Quickies

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A weekly round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.



In the wake of the massacre at Newtown, CT, we perceived this notion that in someway and somehow, the NRA was supposed to answer for what happened there. And we perceived this as coming from both sides of the gun debate, though, obviously more so on the gun control side of the aisle.

And then the NRA buys into this ridiculous notion by holding that press conference on Friday that called for armed policemen in schools. We haven’t thought this through long enough to opine on whether or not this is a good idea but the press became predictably apoplectic that the president of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, did not take questions afterwards. Mind you, this is the same press that has not ever seemed to mind the lack of press conferences held by this current administration.

Let us modify the above paragraph: The press became predictably apoplectic that the NRA was holding a presser at all. This notion that somehow the NRA had to provide answers to what happened two Fridays ago was met with howling and raging criticism from the press who would’ve behaved in exactly the same manner no matter what LaPierre said, so from a strategic stangpoint, we fail to understand what the NRA gained by deciding to go forward with the presser.

And as usual, the anti-gun left continues to demonstrate what hypocrites they are when it comes to civility and having civil discourse on anything they reflexively hate by blowing up twitter with death threats against members of the NRA and gun owners in general.





IBD headline: States Give ObamaCare a Massive Vote of No Confidence

In order to purchase health insurance through the federal government, ObamaCare envisioned the states setting up exchanges or marketplaces through which individuals could purchase insurance for themselves and/or their families.

Unfortunately, the rules and regulations for just how these exchanges would operate have been slow in rolling out. Add onto that the fact that the IT infrastructure that would give the state exchanges the ability to “talk” to the federal administrators of ObamaCare is nowhere close to being set up, you have a massive bureaucratic/administrative nightmare on your hands just a year before ObamaCare is implemented in anger.

The Obama administration wins the Capt. Louie Renault award for being shocked, shocked that just 18 states have agreed to set up these exchanges. The 32 others, including 8 with Democratic governors have said no thanks for shouldering the massive costs associated with setting up and running the exchanges and who, given the current set of circumstances, could blame them?

ObamaCare is already churning out the results one would expect of legislation cobbled together to garner just enough votes to pass but not necessarily to improve the state of healthcare in our country.







How’s that whole Arab Spring working out?

Egypt's new Sharia-based constitution has been approved in a second round of voting, the ruling Muslim Brotherhood party said. The country's opposition leveled accusations of fraud, saying it will appeal the referendum results.

The new charter was approved by 64 percent of Egyptian voters in a “resounding victory,” state news agency al-Ahram reported on Sunday. The preliminary tallies were calculated from reports by polling station officials. Egypt's election committee will confirm the final results on Monday.

Egypt's main opposition party the National Salvation Front (NSF) announced Sunday it will appeal the results of the referendum. NSF members alleged there were multiple instances of “fraud and violations” during the voting process.

“The referendum is not the end of the road. It is only one battle,” the NSF’s Abdel Ghaffer Shokr said, pledging to continue “the fight for the Egyptian people.”

The opposition has asked the electoral commission to “investigate the irregularities” before the vote's official results are announced on Monday.

“They’ve seen a number of instances of possible vote rigging, including unsupervised polling stations, missing ballot papers, stuffed ballot boxes,” Cairo-based journalist Bel Trew told RT. There were also reports of Salafist groups at polling stations coercing people into voting 'yes' on the new document, Trew said.

The opposition also criticized the first round of voting last Saturday, citing various incidents of fraud that have yet to be investigated.

Leading from behind: Putting guns and RPGs into the hands of rebel Islamists, our sworn enemies, to overthrow existing regimes in the Middle East which has only served to further destabilize the region and which has also resulted in restrictions on human rights and civil liberties more so than those previous regimes.

That’s pretty much the sum of it, no? Please let us know if we’ve left out any of the essentials.







They keep telling us they aren’t coming for our guns but emboldened to take cynical advantage of the massacre in CT, lawmakers and tastemakers in this country feel free to unburden themselves of their true intentions ever more increasingly:

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.”

The governor will propose the new gun-control legislation in his State of the State address on January 9.

(italics, ours)









B-Daddy at The Liberator Today has some advise for his son and his union job at a local grocery store here in San Diego.






KT over at the Scratching Post is unimpressed with your fiscal cliff:

I'm not sure what just happened. As I understand it, the House Republicans decided not to offer President Obama a bill he had promised to veto which would have done practically nothing to avert our upcoming fiscal catastrophe. Of the major problems facing the nation,

1. Fiscal collapse from massive debts and deficits,
2. Economic sclerosis from metastasizing, omnipresent regulations and
3. Social stratification from the growth of secular, libertine religious values

The fiscal cliff deal would have changed none of them. If it's not tackling any of our top three problems, I don't see why the event is such a big deal.

Now, we're not digging the potential of paying $2,000 more in taxes next year so there is a visceral compoenent for us but taking the long view, KT is exactly right. But unfortunately, the country voted to keep in the party in power in the Senate and the Oval Office; a party of which does not even acknowlege those three problems exist.





OK, gang. That's it for today. We hope everyone is enjoying Christmas and Holdiay festivities with family, friends and loved ones as we have had the joy in doing for the past week. We hope to see it continue for another week or so.


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