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August 20, 2014

Ferguson’s Michael Brown: The Tall Tale of the “Gentle Giant”

By Selwyn Duke

Unlike Trayvon Martin, pictures of a 12-year-old Michael Brown haven’t been used to portray him as a gentle little cherub. Instead the media has cast him as the “gentle giant.” And they’re at least partially right, say critics. Brown certainly was a giant, as surveillance footage seems to prove, showing his 6’4”, nearly 300-pound self towering over a petrified convenience-store employee, who got manhandled and intimidated for having the temerity to object to his store being robbed.

This characterization lies in stark contrast to the picture painted by Brown’s family, friends, and that sympathetic media. Brown’s uncle, Charles Ewing, who related the gentle-giant moniker, said that the family tried to get the young man to play football, but he “was too timid for the sport,” reported the Washington Post. “‘He had never gotten into a fight in his entire life,’ said Duane Finnie, a family friend. At school, he was that kid who was full of jokes and trying to make others laugh,” continued the paper. In fact, the Post article opened by stating that Brown had just won a “hard-fought victory,” having recently graduated from high school, a note accompanied by a graduation photo of a gown-bedecked Brown.

Now, critics might say that education — even if it is something more impressive than that acquired at Brown’s Normandy High, which had already lost its state accreditation — doesn’t definitively denote goodness. Neither does accomplishment. But isn’t it to be expected that Brown’s defenders will relate facts about the young man’s history in order to establish his character? For sure. It’s also to be expected, however, that his whole history will then be fair game, say critics.

Read the rest here.
August 18, 2014

Mother Drowned Two Newborns to Save Money on Abortion

By Selwyn Duke

“Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like,” said G.K. Chesterton. The philosopher was making a pro-life point, but, increasingly, we’re seeing mothers who actually are performing their own post-partum “abortions.” One case involves a 34-year-old Maryland woman who did, in fact, deliver a baby on two different occasions — and then decide to drown the child right after birth. Writes Lifesite News’ Ben Johnson, “Melissa Schrae Bowen of Prince Frederick said she killed her babies because she had three children already and could not afford an abortion. She saw her acts of infanticide as a parallel to legalized abortion.”

The grisly story came to light on March 8, 2012 when the defendant’s mother found the body of a baby boy, born sometime in 2007, in a garbage bag in Bowen’s car trunk and contacted the police. Months later on November 16, authorities would discover another dead baby boy in a suitcase in a home in La Plata, Maryland; that child was birthed late in 2011 or early in 2012. Bowen said that in both cases she successfully hid her pregnancies, gave birth on a toilet, and then left the children to die. The first child lingered on struggling for life, however; Bowen then drowned him in a bathtub.

Read the rest here.
August 18, 2014

Ferguson Shooting Shock: Witness Unwittingly Captured on Audio Corroborates Police Story

By Selwyn Duke

While Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities are being slaughtered by the Islamic State jihadis in the most brutal of ways, the U.S. media has been obsessed with the Ferguson, Missouri, police’s shooting of teenager Mike Brown. It’s portrayed as an example of how black youth are unfairly targeted by mostly white law-enforcement agencies. But now an eyewitness conversation previously unnoticed in a video of the shooting’s aftermath has been brought to light — and it completely contradicts the media’s politically correct narrative.

The video was originally uploaded to YouTube by a user who bears the handle “BlackCanseco” and who appears to believe his footage buttresses the notion that Brown was shot while unarmed and holding his hands in the air. However, the previously unnoticed conversation — which starts at 6:28 and involves a black male eyewitness (#2) relating what had transpired to a curious onlooker (#1) — tells a different tale (presented as transcribed by ConservativeTreehouse.com):

Read the rest here.
August 18, 2014

Scientists: Huge Life-ending, Gravity-defying Asteroid Hurtling toward Earth

By Selwyn Duke

No, this is not a drill. A huge asteroid is heading for our planet, and with a diameter of one kilometer, a strike by it could wipe out human life. Don’t cancel any plans, give contemporary doomsayers a pat on the back, or descend into ’roid rage just yet, though. Despite a speed of nine miles per second, or 38,000 mph, the object’s arrival isn’t expected till 2880 — March 16, to be precise.

When that time does come, however, there will be cause for concern (assuming man is still traipsing about our blue orb). The asteroid — identified as “1950 DA” — has a 1 in 300 chance of striking Earth. That’s far greater than the odds of being murdered in Chicago (1 in 6,250) or dying in a car crash (1 in 5,000).

Read the rest here.
August 17, 2014

How Facebook Can Manipulate the November Election

By Selwyn Duke

It was the focus of the film The Social Network, but critics say that Facebook has become a political network — one that is two-faced and facing left.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has long been pushing amnesty and targeting politicians who oppose it. Now, warns American Thinker’s Jonathon Moseley, Facebook is going so far as to block Republican activism from its website and may use social-network manipulation to turn out the vote for liberal candidates.

Read the rest here.
August 17, 2014

U.S. Media: Only Republican Scandals Need Apply

By Selwyn Duke

Before the advent of the Gutenberg printing press in 1450, word of mouth was the main method for transmitting information. Perhaps this is why a proverbial “wise man” might have been so valued: In a largely illiterate world of rare handwritten manuscripts, he was the closest thing you had to a library, a self-help book, or an instruction manual. A visit to him was the ancient and medieval form of Googling. And you certainly had to hope he, the local holy men, and other counselors were wise — and honest. They were your only conduit of information.

The amount of information available has exploded in modern times, but the scale hasn’t changed the fact that we still must rely on conduits of information. And even in the Internet age, the main one is the media.

How do you learn of a war in a faraway land, a policy proposal in D.C., a political scandal, or university study? Sure, a soldier, political aide, or graduate student could post a note on a blog, but it would likely become a needle in the haystack of the hundreds of millions of blogs worldwide. The reality is that we rely on the media. And if knowledge is power, the media is that pen mightier than militaries. It also follows, then, that misinformation is the power to destroy.

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August 16, 2014

Immigration: The Ultimate Get-out-the-vote Drive

By Selwyn Duke

One reason predictions of a Mitt Romney victory in 2012 were inaccurate, say analysts, is that the turnout among certain Democrat constituencies — in particular blacks and Hispanics — was greater than expected. And what a significant factor this is. Whether we call it getting out the vote, having a great “ground game” or just turnout, it can make or break an election.

But while the phrase “getting out the vote” is well understood, there is a lesser known election strategy: getting in the vote. What’s the difference? While the former involves getting as many as possible of the set number of sympathetic potential voters to the polls, getting in the vote is the process by which you increase that number of sympathetic voters. This process is most effectively exercised by Democrats, and it’s done in two ways. One is by indoctrinating people — especially young people — via academia, the media and entertainment. The second way is through immigration.

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August 12, 2014

Robin Williams: Death of a Funny Sad Man

By Selwyn Duke

“There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt,” said columnist Erma Bombeck. On Monday, comedian and Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar winner Robin Williams, finding himself lost on the wrong side of that line, hanged himself after a long bout with depression. It was an end that shocked and saddened many fans but that was also sadly stereotypical, giving weight to the claim that comedians ply their playful trade to cover up or deal with pain.

Whether this phenomenon is exaggerated or not, I knew an aspiring comedian who certainly fit that mold. He often was side-splittingly funny but never seemed happy; he could make you laugh but never laughed himself — I don’t remember a genuine smile ever crossing his face even once. And my erstwhile acquaintance and Williams have a lot of company. As Lenny Ann Low wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald:

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August 11, 2014

Libertarian Folly: Why Everybody is a Social-issues Voter

By Selwyn Duke

There is this notion, one we hear more and more, that the Republican Party has to shed the social issues to seize the future. “Social issues are not the business of government!” says thoroughly modern millennial. It’s a seductive cry, one repeated this past Tuesday in an article about how some young libertarians dubbed the “Liberty Kids” are taking over the moribund Los Angeles GOP. Oh, wouldn’t the political landscape be simple if we could just boil things down to fiscal responsibility? But life is seldom simple.

If you would claim to be purely fiscal, or assert that “social issues” should never be government’s domain, I’d ask a simple question: would you have no problem with a movement to legalize pedophilia?

Some responses here won’t go beyond eye-rolling and scoffing. Others will verbalize their incredulity and say that such a movement would never be taken seriously. This is not an answer but a dodge. First, the way to determine if one’s principles are sound is by seeing if they can be consistently applied. For instance, if someone claims he never judges others, it’s legitimate to ask whether he remains uncritical even of Nazis and KKK members; that puts the lie to his self-image. And any thinking person lives an examined life and tries to hone his principles.

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July 5, 2014

Google’s War on Guns

By Selwyn Duke

While its corporate motto is “Don’t be evil,” its critics might say “Don’t be Google.” And this is especially true now that Google is saying “Don’t buy guns.”

The search giant has announced that, starting in September, it will ban advertising of firearms, ammunition, and gun paraphernalia. As Google Support writes on its “Dangerous Products or Services” page, “Our policy: We want to help keep people safe both online and offline, so we don't allow the promotion of some products or services that cause damage, harm, or injury.” Consequently, the ad ban will include, explains the company:

Functional devices that appear to discharge a projectile at high velocity, whether for sport, self-defense, or combat
(Note that we err on the side of caution and apply this policy to sporting or recreational guns that can cause serious harm if misused, or that appear to be real guns.)

Examples: Handguns, rifles, shotguns, hunting guns, functioning antique guns, airsoft guns, paintball guns, bb guns

Any part or component that's necessary to the function of a gun or intended for attachment to a gun

Examples: Gun scopes, ammunition, ammunition clips or belts

But it isn’t just that, to Google, love is not a warm gun. It will also ban ads relating to other weapons, such as tactical, fighting, and military knives; throwing axes; throwing stars; brass knuckles; and crossbows. So we can now all rest assured that the next throwing-star massacre will be averted.

Read the rest here.