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Category Archives: Culture War
Prager University: If Good and Evil Exist, God Exists (video)
Notre Dame Prof: Silent Minority Aids America’s Destruction
And she is right. With the leadership of the GOP seeming to be all over the place, and an RNC that isn’t leading a rhetorical, philosophical, or policy battle; traditionalists, conservatives and those simply wanting some fiscal and regulatory sanity feel like people without a party, and for some they feel like aliens on their own country, but in reality such people are the majority.
[Note: The staff of Political Arena resides in South Bend, Indiana, the home of the University of Notre Dame, although we have no affiliation with the university.]
Ryan Lovelace at The College Fix:
When Laura Hollis, a Notre Dame University business and law professor, looks at America’s path forward, she cannot help but see a dead end.
“Many people say to me, ‘If it gets worse than this, I’m not sure we can survive it,’ and I’m inclined to agree with them,” Hollis said in an interview with The College Fix. “It’s never been as bad as it is now.”
Hollis, who in addition to her professorship is a popular conservative columnist and political commentator, is the author of a post-election column titled “Post Mortem” that went viral across America. It was reposted on many websites, spread like wildfire across social media sites, and emailed far and wide, landing in mom-and-pop inboxes across the nation.
In fact, just as recently as Dec. 28, the popular left-leaning political blog Daily Kos posted an “open letter to Laura Hollis” denouncing her piece.
This ongoing whirlwind of a world wide web debate was prompted by Hollis’ Nov. 8 column, which analyzed the state of the union the day after President Barack Obama was re-elected.
It argued, among other things, that: conservatives are outnumbered; they’re losing the culture war; too many Americans are immature, seeking only self-gratification; and the so-called Republican War on Women played a role in the election outcome.
“America is on a horrific bender; has been for some time now,” Hollis wrote. “The warning signs of our fiscal profligacy and culture of lack of personal responsibility are everywhere – too many to mention. We need only look at other countries which have gone the route we are walking now to see what is in store. … I see the country I love headed toward its own ‘rock bottom,’ and I cannot seem to reach those who are taking it there.”
In an interview this week with The College Fix, Hollis said feedback she’s received from that piece has led her to believe millions of Americans feel as if they have no voice. But the answer, she argued, is not to cower in the corner and give up.
“Speak up,” Hollis said. “Because being polite does not mean being silent.”
First and foremost, the culture war must to be addressed, she said. It’s time to stop worrying about stepping on people’s toes or hurting people’s feelings, she said.
Some Republican and conservative commentators argued after the election the solution to regain the White House, Congress and the country is to become more moderate, acquiesce to the social norms promulgated by the Left.
Bad idea, Hollis said.
“We have to decide we need to change the tone and tenor of culture in the country,” Hollis said. “In order to change the culture, you have to be a part of the culture.”
Take, for example, the alleged War on Women. During the presidential campaign, women’s rights discussions served as a façade for something more sinister, she said. What appeared to be a discourse about access to birth control was really about expanding abortion services and physician-assisted suicide, Hollis said.
“I’m pro-better choice—all choices are not equal,” Hollis said. “If my father is suffering from advanced dementia, I don’t have the right to smother him with a pillow.”
Hollis said advances in science have provided new and startling information about life from conception through natural death that every American should learn. This is one example of the kinds of things that could help turn the culture war tide in conservatives’ favor.
Hollis said “the left” has become politically adept at demonizing people, but it is important for all Americans to understand everyone wants to make things better, she said.
While Hollis’ first point in her “Post-Mortem” work declared Americans who champion free enterprise are outnumbered by those who want free stuff, she said that did not mean throw in the towel.
“No matter where you are, that can be ground-zero for changing things,” Hollis said.
New York Times bureau chief: Muslim Brotherhood is ‘moderate, regular old political force’
Of course the Muslim Brotherhood is bent on destroying Israel, has been using armored vehicles against Christians and publicly crucifying political opponents, but other than that they are perfectly normal….
They are also in the process of taking over Libya, Syria and Jordan, with Obama and NATO giving them military support. Al-Qaeda, you know, those guys who hit is on 9/11, are a sub-group of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Obama is giving them tanks and F-16’s too (but wants to take your guns)
What would the elite media reaction be if Bush had been doing this?
The Daily Caller:
The New York Times Cairo bureau chief David K. Kirkpatrick insists that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “moderate, regular old political force,” despite Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s recent power grab and the Islamist organization’s radical views.
Kirkpatrick called into Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Wednesday from Egypt as the Brotherhood’s supporters battled opponents who feared a return to dictatorship on the streets of Cairo. When asked by Hewitt whether the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, a former top ideological enforcer in the movement, were consolidating power in Egypt to pursue an undemocratic Islamist agenda, Kirkpatrick said he thought such criticism was “misplaced.”
“The Brotherhood, they’re politicians,” he said.
“They are not violent by nature, and they have over the last couple of decades evolved more and more into a moderate — conservative but religious, but moderate — regular old political force. I find that a lot of the liberal fears of the Brotherhood are somewhat outside. That said, you know, you don’t know what their ultimate vision of what the good life looks like. But in the short term, I think they just want to win elections.”
Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s slogan is the not-so-moderate “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Egypt, told The Daily Caller that Kirkpatrick’s assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate was simply a regurgitation of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda.
Troops ordered to keep silent about widespread Islamic pedophilia
Some great journalism Via Timothy Whiteman at Examiner.com:
“Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”
As recently covered by Examiner.com, the U.S. Army has floated a draft of a new training manual to be utilized for troops in the Afghanistan Theater of Operation.
According to the proposed manual, the reason behind many of the allied Afghan troops/police officers attacking and killing American and British personnel is due to ignorance on our part;
“Many of the confrontations occur because of [coalition] ignorance of, or lack of empathy for, Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms, resulting in a violent reaction from the [Afghan security force] member.”
Listed among the “taboo” subjects of conversation include;
- Any criticism of pedophilia.
- Mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct.
- Advocating women’s rights.
- Anything related to Islam.
As reported by yesterday by WND.com, the linkage of pedophilia and/or homosexuality directly to the Islamic belief system has prompted founder of the terrorism watchdog group Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer to state;
“By mentioning pedophilia and women’s rights and saying that soldiers should not mention such things they are tacitly admitting that those things are indeed part of Islam.”
Following the well documented example of the founder of Islam, pedophilia is an accepted practice since its inception.
Admitted by Muslim scholars, Mohammed married his wife Aisha when she was 6-years-old, and consummated the marriage when she was nine.
That Was The 7th Century, This Is Now…
Examiner.com also covered the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, recently authorizing Muslim adult males to marry girls as young as 10.
In a comprehensive (and widely ignored by other major media outlets) news article published by the San Francisco Chronicle from August of 2010 titled “Afghanistan’s dirty little secret,” reporter Joel Brinkley details the widespread cultural and religious acceptance of man-to-boy pedophilia in the Central Asian nation.
As detailed by Brinkley;
“Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy.
Their behavior suggested he was not the boy’s father.
Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to ‘touch and fondle them.’
For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers.
Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover.
Literally it means ‘boy player.’
The men like to boast about it.”
And Women…?
As cited, a favored Afghan expression goes: “Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”
Fundamentalist Muslim clerics throughout the nation teach the faithful that women are “unclean” and “therefore distasteful.”
One unnamed Afghan was quoted as asking how his wife could become pregnant.
When explained the physical actions required, the man “reacted with disgust” and then asked;
“How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?”
New York Times finally admits Reaganomics worked
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
After 30 years, The New York Times has admitted that Reaganomics worked.
The inadvertent revelation comes in a November 29th article by Binyamin Appelbaum chronicling the steadily falling tax burden Americans have experienced since the 1980s.
AEI columnist James Pethokoukis notes that the heart of The Times’ article is that in 2010 Americans “paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago.”
Pethokoukis points out that some tax hike advocates think this means that America’s tax burden is too low and time has come for a hike. But Pethokoukis disagrees.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I think the reduction in the tax burden — staring with the Reagan tax cuts — has been a huge competitive advantage for the U.S. We should keep that edge. Check out these numbers. In 1981, France’s per capita GDP was 81% of U.S. per capita GDP, Germany’s 83%, Italy’s 81%, Britain’s 69%.
In 2010, France’s per capita GDP was 73% of U.S. per capita GDP (down 8 points), Germany’s 81% (down 2 points), Italy’s 68% (down 12 points), and Britain’s 76% (up 7 points).
Pethokoukis reminds readers that Europe was closing the gap with U.S. wealth by 1980, but after Reagan’s tax cuts that trend stagnated and in other cases even began to reverse.
There are many great points made in the Pethokoukis piece and you need to go read them, but his last one is the funniest—or saddest, depending on your point of view.
4. Another bit: “Economists agree that taxes on business are passed on to investors, reducing profits, and to workers, reducing wages. Upper-income households bear the brunt of these taxes, and corporate tax collections have fallen sharply.” That is right. Taxes matter.
Funny, the NYT never mentioned this widely known economic fact when Mitt Romney was attacked for saying “Corporations are people.”
American Elite Media Falling for Terrorist Media Manipulation
Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren:
Michael Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.
What makes better headlines? Is it numbing figures such as the 8,000 Palestinian rockets fired at Israel since it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and the 42.5 percent of Israeli children living near the Gaza border who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Or is it high-resolution images of bombed-out buildings in Gaza and emotional stories of bereaved Palestinians? The last, obviously, as demonstrated by much of the media coverage of Israel’s recent operation against Hamas. But that answer raises a more fundamental question: Which stories best serve the terrorists’ interest?
Hamas has a military strategy to paralyze southern Israel with short- and middle-range rockets while launching Iranian-made missiles at Tel Aviv. With our precision air force, top-notch intelligence and committed citizens army, we can defend ourselves against these dangers. We have invested billions of dollars in bomb shelters and early-warning systems and, together with generous U.S. aid, have developed history’s most advanced, multi-layered anti-missile batteries. For all of its bluster, Hamas does not threaten Israel’s existence.
But Hamas also has a media strategy. Its purpose is to portray Israel’s unparalleled efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza as indiscriminate firing at women and children, to pervert Israel’s rightful acts of self-defense into war crimes. Its goals are to isolate Israel internationally, to tie its hands from striking back at those trying to kill our citizens and to delegitimize the Jewish State. Hamas knows that it cannot destroy us militarily but believes that it might do so through the media.
One reason is the enlarged images of destruction and civilian casualties in Gaza that dominated the front pages of U.S. publications. During this operation, The Post published multiple front-page photographs of Palestinian suffering. The New York Times even juxtaposed a photograph of the funeral of Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari, who was responsible for the slaughter of dozens of innocent Israelis, with that of a pregnant Israeli mother murdered by Hamas. Other photos, supplied by the terrorists and picked up by the press, identified children killed by Syrian forces or even by Hamas itself as victims of Israeli strikes.
In reporting Palestinian deaths, media routinely failed to note that roughly half were terrorists and that such a ratio is exceedingly low by modern military standards — much lower, for example, than the NATO campaign in the Balkans. Media also emphasize the disparity between the number of Palestinian and Israeli deaths, as though Israel should be penalized for investing billions of dollars in civil-defense and early-warning systems and Hamas exonerated for investing in bombs rather than bomb shelters.
Read the rest HERE.
George Zimmerman Sues NBC News: Edited 911 Tape to Make Him Look Racist
NBC did this and there is little doubt that it absolutely was malicious.
Though it might feel like a hundred years ago, it was only last April when the media joined Barack Obama’s cynical crusade to gin up his base in Florida through the artificial inflaming of racial tensions. And there was no question NBC News was the worst of these co-conspirators after the network was busted editing a 9-1-1 call to make Trayvon Martin’s suspected shooter, George Zimmerman, look like a racist. Today, Zimmerman filed suit against the Peacock Network.
Zimmerman accuses NBC of creating a “false and defamatory misimpression using the oldest form of yellow journalism: manipulating Zimmerman’s own words, splicing together disparate parts of the recording to create the illusion of statements that Zimmerman never actually made.”
He’s suing for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, demanding unspecified damages.
I’m no lawyer, but there’s absolutely no question here that NBC News is at least morally liable for one of the most despicable acts of defamation I’ve ever come across. Here’s the maliciously edited version of the 9-1-1 tape NBC’s storied “Today Show” broadcast before the entire world:
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black.
Here’s how the call really went:
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
OFFICER: Okay, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.
All of this, of course, falls on the man in charge of NBC News since 2005, Steve Capus, who apparently encourages this kind of behavior, at the very least, by allowing it to occur again and again without there being any kind of consequence. Because something else Zimmerman might have on his side is the fact that NBC has been caught a handful of times using the exact same kind of malicious edits to aid and abet the left, specifically Barack Obama.
In 2009, NBC’s Contessa Brewer edited video “so that that MSNBC viewers wouldn’t know that the man carrying firearms to a Tea Party was a black man. This allowed Brewer to then host a segment about how racist the Tea Party is towards President Obama and how this racism might just lead to the unthinkable–the assassination of our President.”
In 2011, NBC’s Ed Schultz edited Texas Governor and GOP presidential candidate, Rick Perry, to look racist.
Back in June, Andrea Mitchell was caught editing up a gaffe for Mitt Romney.
Marcus Cicero’s Warning About Obama Like Leaders (video)
“For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.”
– Marcus Tullius Cicero, in De Republica
The Founders warned of just this very type of leader in the Federalist Papers; as did Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.
Here is famed Hollywood Screen writer Andrew Klavan explaining de Tocqueville warning:
It’s mental health that is the problem, not guns – UPDATED
by Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton
Liberal activists stopped new laws in Connecticut that could have helped Adam Lanza get the mental help he needed…..
[Political Arena Editor’s Note: Before we get onto the the disturbing details, this very writer has a great deal of experience in helping treating a schizophrenic. I have pretty much seen it all. As well as read the articles, dealt with good doctors and as well as the bad ones who just “don’t get it”. I have dealt with the insurance issues, legal issues and the social issues of it. As much as any non MD can be I am an expert.
With that said, I was lucky in that most of the time mine wanted treatment because she was getting the “Clive Barker” treatment behind her eyes and that scared her. Some patients resist treatment which is a mistake. The legal system must back parents up and help the patient even if it is against their wishes. D.J. Jaffe has a GREAT editorial about changes in the law that can help such patients – LINK ]
There is little doubt that not only was Adam Lanza partially autistic, (Asperger’s syndrome – this disorder has no history of causing violence), he also suffered from extreme depression and/or schizophrenic disorder as he fits the profile like a glove.
What is schizophrenia?
It is not multiple personality disorder as is so often shown on television. Schizophrenia acts to change how your brain perceives what the five senses tell it. The signals to the brain intermix the schizophrenic’s perception of reality with ones own imagination and even memories such as what one has seen in a movie.
What the schizophrenic sees, feels, and hears sometimes becomes a jumble. At other times one can hallucinate and/or hear voices. Those with schizophrenia have a hard time relating with others because they misperceive the nonverbal cues that are so crucial in interpersonal communication. If the disorder is pronounced enough the direct verbal cues may also be misperceived.
The mind tries to make order out of the chaos. The mind does not wish to accept their condition so the schizophrenic invents elaborate conspiracies to attempt to rationalize and make order out of the chaos they are perceiving. Since schizophrenic events are often accompanied with a cognitive skills impact the conspiracies do not seem too outlandish to one so affected.
Most normal people can look at a problem of moderate complexity and come to the same conclusion. The schizophrenic will come to a different, completely irrational conclusion, and if you don’t agree with them YOU must be crazy, because to them it is so obvious. For Example:
Three plus seven is 18 and I can prove it by counting the clouds outside. If you can’t see that than you are either an effing idiot or a liar.
The unfortunate truth is that for those so affected such as Jarrod Loughner, who perpetrated the Gabby Giffords shooting in Arizona, in his schizophrenic mind he had to shoot Giffords and her party because reason demanded it.
In more severe cases the schizophrenic may hear voices, see people who aren’t there and have conversations with them that are as real to them as can be. For some schizophrenics the life they live behind their own eyes is like a Clive Barker horror movie that they can never escape from without treatment.
Those who get the help can usually be treated with the proper medication. Those who do not usually try to self medicate with drugs or alcohol to try to cope.
To compound the problem, there are a great many family doctors who simply “don’t get” schizophrenia and I have personally encountered a staff psychiatrist at a hospital who could not comprehend the condition. Why? Largely because of “Normalcy Bias”. In a nutshell, those with “Normalcy Bias” apply their ability to reason to everyone else and assume that simply because the person with the bias can make out the situation with relative ease, that the schizophrenic patient must also, so therefore the patient is just lying, or acting out for attention etc. They will ask things like, “Well if you heard things then how come you don’t now” and “you are all better now you faker?” Those with schizophrenia and associated conditions have episodes where the problem is much worse, and much better. Stress can bring about a psychotic episode even over the effects of medication.
As in the case of Jarrod Loughner, the signs were there, lots of people including parents, teachers, administrators and even police saw them and yet, no one took the appropriate action.
The UK Daily Mail published a quite complete bio of Adam Lanza that shows that he fit the profile of someone with a schizophrenic or similar disorder. Here are excerpts:
Crazed killer Adam Lanza was a ‘ticking time bomb’ who suffered from Asperger’s Syndrome and was painfully shy and awkward, former classmates said yesterday.
Last night, a troubling portrait began to emerge of the ‘Goth’ loner, who dressed all in black and was obsessed with video games.
Goth like “death music” with theses about rejection, suicide, and the horrors of the world seem appealing to schizophrenics as in some ways it is how they perceive their own world. Some video games are popular with schizophrenics because in them they can have some control over their reality and create dramatic scenarios , again, in which unlike in the real world, they have some control.
Others say Lanza used to be a mild-mannered student in high school, making the honor roll, and living with his mother, Nancy Lanza, who in turn loved playing dice games and decorating their upscale home for the holidays.
‘No one is surprised. He always seemed like he was someone who was capable of that because he didn’t really connect with our high school, with our town.’
Another former school friend, Jamie Crespo, 19, said: ‘He used to hang with the freaks, guys who dressed in trench coats.’
Other students remember him walking through school dressed in black, carrying a black briefcase.
Family friends said Lanza’s problems started to escalate when his parents divorced in 2008 after 18 years together.
His father Peter, a wealthy executive for General Electric, who is believed to earn $1 million a year, moved out of the family home in 2006, citing ‘irreconcilable differences’.
One of Lanza’s former classmates spoke of his ‘noticeable decline’ after his parents’ divorce. ‘He was a loner at school and hyper intelligent,’ he said. ‘But in recent years he disappeared off the radar.
‘The word is that he was badly affected when his parents split and that might be what pushed him over the edge.’
‘He was always weird but the divorce affected him. He was arguing with his mother. He was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.’
In several press accounts, Adam Lanza went from a typical Asperger’s kid, to a dark, more disturbed, more isolated troubled young man. This is typical of those with schizophrenia because it tends to manifest itself after puberty. Stress tends to bring on more psychotic events and makes the condition worse.
A relative to the family said that Adam Lanza was ‘obviously not well,’ adding that he often seemed troubled.
Lanza’s aunt, Marsha Lanza, said her nephew was raised by kind, nurturing parents who would not have hesitated to seek mental help for him if he needed it.
Everyone hesitated including mom and dad. As is so often the case, parents and some relatives just won’t see it. Some are shamed into inaction, some are just too proud to admit that “their offspring is schizo” because of the stigma. Some are simply in denial. “Oh he just had a bad day”, “but he only does that sometimes”, “the stressful situation made him do it”, “no really he is better now (until the next psychotic episode)”, “but what can I do”, “it’s just kids being kids” and “every kid now a days acts strange” are typical rationalities.
How long did mom (who is now dead sadly) hesitate?
The New York Daily News reports:
Less than a week before her son would launch his horrifying attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School, Nancy Lanza knew “she was losing him” and that “he was getting worse.”
A drinking buddy of Lanza told The Daily News that her son Adam had long been troubled and rarely came up in conversation.
“She just looked down at the glass and said, ‘I don’t know. I’m worried I’m losing him,’” said the bar pal, who did not wish to be named, of the ominous conversation at the bar My Place in Newtown, Conn.
“She said it was getting worse. She was having trouble reaching him.”
Adam, who the coroner’s office said Sunday shot Nancy Lanza, 54, several times in the head before unleashing a nightmarish attack that killed 20 schoolchildren and six others Friday, was prone to hurting himself, the drinking buddy said.
“Nancy told me he was burning himself with a lighter. In the ankles or arms or something,” he recalled of a conversation they had about a year ago. “It was like he was trying to feel something.”
Self mutilation such as cutting and burning actually provide temporary relief to those having psychotic events of depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Criminal Psychologist Dr. Alan Lipman: The FACT is that every One of these episodes Is proceeded by an undiagnosed mental illness:
UPDATE II – Unconfirmed report that Nancy Lanza was petitioning the court for conservator-ship over her son to have him involuntarily committed:
Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims’ families worship.
“From what I’ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,” Flashman told FoxNews.com. “Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”
Off the cuff, I do not think this update is true. If it is where is the court petition and where is the attorney? I do think that it is entirely possible that she discussed doing this at one point. However, if Connecticut had an AOT law such as “Laura’s Law” Nancy Lanza would have been able to get Adam Lanza the help he needed with little difficulty. But who is it who actively resists such laws? Read below.
Far Left Groups Defeated Connecticut Mental Health Protection Laws Just Months Before Shooting (Via Jim Hoft):
Counter Contempt reported:
Here’s a fact you might not know – Connecticut is one of only SIX states in the U.S. that doesn’t have a type of “assisted outpatient treatment” (AOT) law (sometimes referred to as “involuntary outpatient treatment”). There’s no one standard for these types of laws, but (roughly speaking) these are laws that allow for people with mental illness to be forcibly treated BEFORE they commit a serious crime. Whereas previous legal standards held that the mentally ill cannot be institutionalized or medicated until they harm someone or themselves, or until they express an immediate intent to do so, AOT laws (again, roughly speaking) allow for preventative institutionalization or forced medication (I highly recommend reading the data cited in the link I provided in this paragraph, especially regarding what is known as “first episode psychosis”).
AOT laws vary state-by-state, and often bear the name of a person murdered by an untreated mentally ill person (“Kendra’s Law” in New York, “Laura’s Law” in California, etc.).
Earlier this year, Connecticut considered passing an AOT law (and a weak one, at that), and it failed, due to protests from “civil liberties” groups.
Most states have laws and even a 1-800 mental health hotline and free clinics to help those who are mentally ill. Arizona had such laws and facilities, but not even the local police called the number after they determined that Jarod Loughner had troubles perceiving reality. Loughner, like Lanza should have been forcibly evaluated. If evaluated, Jarrod Loughner would not have been able to buy the weapon that he bought to do his terrible deed as his evaluation would have been reported to the proper authorities.
We have gun laws that work pretty well, but no system works unless the people on the ground take action to put those laws and resources into action.
Those who engage in “Normalcy Bias” when it comes to mental illness have plenty of cover in leftist academia (also via Jim Hoft):
For Your Country posted this back after schizophrenic Jared Loughner went on his shooting rampage in Arizona that left several people dead and US Rep. Gabby Giffords seriously wounded.
It actually very hard to force people with severe mental diseases to be treated because of a range of reforms pushed by progressives starting in the 60′s:
- Ronald David Laing, a Scottish Psychiatrist, In the 60′s put forth the foundation of the Anti-Psychiatry movement. He maintained that schizophrenia was “a theory not a fact”. The popularity of Laing’s theories is blamed for decline in students entering the psychology profession.
- President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 Community Mental Health Centers Act accelerated the trend toward deinstitutionalization with the establishment of a network of community mental health centers and changes in laws regarding commitment.
- Kenneth Kesey, wrote “One Flew over the Cukoo’s Nest” based in part on Laing’s thinking (and his own intensive use of drugs). “Kesey did not believe that these patients were insane, rather that society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas of how people were supposed to act and behave.” The Book,play, and later the movie, portrayed a anti-psychiatry philosophy leading to a public displeasure with residential mental facilities resulting in further deinstitutionalization policies.
- Deinstitutioanlization led to many legal and structural changes. American public mental hospital patients declined from more than 550,000 in 1955 to fewer than 40,000 at present. The displaced patients now represent 30-50% of the homeless populations.
As a result of Laing, Kennedy, Kesey and public efforts to transform the mental health care system to be more humane, to characterize mentally ill people as “Just thinking differently”, and characterizing mental health care as some form of evil, we now have a system that makes it virtually impossible to get folks like Loughner the care they need.
Deinstitutionalization policies driven by “do good” liberals and the federal government put focus on limited bad acts. Kesey wrote a story based on his LSD induced observations in one VA mental hospital. Once his story was put into film, his small example falsely characterized the bulk of mental health care as dehumanizing and made it impossible to force the Loughners of the world to get treatment.
Critics will focus on gun control after today’s school massacre. The focus should be on failed liberal policies that excuse rather than assist extremely dysfunctional individuals.
Related:
Illinois Issues blog: Closing mental health facilities could cause other problems, opponents say
Alabama Plans to Shut Most Mental Hospitals
After closing psychiatric hospitals, Michigan incarcerates mentally ill
Illinois Mental Hospitals to Turn Away Thousands of Patients
We here at Political Arena are the last to look for government to offer up solutions, but in the case of the mentally ill, most do not have insurance and need state assistance for treatment. Only by education and treatment on a level comparable to that which has been used to combat AIDS will this problem get seriously better.
But What About Guns
[Editor’s Note – While not every teacher in Israel carries a rifle, military personnel, reservists, and those with a gun license may carry a weapon openly in Israel. Israel provides armed security for most of its institutions including schools.]
While there is no question that those who are bent on destruction will often find a way to do so with or without access to firearms, sometimes access to guns, in this case stolen guns from a relative, amplifies the damage a disturbed person can cause.
It is important to examine the big picture. In Switzerland and Israel where guns are everywhere there is very little gun crime and very few mass shootings, but in areas of Europe that have gun control laws that essentially turn the citizens into mere subjects, according to studies by Dr. John R. Lott and others, per capita they have about the same number of deaths via mass shooting as the United States does. In states areas where more citizens carry guns legally there are drops in crime and gun violence in almost every instance. Put simply, criminals and those with ill intent prefer helpless unarmed victims.
England may have a virtual ban on guns, but they also have among the highest violent crime in the world, even higher than South Africa and the United States. England’s gun crime increased by 35% in the years following the ban.
In fact, it seems that the Aurora, Colorado Cinemark shooter, aside from being schizophrenic, targeted that particular theater because it had signs up announcing that it was a “Gun Free Zone”.
UPDATE – When Adam Lanza discovered that armed responders were on the scene, that is when the rampage ended – “We surmise that it was during the second classroom episode that he heard responders coming and apparently at that, decided to take his own life,” Mr. Malloy said on ABC’s “This Week.”
According to the Brady Center to Prevent Handgun Violence Connecticut ranks fifth best in the country for toughest gun laws.
Dana Loesch has put together a handy list of sourced and credible statistics about gun crime in general. Notice how violent crime, according to government and academic sources, is much higher in areas where citizens are restricted from using firearms for self defense.
Those with a knee jerk reaction may blame the guns, but do they credit guns with the killing of Osama bin Laden or do they credit the Navy Seals? There is clearly a double standard at play here, and in the case of politicians who know better, the double standard is an agenda driven one.
That agenda is parroted by a liberal elite media which not only focuses on the guns due to their statist ideology, that agenda is also what results in that same elite media not reporting cases where armed citizens prevented mass shooting such as the case of Appalachian Law School, and just two days ago an armed citizen stopped a mall shooting in Portland. When the deranged gunman saw the armed citizen he took cover and then took his own life. When heroic Sandy Brook School principal Dawn Hochsprung lunged at Adam Lanza, she deserved to have the right to lunge at him with something better than a ball point pen.
Many critics are being nakedly political by blaming the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA trains every police firearms instructor and almost every civilian firearms safety instructor in the country. The NRA runs the largest firearm safety program for kids in the country and teaches in many schools. The NRA is also the most powerful political lobby in Washington DC.
Blaming the NRA for this tragedy is like blaming anti-drug war groups for substance abuse and drug overdoses. It really does not get much more irrational than that.
Adam Carolla on Samuel L. Jackson’s Gross Hypocrisy (video)
Samuel L. Jackson is a very talented actor to be sure, but this is about how his political activism and his actions are exactly the opposite, as is the case with limousine liberals in general.
Jackson sticks up for the most extreme in the Democratic Party, their taxes, the excessive regulation, the union over reach and thuggery, right down the line. But when Jackson wants to make a movie does he make it in Los Angeles where he will pay the taxes, deal with the regulations and pay the union labor with all of their rules? Nope. He goes to Canada so he can make the movie cheaper up there and increase his already ridiculous profits and wealth; all while the working man in America is losing work.
Judy Garland: Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas! (video)
Part of engaging the culture, is bringing culture to the young. Most people under age 35 might have no idea that this lovely Judy Garland was a household name known all over the world. After you hear her sing you will not doubt why.
Gov. Christie takes down Jon Stewart (video)
The politics of the left has been “divide & conquer” and ridicule and Gov. Christie tells Jon Stewart just how destructive shows like his are.
Were “The Crusaders” oppressors as the progressive secular left would have you believe? (video)
Retired police officer who calls himself “Wild Bill” gives an important and largely accurate portrayal of “The Crusades” and the Crusaders.
The simple truth is that the crusades largely were a response to invading Muslim armies. They will not tell you that in a public school.
Pat Condell on Islamaphobia Month (video)
This is one of the best videos Pat Condell has put out.
Radical Islamists are great at playing the victim card when in the minority, but when in the majority they become “aggressive oppressors” as Condell says. .
I will add that I am friends with some Shiia Muslims who escaped the Mullah’s in Iran and they hate the radicals such as Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Will: Colleges have free speech on the run
Parents, what you are about to read here is commonplace on American universities today. And you may be thinking, “I am in a conservative town so not my local university”…. well you are sadly mistaken.
This very writer is from South Bend, Indiana. Mike Pence is our new governor, Jackie Walorski is our new Member of Congress, and Indiana was the first state to go to Mitt Romney in the election. Yet, I can tell you with absolute certainty that Christians, traditionalists, and conservatives face discrimination and persecution on campus.
This very writer, when faced with persecution on campus, went very high profile on campus and used a strategy of making the left fear me. Having been a radio talk show host and a person with some resources I had that option, but many traditional students don’t.
Pro-life professors at Notre Dame, the largest Catholic University in the world, are persecuted on campus because the radical left has all but taken over the institution since Father Hessburg actively recruited Marxists to work at the university.
Hundreds of thousands of communists didn’t suddenly become libertarians after the East German wall fell. They had to go somewhere and most of them ended up “teaching” our kids. There are plenty of them on almost every campus in America.
At Tufts, a conservative newspaper committed “harassment” by printing accurate quotations from the Koran and a verified fact about the status of women in Saudi Arabia. Lukianoff says that Tufts may have been the first American institution “to find someone guilty of harassment for stating verifiable facts directed at no one in particular.”
He documents how “orientation” programs for freshmen become propaganda to (in the words of one orthodoxy enforcer) “leave a mental footprint on their consciousness.” Faculty, too, can face mandatory consciousness-raising.
In 2007, Donald Hindley, a politics professor at Brandeis, was found guilty of harassment because when teaching Latin American politics he explained the origin of the word “wetbacks,” which refers to immigrants crossing the Rio Grande. Without a hearing, the university provost sent Hindley a letter stating that the university “will not tolerate inappropriate, racial and discriminatory conduct.” The assistant provost was assigned to monitor Hindley’s classes “to ensure that you do not engage in further violations of the nondiscrimination and harassment policy.” Hindley was required to attend “anti-discrimination training.”
Such coercion is a natural augmentation of censorship. Next comes mob rule. Last year, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the vice provost for diversity and climate — really; you can’t make this stuff up — encouraged students to disrupt a news conference by a speaker opposed to racial preferences. They did, which the vice provost called “awesome.” This is the climate on an especially liberal campus that celebrates “diversity” in everything but thought.
“What happens on campus,” Lukianoff says, “doesn’t stay on campus” because censorship has “downstream effects.” He quotes a sociologist whose data he says demonstrate that “those with the highest levels of education have the lowest exposure to people with conflicting points of view.” This encourages “the human tendency to live within our own echo chambers.” Parents’ tuition dollars and student indebtedness pay for this. Good grief.
Milton Friedman vs a Socialist Professor and the 100% Inheritance Tax (video)
Milton Friedman vs a Socialist Professor
Milton Friedman on the 100% inheritance Tax
Leftist Academics Rewriting American History Schoolbooks: George Washington Nixed….
The fastest way to undermine a country is to undermine its history, and the best place to begin is in the nation’s classrooms where pliable young minds are easily influenced. This is precisely what the left has been doing for decades, and with evident success. The left has made great strides in undermining the family, taking over the public square, and dominating education at all levels. But some of its most effective work has been in revising America’s history. Russian philosopher Alexander Solzhenitzyn said: “To destroy a people you must first sever their roots.” Patrick Buchanan said: “To create a ‘new people,’ the agents of our cultural revolution must first create a new history; and that project is well advanced.”
In 1992 that bastion of liberal thought, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), received a two-million-dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education to develop new standards for history books for grades five through twelve. UCLA completed this assignment in 1997. Since that time, its standards have had the intended effect. UCLA’s standards for history books for public school children have resulted in the following:
- No mention in history books of such American luminaries as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or the Wright Brothers. It is the lives of exceptional Americans such as these, among many other factors, that validate the concept of American exceptionalism. Consequently, to undermine the concept, liberals must remove any reference to exceptional acts and exceptional people in American history.
- The founding dates of the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women are given special significance. In truth, the only thing that warrants inclusion of these organizations in history books is that they are considered sacred institutions by the left.
- Instructions for teachers concerning how to teach the unit which covers the traitor Alger Hiss and the spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg encourages leeway to teach the unit either way. In other words, teachers are given the leeway to teach the unit as if Hiss was not a traitor and the Rosenbergs were innocent. This is the same Alger Hiss who was convicted by a jury on the basis of hard evidence, evidence that since his conviction has been validated many times over by further discoveries. These are the same Rosenbergs who gave America’s atom-bomb secrets to Joseph Stalin.
- The Constitutional Convention is not even mentioned. One of the reasons for this is that the deliberations of America’s founders as recorded in numerous documents such as the Federalist Papers as well as those of the anti-federalists are clearly at odds with today’s liberal orthodoxy. The tactic of the left is simple. If the founder’s views do not reinforce those of the left, eliminate any reference to their views in history books.
- George Washington’s presidency is not mentioned nor is his famous farewell address. Rather than learn about the two terms of our country’s first president—two terms in which everything Washington did was precedent setting—students are encouraged to develop an imaginary dialogue between an Indian Leader and General Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War. What students are supposed to learn and how students are supposed to benefit from this hypothetical dialogue is not explained.
- The Soviet Union is commended for its great strides in space exploration, but America’s moon landing is not mentioned.
- Teachers are urged to have students conduct a mock trial for John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil. No mention is made of the fact that the homes of most of the students are heated by energy derived from petroleum and the gasoline in the cars driven by teachers comes from petroleum.
The new history standards developed by UCLA have had far-reaching effects. Look at any history book written for public school students in the K-12 system and you will be appalled at what is included and what is not. There are now history books being used in America classrooms that give more coverage to Madonna than to George Washington. Further, America is often portrayed in the way that Barack Obama appears to view it: as a villainous nation bent on world dominance, imperialism, the perpetuation of slavery, and a variety of other evils. What is less likely to be found is any positive coverage concerning a Constitution that guarantees the rights of everyone, including liberals who are bent on the destruction of America as the founders envisioned it.
U. Texas Journalism Prof: US Founding Fathers like “Nazi’s”,
Parents, this kind of nuttery on campus is not uncommon. Most universities pay very low wages, barely enough to pay one’s student loans, so universities tend to often attract the least capable of academics who cannot make it in the private sector, or ideologues like Prof. Jensen who are so radical that the private sector is out of their reach.
Forget all that turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, today should be a day of fasting and atonement for American “sin.” That’s according to Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Jensen, known for his hard-left politics, also calls Thanksgiving a “white-supremacist holiday.”
Jensen’s opinion piece “No Thanks for Thanksgiving,” appeared on the far-left, Soros-connected website Alternet on Thanksgiving eve. In it, he wrote how Native Americans suffered because of the “European invasion of the Americas.” He went on to compare the Founding Fathers to Nazi Germany. “How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis?” he asked.
Exactly who is “the establishment”?
This wonderful column by Steve McCann eloquently describes many of the problems this very web site was created to address and it is one of the most important columns of the year.
“Yet there is no sense of urgency or desire on the part of the governing class to level with the American people” – Indeed and think about it. Every politician says that they want a balanced budget, but will we ever get one again?
The United States will not reverse its descent into the abyss of financial and societal bankruptcy until the current political and governing establishment is replaced. That will not happen until the American people, who have been deliberately ill-educated and deceived, experience first-hand the early stages of the turmoil and suffering extant in Europe and elsewhere.
While professing to care for the interests of the average person, the underlying motivation for the vast majority of the governing class or Establishment is first and foremost self-aggrandizement and the acquisition of wealth. While a few may be motivated by ideology, the preponderance are not.
There are no offices on Connecticut Avenue in Washington D.C. with signs reading “The Republican Establishment” or the “The Democratic Establishment”; rather it is an amalgam of like-minded groups with one common interest: the control of the government purse-strings and the attendant power contained within.
The Republican and Democratic political establishments are made up of the following:
1) many current and nearly all retired national office holders whose livelihood and narcissistic demands depends upon fealty to Party and access to government largesse;
2) the majority of the media elite, including pundits, editors, writers and television news personalities based in Washington and New York whose proximity to power and access is vital to their continued standard of living;
3) academia, numerous think-tanks, so-called non-government organizations, and lobbyists who fasten onto those in the administration and Congress for employment, grants, favorable legislation and ego-gratification;
4) the reliable deep pocket political contributors and political consultants whose future is irrevocably tied to the political machinery of the Party; and
5) the crony capitalists, i.e. leaders of the corporate and financial community as well as unions whose entities are dependent on or subject to government oversight and/or benevolence .
The current iteration of the Democratic establishment was begun during Franklin Roosevelt’s 12 years in office as the Party chose to follow the lead of those such as Benito Mussolini in Italy, who promoted government as the source of all salvation and survival. This philosophy fit in nicely with those whose egos and drive was directed toward the aggregation of power and wealth.
The Republican members of the governing class, with the exception of the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the Republican controlled House of Representatives from 1995 to 1998, have been content since 1946 to merely slow down the big-government policies of the Democrats, while publically decrying their tax and spend policies. However, in truth, many have been comfortable with reaping the financial and ego-gratifying rewards of such indifference.
Since the1950’s this overall scenario has been tolerated and generally ignored as the nation was experiencing overwhelming and seemingly endless prosperity. The Democrats, with the tacit consent of the Republican establishment, promoted an ever-increasing litany of government programs to ostensibly help the people, under the rubric that the nation could not only afford it but was, in fact, obligated to guarantee a “decent” standard of living for everyone. Further, in the 1960’s the American left, as the Republican establishment turned a blind eye, began to dominate the education agenda. The public’s children were no longer taught American history and the importance of individual liberty; instead, the basics of capitalism and wealth creation were demonized. Additionally, the essential characteristic of a flourishing republic — a society wedded to honor, decency and integrity — was demeaned and ridiculed.
Thus the citizenry has become more willing to not only vote for whoever promises the most financial security, but they are now easily susceptible to unconscionable demagoguery and are increasingly tolerant of dishonesty as well as unethical behavior. Today, with the advent of welfare, food stamps, near endless unemployment benefits, free health care (Medicaid), and a myriad of other state and federal programs, the Democrats have succeeded in creating a virtually permanent voting bloc. One the Republican Establishment now claims, if they wish to win future elections, they must pander to as part of a new strategy of inclusion. Yet, by their acquiescence and indifference over the years, they helped create their electoral dilemma.
How have all these promises and deceptions perpetrated on the American people placed the nation’s financial future in jeopardy? Since 1956 the United States has seen a phenomenal growth in its Gross Domestic Product from $3,700 Billion (inflation adjusted) to $16,100 Billion (+335%). However, government spending at all levels has grown from $978 Billion (inflation adjusted) to $6,400 Billion (+554%) and the nation’s debt, $2,250 Billion in 1956 (inflation adjusted) is now $16,300 Billion (+625%). (source: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com)
As of today, the nation’s true indebtedness (promises that have been made for spending obligations, less all the taxes the Treasury expects to collect) exceeds $222,000 Billion. The indebtedness to Gross Domestic Product ($16,100 Billion) is a staggering 13.8 to 1. The United States is not facing bankruptcy, it is bankrupt.
Yet there is no sense of urgency or desire on the part of the governing class to level with the American people. This nation is living on the residue of the economic growth begun in the 1950’s and accelerated in the 1980’s. That tidal wave of prosperity has ebbed. The United States has entered into a death spiral of unrestrained spending, excessive taxation, printing near worthless money, and stagnant economic activity. Rather than be straightforward with the populace, the governing class is content to paper over the problem by the usual shell games of phony long-term spending cuts, more borrowing, and prevarications about the efficacy of raising taxes on “the rich.”
The true nature of the GOP establishment’s motivation has been exposed by their reaction to the Tea Party movement. This grassroots rebellion was the first manifestation of the awareness by a large portion of the American public of the nation’s problems and ultimate consequences. Despite the overwhelming success of the Tea Party working within the Republican Party in the 2010 mid-term elections, nearly all of the Republican elites downplayed their success and fell-in with the mainstream media and the Democrats in their well-worn and gratuitous aspersions against these concerned and patriotic Americans. The Tea Party movement poses a threat to not only the accumulated power of the governing class but their livelihoods, thus the concerted effort to marginalize them by any vile or preposterous means possible.
The United States finds itself in a circumstance once thought unthinkable. An ill-educated and near morally bankrupt society increasingly made up of those dependent on government combined with a governing class whose primary interest is themselves. The nation cannot, therefore, make any meaningful course correction unless and until the people finally understand they have been lied to and conned by the current establishment. That will, in all likelihood, not occur until America faces imminent collapse and the citizenry turns on those who brought the nation to its knees.
How the George Soros Smear Machine Works (video)
This is one of Bill O’Reilly’s best segments ever; with Dr. Monica Crowley and Phil Kent.
Science Fiction is the last playground of the philosophers – Gene Roddenberry (video)
We have said many times here at Political Arena that just quoting people facts and Lincoln-Douglass style debate isn’t enough. In order to teach the great lessons of life and deeper wisdom, it must be done through stories and narratives.
Star Trek is one of the very best programs that demonstrates this truth. Several of the Greek philosophers, plays, and literature have their work retold in Star Trek. The Roman legal philosopher and rhetorician Cicero is featured throughout the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine shows. William Shakespeare also is well represented in Star Trek.
To the intellectually dim Star Trek is just “space invaders” with actors, but to those with eyes to see and ears to hear, to the intellectually and philosophically curious, Star Trek becomes a wondrous teaching tool that can be used to reinforce the ideals that America was founded upon.
Here is an example:
Star Trek: Samuel T. Cogley Attorney at Law
Star Trek: The Wisdom of Captain Jean Luc Picard
Another reason why Star Trek works as a story telling medium is that the people of Star Trek are exploring the final frontier. Americans are a frontier people who have run out of “frontier”.
The cruelest and most hilarious TV prank of all time (video)
Courtesy of Brazilian TV. ENJOY!!
Leftist film critics think those who liked “Red Dawn” are mentally ill. Sound Familiar? – UPDATED!
The elite media film reviews of the film remake of Red Dawn speak volumes of just who and what is in the elite media. The hostility is so great that they couldn’t help but reveal their collectivist politics in the reviews.
Did the idea of communists in America offend them? Not in the least. Did the idea of some American’s becoming sympathizers with and aiding the invading communists in the film make them even flinch? Nope.
What made the elite media positively furious? The idea of traditional Americans, including an active duty US Marine and three retired Marines, gearing up to act as an insurgent force to make the invading communists regret trying to gain a foothold in the United States.
In fact, so indoctrinated into the radical left are so many in the elite media including these film critics, that they present the exact same false narrative that communists throughout history have treated domestic dissidents who would dare oppose them; they present them or accuse them of being mentally ill.
The film’s critical drubbing was about more than just storytelling hiccups, says National Review contributor John J. Miller.
“Better dead than Red Dawn,” sneered the Washington Post’s Rita Kempley, who called the film “sick and silly.” Janet Maslin of the New York Times labeled it “rabidly inflammatory,” “incorrigibly gung-ho,” and “a virulently alarmist fable.” Bob Thomas of the Associated Press condemned its “bathos” as “unrelenting.” Perhaps these were the honest assessments of dispassionate reviewers….
The makers of Red Dawn, complained Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times, “spent too much time playing to the rabid anti-Commies.” You know: The movie must be awful because those icky conservatives approve of it. Even today, many liberals resort to knee-jerk denunciations: “Its guiding ideology is actually fascism,” wrote David Plotz of Slate in 2008.
That was then. This is the response the “Red Dawn” remake is getting from movie critics.
The Chicago Reader calls it a “Tea Party wet dream.” Time Magazine says “both movies play like hokey advertisements for the National Rifle Association, injected with high school pep rally enthusiasm.”
The Washington Post’s review says the film will be “red meat for tea party patriots,” as if Obama voters would rather allow an invading force take over rather than fight back.
Well film critics, we cannot speak for “all Obama voters”, but in your case the constant overt hostility you have shown over the years to American Exceptionalism leaves little doubt as to whose side you would end up aiding…just as Ronald Reagan knew all so well:
[Editor’s Note – I have seen the film, and even though it is not as good as the original, it is fun and worth the cost of a few tickets and popcorn. The biggest flaw in the film is that the film creators didn’t take a little more time to develop the characters to a point where you really cared about them. People make a story and stories are not as interesting when you don’t have a certain intimacy or identity with the characters.]
UPDATE:
Kate Dalzell comments – Goodness, what will these children think of next. Seriously, anything that has the slightest hint of pro-America or American exceptionalism throws these reprobates into a fear-based frenzy. Since they cannot self-govern, anything that opposes that which protects them from having to do so will induce such a tremendous amount of fear that they feel they must project, as a weapon, in order to maintain their therapeutic state.
Kimberly Saunders comments – Who wouldn’t like an America kicks ass over bad guys movie? I’d call it unAmerican and mentally ill if you didn’t like it.
Supreme Court to reexamine Obamacare
The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal appeals court to reconsider Liberty University’s legal argument that President Obama’s health care law violates the school’s religious freedom.
The case will be returned to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.
“Today’s ruling breathes new life into our challenge to ObamaCare,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, which filed the suit on behalf of the school, said Monday. “Our fight against ObamaCare is far from over.”
A federal judge in 2010 rejected Liberty’s claim, and the appeals court later ruled the lawsuit was premature and failed to address the substance of the school’s arguments.
The Supreme Court upheld the health care law in June 2012.
In the high court’s 5-4 decision, the justices used lawsuits filed by 26 states and the National Federation of Independent Business to uphold the health care law, then rejected all other pending appeals, including Liberty’s.
The school is challenging the constitutionality of the part of the law that mandates employers provide insurance and whether forcing insurers to pay for birth control is unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause.
The appeals court ruled last year the Anti-Injunction Act barred it from addressing the merits in the case. The act blocks any challenge to a “tax” before a taxpayer pays it — in this case referring to the penalties associated with failing to obtain health insurance.
However, the Supreme Court’s ruling stated the act did not serve as a barrier to lawsuits challenging the health care law. On that basis, Liberty University immediately petitioned the court to allow it to renew its original case.
Cadell, Gingrich, Ingraham: The Republican Establishment Consultant Complex Responsible for Romney Defeat
[Editor’s Note – For anyone concerned about politics, or freedom in general, or the culture, should read this post carefully and watch every video link. We are gratified to see that that some in the regular GOP are seeing what we have seen for a long time which we summed up in our “Why Republican’s Lost” post. Fortunately I have been told by a mutual friend of this editor and the former Speaker that he was told to read our post. If he did it certainly shows in his speech at Restoration Weekend sponsored by Dave Horowitz.]
Newt Gingrich’s and Laura Ingraham’s speech at Restoration Weekend.
Read carefully what former Democratic political strategist Pat Caddell has to say which has been well reported by Breitbart News:
Speaking at The David Horowitz Freedom Center’s “Restoration Weekend” in Florida on November 16, Pat Caddell indicted what he called the Republican “consultant-lobbyist-establishment” complex for losing a presidential campaign in 2012 President Barack Obama had no business winning.
“No presidential campaign should be run by consultants,” Caddell said. “They should be run by people who are committed to the candidate and not into making big money.”
Caddell, the former Jimmy Carter adviser who consulted on the “Hope and the Change” movie that profiled disaffected Obama 2008 voters who were not going to vote for him in 2012, warned Republicans that the consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex may threaten to take the party into oblivion if not marginalized.
The Romney campaign, Caddell said, was driven be establishment consultants and was a failure of mechanics and message.
“But most of all, it was a failure of imagination,” Caddell said. ““It was the single worst campaign in modern history of a challenger who had a chance to win … and that’s the truth and nothing can take away from that.”
Caddell said “Republicans never attempted to put a frame around the national election” because “the people who run the messaging in the Republican party and their consultants refused to do it.”
As a result, Rommey lost decisively to voters who voted for the candidate who “cares about me,” which was more than 20% of the electorate. Many of these voters are Reagan Democrats and independents.
“You have to have some connection to the people,” Caddell said, noting Romney lost the “empathy vote” by 65 percentage points to Obama.
Caddell said the Republican establishment thought, “We don’t have to do anything, [Obama] will be defeated because of the economy.”
He said Republicans believed the “numbers” told them they would win the election, and that is why many in the establishment and consultant class thought they could win by default by “holding the ball” and running out the clock. As a result, Caddell said the party neither controls the presidency nor the Senate after having played so unimaginatively and cautiously in 2012.
Caddell blasted the Romney campaign’s strategy of not running positive biographical ads about Romney until the convention. He said he was puzzled the Romney campaign did not play up Romney’s success in managing the Winter Olympics, which the Obama campaign even admitted was a winning issue.
More shockingly, Caddell said the Romney campaign made no effort to run positive spots about Bain Capital, even after Ted Kennedy’s campaign had already eviscerated Romney over Bain during the Senate campaign two decades ago. Letting the Obama campaign define Romney again was, he said, campaign malpractice.
Caddell asked: “Don’t you think you would want to say something positive about Bain?”
Caddell also wondered why Romney, who spent nearly $50 million of his own money in losing the 2008 GOP presidential primary, did not loan his campaign a similar amount of money in the spring so his campaign could more positively define him to voters.
He then brutally told donors in the audience that the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex took millions of dollars from them to only enrich themselves without having any meaningful impact on the election.
“You donors and others were played for marks by groups like [Karl Rove’s American] Crossroads,” Caddell said, noting that establishment super PACs cared more about “preserving arrangements in the media.”
Too often, Caddell said the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex ignores anything that could be effective if it does not allow them to profit.
For instance, even though a Frank Luntz focus group found that the “Hope and the Change” movie was the most effective way for Republicans to appeal to independent voters, Caddell accused the Republican “consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex” of not utilizing the film because “that communication didn’t fit” in their conventional plans to make the consultant class wealthy.
Caddell said Republicans have to go away from a bureaucratic, top-down approach to messaging and outreach and be more imaginative in the future if they do not want to go the way of the Whigs. He said Republicans have been so poor on combating narratives and framing their own messages that minorities — like Asians — voted overwhelmingly for Obama despite sharing conservative values because they think Republicans “do not care about minorities.”
He said the Republican party needed to be more imaginative — like promoting education reform against teachers unions as the new battle for civil rights and running against corruption in Washington, which a Breitbart News/Judicial Watch Election Night poll found 85% of voters were concerned about.
“Why are Republicans not the anti-establishment party?,” Caddell asked.
Caddell emphasized a “narrative is a story” that comes over a period of time and “not just a single message.”
He cited Ronald Reagan as someone who knew how to speak to Democrats and “ordinary and common” Americans and bring them over to his side because Reagan had been one of them and came from regular Americans and shared their experiences.
“That is a quality that has been missing a long time in a search for alternative candidate,” Caddell said, in reference to Reagan’s ability to resonate with blue collar Americans.
In contrast, Caddell compared Romney to the “man on the wedding cake” and Thomas Dewey in 1948, who lost to Harry Truman in an election nobody thought Truman could win. Obama, Caddell said, turned “hope and change” into “divide and conquer” and activated his liberal base just like Truman energized the New Deal coalition in 1948.
Caddell said Republicans played into Obama’s strategy because they continued to believe they could win by default and did not aggressively confront Obama and his machine. For instance, even after the first debate in which Romney thumped Obama, Caddell said Republicans tried to run out the clock. They advised Romney not to challenge Obama on Libya, which Caddell said was as much of a transparency and honesty issue as a foreign policy issue.
As a result, the media was able to protect Obama and go on the offensive against Romney for most of the campaign.
Caddell again called the media the “enemy of the people” for wanting to protect Obama instead of trying to uncover the truth about Benghazi, and told Republicans if they do not confront the mainstream media like the Romney campaign failed to do, “they will continue to kill you.”
Caddell said those in the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex “do not want to hear any views from outsiders” because it threatens their racket. Caddell said this mentality will just result in more Republican losses unless this Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex is eviscerated.
“As long as the establishment wants to preserve the establishment and their special deals, you will lose,” Caddell said.
Condell: Who is morally superior, Hamas or Nazi’s? (video)
Pat Condell tells it like it is:
Pictures and Cartoons 11-21-2012
A very effective political pop-culture video
This video from “Generation J” goes a long way into busting the stereotypes and false narratives that the left is smearing anyone who threatens their power with:
Entertainment Exec: Congratulations to the GOP for losing the easiest election of our lifetime
Mr. entertainment CEO makes a good point. Romney did not do any of the late night shows such as Jay Leno nor did he appear on John Stewart. Romney did not do talk radio, which is bigger than any music format, or Fox News which beats the other news networks combined.
Richard Mgrdechian is doing something about it. He manages Madison Rising which features traditional messages in it’s music. Here is their YouTube channel.
Richard Mgrdechian:
Congratulations to the GOP for losing the easiest election of our lifetimes. Over the past four years, Obama has been exposed as a liar, a fraud, a charlatan and a scam. We’ve seen his policies of racism, divisiveness and class warfare tear at the fabric of our society on a daily basis. We’ve seen the national debt go up by $5 trillion during his watch. We’ve seen the value of the dollar go down dramatically over that same time. We’ve seen ambassadors killed overseas while he sits around and laughs it up with daytime talk show hosts. On top of it all, we’ve seen an endless amount of buyer’s remorse from people who voted for him the first time around and swore they would never do it again. Yet, even with all of this – and an economy in complete shambles – we still lost. The obvious question would have to be how is that possible? Well forget voter fraud, the Electoral College, how much we spent or anything else; at the end of the day the answer is clear and simple – we lost because, no matter how many times they talk about it, Republicans once again missed the boat on popular culture.
Keep reading, because I can tell you right now that this won’t be just another abstract article about what “needs” to be done by someone who has no clue, concept or desire to actually do anything about it, but needs to fill space in a weekly column or has to come up with something to talk about on the radio for a segment or two. No, this is an article about what is being done, what the hurdles have been – mostly from within our own party, by the way – and specific ideas on what we can do to make sure we’re ready next time around.
First of all, we need to understand that popular culture trumps politics every time. Why? Simple: logic and rational arguments are not cool, they’re not fun, they’re not easy and they’re not inspirational. Pop culture on the other hand, is – by definition – all of these things. Pop culture is what we do every day. Pop culture influences what we say, what we think, what we watch, how we dress, what we eat, what we buy and how we act. Ultimately, pop culture is what defines us both as people and as Americans.
Right now, as pathetic as it may be, our front line in the culture war is the Tea Party movement. Unfortunately, these organizations and their events are about as far from “parties” as humanly possible. In fact, the whole thing is more like a tea funeral, actually. Sure, they were effective for a year or so as a way of galvanizing support and aggregating people who felt frustrated and alone, but in reality these groups – especially given they way they are currently run – are completely unsustainable. After all, there are only so many times you can stand there and watch the same twenty people screaming at a podium about the same twenty things for four or five hours at a time. Yes, they truly are funerals in every sense of the word – boring, dreary, draining, unappealing, exhausting and most of all – they are killing the conservative movement.
The same thing seems to be true of the RNC itself, as well as the vast array of non-profits organizations that are supposed to be helping us educate voters, grow our base and win elections. From what I’ve seen, they’ve failed miserably at all three. Not only have they failed, they’ve absolutely refused to do anything innovative, to change their thinking in any manner whatsoever or to make any attempt at all to leverage the power of popular culture.
Political Arena 