The Insufferable Left Wing Crusade Against Chick-Fil-A

I'm shocked at Chick-fil-A. They advocate for a traditional family unit as described in the Bible. This is very controversial, and marginalizing their bases of operation is critical in stopping bigotry and would be a critical victory for the gay rights movement.

That's literally what liberals think about this whole kerfuffle surrounding what Dan Cathy, President and COO of Chick-fil-A, said about the company's stance on gay marriage. After a report was released by Equality Matters, a branch of the liberal Media Matters for America, the contents revealed that "Chick-fil-A donated more than $3 million between 2003 and 2009 to Christian groups that oppose homosexuality. In 2010 alone, the company gave nearly $2 million to such causes, according to the report."

Wow! People who are opposed to homosexuality and gay marriage. I'm shocked. Yet, I'm not convinced that Dan Cathy said anything that could be classified as anti-gay.
As reported in the LA Times:

Chick-fil-A is very much supportive of the family, according to Dan Cathy, president of the popular fast food chain. That is, the biblical definition of the family unit, he said. And that doesn’t include Adam and Steve, suggests Cathy, whose father S. Truett Cathy founded the Atlanta-based company. In a new interview with Baptist Press, Cathy puts on the record what critics say his company’s actions have indicated for years. Well, guilty as charged, he said in the interview when asked about Chick-fil-A’s backing of families led by a man and a woman. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives,” Cathy said. The chain, according to the report, has 1,608 restaurants, sales of more than $4 billion and employees who are trained to focus on values rooted in the Bible. Chick-fil-A's across the country shut down on Sundays. We don’t claim to be a Christian business," Cathy said. But as an organization we can operate on biblical principles.

I didn't hear any epithets or anti-gay rehtoric. All I heard was that Mr. Cathy and the company he works for doesn't support gay marriage. There is a difference.

Well, this has set off the biggest left wing overreaction  that I haven't seen in a long time and it's downright hilarious as it is disturbing. Apparently, Big Bird lobbied heavily to get The Muppets to cut ties with the company and donate all their proceeds to GLAAD.  It's sad to see a great cornerstone in children's entertainment become so easily swayed by the nonsense spewed by left wing activists.  They've whored themselves out to the radical left and I blame Swedish Chef for not being vocal enough in stopping this inane move by the Jim Henson Company. I personally feel that Mr. Snaffalupagus should have curb stomped Bird Bird.  We all know he was a closet liberal.

Public Enemy #1...if you're a liberal

However, more politicians are getting their panties in a bunch over this.  As Chicago is drowning in its own blood, Mayor Rahm Emanuel decided to put a hold on everything and declare war on chicken sandwiches. In fact, "he said the comments disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents, and therefore building the restaurant in Chicago would be a bad investment, since it would be empty." Have you had their sandwiches Mr. Mayor? They're F-ing delicious!

In Boston, which is known for their tolerance since the city desegregated their schools in the 1970s, Mayor Menino "sent a letter to Chick-Fil-A’s President Dan Cathy. In the letter Menino calls out Cathy for his prejudiced statements against same-sex marriage and said that having a branch of the restaurant chain across from City Hall would be an insult."

Menino got the Human Rights Campaign slobbering all over him in their statement:

We applaud Mayor Menino for calling out Chick-fil-A’s anti-LGBT practices. We have been asking people to make their own decisions about whether to continue supporting Chick-fil-A based on the facts available, and Mayor Menino has done just that. Mayor Menino’s rebuke of Chick-fil-A sends a strong messages that their habit of supporting hateful organizations that demonize LGBT Americans are out-of-step with not just Bostonians, but the majority of fair-minded Americans. Chick-fil-A is on the wrong side of history, and we look forward to seeing more and more elected officials and businesses speak out against their discriminatory practices.

So will HRC condemn Mayor Emanuel's public embrace of Louis Farrakahn? As Kyle Becker of the Independent Journal posted today: The Weekly Standard reports, Farrakhan was careful to couch his opposition to gay marriage as 'not homophobic':

"Males coming to males with lust in their hearts as they should to a female," he said. "Now don’t you dare say Farrakhan was preaching hate; he's homophobic. I’m not afraid of my brothers and sisters or others who may be practicing what God condemned in the days of Lot. That’s not our job to be hateful of our people. Our job is to call us to sanity." Farrakhan goes on to call out clergy who support gay marriage, saying they are placing society’s needs over God’s. "Is this the book that you believe in, but now you('re) backing down from an aspect of it because people will get offended?" he asked."

Nothing Mr. Cathy said was anti-gay. Again, he's for traditional marriage, which half the country supports. It's not controversial. Some people are simply against gay marriage and the Left needs to get over it.

However, I'm glad to see that some liberals are noticing that this isn't the right battle. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones stated: Menino and Moreno have it wrong. Blocking construction of Chick-fil-a restaurants over Cathy's views is a violation of Cathy's First Amendment rights. Boston and Chicago have no more right to stop construction of Chick-fil-As based on an executive's anti-gay views than New York City would have had the right to block construction of an Islamic community center blocks away from Ground Zero. The government blocking a business from opening based on the owner's political views is a clear threat to everyone's freedom of speech being unpopular doesn't mean you don't have rights. While we may disagree concerning the Ground Zero Mosque, Serwer hits it on the head concerning the threat this could pose to our  First Amendment rights. It's also anti-capitalist.

This Chick-Fil-A "controversy" is a convenient smoke screen initiated by the left to hide the president's record since they're running out of excuses. While I plan to attend National Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day on August 1st, I will take pleasure as I sink my teeth into that chicken sandwich knowing that the Olympics will overshadow this trivial episode in American politics.

And the Idicoy of Greed Begins

It hasn't even been a week since the tragic shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Most of the memorial services, for the twelve who died, haven't taken place.

Yet, one eighteen year old that was there, but who wasn't even injured in the shooting, is already placing law suits.

Torrence Brown Jr., and his family, are suing Century 16 theater in Aurora, the shooter's doctors, and Warner Brothers studios. O, and they've taken an "exclusive contract" to sell his story, for an unknown amount of money, with Entertainment Tonight.

Their lawsuit claims  that the movie theater "was negligent" in not alarming or guarding its emergency door, that the shooter's doctors didn't correctly monitor the shooter after prescribing him prescription drugs, and that the Warner Brothers' film, "The Dark Knight Rises", was what gave the shooter the idea for the attack.

I'll give them a little leeway on the charge against the theater, that is odd that it wasn't alarmed.

However, suing the doctors is dumb, that's what doctors do. They prescribe drugs, and then say see me again in so many days.

Suing the studio is just plain idiocy and greed. Lots of movies have violence. As do many video games and music. Unless you're going to start suing everyone who has ever made or said anything violent, there should be no way for this to actually get anywhere.

Sadly, we live in the kind of world where events like this can happen. Evil people will commit atrocities. And greedy idiots will sue others over whatever they can think of. Instead of learning from the event, and trying to better the world we live in, they only think of what they personally can gain.

Ford Recalling 486,000 More Escapes

In what is getting to be a familiar story, Ford is recalling Escapes.

Ten days ago a recall was announced for the 2013 model, and then seven days ago more were recalled, for a different problem.

This time it's 486,000 vehicles from 2001-2004 that have the 3 liter V 6 engine.

Investigators looking into the death of an Arizona teen, discovered that the vehicles' speed controls cables can become stuck on an engine cover, when the gas pedal is nearly fully pushed down.

When the cable gets stuck there's no way to slow the car down, as it over rules the brake pedal.

Dierks Bentley Announces New EP

Dierks Bentley is breaking with tradition again, this time putting out an EP album, whilst his last album is still generating chart toppers.

His full length album, "Home", came out earlier this year, and just grabbed it's third number one song, with  "5-1-5-0", the tenth of his career.

Bentley says the goal of the EP is to get kids, who wouldn't normally listen to country, interested in the genre with a completely fun group of songs.

He and his band took two days and wrote the songs for the EP, whilst on tour promoting "Home".

The four song EP, "Country & Cold Cans", is due out August 21.

Philippine Troops Battle Rebels

A firefight between the Philippine army and rebels, cost eight soldiers and four rebels their lives, on Thursday.

Major General Ricardo Rainier Cruz said that reinforcements were deployed as fighting continued.

Army troops launched the attack on an Abu Sayyaf camp, within hours of it being located.

The army had been looking for the camp, since it launched a raid that killed several farmers in Sumisip, two weeks ago.

Abu Sayyaf, a branch of Al Qaeda, has been linked to many of the most violent and deadly attacks, in the Philippines, over the last couple decades.

Olympic Blunder

The 2012 London Olympics haven't even officially started, yet there has already been controversy.

During the first day of women's football (soccer) North Korea and Colombia were set to play.

As the players were introduced, it quickly became apparent that the maker of the introduction video had screwed up.

Instead of the North Korean flag being seen with the country's players, the video showed South Korea's flag.

North Korea's team walked off the field, and only returned over an hour later, when the issue had been corrected.

Olympic and English officials, all the way up to Prime Minister Cameron, have apologized for the blunder.

Christian Science Monitor Bashes Romney for 'Racist' Ads Using... Racial Stereotypes?!

Some liberals would have you believe that just because you can't see it on the surface, Mitt Romney's campaign ads are brimming with racism. What's funny about this analysis, if you could call it one, is that it seeks to combat racism by being racist. It's like the Voter ID narrative the left is pushing in the media. Liberals feel that blacks and minorities are incapable to obtaining a non-driving government issued ID, yet conservatives are the racist ones.

Witness a July 23 column published at the Christian Science Monitor website by Charlton McIlwain and Stephen M, Caliendo in which our helpful liberal guides explain that, "in the presidential election, it’s not a matter of whether racism will appear in campaign messaging, but when":

President Obama is running for reelection with the support of the majority of black and Latino voters. Mitt Romney is challenging Mr. Obama with an almost exclusively white constituency behind him... A crucial question is: How will we know when pro-Romney ads are potentially racist? It’s not always so easy to recognize."

Perhaps the reason could be there hasn't been a scintilla of racism in this campaign. Ah, but no, Caliendo and McIlwain insist, going on to give five ways you can discern if Romney's ads are in fact racist. Caliendo and McIlwain claim that "A recent ad from the Romney campaign, for instance, has the effect of presenting the untrustworthiness stereotype, calling Obama's statements "not true", and "misleading". Then the ad goes a step beyond, by saying, "but that's Barack Obama", that is, the kind of person who misleads and says things that are not true".

They explain that "charges of criminality, untrustworthiness, and the like are standard attacks on white candidates, there is no stereotype associating whites, as a group, with criminality, untrustworthiness, freeloading, or laziness, so the potential effect is not the same". You're right. It's not a stereotype. It's an actual fact within the human condition that transcends all races, creeds, and ethnicities. What's more, politicians, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, and anyone else standing for office is going to be critiqued on their honesty and trustworthiness. It goes with the territory of being a politician.

Caliendo and McIlwain also claim "in the same ad mentioned in question No. 1, while featuring the image of a smiling Obama, the announcer says, he also attacked Hillary Clinton with vicious lies." This provides the opportunity to make the association: Obama, who is black, with "lying", not to mention the descriptors "attacked" and "viciousness", which also conjure the association with stereotypes of black aggression".

Yeah, I'm sure the typical American family, who is suffering economically, doesn't care that such words are falsely associated with "black aggression".  Does anyone know what that means? And what about Obama's attack on Romney for being a felon?  That's a strong attack, but not racist because "there is no historical association between whites – as a group – and criminality. That association is present with respect to blacks, however. Thus, the message functions as a stereotype, not merely a criticism of one individual".  Yes, you read that. When you think black guy, you think criminal, the columnists write, and yet it's Romney who is supposedly the racist!

CSM also has a problem with the people featured in Romney's ads because they're all white. Apparently, "having people surrounding a candidate in a political ad sends the message that those people are whom the candidate ostensibly represents. Featuring an all-white cast of supporters alongside a white candidate makes an inherent critical contrast. It says that "we" whites, represented by Mitt Romney, are different than "those" people."  So if Obama had only non-white rally goers in his ads, would that be called diversity?

The inanity goes on and on about how to spot "us" vs. "them" dichotomies and where the ad is being disseminated. This is critical because then we can get a sense as to what demographic is being targeted. It's totally top secret. However, CSM admits that "determining the audience for an ad run in presidential contests can be complicated (we rarely know where an ad is being run)". So then, why speculate when if the criteria is de minimis at best.

However, "were the ad mentioned earlier ("we good and decent Americas") aired in a place like Iowa, "us" in the ad could likely be interpreted by viewers – consciously or not – as "whites" in a racial context, given that the vast majority of the population there is white. 
 
Clearly, this racist anti-racist analysis of how Romney could be surreptitiously using race to win the election is beyond absurd.

Hospitals to Waive Bills of Shooting Victims

Children's Hospital of Colorado has announced that it will cover all costs of medical treatment for the victims of Friday's shooting.

The hospital will completely cover the uninsured victims, and will cover all co pays for those who are insured.

HealthOne, which owns the Medical Center of Aurora and Swedish Medical Center, followed with their own announcement.


They will be limiting or completely covering all costs for the victims that they treated, depending on the individual's situation.


Victims face a long recovery after the initial medical treatment.


Various charities have started taking money for the victims, and over two million dollars has been raised already.

On Thursday, Parker Adventist Hospital joined them by pledging to cover all costs not covered by insurance.

Denver Health pledged to pay seventy percent of costs that insurance didn't cover.

Does Research and Statistics Support Gun Control?

Author’s note: I reached out to a respected expert on gun control statistics, Dr. Gary Kleck, professor of criminology at Florida State University. He was kind enough to send me The Great American Gun Debate: What Research Has to Say from The Criminal Justice System, 10th edition, Edited by George F. Cole and Marc G. Gertz. Wadsworth. (Published January 2012), I highly recommend reading it. He also sent me a copy of National Vital Statistics Reports Volume 60, Number 3 which is the final report for 2009 which he says “provides the most recent final mortality data, showing numbers of deaths from all causes, with separate counts for gun deaths.”

In the wake of the Colorado theater shootings, many people have called for stricter gun control laws, while others stand by the second amendment right to own and possess guns. Those who want stricter control believe it will prevent deaths, many gun advocates state guns help prevent injury and death. I was interested to find out more information in two areas, the first being the comparison of guns used for violence versus gun use for protection and secondly, mortality rates related to gunshot wounds as compared to mortality rates by other mechanisms.

"Perhaps what is most striking about the patterns of gun ownership in the US is that ownership is generally highest in those groups where violence is lowest." (Kleck 1997, Chapter 3). "It is well known that guns are used in many violent crimes in the US. [However] The best available evidence indicates that guns are used by victims in self-protection considerably more often than crimes are committed by offenders using guns. For example, victims used guns defensively about 2.0-2.5 million times in 1993, compared to fewer than 600,000 violent crimes committed by offenders with guns (Kleck and Gertz 1995)."

"Defensive gun use is effective in preventing injury to the victim and property loss. Research based on interviews with large nationally representative samples of crime victims consistently indicates that those who use guns during crime incidents are less likely to be injured or lose property than those who either adopt other resistance strategies or do not resist at all. These effects are usually produced without shooting the gun or wounding a criminal - only 24 per cent of gun defenders even fired the gun (including warning shots), only l6 per cent tried to shoot the perpetrator, and at most 8 per cent wounded the offender (evidence summarized in Kleck and Kates 2001, Chapter 7)."

"There is also evidence indicating that some criminals may be deterred from making some criminal attempts in the first place by the prospect of victim gun use against them. Criminals interviewed in prison indicate that they have refrained from committing crimes because they believed a potential victim might have a gun, and crime rates have dropped substantially after highly publicized instances of prospective victims arming themselves or being trained in gun use, or victims using guns against criminals. (research summarized in Kleck and Kates 2001, Chapter 7)."

Information I had not even considered, "that when criminal aggressors possess guns in a crime incident, they are substantially less likely to attack and injure their victims in the first place. At least nineteen studies have found that offenders possessing guns are less likely to injure their victims than offenders with other weapons or no weapons. The explanation appears to be that possession of a lethal weapon enables aggressors to intimidate victims without actually attacking them, in crimes where the offender’s goal is not to kill the victim." Kleck 2011

Many gun control proponents state that having stricter gun control laws that restrict who can purchase guns will prevent criminals from obtaining guns. Studies show that most criminals do not obtain their guns from a conventional retail dealer of guns.

Eight four percent, of 943 felon handgun owners surveyed,
did not purchase the gun from a conventional retailer.

Another question that has surfaced is: why do people focus more on gun injury related deaths? Why guns when more people have died from poisoning and motor vehicle accidents individually and followed closely by falls? There are restrictions on some types of poisons, but that didn’t prevent 41,592 deaths by poison in 2009. There are even less restrictions on motor vehicles which caused 34,485 deaths in 2009. Both of these cause more deaths than guns. All of these can be used by in the commission of murder.

According to: National Vital Statistics Reports Volume 60, Number 3 December 29, 2011Deaths: Final Data for 2009 (Table 18) in 2009, a total of 177,154 deaths were classified as injury related Four major mechanisms of injury in 2009— poisoning, motor-vehicle traffic, firearm, and fall— accounted for 75.1 percent of all injury deaths.

Mechanism	Number of Deaths 2009	Percentage
Poisoning	41,592	23.5%
Motor-vehicle traffic	34,485	19.5%
Firearm	31,347	17.7 %
Fall	25,562	14.4 %

Why then are guns singled out as needing restriction or banned? Could it be, perhaps, a matter of politics? Though there are gun proponents and gun control advocates on both ends of the political spectrum, it seems as though it is mostly the liberals and progressives that want gun control and the conservatives and moderates that defend the second Amendment right to bear arms. That this topic has become entrenched in people’s political belief system, it is difficult, but not impossible, for people’s minds to be changed on the topic of gun control.

Research shows that gun control will not help prevent gun related crimes, nor will it prevent people from obtaining guns. In fact, stricter gun control would cause an increase in crime, increase gun related crime, and victim injury/death.

Thank you Dr. Kleck!

REFERENCES: 

Kleck, Gary. 1997. Targeting Guns: Firearms and their Control. N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter.

Kleck, Gary, and Marc Gertz. 1995. “Armed resistance to crime: the prevalence and nature of self-defense with a gun.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86:150-187.

Kleck, Gary, and Don B. Kates. 2001. Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.

Additional Reading:

· Archer, Dane, and Rosemary Gartner. 1984. Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective. New Haven: Yale University Press.

· Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. 2011. Information available at Brady website at http://www.bradycampaign.org/stategunlaws/ .

· Britt, Chester, III, Gary Kleck, and David J. Bordua. 1996a. “A reassessment of the D.C. gun law: some cautionary notes on the use of interrupted time series designs for policy impact assessment.” Law & Society Review 30:361-380.

· Bruce-Briggs, Barry. 1976. “The great American gun war.” The Public Interest 45:37-62.

· Cook, Philip J., and Jens Ludwig. 1997. Guns in America. Summary Report. Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation.

· DMI (Decision-Making-Information). 1979. Attitudes of the American Electorate Toward Gun Control. Santa Ana, Calif.: Decision-Making-Information.

· Killias, Martin. 1990. “Gun ownership and violent crime: the Swiss experience in international perspective.” Security Journal 1:169-174.

· Kleck, Gary. 1991. Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter.

· Kleck, Gary. 2009. “The myth of big-time gun trafficking and overinterpretation of gun tracing data.” UCLA Law Review 56:1233-1294.

· Kleck, Gary, and E. Britt Patterson. 1993. “The impact of gun control and gun ownership levels on violence rates.” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 9:249-288.

· Kopel, David. 1992. The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus.

· Lindgren, James, and Justin Lee Heather. 2002. “Counting guns in early America.” William and Mary Law Review 43(5):1777-1842.

· Lizotte, Alan J., and David J. Bordua. 1980. “Firearms ownership for sport and protection: two divergent models.” American Sociological Review 45:229-44.

· Lott, John, and David B. M. Mustard. 1997. “Crime, deterrence and right-to-carry concealed handguns.” Journal of Legal Studies 26:1-68.

· Ludwig, Jens, and Philip J. Cook. 2000. “Homicide and suicide rates associated with implementation of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.” Journal of the American Medical Association 284(5):585-591.

· Magaddino, Joseph P., and Marshall H. Medoff. 1984. “An empirical analysis of federal and state firearm control laws.” Pp. 225-58 in Firearms and Violence: Issues of Public Policy, edited by Don B. Kates, Jr. Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger.

· National Rifle Association. 2011. Information available at NRA website at http://www.nraila.org/GunLaws/ .

· Newton, George D., and Franklin Zimring. 1969. Firearms and Violence in American Life. A Staff Report to the National Commission on the Causes and prevention of Violence.

· Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

· PRNewswire. 2010. Statement of Kristen Rand, Violence Policy Center Legislative Director, June 28, 2010. NY: PR Newswire Association LLC.

· Stinchcombe, Arthur, Rebecca Adams, Carol A. Heimer, Kim Lane, Scheppele, Tom W. Smith, D. Garth Taylor. 1980. Crime and Punishment — Changing Attitudes in America. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

· United Nations. 1997. Draft - United Nations International Study on Firearm Regulation. Vienna: Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Division, United Nations Office at Vienna.

· U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. 1980. State Laws and Published Ordinances, Firearms – 1980. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Treasury.

· U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. 1998. ATF Annual Report, 1997. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Treasury.

· U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. 2000. Following the Gun. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Treasury.

· U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 1996. Survey of State Procedures Related to Firearm Sales. Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice.

· U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2001. Firearm Use by Offenders. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

· U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2011. Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2008. U.S. Department of Justice. Available online at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus08.pdf

· U.S. Congressional Research Service. 1994. “Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.”CRS Report for Congress number 94-14 GOV, dated January 6, 1994. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress.

· U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2011. Crime in the United States, 2009: Uniform Crime Reports. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Available online at http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr#cius.

· U.S. Library of Congress. 1981. Gun Control Laws in Foreign Countries. Law Library. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

· Vizzard, William J. 2000. Shots in the Dark: The Policy, Politics, and Symbolism of Gun Control. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

· Wright, James D., and Peter H. Rossi. 1986. Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons And Their Firearms. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.

· Zimring, Franklin E. 1975. “Firearms and federal law: the Gun Control Act of 1968.” Journal of Legal Studies 4:133-98.

Kim Jong Un's Mystery Woman Revealed

Kim Jong Un's mystery woman has been revealed, her name is Ri Sol Ju.

Apparently Ri is not his girlfriend, she's actually his wife of three years.

The two also have at least one child together.

Ri is twenty-seven and is a graduate of the Kim Il Sung University graduate school.

It is unclear why North Korea chose now to release her identity.