Monthly Archives: June 2016
When The Truth Doesn’t Matter
Truth seems to be taking a back seat in some major political discussions lately–Katie Couric‘s gun documentary did some creative editing and the State Department edited a press briefing that was to be saved as an historical archive. In both cases, the idea was to promote a point of view that was contrary to the truth. The gun documentary was supposed to show how easy it was to obtain a firearm, and the editing of the press briefing was to erase the fact that negotiations with Iran on the nuclear deal started long before there was a ‘moderate’ president of Iran. Just for the record, the president of Iran is not the person who is actually in charge. The group that is currently ruling Iran is essentially the same group of people that took over in 1979.
Yesterday The Independent Journal Review pointed out another problem with the gun documentary. People unfamiliar with gun laws who watched the documentary might have missed this, but Dana Loesch, a 2nd Amendment advocate, noted the following:
In an interview shared by Ammoland TV, Soechtig (Stephanie Soechtig, also involved in the production of the show) discusses the making of the film and notes the following:
“We sent a producer out and he is from Colorado and he went to Arizona and he was able to buy a Bushmaster and then three other pistoles without a background check in a matter of four hours. And that’s perfectly legal.”
Except it isn’t. Legal, that is. When Soechtig sent a producer to Arizona from Colorado specifically to acquire firearms, she could have actually broken two federal laws:
- Interstate transfer: for a purchaser to acquire a firearm outside their state of residence – in this case, Colorado – the transfer must go through a licensed firearms dealer in the purchaser’s state of residence [18 U.S.C 922(a)(3); 27 CFR 478.29].
- Straw purchase: one individual may not make the purchase of a firearm in someone else’s name [18 U.S.C. 922(a)(5)].
By Soechtig’s own admission, she sent a producer across state lines with instructions to purchase a firearm on her behalf (violation of straw purchase laws). And unless her producer is also a licensed firearms dealer, it’s likely that interstate transfer laws may also have been violated.
Loesch called on the ATF to investigate, noting the irony that people criticizing law-abiding gun owners were actually the ones violating gun laws already on the books.
It is interesting that those fighting to undo the 2nd Amendment do not understand the laws surrounding it. The 2nd Amendment was put there to protect the rights of Americans to own guns. We can argue about the current regulations surrounding the 2nd Amendment, but generally speaking, the safeguards are there to prevent criminals and unstable people from acquiring firearms. The right of law-abiding Americans to buy guns is part of the Constitution. It needs to be upheld. What was done in Katie Couric’s gun documentary is simply another example of the media trying to mislead the American people. We need to be smart enough to know when we are being lied to. Also note that many of the people trying to take away the guns of Americans have armed bodyguards. Another example of a law for thee, but not for me.
Who Paid For This Study?
Yesterday The Washington Post posted an article reporting a study that showed female-named hurricanes kill more people than male-named hurricanes.
The article reports:
Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes.
Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model).
The difference in death rates between genders was even more pronounced when comparing strongly masculine names versus strongly feminine ones.
We have been naming storms after women since 1950 and men since 1979. That means that there were 30 years of female-named storms before there were male-named storms. Of course there would be more female storms with higher death rates–there were more female storms. I really do wonder about the validity of their research.
The article explains that the study was based on questions to individuals–not actual storm history:
To test the hypothesis the gender of the storm names impacts people’s judgments about a storm, the researchers set up 6 experiments presenting a series of questions to between 100 to 346 people. The sexism showed up again.
Respondents predicted male hurricanes to be more intense the female hurricanes in one exercise. In another exercise, the hurricane sex affected how respondents said they would prepare for a hurricane.
“People imagining a ‘female’ hurricane were not as willing to seek shelter,” Shavitt said. “The stereotypes that underlie these judgments are subtle and not necessarily hostile toward women – they may involve viewing women as warmer and less aggressive than men.”
Hurricanes have been named since 1950. Originally, only female names were used; male names were introduced into the mix in 1979.
That’s not a study–it’s a survey.
Logic Turned Sideways
Last night at a Donald Trump rally in San Jose, Trump supporters were attacked by an angry mob as they left the venue.
Hot Air posted an article today about the violence and about the Mayor of San Jose’s comments on the riot.
The article reports:
“Our police officers have done an extremely courageous and professional job so far,” San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo told the Associated Press by phone. “We’re all still holding our breath to see the outcome of this dangerous and explosive situation.”
The mayor, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton supporter, criticized Trump for coming to cities and igniting problems that local police departments have to deal with.
“At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” Liccardo said.
I hate to be difficult, but the behavior of the Donald Trump campaign was not the problem.
The article further reports:
Here’s how CNN described Thursday’s scene outside the San Jose Convention Center:
Protesters jumped on cars, pelted Trump supporters with eggs and water balloons, snatched signs, and stole “Make America Great” hats off supporters’ heads before burning them and snapping selfies with the charred remains.
Several people were caught on camera punching Trump supporters.
This was also reported:
No, California is not Mexico. The fact that the Trump protesters are claiming that it is might be food for thought.
The Weekly Standard also posted an article about the protests today.
They reported:
The mayor of San Jose, Democrat Sam Liccardo, reacted angrily to the events. Not that he was particularly upset at the violent mob that attacked innocent Americans, of course. No, his ire was directed at Mr. Trump. “At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign,” the mayor said. Apparently it was downright “irresponsible” of Trump to even set foot in California’s third largest city.
The Washington Post characterized the mayor’s remarks as if they were just standard partisan hackery: It noted that the mayor is a “Hillary Clinton supporter.” But Liccardo’s remarks were far different than, say, a cable TV flack claiming that Trump’s tax policy “favors the rich.” (And by the way, he employed the same logic as as a slack-jawed misogynist saying of a sexual assault victim, “hey, her skirt was so short, she was asking for it.”)
I would love to know how many people were arrested and charged with assault (as they should have been). I would also like to know when it became acceptable to physically attack people who support ideas that are different than your ideas.
The violence at San Jose is unacceptable. It needs to be condemned. It also needs to be understood that the people who are to blame for the violence are the people who are committing the violent acts. I don’t care who said what–there is no excuse for the behavior shown. I would also like to know how many of the protesters were paid and what the conditions of the employment were–were they encouraged to be violent?
I encountered paid protesters during a political campaign in Massachusetts a number of years ago. It was very clear that they were attempting to create an incident that would get major press coverage. They were unsuccessful because no one cooperated. In the case of San Jose, it didn’t seem to matter what the response was, the protesters were going to be violent.
Until responsibility for the violence is put on those committing the violence, we will see more of this. The solution to this is to charge anyone engaging in violent activity with assault and fine them heavily. Even though the people funding this may have deep pockets, at some point paying fines will get old.
The Consequences Of Letting Everyone In The Same Bathroom
The bathroom bill (should be locker room bill) passed in North Carolina has caused a lot of controversy. This article is based on two articles, one posted at CBN News today and one posted at Lady Liberty 1885.
The article at Lady Liberty 1885 includes the following video (also posted on YouTube):
As the video points out, women need a safe space to change clothes or go to the bathroom. I can’t imagine thinking parents wanting their teenage daughters to share locker rooms with teenage boys.
There has been another interesting example of the fallout of this law.
CBN News is reporting today:
A former state executive director of the ACLU has resigned because her own daughters were frightened when transgendered men entered the women’s bathroom.
The American Civil Liberties Union has been a champion of transgender bathroom rights. Former director of the Georgia ACLU chapter Maya Dillard Smith says she is resigned after her daughters’ experience in a public bathroom.
“I have shared my personal experience of having taken my elementary school age daughters into a women’s restroom when shortly after three transgender young adults, over six-feet tall with deep voices, entered,” Smith wrote in a statement.
“My children were visibly frightened, concerned about their safety and left asking lots of questions for which I, like many parents, was ill-prepared to answer,” she continued.
She also said the incident highlighted the ALCU‘s “hierarchy of rights.”
She wrote in a statement that the ACLU is “a special interest organization that promotes not all, but certain progressive rights….based on who is funding the organization’s lobbying activities.”
Transgender people constitute a very small percentage of our population. They deserve to be respected and not bullied, but their desires should not be used to put the safety of other Americans in jeopardy. The transgenders themselves are not the issue–it’s the people who will use the issue for their own nefarious purposes.
Changing History As It Occurs
Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article about the recent editing of a State Department press briefing on December 2, 2013. A question asked by Fox News reporter James Rosen was edited out of the archived video of the briefing.
The article reports:
The deleted segment of the briefing featured Fox News reporter James Rosen asking then-State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether the Obama administration had lied about having secret talks with Iran in 2011. Psaki essentially admitted that it had.
Rosen inquired, “Is it the policy of the State Department, where the preservation or the secrecy of secret negotiations is concerned, to lie in order to achieve that goal?” Psaki responded, “James, I think there are times where diplomacy needs privacy in order to progress. This is a good example of that.”
The start date of the Iran nuclear negotiations is back in the spotlight because of a New York Times Magazine piece in which Ben Rhodes admitted that the Obama administration “largely manufactured” a narrative for the Iran deal in order to garner support for it. A key element of the manufactured narrative was that negotiations began in 2013 with the election of a “moderate” Iranian president.
It looks like the State Department tried, by editing the video, to cover up the administration’s lie about when Iran negotiations commenced (together with the admission that it is willing to lie), and then lied again by claiming that the cover up was the product of a glitch.
Remember, this video is supposed to be an accurate archived record of American history. The State Department chose to edit it to rewrite a portion of history. I thought only Communist countries did that.
The article explains the consequences for the editing of the video:
Who requested the scrubbing? The State Department claims not to know. It says that officials “tried” to determine who ordered the edit, “but it was three years ago and the individual who took the call [to edit the tape] just simply doesn’t have a better memory of it.”
Jen Psaki, who made the admission that needed to be deleted, is an obvious suspect. She denies responsibility.
Will the State Department launch an investigation? No it will not. Current spokesperson John Kirby says:
There were no rules governing this sort of action in the past, so I find no reason to press forward with a more formal or deeper investigation. What matters to me — and I take it seriously — is our commitment to transparency and disclosure.
The Obama State Department just can’t stop lying.
I have been known to complain about the mainstream media slanting the news or lying to Americans. Now we have evidence that the government is lying to us. It’s time for a new government.
Bringing The Wolf Into The Henhouse
As the Egyptian government attempts to deal with the constant threat of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, President Obama is bringing people connected to the Muslim Brotherhood into high offices in the American government.
On Monday, The Clarion Project posted an article posted an article about the appointment of Zaki Barzinji to be the new liaison to the Muslim-American community.
The article reports:
The official, Zaki Barzinji, previously served as the deputy director of intergovernmental affairs for Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (more on that further down in this article), who is now under investigation for possible political corruption. Before that, Barzinji was the president of the Muslim Youth of North America, which describes itself as the youth wing of ISNA (Islamic Society of North America).
ISNA was labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history, with the Justice Department specifically listing it as an entity of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood’s own documents list ISNA at the top of its list of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.”
ISNA’s links to the Brotherhood and Hamas are laid out in bipartisan legislation titled the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act. The bill now has over 75 supporters in the House and Senate.
How did Zaki Barzinji rise through the ranks in ISNA and McAuliffe’s office to become the new associate director of public engagement for the White House?
He is the grandson of a prominent Islamist leader named Jamal Barzinji, who passed away last year. Indeed, Jamal Barzinji was a founder and/or senior official in virtually every group identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front in America. He also frequently donated to political campaigns. He was nearly prosecuted, but the Obama Justice Department dropped the planned indictment.
On June 1, Frank Gaffney, Jr. at the Center for Security Policy posted the following:
…President Obama has just appointed as his Muslim American community liaison a third-generation Muslim Brotherhood operative: Zaki Barzinji. The practical effect of this appointment will be more Brotherhood influence in U.S. policy – and less security for Americans in this country, as well as overseas.
If this information does not disturb you, I strongly suggest that you read government exhibit 3-85.pdf from the Holy Land Foundation Trial. The English translation of the document begins on Page 16.
I have told the story of the Holy Land Foundation Trial on this site before, but in case you are new to this site, here are the basics from The Dallas Morning News:
The latter (government exhibit 3-85 pdf) refers to where the original 15-page document (the exhibits have an attached, government-created translation) was found — in the home of unindicted co-conspirator Ismail Elbarasse.
In 2004, the FBI searched his Virginia home, where they found a trove of Muslim Brotherhood archival material. The Brotherhood is the parent organization of Hamas, the terrorist organization that the Holy Land defendants were ultimately convicted of supporting.
According to published reports, authorities in Maryland arrested Elbarasse after spotting his wife videotaping portions of a major Chesapeake Bay bridge while they rode across it in their SUV.
As we pointed out during the first trial, the document has continued to take on a life of its own, way beyond the HLF case.
The Muslim Brotherhood holds a number of powerful positions in the American government. The infiltration has been going in since the late 1980’s. We need to education ourselves to the threat and hold our government officials accountable for what is going on. The Muslim Brotherhood believes that the only law Americans should obey is Sharia Law. One of their goals is setting up courts that will be supportive of Sharia Law. If you are not troubled by that, remember that Sharia Law supports wife beating, honor killings, punishing rape victims, female genital mutilation, and other things that should not be condoned in our country.
It is time for Americans to wake up.
A Little Thursday Satire
A website called Sipsey Street Irregulars posted the following:
I realize it is very irreverent, but if I were a college student, this would be a great way to remember some of the events of World War I.
Evaluating Our Priorities
I Wonder If All The People Being Celebrated Want To Celebrate
Yesterday the White House website posted a proclamation by President Obama.
The proclamation states:
Presidential Proclamation — LGBT Pride Month, 2016
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2016
– – – – – – –
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Since our founding, America has advanced on an unending path toward becoming a more perfect Union. This journey, led by forward-thinking individuals who have set their sights on reaching for a brighter tomorrow, has never been easy or smooth. The fight for dignity and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people is reflected in the tireless dedication of advocates and allies who strive to forge a more inclusive society. They have spurred sweeping progress by changing hearts and minds and by demanding equal treatment — under our laws, from our courts, and in our politics. This month, we recognize all they have done to bring us to this point, and we recommit to bending the arc of our Nation toward justice.
Last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision guaranteeing marriage equality in all 50 States was a historic victory for LGBT Americans, ensuring dignity for same-sex couples and greater equality across State lines. For every partnership that was not previously recognized under the law and for every American who was denied their basic civil rights, this monumental ruling instilled newfound hope, affirming the belief that we are all more free when we are treated as equals.
LGBT individuals deserve to know their country stands beside them. That is why my Administration is striving to better understand the needs of LGBT adults and to provide affordable, welcoming, and supportive housing to aging LGBT Americans. It is also why we oppose subjecting minors to the harmful practice of conversion therapy, and why we are continuing to promote equality and foster safe and supportive learning environments for all students. We remain committed to addressing health disparities in the LGBT community — gay and bisexual men and transgender women of color are at a particularly high risk for HIV, and we have worked to strengthen our National HIV/AIDS Strategy to reduce new infections, increase access to care, and improve health outcomes for people living with HIV.
Despite the extraordinary progress of the past few years, LGBT Americans still face discrimination simply for being who they are. I signed an Executive Order in 2014 that prohibits discrimination against Federal employees and contractors on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. I urge the Congress to enact legislation that builds upon the progress we have made, because no one should live in fear of losing their job simply because of who they are or who they love. And our commitment to combatting discrimination against the LGBT community does not stop at our borders: Advancing the fair treatment of all people has long been a cornerstone of American diplomacy, and we have made defending and promoting the human rights of LGBT individuals a priority in our engagement across the globe. In line with America’s commitment to the notion that all people should be treated fairly and with respect, champions of this cause at home and abroad are upholding the simple truth that LGBT rights are human rights.
There remains much work to do to extend the promise of our country to every American, but because of the acts of courage of the millions who came out and spoke out to demand justice and of those who quietly toiled and pushed for progress, our Nation has made great strides in recognizing what these brave individuals long knew to be true in their hearts — that love is love and that no person should be judged by anything but the content of their character. During Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, as Americans wave their flags of pride high and march boldly forward in parades and demonstrations, let us celebrate how far we have come and reaffirm our steadfast belief in the equal dignity of all Americans.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2016 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand sixteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fortieth.
BARACK OBAMA
This is an affront to every Bible-believing Christian in America. I have no problem with giving the LGBT community equal rights–I have a major problem with the concept of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. First of all, that is more information than I need. I don’t care what you do in your spare time, just don’t ask me to celebrate it. Second, as a Christian, the gay or lesbian lifestyle is something I cannot condone. I realize that there are some people who will read what I am about to write and declare me a fanatic, but this proclamation will bring judgement on America. We are sticking our finger in God’s eye, and that is eventually going to be a problem.