Brian Tashman's blog

NRA president David Keene appeared on The Mike Huckabee Show today where he told guest host J.D. Hayworth, a former congressman from Arizona, that President Obama is scared of America.

Keene claimed that Obama and his advisers don’t understand the gun debate because they live inside “the confines of urban Chicago or Cambridge, Massachusetts or Washington D.C.,” which Keene astonishingly seems to think are areas unaffected by gun violence.

He also blasted Obama for a comment about how he understands the appeal of gun ownerships in places like rural Iowa where law enforcement officers could be miles away, which Keene said is further proof that “he just doesn’t get it.”

Keene, whose group opposed background check legislation backed by a huge majority of Americans, including most gun owners and voters in “red states,” argued that Obama is out of step with the country and claimed that “frankly the rest of the country scares him.”

Keene: The amazing thing to me about this administration is just how parochial it is. These are people — remember when Barack Obama recently went to Iowa and he looked around and he said ‘well gosh I can understand why if my wife lived out here she might want a gun,’ what’s that about? You know, in other words, he just doesn’t get it. If you are outside the confines of urban Chicago or Cambridge, Massachusetts or Washington D.C., he and most of his advisers have no concept of what the rest of the country is like and frankly the rest of the country scares him.

Gun Owners of America head Larry Pratt spoke with Stan Solomon about the Boston marathon bombing, and they both agreed that the left is actually pleased with the attack because it might result in increased government control.

After co-host ‘Chief’ Steve Davis said that the left doesn’t want anyone who doesn’t work for the government to have guns and “they don’t care how many of us get killed, blown up, assaulted, murdered or whatever as long as they can control us by taking away our guns,” Solomon maintained that liberals are even okay with other liberals getting murdered: “It’s not just how many conservatives or Republicans [die] because these people that were killed and maimed and devastated and traumatized were overwhelmingly their people, they don’t care, they are like the Chinese who don’t care if they have a million casualties because they got a billion backups.”

Naturally, Pratt agreed and likened liberals to terrorists.

“That’s exactly right,” Pratt said, “this is mission oriented, they don’t care who the victims are, if anything it might be to their liking because maybe they’re thinking that will make the liberals all the more prone to want more control, which plays right into the hands of terrorists and criminals, but then I repeat myself.”

In earlier interviews, Pratt and Solomon warned that President Obama is bent on launching a race war that will target upper-class white heterosexual Christians.

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David Outten of the Religious Right media group Movieguide is worried that a new Disney television show may be undermining the traditional family. Outten warns in “Is Disney’s New Princess Undermining Family Values?” that the Disney show Sofia the First, which is about a girl who enters a princess-training academy after her mom, a commoner, marries a King, may be promoting the “modern family” at the expense of “the long-term well-being of children.”

Sofia the First, Disney’s new preschool princess on television, doesn’t need a prince. She’s the daughter of a poor single mother who marries King Roland. This daughter of a shoe cobbler must learn what it is to be a princess. She’s aided by visits from famous Disney movie princesses.

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Where will Sofia go? Where will she lead 2- to 5-year-olds?

Clearly, the creators see a role for the media in shaping the social and moral values of 2- to 5-year-olds. It’s fine to promote honesty, grace and civility, but any message that undermines the traditional family is harmful. Children raised by their natural parents are far less likely to live in poverty, quit school, use drugs, commit crimes or spend time in prison. If Disney actually cares about the long-term well-being of children, it would promote the traditional family rather than the “modern family.”

It would even be of benefit to Disney to do so. Children raised by their natural parents have far more disposable income to spend on Disney tickets, theme parks and merchandise than do children raised by single mothers. Few single mothers marry a king who can turn their daughters into princesses. More often the daughter of a single mother becomes a single mother herself. The havoc wreaked on children is immense. The economic impact is severe.

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The name Disney has traditionally been associated with family entertainment. Disney’s future is strengthened when the family is strengthened. It’s damaged when the family is undermined.

Tremendous research goes into the production of a program like Sofia the First. Disney would be wise to do tremendous research on the cause of poverty and the cause of high disposable income. They may learn that a princess who has both a mother and a father to take care of them and guide them, and a princess who marries a prince, is more likely to escape poverty and become a better Disney customer.

Writing in the Christian Post, Os Hillman argues that people are gay because they grew up in troubled households and the best way to “see a reduction in the gay population” is “to heal marriages.” “Healthy marriages produce healthy children with healthy identities,” Hillman writes, “Divorce is the entry point of dysfunctional and wounded lives that often lead to aberrant behaviors in human beings” like homosexuality.

Hillman, the dominionist behind Reclaiming the Seven Mountains, claims that gay people need to be freed from “bondage” and know that “God didn't create Adam and Joe.” If the gay rights movement succeeds, Hillman warns, then we may “end up like the Roman Empire and disintegrate from within.”

In the last 50 years the Christian evangelical church has allowed the value of covenant in marriage to be exchanged for contract in marriage. We no longer honor the marital covenant and we make it easy for marriages to break up and reproduce the same pain through remarriage, which also violates scripture. There is no longer shame for divorce or remarriage in the church. The problem has become epidemic and so divorce has become a manufacturing mechanism for dysfunction in society. Consequently the church has lost its moral authority to speak on this issue of gay marriage. Also, the failure of the Catholic Church regarding sexual abuse contributes to the failed authority within the Catholic Church.

We have compounded this by the church making homosexuality as the unpardonable sin by judging and condemning those in this lifestyle. A friend of mine who was delivered from the gay lifestyle said to me one time, "If there was a divorce rate of less than 5%, you would not be talking about gay issues." It would be a non-issue. That's because healthy marriages produce healthy children with healthy identities.

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Wounds can happen so early that a person can believe they were born that way. One thing is for sure, God never made a person gay. That would violate what the Bible teaches.

There's only one way to deal with the root problem; that is to heal marriages and return to covenant commitments in marriage learn to love those who are caught in a web of bondage. Only then will we see a reduction in the gay population.

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Divorce is the entry point of dysfunctional and wounded lives that often lead to aberrant behaviors in human beings in each new generation. Unless there is a stop-gap somewhere in the cycle, more and more expressions of aberrant behavior will be the result until we end up like the Roman Empire and disintegrate from within.

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In 2011, pop artist Lady Gaga received three American Music Awards from three nominations for her smash hit "Born This Way". Millions of young people and adults under 40 heard the gay propaganda over the airwaves compliments of Lady Gaga.

CNN weekend anchor, Don Lemmon revealed in 2012 he was gay during an interview. During one of his interviews with someone else on a CNN broadcast he subtly commented to the interviewer that he knew he was born gay. Because of the power of media viewers often take what is said as truth. Our young people have especially bought this lie. Yet there is no scientific data that proves a person is genetically pre-disposed to be gay. This deception is played out regularly in the media with few willing to state the truth for fear of backlash from the gay community.

Most of us hear the rationale of gay activists that they are born gay rather than their sexual preference being an influence of how they were raised and the exposure to societal factors and childhood wounds that predisposed them to this lifestyle. After the Ball authors Kirk and Madsen made an amazing admission in their book: "We argue that, for all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been born gay, even though sexual orientation, for most humans, seems to be the product of a complex interaction between innate predispositions and environmental factors during childhood and early adolescence." Here you have an amazing admission by gay leaders that "We are not born gay." But we want you to believe we were. What is their ultimate goal?

It isn't just to get acceptance. It is far more than that. David Kupelian explains: "The end game is not only to bring about the complete acceptance of homosexuality, including same-sex marriage, but also to prohibit and even criminalize public criticism of homosexuality. In other words, total jamming of criticism with the force of law. This is already the case in Canada and parts of Scandinavia."

Let's face it; God didn't create Adam and Joe. He created Adam and Eve.

However, being right about an issue has very little redemptive value in helping a gay person who we know is in bondage but may be unwilling to admit it.

Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman is upset that the government and the media don’t believe that the fertilizer plant explosion outside of Waco, Texas was a result of “Muslim terror.”

After arguing that President Obama is to blame for the Boston marathon bombing since “Obama has set the tone and led the way in giving this green light to his fellow Muslims bent on terror,” Klayman writes that Islamic terrorists were likely to blame for the explosion in Texas…along with the Oklahoma City bombing, which he believes was committed by Saddam Hussein and not Timothy McVeigh.

Klayman even blasted the media for not looking into whether there is an “Islamic connection” to the ricin letters case.

At first, Obama administration officials, as has become the norm, refused to implicate a possible Muslim terrorist plot, Obama himself describing the attack as a mere "tragedy." Indeed, given the latent and actual claims of persecution of Muslims in this country by Obama and his allies, like the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), even conservative channels like Fox News shied away from using the "M" word until it was crystal clear who had perpetrated the bombing. For example, Bret Baier of Fox News almost choked Friday morning when he broadcast the names and backgrounds of the bombers and sheepishly revealed their Muslim roots. This politically correct sensitivity, orchestrated and furthered by Obama and his minions, has contributed to the rise of Muslim extremism in our country. Terrorists like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to avoid even the appearance of prejudice against Muslims, are even given scholarships to prestigious schools and entrees into other venues of American society, which they can use as cover for their plots. In short, Obama has set the tone and led the way in giving this green light to his fellow Muslims bent on terror.

Nor was there hardly any mention on any station or other press entity of even the possibility that Muslim terror was involved in the huge explosion that occurred in West, Texas, where a fertilizer plant blew up Wednesday, just days after the Boston Marathon bombing. Typically, here is how the New York Times described the explosion:

"The blast was so powerful that the United States Geological Survey registered it as a 2.1 magnitude earthquake. It reduced an apartment complex to a charred skeleton, leveled homes in a five-block radius and burned with such intensity that railroad tracks were fused. It killed up to 15 people and injured up to 180. Volunteer firefighters were missing. Residents of a nursing home were pulled from debris and rushed to hospitals. ...

"By Thursday evening, one day after a fertilizer plant here caught fire and then exploded, no one among the hundreds of local state and federal officials and first responders who converged on this town north of Waco was certain about the cause. They only knew its effect." ["Blast at Plant Tears at Heart Of Texas Town" by Manny Fernandez and John Schwartz]

This intentionally "clueless" rendition of the likely cause of the blast continues to this day, despite the hard fact that fertilizer bombs are commonly used in the Middle East, were employed in the massive Oklahoma City federal building explosion – for which there was evidence that former Iraqi Sunni Muslim dictator Saddam Hussein played a role (I brought a lawsuit against Saddam Hussein and Iraq for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing) – and that the blast occurred in West, Texas, the former home of none other than former President George W. Bush. What symmetry and deadly timing with the Boston Marathon bombing – yet hardly a mention in the mainstream media of even the possibility of Muslim terrorism. And, of course, Obama and his comrades – including the FBI – refuse to even acknowledge the possibility (or likelihood) that the two events are somehow tied to Muslim terrorism.

And, while a ricin attack of this past week on a U.S. senator and, ironically, Obama himself apparently proved to be from a non-Muslim source, the irony again is that even the possibility of an Islamic connection was hardly mentioned by either the government or our mainstream media. This is despite the apparent similarity in timing and method to the Sept. 11, 2001, anthrax terror attack, which to this day have never been "solved."

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Neville Chamberlain of pre-World War II days would have been proud of Obama and his pro-Muslim minions in the administration. Their actions and non-actions have furthered a march to terror by Muslims similar to what Chamberlain "accomplished" with the Nazis in the years leading up to that great war. Thanks to our "Muslim President," Muslim terrorism in this country is again on the rise, and it threatens the very survival of our nation.

• Michael B. Keegan @ Huffington Post: The Background Check Filibuster: ‘Who’s Laughing Now?”

• Brett LoGiurato @ Business Insider: Joe Scarborough Explodes At GOP For Voting Down Gun Control: ‘This Party Is Moving Toward Extinction.’

• Evan Hurst @ Truth Wins Out: Former ‘Ex-Gay’ Superstar John Paulk Finally Renounces His ‘Ex-Gay’ Past. 

• Don Byrd @ Baptist Joint Committee: Young Plaintiff in Successful Church-State Lawsuit Faces Continued Bullying, Threats. 

• AFJ Justice Watch: Scalia’s latest: Unethical or merely appalling?

• Alexander Zaitchik @ Media Matters: How FAIR’s Activists And Radio Supporters Are Preparing For The Immigration Fight.

• Things just keep getting better for Michele Bachmann.

• Anti-Semitic slurs are probably not helping the GOP’s rebranding effort. 

• Here’s someone who won’t be featured anytime soon in NOM’s Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance. 

• In case you haven’t already lost faith in Congress, Republican congressman Jeff Duncan is now citing the Drudge Report as a “reputable news source.”

• Quote of the day from Don Feder: “Our president isn't about border security or national security or protecting the lives of innocent Americans (for whom he is largely indifferent, when an election isn't pending), but disarming innocent Americans, multi-cultural sensitivity, Muslim outreach, fighting negative stereotypes of Islam and giving great photo ops.”

There is a rumor taking off on the right, which has been embraced by the likes of Glenn Beck and Pamela Geller, that the Saudi student questioned over the Boston marathon attack is being deported. The rumor is, unsurprisingly, “one hundred percent false.”

But even though multiple news outlets, including the conservative Daily Caller, have debunked the story, the anti-Muslim group ACT! For America has decided to go ahead and run with it. The group sent out an email at 4:47 this afternoon repeating the rumor and warning that “something fishy is going on.”

The email also cites a debunked New York Post story (which has even been recanted by the Post) that identified two men who were supposedly potential suspects.

Act! For America had plenty of time to go keep up with this new information and hold back on sending their members an email about the two now-discredited stories. But accuracy has never been their strong point.

Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver has been spearheading efforts to strike down a California law barring ex-gay therapy for minors. Today, he chatted with Mike Huckabee about Liberty Counsel’s case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Staver warned that if the law stands, minors will be forced to turn to harmful, back-alley ex-gay therapy rather than to “licensed professionals.” Huckabee compared this to having an untrained person trying to set a broken leg.

Of course, Staver and Huckabee both support personhood laws that would criminalize abortion in all cases and dramatically increase cases of unsafe, back-alley abortions.

Staver: They make the premise that this counseling is harmful, it’s harmful if it’s engaged in, they say, by licensed professionals that have training and education. Well guess what? If this law passes and it goes into effect and the court doesn’t stop it, then if it’s harmful to have this by licensed professionals, what’s the next step? It’s even more harmful to have it done by people who are not licensed or trained, but that’s where it’s going.

Huckabee: It’s almost like saying that if you set a broken leg as a medical doctor and you don’t do it a certain way, you’re in trouble. Obviously, if you’re not even a medical doctor, I think you’d clearly be clearly under a greater level of trouble, that’s the point you’re making.

Later, Staver made the case that survivors of child abuse would not be able to receive counseling under the law and described the law as “dangerous.” Huckabee, meanwhile, wondered about the plight of a young gay man who “decided” to be heterosexual.

Staver: If this client comes in and the parents say he was molested by the likes of a Jerry Sandusky and abused, now after that several months later he started to have these acting out behaviors and he doesn’t like it, nor do we, can you help him? The counselor would have to say, ‘I can’t, you’re going to have to just accept that, that’s who you are, that’s natural and normal, I can’t give you counsel to ultimately help you eliminate those kinds of attempts that you want to act out, the kind of behavior that you were abused by.’ This is just an absurd situation; it is politically motivated.

Huckabee: I mean this really is the courts stepping in and telling the clinical practitioner the limits of his or her practice to a level that would seem unprecedented. Mat, let me pose a question, let’s say a young person comes in and says, ‘you know I’ve always believed I’m homosexual, believed that since I was seven-years-old, but now that I’m seventeen, I’ve decided that I’m not, I’m heterosexual’ and goes to a pro-homosexual counselor. Would that person be at risk? It looks like some of those folks would be nervous that they couldn’t say, ‘oh no, no you are homosexual all right because you thought that when you were seven and therefore you have to stay that way.’

Staver: The interesting thing the way the law is essentially written is if you are trying to give them counsel, even for somebody who say for example they say they’re bisexual, they’re attracted to both sexes, if you are trying to counsel them to primarily be heterosexual as opposed to homosexual that would be a clear violation. If you are trying to move them away, however, from heterosexuality to bisexuality, transexuality, asexuality, whatever sexuality you come up with, questioning, confused, then that is personally fine as long as you affirm them in that situation. But if you move them back towards heterosexuality, nope, that’s simply not permissible. You can see really where this law is coming from, this law is a political statement; it’s dangerous.

Pat Robertson knows that demonic spirits are behind everything from homosexuality and Halloween to karate and secondhand sweaters, and so it came as no surprise today when he warned 700 Club viewers that Dungeons & Dragons is a “demonic” game.

In response to a question regarding whether it is ok to “enjoy video games that have magic in them,” Robertson warned that such games are part of the “occult” and urged the questioner to “flee from evil.” He said that is especially the case when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons, which has “literally destroyed people’s lives.”

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