The Daily Gouge, Monday, December 24th, 2012

On December 23, 2012, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Monday, December 24th, 2012, the last shopping day before Christmas.  And if you’re venturing forth in search of some last-minute gifts, all we can wish you is “good luck”.

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of Balls Cotton, seasoned firearms instructor and 2nd Amendment advocate Larry Correia offers….

An Opinion on Gun Control

 

68455

Blah, blah, blah; unfortunately, Mr. Constitutional Law Professor, it ain’t about hunting:

the-2nd-amendment-obama-politics-1345293827art_163second-amendment

It’s also there to allow individual citizens to protect their lives and property when the authorities are either unwilling to do so, as was the case in Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots, or unable, as is detailed in today’s “Coming Soon To A Supermarket Near You” segment:

Two Dead as Supermarket Looting Spreads in Argentina

 

628x471

Looters ransacked supermarkets in several Argentine cities Friday, causing two deaths and evoking memories of widespread theft and riots that killed dozens during the country’s worst economic crisis a decade ago. Santa Fe Province Security Minister Raul Lamberto described the attacks on stores as simple acts of vandalism and not social protests.

Lamberto said two people were killed by a sharp object and gunfire after attacks early Friday on about 20 supermarkets in the cities of Rosario and Villa Gobernador Galvez. He declined to identify the victims or the attackers, but said 25 people were injured and 130 arrested during the looting about 190 miles northeast of Buenos Aires.

120803-argentina-food-riot

Closer to the capital, riot police fired rubber bullets to discourage a mob from attacking a supermarket in San Fernando, a town in Buenos Aires province.Some shops closed in several cities despite the busy Christmas shopping season, worrying that the looting might spread.

The troubles followed a wave of sporadic looting that began Thursday when dozens of people broke into a supermarket and carried away televisions and other electronics in the Patagonian ski resort of Bariloche. The government responded by deploying 400 military police to that southern city.The unrest brought back memories of violence during Argentina’s economic crisis in 2001, when jobless people stormed supermarkets, shops and kiosks.

You think any of the more-equal-than-other pigs in Washington will be fighting for food, fuel or other basic necessities, not to mention their lives, when the balloon they’ve been inflating all these years finally goes up?  Not a chance.  They’ll be warm, well-fed and totally secure behind a phalanx of very well-armed security.

Meanwhile, courtesy of Uncle Cliffy, Charles Krauthammer asks some very tough questions as he delves into….

The Roots of Mass Murder

 

tumblr_mdl63t597E1rw5dlyo1_1280

Every mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea. Names are hurled, scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere.

Let’s be serious:

(1) The Weapon

tumblr_m98milxJGP1r3ocfjo1_500

Within hours of last week’s Newtown, Conn., massacre, the focus was the weapon and the demand was for new gun laws. Several prominent pro-gun Democrats remorsefully professed new openness to gun control. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is introducing a new assault weapons ban. And the president emphasized guns and ammo above all else in announcing the creation of a new task force.

I have no problem in principle with gun control. Congress enacted (and I supported) an assault weapons ban in 1994. (A position with which we’ll have to respectfully disagree!) The problem was: It didn’t work. (So concluded a University of Pennsylvania study commissioned by the Justice Department.) The reason is simple. Unless you are prepared to confiscate all existing firearms, disarm the citizenry and repeal the Second Amendment, it’s almost impossible to craft a law that will be effective.

Feinstein’s law, for example, would exempt 900 weapons. And that’s the least of the loopholes. Even the guns that are banned can be made legal with simple, minor modifications.

Not to mention those drafting the anti-2nd Amendment measures don’t know a breech from a bassoon.

Most fatal, however, is the grandfathering of existing weapons and magazines. That’s one of the reasons the ’94 law failed. At the time, there were 1.5 million assault weapons in circulation and 25 million large-capacity (i.e., more than 10 bullets) magazines. A reservoir that immense can take 100 years to draw down.

(2) The Killer

article-0-129E0628000005DC-887_634x390

Monsters shall always be with us, but in earlier days they did not roam free. As a psychiatrist in Massachusetts in the 1970s, I committed people — often right out of the emergency room — as a danger to themselves or to others. I never did so lightly, but I labored under none of the crushing bureaucratic and legal constraints that make involuntary commitment infinitely more difficult today.

Why do you think we have so many homeless? Destitution? Poverty has declined since the 1950s. The majority of those sleeping on grates are mentally ill. In the name of civil liberties, we let them die with their rights on.A tiny percentage of the mentally ill become mass killers. Just about everyone around Tucson shooter Jared Loughner sensed he was mentally ill and dangerous. But in effect, he had to kill before he could be put away — and (forcibly) treated.

Random mass killings were three times more common in the 2000s than in the 1980s, when gun laws were actually weaker. Yet a 2011 University of California at Berkeley study found that states with strong civil commitment laws have about a one-third lower homicide rate.

(3) The Culture

children2

We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.

If we’re serious about curtailing future Columbines and Newtowns, everything — guns, commitment, culture — must be on the table. It’s not hard for President Obama to call out the NRA. But will he call out the ACLU? And will he call out his Hollywood friends?

DjangoNew-650x341

The irony is that over the last 30 years, the U.S. homicide rate has declined by 50 percent. Gun murders as well. We’re living not through an epidemic of gun violence but through a historic decline.

Except for these unfathomable mass murders. But these are infinitely more difficult to prevent. While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic. The best we can do is to try to detain them, disarm them and discourage “entertainment” that can intensify already murderous impulses.

But there’s a cost. Gun control impinges upon the Second Amendment; involuntary commitment impinges upon the liberty clause of the Fifth Amendment; curbing “entertainment” violence impinges upon First Amendment free speech. That’s a lot of impingement, a lot of amendments. But there’s no free lunch. Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.

We made that trade after 9/11. We make it every time the TSA invades your body at an airport. How much are we prepared to trade away after Newtown?

Our respect for the learned Dr. Krauthammer is second to none; but he assumes, quite incorrectly, facts not in evidence.  He grants as valid the specious arguments the involuntary commitment of the mentally-ill violates the 5th Amendment, or that kids have a 1st Amendment right to play ultra-violent video games.  At the same time, he mischaracterizes the 2nd Amendment argument, and ignores measures proven to protect against mass-murder, such as arming teachers and concealed-carry permits, which support rather than restrict the rights granted citizens by the Constitution.

And for those still clinging to the vain and hopelessly-naive belief the 2nd Amendment means anything to the Left, here’s a little wake-up call:

New York Governor: Gun Confiscation on the Table

 

Meanwhile, Team Tick-Tock’s clarion calls for more gun-control legislation notwithstanding, as the Washington Examiner reports….

Gun Prosecutions Down 45 Percent Under Obama

 

4430764-3x2-700x467

Despite his calls for greater gun control, including a new assault weapons ban that extends to handguns, President Obama’s administration has turned away from enforcing gun laws, cutting weapons prosecutions some 40 percent since a high of about 11,000 under former President Bush.

“If you are not going to enforce the laws on the books, then don’t start talking about a whole new wave of new laws,” said a gun rights advocate.

We’d cry too, or at least pretend to, if our Justice Department sold the guns which killed more people than all the mass murders over the last ten years combined!

Next up, the latest from the Religion of Peace:

Mob in Pakistan sets mentally unstable man on fire after he was accused of burning Koran

 

SC_1

A mob in southern Pakistan stormed a police station to seize a mentally unstable Muslim man accused of burning a copy of Islam’s holy book, beat him to death, and then set his body afire, police said Saturday.

The case is likely to raise further concerns about the country’s harsh blasphemy laws, which can result in a death sentence or life in prison to anyone found guilty. Critics say an accusation or investigation alone can lead to deaths, as people take the law into their own hands and kill those accused of violating it. Police stations and even courts have been attacked by mobs.

Local police official Bihar-ud-Din said police arrested the man on Friday after being informed by residents that he had burned a Koran inside a mosque where he had been staying for a night. An angry mob of more than 200 people then broke into the police station in the southern town of Dadu and took the accused man, who they say was under questioning. Din said police tried their best to save the man’s life but were unable to stop the furious crowd.

He said that police had arrested 30 people for suspected involvement in the attack, while the head of the local police station and seven officers had been suspended.

Well, that’s one way of dealing with the mentally-unstable.

Moving on to the Business Section, the WSJ‘s Kimberly Strassel describes how the rich really get richer….all with the help of those supposedly on the side of the “little guy”:

Big Business Sells Out Small Business

CEOs say yes to higher individual taxes in return for Obama’s promise of corporate tax reform.

 

small-business-health-insurance-cost-2-2

Were the Hollywood academy to hand out Oscars for roles in this fiscal cliff drama, the winner of the Best Charlatan award would not be in much doubt. Corporate America, take your bow.

Say this for the Republicans and Democrats: Both sides are fighting over principles. Nothing so generous can be said for the bulk of America’s corporate chieftains, whose agenda lately has been to stick it to everyone else.

As the negotiations have rolled on, a growing collection of CEOs and big-business lobbies have fallen in line with President Obama’s cry to raise income taxes on those making more than $250,000. To listen to these CEOs, this is the ultimate self-sacrifice. “I would pay more in taxes” in a budget deal, explained the noble Honeywell CEO Dave Cote, but it would be worth it to “put the economy on a sounder footing.”

We’ll see how much more Mr. Cote’s personal accountants ultimately allow him to pay. Meanwhile, the virtuous poses appear to be cover for a bigger game.

small_vs_big_wrestling

The Business Roundtable let the cat out of the bag on Dec. 11 when it circulated a letter signed by 150 of its corporate titans sanctioning year-end income-tax hikes. The letter happened to appear a few hours after the White House leaked its offer to include corporate tax reform as part of any cliff deal. The reform, in theory, would lower corporate tax rates.

Put another way, the Roundtable saw an opportunity to make the one million small American business owners who pay individual income taxes shoulder a big rate hike (up to 39.6%, from 35%) while radically lightening the tax load for the Roundtable’s own corporate behemoths (to 28% from 35%). Any corporate tax reform hinges on closing “loopholes” to pay for a lower corporate rate. Small business owners would lose tax perks along with everyone else—meaning they would pay even more—but they would not benefit from lower corporate rates.

“Everybody’s got to feel a little bit like they’re getting nailed,” Jim McNerney, the chairman of both Boeing and the Roundtable, said of the lobby’s cliff-deal position. He neglected to note that those getting “nailed” most emphatically would be Mom & Pop America.

obama-business-AP70478538296_620x350

The Roundtable is getting cover from the RATE Coalition—a group of companies including AT&T, Lockheed Martin and Home Depot—that is committed to obtaining a “lower corporate tax rate.” The coalition sent its own letter on Dec. 6 begging the White House and Congress to “set the framework for comprehensive reform in 2013.”

RATE’s co-chair, Elaine Kamarck, who once led the Clinton administration’s “reinventing government” effort, suggested it would be best to separate any corporate tax reform from individual tax reform, since the latter was complicated and might mess up the former. So not only would small businesses provide the down payment for a Fortune 500 tax cut, they would also get booted from any broader tax-reform ambitions. (Ms. Kamarck later backpedaled.)

Some CEOs have taken to spinning bizarre economic logic on behalf of their position. Witness FedEx CEO Fred Smith, who recently explained that it is “mythology” that raising taxes on small business kills jobs. But it was true, he said, that lowering corporate rates for big business will help create jobs. Track that logic.

The White House is lapping all this up, using the corporate sellout to its political advantage. President Obama has appeared mainly with the big CEOs who agree with him, the better to present them as representative of all business, and the better to highlight their back-stabbing of Republican budget negotiators. By contrast, the National Federation of Independent Business—which remains opposed to individual rate hikes on its many small business members—has been treated like a pariah. That’s the thanks that they, along with the Chamber of Commerce, get for holding true to the principle of tax reform and lower taxes for all businesses.

SmallBusiness_Quote_275px

The White House played a similar game with Big Business leaders during the health-care debate. Back then, the president promised that in return for their support of ObamaCare he’d give them corporate tax reform. Fool me twice . . .

Corporate tax reform, for the record, is extremely important. America’s corporate rate is the highest in the world, which makes competition in global markets difficult. The high rate also retards growth.

But corporate tax reform counts for less when it causes influential business leaders to abandon long-held principles about the importance of overall tax rates. Reform means even less when it comes at the expense of small businesses, which create three out of every four new jobs. It means still less when it allows the White House to exploit the divisions in the business community for the purpose of increasing spending and piling up more debt.

Corporate America resents that this president and the public often unfairly cast it as self-interested, unprincipled and cynical. Fair enough, though it might try not playing to type.

In a related item forwarded by George Lawlor and courtesy of the New York Post:

Ad guru reveals why he sold Hamptons estate

I’m paying unfair price for working hard

 

Jerry Della Femina was a poor kid from Brooklyn who went on to create one of the world’s most famous advertising agencies, Della Femina Travisano & Partners. He recently sold his 8,000-square-foot oceanfront Hamptons estate for $25 million, just in time to avoid next year’s rise in capital-gains taxes. He estimates he would have had to pay an additional 8.6 percent — for a total capital-gains tax bill of $3.7 million — if he had sold it after Jan. 1.

23.1n006.DellaFemina2.c---300x150

I’m happy to pay my fair share — which is whatever the tax is right now.

The thing about capital gains is, I made the investment. I put in the original money. The house cost $3 million and then I put in an additional $6 million because the house was in terrible shape. We added rooms, sections, areas, and basically it was my investment.

When I bought that house I think Obama was in high school, and I certainly have paid taxes ever since.

I don’t come from a lot of money. In fact, I don’t come from any money. So I literally started with zero. I worked very hard. And I’ve been very good to the people who worked for me. At one point I had over 800 employees, and I always paid all health care for my people — including a man who was my assistant who got HIV. I wound up paying his medical bills, which went into the hundreds of thousands. I’m not making myself out to be a saint. I did the right thing.

Now I’m being told the right thing is to do more. And because I can afford it, I have to pay more.

pay-fair-share-not-ge

At this stage of my life, I want to have money to leave to my five kids and seven grandkids. Why would I want to give that additional 8 percent from capital gains to Obama instead?

God knows how that money would be spent.

I made the investment while Obama might have been in high school or smoking dope in college or whatever he was doing. He didn’t make the investment; I did. He didn’t take the risk; I did. He didn’t improve the house; I did. And then in the end, he’s saying I must pay him more.

I always was happy to pay my fair share of taxes. I’m careful to pay every single penny on my taxes. I don’t have any money offshore. But the fact is that at this stage the general feeling in the country is, “You have it, give it to us.”

deliverance-share

And I worked too hard to get it. I spent too much time, working too hard, to get it. Where was President Obama when I was working until 1, 2 in the morning and basically not spending as much time with my kids as I would have liked to? Where was he when I worked on Saturdays and Sundays? (Actually….golfing!)

Well, he’s here now. And what he’s saying is: “OK, you made the money, now you have to pay your fair share.” I think my fair share can be what it’s been all along. I work hard and I pay my taxes. No matter what the administration.

This is an administration that is spending more money than any administration in history. To spend more money, they need more money. That’s where I object.

It’s a case of a president who really wants to redistribute wealth.

Yours….

obamahawaii1

….not his!

And in the “What Did We Tell You?!?” segment….

Kerry picks up quick GOP support for State

 

mccaingraham2010_kevinlamarque_reuters

Several top Senate Republicans were quick Friday to praise the selection of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to become the next secretary of state. “We have known John Kerry for many years,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) told reporters shortly before President Barack Obama made his pick official. “We have confidence in John Kerry’s ability to carry out the job.” And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) – who like McCain was a vocal critic of Susan Rice, another leading candidate for the State job – said Kerry is a “solid choice.”

“He has a lot of experiences, he’s been on the Foreign Relations Committee for a very long time, he knows most of the world leaders,” Graham said. “So when he goes into a country, he will be a known quantity. I’ve disagreed with him on a lot of policy choices but I respect Sen. Kerry would be a pretty solid choice.”

As predicted, so says Tweedledouche and Tweedledumb.

On the Lighter Side….

mrz122312dAPR20121222014527payn_c10595920121222120100payn_c1059392012122112010081_12431820121220063802cb122112dAPR20121221084519mrz122012dAPR20121220055549sk122112dAPR2012122005545981_12438920121221032819Red-InkhCE0C1694hC0DB88B9

Yeah; and while you’re at it, pay for 18….along with my healthcare!

Then there’s this from Jim Gleaves:

twomayanguys

And finally, we’ll call it a day with Tales From the Darkside, and a little This Is Your Life moment the “Reverend” Al would like America to forget:

25 years after her rape claims sparked a firestorm, Tawana Brawley avoids the spotlight

 

23.1N006.tawana3--300x300

Tawana Brawley is living in Virginia under a new name, still owing money to a New York lawyer she accused of raping her 25 years ago, the New York Post reports. The Post reported Sunday that the 40-year-old Brawley lives in Hopewell, Va., has a young daughter and works as a nurse in Richmond, Va.

Brawley was 15 and living in Wappingers Falls, N.Y. when she said (Far more accurately, when she LIED, and the “Reverend” Al knowingly aided and abetted same.) six white law enforcement officials abducted and raped her. Brawley is black. The allegations spurred a national racial controversy before a grand jury decided they were false.

23.1N006.tawana1.C--300x300

Will grant interviews for a Double Whopper Value Meal.

The Post says Brawley never paid a $190,000 defamation judgment owed to one man she accused. She told the newspaper she doesn’t want to talk to anyone about the episode. There was no answer Sunday at a possible phone number for her.

Not even the New York Post thought to seek comment from her Father Confessor….

sharpton1

….the Prince of Liars!

Magoo

 

 

 



Archives