…for me from Fox News Insider:
And this, from the demographic most critical to the NFL:
The [men aged 34-54] group went from 73% favorable and 19 percent unfavorable to 42 percent favorable and 47% unfavorable.
This is what happens when an industry overtly, proudly, attacks our nation’s flag and national anthem and insults our veterans and our Gold Star families.
UNLV Professor (or at least that’s her title) Tessa Winklemann is saying that the mass murder in Las Vegas last week was at least partially President Donald Trump’s fault. UNLV has chosen to play down the slur.
While we respect academic freedom in the classroom and the right to free speech, we believe the comments were insensitive, especially given the series of events this week and the healing process that has begun in the community[.]
With this vapid, empty remark, UNLV has shown that it condones Winklemann’s behavior; school management is merely making a pro forma statement.
Far worse, though, is Winklemann’s later statement.
I regret that my comments caused more pain during this difficult time. Emotions were running high and I wish I would have been more thoughtful in how I directed the conversation.
Notice that: she expressed a bit of regret for the outcome of her misbehavior, but she offered not a syllable of apology for her misbehavior.
That’s dishonest.
That’s what Ana Palacio, Spanish Foreign Minister at the turn of the century, disingenuously claims is needed in Spain following the recent Catalan separation referendum.
Spaniards need to work toward a new commitment to, and connection with, each other and the constitutional system.
But apparently Catalans are not Spaniards according to Palacio, since she also insists
“Dialogue”…is pointless given that Catalan secessionist authorities refuse to live up to or even recognize their responsibilities under the law.
This, in the face of Madrid’s conscious decision to try to suppress the referendum with violence—almost 900 Spanish Guardia– and Policia-inflicted casualties on unarmed Catalans—when, knowing full well that an unhindered referendum would have defeated separatism, Madrid could have arrested the ringleaders peacefully. In fine, Spanish law could have been enforced peacefully; Madrid chose violence.
Responsibilities under law, indeed.
Madrid doesn’t want to work toward a mutual connection; it wants only abject surrender and subjugation of an impertinent population.
Progressives, as The Wall Street Journal puts it,
believe that every human problem can be solved with a policy tweak. A ban here, a background check there, and, voila, no more mass shootings.
But what’s their limiting principle? What level of gun control would satisfy them? What fundamental concept would make them believe they’ve gone far enough with their tweaks, checks, bans on an American citizen’s access to the means of defending himself and his family? Besides their empty rhetoric of “I wouldn’t do that, I wouldn’t take all your guns away…,” I mean.
Some statistics would seem to give the lie to the Progressive-Democrats’ claims both about the ubiquitousness of gun violence and the purpose of these persons’ desired “controls.”
[A] 2015 Congressional Research Service report found that from 1999 to 2013 assault rifles were used in 27% of public mass shootings. The Virginia Tech shooter in 2007 killed 32 people with two handguns. FBI statistics show that of 15,070 homicides in 2016, 374 people or 3% were killed with rifles. Some 656 homicides were committed with “personal weapons” (hands, fists, feet) and 1,604 with knives.
Guns just aren’t that important to the violence humans commit against each other. This, in turn, gives that lie to Progressive-Democrats’ claimed goals of merely wanting to “control” our firearms; our use of them is not out of control.
The Left, the Progressive-Democrats, don’t have a limiting principle. Their tweaks, checks, bans are only first steps. Their purpose throughout this “debate” is to disarm us completely, so that Government—one of the entities the 2nd Amendment seeks to enable us to defend ourselves against—will have the only guns.
Now, why might that be, exactly?
And this from a different angle on the Left’s desire to disarm us, from Larry O’Connor at Mediaite:
The US government is systemically racist and, through its inaction, seems willing to allow innocent, black citizens to be murdered by its police force. Furthermore, the judicial system is often rigged to protect the evil, racist officers by never punishing them for those murders. Additionally, the very same government is now in the hands of a fascist, incompetent criminal who, not only hates blacks and Latinos so much that he is willing to let the latter die of starvation and thirst [in Puerto Rico] rather than deliver humanitarian aid to them, but also calls the former [NFL player kneelers] “Sons of bitches” for protesting the racist country he oversees….
…if I really thought this country was so evil and so racist…I certainly wouldn’t want that evil, fascist, incompetent, and racist government to determine who could and could not arm themselves.
Why would a thinking American want a Government so evil to have the only guns?
The position on gun control of the Left generally and of the Progressive-Democratic Party in particular not only has no limiting principle, it makes no sense within itself.
h/t Grim’s Hall for the Mediaite link.
Catalonia is trying to have one (had one as you read this) on whether the Autonomous Community should completely separate from Spain. It’s turning violent as the Spanish military organization with police duties, the Guardia Civil, and the more civilian Policía Nacional, are using hammers and other such tools to break into locked buildings within which voting is occurring and truncheons and rubber bullets to try to block Catalans from entering and voting.
Nearly 850 civilian casualties had been inflicted by late Sunday, Dallas time.
This is counterproductive. Like the Quebecois separation referenda, Madrid should let the Catalan referendum go forward without interference. Most Catalans want the referendum, and most would vote to stay in Spain.
That vote would defuse the separation movement for a good long time.
The violent suppression is not going to work in the long run.
As Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is putting it,
The unjustified, unchecked, irresponsible violence by the Spanish state today didn’t just fail to stop Catalans’ will to peacefully and democratically vote….” It also made clear “what is at stake for us.”
It’s true enough that Puigdemont is playing politics with his characterization, but the characterization itself and its outcome isn’t far wrong. Marc Quintana, a 34-year-old carpenter who was forcibly removed by police in Sant Julià before he could vote:
The only thing this will do is make those undecided people vote “yes” to independence[.]
It’s also true that the referendum is illegal under Spanish law. However, if Madrid really thought it needed to arrest the referendum leaders, they could do that a lot more easily after a failed referendum.