Month: April 2013

Republican National Committee Meets in the Heart of Hollywood But Can’t Drum up GOP Stars to Lend Youth-Oriented Buzz to the Event

Jon Ponder
The RNC could not find a movie or TV star to attend its 2013 spring meeting in Hollywood as part of its outreach to young people, so Dick Cheney, the GOP’s favorite living war criminal, was flown in to deliver a lunchtime speech

The Republican National Committee is holding its spring meeting this week in a hotel in the heart of Hollywood. As these sorts of events go, this one has generated more speculation about the GOP’s rationale for choosing to meet in a place that is home to an industry Republicans revile, and vice versa, than it has actual news coverage on local outlets.

So what was RNC Chairman Reince Priebus thinking when he decided to hold his spring meeting behind enemy lines?

The answer comes from Beltway insider Politico.com, which notes that a key criticism in the Republican National Committee’s aptly nicknamed 2012 election “autopsy” report released last month was that the “party is seen as old and detached from pop culture.” To counter this, the autopsy committee recommended that the GOP “establish an RNC Celebrity Task Force of personalities in the entertainment industry to host events for the RNC and allow donors to participate in entertainment events as a way to attract younger voters.”

Preibus’ decision to hold the meeting in Hollywood appears to have been the first step in the party’s celebrity outreach — and, if so, this first step has clearly been an abysmal, even laughable failure, so much so that Priebus is now denying that reaching out to celebrities had anything to do with his choice of Hollywood as the meeting site.

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Rick Warren Forgives Whoever Sold His Son the Gun He Used to Kill Himself. But Should He?

Trish
Matthew Warren

That was quick. Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren wasted no time in forgiving the person who sold online an unregistered handgun with the serial number filed off to his son, who used it to kill himself.

On the Thursday following 27-year-old Matthew Warren’s death on Friday, his father tweeted:

Someone on the internet sold Matthew an unregistered gun.I pray he seeks God’s forgiveness. I forgive him. #MATTHEW 6:15

The passage cited reads, from the New International version of the bible, “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

Warren is no doubt using the quick logic that if his son hadn’t gotten that gun he would have gotten another, because someone who is bent on suicide will find a way. But he should slow down and, painful as the truth is, examine that idea.

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More Than Half of American Voters Support Gay Marriage

Buck Banks

53%

Of voters support gay marriage, “up from 49% last March and 30% in 2004,” according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. For the first time, pollsters said, the survey found a majority of independent voters say gays should be allowed to enter into same-sex marriages, with Democrats continuing to support gay marriage in large numbers and Republicans opposing it.

Here’s Another Reason Not to Live In North Dakota

Buck Banks

In our part of the country, this isn’t an issue. This is a way of life. This is how people feel, and it is extraordinarily difficult to explain that, especially to grieving parents.

— Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), quoted by the New York Times, rejecting appeals to support limits on the capacity of gun magazines and universal background checks, adding, “I’m going to represent my state.”

Al Qaeda Leader: America’s Lax Background Checks on Gun Sales Provide a ‘Golden Opportunity’ for a Mumbai-Style Terror Attack in the U.S. – ‘So What Are You Waiting for?’

Jon Ponder

Two years ago, American-born Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn released this video in which he informed his operatives in the United States that because of a loophole in America’s gun laws they could avoid background checks by buying assault weapons at gun shows. Gadahn’s implication was that it would be easy to assemble the arsenal required to launch an attack in the United States similar to the 2008 terror campaign in Mumbai, in which 12 simultaneous bombing and gun attacks across the city left 164 people dead and at least 300 people wounded.

Transcript:

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Stand Down Margaret, Stand Down Please*

Buck Banks
Thatcher, circa 1982

In the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s death, there has been an outpouring of remembrance of her role as Britain’s first female prime minister. Hugo Young, a political columnist for the Guardian from 1984 until 2003 and Thatcher’s biographer, wrote this piece in 2003, two weeks before he died.

… Thatcher left a dark legacy that, like her successes, has still not disappeared behind the historical horizon. Three aspects of it never completely leave my head.

The first is what changed in the temper of Britain and the British. What happened at the hands of this woman’s indifference to sentiment and good sense in the early 1980s brought unnecessary calamity to the lives of several million people who lost their jobs. It led to riots that nobody needed. More insidiously, it fathered a mood of tolerated harshness. Materialistic individualism was blessed as a virtue, the driver of national success. Everything was justified as long as it made money – and this, too, is still with us.

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