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.
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