Gun Free Zones

image credit: dreamstime.com

The headline today was horrible. 17 dead at the Florida school shooting. Here’s a follow-up from CrimeSearch: 

Another mass public shooting in Florida, another gun-free zone: Parkland, Florida school shooting

. . . When will there be a serious discussion of the dangers of gun-free zones?  When will the media point out in their discussions of the guns used or how the guns were obtained that another attack occurred in a gun-free zone?

After listening to Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) push for more gun control on Shepard Smith’s show on Fox News this afternoon, we decided to put up this post. . . .

[Re] mass public shootings in Florida where at least four people have been killed [were] all gun-free zones . . . where general citizens are banned from having guns. . . . 

After the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, I finally figured out that a gun-free zone was the least safe place to be. Note: Cleveland Tea Party does not take a position on guns per se, but one of our core values is "limited government." The Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) is an act of the U.S. Congress signed into law in 1990; less government can save lives. 

# # #

Ohio Governor candidates at CAIR event

Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media reported this (I did not find this story at Cleveland.com); O'Neil linked to Progress Ohio which categorized this event under “Progressive Organizations”:

On Sunday, three Democrats running in the Ohio governor's race, including former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, spoke at an event hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim group with ties to the terror organization Hamas and involved in a terror-funding scheme.

"Join CAIR-Columbus for a Governor Candidate Forum starting at 2:00 PM at the Dublin Community Recreation Center on Sunday Feb. 11th! Doors will open at 1:30," read an announcement at Progress Ohio.

The event included three candidates for governor: state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, former state Rep. Connie Pillich, and former Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Former Congresswoman Betty Sutton represented former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. Sutton is his running-mate.

CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror-funding case by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to radical Islamist terror.

It is still early in the race, but Cordray holds an early lead. In a January poll conducted by Fallon Research, Cordray, who recently resigned as head of the Consumer Products Safety Commission, led with 23 percent, and Kucinich took second place with 16 percent. Schiavoni took four percent, and Pillich two percent. Bill O'Neill, former justice of the Ohio Supreme Court who recently resigned to run for governor, took three percent. A whopping 52 percent remained undecided.

. . .

Full report is here (h/t Stephen Green at Instapundit).

# # #

About the 2-year budget compromise

image credit: foxbusiness.com

About the 2-year budget compromise now signed by President Trump

From Guy Benson’s “Analysis: Let's Face It, Neither of These Awful Parties is Actually Serious About Fiscal Responsibility” at Townhall:

The biggest problem with the compromise is that abandons all pretense of fiscal restraint, and virtually guarantees more harmful and irresponsible can-kicking.  The GOP-led Congress has agreed to a two-year plan that will add $1.5 trillion to deficits over a decade, establishing a higher baseline from which "cuts" will be opposed, and on which additional spending will be built.  And Republicans have done so while surrendering a powerful mechanism (reconciliation) that allows them to pass budget policies without requiring the help of tax-and-spend Democrats (as they did on tax reform). 

Benson’s full article is here. Charles Hurt at Breitbart didn’t think much of it either:

Any time you hear Washington talk about bipartisan agreement, America, grab your wallet and run!

Once again, lawmakers in Washington have finally cut through all the thorny brambles of partisanship and discovered (yet again! yippie!) something they can all agree upon: spending scads and scads more of other people’s money that we don’t even have!

Support for military expenditures was a key talking point for Congress critters like Sean Duffy, who voted "yes." 

It’s still out-of-control spending. And back to Benson:

Here's what bothers me: Republicans didn't even really try.  They could have attempted a full-court press explaining the need for increased military funding, while arguing that in an era of $4 trillion in annual federal spending (up from less than $1.8 trillion in fiscal year 2000, just for some perspective), breaking caps on domestic spending is unnecessary.  Or they could have demanded that in exchange for some heightened domestic spending for discrete priorities, Democrats would have to agree to some modest and mathematically-essential entitlement reforms. 

Instead, we got this [via The Washington Examiner]:

In 2017, for the first time in the post-Tea Party era, Republicans finally gained unified control of government. They spent months blundering on healthcare, and ultimately reneged on their eight-year promise to repeal Obamacare. They have now agreed on a deal with Democrats that would blow up the spending caps that were a legacy of the Tea Party movement — to the tune of $300 billion over the next two years...The agreement would boost military spending by $165 billion above the 2011 caps and nonmilitary spending by $131 billion; it boosts emergency disaster relief spending by $90 billion (remember when the Tea Party Republicans believed emergency spending needed to be offset?); provides $6 billion in more money to fight opioid addiction; has $20 billion in infrastructure funding; it provides more funding for community health centers; and it repeals the Independent Payment Advisory Board, one of Obamacare’s cost-containment initiatives, without any significant alternative ideas to curb Medicare spending. Now, let’s get one thing clear. It's possible to rein in long-term debt while keeping taxes relatively low and military spending relatively high, but only if those policies are met with a dramatic strategy to restrain entitlements and other non-defense spending. But that’s not what Republicans are doing.

I had hoped for better. Reminder to self: the GOPe are members in good standing of the Uniparty.

# # #

Long Live the Tea Party

dontgive-uptheship-blog-blog.tumblr.com

I don’t usually agree with Rick Moran, who posts at PJ Media. But his piece “The Tea Party Is Dead, Long Live the Tea Party” was linked on Instapundit, and it had a few good thoughts, going back to the inception of the Tea Party groups in 2009:

But the tea party's real value to the country is that for the first time since the ratification debates over the Constitution, millions of people across the country were actually reading and discussing our founding document.

These weren't constitutional scholars sitting around some Ivy League lecture hall esoterically discussing the foundations of America. These were millions of ordinary people sitting at kitchen tables, in small church meeting rooms, on front porches and backyards probing the reasons America came into existence.

. . . What mattered was that ordinary people had taken a keen interest in preserving the spirit of the Constitution and the essence of our founding principles that are "self-evident" in that document at a time it has been under relentless attack.

. . .

This side of the tea parties was never widely reported on by the media, for very good reasons. The left hates getting into a discussion about what the Constitution says because they can't defend most of their ideas. Despite the fact that the founders wrote the Constitution so that basically anyone who could read could understand it, the left keeps insisting the Constitution says things that it doesn't.

Any clever lawyer or willing judge can twist the meaning of the Constitution so that it says anything they want it to say to accomplish any end they wish to accomplish. So the budget deal may have killed fiscal sanity in Washington and -- perhaps -- the tea party's political power to some extent. And the GOP may have co-opted most of the larger tea party groups to do the party's bidding.

What remains of the tea party is, to my mind, the best part. The desire of ordinary people to govern themselves, to take personal responsibility for their own lives, and to try to do something about the denigration and increasing irrelevance of the Constitution.

As Glenn Reynolds concluded: Don’t give up the ship.

# # #

Falcon Heavy rocket boosters perfect landing

YouTube 

INSANE! SpaceX Falcon Heavy Side Boosters Landing Simultaneously at Kennedy Space Center

Off topic, but just "awesome." The Falcon Heavy SpaceX test launch earlier this week was as astonishing to watch as was Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the Moon. And Elon Musk put a Tesla inside the rocket as payload. Nice touch. 

But it was the booster rockets that disconnected from the main rocket and guided themselves back to earth, hitting their landing pads perfectly - sort of like pencils landing directly on their erasers. The split screens show the booster coming down to Earth feet-first, as it were, and the cameras on the boosters themselves let you watch the landing pads come into focus as the boosters approach their target. I've never seen anything like it. 

# # #

Houston: we have a man-splaining problem

image credit: memegenerator.net

Until recently, Doug Powers blogged at Michelle Malkin’s blog site. When he posted his final blog on her website a week or two ago, he pointed to his own blog, and since then, I’ve visited him several times a week. He’s irreverent, but I rather like that. He posted the other day on Canada’s Justin Trudeau's moronic response to a question at a townhall:

Questioner: “My question is about volunteering. So, the World Mission Society Church of God is truly growing and changing society through our volunteer work. We have received the Queen’s Award in the UK… [and] have received many awards throughout the whole word; however, unfortunately in Canada, our volunteering as a charitable religious organization is extremely difficult. Extremely. That’s why, in actuality, we cannot do free volunteering to help our neighbors in need as we truly desire. So, that’s why we came here today to ask you, to also look into the policies that religious charitable organizations have in our legislation so that it can also be changed, because maternal love is the love that’s going to change the future of mankind…”

Trudeau: “We like to say peoplekind, not necessarily mankind, because it’s more inclusive.”

Cue: eye rolling.

But the humor that Doug Powers brought to this craziness is why I am posting his commentary below. Cue: belly laugh:

Can you imagine if somebody like this had been in the control room at NASA in 1969?

***

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

#Beep

“Ok Neil, Um, I’ve got a couple problems with that. Can you climb back up there and come back down instead with maybe ‘one small step for a non-binary hu-person, one similar step for person-kind’? ‘Giant leap’ seems a bit presumptuous, and it could be a little triggering for those with the inability to leap.”

#Beep

“Houston, this is the first manned mission to another celestial body, could we save this discussion for later?”

#Beep

“Manned? Have you not been paying attention, Neil? … Neil?”

#Beep

“Uh, Houston, Buzz, Michael and I have decided to just go ahead and stay up here if it’s ok with you.”

Political correctness is out of control. Doug Powers showed how pathetic it is in this one little sketch.

# # #

Diversity 360 – huh?

image credit: thedailysheeple.com

Our friend Steve Salvi at Ohio Jobs & Justice Pac posted about this on FB:

The universities have become cults, pushing BS ideas...An example from one of Cleveland's most prominent Universities...Case Western Reserve University. You can learn about your "privilege" and about "microaggressions" from the CWRU website:

Diversity 360^o is a new campus-wide diversity education program for students, faculty and staff developed in collaboration with the Office for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Division of Student Affairs and the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Diversity 360^o can be implemented and customized into modules for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty and staff that will assist the campus community in advancing its efforts to be a welcoming, inclusive environment for learning, leading, and innovation.

Based on research from higher education and the corporate sector about cross-cultural competency and on results from university climate surveys, the modules will engage participants in learning to:

• Increase capacity to recognize and engage in dialogue across the breadth of differences;
• Deepen understanding of how affiliations in privileged and marginalized groups impact treatment on campus, campus climate and productivity;
• Deepen awareness of types of microaggressions and how they affect experiences on campus and in the local community; and
• Discover ways to become a change agent and diversity champion with new knowledge, ideas and resources about university policies, programs and best practices.

Diversity 360^o includes pre- and post-assessment of diversity-related knowledge, as well as, ongoing programming to assist members of the campus community with the goal of creating a welcoming campus climate at CWRU.

It’s worse than “ugh.” It’s politically correct indoctrination.

# # #