Not-church church loses two not-member members

Westboro Church, famous for hate, loses two key members (hit link)

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/08/westboro-hate-gays-fred-...

Important to note: this is not actually a church, but a family led by an extreme bigot who promotes a fouled version of Christianity under auspices of a church. And now even the founders' grand kids have figured it out.

Some rotted excuses for humans point to this pack of mixed up creeps as evidence of how bad Christianity is, of course. That, or as lamely, some point to this group and assign them to the conservative side of Christian and political influences in America.

I think they are rare, the people who appreciate this group once they actually learn what this group does. And, by now, whoever is paying attention is aware. Looking forward to their being left to the trash heap of our society's oddities real soon!

QUOTE:
" Two granddaughters of Westboro founder Fred Phelps, 83, have publicly quit the church, denounced its campaigns to disrupt funerals for military officers, entertainers and shooting victims, and apologized for years of carrying signs proclaiming "God hates" homosexuals "

Posted via email from Like, Totally Political Dude! - posterous

Duh: Bob Costas says many shootings are fault of gun culture... but gangsta hip hop, too!

NBC sports analyst Bob Costas.(Photo: Matthew Emmons, USA TODAY Sports)

Tags

• National Football League
• Jon Stewart
• Kansas City Chiefs
• Jovan Belcher
• Bob Costas

Nearly two months after first discussing Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher's murder-suicide, Bob Costas appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart with searing remarks about the state of gun control and again took issue with a culture he believes glorifies guns.

"When Jovan Belcher texts his friend who says 'you better have a gun ready,' and he replies, 'I have eight,' what does that tell you?" Costas wondered during his interview with Stewart.

In December, Costas used the halftime portion of NBC''s Sunday Night Football to address the Belcher situation and quoted a column from FOX Sports' Jason Whitlock.

"If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today,'' Costas said.

Later, Costas acknowledged it was a "mistake" to mention gun control on-air because his choice of words "left it open for too much miscommunication."

But after backtracking from those remarks, Costas attacked the subject anew Monday night with Stewart, opining that there are added risks when guns are placed in the hands of an NFL player.

"We have to acknowledge that guns are glorified in hip hop culture," Costas said. "Some 70% of players in the NFL are African-American, not all of them are influenced by that part of the culture, but some are. Many of these kids come out of environments where it's commonplace for a 14 or 15-year-old to be packing."

"It's a legitimate question to ask can you expect hundreds if not thousands of football players to do something by which it's nature is brutal, belligerent, and violent," Costas began. "Isn't it reasonable to expect that some of them won't be able to contain that to the field?"

The Belcher murder-suicide and Costas' initial comments were followed by the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., which Costas believes reshaped the gun control dialogue.

"Newtown happened, and that seemed to change the tone," Costas said. "Horribly tragic as that was, it did redirect, and if at least people are now somewhat more willing to think about this more rationally and compassionately, then that's a good thing."

Costas stressed the need not to repeal or alter the second amendment, rather the need to change America's gun culture.

"I think any sane person believes we ought not have high capacity magazines and assault rifles and that there ought to be background checks," Costas said. "You know what? I'm not exactly sure what's sane, but I know a lot of what I've heard in the aftermath is insane."

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

via usatoday.com

Story notes that Costas "stressed the need NOT TO repeal or alter the second amendment, rather the need to change America's gun culture."

Gee, thanks for the clarification. What the hell is this gun culture, exactly? The one where crazy people illegally get guns and illegally carry guns and illegally kill people? The one where people take a gun and kill someone -- by the way, THAT'S ILLEGAL, TOO!!!

Not sure that's exactly a "gun culture."

Damned celebrity yammering nit wits. The problem is guns, just say it, stop there and admit you're an elite boob, Costas. You cannot imagine feeling a bit safer just because you have a gun in your home. I get it. So now shaddup about it and let us boring regular mortals go on about our gun culture driven lives... as if.

- jR

Posted via email from Like, Totally Political Dude! - posterous

Shocking: Obama goes after limits on Constitutional rights as a drippy feel-good measure

Obama calls for assault weapons ban, background checks (from USA Today):

From the article: "While not citing the NRA by name, Obama did denounce groups that gin up "fear" about a fictitious plot to take away people's guns."

Yeah, because none of those other things that Obama specifically voewed would never happen ever happened. There is no increase in any taxes on the middle class. The SS tax increase that is in everyone's paychecks now was categorized under "fees," was it? Was a return to a preexisting condition? How's that not a lie? Don't trust this far-left tool -- sorry, I meant tool of the far left.

-----

I want to believe that Obama isn't a... compassionate Marxist (the far left's variation of George Bush the compassionate conservative), but every issue over the last fours years has resulted in some sweeping and stupid message from the far left's big book of infringements on society. The easy example is Obamacare: health care reform took center stage when we kinda needed to focus -- like REALLY FOCUS -- on the economy.

In case you forgot or didn't really realize it, back in 2009 and 2010, for months the country was caught up in arguing about health care reform (which is needed, it's a matter of how, and WHEN to prioritize it) and a giant, unread bill. Unread, the bill was passed by a fully Democrat-controlled Congress. This done, rather than focusing like a laser beam on creation of private sector jobs and economic stability and growth to create jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs. (Who needs jobs when you have devoted voters who don't work, anyways, was that the logic? Eeeew.)

Obama's rhetoric is always a concern because he -- at best -- treats being a leader like a spacey, feelings-driven camp counselor in many matters. (At worst, he's a charlatan who pretends he isn't fully entrenched in the ideology of hippies and big government, one-party leftists.)

His rhetoric in proposing these gun ban ideas is further proof: it's not about the mentally unstable, the severely mentally ill people. They are not the problem, it's the "gun culture" and "gun violence." It isn't, in his version of things, "crazed violence" or "violent madmen" who commit such acts that are root of the problem, it's an inanimate object that is deadly -- threatening to bad people in the right hands, tragic in the hands of others. He does not stress that this is a problem of sick people who take a lawless and insane attitude, grab deadly guns and proceed to kill people. No, because people are not responsible for themselves: government, it seems, is the ultimate responsible party. So, as the head of the national government, he is making his move. To hell with Americanism, Federalism and the Second Amendment, let's get this gun control thing rolling, slowly but surely.

I hope this is just part of a negotiation, his initial proposals. Because I missed the part where we blame criminals for their heinous acts, whether insane, just plain criminal, or otherwise. His message tell us that it is not a problem with people that killed children in Sandy Hook, but with objects. If we tell everyone they have to curb their attitudes according to his will, then we've accomplished something. Except all we've accomplished is rattling a saber.

His simple message wins the morons, a perfect example of why Democrats are now more than I've ever understood it to be the party of mob rule. If the majority of nitwits are with you, you may not be effective or even sensible, but you are getting your way.

Read the article:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/01/16/obama-gun-violence-pla... -jR

Posted via email from Like, Totally Political Dude! - posterous

Fiscal cliff fix? Our 'leaders' seem to have abandoned fiscal sense, Democrats in the lead

Maya MacGuineas, a budget hawk who has led a group of corporate chieftains in a group called "Fix the Debt," was also unenthusiastic about the bill.

"This is one of the lowest common denominator deals," MacGuineas said. "I wish I had something nice to say, but not so much."

http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-fiscal-cliff-deal-called-dud-deficit-front-000...

Deeeeeeeeee-sgusting.

-jR

Posted via email from Like, Totally Political Dude! - posterous

Guns vs. severe mental problems: Ideologies don't make people right, and guns don't make them killers

From "Gun Ban Won't Stop Another Sandy Hook Massacre: Let's Have the Hard Conversation":

Does anybody really think the guns Nancy Lanza kept in their Newtown, Conn., house all on their own attracted her son to launch a murderous rampage that claimed the lives of 20 small children and seven adults? Such simplistic nonsense.
What if the answers aren't that simple?
Consider that last year in Norway, a nation with a tight gun-control and licensing program, Anders Breivik methodically gunned down 69 people, mostly teenagers, on the island of Utoya. Again, this didn't happen in the United States of America, where 311 million people own an estimated 200 million guns. It happened in orderly, gun-sparse Norway, where living by the rules is the modern-day path to Valhalla.
What if gun control is the wrong conversation for us to be having?
What if we dealt instead with the harder-to-comprehend realities that affected Adam Lanza's life -- the fact that he lived virtually locked up in a basement room playing violent video games over and over, hypnotized by war. Or that he kept to himself, couldn't look others in the eye, reacted without emotion. Or that he had cut his father out of his life, refused to see him after his parents divorced, when his father began dating another woman. Or that he was consumed with anger because his mother was going to have him committed for treatment.
Instead of more gun control, shouldn't we be talking about where to set the bar when it comes to forcing an individual into treatment –- and whether those caring for people with mental-health issues have enough resources available to head off potential crises? The state of Connecticut didn't do much to help Nancy Lanza. It's a state that makes involuntary treatment difficult because it leans strongly toward supporting the civil liberties of individuals. Let's talk a little more about that.
In his address in Newtown [the Sunday after,] President Obama promised a grieving community "meaningful action ... regardless of the politics."But if enacting more restrictive gun laws is the action he has in mind, it leaves a mountain to climb in light of the Second Amendment and its principle. And more important than that, more gun laws aren't going to prevent another Sandy Hook massacre.

That is from "Gun Ban Won't Stop Another Sandy Hook Massacre: Let's Have the Hard Conversation," by Nancy Smith. See more at: http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/gun-ban-wont-stop-another-sandy-hook-m...? Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859. via sunshinestatenews.com

The problem is not guns, while there are some things to be addressed where guns are concerned. There are too many guns too easily available to the dangerous, it could be argued. But worse are such things as loopholes in the ability to sell and buy guns between private individuals with pretty much no oversight or checking. That is unseemly, but also quite easy to fix (does not require a gun control act, for goodness sake).
No, the problem is not one that requires further gun legislation. We can see from such despicable efforts like the government's own Fast and Furious disaster that regulations are only so good as the people we have enforcing them. And fools who are encouraging such a route as Fast and Furious gunrunning program included the President of the United States. Shameful.
It's proof that he may be the victor in a popular vote, but is far from being a man above a most unattractive, elitist deception that guns are a threat, not sick or criminal people. The last thing elitists who desire power want are an armed population. No matter how comfortable and apathetic citizens are, we should not let anyone forget that tyranny is potentially never more than a generation away.
I don't want to be a part of the generation who lays the carpet out for tyranny here in America by moving farther toward a no-guns population. Stiff gun controls work in comparably powerless and rather homogenous and passive Sweden, Finland and elsewhere. It won't work for us.
The problem is, as Nancy Smith argues, and I've felt and argued for some time: some people are very, very broken, as Adam Lanza was, as best as can be seen, and cannot be allowed around guns. The problem, too, those who are too preoccupied to face those things that afflict broken people, including the current "false prophet" of the downtrodden, the President of the United States with his anti-gun rhetoric that completely avoids the issue of severe mental illness. In my view that is crass, cynical political gamesmanship and nothing about the rights or benefits of men. Until those with the second problem can be adult enough to address the first problem, this will be a discussion that will give me deep, deep dismay at the ignorance and shallowness of the many.

- jR
(revised for clarity, Oct 6, 2013)

Posted via email from Like, Totally Political Dude! - posterous