“In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of ‘Wild West’ showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.
The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.
Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189.
By comparison, the population of Morton Grove, the first city in Illinois to adopt a gun ban for anyone other than police officers, has actually dropped slightly and stands at 22,202, according to 2005 statistics. More significantly, perhaps, the city’s crime rate increased by 15.7 percent immediately after the gun ban, even though the overall crime rate in Cook County rose only 3 percent. Today, by comparison, the township’s crime rate stands at 2,268 per 100,000.
This was not what some predicted.
In a column titled ‘Gun Town USA,’ Art Buchwald suggested Kennesaw would soon become a place where routine disagreements between neighbors would be settled in shootouts. The Washington Post mocked Kennesaw as ‘the brave little city … soon to be pistol-packing capital of the world.'” (Read more from wnd.com)
This picture started appearing all over the internet a few weeks ago. It’s content and then-unknown author was quickly denounced as racist by major new media. (See here, here, and here.)
From prisonplanet.com: “It turns out the image was created not by a Republican white supremacist but by a Muslim-American of Palestinian descent who didn’t vote for Obama or McCain.
Firas Alkhateeb, a 20-year-old senior history major at the University of Illinois, created the image as a reaction to the Christ-like status being afforded to Obama by the establishment, and also in protest at Obama’s appointment of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff.
‘Emanuel is a fervent anti-Islam voice in Washington,’ he wrote on his Flickr page. ‘A Zionist, he takes a hard line stance against the Palestinian cause, and shows a clear anti-Muslim racism.'”
During the Bush administration, much of the anti-war movement was portrayed as the fringe and irrelevant left. Now, much of the anti-socialized-healthcare movement is portrayed as the fringe and irrelevant right. In both cases, it’s individual liberty vs. government power. In both cases, the conflict is portrayed as left vs. right.
“The prohibition on drugs leads to unregulated, and often violent, public drug dealing. Perhaps counterintuitively, better police training and bigger guns are not the answer.
When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighborhood becomes home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the dealer walks around the block. But if the dealer sells inside, one raid, by either police or robbers, can put him out of business for good. Only those virtually immune from arrests (much less imprisonment) — college students, the wealthy and those who never buy or sell from strangers — can deal indoors….
Drug users generally aren’t violent. Most simply want to be left alone to enjoy their high. It’s the corner slinger who terrifies neighbors and invites rivals to attack. Public drug dealing creates an environment where disputes about money or respect are settled with guns.” (Read more from dailypaul.com)
Just as opponents of Bush’s war were portrayed as fringe loonies, opponents of Obama’s healthcare are portrayed the same way. It’s not left vs right. It’s government vs liberty, and a complicit media to spin every debate in favor of government.
So long as we the people are fighting one another, the government can run rampant.
I’ve been disgusted by what little I’ve seen of big media’s healthcare opposition coverage. As usual, the media is trying to squeeze a people vs. government issue into a left vs. right paradigm. So long as we are fighting each other, government is free to run rampant.
God bless the internet, lest I might think myself un-American for opposing Obamacare. I’m please to see strong criticism of the coverage from my usual sources.
Great commentary by Southern Avenger:
Some guy reacts to MSNBC host equating cries of “socialism” to using the N-word:
Fox “news” has been a checkered ally of the liberty movement. They seem like party hacks. When Republicans propose war, tyrannical government powers, and endless spending, Fox “news” becomes their #1 cheerleader, but when Democrats propose war, tyrannical government powers, and endless spending, Fox works to expose the threat to our liberty. Here, Fox interviews a Michigan man who confronted his congressman:
In the above interview, the man who confronted his congressman referenced this NY Post article, in which two of Obama’s advisers, including Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, discuss healthcare rationing. I actually think they offer very level-headed thoughts on how socialized healthcare would work. You can’t provide unlimited use of finite (and expensive) goods and services. Of course, most of the socialists behind Obamacare like to pretend you can.
As Tyler Durden wrote in this essay: “There is no system that provides for unlimited wants with limited resources. Our choice is whether it should be rationed by free people making their own economic calculations or by a bureaucracy run by Congressional committee (whose members, like the Russian commissars, will, I guarantee you, still get the best health care the gulag hospitaligo can provide).”
Lastly, hear Peter Schiff discuss bringing free market forces back to healthcare. I think the example of cosmetic surgeries provided at the end is spectacular:
“They’re all tears and pity for average Americans, while at the same time demonizing people who think there might be something a teensy weensy bit non-progressive about creating trillions of dollars and throwing it at the financial elite.” ~Thomas Woods
Ron Paul is certainly getting more mainstream media attention than he did when he ran for President, but the censors are still at work.
Justin Miller deserves credit for his Atlantic article pointing out how Gallup and Rasmussen polling agencies are ignoring Ron Paul as a potential 2012 candidate. They list Tim Pawlenty and Haley Barbour, but no Ron Paul. Justin Miller makes the rather obvious case for Ron Paul’s consideration.
Rasmussen: “In a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, it’s close to a three-way tie when GOP voters are asked whom they would vote for � from among a list of six prominent Republicans – in the 2012 party primary in their state: 25% say Romney, while 24% say Palin and 22% opt for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
After that, GOP primary voters list former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (14%), while Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty each received one percent (1%) of the vote. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate.”
(What a convenient list of establishment candidates.)
Kudos to Justin Miller, but I feel he should have at least acknowledged the widespread censorship and slander Ron Paul faced during his presidential campaign. I detailed much of it here: Censoring Ron Paul – Why the rEVOLution will not be televised, back when I was a fledgling blogger. I saved my own copies of only some (not all) of the offending coverage. Unfortunately, some of the most glaring examples have been removed by the news sources.
***
Lets not be surprised that Rasmussen is ignoring Ron Paul now. They even did so DURING the election:
(click for saved web page)
And this poll was AFTER Ron Paul’s 6-million-dollar money bomb.
USA Today cover story / photos / candidate-profiles covered four of the five candidates still in race at the time. The excluded candidate was . . . (drum roll) . . . Ron Paul.
MSNBC debate bias
Romney: 21 minutes, 11 seconds (12 answers and asked 1 question)
McCain: 16 minutes even (12 answers and asked 1 question)
Giuliani: 13 minutes and 50 seconds (10 answers and asked 1 question)
Huckabee: 12 minutes and 11 seconds (8 answers and asked 1 question)
Paul: 6 minutes and 31 seconds (5 answers and asked 1 question)
In a staggering display of selective perception, NY Times columnist Bob Herbert laments the GOP’s militancy, completely ignoring Ron Paul’s presence. This is especially asinine, as Herbert’s own beliefs most closely resemble Paul’s. Herbert mentions all GOP presidential candidates in his column except . . . (surprise, surprise) . . . Ron Paul.
Ha! I read “bullshit” instead of bullish. I thought it was embarrassing, but accurate. Here’s the article:
“US economic growth is highly likely to resume in the second half of the year, senior US administration officials have said.
But Timothy Geithner, the treasury secretary, warned in an interview with ABC television on Sunday that once recovery was regained, there would be “hard choices” to contain rising deficits.
He said he would not rule out higher taxes in the future, adding: “We’re going to have to do what is necessary.”
Geithner and Larry Summers, the White House economic adviser, went on the Sunday television talk shows to make the case that the economic stimulus programme by Barack Obama, the president, was gaining traction, despite rising unemployment and worries about the US deficit.
Summers told NBC television: “A very great likelihood – and this is what most professional forecasters say – is that we’ll see growth going forward in the second half of this year.”
The two men were seconded by Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, who told ABC the worst US financial crisis in a half a century was “not quite” over, “but we’re getting there”.
‘Pretty sure’
Greenspan said he was “pretty sure” the broader US economy had hit bottom and begun to turn around in mid-July.
Summers pointed to the success of a “cash for clunkers” programme where motorists can trade-in old vehicles for a government payment against a new one as a sign that the US car industry was coming back to life.
He said industries will have to replace inventories that have been massively cut.
But both he and Geithner acknowledged that the US jobless rate would continue to climb from its current level of 9.5 per cent.
Geithner cited private analysts as saying the rate will not start coming down until the beginning of the second half of 2010.
Gross domestic product figures released on Friday by the commerce department estimated that the US economy contracted 1.0 per cent in the second quarter, better than forecasters expected.
The administration said the new report showed the economy was in deeper trouble than believed when Obama took office but that its recovery programmes were working.” (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)
The only good thing about Obama’s speech, is him calling bullshit on Newsweek.
Every single one of the things he takes credit for is Keynesian bullshit. If you print a bunch of money out of thin air, of course you can “create” jobs, and prop up artificially high home and stock prices.
People NEED to lose jobs. Values of things we don’t want NEED to drop. There has been so much mal-investment that resources need to realign in the production of goods and services that people actually want. Obama is making it worse.
Also, the vast quantities of money printed so that Obama can take credit for propping up prices and creating jobs are a huge transfer of wealth AWAY FROM the poor and working classes. When the government prints (ie legally counterfeits money) it is a transfer of wealth from money holders at large to the institutions who have the privileged of dealing directly with government – banks, military industries, our 22 million government employees, etc.
This excellent about our new administration was written by Yuri Maltsev.
Check out his excellent book, Requiem for Marx. Another excellent essay which serves as the book’s introduction is excerpted here.
Sooner Than We Thought
by Yuri N. Maltsev
The new Obama regime is taking shape in Washington and provinces eager to take power and secure the “change you can believe in” using humungous propaganda machine of both government radio and television and still privately owned, so-called “mainstream media.” These private networks are competing with National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in praising Obama’s first choices from his new dog to his new chief of staff.
The thought scene in the US today resembles that of Russia in 1917, Cuba in 1959 or China in 1948. Incessant calls for “unity” and “fairness,” attacks on “divisive,” “toxic” and “hateful” language are nothing new – they resemble Germany of 1932 and Venezuela of 1996, today’s Putin’s Russia and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. . . .
In the old Marxist tradition, the new great Leader’s calls for “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military. His chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had openly shared this vision of the civilian national security force (CNSF) in his book:
It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.
. . . .
A phone call from Moscow woke me up in the middle of the night. My friend Vladimir, former Soviet Army general turned reformer under Yeltsin and businessman under Putin, sounded slightly drunk and very agitated. “I am watching televised interrogation of Alan Greenspan and another guy by some Jewish investigator and it looks exactly like the “Great terror” is back, but not here, for a change. What is going on? Would they shoot all these economic subversives and saboteurs at the end of the day? ”
“I am not sure about that, definitely not at the end of the day. Maybe after elections,” I mumbled in response and went back to bed. My sleep was ruined however, and in a desperate attempt to get it back I opened Greenspan’s “Gold and Economic Freedom” chapter in Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
Yes, Comrade Waxman (D-CA) definitely has a case against former capitalist sympathizer Greenspan. This now repentant agent of the world capitalism wrote back in 1966 about Waxmans of the time:
An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense – perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire – that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.
Make no mistake about it – Greenspan was attacked by Waxman and the new socialist establishment because of his libertarian past and free-market rhetoric and not because of his job as chief inflationist and central planner. The show trial over Greenspan’s pro-capitalist past was turned by Waxman and his committee comrades into the trial against capitalism itself.
