The enemy
About the 27 slain in Newtown, Conn.:
Pogo said it best several years ago: We have met the enemy and he is us.
BENJAMIN C. WILSON SR.
Winston-Salem
Evil in the world
Several times in my tenure as a pastor I have been asked the question “Why?” Sitting with parents who awoke to find their daughter dead in her crib. Or another mother who went through hours of labor only to have her baby son stillborn. I watched the horror of 9/11/2001, and earlier the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Tragedies big and small, all with a one-word response: Why?
One answer my mind keeps coming back to in this most recent tragedy is simple (some might think simplistic). There is evil in the world. Satan is alive and well, and he and his minions are working very hard to drive people away from the source of peace, the Prince of Peace.
Some will blame hardware (guns) and others will blame software (the shooters’ mental difficulties), but let's lay the blame at the feet of the one to whom it should ultimately go. He is the one who has come to steal, kill and destroy. Let's also run to the one who offers that peace beyond understanding. He is the one who came bringing life more abundantly.
JERRY OBERG
Winston-Salem
Asking the right question
It seems with each passing day Americans find themselves horrified with the violence that surrounds our culture. Taking the life of one innocent person shocks our sense of morality and justice. And now we have awoken to the grim reality that young children just starting school have fallen prey to an emotional sickness that seems be growing in our country.
President Obama was eloquent when speaking about the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary School during the prayer vigil Sunday night. But I was bothered by his question, “Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm?”
His conclusion was that we were not. I think he missed the point. The question should have been, “Why are we having to protect our children?”
Let the discussion begin.
MERLE WHITNEY III
Advance
Our business climate
The Journal reported on Dec. 14 that Forbes magazine ranks North Carolina as the fourth best business climate in the country. Looks like Gov. Bev Purdue did something right!
It will be interesting to see the ranking after four years of Pope/McCrory.
KEN JAMES
Winston-Salem
Thoughtful and kind
This is in response to the Dec. 9 article “Hospice supports families over holidays,” about Tandra and Thurmond Chandler. My mother-in-law passed away in 2005 and she died at home as she wished and Hospice was such a blessing to us. Tandra was on her Hospice team and she was part of our family. She was wonderful; we were always glad to see her coming and she was so thoughtful and kind to us and to my mother-in-law. I do not know what we would have done without her. We just want to thank her and Hospice for all they do and tell Tandra that she and her husband are in our prayers.
I hate that she and her husband are going through the health problems they are having and so glad that Hospice is helping them, too. She was an angel to us and we will never forget her or Hospice for the kindness they gave to us and to our family.
JANICE CROW
Winston-Salem
Fiscal-cliff comedians
Discussion of baseline budgeting is not surprisingly missing from “fiscal-cliff” negotiations. Baseline budgeting is the gimmick Republicans and Democrats in Washington have used to establish the following year's budget by taking the total amount of spending for the current year, multiplying it by a percentage, and using that total as the following year's budget. So federal spending automatically grows year after year, and has since 1985.
Any reduction of the increase in spending is touted as a “budget cut,” when it is really only a reduction in how much spending is to be increased. Even worse, they authorize more spending than they automatically get with baseline budgeting.
Federal spending in 2011 was $3,603.1 trillion, resulting in a spending growth of over $252 billion for 2012.
Neither House Speaker John Boehner nor the administration in fiscal-cliff negotiations has proposed to cut any amount close to federal spending automatic growth in 2012 or 2013. About $6.4 trillion is forecasted to be the 2013 spending.
However, actual or pretended spending cuts isn't the main sticking point in this Kabuki comedy called fiscal-cliff negotiations — it's increased taxation. Boehner wants tax increases to come from eliminating loopholes or reducing deductions, while the administration wants to raise tax rates, supposedly only on the top 2 percent of taxpayers.
These Kabuki comedians should fly off the fiscal cliff arm-in-arm. We might, then, get an actual reduction in federal spending. However, getting more taxes is a certainty from Republicans and Democrats in Washington.
TOM SEAMAN
Pfafftown
Finish the Thought
Briefly complete the sentence below and sent it to us at letters@wsjournal.com. We’ll print some of the results in a few days. Only signed entries, please — no anonymous ones.
“The holiday season is the perfect time to ...”
The holiday season is the perfect time to ...” Get married.
ReplyDeleteand to meet some of forum's contributors in person.
DeleteSHIPPING DELAY
ReplyDeleteDue to the threat of gun control instigated by Barak Obama and supported by NRA backed Congressional leaders, we are experiencing a higher than normal order volume. Please allow ten business days for order processing. If you need your item in a hurry, you can select FedEx Express and we will process orders of in stock the order within two business days. Until further notice, we will not be taking phone orders.
There are only seven of us here normally to process orders, so we can only do two to four hundred orders per day at a maximum. We have temporary helpers to help get orders shipped as fast as possible. Once the order is made, please do not contact us to check the status. Constantly checking the status only makes it more difficult for everyone else involved. If you are not sure that you can be patient and wait for the order to process, please do not make an order.
Rather than contacting us to check on an order that you made one hour ago, please take the time to contact your congressmen and express your support for the Second Amendment and no new gun legislation.
Thank you for your patience as we work through this delay.
__________
Gun dealers are being flooded with orders because of Obama's and Democrats' threat to enact more ignorant and foolish gun laws.
In order to kill 27 people, one would only have to change a magazines twice under the Democrats proposal.
Columbine occurred while the 'assault weapons' ban was in effect.
The NRA members referred to above, are of course, mostly Democrats.
DeleteAs always, the forum fool natters on about matters of which he knows not.
DeleteHe has revealed in his own words over time that he knows nothing about weapons of any kind, from guns to nukes. And he clearly knows nothing about what happened at Columbine.
The Newtown shooting was typical of school invasion attacks. It began at about 9:35 and was over by 9:53 when police dispatch reported “one suspect down…building cleared”. Total time, 18 minutes.
Columbine was not a typical school invasion shooting. Dylan Clebold and Eric Harris had a varied array of weapons: a carbine, an “assault pistol”, two sawed off shotguns, a variety of bombs, 99 in all, both pre-planted and portable and a number of knives.
Rather than a quick in and dead, they spent a total of 49 minutes shooting outside and inside the school, in the hallways, stairwells, the cafeteria and the library, leisurely reloading their weapons several times. Most of those killed, 10 of the 15, died in the library, most from shotgun wounds.
There was a school resource officer on the premises when the shooting started. Within minutes, a second deputy sheriff was on the scene. Neither was able to stop the killing. By the time that Harris and Klebold committed suicide at 12:08 PM, there were dozens of officers on the campus.
As a result of Columbine, a new approach, known as the Immediate Action Rapid Deployment tactic has been adopted by many police forces. It calls for police arriving on the scene to ignore wounded, create a four-man "wedge" team and converge on the shooter and take him out, no matter what. Sometimes that is possible, sometimes not. It is credited with saving a number of lives at Virginia Tech and other shootings.
But it does not work against an attack like the one at Newtown, because the Newtown attack was over before police could respond. Even if there had been an armed officer standing in the lobby when the shooter blew out the glass, the chances that he would have been able to draw his holstered weapon and fire before being hit himself by the shooter are very low indeed.
The NRA proposal is pathetic, but it is not surprising that the forum fool will embrace it. Birds of a feather always flock together at Lameduck Mountain.
Only a liberal idiot would think that the Obama and Democrat proposal to eliminate 'assault weapons' will stop mass killings.
DeleteIf the shoe fits, wear it Rush.
Gun-related violence is most common in poor urban areas and in conjunction with gang violence, often involving juveniles or young adults [i.e. Chicago/Obamaland].
DeleteAn estimated 500,000 guns are stolen each year, making guns available to prohibited persons.
Wikipedia
Duh!
Let's pass another worthless law though say liberals.
Only a sixth grade failure with a severe reading disability would see anything about eliminating assault weapons in my post.
DeleteOf course, the problem is that not only can the forum fool not read and understand anything more than a headline, but he cannot write anything more complicated either. So no matter what anyone else posts, we get the same old irrelevant parrot juice, time and time again, awk, awk, awk!
I don't think banning "assault weapons" will have the slightest effect on violence in America. The problem is very simple:
1. Too many guns in the hands of fools, which covers most gun owners.
2. The fools themselves.
When my secret, heavily armed militia overthrows the US Government, get ready to travel, because:
1. All fools will be deported to Somalia.
2. All guns will be banned.
3. How do we get rid of the guns? The deportees are required to take them with them to Somalia, where they can spend the rest of their worthless lives shooting each other.
4. As an intended consequence, once the fools are gone, the national average IQ will rise sharply, say 20 or 30 points, and the US will again become the most creative and vibrant nation on earth.
Eliminate toy guns, and violent films and video games, that would probably have more of an effect on improper gun usage than Democrats' proposal to prohibit the sale of 'assault weapons'.
DeleteLet's use some innovative ideas for a change. It's getting real old blaming guns for mentally ill people's heinous behavior with guns.
Well, let's see. Toy weapons are as old as homo sapiens, translated for the forum fool: "humans".
DeleteOur earliest literature , The Illiad is a blood soaked saga. The Old Testament is a grisly account of slaughter after slaughter. One of my favorite bible stories is when Jael took a stake and hammered it through Sisera's temple. Cute.
The tale of Jesus' death is a gruesome one that includes torture. The first great English work is Beowulf, filled with horrible depredations. Shakespeare's greatest plays are filled with agony and death.
As soon as guns were invented (that would be over a thousand years ago), boys had toy guns. The most popular events in 19th century America were public hangings and lynchings.
Among the first movies were one in which Thomas Edison both planned and filmed the execution of a menagerie elephant by electrocution, mostly to promote his business. If you are the sort who enjoys that kind of thing, you can see it on YouTube. It is gruesome and savage and tells you a lot about the society which you come from.
The first box office smash movie was "The Great Train Robbery", which was mostly just killing. In the last scene, the leader of the bandits, played by Justus D. Barnes, turns and fires directly at the camera, which caused moviegoers of the times to duck under their seats. Maybe a foreshadowing of what a bunch of sissies Americans would become.
The first film epic was DW Griffith's "Birth of a Nation", a disgusting glorification of the KKK, based on a novel, The Clansman, by North Carolina racist Thomas Dixon.
Beginning with the talkie era, the Hayes office attempted to remove anything sexual from movies, while allowing ever increasing violence. In the 1940s, John Wayne's "Sands of Iwo Jima" showed us actual combat footage of US troops frying Japs with flame throwers. With the 1950s came such masterpieces as "A Bucket of Blood". If you are of age, don't you dare tell me that you didn't see it.
By the early 70s we had the "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and Clint Eastwood arrived with his spaghetti western form of delight at other's suffering…not to mention the soon to come Dirty Harry shit.
The earliest "video games" were all about death, from Pac Man to Pitfall.
It is difficult to understand how anyone of my generation or any other can try to place the blame for our current violence on some stupid video games. Get real, fools.
It's difficult for you to 'understand' anything, because you don't use logic in your reasoning.
DeleteI think most people in here have figured that out by now.
10 Totally Tasteless Pro-Gun T-Shirts
ReplyDeleteSick and pathetic, but frightening that someone who would buy and wear such a thing is actually walking around loose...
DeleteAnd further proof that the NRA and gun makers market to juveniles and adults whose development has been arrested at the juvenile stage.
Excellent post Wordly. I enjoyed it.
DeleteOf course, you've got the NWs of the world, like Rush, that think those T-Shirts are to be taken seriously. But most sane people know they are just to be taken in jest.
Somewhere, the bells are ringing...a little wedding poem from the past...
ReplyDeleteThe minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.
___Rumi, 13th century CE
Trans. from the Persian by Coleman Barks
Thank you, OT, for the poem and well wishes earlier. And thanks to other well wishers, also.
ReplyDeleteAt the church. I remembered the rings and the license.
Well done, lad. Stiff upper lip!
DeleteLiberal press corps blow back at NRA's Wayne La Pierre comments.
ReplyDeletehttp://dailycaller.com/2012/12/21/journalists-slam-nra-throughout-press-conference/
Who us? We don't spread no stinking lies about law abiding gun owners?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEmanuel Blasts NRA School Safety Plan As ‘Outrageous And Unsettling’
ReplyDeletehttp://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/12/21/emanuel-blasts-nra-school-safety-plan-as-outrageous-and-unsettling/
_________
Chicago has some of strictest gun laws, and the worst gun violence in America. Yet, Emmanuel has the audacity to make such a comment.
As always, the forum fool spews nonsense and misinformation at every turn…natter, natter, natter…blah, blah, blah. Instead of relying on such "sources" as FoxLies®, Limbaugh, Back and their ilk, all info below comes from the FBI.
DeleteDespite the Prohibition inspired orgy of violence created by Al Capone and his ilk in the 1920s, Chicago has never even been in the top three US cities in murders since World war II..
The all-time high murder rate for any of the 24 largest cities was about 80 per 100,000 in Washington, DC in 1991. Washington has seen the sharpest decrease of any of those cities to a rate well under a third of the 1991 rate. The current leader is Detroit, with about 43 per 100,000, down from a high of about 64.
Chicago's highest rate ever was in 1992 at about 34 per 100,000. The current rate is about 15, in a virtual tie with Milwaukee, Memphis, Indianapolis, Houston and Dallas.
At the bottom of the big 24, San Francisco and New York are in a virtual tie at under 10 murders per 100,000, just a hair ahead of San Antonio and Los Angeles.
But when it comes to murder rates nationwide among all cities with a population of 250,000 or more, Detroit and Washington are the only top 24 cities that even make the top ten:
Murder Rates per 100,000, US Cities over 250,000 Population:
1. New Orleans 72.8
2. St. Louis 40.5
3. Baltimore 34.8
4. Detroit 34.5
5. Newark 32.1
6. Oakland 22.0
7. Washington, DC 21.9
8. Kansas City 21.1
9. Buffalo 20.7
10. Cincinnati 20.5
Chicago is 19th. Durham has the highest rate in North Carolina, but does not appear in the rankings because its population is slightly below 250,000. Of the qualifying NC cities, Greensboro is 38th with a rate of 7.8 and Charlotte is 41st at 7.6, both well above New York at 6.4.
By far the lowest murder rates among major NC cities are in Raleigh and Asheville.
In overall violent crime, the top 10 in the US are (numbers rounded off to nearest hundred per hundred thousand):
1. Detroit 1900
2. St. Louis 1700
3. Memphis 1500
4. Oakland 1500
5. Baltimore 1500
6. Stockton 1400
7. Buffalo 1400
8. Cleveland 1300
9. Washington, DC 1200
10. Philadelphia 1200
The next six are Kansas City, Nashville, Miami, Tulsa, Cincinnati and Atlanta. Chicago ranks 17th, just behind Atlanta.
Charlotte is the worst NC city with a rate of 613, Greensboro is next at 588. Compare to New York at 582 and Los Angeles at 559.
Early this year, Chicago captured headlines nationwide, with a sharp increase in murders and violent crime, the result of a couple of gang wars, primarily in the Englewood neighborhood. Since then, the Englewood numbers have dropped by over 40% and citywide they have dropped even more.
When the final numbers for 2012 are tallied, Detroit, St. Louis and Oakland will still be at the top, and Chicago will not be in the top 15. So much for the hysterical fool.
As usual, the intellectual idiot cites numbers for incidents of murder and violent crime. Our favorite forum NW does not cite numbers that directly correlate to gun crime data.
DeleteLiberal diversionary tactics. Who would have guessed, huh?
You'll also note there is no cite for the information that he gives. Who knows where he got his statistics?
In his 'rush' to prove me wrong on every issue, Rush inevitably makes a fool of himself.
Well, actually, the post cites the FBI as the source.
DeleteGiven the reading and comprehension disabilities of the forum fool, who would be surprised?
And the original subject was murder and violent crime in Chicago. Duh!
Poor, pitiful fool.
Where are the gun stats? That's the topic you are 'trying' to discuss.
DeleteYet another example of why some people are not as smart as they think they are.
A vote last month that makes Californians among the highest-taxed residents in the country is sparking debate about whether the Democrat-back initiative will backfire, by forcing high-earners to join a long exodus from the cash-strapped state.
ReplyDeleteDemocratic Gov. Jerry Brown successfully pushed the tax increase by suggesting that high-earners must shoulder the largest burden in bailing out the state, particularly its debt-ridden public school system.
However, high unemployment and government debt have already sent residents fleeing in large numbers – an estimated 225,000 annually for the past 10 years.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/22/new-tax-increase-in-california-stirs-debate-about-adding-to-exodus/#ixzz2Fofe9yrE
________
CA liberals will never learn until the state is just one big waste-land.
Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths, even though they were only 15 percent of the child/teen population.
ReplyDeleteABC News
_______
Of course, ABC fails to mention that most are murdered by young black males, or negligent family members. It wants to infer a racial component in the story.
(CNN) – One of America's leading students of violence tells CNN that trying to prevent future massacres like the one at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School should not be the driving force of America's policies to reduce violence.
ReplyDelete"We can get misled if we focus on rampage killings like Newtown," says the man we've chosen for this week's CNN Profiles.
"To concentrate all of our violence reduction efforts on the most unpredictable, the hardest to control, the craziest incidents is, I think, a misallocation of resources," our guest tells us. He adds, "if we want to keep most people from being killed, it's the wrong place to obsess."
_____________
That will be impossible with Democrats involved. They wouldn't know what rational thinking is if it hit them in the head.
Gun politics:
ReplyDeleteDemocratic Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.), Mark Begich (Alaska), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Tim Johnson (S.D.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Kay Hagan (N.C.) face reelection in 2014 in states with avid hunting cultures.
__________
Kay Hagan? Who is she? What has she done? I would name her Mrs. Mole if I could rename her.
A survey conducted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service a couple of years ago showed that only about 5% of Americans still participate in hunting. Anyone who actually has a job, a family and friends simply does not have time for such.
DeleteThe top hunting states are Pennsylvania and Texas. None of the states mentioned by the forum fool is in the top ten hunting states. North Carolina is not even on the map.
As always...
The comment above mine was taken from a CBS news article. Tell that to them if you have a problem with the way the sentence is structured.
Delete16% of Montanans went hunting during the last year, while only 1% of Californians. Yet, the liberal nitwits in CA want to control the gun law debate.
They're much like you, Rush, they don't have clue, but the want to run their mouths.
Fishing, on the other hand, is considerably more popular. Almost three times as many Americans fish regularly than those who hunt regularly. And millions more try fishing on occasion, which rarely happens in hunting.
DeleteEven though I grew up in a hunting family, I quit when I was only twelve. But I have still gone fishing more than a few times since…it is a totally different experience.
In hunting you shoot and you either hit or miss. In fishing, you can hook the prize, but the outcome is delayed until you actually land the fish…mucho drama…and the fish wins often enough to keep it interesting. Just ask anyone who has ever gone bonefishing. A bonefish is the spawn of the devil…he does not like you and does not want to be your friend.
In a single day on Lake Michigan, I landed a very respectable 24 pound Atlantic Salmon (still pretty rare there) while my friend Fam lost a huge Chinook, probably 35-36 pounds when I bobbled the net and it ran under the boat and cut the line. I'm not a big venison fan, but will eat almost anything that comes out of the water. Even learned to appreciate eel in Hong Kong.
Wildlife watching has become much more popular than either hunting or fishing. More than twice the number of people do that than hunting and fishing combined. i would have a hard time shooting a mountain goat in the Rockies after watching her toe-walk across a sheer cliff that would have sent me plunging to my death. Amazing creatures!
And on several excursions with a herpetologist friend from NC State have seen four coral snakes in the wild, which he tells me puts me in the upper 10% for lifetime spottings…those babies may be deadly, but they are also painfully shy…almost exclusively nocturnal…our one daytime sighting is still legendary in certain circles.
It continues to amaze me that fools get their "news" from TV. TV is "entertainment" while newspapers, especially local ones, try to remain true to the definition of news.
DeleteHere is a snippet from a Montana newspaper, datelined Billings, a few weeks ago. They are quoting their own local Fish and Game report from last year, not some fantasy produced in New York.
"Still, the numbers remain relatively small as a percentage of the entire U.S. population. The survey found 14 percent of the U.S. population fished, while only 6 percent hunted. Montana and Wyoming had participation rates of only 15 percent in fishing and 6 percent in hunting."
___The Missoulian September 15, 2012
It is understandable that those whose only life is fantasy would prefer the fantasy to the truth.
Fewer and fewer people are going hunting every year, that's the reason many liberals cite people need to own guns. As such, more and more people are buying guns just for self-protection. Because Obama and Democrats are destablizing the nation through their foolish and ill-advise economic policies. The need to own an assault weapon for self-protection from a foreign invasion or other mass threat is actually increasing, not decreasing as some have suggested.
DeleteIn late August, 2012 there were in the USA:
ReplyDeleteFederally licensed firearm dealers: 129,817
Gas stations: 143,839
Supermarkets: 36,569
McDonalds restaurants: 14,098
Is there something wrong with these numbers? You tell me?
A 2007 study conducted by the ATF found that the average licensed firearms dealer reported about 2.5 firearms as stolen or missing from their inventory each year. Let's be charitable and say that that amounts to 300,000 stolen or missing guns per year.
The same study found that about 600,000 firearms were stolen from private residences. Almost every one of those was the result of irresponsible gun ownership.
The ATF also estimates that there are about 40,000 "gun shows" held each year. Most of the sellers are not federally registered dealers. Even the ATF has no idea how many guns are sold at these shows, but their studies have shown that about 40% of all gun sales occur at these shows and on the internet and in private sales, so about 400,000 unmonitored sales annually. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris of Columbine infamy acquired three of their four guns from a single gun show.
That brings the total to about 1.3 million guns changing hands each year without any record of who sold or stole what from who. The ATF estimates that 50-60% of guns in the US have been acquired illegally, one way or another.
We have a nationwide system for dealing with firearms sales called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Since this system was established, ATF records show that about 1.3 million criminals and other non-qualifiers have been prevented from buying guns.
But in 2010, over 16 million checks were run. Only about 78,000 were denied, less than 1/2 of 1%. Do you really believe that less than 1/2 of 1% of those folks were qualified to own guns? If so, you are dramatically out of touch with reality.
About 50% of Americans, by far the highest in the world, have emotional conditions that deviate from the "norm". About 45 million of those are classified as mentally ill. And about 11 million of those cases are considered "serious". Yet since 2009, conservative politicians at the national, state and local levels have cut at least $4.35 billion in public mental health spending.
Most of those 11 million serious cases are harmless, but when their conditions are left untreated, that can and does change. As our Marine instructors in basic combat liked to say "A rat is usually not a threat to you. But back him into a corner where he perceives that his survival is threatened, and you've got a helluva fight on your hands."
The NRA and its mindless supporters are a major threat to all of us. So far, their tactics of threatening Congressmen with defeat if they fail to follow the NRA's advice has worked. But the fact is that they are selling fear, not truth. In the 2012 elections, they pumped $13 million into defeating the President and came up short. And they put $100,000 more into eight Senate races, in which they failed on seven.
If you want to see their true influence, look at the numbers that I just cited. $13 million in a presidential race that produced billions in spending? $100,000 total in eight Senate races that averaged about $23 million in expenditures? You've got to be joking. Even in the one race where they were on the winning side, they had zero influence on the outcome.
The time has come to send these small-dicked losers packing. If they want to improve their "equipment", maybe they should look to the ads for penis enlargement. Ha, ha, ha.
Of the some 30,000 deaths by firearms last year, over two thirds of them were suicides.
DeleteWe can't keep stupid people from killing themselves no matter what laws we pass.
Of course, you can't tell that to the NWs of the world. Like you know who................
As always, no attempt to reply to the post...just another irrelevant bunch of shit...irrelevance from an irrelevant bullshitter.
DeleteMore shallow responses from a liberal trying to avoid reality.
Delete