"Flyover Nation: You Can't Run a Country You've Never Been To"

In a new book released this summer, author Dana Loesch is alarmed that America is fracturing into two countries—not North and South, but Coastal and Flyover.  Worse, the people in charge don’t understand the first thing about how most of the country thinks and lives.  Consider a few examples . . .

• In Flyover America, people believe criminals should be punished.  Coastal America focuses on “rehabilitation.”
• Flyovers think the Declaration of Independence was crystal clear: “All men are created equal.”  For Coastals, Black Lives Matter—but anyone who adds that all lives matter must be a racist.
• Coastals think they understand firearms because they watched a TV movie about Columbine.  Flyovers get a deer rifle for their thirteenth birthday.
• Coastals talk about blue-collar workers in the abstract.  Flyovers have a relative who works the night shift in a granola bar factory, where the big perk is taking home a bag full of granola bars every Friday.
• Coastals think every problem—from hurt feelings to the cost of birth control—requires government intervention and huge federal spending.  Flyovers know that money isn’t magic fairy dust, and many problems can be solved only by individual character and hard work.

It would all be funny—if Coastals weren’t winning on most of today’s big issues and changing the character of the United States in the process.

As Loesch writes, “Most of these pinkies-out, cocktail-drinking-appletini fans selfishly entertain grandiose plans of economic equality without realizing the negative impact their plans would have on the very people they pride themselves on helping.  That’s the true class warfare.”

Loesch shines the light of truth on everything from feminism to gun violence to abortion.  She reveals the damage done by elitists who flat-out don’t get the lives and values of people in the heart of the country.  And she asks common sense questions such as: How can you be angry at Walmart if you’ve never shopped in one?  How can you hate the police if you’ve never needed help from a cop?  How can you attack Christians if you don’t have a single friend who goes to church?

In other words, how can you run a country you’ve never been to?  And how much could our politics improve if Coastals would actually listen to their fellow Americans?  But, of course, Coastals won't listen to their fellow Americans from the heartland, because they are so infused with a sense of moral superiority that they see the Flyovers as backward dolts who need to be told what to think and do. 

Loesch's book is a rallying cry for anyone who wants our leaders to understand and respect the culture that made America exceptional in the first place.
  

University of Chicago Accidentally Proves That Gun Control Laws Don’t Work

From here, where there is more:

The city of Chicago has some of the toughest and strictest gun control laws on the books out of all the major cities in the entire country.

But every day the newspapers and TV stations of Chicago fill the airwaves with devastating reports showing innocent Americans being murdered by criminals carrying guns.

The city is a shining example of how gun control doesn’t stop criminals from obtaining and using guns to commit robbery and murder.

Instead of allowing law abiding Americans the chance to easily acquire a firearm for self-defense, politicians and public officials in Chicago call for harsher anti-gun measures almost daily.

The anti-gun crowd refuses to accept reality and the fact that criminals don’t obey gun control laws. They would rather disarm law abiding citizens who accept and obey the law.

A recent study by the University of Chicago proved this point after conducting a study to figure out how criminals in Chicago were acquiring their firearms.

Not surprisingly, administers of the study quickly learned these criminals do not acquire their guns from licensed dealers, private sellers, or even the Internet.

The study looked at inmates in Chicago’s Cook County Jail who face gun charges or who have a history of firearm related convictions.

They learned zero criminals have used gun shows or the Internet to purchase their weapons.

The reason why? The method is too easily traceable by law enforcement.

Instead, the preferred method for criminals was to purchase firearms available on the streets, where they are harder for law enforcement to track.

Harold Pollack, University of Chicago’s Crime Lab co-director, also said criminals, “were less concerned about getting caught by the cops than being put in the position of not having a gun to defend themselves and then getting shot.”

Read the rest.
 

About Those Palestinians...

From The New York Times, where there is more:

Fatah Makes Incendiary Facebook Claim of Killing 11,000 Israelis

JERUSALEM — In an effort to appeal to Palestinians ahead of hotly contested elections, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas listed one of its main achievements as having “killed 11,000 Israelis.”  [emphasis added]

The party, Fatah, made the incendiary claim on Tuesday in an Arabic-language post on one of its official Facebook pages.

“For the argumentative … the ignorant … And for those who do not know history,” begins the Facebook post, “The Fatah movement killed 11,000 Israelis.”

Fatah also claimed to have “offered 170,000 martyrs,” and hundreds of its followers, it said, were in “Israeli occupation jails.”

[...]

Israelis and Palestinians have long accused each other of incitement to violence.  But in Israeli eyes, Palestinian leaders starting with Yasir Arafat, the father of Palestinian nationalism who helped found Fatah in 1959, have had a habit of saying one thing in Arabic and another in English.

In the early 2000s, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising, Mr. Arafat led crowds in the West Bank city of Ramallah in a chant of “To Jerusalem, we are going, martyrs in the millions!” days after writing an Op-Ed article in The New York Times about the Palestinian vision of peace.

Mr. Abbas, who succeeded Mr. Arafat, has repeatedly said he supports nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation.  But Fatah has historically championed armed resistance as a central tenet of its doctrine for the liberation of the Palestinian people.

Read the rest.

And in related news (also from The New York Times):

Israel Charges Aid Group’s [World Vision's] Gaza Branch Manager With Funneling Funds to Hamas

ASHKELON, Israel — The Palestinian manager of the Gaza branch of World Vision, a major Christian aid organization, was charged by Israeli prosecutors on Thursday with infiltrating the charity on behalf of Hamas and funneling about $43 million in the group’s funds over the past six years to the military wing of the Islamist militant group.

Read the rest.
 

Roe vs. Wade will be overturned if Donald Trump wins, Mike Pence says

As a follow up to my previous post...

From the Los Angeles Times:

 

GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence on Thursday predicted Roe vs. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion, would be overturned if Donald Trump is elected president.

“I’m pro-life and I don’t apologize for it,” he said during a town hall meeting here. “We’ll see Roe vs. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs.”

The comments — made in a conservative stronghold that strongly supported Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over Trump in the Michigan primary — were part of a broader argument Pence has been making on the stakes of the election: Voters need to consider that the next president will likely select multiple Supreme Court justices.

Pence said Trump would appoint strict constitutionalists in the mold of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

“While we’re choosing a president for the next four years, this next president will make decisions that will impact our Supreme Court for the next 40,” he said. “… Go tell your neighbors and your friends, for the sake of the rule of law, for the sake of sanctity of life, for the sake of our 2nd Amendment, for the sake of all our other God-given liberties, we must insure the next president appointing justices to the Supreme Court is Donald Trump.”

They actually used the "A" word...

Have you ever noticed how abortion “rights” supporters always try to hide their real agenda?   They always refer to “women’s health care,” or a “right to privacy,” or a "right to choose"—as if we were talking about choosing chocolate or strawberry ice cream.   But they never talk about the rights of the babies living in their mothers’ wombs.

You almost never hear them come out and use the word, “abortion.”  Because they’re hiding something.  They know it is wrong; and they know the majority of Americans believe it is wrong.

That is why it was surprising and, in a way, gratifying to hear Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood go on stage at the Democratic National Convention and tell the crowd that Hillary Clinton:

“will always stand up for the rights of every woman to access a full range of reproductive health care, including abortion, no matter her economic status.”

She told the horrifying truth: Hillary Clinton believes abortion — the killing of an innocent child — is not just a right, it is a taxpayer-funded entitlement—even when the baby is in the 9th month of pregnancy!

As we come down to 100 days until the next presidential election, we must consider Hillary Clinton’s pro-abortion extremism, and we must unify to elect leaders who will pass lifesaving laws and appoint pro-life judges and Supreme Court justices.

Because it’s not just Hillary.  The entire Democratic National Convention was a celebration of abortion and the "progress" they have made, by which they meant the killing of millions of precious boys and girls who have been aborted since the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.

In fact, the Democratic Platform Committee this year put forth the most pro-abortion platform EVER in their party’s history.   The Democratic Platform includes provisions for:

• Abortions on babies old enough to live outside the womb.
• Repealing the “Hyde Amendment” so they can force you and me to pay for abortion on-demand with our tax dollars.
• Hundreds of millions of dollars for Planned Parenthood, the organization that has been caught on video discussing the harvest and sale of the body parts of babies they abort!

The good news is that, when presented with the truth, the American people have always rejected these kinds of extreme positions on abortion.   In fact, polls show that the American people today are better informed and more pro-life than ever!

It hasn't been reported much in the media (are we surprised?) but this year's Republican National Convention passed a platform that has been described as the most pro-life in the party's history.  The cultural divide between the two parties has been growing ever since the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan; but it is now more clearly defined and more serious in terms of the consequences for our country than ever before.

I urge you to do two things:

1. To contribute to a pro-life ministry--a crisis pregnancy center in your town, if there is one, or a local or national organization that is aimed at providing assistance to women with unexpected pregnancies or that is working to provide even greater protection for pre-born children.  (If there isn't a crisis pregnancy center in your town, I urge you get together with some friends and start one.  There are several national organizations, such as Care Net, that exist to help you.)

2. To vote for and to work to elect those candidates in this November's election who will advance the cause of life in our country and provide legal protection for unborn children and assistance to their parents. (We always speak of assistance to the mothers; but for every crisis pregnancy there is a father, too, who also needs spiritual and material assistance.)

Here are some organizations you might consider supporting:

The Susan B. Anthony List: https://www.sba-list.org

The National Right to Life Committee: http://www.nrlc.org

Care Net Pregnancy Centers: https://www.care-net.org

And, if you are an Anglican, as I am, please consider supporting Anglicans for Life: http://anglicansforlife.org

If you are a Christian of another tradition, there is information on pro-life organizations in your tradition through the National Pro-life Religious Council: http://www.nprcouncil.org