individual quarters.

“Direct agencies to develop data tests and guidance to improve their reviews of the jobs information reported on FederalReporting.gov,” the report said.

“This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring that the project description fields match the number of jobs reported, recipients with multiple awards are reporting accurately, and recipients are reporting only the jobs created or saved during the quarter being reported.”

In total, USDA received $28 billion in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was signed by President Obama on February 17, 2009. The $28 billion in funding took the form of loans, contracts or grants and were mostly directed to rural projects.

Jewish Leaders Slam NRA Plan for More Guns

Dec. 22, 2012

Blast Pro-Gun Group for 'Outrageous' Newtown Response

More Guns: National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre speaks on the one-week anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. Getty Images

Forward!
(Forward.com) - The powerful gun rights lobby went on the offensive on Friday arguing that schools should have armed guards, on a day that Americans remembered the victims of the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre with a moment of silence.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association, noting that banks and airports are patrolled by armed guards, while schools typically are not.

His remarks - in which he charged that the news media and violent video games shared blame for the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history - were twice interrupted by protesters who unfurled signs and shouted “stop the killing.”

Speaking in Washington, LaPierre urged lawmakers to station armed police officers in all schools by the time students return from the Christmas break in January. LaPierre did not take questions from reporters.

Response from the Jewish community was swift and critical of LaPierre’s statements. “It was outrageous, I must say, even for them,” said Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly. Schonfeld said the NRA’s statement contained a “total absence of any sense of the common good or moral responsibility.”

“Judaism is very clear in that you don’t provide weapons to people who are likely to harm you,” Schonfeld added.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a statement that said, “The NRA’s Washington leadership has long been out of step with its members, and never has that been so apparent as this morning. Their press conference was a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country. Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe.”

Congressman Jerrold Nadler called the NRA’s response to the Newtown shootings as, “both ludicrous and insulting,” and called the NRA “fundamentally out of step with the American people on the issue of gun violence.”

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center, also condemned the response and dismissed laying blame on violent video games as a root cause of increased violence. “Yes, there’s far too much violence in our entertainment, and it corrodes our children’s souls, and we have to change tha,t and religious communities can be helpful,” Saperstein said. “But in scores of other nations who see the same films, play the same video games, they don’t got take their mother’s legally acquired Bushmaster rifle and walk into schools and shoot people. The difference between those countries and ours is the availability of weapons.”

The blog, New Voices, printed an editorial this morning that called gun violence a Jewish issue and a student issue.

Earlier on Friday, church bells rang out in tree-lined suburban Newtown and up and down the East Coast at 9:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT) in memory of the victims of the attack on Dec. 14 in which 28 people, including the gunman, were killed.

LaPierre’s comments came at the end of a week when President Barack Obama commissioned a new White House task force to find a way to quell violence, a challenge in a nation with a strong culture of individual gun ownership.

“We have to have a comprehensive way in which to respond to the mass murder of our children that we saw in Connecticut,” Vice President Joe Biden, who heads the task force, said on Thursday.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms and hundreds of millions of weapons are in private hands.

About 11,100 Americans died in gun-related killings in 2011, not including suicides, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Some U.S. lawmakers called for swift passage of an assault weapons ban. Some Newtown residents have already launched an effort aimed at tightening rules on gun ownership.

“What I feel is a sense of guilt because I’ve been a strong advocate of gun control for years,” said John Dewees, 61, who was in downtown Newtown, where a makeshift memorial rose several feet around two Christmas trees with teddy bears and flower bouquets. “I wish I’d been more vocal. You wonder, had we all been, could we have averted this?”

SHATTERED ILLUSION OF SAFETY

The attack, which killed 20 first graders ages 6 and 7, shattered the illusion of safety in this close-knit town of 27,000 people where many residents knew someone affected by the attacks.

“There’s just so many connections,” said Jay Petrusaitis, whose son was in the same high school class as the gunman.

Churches as far south as Florida and at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., rang their bells.

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy had called for residents of his state to observe the moment of silence to mark a week since a 20-year-old gunman killed his mother and then stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School. He killed a total of 28 people that day, including six school teachers and staff in a rampage that ended when he turned his gun on himself.

Governors in Maine, Illinois, Michigan and several other states also called for moments of silence.

The gunman, Adam Lanza, used a military-style assault rifle and police said he carried hundreds of bullets in high-capacity magazines, as well as two handguns.

The weapons were legally purchased and registered to his mother, Nancy, his first victim.

Roots of mass murder: Getting serious about stopping the psychotic

Dec. 22, 2012
By Charles Krauthammer


http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer122112.php3#.UNWnnLS1tj8 | Every mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea. Names are hurled, scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere.

Let’s be serious:

(1) The Weapon

Within hours of last week’s Newtown, Conn., massacre, the focus was the weapon and the demand was for new gun laws. Several prominent pro-gun Democrats remorsefully professed new openness to gun control. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is introducing a new assault weapons ban. And the president emphasized guns and ammo above all else in announcing the creation of a new task force.

I have no problem in principle with gun control. Congress enacted (and I supported) an assault weapons ban in 1994. The problem was: It didn’t work. (So concluded a University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the Justice Department.) The reason is simple. Unless you are prepared to confiscate all existing firearms, disarm the citizenry and repeal the Second Amendment, it’s almost impossible to craft a law that will be effective.

Feinstein’s law, for example, would exempt 900 weapons. And that’s the least of the loopholes. Even the guns that are banned can be made legal with simple, minor modifications.

Most fatal, however, is the grandfathering of existing weapons and magazines. That’s one of the reasons the ’94 law failed. At the time, there were 1.5 million assault weapons in circulation and 25 million large-capacity (i.e., more than 10 bullets) magazines. A reservoir that immense can take 100 years to draw down.


(2) The Killer

Monsters shall always be with us, but in earlier days they did not roam free. As a psychiatrist in Massachusetts in the 1970s, I committed people — often right out of the emergency room — as a danger to themselves or to others. I never did so lightly, but I labored under none of the crushing bureaucratic and legal constraints that make involuntary commitment infinitely more difficult today.

Why do you think we have so many homeless? Destitution? Poverty has declined since the 1950s. The majority of those sleeping on grates are mentally ill. In the name of civil liberties, we let them die with their rights on.

A tiny percentage of the mentally ill become mass killers. Just about everyone around Tucson shooter Jared Loughner sensed he was mentally ill and dangerous. But in effect, he had to kill before he could be put away — and (forcibly) treated.

Random mass killings were three times more common in the 2000s than in the 1980s, when gun laws were actually weaker. Yet a 2011 University of California at Berkeley study found that states with strong civil commitment laws have about a one-third lower homicide rate.


(3) The Culture

We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.

If we’re serious about curtailing future Columbines and Newtowns, everything — guns, commitment, culture — must be on the table. It’s not hard for President Obama to call out the NRA. But will he call out the ACLU? And will he call out his Hollywood friends?

The irony is that over the last 30 years, the U.S. homicide rate has declined by 50 percent. Gun murders as well. We’re living not through an epidemic of gun violence but through a historic decline.

Except for these unfathomable mass murders. But these are infinitely more difficult to prevent. While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic. The best we can do is to try to detain them, disarm them and discourage “entertainment” that can intensify already murderous impulses.

But there’s a cost. Gun control impinges upon the Second Amendment; involuntary commitment impinges upon the liberty clause of the Fifth Amendment; curbing “entertainment” violence impinges upon First Amendment free speech.

That’s a lot of impingement, a lot of amendments. But there’s no free lunch. Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.

We made that trade after 9/11. We make it every time the Transportation Security Administration invades your body at an airport. How much are we prepared to trade away after Newtown?

3 days of Rioting and Looting across Argentina

Dec. 22, 2012


Its not as if some looting surprises anyone in Argentina anymore. Its pretty much a fact of life for Argentines. But it has been three days now of widespread looting across the country, from Buenos Aires and its suburbs, to smaller provinces as far as Bariloche where incidents first started.

As always supermarkets, gas stations and smaller stores are favorite targets by looters and there’s also been reports of assaults and robberies as well. Two people have been killed in Rosario during the lootings and the government is deploying military personal across the country so as to protect supermarkets and avoid the “contagion” effect. This could be described as the perception that the authorities have lost control of the streets and everyone feels it’s a “free for all” time when looting can go unpunished. Unfortunately that observation isn’t far from the truth.

I don’t know what it is. Maybe its a combination of heat, blackouts, disruptions in the water supply and the yearly 25% inflation that hits people the most during holyday times, but these widespread lootings usually take place during summer.

What to do when something like this happens, you may ask? Stay put, leave lights on so that its clear your house isn’t unoccupied ready for easy picking. Hopefully, have a firearm in case anyone is feeling particularly courageous and needs some flying lead to be remembered of his own mortality. “Ferfal, should I bug out, make a run for it, as seen on this or that reality tv show?” Leaving a defendable position is pretty stupid to begin with. Then there’s the problem of traffic jams due to the rioting and probably some roadblocks. Being stuck in traffic is bad. Being stuck in traffic during a lawless riot is even worse. I’ve seen how they start robbing and carjacking everyone stuck in traffic, going car by car robbing everyone’s wallets, purses, jewelry and cell phones. You also risk getting pulled out of your vehicle, getting beaten, even killed. So no, stay put.


Hat tip: FerFAL

source: Sun Herald

Nausiating, Disgraceful Perversity: Obama Invokes Newtown Massacre to Pressure Republicans to Go Along with His Tax Hikes

Dec. 22, 2012

During his press conference today, called to announce his new gun control task force, President Obama invoked the Newtown massacre to apply pressure on congressional Republicans in the fiscal cliff standoff.

OBAMA: If this past week has done anything it should give us some perspective. I-I-I-If there’s one thing we should have, after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what’s important. And I would like to think that members of that caucus would say to themselves “You know what, I disagree with the president on some things. We wish the other guy had won. We’re gonna fight him on a whole range of issues over the next four years. We think his philosophy is all screwed up. But right now, what the country needs is for us to compromise, get a deficit reduction deal in place, make sure middle class taxes don’t go up, make sure that we’re laying the foundations for growth, give certainty to businesses large and small, not put ourselves through some sort of self-inflicted crisis every six months, allow ourselves time to focus on things like preventing the tragedy in Newtown from happening again, focus on issues like energy and immigration reform, all the things that will make a determination as to whether our country grows over the next four years, ten years, 20 years, and if we could just pull back from the immediate political battles, if ya peel off the partisan war paint, then we should be able to get something done.”

I think, I think the Speaker would like to get that done. But an environment needs to be created not just among House Republicans but among Senate Republicans that says the campaign is over and let’s see if we can do what’s right for the country, at least for the next month! And then, we can re-engage in all the other battles that they’ll wanna fight.

This has to be one of the lowest moments of a very low presidency. Why should the Newtown killings bring any sort of “perspective” to a spending crisis that Barack Obama has created?

Obama ascribes all kinds of nefarious political motives to his opponents while never acknowledging that he or anyone else on his side have anything but the best intentions. Then he invokes Newtown as if it has anything to do with his own reckless and highly partisan spending habits, when the spending standoff has been going on for years, and he signed onto the deal that has brought us to the current impasse. His nod to a “self-inflicted crisis” should be delivered while he looks into a mirror — he is calling for unbridled and uncapped spending because spending is the only thing he knows how to do. The best way to avoid such crises in the future would be to avoid spending so much that Congress has to keep raising the debt ceiling. He shows no interest in that approach, though.

Upon what issue does Barack Obama believe Republicans are in the right to fight his “screwed up” philosophy, if not taxation and how the government spends money, and how much power a president should have over government spending? That constitutes a far more fundamental issue worth fighting for than any of the others he invoked.

Video here, thanks to Tom Elliott.

source: PJMedia

AMAZING: The Journalist's Guide to Gun Violence Coverage

Dec. 22, 2012

by Dr. Michael Brown

Guns are a sad fact of life in American culture and are a major topic
in modern journalism. A good Journalist has a duty to get involved
and make a difference in this important societal debate. By following
certain guidelines, the concerned Journalist can be assured of having
the maximum impact on this shameful problem.

The first principle to remember is that subtle use of terminology can
covertly influence the reader. Adjectives should be chosen for
maximum anti-gun effect. When describing a gun, attach terms like
"automatic," "semi-automatic," "large caliber," "deadly," "high
powered," or "powerful." Almost any gun can be described by one or
more of these terms. More than two guns should be called an
"arsenal."

Try to include the term "assault weapon" if at all possible. This can
be combined with any of the terms above for best results. Nobody
actually knows what an assault weapon is, so you cannot be criticized
for this usage. Your local anti-gun organization can provide you with
a list of the latest buzz words like "junk guns," "Saturday Night
Specials," and "the criminal's weapon of choice."

Don't worry about getting technical details right. Many a reporter
has accidentally written about semi-automatic revolvers or committed
other minor errors. Since most people know little about guns, this is
not a problem. Only the gun nuts will complain and they don't count.
The emotional content of your article is much more important than the
factual details, since people are more easily influenced through their
emotions than through logic.

Broadcast Journalists should have a file tape showing a machine gun
firing on full automatic. Run this video while describing "automatic"
weapons used in a crime or confiscated by police. At the least, a
large graphic of a handgun should be displayed behind the on-air
personality when reading any crime story.

Do not waste words describing criminals who use guns to commit crimes.
Instead of calling them burglar, rapist, murderer, or repeat offender,
simply use the term "gunman." This helps the public associate all
forms of crime and violence with the possession of guns.

Whenever drug dealers are arrested, guns are usually confiscated by
the police. Mention the type and number of guns more prominently than
the type and quantity of drugs. Include the number of rounds of
ammunition seized, since the number will seem large to those who know
little about guns. Obviously, the drug dealers who had the guns
should now be called "gunmen."

Political discussions on gun control legislation usually involve
pro-gun organizations. Always refer to these organizations as "the
gun lobby." If space permits, mention how much money the gun lobby
has spent to influence political campaigns and describe their
legislative lobbying efforts as "arm twisting" or "threats."

Gun owners must never be seen in a positive light. Do not mention
that these misguided individuals may actually be well educated, or
have respectable jobs and healthy families. They should be called
"gun nuts" if possible or simply gun owners at best. Mention details
about their clothing, especially if they are wearing hunting clothes
or hats. Mention the simplistic slogans on their bumper stickers to
show that their intelligence level is low. Many gun owners drive
pickup trucks, hunt and live in rural areas. Use these details to
help portray them as ignorant rednecks. Don't use the word "hunt."
Always say that they "kill" animals.

Don't be afraid to interview these people, they are harmless even
though we don't portray them that way. Try to solicit comments that
can be taken out of context to show them in the worst possible light.

Never question the effectiveness of gun control laws or proposals.
Guns are evil and kill people. Removing guns from society can only be
good. Nobody really uses guns for legitimate self-defense, especially
women or children. Any stories about armed self-defense must be
minimized or suppressed.

Be careful about criticizing the police for responding slowly to 911
calls for help. It is best if the public feels like the police can be
relied upon to protect them at all times. If people are buying guns
to protect their families, you are not doing your job.

Emphasize stories where people kill family members and/or themselves
with guns. It is important to make the public feel like they could
lose control and start killing at any moment if they have a gun in the
house. Any story where a child misuses a gun is front page material.

View every shooting as an event to be exploited. Always include
emotional quotes from the victim's family if possible. If they are
not available, the perpetrator's family will do nicely. The quote
must blame the tragedy on the availability of guns. Photos or video
of grieving family members are worth a thousand facts. Most people
will accept the assertion that guns cause crime. It is much easier
than believing that some people deliberately choose to harm others.

Your story should include terms like "tragic" or "preventable" and
mention the current toll of gun violence in your city or state. Good
reporters always know exactly how many gun deaths have occurred in
their area since the first of the year. List two or three previous
incidents of gun violence to give the impression of a continuing crime
wave.

Little space should be devoted to shootings where criminals kill each
other. Although these deaths greatly inflate the annual gun violence
numbers, they distract from the basic mission of urging law abiding
citizens to give up their guns. Do not dig too deeply into the
reasons behind shootings. The fact that a gun was involved is the
major point, unless someone under 18 is affected, in which case the
child angle is now of equal importance.

Any article about gun violence should include quotes from anti-gun
organizations or politicians. One quote should say that we must do
something "for the children." Anti-gun spokespersons should be called
"activists" or "advocates." If your employer wishes to appear
unbiased, you can include one token quote from a gun lobby group to
show that you are being fair. The anti-gun statements should be
accepted as fact. The gun lobby statement can be denigrated by
including text like, "according to gun lobbyist Jones."

Fortunately, statements from anti-gun organizations come in short
sound bites that are perfect for generating an emotional response in
the reader or viewer. Gun lobby statements usually contain boring
facts that are easy to ignore.

Feel secure in your advocacy journalism. The vast majority of your
fellow Journalists support your activism. The nation will be a better
place when only the police and military have guns. Remember that you
are doing it for the children so the end justifies the means.

Eventually, the government will have a monopoly on power. Don't worry
about the right to freedom of the press, just contact me then for
more helpful hints.

Professor Michael Brown
School of Journalism, Brady Chair
Vancouver College of Liberal Arts

Political Satire, copyright 1999, Michael Brown.
May be reproduced freely in its full and complete form.
The author may be contacted at mb@e-z.net



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