A medley of news this morning!

Nazgul-in-chief? – Culture wars|Justice Ginsburg: We Need An All-Female Supreme Court
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan et al: Stupid!  My younger son agrees with her; he says that is great, so that the country can tear itself apart even faster.  (He points out that one reason females tend to end up in the lower parts of society is because they act so stupid when in authority!)  Debby points out we need a fair and honest court, and that isn’t going to happen, whatever sex they pretend to be.  Do Nazgul have sexes?  Ah, for self-governing instead of having these blackrobes and all their ilk.

Mama’s Note: Tell younger son that it is the exercise of power over other people that generates stupidity, regardless of gender. Nobody should have that power, of course.

Congress in action – Theft by government
Read Sen. Levin’s Lips: Republicans Must Break Their Tax Pledge
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: As do several other GOP types: they are more greedy for power and wealth than for honor and ethical behavior.  They seem to think that people are even more stupid than we are.

Culture wars: No Xmas – Europe’s Fall
Sweden’s Dreaming of a Gender-Neutral Christmas
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: Must be friends with that idiot of an governor of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.  He ticked everyone off last year by renaming a Christmas Tree a “Holiday Tree” (supposedly to be “inclusive in honor of Rhode Island’s traditions” but THIS year, he just gave up on the tree-lighting ceremony entirely.  Now, I recall from elementary school that Sweden’s big contribution to Euro-American Christmas traditions was Santa Lucia – who just happens to be one of the relatively few female characters involved with Northern European Christmas.  (Of course, I have always understood that the entire idea about Christmas was that a virgin FEMALE gave birth to a Son – so what is there that needs to be made “gender neutral?”  This is another example of the Tranzi mindset: majoring in minors and minoring in majors.

Mama’s Note: Seems to me that the people of the world have one or two problems that do not involve the gender of their holiday figures, but far too many people are thus easily distracted.

Stupid government – First Citizen’s minions
Republican Critics of Susan Rice Ease Opposition to Naming Her Secretary of State
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: Ah so – I think the GOP is trying to see just how many different ways they can wimp out:  it appears that the GOP is going to finally and officially roll over and do anything the White House and their “opponents” want – instead of just sneaking around and doing it.

Mama’s Note: Well, I’m sure that will be a big relief to all of those politicians who just hate sneaking around…  Oh, wait!

Nah… I doubt there will be any real reduction in sneaking, just perhaps some new sneaky agendas.

Theft by government -Government-ruined, Theft-funded schools
One Third of Schools Receiving Stimulus-Funded ‘Student Improvement Grants’ Showed Declines
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: Duh!  You get more of what you subsidize.  You subsidize school failures and guess what!  You get MORE school failures.  For too many teachers, not just the union goons, it is all about the money.  How do you maximize the money you get to control (not just your salary and benefits)?  By FAILING so that the politicians (backed by a stupid electorate) throw MORE money at you.

East Asian Front – Stupid government
S. Korean Defense Minister on N. Korea: ‘Confront Them with a Club and Defeat Them’
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: Do I hear a wee bit of frustration in this?  Imagine if it were North and South Dakota divided by a DMZ with families split on both sides: family members in the North starving to death or nearly, and freezing in the winter because the elite take all the wood and coal, while in the South we are comfortable and prospering: the night lights up only on the south side of the border.  The temptation to end the suffering in the North would be very great.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party did not understand that The Onion is a satirical publication and was making fun when they declared Kim Jong Un the “sexiest man alive” and put out a special 50-page photo spread of the poor geek (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2239121/China-newspaper-The-Peoples-Daily-accidentally-declares-Kim-Jong-Un-sexiest-man-alive.html) What fun!  Communist apparatchiks have NO sense of humor.

Mama’s Note: Oh, this is hysterical. I’ll bet, however, that some Chinese editor somewhere is seriously contemplating the afterlife. These folks don’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.

Home Front
Gun Violence Rising in Media not in Reality
(Political Outcast) An increase in reportings by the media of gun-related violence does not mean that there has been an actual increase in incidents. In fact, violent crime in the U.S. (murder, rape, robbery and assault) actually went down four percent in 2011 compared with the previous year. It’s been going down for the past six years, and last year was the lowest it had been since 2006. It’s dropped twelve  percent since then. Naturally, since the Left will never concede intellectually on the gun control debate, the one thing they can do is just report more incidents to give the impression that more guns equals more crime.

The other side of the coin is that gun ownership is up. Forbes pointed out that call-ins to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) have steadily increased over the past decade:  ”Over the last 10 years (from 2002 to 2011) there has been a 54.1 percent rise in the number of NICS checks and the increase hasn’t all taken place since 2008. In 2005 there were 8,952,945 NICS checks. In 2006 the number topped 10 million. In 2007 NICS checks pushed passed 11 million. In 2008 NICS checks passed 12 million, and then hit the 14 million mark in 2009. They increased slightly (4 percent) through 2011.” We’ve all seen these familiar statistics that have shown consistently that as gun sales rise, crime rates drop. These are no surprise to us since we understand that an armed society is a polite society.

Nathan: Amen!  Assuming this is really the case, and that the reason for the official numbers going down is not either (a) people have given up even reporting or (b) the cops are lying even to themselves, this is obvious to libertarians and even conservatives.  But people are really willing to be blind to the obvious: GUNS SAVE LIVES.  GUNS STOP CRIME – IF IN THE HANDS OF PRIVATE CITIZENS.

Medical
Study: Smoking tobacco “rots” the brain
(The Raw Story)  “In a study published Sunday in the scientific journal Age and Aging, researchers discovered that regular exposure to tobacco smoke caused significant declines in cognitive performance among older people who had elevated cardiovascular risk factors like high blood pressure. Researchers asked 8,800 people over age 50 to take a series of memory tests, which were repeated four years later, and again eight years later. They found that any risk factor which elevates the chance of stroke or heart attack causes mental degradation.” (11/26/12)

Nathan: Personal opinion?  The rot starts a LONG time before “old age” – and there is a certain degree of “mental degradation” that gets someone to do more than light up that first cancer stick, too.  I have seen the declines in a fair number of people who continue to smoke as they get older.  However, tobacco is one of the many substances that man abuses, ignoring the many good purposes that tobacco and its ingredients can be used for.  Government, of course, will use this as an excuse to hammer something that they have decided is evil.