Mikeb302000

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Glenn Beck on the Byron Williams Incident

The Washington Post published an article examining the reaction of Glenn Beck to the arrest of Byron Williams. He's the guy many say was motivated by Beck to plan an attack on the Tides Foundation, which was thwarted.

A week after the incident, the mystery was solved. "Tides was one of the hardest things that we ever tried to explain, and everyone told us that we couldn't," Fox News host Glenn Beck told his radio listeners on Monday. "The reason why the blackboard" -- the prop Beck uses on his TV show to trace conspiracies -- "really became what the blackboard is, is because I was trying to explain Tides and how all of this worked." Beck accuses Tides of seeking to seize power and destroy capitalism, and he suggests that a full range of his enemies on the left all have "ties to the Tides Center." On Monday, he savored the fact that "no one knew what Tides was until the blackboard."

For good measure, Beck went after Tides again on Fox that night. And Tuesday night, Wednesday night and Thursday night. That's on top of 29 other mentions of Tides on Beck's Fox show over the past 18 months (two in the week before the shootout) according to a tally by the liberal press watchdog Media Matters. Other than two mentions of Tides on the show of Beck's Fox colleague Sean Hannity, Media Matters said it was unable to find any other mention of Tides on any news broadcast by any network over that same period. Beck declined comment.

The author of the article, Dana Milbank says, "It's not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show." She goes on to describe some of the other Beck-inspired incidents.

I'm not that politically correct or journalistically fair, I blame Glenn Beck. In my book, he bears part of the responsible for these incidents, only a few of which come to light. Thousands of lesser ones must go unconnected to him but are actually a result of his hateful talk. And that's not to mention the millions of his followers who enjoy an increased hate of government and hate of progressives and hate of the Left, all in the name of what, freedom, rights?

What's your opinion? What do you think about Glenn Beck?

Restoring Honor

Dennis Henigan wrote it up for The Huffington Post, Paul Helmke covered it on the Brady Blog.

We now know that the National Rifle Association will be joining Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin for Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th Anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Is it possible to imagine a greater offense to the legacy of Dr. King?

Later in the article it mentions the fact that Ted Nugent will be there as well. What a cast of characters. Helmke and Henigan point out the terrible incongruity in these characters pitching their hateful and sometimes nonsensical rhetoric at the site of King's famous speech, which was at the site of the Lincoln Memorial.

The part that always amazes me is usually associated with Wayne LaPierre - the "notion that guns are legitimate tools of political dissent." His famous "the guys with the guns make the rules," is what must have inspired an entire generation of deluded gun owners. That combined with the tendency to succumb to adolescent braggadocio results in frequent comical remarks, many on this very blog.

What's your opinion? Is restoring honor in America an idea that has something to do with guns? Are these speakers, Beck, Palin, LaPierre and Nugent, the best representatives of a movement which can "restore honor?" Do you think these people represent the majority of gun owners?

Please leave a comment.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Naomi Klein

We talked about her before. She's still great.

For the Gun Owner Who Has Everything

Bankrupt Gun Owners

CBS News reports on the latest protection for gun owners.

If you file for bankruptcy, you run the risk of losing your money and your car to creditors.

But under a measure that just overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives, one thing they would not be able to take is your gun.
The House this afternoon passed a bill that would change the law to allow someone going through bankruptcy proceedings to retain their rifles, shotguns, and pistols so long as they are worth less than $3,000 combined.

I guess that's pretty reasonable, but it seems a bit weird that you might have to give up your car, which could be necessary for work, but not your guns. Doesn't it often seem that gun owning gets more than its fair share of attention?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

One Can Only Hope

A Washington Times editorial expressed the concerns gun owners should have about Elena Kagan.

We've been down this road before. Less than a year ago, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, made similar assurances regarding then-Supreme Court hopeful Sonia Sotomayor, saying, "I do not see how any fair observer could regard her testimony as hostile to the Second Amendment personal right to bear arms, a right she has embraced and recognizes."
Once the "wise Latina" donned the robes of her lifetime office, any pretense of upholding the individual's right to bear arms was jettisoned. Ms. Sotomayor signed onto the gun rights dissent of Justice Stephen G. Breyer last month, which stated, "I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes."
There's reason to think Ms. Kagan will follow the same path.

What's your opinion? Is Kagan going to be another Sotomayor, as concerns gun rights?

And how about that Justice Breyer? Can he write, or what?

"I can find nothing in the Second Amendment's text, history or underlying rationale that could warrant characterizing it as 'fundamental' insofar as it seeks to protect the keeping and bearing of arms for private self-defense purposes."