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Hate crime hoax: Houston Muslim arrested for setting his own mosque on fire

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Suspect arrested for arson of Houston mosque, liberals hardest hit
Suspect arrested for arson of Houston mosque, liberals hardest hit

Here’s the raw story from the leftist Houston Chronicle.

It says:

A Houston man has been arrested in connection with a suspected arson at a mosque on Christmas Day, but the motive for the crime remains a mystery, with the suspect maintaining he was a regular at the mosque.

A spokeswoman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed that the suspect, 37-year-old Gary Nathaniel Moore of Houston, was arrested early Wednesday. Moore appeared in court at 7 a.m., spokeswoman Nicole Strong said, and bond was set at $100,000.

According to a charging instrument released by the Harris County District Clerk, Moore told investigators at the scene that he has attended the storefront mosque for five years, coming five times per day to pray seven days per week.

Moore said he had been at the mosque earlier on Dec. 25 to pray, and had left at about 2 p.m. to go home, according to authorities and court papers. Moore said he was the last person to leave the mosque and saw no smoke or other signs of fire when he departed, authorities said. He maintained he had returned to the scene after hearing about the fire from a friend.

Now, I wouldn’t post this if there was not something to learn from it at a higher level, and there is. There is something to learn about the left-wing, shame the good, praise the evil, mindset.

Breitbart News documents the initial reactions from the mainstream media to the story before it was known who the guilty person was.

Excerpt: (links to other sites removed)

CBS News:

Advocacy groups believe there has been a spike in anti-Muslim incidents across the United States in recent weeks that can be linked to the mass shooting in California and the inflammatory rhetoric of Donald Trump and other Republican presidential candidates. And they say that Muslims are fearful the backlash could lead to further harassment and violence.

CNN:

The Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on authorities to investigate the fire for an anti-Muslim motive.

“Because of the recent spike in hate incidents targeting mosques nationwide, we urge law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for this fire,” Mustafaa Carroll, the chapter’s executive director, said in a statement.

NBC News:

The Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on authorities to investigate a possible bias motive in the case, citing what it called a “recent spike in hate incidents targeting mosques nationwide.

Now that a devout Muslim has been charged, the DC Media will forget all about the incident.

The media’s playbook is always to immediately use any disaster or crime as a means to make the GOP answer for it. Then, once the facts come out and point to a member of the Protected Class, the story is memory-holed and the accusation against the Republican lingers.

That was very bad, and it should teach you a lesson about how anxious the media is to make traditional groups (conservatives, Christians, orthodox Jews, etc.) feel ashamed, while protecting and praising radical Islamists. They want to force everyone to be “equal” on the moral scale, so that no one can judge anyone else. The problem is, as we see in this story, that not shaming evil causes evil people to more evil, not less evil.

Anyway, all that is well and good, but we haven’t seen the worst media bias. That prize goes to the radically, radically leftist Salon, which not only put up a story blaming conservatives for the arson, but then took it down once the news came out about who was arrested for it: (H/T Weasel Zippers)

Salon took down their entire post to protect radical Islamists
Salon took down their entire post to protect radical Islamists

(click for larger image)

Why did they do it? Because the story only had value to them when it could give America, Christians, Republicans, etc. a black eye. When it gave radicalized Muslim terrorists a black eye, then Salon had to take it down. They didn’t want to make their allies in the culture war look bad. And do you know what else Salon doesn’t report on? Crucifixions, torture, rape and murder by radical Muslims (often against other Muslims!) in other parts of the world. That doesn’t fit their narrative, either.

Do you ever wonder where so many people have an emotional reaction of sympathy for people who do evil? It’s because they’ve been conditioned by the media to think that somehow, some way, evil people are actually justified in doing their evil. And somehow, some way, good people are all hypocrites who shouldn’t judge anyone, because it is mean and makes people feel bad. If you went to public schools in America and listened to the mainstream media, you’ve been indoctrinated in that from birth to present day. It all comes from the shame that people on the left feel for their own immoral actions, and their desperate desire to stop all moral judging as a way of escaping from the misdeeds they committed in the past. This is their way of dealing with their own guilt – stopping everyone else from making moral judgments about anything.

To learn more about media bias from peer-reviewed studies that document it, click here.

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Is there a downside to celebrating homosexuality as normal?

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Making sense of the meaning of atheism
When disagreements come up, it’s good to look at what the evidence is

This article from Touchstone magazine has the numbers. The “CDC” is the government-run Centers for Disease Control.

It says:

We don’t hear much about the HIV/AIDS epidemic anymore. When was the last time you read an article either online or in a newspaper of general circulation, or saw a report on a television news program about HIV/AIDS? And yet, with no media attention or public fanfare, Mr. Obama’s proposed 2016 federal budget requests almost $32 billion for HIV/AIDS treatment and research, an increase of 3.1% over the prior year. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s recent decision finding a fundamental, constitutional “right” to homosexual and lesbian “marriage,” there is a deeply dark and dangerous side to today’s American homosexuality. Since the first cases of what would later become known as AIDS were reported in the United States in June of 1981, more than 1.8 million people in the U.S. are estimated to have been infected with HIV, of whom 658,507 have already died. Today, the Centers for Disease Control (“CDC”) estimates that more than 1,218,400 people aged 13 years and older are living with HIV/AIDS in the United States. Of those, tragically, the CDC estimates that almost 1 in 8 (156,300 or 12.8%) are unaware of their infection. Homosexual and bisexual men who have sex with men, particularly young African-American men, continue to be the most seriously affected by HIV/AIDS. Over the past decade, approximately 50,000 people are newly infected annually. In 2013, the CDC estimated that 47,352 people were diagnosed with HIV infection, and an additional 26,688 people were diagnosed with full-blown AIDS in the United States. Again, according to the CDC, in 2012, notwithstanding medical advances, an estimated 13,712 people with AIDS died.

Although African-Americans represent 12 percent of the U.S. population, but accounted for 44% of new HIV infections in 2012, and accounted for 41% of people living with HIV/AIDS. Hispanics/Latinos account for 20 percent of people living with HIV infection. Although homosexual and bisexual men who have exchanges of body fluids through anal intercourse and other sexual contact with other men represent a very small proportion of the male population in the United States, the CDC reports that they account for 78 percent of new HIV infections among males, and 63 percent of all new infections. Importantly, in a typical year, the greatest number of new HIV infections occur in younger African-American males aged 13-24. Younger black men accounted for 45% of all new HIV infections among African-Americans, and 55% of new HIV infections among all younger homosexual and bisexual men.

We can all think of behaviors that are not good for people. Suppose you notice your friend has started smoking, or maybe is eating too much and not exercising, or maybe’s she’s getting really thin and not eating enough – if you loved them, you would say something. What if they got defensive and they felt bad about being judged? I still think it’s good to gently but firmly tell the truth.

In my office, I have leftists who often tell me to recycle cans. If I don’t recycle cans, nothing bad will happen to me. But strangely enough, the leftists don’t have anything to say about behaviors that really would hurt me, like homosexuality. Secondhand smoke? They will condemn that. But engaging in risky sexual activity? They want to celebrate that. What sense does this double standard make? Tell people the truth about what behaviors might hurt them, but do it in a gentle way. Don’t just tell someone “it’s wrong”, either. Instead, show them the facts and the sources so they can check out the data for themselves.

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Can blacks and Hispanics blame their troubles on racism by whites?

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Does government provide incentives for people to get married?
The success of children is due to their parents’ choices, not from outside racism

If the underperformance of blacks and Hispanics in America were caused by racism by whites, then it follows that Asian-Americans would be underperforming as well. But Asian-Americans are outperforming whites. Let’s look at three reasons why, and see if blacks and Hispanics can learn how to succeed by looking at the Asian example.

Here is the summary of this post:

  1. Asian Americans marry before they have children
  2. Asian Americans save more of what they earn
  3. Asian Americans monitor their children’s educational progress

Now let’s take a look at each of these in order.

Asians marry before they have children, so the kids have two parents
Asians marry before they have children, so the kids have two parents

1. Asian Americans marry before they have children

This article is from Family Studies.

It says:

Eight in ten Asian-American kids live with married birth parents, compared with about seven in ten European-American kids, five in ten Hispanic-American kids, and only about three in ten African-American kids. Half of black children live with their mothers only, compared to three in ten Hispanic children, less than two in ten white children and less than one in ten Asian children.

Naturally, children who have two parents to look after them do better, because one parent alone cannot work and do household chores and monitor the children as easily as two parents can. The decision about whether to have sex before marriage is entirely under the control of the grown-ups. It cannot be blamed on racism, poverty and other non-moral pre-occupations of the secular left. Marriage is a moral issue, and Asian-Americans do the moral thing, and marry before they have children.

Asian household wealth set to surpass whites
Asian household wealth set to surpass whites

2. Asian Americans save more of what they earn

This article from CNN Money explains:

Asians have had higher median incomes than their white counterparts, according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The typical Asian family has brought home more money for most of the past two decades.

[…][Asians] will surpass whites in net worth in the next decade or two, Fed researchers said.

[…]In 1989, the median Asian family had about half the net worth of its white peer. By 2013, they had more than two-thirds.

The gap between whites and blacks and Hispanics, meanwhile, remained little changed over that time period.

Asians have similar financial habits to whites, in terms of investing and borrowing. Both groups are more likely than blacks and Hispanics to invest in stocks and privately-owned businesses and to have more liquid assets, which serves as a buffer against financial shocks. And, on average, the former have about half as much debt as the later.

As a result, Asians and whites have more financial stability than blacks and Hispanics, which also allows the former to build more wealth.

Everyone has to earn and save money, but in some cultures, it becomes normal to not save part of what you earn. That needs to stop. But it has nothing to do with discrimination due to skin color. In Asian culture, there is no glorification of consumer spending on sparkles, bling and other ostentatious wealth. Asians don’t want to appear to be wealthy, they want to actually be wealthy – by saving money.

Composite SAT scores by race and income levels
Composite SAT scores by race and income levels: Asians outperform at every income level

3. Asian Americans monitor their children’s educational progress

This article from Investors Business Daily explains how Asian parents don’t just make demands on their kids to learn, they actively monitor their progress and talk to their kids’ teachers:

Asian-American parents tend to oversee their children’s homework, hold them accountable for grades and demand hard work as the ticket to a better life. And it pays off: Their children are soaring academically.

[…]As a group, Americans need to take a page from the Asian parents’ playbook. American teens rank a dismal 28th in math and science knowledge, compared with teens in other countries, even poor countries.

Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are at the top. We’ve slumped. For the first time in 25 years, U.S. scores on the main test for elementary and middle school education (NAEP) fell. And SAT scores for college-bound students dropped significantly.

[…]Many [Asian students]from poor or immigrant families, but they outscore all other students by large margins on both tests, and their lead keeps widening.

In New York City, where Asian-Americans make up 13% of overall students, they win more than 50% of the coveted places each year at the city’s eight selective public high schools, such as Bronx Science and Stuyvesant.

What’s at work here? It’s not a difference in IQ. It’s parenting. That’s confirmed by sociologists from City University of New York and the University of Michigan. Their study showed that parental oversight enabled Asian-American students to far outperform the others.

No wonder many successful charter schools require parents to sign a contract that they will supervise their children’s homework and inculcate a work ethic.

You can see an updated image with the latest scores here.

It’s not enough to just outsource the education of your children to a bunch of non-STEM education-degree-holding teachers. Teachers can be good, and some work very hard. But the Democrat teacher unions prevent the firing of teachers who underperform. This is especially true in non-right-to-work states (Democrat states). So, you cannot depend on teachers to educate your children, and Asian parents don’t. That’s why their kids learn. Performance of children in school is not affected by discrimination against skin color, it’s affected by the level of involvement of parents.

Conclusion

We have learned that the success of Asian-Americans in America is all earned. And this proves that there is no such thing as “racism” that holds back non-whites. If blacks and Hispanics imitated the behaviors of Asians (not whites, but Asians), then they would achieve just as well as Asians do. It’s not a race problem, it’s a behavior problem. It’s not a “racism” problem, it’s a behavior problem. It’s an us problem, it’s not a them problem.

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Every day in America law-abiding citizens use legally-owned guns to stop crimes

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Gun ownership up, gun violence down
Gun ownership up, gun violence down (Source: Congressional Research Service)

I have some European friends on Facebook, and they cannot understand why Americans like to own guns as much as we do. Many of them are influenced by Hollywood movies that glamorize gun use. They perceive guns in a way that is different than the people who actually own them. So why do law-abiding Americans own firearms? It’s a very simple and obvious reason, really. We own guns because we don’t like criminals robbing us, raping us, murdering us, and damaging the property we bought with our own earned incomes.

Here are a couple of examples from earlier this week that illustrate this concept.

First one from Virginia, reported by local news:

Neighbors are praising a Henrico man who took matters into his own hands when he noticed something wrong in his neighborhood. When the man saw another man looking into vehicles parked along Viking Lane, near Woodman Road, at about 8:30 Tuesday night — he confronted the individual, police said.

“When the resident approached the suspect, the suspect drove a pickup truck right in the path of the resident until the resident drew a handgun, forcing the suspect to stop,” Henrico Police spokesman Sgt. Colin Rooney said.

Neighbor Theresa Strickland witnessed the tense situation.

“I saw him demand that he get out of the truck and was standing in the path of the truck and I thought how in the world is he going to make this guy stop his vehicle,” she said. “Apparently he did and I’m thankful he did.”

In Europe, Canada, or other pro-criminal countries where the law-abiding populations are disarmed, this would never happen. Liberals run those countries, and they just don’t see the point of allowing taxpayers to prevent “redistribution of wealth” by criminals. After all, if criminals are poor, they should be allowed to take the property of their law-abiding neighbors. It’s always the poorer law-abiding people who are the ones most threatened by crime… but liberals don’t care about them – they care about the criminals.

Here’s another from Ohio, reported by local news:

Trotwood Police were called to a home at the dead end of Atlas Road around 6:00 Monday morning.

Police tell FOX 45 three masked men armed with firearms forcibly entered and attempted to rob the homeowner.

[…]”I got my gun and I started shooting and they ran,” the female caller told dispatchers. “They all three had guns, I’m confused … they must not have had bullets because after I pulled the trigger they just took off, instead of firing back. I don’t know if I hit one or not, I don’t see blood anywhere.”

The three suspects were caught on home surveillance outside the residence, before they kicked their way inside.

Police say two kids were asleep inside the home in the room where the invaders kicked their way in.

[…]Trotwood Police said two of the suspects tried to steal a safe, while the third held the victim and two kids at gunpoint. They say the homeowner was able to get away and grab a gun she had hidden in the room, then started firing shots at the suspects.

Now, the response of most liberals, criminals and terrorists, and other predators to this story will be to say “she should just let the criminals assault her and the kids, steal her property, rape them all, and murder them all.” That’s the liberal view, after all – let the criminals do as they please while you wait for the police to arrive. In fact, in the UK, people who defend themselves with any weapon are usually arrested by the police, for example in this case or in this case. This makes sense to liberals – they want to arrest people who scare criminals off by defending themselves.

Learn about the issue

To find the about guns and self-defense, look in the academic literature. Here are two books I really like for that.

Both of those books make the case that permitting law-abiding citizens to own firearms for self-defense reduces the rate of violent crime.

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New study: children from broken homes more likely to have mental health issues

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Does government provide incentives for people to get married?
Do children do as well when they are raised by single parents or step families?

This was reported in the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

Children brought up by single parents and in step families are three times as likely to suffer from mental health problems, a major study has found.

Research on more than 10,000 children found that those brought up by both natural parents are far less likely to suffer severe emotional and behavioural problems.

The major study by University College London shows large differences in the well-being of children, depending on their upbringing.

Experts said the findings added to “a mountain of evidence” about the damage caused by family breakdown, with children left stressed by marital breakdowns, or falling into poverty which could increase their risk of psychiatric distress.

The Millennium Cohort Study examined the mental health of 10,448 11-year-olds living in the UK.

Overall, 6.6 per cent of children living with both natural parents were found to have severe mental health problems, compared with 15 per cent of those living with single parents, and 18.1 per cent of those living in step-families.

[…]Higher levels of mental health problems were found among boys, who were more likely than girls to suffer from conduct problems, hyperactivity and inattention.

[…]Children brought up in low income households were also more likely to suffer mental health problems, with a four-fold difference between the wealthiest and poorest households.

So, from a Christian perspective, here’s what I want to say about the harm caused to children when men and women choose to make babies with people who are not capable of making a commitment.

Chastity

First, the Christian view of dating and courtship is not very popular today, even among conservative Christians. Instead, most people have embraced the “feelings-driven” model of dating and courtship, where relationships are viewed as a vehicle for experiencing fun and thrills. The Christian model stresses self-control, by requiring strict chastity – no sex before marriage. But, if you ask feminists, they will tell you that women should engage in premarital sex for recreational purposes, and that women should not think about the harm that could result from an unplanned pregnancy (abortion or fatherlessness). If a woman thinks that recreational sex is OK, then she will attract a man who thinks that relationships are about personal fulfillment, not about commitment. When you take premarital sex off the table, the focus of relationships becomes about making a match based on commitment, not fun. Men who get into relationships for recreational sex are the exact kind of men who want relationships to be about fun, not commitment. And that’s why women should not choose them, because as the study shows, children suffer.

Stewardship

Second, the Christian model requires the man to provide financially for his family. Christian women are expected to favor men who focus on their studies, choose jobs that pay well, and save their money for their future families. In fact, fathers are supposed to guard their daughters from men who do not work, do not save and are not financially prepared for marriage. Again, this view is not embraced by most people. Most young women believe in feminism, which is the view that men and women are interchangeable, and men have no specific duty to provide for others. So, when women choose men, they are not choosing them according to this requirement to provide. Instead, they choose men who let them rule, or who are fun, or who don’t expect anything out of the woman except sex. A man who makes no demands is valued higher than a man who earns money and requires emotional support for the stress he incurs from working and saving. And naturally, when children arrive, these women find that men who were unemployed or underemployed are not able to take responsibility for their children.

Commitment takes self-denial and self-control

So, there are two reasons why people are not staying together. And both of these are embraced by women today. Women see premarital sex as something they can give to a man to get his attention without having to support him in a feminine / supportive way. And women see a weak man who does not work and save as having no authority over them to lead them. The desire to avoid the judgment and leadership of marriage-minded men causes women to choose losers who are easy to control and manipulate – men they won’t have to listen to or support. The problem with those men is, of course, that they don’t keep commitments. And that’s why we have this problem of broken homes.

Welfare

It would probably help if we were not paying women welfare in order to have babies before they are married, too. After all, you get more of what you subsidize, especially when our new emotional view of morality makes moral judgment of single mothers impossible. Almost every single mother chose to have sex with a man who did not commit, the only exception being rape. But instead of blaming women for their poor choices, we pretend that they can do as they please, and that men must enable their irresponsible choices. When we cut off the funding for women who choose to become single mothers (by choosing to have sex with men who cannot commit) then children will do much better. Children are more important than women or men. We have to shame the grown-ups into restraining their wildness, so that children get what they need from both of their parents.

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