Neil Armstrong Dead at 82

RIP to a great man.

Media Double Standard

     So anyone watching the news the past few days will know about the shooting at the Family Research Council. Now personally, I do not at all like this group in terms of their anti-gay marriage stance. Some gay rights advocates say they can be classed as a hate group. I don't know a whole lot about their actual activities myself, so I won't go so far as to call them that, and with these types of groups it depends. Some conservatives are just anti-gay marriage, while others will present themselves as just anti-gay marriage, but behind-the-scenes are actually viscerally anti-gay period, pushing for legislation behind-the-scenes that is very anti-gay.

     Some say this is what the FRC does. Well as said, I haven't researched it, but either way, hate group of not, I think it is a complete double-standard of the worst kind that the media has barely bothered to report the shooting there! If that had been a Tea Party member shooting (or trying to shoot) up let's say a Planned Parenthood, I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that it would have been 24/7 in the news cycle, with talk about the way groups like the Tea Party breed hatred, the dangers of right-wing hatred, and so forth. We saw what happened with the Gabriel Giffords shooting by Jared Loughner, a man who cited The Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books. Despite this, the general "climate of hate" was blamed for it, with said climate being blamed on the right-wing (even though the Left continue to participate in such harsh rhetoric (not saying the Right don't do it too, but the Left do it a lot as well)), and Sarah Palin accused of having influenced Mr. Loughner (!!!).

Yes, the media has reported the incident, butI think nothing like they would have had this been a right-wing nutcase as opposed to a left-wing nutcase.

Paul Ryan Announced As Mitt Romney's VP Running Mate

     So this will be interesting to watch. I think Paul Ryan can aid Romney's campaign in how knowledgable and fluent he is on the issues, and how he can come across in a very non-aggressive, non-mean sort of way, which is good. The Democratic party is going to attack him on his Medicare reform plan with the misconception that his policy is to get rid of Medicare as it exists whether people like it or not. It will be interesting if Ryan is criticized for lacking foreign policy experience, when the same critics were okay with Barack Obama's complete lack of foreign policy experience when he was running for President. But that's politics! I guess the Romney campaign wants to get this whole thing out-of-the-way early. I do wonder though if President Obama will keep Biden as his running mate, or switch to making Hillary Clinton as his running mate.

Gun Regulations and Semi-Automatic Guns

Another thing I wanted to point out regarding semi-automatic firearms is that semi-automatic guns in the United States have to be manufactured according to specific regulations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms that make them difficult to convert into fully-automatic weapons. Any semi-automatic gun that can easily be converted into an automatic weapon is classed as an automatic weapon.

Chick-Fil-A

So anyone who's been following the news lately is probably aware of the hoopla Chick-Fil-A's owner stirred up when he said that God will punish the United States for embracing gay marriage. The mayors of some major cities such as Chicago and Boston moved to ban Chick-Fil-A from their cities. Chick-Fil-A got a major sales boost from supporters however as a result of this.

Now me personally, I am fine with gays and gay marriage. But I think it is wrong to try to bully a business because its owner has anti-gay marriage (or even anti-gay) views. By law, the business cannot put up a sign saying that they do not serve gay people, so gay or straight, you can go in there and buy food and eat. We cannot become a country where people have to literally start being careful about what opinions they have or else their business will be outlawed from an area. That sets a very bad precedent that could spill over into other things.

The beauty of the free enterprise system is that if you don't like the views of the business's owner or the business itself, then don't buy their product.