Friday, April 26, 2013

Open letter to Barak Obama, one father to another


April 26, 2013

Dear Barak:

Your two girls are getting big, too big to carry around on your back.  Too big to hold hands with them when you walk with them.  They're now teenagers, and teenagers have a need for independence.  As one father to another, you should give it to them.

You've done a good job raising them so far, but even with round-the-clock armed security, a long list of scheduled activities, and a strong Muslim religious faith, you still can't stop them from wanting to be like other American girls.  If you try to stop them from listening to the television shows that other American girls listen to, they'll do it behind your back.  If you try to stop them from sending messages to their teenage friends, they'll do that behind your back.  Can you really find the time to watch them when you have so many other things to do?

During the turbulent 1960s, wall posters were sold with this saying:

"If you love something, let it go.
If it comes back to you, it's yours.
If it doesn't, it never was."

The same thing happens with children.  If you truly love them, you have to let them find their own unique individual identity.  Even though you, their father, are an immigrant, according to the extensive research provided by an Arizona Sheriff, Malia and Sasha are Americans.  As long as they live here, they will want to be like other people who live in this country.  First-generation immigrants sometimes mourn the loss of the culture that they enjoyed in "the old country", but assimilation is impossible to avoid.

Please avoid the urge to force your daughters to be more like Kenya where you were born or Indonesia where you grew up.  You will only alienate them.  You may be able to prevent them from influencing foreign policy, and you may be able to prevent them from speaking their mind in public about the tax code, but in less than four years, you won't be President any more, and you will lose a lot of your ability to control what they see and hear as well as your ability to control how they communicate with other Americans.  You should get used to the idea that they will have different ideas than you do.

I have heard rumors that Malia is dating.  Some of these rumors were started by YOU.

From an article posted on the Huffington Post February 15th.  The links are theirs:
During a stop in Georgia Thursday, where he pushed his education agenda, President Obama hinted that one of his daughters -- most likely the eldest, 14-year-old Malia -- is officially dating.

"I do have to warn the parents who are here, who still have young kids, they grow up to be, like five feet 10 inches. And even if they're still nice to you, they basically don't have a lot of time for you during the weekends," he told the crowd. "They have sleepovers and dates. So all that early investment just leaves them to go away," he said.

A White House official declined Yahoo.com's request for comment and clarification on the president's remark, but it's safe to say that First Boyfriend watch is officially in effect.

In an interview with People magazine last month, the Obamas talked about the influence their marriage will have on their daughter's inevitable relationships with boys.

"The great thing about the girls is they've got a wonderful role model in their mom. They've seen how Michelle and I interact — not only the love but also respect that I show to their mom. So I think they have pretty high expectations about how relationships should be, and that gives me some confidence about the future," Obama said.

Case in point: The romantic Valentine's date the president said he and Michelle had lanned last night.

"She made me promise to get back in time for our date tonight. That's important," Obama said during his Georgia stop, "I've already got a gift, got the flowers," he went on to say.

During their father's second term, Sasha, 11, who arrived in the White House as a second-grader, moves on to middle school while Malia begins the many adventures of your average teen.
Don't look now, Barry, I mean Barak (sorry, I keep forgetting to use your Muslim name), but Malia is fooling her mother.  She's not really interested in dating a Muslim.  She's only doing it because you're trying so hard to push your ideas onto her.  What she really wants is some romantic diversity.  If she had her way, she would date someone who looks like America, and if you really loved her, you'd let her.

You see, Mister President, as much as you hate the concept, this country is a melting pot.  Two centuries ago, the children of British immigrants welcomed Germans and Irish into our country.  Most of them intermarried, and now, it's hard to tell them apart in a crowd.  The melting pot did its' job.  Since then, many people from many countries have come to our country, and the melting pot is still doing the same job, creating Americans out of a hundred other nationalities and a thousand other cultures.

If you truly love your daughters as an immigrant, and as a father, let your daughters learn that this nation takes pride its' immigrants because of what they contribute to the whole country as blended un-hyphenated Americans who are proud of our country and friends to allies like Canada, most of western Europe, and many other nations.

Tell the same thing to your strong-willed wife, too.  She, even more than you, needs to know why we are the strongest nation on the face of the earth.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

This is why they call it Great Britain


All of the following photos were taken at yesterday's London Marathon.

The race began with a moment of silence, to demonstrate their deep respect for all of the victims of the Boston bombing, which happened a week ago.






Every runner passed under this banner.

It says:


"Run if you can,

walk if you must,

but finish for Boston."




Other photos from the marathon:





May

God

continue

to

bless

The
Queen

Monday, April 22, 2013

An idea whose time has come


A radio station that broadcasts exclusively in Spanish and whose hosts are people who like this nation and its' Constitution.

The story in Politico, dated January 27, 2012.

The first five paragraphs of the story and an audio link.
(Note: All links in these paragraphs are Politico's.)
A former Bush administration official is launching a Spanish-language talk-radio show in hopes of bringing a conservative political message to a medium popular with many Hispanics.

“It will be like Rush Limbaugh but with a little Piolín flavor,” said host Alfonso Aguilar, referring to the godfather of conservative talk and the country’s dominant Latino broadcaster.

Listen.Listen to this article. Powered by Odiogo.com

Last Saturday, Aguilar began what will be a weekly, hour-long show in 11 top Univision radio markets by interviewing Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. An interview with Newt Gingrich will air Saturday morning, just four days before Florida’s primary. The show airs live and features newsmaker interviews as well as listener phone calls.

It’s the first national conservative talk show in Spanish and the idea is to reach Hispanics on a station that draws millions of listeners — but doesn’t often include a conservative perspective.

“Right now, the problem that we have is Latinos have been voting for liberals because we haven’t showed up,” said Aguilar, who served as chief of citizenship for President George W. Bush and now serves as executive director of a group called the Latino Partnership for Conservative principles. “It’s important for conservatives to reach Latinos directly.”

You know, I'm starting to like immigration ....





These are the first five paragraphs of a December 27, 2018 Associated Press story that was published on their own website.
LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — Pedro Gonzalez has faith in Donald Trump and his party.

The 55-year-old Colombian immigrant is a pastor at an evangelical church in suburban Denver. Initially repelled by Trump in 2016, he’s been heartened by the president’s steps to protect religious groups and appoint judges who oppose abortion rights.  More important, Gonzalez sees Trump’s presidency as part of a divine plan.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Gonzalez said of the president. “He was put there.”

Though Latino voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition, there is a larger bloc of reliable Republican Latinos than many think.  And the GOP’s position among Latinos has not weakened during the Trump administration, despite the president’s rhetoric against immigrants and the party’s shift to the right on immigration.

In November’s elections, 32 percent of Latinos voted for Republicans, according to AP VoteCast data.  The survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters — including 7,738 Latino voters — was conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.
This group of voters is demonstrating an appreciation for Republican political values.

As a proud Republican, I want this trend encouraged, especially since many people are telling Republican President Donald Trump to expand the base of the party and thus to increase the Republican presence in Congress.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

My favorite tweet during the past week


"The punk placed a bomb next to a child.  I don't need to know why.

Because why will not change the fact that he placed a bomb next to a child."

This message was sent via Twitter by Greg Gutfeld on April 20th.

On April 19, 2017, I added the actual tweet from Mr. Gutfeld.
If you click on the date at the end of this tweet, you will see this tweet on his Twitter account.

**********

Note: I agree one hundred percent with the righteous indignation.

However, after professional law enforcement agencies find accurate information about these two individuals, and after professional lawmakers use this information to pass better laws, the new information and the new laws may prevent further crimes.

When I say "professional" law enforcement and "professional" lawmakers, both phrases refer to people who will let the facts outweigh the politics.

This was not done when our embassy in Benghazi was attacked, and it was not done when thirteen U.S. soldiers were murdered at Fort Hood in Texas.  Both are clear cases of murders being done by Islamic extremists, and both events have multiple sources of evidence that is ready for a courtroom, but in both cases, President Obama never acknowledged the fact that Muslims committed the crimes.

In the case of Benghazi, President Obama never allowed available units of the U.S. Military to fight back against the heavily-armed Islamic extremists who were attacking the embassy, which was located on U.S.-owned land, as is true with every U.S. Embassy.


Why has Presisent Obama refused to label Muslim extremism "terrorism"?


Because President Obama IS a Muslim.

This video was posted on YouTube Sept. 7, 2008.

Barak was being interviewed by George Stephanopoulis of ABC News.

At that time, he was a U.S. Senator and a candidate for the Presidency.



More information about Barak Obama's Muslim background is available in a story published by the Washington Times on September 11, 2012.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

This is why this abortionist is on trial for murder


This is not just "human tissue".

This is A BABY GIRL, and he killed her.






These are the first three paragraphs of a story published 24 hours ago on the website of the Atlantic Monthly, which still prints and mails out a monthly magazine (I have a subscription).

Note: The links in the following paragraphs were in the original article.
The grand jury report in the case of Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I've read. "This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors," it states. "The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths."

Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate's coverage includes testimony as grisly as you'd expect. "An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions," the channel reports. "Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.' He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, 'it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.'"

One former employee described hearing a baby screaming after it was delivered during an abortion procedure. "I can't describe it. It sounded like a little alien," she testified. Said the Philadelphia Inquirer in its coverage, "Prosecutors have cited the dozens of jars of severed baby feet as an example of Gosnell's idiosyncratic and illegal practice of providing abortions for cash to poor women pregnant longer than the 24-week cutoff for legal abortions in Pennsylvania."


The babies he killed are all in heaven, because they're all innocent of any human crimes.

If Kermit Gosnel, who killed them, wants to join them there, he had better start spending a lot of time begging God to forgive him.



This is a link to a PDF-format 281-page Grand Jury report on this case.

Dated updates

April 18, 2013

The last prosecution witness told the jury that he saw, as an eyewitness, ten babies breathing before Kermit Gosnel killed them.  Oh by the way, some third-trimester abortions are permitted under the "Roe vs. Wade" Supreme Court ruling.  Any baby that breathes is a baby that has a right to life.  If those parents don't want that baby, there are millions of married couples who would love to be given that baby because they can't have babies of their own.


June 22, 2016

These are the first five paragraphs of a May 13, 2013 New York Times story.
PHILADELPHIA — A doctor who was responsible for cutting the spines of babies after botched abortions was convicted Monday of three counts of first-degree murder in a case that became a sharp rallying cry for anti-abortion activists.

The doctor, Kermit Gosnell, 72, operated a clinic in West Philadelphia catering to poor women that prosecutors called a “house of horrors.”

The case turned on whether the late-term pregnancies Dr. Gosnell terminated resulted in live births. His lawyer, Jack McMahon, argued that because Dr. Gosnell injected a drug in utero to stop the heart, the deliveries were stillbirths, and movements that witnesses testified to observing — a jerked arm, a cry, swimming motions — were mere spasms.

But after deliberating 10 days, the jury found Dr. Gosnell guilty in the deaths of victims known as Baby A, Baby C and Baby D. He was found not guilty of murdering Baby E.

Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty when the trial moves into the sentencing phase next Tuesday.

February 21, 2017

These are the first four paragraphs of a Daily Mail (U.K.) story dated today.  The link in the first paragraph was in their story.
Superstar Will Smith was brought into this world by the most notorious abortion doctor in America, DailyMail.com can reveal exclusively.

And now Kermit Gosnell, who is serving life in prison for running a horrific clinic, is trying to make contact with the Collateral Beauty actor in a bid to get him to take up his case.

‘I’m fond of asserting that there could never be a Men in Black if I had dropped you on your head,’ Gosnell, now 76, wrote in a letter he sent to Smith, a copy of which has been provided to DailyMail.com.

Father-of-six Gosnell was convicted in 2013 of the murder of three babies who were born alive and the involuntary manslaughter of a patient who died during a botched abortion. He agreed to a sentence of life without parole if prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

September 8, 2017

Today, I added these two videos and the text below them.
Animated video of development in the womb
Still photos captured by Lennart Nillson

Here's a review of this movie on the Hot Air website.


October 13, 2018

A movie has been made about these crimes. Link to their IMDb page.  The first video is the announcement from the producers. The second video is the official trailer for the PG-13 movie, which is in movie theaters for a limited run this weekend.


The Hot Air website has reviewed the movie.  After an introduction that covers the making of the movie and the personal views of the reviewer, these are the first two paragraphs of the review.
Gosnell has a number of things going for it right off the bat, and the film takes advantage of them all.  The story is already horrific, dramatic, suspenseful, and provocative.  Rather than fall into the bad practice of applying “style” or intrusive camera techniques, director Nick Searcy plays it straight and lets the story tell itself more organically.  The cast is solid and delivers realistic portrayals without chewing scenery and distracting from the story.  Searcy himself probably has the most fun, playing the role of defense attorney in courtroom scenes, but that works because the others are playing their roles without overdoing it, especially Sarah Jane Morris as Lexy McGuire as the assistant DA whose pro-choice views get a serious challenge in her work on this case.  AlonZo “Zo” Rachel, a longtime favorite in the blogosphere and on social media, does a very good job in the supporting role of Detective Stark, the partner to Dean Cain’s lead role of Detective James Wood, which Cain pulls off well.

However, the best performances in the film come out of the clinic itself.  The clinic employees who testify in the courtroom scenes don’t get a lot of screen time but they are tremendously effective as the trial builds to its climax.  Dominique Deon as Betty Goodwin stands out in a critical role, setting up the jury’s decision and the conclusion of the trial.  Janine Turner (Northern Exposure) has an intriguing cameo as a abortion-clinic medical director called as a trial witness by the prosecution to differentiate Gosnell’s actions from other abortion clinics, a small part of the film’s repeated message that the prosecution wasn’t focused on fighting abortion — just murder.
"Janine Turner (Northern Exposure) has an intriguing cameo as a abortion-clinic medical director called as a trial witness by the prosecution to differentiate Gosnell’s actions from other abortion clinics, a small part of the film’s repeated message that the prosecutor wasn't focused on fighting abortion - just murder."

The prosecutor was fighting murder, not abortion.


The Lennart Nilsson Award

The Lennart Nilsson Award Foundation was established in 1998 in recognition of the world-renowned Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson and his extraordinary body of work.  It's main aim is to promote education, training and research within the medical, biological and engineering sciences through the use of images.  This is achieved through the Lennart Nilsson Award, an international award bestowed annually upon an individual in recognition of outstanding contributions within the realm of scientific photography.  Award recipients are people who work in the spirit of Lennart Nilsson, revealing science to the world in beautiful, unique and powerful ways.


About Lennart Nilsson

Born in Strängas, Sweden, on August 24, 1922, Lennart Nilsson began his career as a freelance photojournalist. His work spans more than seven decades, beginning in the early 1940s when modern photojournalism made its breakthrough in Sweden.

His early photographic essays, including A Midwife in Lapland (1945), Polar Bear Hunting in Spitzbergen (1947), Congo (1948) and Sweden in Profile (1954) gained international attention through publication in leading photojournalism magazines such as Life, Picture Post and Illustrated.

In the 1950s, Nilsson began experimenting with new photographic techniques including macro- and microphotography, which led to the books, Ants (Myror) and Life in the Sea (Liv i hav).

In the 1960s, the use of specially designed, ultra-slim endoscopes made it possible for Nilsson to capture on film the inner workings of blood vessels and various cavities of the human body. The book A Child is Born (Ett barn blir till) first published in 1965 is undoubtedly Nilsson’s most famous work.

In the 1970s, Nilsson began to use the scanning electron microscope to capture images of the inner workings of the human body. This shift in the focus of his work gave Nilsson the opportunity to work on the premises of Karolinska Institute.

What remains remarkable is the combination of his unending patience to fully explore his subjects, combined with a journalist’s eye, artist’s sense of form and colour, and technician’s inventive skills to maximize available light and capture spectacular images.

In 1976 Lennart Nilsson was awarded an honorary doctorate at Karolinska Institutet. In 2009 he was given the title Professor’s name by the Swedish Government and in 2012 he was awarded the Karolinska Institutet Jubilee Medal (Gold class) for his long-standing and groundbreaking contributions to the development and innovative advancement of medical photography.

Link to the source of this text, on the website of the Karolinska Institutet, a Swedish medical university.

Lennart Nilsson passed away in January 2017.  His obituary in:
The New York Times The Washington Post
Time Magazine's annual survey of photographers who had died that year

A Florida teacher asked students to throw away the Constitution


Copied VERBATIM fom a story that was published yesterday in The Blaze.  I have already tweeted this story to my followers.

The photo was published by The Blaze, as part of their story.
The words are written in crayon, in the haphazard bumpiness of a child’s scrawl.

“I am willing to give up some of my constitutional rights in order to be safer or more secure.”

They’re the words that Florida father Aaron Harvey was stunned to find his fourth-grade son had written, after a lesson in school about the Constitution.

Harvey’s son attends Cedar Hills Elementary in Jacksonville, Fla.  Back in January, a local attorney came in to teach the students about the Bill of Rights.  But after the attorney left, fourth-grade teacher Cheryl Sabb dictated the sentence to part of the class and had them copy it down, he said.

The paper sat unnoticed in Harvey’s son’s backpack for several months until last week, when his son’s mother almost threw it away.  The words caught her eye in the trash, and she showed it to Harvey, who said he was at a loss for words.  He asked his son, who said Sabb had spoken the sentence out loud and told them to write it down.  Harvey said he asked some of his son’s classmates and got a similar answer.

“Everybody has their opinions,” Harvey told The Blaze.  “I am strongly for proper education, for the freedom of thought so you can form your own opinion and have your own free speech in the future… [but] the education is, ‘when was the Constitution drafted, when was it ratified, why did this happen, why did we choose to do this…all these things, why did they particularly choose those specific rights to be in our Bill of Rights.’”


A different teacher, but the same principle

This section was added on September 25, 2017.

These are the first five paragraphs of a story published today on the website of KGUN, the ABC-TV affiliate in Tuscon, Arizona.
MESA, AZ - A Mesa mother is voicing concerns after her child's 4th-grade teacher changed words in the Declaration of Independence, and made the students recite the altered version in class.

The teacher at Salk Elementary school crossed out the words "man" and substituted it with "human".

The mother, Elizabeth Vaillencourt said the teacher's goal may have been to include women as well, but she went too far in altering a historical document.

When Vaillencourt took this concern to school officials, she was initially told she had "hurt the teacher's feelings" by posting about it on social media.

The school reacted by removing Vaillencourt's child from that teacher's classroom, and placing them under a different teacher.
Instead of removing the student his safety, the school's principal should have removed the teacher, to protect the safety of all of the students.

Note: This KGUN story was mentioned on the website The Blaze, which is why I saw it.  This is the complete text of the parent's Facebook page.  The Blaze story included a link.  The KGUN story did not.
I have an interview with Sonu Wasu with ABC 15 today to discuss this matter.

Indoctrination is happening at Salk Elementary

This is not up for debate  I am trying to raise awareness for those like myself who agree and see the problem with what the teachers doing for those of you who did not get that far what she is doing is indoctrination you may be alright with her doing this but it is against board and school policy so therefore she was in the wrong.

Indoctrination is in fact occurring in our Elementary Schools.  This was hanging in my son's 4th Grade classroom.  Each and every morning after the Pledge of Allegiance is said, the class recited this altered version of our Declaration Of Independence.  This teacher also felt it was "A teachable moment" when she shared with the class that she attended a protest of our President Donald J. Trump.  When I confronted the teacher she in fact believed this behavior to be within her rights.  We did get the sign removed from the classroom as well as my son.  My son is a Boy Scout of America and felt uncomfortable enough about this to tell us.  If he had not, and to my great shame, we would not have known.  And this would be still occurring.  I beg of you all for future generations to remain free, please beware of what is actually occurring in our schools.  The school seemed much more upset about my face book posts, meant to inform the public, than what is happening in the class.  I was told when we went to the school that they had another complaint.  If so ,why had they not acted?  Perhaps, turning a deaf ear?  Let us pray not.
These are the first two sentences in the fourth paragraph.

"Indoctrination is in fact occurring in our Elementary Schools.  This was hanging in my son's 4th Grade classroom."

This photo was added to her Facebook page.


In fairness to KGUN, their online story included a video of their on-air report.  The Blaze story included a photo of the parent.


More important than any words written in crayon

These words are what every President says, with his hand on a Bible, when he takes the Oath of Office at the beginning of his presidential term:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

- The United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 1.


Also more important than words written in crayon

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson, our third president

Friday, April 12, 2013

Gabrielle Gifford's husband likes to shoot his gun


These are the first seven paragraphs of a story published April 9, 2013 in The Hill, a news journal that focuses on Capitol Hill politics.
Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) sometimes watches her husband shoot guns recreationally.

CNN released a taped interview with Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, where Kelly is shown shooting a Glock 9 millimeter handgun at pots and bottles while Giffords watches on a patio at her mother's house in Arizona.

The Glock 9 millimeter is the same gun that was used in the shooting massacre in Tucson, Arizona in early 2011 where Giffords suffered a gunshot wound to the head.

Kelly notes that the Glock he fires recreationally holds 17 rounds while the one used in Tucson held 33 rounds.

Kelly and Giffords have become some of the most prominent proponents of strengthening gun laws. They run the group Americans for Responsible Solutions which advocates policies meant to reduce gun violence.

Americans for Responsible Solutions recently released a video of Kelly buying a Sig Sauer .45 in Tucson, Arizona. The video argued that it's currently too easy to buy a gun.

President Obama has urged Congress to pass new gun laws. On Monday Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced that he would block a package of gun-control measures Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to bring to the Senate.

Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook
Note: This article has been rewritten since it was first published and since I copied and pasted the text onto this blog page.  The text of this story has been changed without any notification to the readers, but the original article is available on this web page, which includes a link to this CNN story, which was published April 9, 2013.


February 16, 2019 update

There's a lot of material in this update.  Please take the time to read it thoroughly.

Mark Kelly is now a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

These are the first four paragraphs of a February 12, 2019 New York Times story.  Both of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.
Mark Kelly, the former astronaut and gun-control activist who is married to Gabrielle Giffords, announced on Tuesday that he would run for Senate in Arizona, challenging appointed Senator Martha McSally and intensifying the Democratic threat to Republicans’ narrow control of the chamber.

Mr. Kelly’s entry sets up a possible general election between two combat veterans in a swiftly changing state, and may elevate Arizona further as a 2020 battleground.  Both parties already view Arizona as a swing state in the presidential race and in 2018 Democrats won a Senate race there for the first time in decades.

Ms. McSally, an Air Force veteran, was narrowly defeated in a statewide race last year by Senator Kyrsten Sinema.  Ms. McSally joined the Senate anyway a few months later, appointed to fill the vacancy left by John McCain’s death after a placeholder appointee, Jon Kyl, resigned.

Mr. Kelly, 54, unveiled his campaign in an online video highlighting his experience as an astronaut and Navy pilot.  Ms. Giffords, a former member of Congress who was shot and nearly killed by a deranged gunman in 2011, appeared beside him in the message.

These are 20 links to other stories about his new campaign.  All of these stories were published on the same day as the New York Times story.  Some of these stories refer to the Senate seat as "John McCain's seat" even though he died on August 25, 2018 and was replaced in early September by Jon Kyl, who was once a Senator himself.
USA Today Washington Post CNN Tuscon Weekly
AZ Central The Associated Press People Wall St. Journal
CBS News KTLA Los Angeles WLS Politico
NBC News Arizona Public Media The Hill Tuscon Weekly
Town Hall Arizona Capitol Times Roll Call Sacramento Bee

These journals published the February 12, 2019 Associated Press story that is linked above.
Tuscon.com Las Vegas Review-Journal ABC News
Boston Globe New York Daily News KPRC Houston
WGN Chicago The Times of Israel The Japan Times


Mark's main political issue is gun control

Even though this April 9, 2013 story includes a video of a CNN reporter, visiting Mark Kelly's home with his permission, and firing a 9mm Glock handgun at some clay flowerpots, U.S. Senate Candidate Mark Kelly says that people should not own firearms.

This video was uploaded to YouTube by the PBS Newshour on October 2, 2017.  This is their description of the content of the video.

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, co-founders of gun control advocacy organization Americans for Responsible Solutions, respond to Las Vegas shootings.

Starting at 1 minute, 14 seconds of the PBS video, Mark says these words;

"Every year, roughly 33,000 people die from guns.  Over 100,000 more are shot.  This is the worst-case scenario.  It's haunted our dreams, that we would wake up to the news of a massacre like this.  Weapons of war in the hands of a determined killer with a tactical advantage  This was an ambush if there ever was one."


These are the first five paragraphs of a January 8, 2019 Associated Press story that was published on the website of the ABC-TV affiliate in Toledo, Ohio.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Days after reclaiming the House majority, Democrats are introducing gun control legislation timed for the anniversary of the shooting of former Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats introduced a bill to expand background checks for sales and transfers of firearms on Tuesday, the eighth anniversary of the day Giffords was shot in the head at a constituent meeting in Arizona.

Giffords, who co-founded a gun safety group with her husband, Mark Kelly, said in a statement Friday she was thrilled that her former House colleagues were responding to a gun-violence epidemic that killed nearly 40,000 people in 2017.

The bill expanding background checks "marks a critical first step toward strengthening America's gun laws and making our country a safer place to live, work, study, worship and play," Giffords said. "I stand ready to do everything in my power to get this legislation across the finish line."

Democrats promised swift action on gun control after the party regained the House majority following eight years of Republican rule.
This is the last quoted sentence.

"Democrats promised swift action on gun control after the party regained the House majority following eight years of Republican rule."


Democrats promise 'swift action on gun control' but ...

... but many of the Democrats are hypocrites.

This is the second paragraph of the April 9, 2013 story in The Hill, titled "Giffords and husband still enjoy recreational gun use", that is quoted and linked at the top of this page.
CNN released a taped interview with Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, where Kelly is shown shooting a Glock 9 millimeter handgun at pots and bottles while Giffords watches on a patio at her mother's house in Arizona.

The CNN story that was linked in the April 9, 2013 story in The Hill included this video, which runs just under three minutes.

Starting at 35 seconds, you will see him shooting at clay flowerpots and plastic water bottles with a 9mm Glock handgun that has a 17-round clip.

He originally bought it as a gift for her.  He says so in the video.
This five-second video, uploaded in August 2013, shows him shooting a shotgun at objects made of clay at a shooting range in Napa, California.

If I find other videos, I will add them onto this page.

If Gabrielle Gifford's husband can buy and use a firearm and ammo for it, and if he tells the rest of the country that we have no right to buy and use a firearm and ammo for it, then he's either a dictator or a hypocrite.

Either way, the National Rifle Association is right and he's wrong.


The person who posted this February 6, 2014 tweet was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.


This February 7, 2014 article in the Oregon Catalyst summarizes the obvious discrepancy in Mark Kelly's political philosophy.  These are the first four paragraphs.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in their article.
Mark Kelly, the husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, went shooting yesterday after testifying in favor of additional gun control at the Oregon Legislature.  Kelly, a former Navy captain and former astronaut, was in Oregon to testify at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in support of Sen. Floyd Prozanski’s “universal background check” bill, SB 1551.

As we reported on Wednesday, the man who shot Gabby Giffords in 2011 purchased the gun legally after passing a background check, and so Mark Kelly’s reason for testifying yesterday was more about his support of gun control in general than any relevance to the Oregon bill.  In fact, Kelly acknowledged yesterday that the man who had shot his wife had passed a background check.

Kelly testified as part of a panel along with Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and Donna Henderson, an Assistant Chief of Investigations at the Portland Police Bureau.

Later in the day, Kelly went shooting at the Portland Police Bureau Central Precinct Range.

An article, published in the March/April 2016 issue of Sonoma Magazine, and titled Congressman Mike Thompson: Taming Gun Violence, misses the mark.  These are the first six paragraphs.
Mike Thompson was talking gun safety legislation as he slipped two yellow shells into a 20-gauge Browning shotgun, snapped the breech closed and yelled, “Pull.”

Two orange sporting clays sailed in a low arc above a muddy field, dark clouds hanging over San Pablo Bay in the distance. Thompson aimed and fired twice.

The first flying target shattered, raining debris on the ground below. A second disc suffered the same fate.

The white-haired congressman stared for a moment with a satisfied look before turning to reload.

“I’m just trying to stop the bad guys from getting guns,” Thompson said after a day of shooting, which included an early morning duck hunt at the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area.

But the St. Helena Democrat, lifelong hunter, Vietnam War veteran and chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, has yet to hit his most important mark.

The reason why so many advocates of gun control find it hard to pass their favorite legislation is precisely because many of them aren't willing to let the public share their own love for guns.  The photo below was at the top of the article in Sonoma Magazine.



If gun-control advocates want more votes ...

... especially the votes of young women, a group that both parties are actively recruiting, they must accept two facts.
  1. Many of these women are the victims of violent crime, and

  2. Many of them are preparing themselves so that they can prevent it before it happens.

The purses shown below allow a woman who has a permit to carry a concealed firearm,  These are not the only styles that are available.

The women who buy and use these purses have made the simple decision that they do not want to become victims.

Some of them, who have already been the victims of violent crime, were so horrified by it that they don't ever want to repeat that experience or anything like it ever again.





The Democrat Party should listen to some very old advice

If you want other people to throw away their guns, set a good example by throwing yours away.

That is especially true for Mark Kelly, who used his own Glock handgun to shoot some clay flowerpots while a CNN reporter watched.


Thursday, April 11, 2013

The U.S. Senate is voting on legislation THEY HAVEN'T READ


This happened with the Affordable Health Care Law, also known as "Obamacare", and it is happening RIGHT NOW with other legislation, being debated RIGHT NOW in the U.S. Senate.


The legislation would approve a United Nations treaty that would remove the protection of one of the rights in our Bill of Rights, a document that a hundred generations of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coast guardsmen have fought and bled to protect.


U.S. Senator Mike Lee of South Carolina, speaking today about the legislation.

This video lasts five and a half minutes.


Call your Senator NOW.

Tell him/her that any legislation that hasn't been read should never be approved.


June 22, 2017 update

These are the first three paragraphs of a story in The Blaze, published today.  The link in the first paragraph was in their story.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul introduced a Senate resolution called “Read the Bills” Wednesday that would require every bill or amendment to be filed for a minimum of one day for every 20 pages before they can be considered by the upper chamber.

“Enough with rushed, secret legislation!  Today I reintroduced my Read the Bills resolution,” Paul tweeted Wednesday.

The purpose of the resolution, according to Paul, is to make sure that his fellow senators have ample time to review bills before they can be voted on.  The resolution would allow the Senate to waive the minimum time requirement only with “an affirmative vote of three-fifths of the members.”
A Senate resolution can't force any action to be taken, but it shows a Senator's views on a subject.  This is a subject that he and I agree on, which is why I added this news story to this blog page.

Seeing racism and sexism where it doesn't exist


When I was a young boy, one of my grandfathers taught me how to play chess, but because he lived far away, I couldn't play with him very often.

Later, as an older boy, I discovered that there was a group of people who played chess at my local public library.  They met once every week.  This was a very informal chess club, and it didn't own any chess boards or sets of the pieces that move around on the boards, but many people who came to the weekly meetings had their own chess sets (boards and pieces), and so, many people had an opportunity to play chess with a human opponent when they came to the weekly meetings.

These were friendly games.  Many of the players shook hands with their opponents after a game was finished.  Some players tried to teach strategy to their opponents.  Sometimes, this happened while a game was in progress.  The players who performed this act of kindness still felt the need to be competitive and to play at their best during organized chess tournaments, but when they attended the chess club, they cared so much about the game of chess and about the other players that they wanted to improve the skills of the other players.  These acts of kindness usually resulted in better and more interesting games later between those same two players.

Most of the people who came to the "club meetings" were male, but the club didn't have a policy that prohibited women from attending our meetings.  In fact, I doubt that the library would have allowed us to hold our meetings if we had such a policy.  In the absence of any sociological studies about this subject, I believe that most women simply don't like to play chess, and that this is why the club rarely had any women visitors.

The people who came to our club meetings were usually people who lived close to the public library, located a few miles away from a major U.S. city.  Some people might say that the club wasn't very "diversified", but again, the club didn't have any formal membership policies, so anyone who had an interest in the game of chess was welcome to come, even if all they wanted to do was to watch two other people play chess.

The photo below shows people playing chess at the Central Florida Chess Club.  The library-based chess club that I attended looked like this picture.



Judging racism and sexism

This is the first paragraph of a January 2, 2020 Economist article.
When Alicia Thompson was a student in Johannesburg before the end of apartheid, she would often walk past the beautiful cars parked outside a club she was not allowed to join.  It was not by chance that the Rand Club, the oldest private-members’ club in the city, was filled with old white men.  It was by design.  Women and blacks were not admitted as members until the early 1990s.  “It was not my space,” says Ms Thompson.  “That was the power of apartheid: you never questioned where you couldn’t go.”
Was the chess club that I attended diversified?  Honestly, I don't really care.  There's less diversity in Saudi Arabia, but how many people are complaining loudly enough to make a difference?


The rest of the news stories and articles in this section are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.


2005

From the website of the U.S. Department of State (and their 2005 report on religious freedom in Saudi Arabia):
The country is a monarchy with a legal system based on Islamic law (Shari'a).  Islam is the official religion, and the law requires that all citizens be Muslims.  The Government does not provide legal protection for freedom of religion, and such protection does not exist in practice.

The public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited.  The Government recognizes the right of non-Muslims to worship in private; however, it does not always respect this right in practice and does not define this right in law.

2016

These are the first four paragraphs of a July 16, 2016 Human Rights Watch article.
In Saudi Arabia, a woman’s life is controlled by a man from birth until death.  Every Saudi woman must have a male guardian, normally a father or husband, but in some cases a brother or even a son, who has the power to make a range of critical decisions on her behalf.

As dozens of Saudi women told Human Rights Watch, the male guardianship system is the most significant impediment to realizing women’s rights in the country, effectively rendering adult women legal minors who cannot make key decisions for themselves.

Rania, a 34-year-old Saudi woman, said, “We are entrusted with raising the next generation but you can’t trust us with ourselves. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Every Saudi woman, regardless of her economic or social class, is adversely affected by guardianship policies.

These are the first three paragraphs of a September 17, 2016 Time magazine story.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.  The man pictured in the March 3, 1941 cover of the magazine is a Hollywood actor named Gary Cooper.
A growing protest movement is looking to loosen the tight restrictions faced by women in deeply conservative Saudi Arabia.  An online petition calling for an end to the country’s male-guardianship system has garnered almost 15,000 signatures, in part thanks to a social-media campaign.

According to Saudi law, women must have the permission of a male guardian to travel abroad, get married or leave prison.  Women often need to get consent — from a father, brother or son — to work, study, rent a flat or undergo hospital treatment, the Guardian reports.

The petition is the first of its kind in the kingdom and was handed to the government on Monday, the BBC reports.

Link to a September 27, 2016 Metro News (U.K.) story titled "Thousands of women storm Saudi King’s office demanding basic freedoms".


2017

These are the first six paragraphs of a May 19, 2017 Associated Press story.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — First she’s in the hands of her father, then she moves to her husband.  Often, she ends up under the power of her son.

From childhood through adulthood into old age, every Saudi woman passes from the control of one legal guardian to another, a male relative whose decisions or whims can determine the course of her life.

Under Saudi law, the guardian’s permission is required for a woman to get a passport, to travel abroad or to marry.  It is also often demanded whenever a woman tries to do any number of things, including rent an apartment, buy a car, undergo a medical procedure or take a job.  As a result, women are consigned to the legal status of minors.

Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving is what often grabs the most attention, but rights advocates say guardianship laws are the factor that most powerfully enshrines inequality for women.  President Donald Trump heads to Saudi Arabia this weekend to cement ties with the deeply conservative kingdom.

Guardianship was a major reason for the outrage when Saudi Arabia last month was elected to a U.N. commission tasked with promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment.  The kingdom was nominated to the post by the Asia-Pacific region, and normally nominees are rubber-stamped automatically.  In this case, the U.S. requested a secret ballot vote, a move seen as a symbolic objection, though the kingdom won with 47 out of 54 votes.

The Geneva-based rights group UN Watch denounced the acceptance of Saudi Arabia on the commission, calling it the “world’s leading oppressor of women.”

These are the first five paragraphs of a September 29, 2017 ABC News story.
The announcement that Saudi Arabia will finally allow women to drive has been hailed a watershed moment for gender equality, but the kingdom still has many laws in place that restrict the rights of women, activists say.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the only country in the world that forbids women from getting behind the wheel, announced that women will be allowed to obtain drivers' licenses for the first time in June 2018.

In the meantime, a newly-formed committee will develop a plan on how to implement the royal decree in accordance with religious and regulatory standards, presenting its recommendations within 30 days.

"This is a historic big day in our kingdom," Prince Khaled bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, said during a press conference Tuesday at the Saudi embassy in Washington.

Ambassador bin Salman confirmed women will be allowed to apply for a license, take driving lessons and drive any vehicle without needing legal permission from their male guardians.  The choice to do so will be solely up to women, bin Salman said, but he acknowledged "there might be social issues."

These are the first five paragraphs of a December 6, 2017 CNN story.  All of the links in these paragraphs were in their story.
(CNN) In a first for the conservative religious kingdom, Saudi Arabia has declared that women will finally be able to drive, the culmination of years of activism and appeals both from within and outside the Gulf nation.

The royal decree, announced live on state television Tuesday, will come into effect in June next year.  A newly-formed committee will present its findings within 30 days on how the policy should be implemented.

Saudi women will reportedly be able to apply for their own driving licenses without having to secure the permission of their male guardians.  However, rules that govern the guardianship of women continue to restrict many aspects of every day life for the country's female population.

Saudi Arabia, which adheres to some of the strictest interpretations of Sunni Islam in the world, has long prevented women from taking on a larger role in its society.

The 2016 Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum ranked the kingdom 141 out of 144 countries on gender parity.  Trailing behind Saudi Arabia were Syria, Pakistan and Yemen.
This is the last quoted paragraph of the previous C.N.N. story, without the link.

"The 2016 Global Gender Gap Report by the World Economic Forum ranked the kingdom 141 out of 144 countries on gender parity.  Trailing behind Saudi Arabia were Syria, Pakistan and Yemen."

Link to the Wikipedia page for "Women in Yemen".

2018

These are the first six paragraphs of a January 22, 2018 NBC News story.  The link in the fourth paragraph was in their story.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — At first a controlling father’s whims ruled Khadija Majrashi's life. Then a sick husband dictated her decisions. Now it’s an angry son.

"There is a conflict between the two men in my life,” Majrashi said. While her spouse now supports her working outside the home, their 22-year-old son vehemently objects.

Strife within this one family helps illustrate the struggle at the heart of Saudi Arabia, where a raft of social, political and economic changes are being driven by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

He has promised to restore "moderate, open" Islam. But headline-grabbing announcements regarding women's rights and freedoms — such as the lifting last summer of the kingdom's driving ban — obscure conflicts among relatives as well as concerns over the justice system and the rule of law.

Rights advocates say that while welcome, the innovations hailed around the world as signs that the absolute monarchy had entered the 21st century are only scratching the surface.

“All the changes that we are hearing about are economic and entertainment changes," said Nasreen Alissa, a Saudi lawyer who created the Know Your Rights app to help women navigate the confusing tangle of strictures that govern them.  "The rules and regulations are the same regarding women's basic rights.  Not a single thing has changed except for driving and entertainment."

Link to a June 22, 2018 New York Times story titled "How Guardianship Laws Still Control Saudi Women".

These are the first three paragraphs of a November 1, 2018 article in Foreign Policy. The links in the second paragraph were in their article.
The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul extinguished Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reputation in the United States and Europe as a liberalizing reformer of his country.  What the West must now do is ask itself why Salman enjoyed such a reputation to begin with.  This is not the first time a Saudi leader has presented himself to the world as a liberalizer—and it’s not the first time the world has found itself duped.

The premise of Mohammed bin Salman’s reform effort has been that, prior to 1979—when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini established an Islamic theocracy in Iran and Juhayman al-Otaybi seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca—Saudi Arabia was a moderate kingdom that respected the diversity and civil rights of its subjects.  In March, CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell asked the crown prince whether the last 40 years represents the “real Saudi Arabia,” and he replied, “I would ask your viewers to use their smartphones to find out.  And they can google Saudi Arabia in the ’70s and ’60s, and they will see the real Saudi Arabia easily in the pictures.”  In an interview this spring with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Mohammed bin Salman similarly portrayed the Saudi Arabia of the 1960s and ’70s as comparatively liberal—always citing 1979 as the turning point.  “Before 1979 there were societal guardianship customs, but no guardianship laws in Saudi Arabia. … In the 1960s, women didn’t travel with male guardians,” he said.

The problem is that this story is a myth—indeed, it’s the very myth that Saudi rulers in the decades prior to 1979 peddled to the United States in exchange for its material and diplomatic support in the region.  Saudi Arabia’s promised reforms, however, went systematically ignored.  If anything, they were often a prelude to crackdowns on dissidents and unpredictable regional policies.  Rather than a break from that pattern, Mohammed bin Salman represents its continuation.  Today, as in the 1960s and ’70s, Saudi Arabia is not only experiencing a disruption of its royal succession and a proxy war in Yemen between Riyadh and another regional power, but it is also offering a disingenuous pledge to liberalize in exchange for U.S. political support.  Khashoggi is the latest casualty of this pattern—and there’s no reason to expect the outcome will be any different.

2019

These are the first four paragraphs of a January 8, 2019 British Broadcasting Corporation story.
Saudi Arabia drew international plaudits last year when it lifted a longstanding ban on women driving.

However, restrictions on women remain - most notably, the "male guardianship system", a woman's father, brother, husband or son has the authority to make critical decisions on her behalf.

These restrictions were highlighted in early January, when a young Saudi woman fleeing her family barricaded herself in a hotel room in Bangkok saying she feared imprisonment if she was sent back home.

A Saudi woman is required to obtain a male relative's approval to apply for a passport, travel outside the country, study abroad on a government scholarship, get married, leave prison, or even exit a shelter for abuse victims.

These are the first four paragraphs of a February 4, 2019 Reuters story.
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia will study how its male guardianship system is being abused, Saudi media reported on Monday, after the flight of an 18-year-old woman to Thailand last month focused global attention on the issue.

Every Saudi woman is assigned a male relative - often a father or husband but sometimes an uncle, brother or even a son - whose approval is needed to marry, obtain a passport and travel abroad.

Rights groups say the arrangement turns women into second-class citizens, depriving them of social and economic freedoms and making them more vulnerable to violence.

Without a codified system of law to go with the texts making up sharia, or Islamic law, the Saudi police and judiciary have long cited social customs in enforcing certain prohibitions on women.  Many aspects of guardianship stem from informal practices rather than specific laws.

This is the first paragraph of a July 11, 2019 Wall Street Journal story.
Saudi Arabia is planning this year to loosen restrictions on women’s ability to travel without a male guardian’s permission, officials and people familiar with the matter said, in a step away from the system of male domination deeply rooted in Saudi society.
The previous Wall Street Journal story was linked in a Guardian (U.K.) story that was published the same day.


This is the subheadline of a July 22, 2019 Deutsche Welle story.
Saudi women are treated as legal minors their entire lives — they even need permission from a male guardian to travel.  This rule is set to be relaxed, but will it actually help lead to gender equality in the country?

This is a link to a July 26, 2019 Washington Post editorial demanding that Saudi Arabia change their guardianship laws.


Judging people's intentions by their actions

Leave chess clubs and other similar organizations alone.  They don't want diversity, and they don't need diversity.  Saudi Arabia does need diversity.  So does Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, and many other countries, too.

Racism and sexism exists now in these countries, but it did not exist in the chess club I attended as a boy, and it does not exist now in many other American organizations.

Look closely at some of the organizations that are accused of being racist and sexist.  You won't find it.

Michelle Malkin's Twitter account @michellemalkin had 2.2 million followers on May 6, 2019, when I added this image to this page.



June 2015 update. While researching the reasons for the high male-female ratio among people who play chess, I have seen some people say, in writing, that it is because women "aren't smart enough" to play an intellectual game like chess.  I do not accept this idea.

I believe that men and women have a different psychology.  Male psychology is focused on competition, while female psychology is focused on cooperation.  Chess is a competitive game, so it naturally attracts more men than women.  On the other hand, it requires cooperation to be in a choir, a book-reading group, or to make a quilt.  Those activities attract women.

These links, listed in chronological order, mention research about the male-female ratio in chess.

Scientific American, December 29, 2008 Includes a downloadable 1-minute podcast and the transcript of it.

Phys.Org, January 12, 2009 Mentions a research study done by Oxford University (without mentioning the university by name).

Daily Telegraph (UK) January 27, 2009 Also mentions the research done by Oxford University.

Chess.com A discussion board that began June 3, 2010, but other similar discussions began two years earlier.

National Public Radio, August 15, 2010.  Their headline uses the unfortunate term "gender divide".

PhpBB discussion board topic began March 20, 2011.  This topic was started to compare the few female chess players with the large number of female bridge players.

The Guardian (UK) November 12, 2012 The first five paragraphs are about one expert female player.  Note, good players are called a "master", and the best players are called a "grandmaster".  These titles have to be earned by winning games against other players with certain numbered chess ratings.  The ratings and the titles are assigned by an international chess organization.



April 4, 2016 update.  As I wrote earlier in this essay, there is a lack of diversity in Nigeria, specifically religious diversity.  These are the first three paragraphs of a February 14, 2015 NBC News article.
Boko Haram forces appear poised to attack Maiduguri, a city of 2 million in northeast Nigeria -- meaning that 200,000 Christians could be at risk of slaughter by the Islamist terror group, say U.S. intelligence officials and experts on Nigeria.

"An attack on Madiguri is very likely," said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Project at the Atlantic Council, echoing U.S. intelligence officials. Pham believes, as do other experts, that Boko Haram has already placed "sleeper cells" among the tide of refugees who have fled the group's murderous rampage through Africa's most populous nation. "They've done it everywhere else they've gone," said Pham. "So why not Maiduguri?"

One big concern is the large number of Christians in the city -- about 200,000, most of them Roman Catholic. In previous attacks, Boko Haram has offered Nigerian Christians the opportunity to convert or be killed. Already, 200 Christian churches have been lost to the group's onslaught.