Clipping blog

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• Clearing the Browser Tabs – Martin Luther King Jr Monday Edition
• When Guns Are Outlawed…We All Rely on the Mercy of the Unjust
• We’ll Fix Social Security Over Their Dead Political Careers, And I’m Okay with That

Clearing the Browser Tabs – Martin Luther King Jr Monday Edition Posted: 17 Jan 2011 03:10 AM PST As you probably know, especially if you’re home from work, today is the day we remember a pretty great man. Martin Luther King, Jr. was, so far as I’m concerned, a rare creature — a charismatic visionary who didn’t build a self-aggrandizing movement about himself.  He used his gifts to serve this country very well and I’m thankful he chose to do so. If you get a few minutes, I recommend you listen to his “I Have A Dream” speech, if for no other reason than to reacquaint yourself with the vision he had for this country. It’s a good vision for all of us to have still. And now, links! Pope Benedict XVI will beatify Pope John Paul II this spring. Beatification is the last step before sainthood, should the Church grant it. I think he’s an excellent candidate. Few Catholics have done as much in their lives for good as John Paul II. When the value of your house crashes in a year or so, you’ll know just who to blame. I’m with Don Surber and Moe Lane. If I choose to be civil, it’s because I choose it, not because I allow myself to be cowed into it by the same progressive jerks who have spent the last ten years in one long insane rant. And if they want to cry about it, well, I’m not listening. Big Hollywood has an excellent detailed review of Goldfinger, my favorite Bond movie. The author hits on every reason I love the film, and a couple points I hadn’t considered. Why is American television stealing very good British shows and turning them into crap? I had this very same conversation with a couple friends of mine the other day. None of us had an answer except to say that it’s a cheap and easy way to build a quick audience for a season or so. Now this is a cool eclipse photograph!

When Guns Are Outlawed…We All Rely on the Mercy of the Unjust Posted: 16 Jan 2011 07:13 PM PST See the violence inherent in the system! The Illinois House’s assistant majority leader had a handgun pointed at him in the Lower West Side’s Heart of Chicago neighborhood over the weekend. State Representative Edward Acevedo (D-Chicago) wasn’t injured in the incident, which occurred around 10:18 p.m. Friday in the 2500 block of South Oakley Boulevard. Police said someone inside a van pointed a pistol at Acevedo, but the vehicle sped away when the representative announced his office. Acevedo is not just a bigwig in Illinois government but he’s also been a police officer since 1995. Whoever pointed that gun at him may not have known that, the van sped off when he informed the occupants who he was, but clearly the assailants were not cowed by Chicago’s gun laws in the lease. So, perhaps, as we’ve been told my members of Congress and folks in the media, more strict gun laws are the answer. Or, maybe not. For 28 years, Chicago banned handgun ownership outright until the Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional last June. The city reacted with a new, almost-equally strict set of laws which, in part, require registration every three years  and prohibit any gun owner from leaving their house with their handgun unless it is unloaded and secured. Obviously the people who threatened Acevedo weren’t particularly interested in Chicago’s shiny new laws. And that’s the essential flaw in the arguments made by gun control proponents, isn’t it? Criminals like Jared Loughner don’t particularly care about the law. That’s what makes them criminals in the first place. Gun control laws do one very important thing, though. They take away another little bit of control we have over our lives. For the record, I don’t own a handgun, even though no law in my state prevents me. I have made a choice, exercised my Constitutional freedom, not to own a gun. If you are a law-abiding American, I don’t care if you own a gun or not. I do care greatly that you keep your freedom to make that choice for yourself. We each use our freedom in a way that suits our lives best. That is how the Constitution — all of it, not just the parts the progressives like — works. Is that such a difficult thing to understand? For a great number of Americans, it is. I don’t doubt the sincerity of most gun control activists. They see one way, and only one way, to solve what they view as an intolerable problem. Their calculus is simple: if we get rid of all the guns, no one will die of a gunshot. What they don’t reckon are the many holes in their reasoning. More importantly, they simply don’t see the more dangerous situation they create when they force thinking, choosing individuals to depend on a system that can not protect them. Edward Acevedo was lucky. He doesn’t owe his life to gun laws but to a quick of circumstance where a man who could have pulled the trigger did not. He is alive because someone who doesn’t respect our law showed him mercy. The rest of us should not have to trust our lives to similar mercy.

We’ll Fix Social Security Over Their Dead Political Careers, And I’m Okay with That Posted: 16 Jan 2011 12:44 PM PST In the coming budget battle, a growing number of Democrats have chosen a side — against the American people. The battle lines are forming within the Democratic Party over the charged question of reforming Social Security in the days leading up to President Obama's State of the Union address. Liberals, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO, AFSCME and SEIU, have taken a firm stand against cutting Social Security benefits. They are still reeling over the deal Obama struck with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in December to extend almost all of the Bush tax cuts and chop the Social Security payroll tax for one year by 2 percentage points. There isn’t a reasonable person in this country right now who imagines we can make a serious dent in the deficit unless we get Social Security under control. That will almost have to include some sort of benefit adjustment. Whether that means pushing the retirement age up, means-testing recipients, or (my personal choice) developing a private system that will let people opt out of the government-run program is up for debate. What we can not do is exactly what the progressive left wants — massive tax increases. The rest of the country understands this, even if we don’t agree on the details. According to this recent CBS News poll, a stunning 77 percent agree that spending cuts are the answer to our deficit problems. Only 9 percent want to raise taxes yet again. If you throw in the 9 percent who want to do both, the percentage of Americans who say we must cut the federal budget jumps to 86 percent. Of course, that’s the one thing the public sector unions and creaky Socialists like Sanders, who make all their money off of us, can not allow. Bigger budgets in Washington mean less freedom for us and more control for them. They will fight to their last breath against our liberty, even if that means they destroy Social Security, Medicare, the housing market, and whatever remains of our still-struggling economy in the process. I’m okay with that fight, because when we win, we will have crushed their dreams of a totalitarian America and driven them so far from the levers of power that it’ll take them a generation to get near them again. That will make us all a lot more free, prosperous, and happy.

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