The Peaceful, Compassionate, Altruistic Left

As embodied by the teachers unions.  This excerpt from an article in today's Detroit News entitled "Tougher teacher no-strike law pushed" shows how the left uses logic, peaceful dialog, and uplifting art to argue their point:

Acrimony over school funding played out Tuesday in controversy over the MEA's Facebook page and its image of Snyder with satanic stars, red eyes and blood spatter.

The photo appeared to have been posted on March 11, according to Michigan Capitol Confidential, an online news agency run by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank.

The agency alerted the MEA to the photo on Tuesday morning, and it was removed minutes later.

Ken Braun, managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential, said his staff had noticed even before discovering the photo that the tenor of comments posted on the page had grown remarkably harsh in recent days.

Folks - these are the people who have control of your kids for 180 days a year over 13 years.  Think about that for a minute.  13 of the most formative years your kids will have in their entire lifetime are spent with people who for the most part think that drawing demonic horns and blood spatters is an acceptable way of expressing themselves.

Is it any wonder that people home educate their kids more and more these days?

High Capacity Freedom

In the aftermath of the Tuscon shootings earlier this year, there is lots of heat being generated these days in the hallowed halls of Congress over a renewal of the "high capacity magazine" ban. (Thanks again for nothing, Bill Ruger). This article by Rabbi Dovid Bendory gives logical reasons why high capacity magazines are essential. Not that gun banners care about logic.

Link to the original article: http://jpfo.org/rabbi/five-reasons.htm

Minutes before lunatic Jared Loughner began his mayhem in Arizona, the issue of a Federal high capacity ammunition magazine ban was a complete political non-starter. Obama didn’t go near it when he had Democratic majorities and he certainly wouldn’t have tried it after the election rout of 2010. High cap bans were simply not possible. Add to this the pro-self defense victories in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Heller and McDonald decisions, and the door to magazine bans seemed both locked and barred … perhaps even welded shut for good.

And then came Jared Loughner. And the gun grabbing vultures circled and landed. We now face a replay of the hysteria that brought us the so-called “Assault Weapons” Ban (and the included magazine bans) of the Clinton years. The act of a single madman has struck a blow against the Second Amendment that all the gun grabbers combined have been unable to strike. Please think long and hard on this irrational state of affairs.

Today, the most common plaintive question you hear from the victim disarmament crowd is: “Why would anyone need a high capacity ammunition magazine?” Note that the emphasis is always on the word “need”.

So-called “gun control” has always used semantic deception. What the gun confiscators want to do is apply “needs” to situations that more accurately require “wants”.

No one “needs” a seat belt. After all, 99.999 percent of your driving time you don’t “need” a seatbelt. You only “need” a seat belt during an automobile crash. Do you want a seatbelt? Of course! No one would even debate this issue.

To a greater or lesser degree, the same goes for property insurance, fire extinguishers, spare tires, life jackets, and first aid kits, to name just a few things.

So with this in mind, here are five good reasons that you should WANT a high capacity magazine.

1. Multiple assailants. Whether on the street or during a home invasion, violent criminals often move in pairs or packs. Realize that you will never shoot as well as your score at the range when you are under the unbelievable stress of a life-or-death encounter. Which would you prefer to have in your magazine in such an event? Ten rounds? Or fifteen or seventeen? Or perhaps even 30?

2. Private citizens always face the threat before the police arrive. Private citizens were on the front line at Tucson, Columbine, and Virginia Tech. Why limit our effectiveness?

You should logically want whatever cops choose to carry. How many cops choose a ten round magazine? If politicians want to hinder us “little people” with a ten round limit, they should also hamper the police with the same limit. Let’s see how far that flies.

In nearly every instance it is not a cop on the “front line” of a violent situation. It is private citizens who must face the “lone gunman” until (and sometimes even after) the police arrive. See Dial 911 and Die. Is the life of a policeman more important than yours?

3. Civil disturbances. Watch the Reginald Denny beating video some time. Review the looting insanity of Hurricane Katrina. You’ve got a crazed mob of ten, twenty, or fifty people headed in your direction. Are ten rounds enough? Might you want fifteen, or seventeen, or even thirty? 

Oh, and while you’re at it, perhaps bring from memory those Los Angeles Korean store owners standing guard on the roofs of their businesses with semi-auto AKs during the Rodney King riots. No one messed with those stores, did they?

4. Because it is your most fundamental right as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, and, more importantly, as given by G-d A-lmighty: the right to the righteous defense of yourself and the innocent. “Shall not be infringed” simply means what it says. When politicians infringe on magazine capacity, they infringe on the Second Amendment. You should want a high cap mag because you can have one! 

This is America, not a socialist nanny state or tin pot Third World dictatorship. The saying “use it or lose it” is never so relevant as when applied to our Bill of Rights. See "2A Today for the USA"

5. Your assailants may well be armed with high cap magazines themselves. No ban will affect these criminals; it will actually encourage them. Do you really think the gang bangers care about federal laws? Again, ask the local cop why he or she won’t “downgrade” to a ten round mag to go along with this feel-good idiocy. Ask the pols why they don’t think the cops should do so.

These are just a few of the reasons for WANTING (not “needing”) a high cap magazine. In the spirit of JPFO’s recently launched “High Cap Freedom” campaign, go out and buy one or more high capacity mags for your pistol or rifle today.

Always remember, the present drive towards a ban might fail, but all it will take is “Loughner II” (another convenient “crazed lone gunman”) to drive the hysteria machine to victory for the gun grabbers. Get your high cap magazines before any ban can take place.

“Because your life is too precious to risk running out of bullets.”

Rabbi Dovid Bendory
Rabbinic Director
Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
(http://jpfo.org)

Continuing Irresolution

My frustration with this whole continuing resolution mess in Washington is summed up by freshman Rep. Lankford (R-OK). In an interview with Radio America, Rep. Lankford defends the continuing resolutions with the statement "We're cutting 2 billion per week". Well, let's do a little math, shall we?

The first number we need to know is 14 trillion. That is the commonly accepted total budget deficit right now (not that I believe that, but for the sake of argument we'll use that number). The second number we need to know is 104 billion. That is 2 billion per week times 52 weeks. That is the amount that will be cut from the deficit if Rep. Lankford's pace continues. So what percent of 14 trillion is 104 billion?

Let's start with an easy one to show the formula. What percentage of 100 is 50? We all know it's 50%, but how do we do the math? Well, we make a fraction. The bottom number (the denominator) is the number we want to determine the fraction of, in this case 100. Then we put the other number on the top of the fraction (the numerator). So in this case, the fraction is 50/100, which can be said as "fifty over one hundred" or "fifty one-hundredths".

All you sixth-grade math students can see that we can reduce this fraction by asking which numbers can be evenly divided into both numerator and denominator. I can see several: 2, 5, 10, 25, and 50. I'll take the largest to eliminate steps, so 50/100 becomes 1/2, or "one half". We all know that "one half" is fifty percent.

It's easier to show it in decimals, so we would express our 50/100 in decimal notation as .50 - fifty one-hundredths. To express any decimal number as a percent, you multiply it by 100 which is the same as moving the decimal point two places to the right, which gives you 50. - that is, fifty percent. This is how we calculate batting average, save percentage, winning percentage, all kinds of things.

So using this formula with our actual numbers, the equation is 104,000,000,000 (that's our 104 billion) over 14,000,000,000,000 (14 trillion) which comes out to .007428571429 according to my handy-dandy Casio calculator (and Microsoft Excel confirms it). Multiply that by 100 to move the decimal point for our percentage, that gives us .7428571429 percent. Let's just round that off and say .74 percent.

Folks, that is three-quarters of one percent. Less than one percent. Or put it another way: for every $100 of deficit, Rep. Lankford and his colleagues are cutting seventy-five cents.

All this wrangling, all this speechifying, all the meetings and arguments and proposals and interviews - all for a lousy .74%. This is beyond appalling, beyond disgusting, and bears a passing resemblance to a great heaping mountain of male cow excrement. Only much, much worse.

Rep. Lankford, let me remind you and your fellow freshmen why you were voted into office last November: GET CONTROL OF WASHINGTON'S EXCESSIVE SPENDING!!!! With this kind of crapola you are spewing publicly, you are showing yourself to be no better than the one you replaced. YOU ARE NOT DOING YOUR JOB, SIR! GET WITH THE PROGRAM OR WE'LL FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL TO REPLACE YOU IN 2012!

Let me help you out. You have set your goal way too low, obviously, so let's give you a new goal by taking your original yearly goal (104 billion) and make it your weekly goal! That would lead you to cutting 5.408 trillion by this time next year. That's over one-third (38.6%) of the deficit in one year! THAT would be a much more worthy goal for you!

I'll go even farther for you. Here's a list of programs that could be cut completely from the budget:

Dept. of Education
Dept. of Commerce
HUD
Dept. of Interior
Dept. of Homeland Security

And here's a list of those that could be cut drastically:
IRS
BATFE
Transportation

That's just a start, Congressman. I'm sure you can come up with some more.

Public Sector Unions Explained

Energy

If we would have started drilling in ANWR when we first found the oil there, we wouldn't be having $3.55 gasoline prices today.

I'm just sayin'.

And we're going to lose at least two more years until we get someone (and more like a lot of someones) in Washington who will not cave in to the enviro-socialists.  And then it will be ten year (or more probably, since the eco-weenies litigate what they cannot legislate) before we see the first tankful of gas produced from oil out of ANWR.

You know - Congress can limit the jurisdiction of the US Courts...

Glen Beck and Detroit

I'm hearing and reading news reports of Glen Beck's rant comparing Detroit to Hiroshima, but I didn't hear the rant myself.  Most of the Detroit media is huffing and puffing about how horrible it was and what a jerk Beck is and Detroit is coming back, you just wait.

I have to ask Detroiters - what do you expect?  People have been down on the D for years.  Don't you remember "Murder Capital of the World" for all those years?  And frankly, you don't have a lot going for you right now.  Do you think Mayor Bing would be wanting to consolidate neighborhoods and move people around and create "Urban Farms" if there was much of a chance of recovering your former glory?  It's time to face reality, folks.  Your city sucks.

I was talking to a friend of mine that grew up in Royal Oak, a city right on the northern border of Detroit.  He hasn't lived down there for probably 25 years, but was back recently to take his daughter to Childrens Hospital.  He said he can't believe the decay since their last trip to the hospital about 3 years ago.  Neighborhoods that used to be nice are now nasty.  Not like it was when he was growing up.

The last time I was down there was in 2006.  My wife and I spent the weekend there at the Renaissance Center, which happened to coincide with Game 1 of the World Series which the Detroit Tigers were playing in.  We didn't go to the game, but we did walk around the area of Greektown and Comerica Park during the afternoon before the game.  Certainly it had been spruced up a little bit for the game, but I remember looking around and seeing all the buildings that had no tenants and were already decaying.  I remember thinking how grim it looked outside the stadium district. 

I would truly love to see a true revival of Detroit's fortunes because frankly that city has been dragging down the rest of this State with all of its problems and corruption and racist knucklehead politicians at every level.  But I don't see much hope for that because they keep electing the same kinds of politicians and running the place out of the same socialist playbook they have used for the last half century.  Where has that gotten you, Detroit?  Be honest with yourselves.

So when Glen Beck or anyone else goes off on you, don't get all self-righteous and whine about how mean and unfair the remarks were - use it as a motivation to effect real change.  More of the same will get you nowhere and you'll drag the rest of us down with you.