Showing posts with label gun rights. Show all posts

Monday, December 12, 2016

Weekend Box Office: Miss Sloane, Office Christmas Party

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to choosing good movies to watch yourself!

Weekend Box Office: Miss Sloane, Office Christmas Party

By Debbie Schlussel

It’s nearly Christmas time. So, this is supposed to be the time of year when most of the new movies are very good. That ain’t happening. Two new movies this weekend, neither of them good.
* Miss Sloane – Rated R: This is a very cold, very harsh, very dark, and very overwrought picture of the kind of lobbying that happens on Capitol Hill. As one who worked for several Congressman on the Hill, I can tell you that this movie is ridiculous and bears no resemblance to reality. The cat-and-mouse absurdities that go in during the course of this movie are just not how it’s done in real life. Not even close.
Plus, while the movie pretends to be even-handed on the gun control debate, it really isn’t. The protagonist, a female lobbyist, risks it all in order to get stricter gun control laws passed–it’s the only “moral” position she’s ever taken in her life. And with that, the movie is a more subtle version of the gun control propaganda we’re used to seeing in the movies, on TV, and throughout pop culture. On top of that, this is an attack on the free market and makes no bones about it. Our “heroine,” the lobbyist, is a free marketeer and evil until she gives it all up to pull out all the stops in favor of more gun control.
On top of that, the movie is long, slow, and boring, taking up 132 minutes of your life that just aren’t worth the wasting here.
Jessica Chastain–in very dark, harsh makeup–is a Elizabeth Sloane, the aforementioned lobbyist, who tells us flat-out that she believes in the free market and American free enterprise. That’s “bad” in the filmmakers eyes, as she bends the rules to almost the breaking point in order to get tax laws and import duties to go her clients’ way. But she’s also smart (or so we’re told). In order to get a client’s sugar-laden breakfast cakes out from under restrictive regulations, she recommends reclassifying them as cookies, which are covered by more relaxed rules.
But that’s the humdrum stuff. Now, a new client–the gun lobby (and presumably, the NRA)–wants to hire her lobbying firm and her to in order to relax gun laws. The lobby wants her to present guns as the ultimate equalizer for women against violence and would-be attackers. But Elizabeth doesn’t want that and laughs in the new client’s face, as well as that of her boss (Sam Waterston). Soon, she’s gone from her big firm to a smaller one in order to lobby for more gun control and fight her former employer in the fight.
Elizabeth has no life. She never sleeps (and takes a lot of pills to stay awake). She hires male prostitutes for sex, as there’s no time for a relationship. And so on. In the meantime, the team she’s poached from her former firm, helps her pursue several senators to get their votes for gun control. They’re working with a victim of “gun violence.” However, later in the film, there’s an incident that makes the gun lobby’s point.
The various machinations in this movie just don’t happen on Capitol Hill. The lobbying in real life is a lot more dry and basic. There just isn’t the intrigue–to the point of the cockamamie in this film–that is presented here. Not even close. And there aren’t mechanical bugs with cameras crawling into Senators’ and lobbyists’ cars. There also aren’t major Senate hearings into the personal lives of lobbyists. The only thing I can ever remember happening that was even close (and it didn’t involve an examination of the lobbyist’s private life or health), were the Senate hearings into corrupt, convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s multi-million-dollar rip-offs of federal Indian tribes. But in that case, there was major money-laundering, tax-evasion, and other crimes going on, including the use of jihadist Muslim Grover Norquist’s “non-profit” Americans for Tax Reform to launder Indian tribe money and hide the source and ultimate destination of it. Apparently, some of that money went to Islamic terrorist outfits tied to Al-Qaeda, too. That’s a legit inquiry by Congress.
The Senate inquiry into Miss Sloane, a major and prolonged scene in the movie, is just ludicrous, and it would never happen. After nearly 2.5 hours of this movie, there just isn’t a worthy payoff. Not even a little bit. (Unless gun control is what you consider a worthy payoff.)
The movie’s just a high-styled, low-brow bore pretending to be something important. It isn’t. Certainly not important enough for 132 minutes of your life and ten-bucks-plus from your wallet.
Yawn.
TWO MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .

* Office Christmas Party – Rated R: I hated this poor excuse for comedy. You’ve seen this crap–waaaaay toooooo muuuuuch of it–already in recent years. Juvenile, crass, depraved jokes pretending to pass for funny. And they just aren’t. Sure, I laughed several times. But most of this movie was just dumb. Extremely dumb. On top of that, it’s the usual message from liberal Hollywood: loser, drug-using, incompetent, unethical schmucks are the good guys and the heroes; straight-laced, disciplined people, who actually work for a living are the losers and the villains. (Ditto for the human resources manager who objects to female employees wearing too-sexy-for-work outfits–she’s “too uptight”). So typical, so stupid.
The story: Jason Bateman is the Chief Technology Officer at the Chicago branch of Zenotek, a failing internet-hosting and online promotions company. Everyone at the branch is either incompetent or a whiner. The boss is Clay VanStone (T.J. Miller), a rich idiot who wastes money and acts like a child. His rival sister, Carol (Jennifer Aniston), is the hard-working, responsible adult in the family and the company CEO. She wants to pull the plug on the Chicago branch and end the bleeding. She’s right. But, of course, in all Hollywood movies these days, responsible people and responsible decisions aren’t hip and they aren’t to be admired. Instead, they are to be condemned.
Clay and his sister agree that if he can land more business and keep the office profitable, it can remain open. So, he goes about trying to recruit the account of Walter Davis (Courtney B. Vance). At first, Walter rules out hiring Zenotek, and morale is lower than low. But Clay decides to throw a giant, wild Christmas party to entice Walter to change his mind and hire Zenotek. The party is filled with cocaine binges, topless naked women, a prostitute and her female pimp, and other lowlife stuff, which makes it “cool” in the world according to Hollywood. Soon, Walter is literally hanging from the chandeliers, trying to ride ropes of lighting–Tarzan-style–from across a second-floor balcony.
Ultimately there are hospital trips, annoying Uber rides, car crashes, and a power outage in the entire Chicago. Haha, funny. NOT. Also not funny: that a guy (Bateman–who is supposed to be the voice of reason here) drinks spiked eggnog from the male genitalia of an anatomically-correct ice sculpture and then gets his tongue stuck on it. If this is your idea of humor, that’s a not-so-thrilling statement on the state of America. And, sadly, that’s where we are. Forget Kris Kringle. This is Kris Kringeworthy.
Absolute garbage. And not even good for more than five or six laughs. If that.
FOUR MARXES PLUS TWO ISIS BEHEADINGS

Watch the trailer . . .

Friday, October 7, 2016

Did Jesus Christ Foretell Devastating Storms?

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about prophetic hurricanes. This follows this post about the Day of Atonement. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.

Did Jesus Christ Foretell Devastating Storms?

by United Church of God Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

In Matthew 24:7-8, Jesus Christ foretold signs that would mark the time leading up to His return: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places …”
We have certainly seen devastating earthquakes in recent years. The December 2004 earthquake off Indonesia was the most powerful in decades, unleashing a massive tsunami that took some 300,000 lives. Less than a year later, an earthquake in southern Asia killed another 30,000.
In Matthew 24:7, the Greek word translated “earthquakes” is seismos, from which we derive such English words as “seismology,” referring to the study of earthquakes. Strong’s Lexicon defines it as “a commotion, i.e. (of the air) a gale, (of the ground) an earthquake—earthquake, tempest” (Strong’s No. 4578).
So seismos has a broader meaning than just the earth shaking. Matthew 8 records how a violent storm overtook Jesus and His disciples on the Sea of Galilee, threatening to capsize their boat and drown them—until Jesus miraculously calmed the winds and waves.
The word used in Matthew 8:24 for this powerful storm is seismos , here translated “tempest.” So we see that seismos can also refer to violent storms and isn’t limited strictly to earthquakes. When Jesus foretold “famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places,” His words encompass natural disasters that include earthquakes, but can also apply to hurricanes, tornadoes and other such deadly storms.
As we saw with Hurricane Katrina, these storms can be enormously destructive. Katrina took more than 1,200 lives and caused an estimated $200 billion in damage, not counting the economic hit from losses to shipping, oil and gas production, fishing and agriculture. New Orleans, devastated by the storm, will not fully recover for decades— if ever.
A hurricane like Katrina, which reached category 5 strength before weakening, can produce winds greater than 155 miles an hour and push ahead of it a wall of water 18 feet or higher, doing major damage to virtually anything in its path.
Are such natural disasters increasing as Jesus foretold?
The Sept. 16, 2005, issue of Science magazine reports on research by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They concluded that while the total number of hurricanes and cyclones had not increased, there has been “a sharp increase during the past 35 years in the number of category 4 and 5 tropical cyclones, the most intense storms that cause most of the damage on landfall” (Richard Kerr, “Is Katrina a Harbinger of Still More Powerful Hurricanes?,” p. 1807).
Specifically, the frequency of the most dangerous and damaging storms—those rated category 4 and 5— increased by 80 percent from the 1970s to the latest decade.
This should certainly make us sit up and take notice. Later in Jesus Christ’s same prophecy, as recorded in Luke 21:25-28, He says: “And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth …
“Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.”

Natural Disasters

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Youth Violence Who's to Blame?

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about violence. This follows this post about Zika. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.

Youth Violence

Who's to Blame?

by Howard Davis

In the 1960s Bill Roberts forever abandoned youthful innocence for the killing fields of Vietnam. Not long ago something happened to Bill that brought back the terror he felt years ago in guerrilla warfare.
His recent brush with death was not in a war in Southeast Asia. It happened in Portland, Oregon, a prosperous city of a million and a half people. The enemy wasn't Vietnamese guerrillas but gun-toting gang members in a school yard.
Mr. Roberts serves as principal of a school attended by my children. He is still a soldier, but his fight is with the explosion of youth violence that began 20 years ago in America.
With the American prison population up to 1,800,000 from 750,000 in only 10 years, violence among young people affects every stratum of American life.
Easy solutions are hard to come by because the problem with youth violence is not a trend fueled primarily by desperation and poverty. It is driven by powerful forces and influences that lead some children to treat other human beings as if they are of no more value than the electronic video-game figures they mindlessly kill off by the hour for amusement.
With the lines between fantasy and reality confused and blurred, some American youths have received the unmistakable message that it is entertaining to kill. The two teenaged gunmen who killed and maimed 35 students and teachers at Colorado's Columbine High School in May laughed as they roamed the classrooms and hallways and gunned down their victims.
Does our culture teach children that killing people is not a big deal? Violent movies, video and computer games, and many television shows certainly send that message.
Strangely, many violent teenagers are possessed of a sense of invincibility. Not only do they evince no fear of God, they have little fear or understanding that they could be killed as easily as the fictional characters on a video-game screen.

Explosive Violence

After a 15-year-old boy confessed to the May 1998 shooting of 22 students and his parents in Springfield, Oregon, commentators pointed out that explosive violence had crept from the poor, inner-city communities of the 1980s and early '90s onto the manicured lawns of suburbia.
Not only is homicide one of the greatest risks to our youngsters, says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, it has progressively permeated the national landscape. The epidemic of gun violence began to peak among youth in the late 1980s, ravaging a predominately poor minority generation of inner-city residents, according to James Garbarino, director of the Family Life Development Center at Cornell University.
National Council on Crime and Delinquency president Barry Krisberg notes a difference in today's profile of youth violence. Recent mass-murder attempts and episodes “had nothing to do with drugs or guns,” he said. “Some were from affluent communities and intact families.”
In the last six years 11 of 12 mass shootings with multiple victims took place in cities with populations under 80,000. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report nine of these were municipalities with a smaller population than 52,000.
Initial studies indicate a shift in violent youth behavior out of the low socioeconomic stereotype. Harvard School of Public Health professor Deborah Prothrow-Stith characterizes the movement of youth violence from poor urban communities to the rest of the population and regions as an effect similar to any other epidemic. “It's the second wave,” she said. “First [it strikes] the most vulnerable community, and then it spreads.”
Copy acts have also proliferated. In one study 25 percent of young violent felons said they got the specific idea for their violent activity directly from television. “I can do that” is the remark attributed to the 15-year-old Oregon shooter in a conversation two months earlier to his school-bus driver when he heard about the school massacre by two youths in Paducah, Kentucky.
Murders committed by teens ages 14 to 17 tripled between 1976 and 1993, then dropped somewhat, according to University of Oregon sociology department chairman Robert O'Brien. However, observers point out that upward trends in youth violence may be masked somewhat by imprisonment, aggressive policing and a dynamic national economy.

A Childhood Jungle

Youth violence is, at its core, an outgrowth of an American crisis of values. Successful child-raising requires values flowing from a firm commitment to children—a commitment that requires time, attention and resources. In their absence, children grow up in a veritable jungle.
It doesn't have to be so.
Consistent, loving guidance of children works. Demonstrating concern works. These parental commitments help stop violence by preventing it. They require a child-centered approach that touches the spirit of the child rather than a manipulation of material circumstances masquerading as attention.
A central message of Jesus Christ regarding children is that they are to be loved because “of such is the Kingdom of God.” He showed that true love works. The explosion of youth violence is a clear warning that time is running out to begin practicing Christ's approach before it's too late.
Most youthful violence emanates from environments in which brutal adult behavior is modeled and acted out in what National Council on Crime and Delinquency president Krisberg calls a “nihilistic culture that does not promote community and social values.”
Not only are right values ignored, but wrong values are often celebrated. “Go to the movies and listen to the music,” says Mr. Krisberg. “It's violent, it has misogynist content. There's gross materialism and no ennobling values celebrated.”

A New Battleground

The war of youth violence is waged in many communities. On Mr. Roberts' Portland school ground, a battle almost erupted because a 12-year-old student had grabbed a basketball away from a gang member.
A few days later school was just letting out when the gang members arrived with revolvers under their coats and dozens of umbrellas tipped with blades. They were ready for the boy.
What surprised Mr. Roberts and led him to instinctively sense he might witness a murder was the bizarre willingness of the 12-year-old with no violent history to take on the gang single-handedly.
As the boy raced out the front door toward the gang, Mr. Roberts grabbed him, handing him over to two assistants who restrained him in Mr. Roberts' office while Mr. Roberts confronted the gang.
In schools across the nation, principals experience such potentially deadly conflicts. Although this situation passed without harm, Mr. Roberts says he feels sure he will see similar problems again. He fears that America, with its random, bloody explosions of violence, is in some ways repeating the frightening guerrilla warfare of Vietnam.
The tentacles of youth violence have traveled across the Atlantic and the Pacific into most other parts of the Western World. Consider the United Kingdom. In some British schools youth violence and disrespect for authority are out of control. An East Anglian instructor wrote an article, “How We Teachers Have Lost Control of the Classroom” ( Sunday Telegraph ) in which he said only one goal matters: “reducing violence in schools.”

Need for Spiritually Motivated Love

Former U.S. Army general Colin Powell, whose leadership helped the American military and its allies emerge victorious in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, says the problem of troubled youth is the greatest threat to the future of the United States.
Youth violence has its roots in a parental culture that has spiritually abandoned them. More money, expensive schools and government programs run by well-meaning bureaucrats cannot substitute for parental love. Western nations so often look to institutional programs for salvation from social crises, but this is one money can't buy.
The 15 million children living in poverty are not alone in a landscape of emotional, interpersonal and spiritual impoverishment. Many children in prosperous nations grow up without enriching values conveyed by the intimacy of sacrificial parental love.
Many of them have no concept of the sanctity of life, even their own. “This is the way we want to go out,” read the suicide note from Columbine High School gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who between them killed 13 people in a rampage of bullets and homemade bombs before they turned their guns on themselves.
With materialism substituted for love, many children have no comprehension of an overriding purpose for life, no sense that life is anything more than a quest for instant gratification. They have scarce knowledge of a Higher Power with endless love who reveals a meaningful purpose and destiny for every man, woman and child.
The discouraging social forces affect almost all of society. Even people who profess to be Christian aren't immune, with divorce and abuse rampant. Too many political and religious leaders have abandoned belief in absolute standards such as those that flow from the immutable law of God. God's standards condemn both lack of and abuse of parental authority as well as the sexual promiscuity that almost always leads to single-parenthood.
As a result, children absorb a chaos of relativistic values that mingle hedonism with self-destructive and aggressive behavior.

Serious Consequences

The Creator of mankind has the authority to define right and wrong. And He warns that He will reject a nation whose mothers and fathers reject the spiritual knowledge revealed in the law of God.
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” declares the Creator God. “Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you . . . Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children” (Hosea 4:6, emphasis added).
Youth violence is not a mystery. It is a mistake, a sin and a tragedy for all concerned. But the good news is that the spiritual principles that have always worked still work. Families, communities and nations don't have to be destroyed if they will seek the spiritual knowledge that shows them how to express godly love.
Societies and cultures can change. In the case of America's crisis of youth violence, the problem begins in the home. It is there that parents must learn about and then begin to foster a family culture based on biblical values. Love, if it is genuine, always works. GN

disrespect violence End Times Conflicts and War News and Prophecy Youth Christian Living

Parents suing Hillary Clinton for wrongful death and defamation over jihad murders in Benghazi

A timely post about from www.jihadwatch.org about Benghazi victims' families suing Hillary Clinton. This follows this post about Donald Trump. This follows this article about American energy independence and preventing money from going to hostile countries. For more, you can read two very interesting books HERE.You can follow me here.

Parents suing Hillary Clinton for wrongful death and defamation over jihad murders in Benghazi

By Christine Williams 65 Comments

The parents of two Americans killed in a jihad attack in Benghazi are suing Hillary Clinton for wrongful death and defamation, citing her “‘extreme carelessness” in handling “confidential and classified information” that got into the hands of the jihad terrorists who launched the deadly attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi.
Clinton has been consistently under the microscope for apparent recklessness with regard to jihadists and their threats to America and to the West.
Recall a statement she made, that “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”
Hillary Clinton did not need to be told that not all Muslims are jihadists, but her politically correct statement manifested a reckless disregard for and undermining of the global jihad war against infidels and apostates, at a time when the sufferings of the victims of that war, Christians, Yazidis, the state of Israel, and other Muslims, are incalculable.
Let’s also not forget the Western victims who have been attacked by jihadis on their own soil — but to reckless Hillary, Muslims “have nothing whatsoever” to do with any of that.
Also in a speech, she reportedly “slowed to mock three words – ‘radical Islamic terrorism.'”
Well, now Hillary Clinton is being sued by parents who went through the grief of losing their children due to “radical Islamic terrorism” that Muslims “have nothing whatsoever to do with.”

“Two Benghazi Parents Sue Hillary Clinton for Wrongful Death, Defamation”, Breitbart, August 8, 2016:

The parents of two Americans killed in the 2012 terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court Monday against Hillary Clinton.
In the suit, Patricia Smith and Charles Woods, the parents of Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods, claim that Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server contributed to the attacks. They also accuse her of defaming them in public statements.
Smith was an information management officer and Woods was a security officer, both stationed in Benghazi.
“The Benghazi attack was directly and proximately caused, at a minimum by defendant Clinton’s ‘extreme carelessness’ in handling confidential and classified information,” such as the location of State Department employees in Libya, the lawsuit said…..
Such information, the lawsuit claimed, “easily found its way to foreign powers” and was then obtained by Islamic terrorists.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Koran contest kids get guns, grenades

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about gun contests among jihadists. This follows this post about the reasons for the Brexit from the European Union. This follows this post about the Gay Agenda Blueprint. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free click HERE! or call 1-888-886- 8632.

World News and Trends

Koran contest kids get guns, grenades

by Jerold Aust, John Ross Schroeder Estimated reading time: 1 minute

The prizes in this year's contest? Assault rifles and live grenades!
The station, based near the capital, Mogadishu, awarded an AK-47 assault rifle and the equivalent of $700 to the first-place group. The second-place group received an AK-47 and the equivalent of $500, while those who placed third received two live hand grenades and $400.
The al-Shabab group is linked to al-Qaeda and was recently forced out of Mogadishu, though it still controls much of central and southern Somalia.
“Youths should use one hand for education and the other for a gun to defend Islam,” said al-Shabab official Mukhtar Robow at the prize awards ceremony, held not far from Mogadishu. Pictures of the awards ceremony appeared on a website affiliated with the group.
Winners also received Islamic religious books. Prizes in previous years included a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and anti-tank mines. Somalia has been in the news in recent years due to the twin plagues of drought and piracy, with Muslim pirates preying on shipping and pleasure boats in the Indian Ocean. (Sources: BBC News, The Guardian [London].)

Somalia al-Qaeda Middle East News and Prophecy

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Jerold Aust

United Church of God Pastor
Jerold Aust has served in the ministry for 45 years, as a public speaker for 51 years, a published writer for 31 years, and is employed by UCG’s Media and Communications Services. He is a Senior Writer, interviewer, and editor for The Good News Magazine and also teaches Speech Communication for UCG’s ministerial online program.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Dividing The Coalition Of The Fringes: Why the Establishment Is So Berserk Over Trump Talking Sense on Immigration

An interesting article from http://www.vdare.com about the Muslim attack on homosexuals. This follows this post about homosexuals lobbying to INCREASE immigration! Remember, “Amnesty” means ANY non-enforcement of existing immigration laws! This follows this comment and this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! Also, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
Please follow me here.

Trump wants to keep this guy out of the US--Hillary and Obama have no problem with him.

Dividing The Coalition Of The Fringes: Why the Establishment Is So Berserk Over Trump Talking Sense on Immigration

Steve Sailer

From my new column in Taki’s Magazine:

The Orlando Latino gay slaughter is a nightmare for the establishment because Florida is a purple state with 29 electoral votes. And while the mainstream efforts to elicit Hispanic racialism haven’t gotten all that far outside of La Raza circles, gays have become a popular sacralized group. Trump’s alt-center offer to defend gays from Muslims is part of his clever divide-and-rule strategy aimed at the obvious (but henceforth unspeakable) divisions among the Obama Coalition.
As I’ve been pointing out for years, the Democrats’ coalition of the fringes has been held together only by the KKKrazy Glue of egging on paranoid fantasies against straight white men.
But the GOP upstart is asking gays: Who is more likely to be on your side: Donald Trump or Omar Mateen?
Personally, I’ve been to Trump Tower, and I’d guess that the GOP candidate employed more than a few gay men to decorate it.

Read the whole thing there.

[Comment at Unz.com]

brianlee

Monday, December 12, 2016