Merry Christmas!

Mark Noonan22 Comments

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a good New Year.

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
A man named John was sent from God.
He came for testimony, to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
He was not the light,
but came to testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world,
and the world came to be through him,
but the world did not know him.
He came to what was his own,
but his own people did not accept him.
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The God in the Cave

Mark Noonan90 Comments

This is quoted from G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.

This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passersby, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd. God also was a CaveMan, and, had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously colored upon the wall of the world ; but the pictures that he made had come to life.

A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded. It is at least like a jest in this; that it is something which the scientific critic cannot see. He laboriously explains the difficulty which we have always defiantly and almost derisively exaggerated; and mildly condemns as improbable something that we have almost madly exalted as incredible; as something that would be much too good to be true, except that it is true. When that contrast between the cosmic creation and the little local infancy has been repeated, reiterated, underlined, emphasized, exulted in, sung, shouted, roared, not to say howled, in a hundred thousand hymns, carols, rhymes, rituals pictures, poems, and popular sermons, it may be suggested that we hardly need a higher critic to draw our attention to something a little odd about it; especially one of the sort that seems to take a long time to see a joke, even his own joke. But about this contrast and combination of ideas one thing may be said here, because it is relevant to the whole thesis of this book. The sort of modern critic of whom I speak is generally much impressed with the importance of education in life and the importance of psychology in education. That sort of man is never tired of telling us that first impressions fix character by the law of causation; and he will become quite nervous if a child’s visual sense is poisoned by the wrong colors on a golliwog or his nervous system prematurely shaken by a cacophonous rattle. Yet he will think us very narrow-minded, if we say that this is exactly why there really is a difference between being brought up as a Christian and being brought up as a Jew or a Moslem or an atheist. T he difference is that every Catholic child has learned from pictures, and even every Protestant child from stones, this incredible combination of contrasted ideas as one of the very first impressions on his mind. It is not merely a theological difference. It is a psychological difference which can outlast any theologies It really is, as that sort of scientist loves to say about anything, incurable. Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether be likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God. But the two ideas are not naturally or necessarily combined. They would not be necessarily combined for an ancient Greek or a Chinaman, even for Aristotle or Confucius. It is no more inevitable to connect God with an infant than to connect gravitation with a kitten. It has been created in our minds by Christmas because we are Christians; because we are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones. In other words, this combination of ideas has emphatically, in the much disputed phrase, altered human nature. There is really a difference between the man who knows it and the man who does not. It may not be a difference of moral worth, for the Moslem or the Jew might be worthier according to his lights; but it is a plain fact about the crossing of two particular lights, the conjunction of two stars in our particular horoscope. Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique.

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Democrat Party: For and By the Rich

Mark Noonan88 Comments

This is the sort of issue we have to put front and center in the American mind – from Reuters:

In the town that launched the War on Poverty 48 years ago, the poor are getting poorer despite the government’s help. And the rich are getting richer because of it.

The top 5 percent of households in Washington, D.C., made more than $500,000 on average last year, while the bottom 20 percent earned less than $9,500 – a ratio of 54 to 1.

That gap is up from 39 to 1 two decades ago. It’s wider than in any of the 50 states and all but two major cities. This at a time when income inequality in the United States as a whole has risen to levels last seen in the years before the Great Depression…

Our liberals are in the process of creating the “two Americas” that they’ve been whining about…an America of a small class of rich (all of whom will be in or highly connected to government) while most of the population wallows in poverty with their lives eked out between small time jobs and government hand outs.  Did the liberals intend this?  No, but it is clear from their actions that they prefer it to a system where someone can get ahead without government permission.

Tie this in with Obama’s bogus “tax the rich” rhetoric – which really means “tax the upper middle class” – and we can show, even to low information voters, that it is the government which is keeping them down…and allowing the rich to get richer as long as they donate to the right political party.  This is where we can turn the “class war” against the left…where we can get people to raise their fist against the Department of Education as much as they raise it against Bank of America.

This is what is happening in Detroit, in Los Angeles, in Chicago, in New York City…every place where liberal Democrats are firmly in power they have done all that liberalism promises…and it has invariably led to the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer (with the only poor people getting rich are those who are willing to sell out for a rake off…think Jesse Jackson).  But, remember, the people in these places don’t know their full plight because, for the most part, the MSM doesn’t tell them (that would upset the Democrat Ruling Class, after all).  So, we need to tell them – by campaigning in the deepest blue areas.

We can do this, people – we can crush the left, if we’ll just try.

Intervention in Syria?

Mark Noonan24 Comments

According to the headline number in the Washington Post/ABC poll, the American people say “no”:

In general, 73 percent say the U.S. military should not get involved in the conflict.

But the bad news is in the details:

But almost exactly as many say they’d support U.S. military involvement if Syria were to lose control of its chemical weapons, as do 63 percent if the Assad regime used these banned weapons against its own people – an action that Barack Obama has warned would “cross a red line.”

Now, I agree with the 69% who, later in the poll, say that if the Assad regime were to attack an ally, we should intervene – but for me the word “ally” in that area of the world only means “Israel”.  You’ve got to be the most obtuse sort of State Department pinhead to actually see Turkey as an ally these days – they aren’t quite as far gone down the route of Islamism as Egypt, but they’re heading there quickly.

For the duration of the Obama Administration you are going to find me to be the most dovish of people – because Obama is a foreign and military policy idiot and I simply don’t trust him to run either thing…and as during wars blood gets shed, I’m even more wary of Obama as Commander in Chief than I am as him being director of our foreign policy.  Short of absolutely surrendering our national honor, I want peace at any price at least until January 20th, 2017.

But this poll shows that if Assad does what he may well do – ie, go nuts –  then Obama has a ready-made public support for military action.  At a time when our military is already strained and we’re absolutely bankrupt.  What we’re likely to get, if Assad does go nuts, is a half-assed intervention along the lines of the mess we’ve made out of Libya…at a time when the non-Islamists of Syria are already mistrustful of us because of our dithering with the UN over the Syrian Civil War…and, of course, at a time when the Islamists of Syria are moving from victory to victory and likely to take over as soon as the barbarians can settle which particular batch of savages will get to be in charge.  There is no good we can do in Syria other than providing some medical and food aid to alleviate some of the worst of the suffering – and even that should be done by third parties we supply so that we don’t have to put Americans (ie, “targets”) in to the area.

Obama’s foreign and military policies have made the United States weaker than at any time since 1940 – and all we can really do is hope the fool doesn’t lead us in to a major war before he gets out of office.  And even then the damage he’s done and doing might make war inevitable once he’s out of office.

Stay out of Syria.  Get out of Afghanistan.  Bring the boys and girls back home and let’s hunker down for the remaineder of the Error of Obama.  (As an aside to you pinhead liberals out there – if Obama does order intervention then you’re not going to see me out there holding anti-war demonstrations and slandering Obama about the conduct of the war – I’m not, in short, going to be like you:  when the guns go off and our boys and girls are in harms way, then Obama is my Commander in Chief and I back him 100% in the pursuit of victory…I just hope the dolt can deliver it; or that the military can carry it off in spite of him).

The Puppet Show

Leo Pusateri52 Comments

Well, the dutiful bubble-headed talking heads on the Alphabets, like clockwork, are busily carrying the democrat water, spouting off about how gun control is now the best thing since sliced bread; that it was the gun that killed the children at Sandy Hook Elementary, not the finger attached to the perp that pulled the trigger.

The bodies are cold enough. Let the politicization begin.

I’m really tired of having public policy dictated by the emotion du jour instead of by clear-thinking minds, just so some idiot politician can beat his or her chest, and say “Look at me!! See what I did?? I care!!” not to mention the lamebrained kneejerk reactions by some politically correct company board rooms afraid of their own shadows, putting their ears to the ground, just so they could follow the latest mindless lemming stampede.

As David Axelrod said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
There’s nothing that the current statist government-uber-alles powers-that-be would love more than to have an unarmed populace of subjects, vs. an armed populace of citizens.Never mind that gun control in this country, no matter how strict, has NEVER worked. It has had the OPPOSITE effect.Never mind that criminals don’t give a flying copulatory act in a rolling pastry about gun laws.

Never mind that the only ones who will be disarmed are the law abiding citizens who would never otherwise visit harm upon their fellow man.

It’s all about EMOTION. Rationality, my friends, is over-rated.

What you are now witnessing is a textbook example of David Axelrod’s axiom in action; Big Government statists and willing media accomplices engaging in a coordinated “campaign of whispers” to whip the information-bereft Idiocracy into an unstoppable emotion-laden frenzy to do their bidding under the guise of “doing *something!*” little realizing (or simply not caring) that they are all too willing to give up freedom, for a false sense of security, only to be relieved of both.

The puppeteers are now licking their chops; joyously, triumphantly pulling emotion-laden strings, and the dutiful marionettes are happily, even if unwittingly dancing to their tune.
With their “Lord and Savior” Barack Obama at the helm, who even needs congress?

The Gun Debate

Cluster14 Comments

From the Chicago Tribune earlier this month:

There were 192 shootings in Chicago throughout the month of November – a 49 percent increase from a year earlier – according to police records obtained by the Chicago Tribune.

In November of 2011, Chicago recorded 129 shootings compared to the 192 shootings this November.  Police records also reveal that shootings increased more than 11 percent in the first 11 months of 2012 compared with a year earlier.

Total homicides in Chicago rose to 480 for the first eleven months of 2012; a 21 percent increase from last year.  On November 30, 2012, there were four fatal shootings within the city.  These murders brought the homicide total to 38 for the month, just above the 37 recorded in November of last year.

Despite having some of the strictest gun laws in the country, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans on restricting gun ownership further by banning individuals with a violent misdemeanor conviction from getting a gun permit for five years.  The mayor also hopes to ban convicted felons from ever owning a gun.

Emanuel’s intentions are no doubt well intentioned, but like many cities with strict gun laws, the disarming of law-abiding citizens doesn’t remove guns from the hands of those who wish to do harm.  On the contrary, it often leaves innocent victims vulnerable to criminals.

Despite the fact that gun laws are a proven failure, the American President again called for the possibility of more legislation just today in the wake of Sandy Hook. What’s more troubling is the media’s sudden attention to gun violence because of Sandy Hook, when more people than that are murdered in Chicago every month, and that’s despite Chicago’s strict gun laws. But don’t be fooled by the medias, or the regimes sudden  attention to gun violence either, because it is all agenda driven. The unfortunate murders of all middle class, white children became a very fortunate and convenient crisis for the regime and the liberal media to further their anti gun legislation. If you doubt me, then tell me why the monthly murder rate of inner city black children doesn’t register on their radar.

Despite liberals best intentions, “gun free zones” simply don’t work, and are literally an advertisement for those with mal intent. Amazona nailed it in the previous thread when she said:

“There is no greater control over others than to control whether they live or die, and no greater control over one’s own fate than to take his own life before it falls into the control of others.”

A responsible, well armed, God-fearing populace is the best deterrent than any government issued sign and well-intentioned legislation could ever be. We just need to hopefully get back to the point where we fear God, more than we fear guns.

 

Victims No More.

Leo Pusateri62 Comments
As an educator, and as one who has lived through a school shooting incident, I’m not going to sugar-coat anything. What happened in Connecticut (as well as the school district in which I worked) is proof positive that there is evil in the world, and evil will continue to prey on the most vulnerable. The only way to combat this evil is to make the vulnerable less so. If there was an armed teacher or administrator at Sandy Hook Elementary school, there is a great chance that many if not all innocent lives would have been saved. This would have held true in the theater in Aurora, Colorado, and even in Fort Hood, where, ironically, there were strict gun control laws. To deny this is not only foolish, it continues to place our children (and other innocent, law-abiding citizens) in harm’s way. 

A “No Guns Allowed” sign is nothing but an invitation for any low-life scumbag psycho-killer to enter what promises to be a target-rich environment. 

Victims, no more. It’s high time we stop ignoring the dangers and put an abrupt stop to this madness.

Ah, But We Do Forget

Mark Noonan5 Comments

That song was done by the Boomtown Rats and was made in response to the school shooting carried out by Brenda Ann Spencer on January 29th, 1979 in San Diego, California. I admit that I had mentally lost track of it, but it always has been floating around in my head, re-emerging from time to time.  I was 14 years old and living in San Diego at the time.  The shooter was 16.  When asked why she had done it, she answered, “I don’t like Mondays”.

Two people were killed, and 9 injured, including 8 children.  It was a horrifically shocking event which, I’m sure, everyone at the time said they’d never forget.  Ok, so how many of you who were 14 or older in 1979 remember?  How many of you have heard that Boomtown Rats song and never knew what it was about?

We forget and we forget and we forget – and then comes the next massacre and we wring our hands and swear we won’t forget.  But, we do – and then repeat the process.  If we want it to stop, then we have to remember….and keep remembering and start thinking about how it happened.  How is it that prior to 1979 we never had someone pick up a gun and randomly shoot at a school for no identifiable reason?  To be sure, you can find long lists of people who were murdered at schools over the ages – but in each case there was an identifiable cause; some grievance against the school, or the school authorities, or some of the students.  Something you could logically connect to the crime…not because a bored person decided they didn’t like Mondays.

We’ve lost our morals, my friends – that is it.  Only a people increasingly lacking in basic, human decency can breed people who will just kill for no reason.  Until we get back to basic, human decency we won’t get anywhere.  Just more massacres and more memorial services and more (empty) pledges to never forget.

UPDATE:  Rush gets it:

I said, “Twenty-five years ago we were warning about what was going to happen if X kept happening and Y kept happening and if we didn’t stop Z.”  Well, now, we’re there.  We’re no longer talking about what will happen unless we do something about it.  We’re living it.  We’re living the collapse.  We’re living the implosion of our culture and our society.  Politically, morally, religiously, you name it, and it all stems from the fact that no one is allowed to have values.  Values are judgmental.  You have no right to impose values on people.

The death of our civilization is proceeding precisely as predicted in decades past – stodgy, boring, old conservatives (and a few wise liberals) pointed it out and pointed it out and explained with charts and diagrams that all this would happen if we didn’t change course.  We didn’t change course.  We just doubled down on doing it wrong – and now people pretend to be all shocked about it?  Astounding.

Get ready to start imposing the old morality (and, of course, all of us must start by imposing it on ourselves) or get ready for death.  Pick one.  There are no other choices.

Tim Scott Appointed Senator

Mark Noonan7 Comments

From the Washington Post:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) announced Monday that she will appoint Rep. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to the Senate.

Scott will replace Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who is leaving the chamber in January to head up the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“It is with great pleasure that I am announcing our next U.S. senator to be Congressman Tim Scott,” Haley said. “I am strongly convinced that the entire state understands that this is the right U.S. senator for our state and our country.”

Sen.-designate Scott, 47, will become the only African-American currently serving in the Senate and the first black Republican to serve in the upper chamber since the 1970s. He will also be the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction…

Clearly just a clever plot by those wascally, wacist Wepublicans!  Imagine, the nerve of them!  Having a female, racial minority governor appointing a black man to the Senate?  Obviously, its just to throw dust in everyone’s eyes so they won’t see the Klan hood peaking out…I mean, its not like the two Latino governors of American States are Republican…oh, wait…

Tell ya what, Democrats – you can keep all the old, white guys like Charlie Crist…we’ll go Forward! with people who actually want to make America great again.

If You Liberals Really Want a Class War…

Mark Noonan51 Comments

…then we on the right are pleased to give you one.  From National Review Online:

…While we would prefer no tax increase at all, eliminating this deduction (for State and local taxes) would be a sensible reform of the tax code, and could be paired with tax cuts elsewhere for a fiscally neutral simplification of our byzantine tax code.

Estimates suggest that eliminating this deduction would raise as much as $900 billion over ten years, though it may well turn out to be less as taxpayers modify their behavior in light of the new incentives. That won’t balance the budget with deficits running that much or more every single year, but it is nothing to turn the national nose up at, either: $900 billion would completely offset the estimated deficit for 2013. Progressives should welcome eliminating the deduction in that the new tax burden would fall much more heavily upon those earning $200,000 or more. As Reihan Salam points out, households in the $200,000-and-up range would pay an average of $5,166 more without the deduction, while those in the $30,000-to-$50,000 range would pay only $70 more…

Wouldn’t cost me a penny more, of course, as I live in a no-income-tax State.  But it would cost people in New York and California a bundle, especially if they are making more than 250 grand a year and are getting hit with those very high California and New York State income taxes.  But, given that those two States voted overwhelmingly for Obama, it stands to reason that they’ll be pleased as punch to fork over a bit more to Uncle Sam.  Unless, that is, they were just stupid and thought that Obama was talking about people like Bill Gates when he said “make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share”.  We on the right can’t be blamed if people didn’t bother to actually look past Obama’s rhetoric and examine his concrete proposals.

This is not quite up to the standards I want – I still prefer my “wealth tax”, and I’ve actually come around to turning the screws a little harder on it.  While still excluding farms/ranches, mines and factories which are family or individually owned, I’m thinking that a 10% annual tax on all wealth in excess of $2 million should do the trick.  Which trick is that?  The double trick of both making rich liberals pay for their liberalism and showing lower and middle class Americans just who’s side we’re on.  The dirty secret of liberalism is that it is run by rich people and largely for the benefit of rich people – I want to drive that home.  Next step is to eliminate charitable deductions for any organization which does not provide direct housing, clothing, food or medical aid to poor people…no more tax write-offs for donating to liberal political groups which have got themselves a tax exemption.  Oh, and the group dispensing the help to the poor better have administrative expenses down to no more than, say, 30% of expenditures or it gets reclassified as a very heavily taxed racketeer influenced/corrupt organization.

I’m all set for the class war.  Are you?