DELETED TWEETS

The top 20 deleted tweets from liberals in 2012.  I guess people tweet without thinking, but it must somehow show what is in their hearts.  It reveals the violent aspect of those who so often publicly try to come across as caring individuals concerned about life and justice. 

OBAMA ON BENGHAZI

Obama blames the failures on "sloppiness"--I think better words could have been used.  People did die.  If government is this sloppy on foreign policy what other sloppiness is being committed by government?

GUN LAWS

Evidently strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia have not made people safer.

Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don't provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.

Because of my earlier post on violence in movies and my memories of less violence when there were no gun laws, I want to start following the pros and cons of gun laws as the reason crime goes up or down.

The American Civil Rights Union.  Quotes a Harvard study among others that nations with higher gun ownership have lower murder rates.

Washington Post.  Gun ownership in America is going down, but states with more sringent gun laws have fewer shooting deaths.

CNN.  Violent crime is up. . .but the WAPO study says gun ownership is declining so are more people using other weapons to commit crime???

WORST FISCAL IDEAS OF 2012

The Christian Science Monitor appears to be an equal opportunity judge--everything or everyone from California to Obama and the Tea Party came up with lousy fiscal proposals.

VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

After the recent Newtown school attack a lot of attention has been focused on guns as the cause of violence and mass-killings in America. Mass-killings is a phenomena my generation did not grow up with.  I am still not sure why someone needs an AK 47 or an Uzi, but I don't think guns are the real problem.

This afternoon I went to the theater to watch "Lincoln."  Before it began there were a number of the usual previews. 

The first preview was for "Gangster Land" which deals with Mickey Cohen's gangster activities in Los Angeles sometime before the 1960s. The film previews showed extensive gratuitous violence and people being shot in cold blood.  It got me thinking about the old black & white gangster movies I saw on TV as a teenager with Eliot Ness chasing Chicago gangsters and the later 1960s television program "The Untouchables" starring Robert Stack.  In those movies guns were fired and the bad guys died, but I never recall seeing gratuitous violence and the vivid depiction of gruesome death or killing.  And then I saw a preview of "Jack Reacher" starring Tom Cruise and more violence.  And in 2013 a remake of the "Lone Ranger" starring Johnny Depp is coming. . .but in the short preview it appears that it, too, is a far cry from the original Lone Ranger's fight against bad guys (most of whom were arrested and taken to jail).

I forget the other previews, but only one seemed to be non-violent and that was "Parental Guidance."  So out of 6 or so previews, only one seemed not to contain some kind of experiential excitement with death and violence. 

As I thought more about the movies of my younger and even college years and I just do not recall the blood and gore that I saw in today's movie previews.  Sure there were cowboy movies and bad guys got killed, but it was not done in a way that glorified the process of killing and dying.  And the good guys did not seem to get some kind of gruesome satisfaction about the whole process.  And even old monster movies did not dwell on the excitement of mass killing with the gore and blood that followed.  There was terror but the focus was not on watching the process of killing or dying. These movies may seem hokey today (they do to me), but killing did not create an adrenalin rush.

All this has cause me to consider holding Hollywood accountable for the violence in America today.  There were no gun laws to my knowledge until sometime in the 1990s, yet as I have said I don't recall the level of violence that I see today.  So are guns really the major problem?  If what I saw today is typical of Hollywood, shouldn't its violence be part of the media discussion.  Or is Hollywood producers just giving American audiences what they want?  If so, the problem goes deep into the American soul.

But as I watched "Lincoln" I saw a movie focused on the human struggle of Lincoln and others to deal with racial justice and civil war.  While battle scenes were graphically portrayed the focus was not on the process of killing, but the results of the horrors of war.  Violence is portrayed as something destructive, not something to create emotional excitement. I would hope one would leave the movie thinking about deeper issues of humanity than being titillated by the gruesome process of killing and psychopathic destruction.

AMERICAN DECLINE BEGINNING

Simon Johnson in Bloomberg. 

Those predicting an imminent American economic decline have usually been no exception. This time, though, they may be on to something.

Even so, the U.S. has serious economic, social and political problems. Just look at the current budget debacle. Democrats and Republicans are at each other’s throats, struggling theatrically, rather like Holmes and Moriarty above Reichenbach Falls. If they get a fiscal deal done in the next few weeks, do you really think it will result in a sensible tax system, or bring long-term health-care spending under control? Are we going to invest more in education? Will we really have a frank discussion about what kind of social-insurance programs we want, and how to pay for them?

TOP TEN FOREIGN RELATIONS BLUNDERS IN 2012

From U.S. News & World Report: 

1. Obama continuously mispronounces name of nobel laureate.
2. Romney's summer trip to Europe mistakes.
3. Julian Assange & Wikileaks.
4. Obama's "pivot" in Asia.
5. Obama's open microphone in meeting with Putin.
6. Biden asking audience if they knew of a serviceman serving in Iraq and Iran.
7. Romney's statement on Benghazi.
8. London Olympics when North Korean women's soccer team marched into stadium with South Korean flag.
9. Obama's failure to meet with other world leaders at UN meeting.
10. Europe's nomination for Nobel Peace Prize.

DEATH PENALTY FOR GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS

"Eliminationist rhetoric" from the left--these are pretty strong words even if they have been revised.  Global warming deniers are causing the deaths of millions so they must pay the penalty.

In this article I am going to suggest that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for influential GW deniers. But before coming to this surprising conclusion, please allow me to explain where I am coming from.

CHRISTIANITY DYING IN MIDDLE EAST

The Telegraph. 

The study warns that Christians suffer greater hostility across the world than any other religious group.

And it claims politicians have been “blind” to the extent of violence faced by Christians in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The most common threat to Christians abroad is militant Islam, it says, claiming that oppression in Muslim countries is often ignored because of a fear that criticism will be seen as “racism”.

ISLAMISTS DESTROY MALI TOMBS

From Reuters.  Islamists are destroying their own historical heritage.

Residents said the attacks on traditional Sufi Islamic shrines were being carried out by about 15 heavily-armed fighters, some weilding pick axes. At least two previously untouched tombs in Timbuktu, a UNESCO world heritage site, were destroyed on Sunday, residents said.

THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS FROM HITLER TO THE PRESENT

A brief analysis on Hitler's attack on Christianity.

In the new versions of the old songs reference to Nazi tenets of race, blood and soil replace familiar words concerning Christ, Child and the like. The accepted English translation of Mohr’s “Silent Night,” stanza three lines two and three is: “The Son of God loves pure light, radiant beams from thy Holy faith.” Equivalent lines in the Nazified version are “German blood, O how laugh the lips of thy children, blessed with joy.”

Foxnews chronicles the current war on Christmas.  The atheists react.  From the Blaze.  Foreign Policy discusses the international war on Christmas--from Saudi Arabia and Uzebekistan to Cuba and Venezuela.

PUTIN & THE DECLINE OF RUSSIA

Russia has been in decline demographically for a number of years.  How will Putin handle it?

President Putin is too intelligent and clear eyed a man to miss these truths, however the propagandists and spinners around him try to paint a different picture. His foreign policy needs to be understood against this background of uncertainty and decline. Bluff, caution, patience and opportunism are the chief instruments of a power in Russia’s current position, and those (plus the diligent and determined use of the legacy intelligence and propaganda capabilities inherited from the Soviet era) are the instruments we expect President Putin to use.

OBAMA STATEMENTS ON WEAPONS

Ann Althouse raises some interesting questions about Obama's statements after the Aurora attackand the Newtown attack.

CAUSE OF SUBPRIME MORTGAGE CRISIS

A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows how the Democrat supported Community Reinvestment Act led to the subprime crisis.  It led to increasing delinquencies. Democrats and the media disagree.

ANOTHER DEMOCRAT ETHICS VIOLATION IN CONGRESS

This ethics issue in congress has not been covered in the mainline media so it must not see this as a problem. A Democrat congresswomen, Shelley Berkeley (Nevada), helped her husband get medical work with Veterans Affairs, Medicare, and Medicaid. Senator Menendez (D, New Jersey) also has had problems with prostitutes and an aide who was an illegal immigrant and sex offender.  How many more Democrats have had ethics problems that the public is largely unaware of?

The committee’s report noted that between April 2008 and December 2010, Berkley’s husband, Dr. Lawrence Lehrner, contacted her office four times on behalf of Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada to discuss payments his practice was due from the VA, Medicare and Medicaid. On two occasions, Berkley and her staff took actions to address those issues.

“Because such actions caused ‘compensation to accrue to the beneficial interest’ of Representative Berkley, the Committee finds that they violated [House Rules],” the committee’s report said.

UPDATE on Menendez scandal (1/15/2013).

CONGRESS ABANDONING CIVIL LIBERTY PROTECTIONS

Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic summarizes the recent infringements on the 5th amendment occurring in the Senate.  American citizens can be held in jail or confinement without any charges being filed or trials conducted.  If this were happening in the Bush administration the press would be all over this issue. 

It may seem like a United States senator would be widely ridiculed for suggesting that American citizens can be imprisoned indefinitely without chargers or trial, and that if numerous U.S. senators took that position, the press would treat the issue with at least as much urgency as "the fiscal cliff" or the possibility of a new assault weapons bill or likely nominees for Cabinet posts. 

UPDATE:  It was stripped from the final bill, but it is still troubling that some senators thought there was no problem with it.

OBAMA'S RELATIONSHIP TO CONGRESS

Walter Shapiro believes Obama has been unable to "manage" congress.  In the past historians generally rated presidents that could move congress in their direction as the more successful.  Shapiro calls Obama the most guarded and emotionally remote modern president. 

During his reelection campaign, Obama remained elusively vague about his second-term plans. But the assumption was that—once free of political pressures—Obama would reveal his governing agenda. Now, it seems quite possible that even after the Inaugural Address next month, we will still be searching for the Rosetta Stone that deciphers Obama’s vision.

SEX & GENERALS

In light of the David Petraeus affair Victor Davis Hanson gives a brief summary of past generals of historical fame and their sexual conduct as commanders.

BENGHAZI REPORT

Just like bureaucrats. . .people mess up, but no one can be held responsible.  No accountability.

In a properly functioning society, this report would signal the end of Clinton’s chances of becoming president. The Peter Principle isn’t supposed to apply when it comes to the highest office in the land. But then, in a properly functioning society, Clinton’s successfor would not be the wannabe statesman who concluded that Bashar al-Assad was the answer to our prayers for peace and harmony in the Middle East.

Thomas Joscelyn's critique of the events.

MORE ON OBAMA VICTORY

Interesting.  If these preliminary statistics are correct, almost 20% of young black males voted for Romney--is this the beginning of a black gender voting gap that parallels a white male gender voting gap?  The article also cites the continuing failure of Obama to change the black unemployment rate--it has actually gotten worse for blacks under his administration while improving for whites.

Not only has Obama failed to address the sorry state of families in the black community, his policy stances actively undermine the family and leave many blacks feeling less secure. Elizabeth Flock of U.S. News & World Report details:

A new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds that under Obama, many black Americans feel less free than whites when it comes to political participation.
…
The study found that while the election of Obama initially boosted feelings of political empowerment among black Americans, those sentiments significantly faded in the years that followed—especially among conservative and religious blacks.

For black Americans, the advent of an alternative to vampiric institutions which thrive on perpetual black poverty should be welcome news. Leftist non-profit organizations which claim to serve the black community and advocate for “progressive” change succeed only so long as their constituency continues to fail. Were blacks to meet with actual success, become better educated, deeply motivated, and increasingly wealthy, many of these left-leaning non-profits would be out of business. That truth prompts Minneapolis-based conservative activist and black commentator Don Allen to label such groups as “poverty pimps.”

A column worth reading.