Post Scripts

Posted by Tina

South Korea lit a massive steel Christmas tree overlooking its armed border with the North on Tuesday, marking a pointed return to a tradition that Pyongyang has condemned as propaganda. Troops stood guard and a choir sang carols as the 30-metre-tall tree was lit for the first time in seven years. The provocative ceremony — which must receive government permission — was also a sign that President Lee Myung-bak’s administration is serious about countering the North’s aggression with measures of its own in the wake of an artillery attack that killed four South Koreans last month. – AP

Posted by Tina

You can count on it like you can count on death and taxes. Radical leftists always hide their true intentions behind some innocuous sounding word like “fair” or “equal”. This time the word they’ve chosen is “neutrality” and their target is the internet. Behind this first regulatory step is a plan that calls for the eventual government usurpation of all forms of media communication. John Fund, writing for the Wall Street Journal, has the background story. Clearly there is nothing “neutral” about what these folks have in mind:

The net neutrality vision for government regulation of the Internet began with the work of Robert McChesney, a University of Illinois communications professor who founded the liberal lobby Free Press in 2002. Mr. McChesney’s agenda? “At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies,” he told the website SocialistProject in 2009. “But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.”

A year earlier, Mr. McChesney wrote in the Marxist journal Monthly Review that “any serious effort to reform the media system would have to necessarily be part of a revolutionary program to overthrow the capitalist system itself.” Mr. McChesney told me in an interview that some of his comments have been “taken out of context.” He acknowledged that he is a socialist and said he was “hesitant to say I’m not a Marxist.”

For a man with such radical views, Mr. McChesney and his Free Press group have had astonishing influence. Mr. Genachowski’s press secretary at the FCC, Jen Howard, used to handle media relations at Free Press. The FCC’s chief diversity officer, Mark Lloyd, co-authored a Free Press report calling for regulation of political talk radio.

President Obama promised to transform the United States of America. He is certainly on track with his plans. This move is one among many others that is part of the Democrat desire to control the political message in the next election and for-ever. Another is a plan to shut down conservative talk radio. Al Sharpton has been talking with the radicals at the FCC to create hearings and compell Rush Limbaugh to testify. Read about that effort in The American Spectator

If you care about the Constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech and a free press you will pay close attention to the maneuverings of the radical left to transform the media over the next couple of years. We need to learn everything we can about the web of players behind the FCC’s new rules as well as other schemes to control political speech. We should also be aware of the nice sounding words they use to describe these power grabs.

They now have their foot in the door…it will be up to the new Congress to kick them back to the curb! They won’t do that without support (and constant nagging) from we the people.

Posted by Tina

We live in stranger than strange times. The numbers of young men attending college has fallen sharply. Too many young men are getting caught up in violence, murders, gang membership, drug running, human trafficking, riots, rape, drug use, and robberies. What’s even more disturbing, are those that have been recruited into terror activities in its many forms. It’s disheartening and unsettling for anyone who wishes better things for our societies.

Given this sad state of affairs you would think that a little harmless fun, coupled with some Christmas cheer at Christmas time, would be a welcome site on high school campuses. You would think that a more wholesome form of expression would be celebrated and encouraged. Not in today’s strange world.

The boys in the Christmas Sweater Club were given detention and two hours of clean up on campus. The charges were that the candy canes they were tossing to fellow students could be used to:

“maliciously maim students with the intent to injure.”

“Christmas Sweater Club Punished At Local High School” Peggy Fox – wusa9.com

MANASSAS, Va. (WUSA) — They call themselves the “Christmas Sweater Club” because they wear the craziest ones they can find. They also sing Christmas songs at school and try their best to spread Christmas cheer. ** Now all 10 of them are in trouble because of what they did at their school. ** The boys say they were just tossing small two-inch candy canes to fellow students as they entered school. The ones in plastic wrap that are so small they often break apart. ** Skylar Torbett, also a junior, said administrators told him, “They said the candy canes are weapons because you can sharpen them with your mouth and stab people with them.” He said neither he nor any of their friend did that. ** Mother Kathleen Flannery said an administrator called her and explained “not everyone wants Christmas cheer. That suicide rates are up over Christmas, and that they should keep their cheer to themselves, perhaps.”

Was this detention and punishment warranted? Or…is this just another case of the so-called tolerant and inclusive gettin’ a little too grinchy and failing completely in their mission?

by Jack

South Korea didn’t back down and went ahead with its artillery drill today. Nothing was heard from North Korea in response. U.S. kept its planes and warships far out of the area, to not provoke North Korea.

Since North Korea has vowed to take military action on a scale worse than the shelling earlier one can only wonder what it will do next?

UPDATE: 12/20/10, 1230 hours – PST Moments ago, North Korea issued this statement: “The revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK did not feel any need to retaliate against every despicable military provocation,” the official KCNA news agency said, quoting a communique from the North’s Korean People’s Army Supreme Command that called the drills a “childish play with fire.”