Archive for Random Thoughts

Brady Campaign’s slipping relevancy underscored by NRA convention

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on May 29th, 2010

by Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman

Adhering to a pattern of behavior that has developed over the years, a tiny contingent of gun prohibitionists paraded outside of the Charlotte Convention Center while the National Rifle Association was hosting its record-breaking members’ meeting, but they remained only long enough to get some camera time with local news crews.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, came to that North Carolina city in order to grab some face time and get his name in the local newspapers. Where the NRA can pull more than 70,000 members, the Brady bunch could barely muster two dozen protesters to parade around for perhaps an hour, probably less, and then leave satisfied that the 5 o’clock news would carry their images.

For several years, right up to the devastating 1994 mid-term elections that turned dozens of Congressional anti-gunners out of office, the Brady Campaign and other gun control groups enjoyed media and public support. But when gun rights organizations began fighting back with facts, and developed a strategy of education through legal journals, their influence began to wane. That influence continued to erode as time tested their rhetoric and found it not simply wanting, but totally preposterous.

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Questioning your ‘compassionate’ politics

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on May 19th, 2010

by Brian Schwartz

“You oppose Medicaid and government-run schools? You’re heartless and lack compassion.”  If you have ever made this accusation, even tacitly, I invite you to reconsider the government policies you support.

Why does being compassionate mean supporting government-run schools and health plans? This makes little sense if you view these programs as government-run charities. Would you agree to perpetually donate a portion of your monthly income to the same charity - regardless of its effectiveness?  If the charity is doing a lousy job, wouldn’t you want the freedom to find a better one?

By supporting government-run charities like Medicaid and tax-funded schools, you relinquish this freedom. You could try to improve their performance through the political process. But this is grossly inefficient and ineffective compared to using on-line charity rating services to find a charity that deserves your donations.

Many rightly oppose paying taxes to support a faith-based charity, as the charity’s fundamental beliefs conflict with your own. But shouldn’t your objection also apply when you disapprove of a charity’s methods or performance?

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A Sherman pledge for LNC chair candidates

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on May 9th, 2010

by Steve Kubby

When questioned about a potential candidacy for the presidency of the United States, General William Tecumseh Sherman replied in a manner quoted (and misquoted — there are several versions) to this day. My favorite distillation of his reply:

“If nominated, I will not accept; if drafted, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve.”

Sherman had good reasons for replying that way. He didn’t trust politicians, even though his own brother was a US Senator. He blamed politicians for starting the war which had made him famous, and for causing that war to drag out for four years at the cost of more than 600,000 lives. He had a job, he was happy with that job, and he didn’t want a different job.

Later this month, the Libertarian Party’s national convention delegates will convene just down the street from Sherman’s grave in St. Louis. At that convention, they’ll elect a new Libertarian National Committee.

Those delegates deserve a pre-emptive pledge, very similar to Sherman’s, from candidates for election as the next chair of that LNC.

At least two of those candidates sought the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination in 2008.

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Evil people and hatred

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on April 24th, 2010

by Tessa Rose

Recently Larken and I watched the movie “The Green Mile” for the first time in many years. Having just written my last post about how people always think they’re doing the right thing, it was challenging to be reminded just how unspeakably, deliberately evil some people are. Of course the movie is entirely fictional, based on a Stephen King story about characters living or working on a Death Row in a 1930s prison. But there really are people like the villains in that film: people who simply enjoy making other people suffer–which, it seems to me, is pretty much the essence of evil.

Does my premise break down when we look at the worst people on earth? How could mass murderers and child rapists possibly think they’re doing the right thing? Well, I do believe that on a conscious level they usually know that what they’re doing is wrong and evil, but on some deeper level, below their own awareness perhaps, they’ve decided that being “evil” is the right choice for them. For some reason they’ve decided that being “good” just doesn’t work for them. It’s hard–maybe impossible–for normal people to understand why someone would feel this way, but criminal psychologists keep trying to figure it out.

And why, you might think, should we even try to understand — let alone forgive — these horrible people? Especially those who are completely unrepentant, and will keep on doing heinous things until someone stops them with a bullet? How could such a person deserve understanding and forgiveness?

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Should Christians change political course?

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on February 7th, 2010

by Laura Duke Stansbury

What if Christians were to wake tomorrow and realize that their political strategy over the course of the past century had been utterly misguided? Consider the timing. Few would argue that the Obama administration’s new culture of corruption has left the door wide open for Republican victory in November. But as it stands, today’s conservatives have become so embroiled in a philosophical deadlock that many are wondering whether unity will be possible.

I am a Christian, a so-called social conservative. Many of my colleagues are of the libertarian breed: Ayn Rand Republicans. Our party has long been divided between these two very distinct schools of thought. For a long time, I had lent my support to the legislating of virtue issues such as gay marriage and prayer in schools. Recently however, I attended an early morning lecture where business strategist and evangelical Christian Kevin Miller called into question many of my preconceived notions about the roles of virtue, politics and morality.

“Freedom Nationally, Virtue Locally” was Miller’s mantra. He pointed out that our government had only initially been established to provide this nation with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In Joseph Ellis’ The Founding Brothers, the author astutely unraveled a major conflict faced by the first Congress in 1790. “Perhaps it was inevitable, even preferable, that slavery as a national problem be moved from the Congress to the churches, where it could come under scrutiny as a sin requiring a national purging, rather than a social dilemma requiring a political solution.” In other words it was man’s heart, not his politics that weakened and eventually destroyed the institution of slavery.

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James Cameron goes green

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on January 5th, 2010

by Mike Renzulli

James Cameron’s Science Fiction epic, Avatar, has very impressive, cutting-edge special effects, spine tingling action and good acting.

However, the movie’s overall message makes it worse than J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek and ties with Gene Roddenberry’s franchise reboot as the worst movie of the year.

Avatar takes place in the future on Pandora, a moon of a gas giant named Polyphemus, that is located over 4 light years from Earth. Pandora is being explored for certain resources that Earth needs since Earth’s economy is bad.

Pandora is a lush, tropical planet filled with unique wildlife and is inhabited by a race of primitive humanoid beings called the Na’vi.

One Na’vi tribe occupies an area of the moon that is plentiful in Unobtainium that a private corporation wants to extract since the mineral would be of some use on Earth and is extremely valuable.

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Atheists for Jesus?

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on December 30th, 2009

by Jessica Peck Corry

There are American attorneys who could build viable practices solely by representing atheists seeking to remove Nativity scenes from the front of courthouse lawns. Proclaiming “separation of church and state,” they profess to have the market cornered when it comes to our Founding Fathers’ intentions.

Are they right?

According to one Denver lawyer, they are mistaken. Joseph C. Smith, a former deputy attorney general for Colorado, is the co-author of a new book titled, “Under God: George Washington and the Question of Church and State.” Smith believes strongly that as a nation, we’ve misconstrued what the Founding Fathers actually desired when it came to the role of religion in America.

As history teachers rarely discuss, the basis of America’s notion of the “wall of separation” between government and organized religion comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists in 1802. According to Smith and his co-author, Dallas writer and attorney Tara Ross, Jefferson accepted that this view on the First Amendment was not widely shared. They also point out that Jefferson never again publicly advocated for separation of church and state.

The letter, they argue, was written for political purposes and was brushed aside for more than seven decades, until 1879, when the U.S. Supreme Court took up a case concerning a Mormon polygamist. It was then that “separation of church and state” emerged as a legal authority. It took nearly six more decades for the Court, in Emerson v. Board of Education, to fully embrace the term.

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25 things that are about to become extinct

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on October 11th, 2009

by author unknown

25. U.S. Post Office
They are pricing themselves out of existence. With e-mail, and on-line services they are a relic of the past. (refer to #9) Packages are also sent faster and cheaper with UPS. (Regular mail gets periodic, almost yearly, increases, but second and third class junk mail still merits a lower fee from the USPS, which delivers this unwanted crap to your home or business at reduced rates.)

24. Yellow Pages
This year will be pivotal for the global Yellow Pages industry. Much like newspapers, print Yellow Pages will continue to bleed dollars to their various digital counterparts, from Internet Yellow Pages (IYPs), to local search engines and combination search/listing services like Reach Local and Yodel Factors like an acceleration of the print ‘fade rate’ and the looming recession will contribute to the onslaught. One research firm predicts the falloff in usage of newspapers and print Yellow Pages could even reach 10% this year — much higher than the 2%-3% fade rate seen in past years.

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A victory

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on September 15th, 2009

by Richard C. Evey

A federal judge has made a ruling that could change the way that law enforcement treats “We the people”.

The judge granted that the plaintiff has liability under the Fourth Amendment and that law enforcement does not have immunity. In my opinion, a major victory for liberty and freedom.

The case: St. John v Alamogordo Public Safety, U. S. District Court of New Mexico, No. 08-994 BB/LAM.

Mr. St. John went into a movie theater openly carrying a holstered handgun. New Mexico has no law forbidding the open carry of a handgun.

The theater owner called Alamogordo Public Safety. Four law enforcement officers (LEO) approached Mr. St. John and with force removed him from the theater, took his handgun and patted him down. After checking, found out that the handgun was legal and that he was not a criminal, returned his handgun and let him go back to the movie but without his handgun, which he placed in his vehicle.

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What would happen?

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on August 5th, 2009

by Richard C. Evey

There has been talk about AKA and if he was born in the United States or Kenya? Just to make clear, AKA is the guy who lives in the White House. During his life he has had seven aliases.

MSM has been talking about this off and on for the past few months; only when there is little to talk about 24 hours a day. The issue has been gaining strength throughout the country and the world.

The DINO’s are all upset with certain media for even talking about the issue, saying that he was elected, sworn in and is in the White House and that makes it good. The RINO’s talk about it just because they want to run their mouths and have to keep hammering on AKA, just like the DINO’s did to Bush.

Those of us who are part of the alternative news have been talking about this for years and no one has really listened. But I digress.

Now let us come to a real important issue. What would happen if AKA, the press or anyone comes up with the TRUTH? That there is not a Hawaiian birth certificate for AKA and the TRUTH that AKA was born in Kenya, Africa. Then the human excrement would really hit the osculating device. What then would happen?

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