Mark Levin on Newtown Speech: ‘How Come Obama Did Not Mention Fort Hood?’ (+ Audio)

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(Daily Caller) On his Monday radio show, conservative talker Mark Levin was critical of President Barack Obama’s Sunday address regarding the heartbreaking Newtown, Conn., shooting deaths of 20 children and six adult victims.

Obama’s address, Levin said, omited any mention of the November 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas — which killed 13 and wounded 29 others.

“Over the weekend, the president was speaking and, really, when he got to his politics it was just stomach-turning,” Levin said. “There he is, in the middle of that little town … and he named four instances in where there were, what — massacres? But he left one out. I immediately realized — and my brother emailed me too — what happened to Fort Hood? How come he didn’t mention Fort Hood?”

“How come Obama did not mention Fort Hood where 13 human beings were slaughtered and there were several survivors. Because, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, Fort Hood is a military enclave, it’s a base. You can’t have more control than that.”

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Conservative Populism

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The conservative failure in 2012 was not an inability to appeal to hyphenated groups on the basis of ethnic, gender, and age identification. Instead, there was a general cluelessness about how to reach the middle and working classes of all races and ethnicities by explaining how conservative principles are not just for the rich.

Consider what messages candidates send by the issues they choose to address. Rather than write off the 47 percent of Americans who receive entitlements and do not pay income taxes, conservative candidates needed to wade into those groups to talk with them and debate them rather than merely lecture them. Why not a symbolic minimum $500 income tax on everyone who is working, if only to remind all of us what April 15 portends? Getting booed for supporting school vouchers is a lot better than not talking about them at all to those who would most benefit. The Michigan episode reminds us that when the message is democracy and freedom to choose rather than union-busting, liberals lose. Hundreds of millions of dollars given to Washington and New York PACs and consultants is not a good bargain, at least in comparison with funding grass-roots registration and get-out-the-vote efforts in key states.

Vocabulary should change as well. It would be wiser to rail against “wasteful” or “callous,” rather than just “big,” government. “Borrowing” is preferable to the drier “deficits.” Republicans always lose when “taxes” become “revenues,” “borrowing” becomes “investments,” and mega-borrowing becomes “stimulus.” “A trillion” means nothing to most people; “a thousand billion” might still shock a little. The “campus” (Latin: “field”) is much better referred to as a “country club.” If you wish to cut PBS funding, then focus not on Big Bird but on the insiders who expect six-figure salaries for providing public-television entertainment in a largely uncompetitive environment of crony capitalism. Can’t expensive and government-subsidized wind and solar power be seen as the obsessions of the affluent, while cheap, free-market natural gas is a lifeline to the poor and the middle class?

Conservatives might rethink the tactical approach to key issues. Why get trapped in the Obama notion that $250,000 qualifies one as “rich”? Most Americans aspire to make a six-figure income, but few hope to make a seven-figure one. Eight out of the ten wealthiest counties in the nation went for Obama; so did Hollywood millionaires and Silicon Valley grandees. When a George Soros, Steven Spielberg, or Michael Moore is a beneficiary of the very tax policies he despises, it is time to become creative and take a hard look at tax breaks, incentives, and federally backed loans. Should municipalities be allowed to issue blank-check tax-free bonds, often for social-engineering purposes far beyond street or sewer maintenance?

Barack Obama keeps begging us to raise taxes on those like himself. But most of his affluent supporters in Greenwich or La Jolla do not receive the free housing, travel, food, and entertainment the Obamas do, and might resent the president’s professed magnanimity at their expense. If Republicans cannot stop tax hikes, then perhaps they might draw the line at the $1 million income level and spare the dentist and auto-repair-shop owner below that line. The Republicans are more the party, anyway, of those who aspire to be rich than of those who are so rich that they can afford to donate to and vote for Obama — an act for those in Carmel and Cambridge increasingly analogous to a tasteful indulgence like granite counter tops and wood floors.

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Matt Ridley: Cooling Down the Fears of Climate Change

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Forget the Doha climate jamboree that ended earlier this month. The theological discussions in Qatar of the arcana of climate treaties are irrelevant. By far the most important debate about climate change is taking place among scientists, on the issue of climate sensitivity: How much warming will a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide actually produce? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has to pronounce its answer to this question in its Fifth Assessment Report next year.

The general public is not privy to the IPCC debate. But I have been speaking to somebody who understands the issues: Nic Lewis. A semiretired successful financier from Bath, England, with a strong mathematics and physics background, Mr. Lewis has made significant contributions to the subject of climate change.

He first collaborated with others to expose major statistical errors in a 2009 study of Antarctic temperatures. In 2011 he discovered that the IPCC had, by an unjustified statistical manipulation, altered the results of a key 2006 paper by Piers Forster of Reading University and Jonathan Gregory of the Met Office (the United Kingdom’s national weather service), to vastly increase the small risk that the paper showed of climate sensitivity being high. Mr. Lewis also found that the IPCC had misreported the results of another study, leading to the IPCC issuing an Erratum in 2011.

Mr. Lewis tells me that the latest observational estimates of the effect of aerosols (such as sulfurous particles from coal smoke) find that they have much less cooling effect than thought when the last IPCC report was written. The rate at which the ocean is absorbing greenhouse-gas-induced warming is also now known to be fairly modest. In other words, the two excuses used to explain away the slow, mild warming we have actually experienced—culminating in a standstill in which global temperatures are no higher than they were 16 years ago—no longer work.

In short: We can now estimate, based on observations, how sensitive the temperature is to carbon dioxide. We do not need to rely heavily on unproven models. Comparing the trend in global temperature over the past 100-150 years with the change in “radiative forcing” (heating or cooling power) from carbon dioxide, aerosols and other sources, minus ocean heat uptake, can now give a good estimate of climate sensitivity.

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Sarah Palin Hits Pols, Media On Newtown

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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — who was harshly criticized for her response to the January 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz. — is telling Americans in the wake of Newtown to put their faith in God and ignore political and media “elites.”

“First, all truly is hopeless if your faith and hope are put in any politician or media elite,” the Fox News contributor wrote on Facebook on Monday night. “That is because the average person is more truthful and responsible than the average politician or media elite. Those who let themselves be terribly disappointed in political leaders as they ignore real problems, aided along with a complicit media bombarding us with irrelevant distractions in order to avoid facing the reality of a fallen culture, should know those distractions are to hide from a finger pointing to the main contributors to much of our problem.”

Palin’s post, “The Only Hope,” asked Americans to place more emphasis on their faith.

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Boehner’s House Has Increased Debt $18,944 Per Household

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(CNSNews.com) – Under the leadership of House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio), the 112th House of Representatives has thus far approved legislation that has increased the debt of the federal government by $2,176,949,774,695.46—or approximately $18,944 for per American household.

The 112th House of Representatives has achieved this in a little more than 20 months time—and it may not be done yet enacting laws to approve new federal borrowing and spending.

The 112th House came into power on Jan. 5, 2011, electing Rep. John Boehner as its speaker on that day.

The Boehner-led House did not have a direct impact on the fiscal policy of the federal government until March 4, 2011, when a continuing resolution enacted on Dec. 21, 2010 in the lame-duck session of the previous Congress expired.

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Fear of Being Committed May Have Caused Connecticut Gunman to Snap

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NEWTOWN, Conn. – The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, according to a lifelong resident of the area who was familiar with the killer’s family and several of the victims’ families.

Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims’ families worship.

“From what I’ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,” Flashman told FoxNews.com. “Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”

A senior law enforcement official involved in the investigation confirmed that Lanza’s anger at his mother over plans for “his future mental health treatment” is being looked at as a possible motive for the deadly shooting.

Flashman was told Nancy Lanza had begun filing paperwork to get conservatorship over her troubled son, but that could not be confirmed because a court official told FoxNews.com such records are sealed. The move would have been necessary for her to gain the legal right to commit an adult to a hospital or psychiatric facility against his will. A competency hearing had not yet been held.

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Benghazi Review Finds Systemic Security Failure

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WASHINGTON (AP) — An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management and leadership failures at the State Department led to “grossly” inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi.

“Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” the panel said.

The report singled out the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for criticism, saying there appeared to be a lack of cooperation and confusion over protection at the mission in Benghazi, a city in Eastern Libya that was relatively lawless after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

Despite those failures, the Accountability Review Board determined that no individual officials ignored or violated their duties and recommended no disciplinary action now. But it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future.

The report appeared to break little new ground about the timeline of the Benghazi attack during which Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens, information specialist Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – who were contractors working for the CIA – were killed. Stevens’ slaying was the first of a U.S. ambassador since 1988.

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Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste…Ever

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While speaking at a prayer vigil for victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, Barack Obama, ever the divisive political creature with a burning transformative agenda, could not pass on the opportunity to politicize the event:

In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens, from law enforcement, to mental health professionals, to parents and educators, in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this, because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine.

Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?

Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

Forget about the shock, grief, anguish, pain and suffering of the survivors. Never mind that the vigil was intended to honor the innocent victims, not promote Obama’s ardent agenda to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

Never let a crisis go to waste … ever.

And to think, there are still people who wonder why America is so divided.

Congratulations Barack … Saul Alinsky would be proud of you.

If Obama is truly devoted to preventing such tragedies, how about he cease and desist being the most divisive American political figure of the 21st century? Anyone who is paying attention knows he is leading a group of like-minded politicians whose strategy is “divide and conquer.”

If Obama is honestly concerned with preventing the routine slaughter of children in schools, schools will no longer be gun free zones. The criminally inclined, mentally deranged people who have perpetrated these shootings clearly have not respected these gun free zones, including America’s shopping malls and other public gathering places.

For “progressives” to use these tragedies as a thinly disguised attempt to alter or abolish Second Amendment Rights for free American Citizens is further evidence that they are attacking, not defending the Constitution of the United States of America. Why is it not surprising that those who desire a “fundamental transformation” of America would be derelict in their duties while ignoring their oath of office?

Here is a clue for Obama and his high falutin, fancy pants, smooth talking, words parsing “progressive” Ivy League chums: the Second Amendment was not written so 21st century Americans could go deer hunting.

America’s Constitution secured the Right of the People to keep and bear arms as the last line of defense against tyrannical government. Having just fought against and defeated King George’s military, America’s founders were keenly aware of the need for all Citizens to be prepared in defense of their Liberties. It matters not whether tyrannical government is imposed by a foreign crown as it was in the 1700s, or from Washington DC, as is being done today. Tyrannical government is tyrannical government.

As Patrick Henry said during debate in the Several State Conventions on the adoption of the U.S. Constitution:

Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

Barack Obama and his fellow “progressives” are not interested in defending the God given, constitutionally protected Rights of American Citizens. They are interested in ensuring that “progressives” gain a firm, final grasp on unstrained power.

America had better wise up. Fast.

Because of groupthink and a poverty of imagination, the story of American Freedom and of American exceptionalism may end far too soon in a tragic, final chapter.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/

Golden Retrievers Used in Newton to Comfort Massacre Survivors

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A team of golden retrievers made an 800-mile journey from the Chicago area to Newtown, Conn., over the weekend to comfort people affected by the shootings Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Lutheran Church Charities sent about 10 of the dogs for residents who want to pet them while they talk or pray with the dog’s handler, said Tim Hetzner, president of the Addison, Ill., organization.

“Dogs are nonjudgmental. They are loving. They are accepting of anyone,” Hetzner said. “It creates the atmosphere for people to share.”

The dogs often visit people in hospitals, nursing homes and parks. Each dog carries a business card with its name, Facebook page, Twitter account and email address.

“The dogs have become the bridge,” said Lynn Buhrke, 66, who is a dog handler for a female golden retriever named Chewie. “People just sit down and talk to you.”

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Police to Begin Patrolling Arkansas Streets with M-16 Style Assault Weapons

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In response to a recent increase in crime, Paragould Mayor Mike Gaskill and Police Chief Todd Stovall offered residents at a town hall meeting Thursday night at West View Baptist Church what could be considered an extreme solution — armed officers patrolling the streets on foot.

Stovall told the group of almost 40 residents that beginning in 2013, the department would deploy a new street crimes unit to high crime areas on foot to take back the streets.

“[Police are] going to be in SWAT gear and have AR-15s around their neck,” Stovall said. “If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, check for your ID.”

Stovall said while some people may be offended by the actions of his department, they should not be. “We’re going to do it to everybody,” he said. “Criminals don’t like being talked to.”

Gaskill backed Stovall’s proposed actions during Thursday’s town hall. “They may not be doing anything but walking their dog,” he said. “But they’re going to have to prove it.”

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