Tag Archives: New York

It All Depends On How You Name Something

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There have been some negative comments lately from Democrats worried about how the implementation of ObamaCare will impact the 2014 mid-term elections. Historically, a President in his second term loses big in the mid-term elections, so the Democrats don’t want any additional difficulties. Recently a Democrat referred to ObamaCare as a ‘train wreck’ about to happen. That certainly does not improve the image of ObamaCare. Also, a lot of 26-year-olds are timing out of their parents’ health insurance and realizing that the IRS will be fining them if they do not pay the increased premiums ObamaCare requires from them. Keep in mind that increasing premiums on younger people is supposed to subsidize medical expenses for the elderly and for those with pre-existing health conditions.

Well, now it’s time for the goodwill tour for ObamaCare. Yesterday the Washington Examiner reported that as part of the Mother’s Day offensive for ObamaCare, President Obama has described ObamaCare as “largest health care tax cut for working families and small businesses in our history. “ Really. If you believe that, please call me about buying some waterfront property in Arizona–or maybe I could interest you in a bridge in New York.

The article reports:

His argument was a Hail-Mary effort to redesignate subsidies for individuals to purchase health insurance on government-run exchanges as a “tax cut.” But according to the Congressional Budget Office, these subsidies actually qualify as more than $1 trillion in “Exchange Subsidies and Related Spending.” (Emphasis mine.)

Far from being a historic tax cut, Obamacare actually qualifies as one of the largest tax increases in history. It contains roughly $1 trillion in taxes — on insurance plans, medical devices and investment income. And many of the taxes will end up falling on the middle class. The law’s individual mandate, which the Obama administration successful argued was a tax before the U.S. Supreme Court, is projected to hit nearly 5 million Americans with incomes less than $60,000 by 2016.

I understand that right now we have a lot of low-information voters who know more about American Idol than about what is going on in Washington. However, as these people begin to notice what is happening to their household budgets, maybe they will wake up and start paying attention. I can relate to the low-information voters–I used to be one. My excuse was not American Idol–my excuse was juggling family, work, etc. Either way, it’s time for America to wake up and begin to vote for people who will actually tell us the truth and practice fiscal restraint. I am sure that we have people in politics who are capable of that–I am just not sure how much power they have right now. We need to pay attention and vote accordingly.

 

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What Does This Have To Do With Reading, Writing, And Arithmetic?

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CBN News posted a story today about a recent anti-bullying presentation at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, New York. I would like to go on the record to say that I oppose bullying. I do wonder why it seems to have become such a major problem in our schools in recent years. Back in the age of dinosaurs (the 1950′s and 1960′s) we had bullies too, but somehow it didn’t seem to be as much of an issue. Has the concept of conflict resolution caused us to forget how to deal with a bully? I don’t consider myself a violent person, but I have learned that the only successful way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him. Evidently our schools are suggesting an alternative approach.

The article at CBN reports:

The workshop for 13 and 14-year-old girls focused on homosexuality and gender identity. They were also taught words such as “pansexual” and “genderqueer.”

Parents say their daughters were told to ask one another for a kiss and they say two girls were told to stand in front of the class and pretend they were lesbians on a date.

“She told me, ‘Mom we all get teased and picked on enough. Now I’m going to be called a lesbian because I had to ask another girl if I could kiss her,’” parent, Mandy Coon, told reporters.

What in the world does this have to do with how to deal with a bully? Parents of the students who attended the workshop were not warned in advance or given the opportunity to opt out of the workshop.

The article further reports:

Superintendent Paul Finch told The Poughkeepsie Journal the presentation was “focused on improving culture, relationships, communication and self-perceptions.”

“We may require more notification to parents in the future,” Finch said.

He claimed the sessions are required under the state Dignity for All Students Act, which prohibits harassment and bullying in the classroom.

I would have no problem with teaching the students to report bullying incidents so that the school administration can deal with the bully involved. I would have no problem with teaching the students how to ignore bullying and encouraging all students to be kinder to each other. I would have no problem teaching students interpersonal problem-solving skills that would help end the bullying. I do, however, fail to see how making two young ladies kiss in front of the classroom relates to education. There is a reason parents are fleeing the public schools in favor of home schooling and private schools. This sort of behavior on the part of school administrators is part of that reason.

 

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Is This Really What We Intended?

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The media silence on the trial of Kermit Gosnell is deafening, but how do the things he did compare with what goes on at other abortion clinics? Yesterday the New York Post posted a story (updated today) about a sting operation in a Bronx abortion clinic.

The women went in claiming to be 23 weeks pregnant (abortion is legal in New York up until 24 weeks) seeking an abortion.

The article reports:

In an exchange laden with euphemisms on both sides to conceal the gruesome nature of the discussion, the pregnant woman wondered aloud what would happen if “it” (her fetus) emerged from her intact and alive.

The employee assigned to take note of medical history reassured the woman, “We never had that for ages” (a seeming admission that a baby did survive abortion at the clinic at least once) but that should “it” “survive this,” “They would still have to put it in like a jar, a container, with solution, and send it to the lab. . . . We don’t just throw it out in the garbage.”

Oh, and this innocuous-sounding “solution” was, of course, a toxic substance suitable for killing an infant.

“Like, what if it was twitching?” asked the pregnant woman.

“The solution will make it stop,” said the clinic employee. “That’s the whole purpose of the solution . . . It will automatically stop. It won’t be able to breathe anymore.”

This is what has happened to ‘a woman’s right to choose.’ Was this what was intended?Enhanced by Zemanta

Some Historical Perspective On This Unlawful Combatant Thing

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The information below is taken from the FBI website detailing famous cases and criminals:

Shortly after midnight on the morning of June 13, 1942, four men landed on a beach near Amagansett, Long Island, New York from a German submarine, clad in German uniforms and bringing ashore enough explosives, primers, and incendiaries to support an expected two-year career in the sabotage of American defense-related production. On June 17, 1942, a similar group landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, near Jacksonville, Florida, equipped for a similar career in industrial disruption.

The purpose of the invasions was to strike a major blow for Germany by bringing the violence of war to our home ground through destruction of America’s ability to manufacture vital equipment and supplies and transport them to the battlegrounds of Europe; to strike fear into the American civilian population; and to diminish the resolve of the United States to overcome our enemies.

By June 27, 1942, all eight saboteurs had been arrested without having accomplished one act of destruction. Tried before a military commission, they were found guilty. One was sentenced to life imprisonment, another to 30vyears, and six received the death penalty, which was carried out within a few days.

Two of these men were American citizens–Ernest Peter Burger had become a naturalized American in 1933 and Herbert Hans Haupt had entered the United States as a child, gaining citizenship when his father was naturalized in 1930.

The FBI website reports:

All eight were found guilty and sentenced to death. Attorney General Biddle and J. Edgar Hoover appealed to President Roosevelt to commute the sentences of Dasch and Burger. Dasch then received a 30-year sentence, and Burger received a life sentence, both to be served in a federal penitentiary. The remaining six were executed at the District of Columbia Jail on August 8, 1942.

Why is the person who bombed the Boston Marathon being treated differently than these men?

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Another Gun Confiscation And American Citizen Forced To Go To Court To Defend His Constitutional Rights

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Today’s National Review posted a story about a soldier in Texas arrested for “rudely displaying” his weapon. Yes, you read that right.

The article describes the incident:

“We live out in the country in Texas, near Temple,” he told me. “My son and I were on a ten-mile hike so that he could earn his hiking merit badge – it’s the last badge he needs to become an Eagle Scout.” But half way into the hike, Grisham said, “a police officer pulled up.” Initially, he was “cordial” and he “asked what we were doing.” Grisham told him. “Then he looked at my rifle. I carry a rifle any time I walk around because there are feral hogs and cougars and things like that.” 

From here, things took a turn for the worse.

“‘Where you going with that rifle?’ he asked me. I said, ‘does it matter? Am I breaking any laws?’” Then, he says, the officer “grabbed the rifle without telling me – but it was attached to me. My immediate reaction as a combat veteran was to grab it back and then take a step back. I asked him what he was doing. So he pulled his gun on me. Then I thought about my son, so I put my hands off my gun and he told me to move over to the car. Luckily my son had the video camera to document the hike for his merit badge. I told him to turn it on.”

There is a video of the incident included in the article. I suggest you watch the whole thing. This is clearly unconstitutional.

The soldier’s concealed-carry permit was taken along with his guns. The article notes that historically what happens next is that the prosecutor will offer to drop the charges if the soldier gives up his guns. It is a very subtle form of gun confiscation.

Evidently this is not an isolated incident. The obvious question here is, “Why are the police wasting their time on legal gun owners when there are so many illegal guns out there?” If the police had been half as diligent in “Fast and Furious” as they are at harassing legal gun owners, a lot a people would be alive today who are no longer with us.

UPDATE: Evidently there are some questions about whether or not Mr. Grisham set up this encounter. However, even if this were the case (and we don’t know if it was), confiscating someone’s guns without proper legal procedure is a serious violation of the Constitution. The fact remains that it will cost Mr. Grisham a lot of time, money, and energy to get those guns (which are rightfully his) back. If I come across further information on this story, I will post it.

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Disarming America–One State At A Time

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Yesterday I posted a story about state police in New York mistakenly taking away a law abiding citizen’s guns. Today I have another story. Breitbart.com reported yesterday that during an investigation of the states new driver’s licensing system, it was discovered that the Missouri State Highway Patrol twice gave a database of concealed carry permit holders to federal authorities.

The article reports:

The investigation into leaked personal information began after suspicions arose over new drivers license rules requiring citizens to bring in numerous personal documents–including concealed carry permit information–to be “scanned and retained.” 

Replogle said the names were turned over to “cross-check… names on the concealed carry list with [the federal] agency’s list of those with disabilities attributed to mental illness to find possible evidence of fraud in the system.”

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) has been denying that “concealed weapons permits were turned over to a ‘magical database’ for federal agents to ‘mess with.’”

The article states that the information was given to the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General in Nov. 2011 and again in Jan. 2012. Replogle claims the information was encrypted and the discs holding the information were destroyed.

Excuse me if I am a little skeptical of the fact that the information was destroyed and that there are no copies floating around anywhere.

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Why The Anti-Gun Hysteria Is Dangerous

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The Blaze is reporting today that the New York State Police mistakenly confiscated the guns of a law-abiding citizen. They confiscated the guns and suspended the gun permit of David Lewis of Amherst, New York, based on the misinformation that Mr. Lewis had mental health problems.

The article reports:

“Erie County Clerk Chris Jacobs said that late today he received a call from the New York State Police informing him that they had provided information on the wrong person when they notified his office of someone whose permit should be suspended because of the new mental health provisions in New York’s SAFE Act,” the release begins.

“When the State Police called to tell us they made a mistake and had the wrong person … it become clear that the state did not do their job here and now we all look foolish,” the release went on to say in a quote from Clerk Jacobs.

This is a vivid example of what can happen when the government has too much power.

This is the press release acknowledging the error:

New York State Police Admits It Got Wrong Man in Gun Confiscation Case

Keep this incident in mind as you listen to Congress declare that they have no intention of confiscating guns.Enhanced by Zemanta

The Pitfalls Of Random Acts Of Charity

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It feels good to help someone who is less fortunate than yourself. We encourage our children to be generous, and we try to set a good example. However, our efforts are not always as helpful as we would like to think. I used to know a Pastor who when someone on the street asked him for money would offer to buy them lunch–that way he knew the money didn’t go toward drugs or alcohol. I don’t know the actual percentage of homeless people with drug or alcohol problems, but I suspect it’s fairly high.

Recently, a video of a New York City policemen went vital on YouTube because he bought a barefoot homeless man on the street a pair of new shoes. It was a beautiful gesture, but the story is not what it appears to be. Scott Johnson at Power Line posted ‘the rest of the story’ yesterday.

It seems that the homeless man actually did have a home–and multiple pairs of shoes. He earns a few hundred dollars a day (tax free) by walking the streets of New York City barefoot, asking for money.

The article at Power Line cites a New York Post article which concluded:

Hillman reminds us how easy it is to exploit generosity. His scam seems to have been directed at passers-by who take pity on a man who goes about Midtown pretending to be barefoot, poor and homeless. His example reminds us why it is important for the city to ensure that its own assistance is not exploited by those who don’t need it.

For in addition to the needy, New York also has a whole class of politicians and activists quick to denounce City Hall as cruel and heartless (and to sue) whenever it takes reasonable measures to weed out the deserving from the undeserving.

Scott Johnson draws a different conclusion:

I don’t think the Post quite gets the lesson offered by the Hillman saga as a case study. Despite Hillman’s exploitation of the kindness of strangers, I think his case is inherent in the welfare state. One way or another, however, it provides a case study worthy of continuing discussion.

The generosity of the policeman is commendable. The actions of the barefoot beggar are those of a con man taking advantage of the kindness of New Yorkers.

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Finally–Someone With Some Common Sense

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Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling has blocked Mayor Bloomberg‘s ban on the sale of sugary drinks.

The article reports:

In his ruling, Judge Tingling found the Board of Health‘s mission is to protect New Yorkers by providing regulations that protect against diseases. Those powers, he argued, don’t include the authority to “limit or ban a legal item under the guise of ‘controlling chronic disease.’ “

The board may supervise and regulate the city’s food supply when it affects public health, but the City Charter clearly outlines when such steps may be taken: According to Judge Tingling, the city must face imminent danger due to disease.

“That has not been demonstrated,” he wrote.

The ban on sugary drinks over 16 ounces was to take effect tomorrow. Thank God for a judge with some common sense!Enhanced by Zemanta

Do Parents Have The Right To Know That The School Is Giving Their Children Drugs ?

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The New York Post posted an article on Saturday (updated today) about a program in the New York City schools that provides high school girls with birth control pills–including Plan B (the morning-after pill).

The article reports:

Last September, the city revealed it had started giving out Plan B and other birth control in the nurses’ offices of 13 high schools. At the time, officials said 567 girls had gotten Plan B.

But the birth-control blitz was much bigger than the city had acknowledged. About 40 separate “school-based health centers” doled out 12,721 doses of Plan B in 2011-12, up from 10,720 in 2010-11 and 5,039 in 2009-10, according to the newly released data.

 About 22,400 students sought reproductive care from January 2009 through last school year, records show. Under state law, minors don’t need parental OKs to get contraceptives.

The article further reports:

The city says about 6,300 NYC girls under age 17 had unplanned pregnancies last year, and more than half had abortions. Of those who give birth, the city says, about 70 percent drop out of school, making their futures bleak.

Just for the record, the age of consent for sex in New York is seventeen. That means that the schools are giving out birth control to children who are not legally supposed to be having sex. So let me get this straight. There won’t be salt on my table at a restaurant in New York City because Mayor Bloomberg says it is bad for me. No restaurant can use transfat to fry food in New York City, and ‘big gulp’ sodas are illegal in New York City because Mayor Bloomberg says they are bad for me, but my daughter can obtain birth control or the morning after pill without my consent our without consulting me about any medical conditions that she may have.

The world has truly turned upside down.

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Some Common Sense In The Gun Debate

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This is a video of Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New Jersey. The video was posted at Breitbart.com.

This is what the Mayor said:

To me, the data should drive our decision making. So I know, I’m not afraid of people having guns who are law abiding citizens. In the analysis of gun murders and shootings in my city, I could only find one in the entire time I’ve been mayor – and unfortunately there have been hundreds and hundreds – where a person who was involved in a shooting where they had their gun legally, where they legally acquired their gun. The guns that are causing carnage in our cities, my city and our country, every single year are acquired illegally.

Newark, New Jersey, is the second largest city in the New York metropolitan area.

Wikipedia gives us a picture of crime in the city:

In 1996, Time magazine ranked Newark “The Most Dangerous City in the Nation.” By 2007, however, the city recorded a total of 99 homicides for the year, representing a significant drop from the record of 161 murders set in 1981. The number of murders in 2008 dropped to 65, a decline of 30% from the previous year and the lowest in the city since 2002 when there were also 65 murders.

In 2011, Newark recorded 90 homicides, after experiencing 86 homicides in 2010. Overall, there was a 6% increase in crime numbers over the previous year, including a rise in carjackings for the third straight year. Along with the increase in crime, the Newark Police Department increased its recovery of illegally owned guns in 2011 to 696, up from 278 in 2010.

After being forced to lay off 162 officers due to economic reasons in 2010, the NPD was able to rehire eight of those officers in 2012, with plans for another 17 rehires later in the year.

Mayor Booker was elected in 2006. He is an inspiring mayor to watch–recently he rescued a young woman from a burning building and came to the aid of a dog that had been left out in the extreme cold. We need more mayors (and people involved in politics) like Mayor Booker–he tells the truth and does what’s right!

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Losing Revenue By Raising Taxes

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Hot Air is reporting today that the Midland, Mich.-based Mackinac Center has released a report stating that in 2011 New York had the highest cigarette smuggling rate in America. In 2006, when the cigarette tax was $1.50 a pack, New York was the fifth highest. In 2008, the tax went to $2.75 a pack, in 2010 it went to $4.35 a pack. That increase was enough to move New York from fifth place to first place in the number of cigarettes smuggled into the state. It is now estimated that 60.9 percent of all cigarettes smoked in New York are not taxed there!

What can we learn from this? Simple. People don’t like to pay taxes and will do almost anything to avoid them. Some state is making money on the sale of these cigarettes–it’s just not New York. New Hampshire seems to be where most of the smuggled cigarettes are coming from–New Hampshire does tax cigarettes, but only $1.68 a pack. I suspect New Hampshire collects more revenue from its lower tax than New York does from its higher tax. Maybe we could learn from that.

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The Real Cost Of Irresponsible Journalism

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The U. K Daily Mail reported yesterday that two homes listed on the gun owners map published by the Journal News have been burglarized since the publishing of the list.

The article reports:

Thieves ransacked a house that features on the gun map published by the Journal News, just days after another home on the list was also targeted.

Burglars broke into the house in New City, New York, on Wednesday and pried open two safes, before leaving with another one.

The criminals escaped with two handguns, two pistol permits, cash, savings bonds and jewelry. The firearms were in the stolen safe.

Publishing the list of gun owners made it easy for criminals to target homes that had guns if that was what they wanted or to target homes where they knew the owners would be unarmed. Either way, publishing the map of gun owners was an invasion of the privacy of the gun owners and created problems for both gun owners and non gun owners. The people whose names and addresses appeared in the newspaper would be totally justified in exploring lawsuits for invasion of privacy and putting them and their families at  unnecessary risk.

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Exploiting Children For Political Points

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It has already been announced that President Obama will have children present when he announces his program of gun control today. It’s always good to have props to distract from the fact that you are about to violate the Second Amendment. But it’s worse than that…

The Weekly Standard posted a story stating that today, just hours before the President’s press conference, the White House has released letters from little kids pleading for gun control. There were no little kid letters released by the White House asking for policemen in the schools or guns for the teachers–just little kids pleading for gun control. Wow! Eight year old Constitutional Scholars.

Meanwhile, back in New York State, a gun control bill was passed that conceivably could limit the number of bullets a policeman could have in his gun. That wasn’t the intent of the bill, so amendments are being looked at, but evidently the law was not thought through before it was passed. We know that if policemen are only allowed seven bullets in their guns that criminals will also follow that law. Right?

The violence in our society has to do much more with the culture of our society than it does with guns. Part of the problem is not effectively keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, and part of the problem is the devaluing of life. It is a tragedy that 26 people were killed in an elementary school in December and that many of those people were children, but it is also a tragedy that over 1 million babies a year are aborted. Where is the outcry over those innocent lives that were violently ended. Until the lives of the unborn are valued, we cannot realistically expect the lives of the living to be valued.Enhanced by Zemanta

The Criminal Point Of View

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About a month ago, the Journal-News, a daily paper serving the New York suburbs of Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties, published a map of names and addresses of gun owners.

Fox News reported today on some of the fallout from the decision to publish that information.

The article reports:

“That was the most asinine article I’ve ever seen,” said Walter T. Shaw, 65, a former burglar and jewel thief who the FBI blames for more than 3,000 break-ins that netted some $70 million in the 1960s and 1970s. “Having a list of who has a gun is like gold – why rob that house when you can hit the one next door, where there are no guns?

“What they did was insanity,” added Shaw, author of “License to Steal,” a book about his criminal career.

Another criminal, Frank Abagnale, who was portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2002 film “Catch Me if You Can,” also weighed in.

The article reports:

“It is unbelievable that a newspaper or so called journalist would publish the names and addresses of legal gun owners, including federal agents, law enforcement officers and the like,” said Abagnale, who noted that he grew up in the suburban New York area served by the Journal-News. “This would be equivalent to publishing the names of individuals who keep substantial sums of money, jewelry and valuables in their home.”

There is a former policemen in my extended family. I suspect he was responsible for putting one or two people in jail. It is quite possible that some of those people have long memories and hold grudges. He owns a number of guns. Publishing his name and address in a newspaper would put him and his family in danger. What were the editors of this paper thinking?

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The Problem With The Internet (If You Are A Politician) Is That Everything You Have Said Or Done In The Past Is Easily Accessed

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National Review Online posted an article today about some inconvenient history that seems to have been overlooked in the current debate about gun control. NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre was denounced, ridiculed, and called all sorts of names for suggesting that we put policemen in our schools. Although his statement, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” makes sense, he was ridiculed for stating the obvious.

Oddly enough, President Clinton did put policemen in our schools as a response to the April 1999 shooting at Columbine High School.

The article lists some of the supporters of President Clinton’s program to put guns in the school:

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district was one of the first to receive funding through the program: $3.25 million for 26 new police officers, to be exact. As a whole, California, also home of Dianne Feinstein, received $5.6 million in grants from the COPS in Schools program in 1999 alone.

Touting the grants set to be distributed to several New York state school districts in 2004, Senator Chuck Schumer acknowledged that “we live in a different world now than we did 20, 30, or even three years ago” and said that the new realities are forcing parents to think constantly about the safety of their children. “Getting more police officers on school grounds will go a long way toward making sure our kids stay out of harm’s way,” he said. Schumer assailed the Bush administration’s 2005 budget for doing away with the COPS in Schools program and, in doing so, attested to its efficacy. “Thanks to COPS, people feel safer with their children on the streets today,” he said in a press release in May 2004. “But now the Administration has proposed ending the program and taking away funding to hire thousands of police officers just when they are needed most. Why the Administration would want to rip a hole in that sense of security by slashing COPS funding is beyond me.”

It’s amazing to me that the history of guns in our schools is being overlooked in the current effort to take guns away from private citizens.

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Disturbing Words From An Influential Governor

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Andrew Cuomo is the Governor of New York. He is also one of the Democrat party’s upcoming stars. I have no doubt we will be hearing more from him in the future. Hot Air quoted one of his recent statements that needs to be considered as he rises to higher positions in government.

In a radio interview on Thursday with Albany’s WGDJ-AM, New York governor Andrew Cuomo said that he plans to work with state legislators next month to submit a proposal for new gun-control laws; in particular, Cuomo said, “our focus is assault weapons,” because current state laws regulating the weapons “have more holes that Swiss cheese.”

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” he said.

Cuomo continued, “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it.”

Confiscation is not an option. Confiscation is against the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is part of the Constitution, which forms the foundation of American law. If you destroy the foundation, you destroy the country.

Just a note about the effectiveness of gun bans. The Sandy Hook Elementary School was a gun-free zone. Connecticut has an assault weapons ban. Does anyone honestly believe that laws stop a mentally disturbed person from causing harm to innocent people? The theater in Colorado was particularly chosen by the shooter because it was gun-free. Criminals and mentally unstable people desiring to do harm to innocent people do not go where people are armed–they go where people are defenseless. Laws are not the answer. Dealing with the mentally ill is part of the answer, and teaching everyone to value life is part of the answer. I am not sure we will ever have the entire answer.

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How Much Are The Taxpayers Actually Going To Lose In The General Motors Bailout ?

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Today the Detroit News posted a story about the General Motors exit strategy announced today by the Treasure Department.

The article reports:

The Detroit automaker said it will purchase 200 million shares of GM stock held by Treasury for $5.5 billion — or $27.50 per share — nearly $2 above the stock’s closing price on Tuesday. GM shares jumped sharply on the news and were up 6.7 percent to $27.10, or $1.59.

The U.S. Treasury — after more than a year of refusing to say when it might start selling its remaining stake in GM — said it will announce a written plan in January to shed its remaining 300 million shares over the next 12 to 15 months — likely in a series of small stock sales.

The Treasury’s move is intended to minimize the impact of the stock sale on the share price.

The article states that there will be serious government losses in the General Motors bailout:

The exit plan may prove to be a boost to GM’s lagging stock price and to some car buyers, who have avoided GM because of the “Government Motors” label.

Still, taxpayers will almost certainly lose billions of dollars in the $49.5 billion GM bailout. If the government sold the rest of its stock at current prices, taxpayers would lose more than $13 billion.

Bailing out General Motors was not a good idea. A controlled bankruptcy would have been a better idea. What the bailout did, other than cost the taxpayers serious money, was to protect the unions and ignore what was good for the company in the long run. Even after the amount of taxpayer money spent and the losses taken, there are no guarantees that General Motors will exist in five years.

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The Week After

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Investors.com posted an article yesterday listing the things we have learned about the economy since last week’s election. It’s not a pretty list.

This is a chart from the article:

Some of the highlights are lower earnings, increased poverty, jobless claims increasing, inflation creeping up, coal plants closing, food stamp enrollment climbing rapidly and small banks going out of business.

What a mess President Obama has inherited from his predecessor.

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Stupid Things That Slow Down The Recovery From Hurricane Sandy

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WAFF.com, an Alabama news site, is reporting that utility crews from Decatur, Alabama, were told that they would not be allowed to help in the New Jersey clean-up unless they affiliated with a union.

The article reports:

The general manager of Decatur Utilities, Ray Hardin told Fox Business they were presented documents from the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers at a staging area in Virginia. The documents stated they had to affiliate with a union to work, which the crews could not agree to.

Hardin said the crews were told this was a requirement to work.

As they waited for confirmation on the documents, crews received word that Seaside Heights had received the assistance they needed from other sources.

The crew returned home on Thursday night.

The article further reports:

Huntsville Utilities said they were not turned away and are in Long Island, New York working.

Joe Wheeler EMC said they did not respond to New Jersey, but did go up to Maryland and headed home once they were done.

We really do need to reevaluate some of our priorities.

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From The Plainview Patch

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I live in Massachusetts. Because the planes that were involved in the September 11th attacks came out of Boston, many Massachusetts residents were affected. However, the majority of the casualties on September 11th were New Yorkers, and New York remembers.

The Plainview (NY) Patch posted a story this morning about a 9/11 Commemoration Service held at the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church yesterday. The first two pews at the front of the church had been left empty so that the Plainview firefighters could sit there. The firefighters came to mourn fallen comrades and to honor those lost on September 11th. Unfortunately, the service was delayed–the firefighters’ beepers went off as they arrived at the church, and they left to answer the call. The service began about a half-hour later when the firemen returned.

The article reports:

When it was over, the community and the firefighters stood outside the sanctuary, shook hands, exchanged words of thanks and went on their way.

Not 15 minutes later, distant sirens cut the stillness of the Plainview night.

They had another run.

The firemen were still doing their job, even as they mourned the loss of their comrades on September 11th.

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The Last Ozzie And Harriet Generation

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This past weekend I attended my husband’s 50th high school reunion in Great Neck, New York. Out of a class of over three hundred students, about one hundred attended. About thirty of the class members have died in the fifty years since they graduated. I have no connection with Great Neck and up until this weekend had never been inside Great Neck South High School. The school is impressive.

I have a few comments on the reunion. First of all, I would like to say that the people who organized the reunion did a fantastic job—even those of us who married members of the class felt welcomed and included. It was an awesome weekend.

But that is not what this article is about. The reunion was for the Class of ’62. I was part of the Class of ’65. For anyone old enough to remember the early sixties, it was a time a tremendous change in our country. The Class of ’62 was the last of the “Ozzie and Harriet” Generation. For those under the age of sixty, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet” was a television situation comedy that ran from 1952 to 1966. The show depicted the lives of Ozzie and Harriet and their two sons David and Ricky. The show launched the singing career of Ricky Nelson.

The Class of ’62 graduated in bobby socks, saddle shoes and poodle skirts (at this point, anyone under the age of 35 reading this is looking for a dictionary). The Class of ’65 graduated in knee socks, penny loafers, and discovered miniskirts shortly (no pun intended) after graduation.  The disorderly students in both classes were guilty of such offenses as chewing gum, talking in class, and being impolite to a teacher. In Great Neck the drinking age was eighteen and some older students frequented the ‘clubs’ in the area that catered to eighteen and nineteen year olds. In New Jersey, where I went to high school, the drinking age was twenty-one and those clubs did not exist.

Drugs had not yet arrived in high school by 1962 and did not arrive in most high schools until the late 1960’s. The Class of ’62 went off to college or off to work—the war in Viet Nam in 1962 had not yet heated up; although by 1963, America had 16,000 advisors in Viet Nam. The class of 1965 went to college or to Vietnam.  As the Class of ’62 graduated college, they were drafted and headed overseas.

One of the events that were pivotal to the lives of both the Class of ’62 and the Class of ’65 happened after the Class of ’62 graduated—the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I truly believe that event, along with the escalation of the war in Vietnam and the draft, ended the naiveté of the Class of ’62.

The Class of ’62 graduated in a world that had obvious values generally supported by society. No one in mainstream society was using drugs for ‘recreational purposes.’ All work had value—there was a work ethic. If you wanted to live with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you got married and raised a family. If you got in trouble with a teacher, your parents sided with the teacher. It was a structured world that generally worked.

Congratulations to the Class of ’62 for all the things you have achieved in spite of the challenging times in which you graduated.

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Sometimes I Just Have An Attitude Problem

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Yesterday’s New York Times reported on the antics of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other detainees being tried at Guantanamo as the planners of the September 11 terrorist attacks on America. Needless to say, the trial is a something of a circus because of the behavior of these five men. Al Qaeda and its related groups have very little respect for the American justice system (military or civilian), and play our courts and our media very well. I don’t have any other comments on the article, but I mention it because it leads to what I want to say.

Today’s New York Post posted a story by Gary Buiso explaining some of the details of how we eventually collected information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Just as America waterboards many of its military to prepare them for what will happen to them if they are taken prisoner by an enemy of America, Al Qaeda and related groups prepare their terrorists for what will happen to them if the Americans capture them (we used to capture them and send them somewhere for questioning–now we simply kill them with drones and cut off our source of information). The source of the story in The New York Post is a book titled “Hard Measures” by ex-CIA official José Rodriguez, Jr.

The article at the New York Post mentions Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s response to waterboarding. He had been coached on how it worked and how long it would last, and he simply counted on his fingers until it was over. Waterboarding alone would not have resulted in America getting the information we needed to understand the organization of Al Qaeda and eventually find Osama Bin Laden.

So what made Khalid Sheikh Mohammed talk–the experiencial equivalent of having a newborn baby in the house!

Ex-CIA official José Rodriguez Jr., told The Post:

The first day he was in custody, Mohammed — who attended college in Greensboro, NC — initially pretended to only speak Urdu, fooling no one. Officers forced him to stand, and after hours of questioning, his weakness for shut-eye began to show.

“Here’s the deal,” an interrogator said. “I know you speak English. I want you to politely ask me to let you go to sleep.”

The idea was to demonstrate to Mohammed “that he was no longer in control,” Rodriguez says. Officers would later keep him awake for 180 hours straight — 7 1/2 days. Loud noises and stress positions — where a detainee is shackled and forced to stand, putting intense pressure on the leg muscles — were used.

Other than the stress positions, that really does sound a lot like different stages of parenting. One of my daughters had a child who finally slept through the night after about a year. By the time that year was over, I think she and her husband would have given about anything for a good night sleep. As for loud noises, what do you say to parents who are raising a child who is a gifted drummer?

My point here is that there is a legal definition of torture–it does not include simply making someone uncomfortable.

The article reminds us:

One of Mohammed’s frequently stated goals was to be put on trial in civilian court in New York — which nearly happened until Congress last year blocked the Justice Department from transferring any Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States.

“It seemed to us that he was looking for a platform from which he could spout his hatred for all things American, and a trial would certainly present that opportunity,” Rodriguez writes. “It strikes me as more than a little ironic that several years later, Attorney General Eric Holder almost granted KSM his wish.”

A civilian trial in New York would have been made into a circus with the antics of these five prisoners. Thank God it never happened.

There is one other comment in the New York Post article I would like to mention:

“More than one detainee expressed surprise when slapped, and told the interrogator, ‘Hey, you aren’t supposed to do that!’ The al Qaeda training manual told them that Americans would treat them with kid gloves!” Rodriguez writes.

We can’t win the war on terror wearing kid gloves. Even if we are not planning to use torture, it might be a good idea to let our enemies think we are. We are not dealing with nice people–we are dealing with people who cut off the heads of innocent people with dull knives and think it is fun. We need to remember that.

 

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Were The Feudal Lords Driving SUV’s ?

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Yesterday the U.K. Daily Mail posted a story that will create some problems for those who believe that global warming is man-made and caused by our use of carbon fuels. Recent evidence shows that global warming occurred in the Middle Ages in many areas of the world.

The article reports:

A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the ‘consensus’, the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn’t just confined to Europe.

In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica – which means that the Earth has already experience global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions.

Whoops.

Professor Lu based his conclusions on a rare mineral called ikaite, which forms in cold waters.

The article explains:

It turns out the water that holds the crystal structure together – called the hydration water – traps information about temperatures present when the crystals formed.

This finding by Lu’s research team establishes, for the first time, ikaite as a reliable way to study past climate conditions

The article further reports:

The scientists were particularly interested in crystals found in layers deposited during the ‘Little Ice Age,’ approximately 300 to 500 years ago, and during the Medieval Warm Period before it.

Both climate events have been documented in Northern Europe, but studies have been inconclusive as to whether the conditions in Northern Europe extended to Antarctica.

Lu’s team found that in fact, they did.

Now that we have a reliable way of studying past climate conditions, we may be able to actually understand the things that do actually impact our global temperatures.

 

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Letting People Go Hungry Rather Than Taking The Chance That They Might Eat Something Unhealthy

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The New York Post reported today that New York City Mayor Bloomberg is blocking food donations to all government-run facilities that serve the city’s homeless.

The article reports:

In conjunction with a mayoral task force and the Health Department, the Department of Homeless Services recently started enforcing new nutritional rules for food served at city shelters. Since DHS can’t assess the nutritional content of donated food, shelters have to turn away good Samaritans.

The new policy ends the custom of houses of worship in New York who routinely donate food to the homeless shelters.

The article reports:

 For over a decade, Glenn Richter and his wife, Lenore, have led a team of food-delivery volunteers from Ohab Zedek, the Upper West Side Orthodox congregation.

They’ve brought freshly cooked, nutrient-rich surplus foods from synagogue events to homeless facilities in the neighborhood. (Disclosure: I know the food is so tasty because I’ve eaten it — I’m an OZ member.) The practice of donating such surplus food to homeless shelters is common among houses of worship in the city.

DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond says the ban on food donations is consistent with Mayor Bloomberg’s emphasis on improving nutrition for all New Yorkers. A new interagency document controls what can be served at facilities — dictating serving sizes as well as salt, fat and calorie contents, plus fiber minimums and condiment recommendations.

I appreciate the Mayor’s wanting to make sure everyone gets healthy food to eat, but it seems as if the choice here is whether people in the shelters get healthy food or very little food. The government interference in this matter prevents the churches from providing the charity that is part of their mission. The government needs to step aside and let the churches help.

 

 

 

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