Their convictions are sincere, the product of each man’s upbringing and early life experience. Mr. Obama’s formative years spent as a community organizer inspired him to consider the poor or unemployed as abused by businesses that shuttered plants or raised rents – victims of an indifferent society. His decision to “organize black folks” as he explains in “Dreams from My Father,” was fed by a need to find his place in the civil rights movement, to prove himself “not alone in my particular struggles.”
Those struggles include uneasiness with being black. When in Kenya, he finally experiences the “freedom that comes from not feeling watched…here the world was black, and so you…could discover all those things that were unique to your life without living a lie or committing betrayal.” His views of the United States and of Europe are tinged by antipathy to white colonialism. During his visit to Kenya he decides the white tourists are “an encroachment”; he resents that they exhibit “a confidence reserved for those born into imperial cultures.” Obama carries baggage.
Rubio grew up listening to his polio-stricken grandfather extol the virtues and values of the United States. Rubio recalls that like so many proud immigrants, the old man impressed upon his grandson that “there was no limit to how far I could go, because I was an American.” While Obama’s upbringing causes him to focus on America’s “darker periods,” Rubio’s relationship with his native land is celebratory. Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama declines to proclaim America’s exceptionalism while Rubio shouts it from the rooftops.
Kurt Schlichter says that our “justice” system is out of control, particularly at the federal level, and people who fancy themselves conservatives should take the lead in fixing it.
…when the smoky haze — caused by rapid fire of nearly 140 bullets in less than 30 seconds — dissipated, it soon became clear that more than a dozen officers had been firing at one another across a middle school parking lot in East Cleveland.
Soon after the shooting stopped, one officer rushed to check the two occupants of the 1979 Chevrolet Malibu that the cadre of Cleveland cruisers had followed into the lot.
Officer Wilfredo Diaz, a former city EMS worker, had fired the first shots at the Malibu after bailing out of his car.
He felt for passenger Malissa Williams’ pulse.
There wasn’t one.
Diaz moved Williams’ leg slightly to look for a gun.
Again, there wasn’t one.
Dead next to Williams in the driver’s seat was Timothy Russell, 43.
No officers were injured.
Speaking of which, should we be more disturbed that the LAPD is shooting at so many innocent people in their search for Dorner, or that they’re such lousy shots?
The United States is at something of a crossroads here: we can remain focused on gun control, or we can look at the root cause of not only the random acts of mass murder, but many other serious social maladies. The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has played a destructive role not only with respect to crime, but also with the degradation of urban life, and with the barbarous degradation of mentally ill people, who are a large fraction of the homeless in our country.[11]
Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill is the root cause of most of these shocking acts of mass murder, and the much more common but less publicized murders that happen every day in America, which very seldom involve high-capacity magazines or scary looking black rifles.
Pretending that gun control is going to have much of an impact on this is like putting a Band-Aid on an arm with a severed artery. It is only a short-term solution, because it covers up a deeper problem. It is time to recognize and solve the root problem.
Gun control isn’t about guns, or public safety. It’s about control.
The public disapproves of Obama’s gun policies by 54-42%. Actually, they seem to disapprove of almost all of his policies. Think in particular about the 2-1 opposition to his deficit policy as he spouts his lies tonight. There was no majority who voted for Barack Obama. Those who put him over the top were voting against the demon Romney, per the Obama campaign strategy.