Monday, September 17, 2012



Pedophilia hysteria engulfs Minnesota football coach

A Minnesota football coach continues to face two child pornography charges, despite investigators revealing that no evidence of child porn was found on the computers taken from the home.  Minnesota State, Mankato coach Todd Hoffner was arrested and charged after three videos of his children were found on his work-issued cellphone when he took it to the university for service.

His attorney and wife have publicly rejected the charges as ridiculous, saying the videos simply captured the family's children being silly.

A search of computers taken from the Hoffner home has found 'no additional items that would be considered child pornography,' said Blue Earth County Sheriff's Captain Rich Murry. That information will now be forwarded to the county attorney's office.

Hoffner was charged last month with one count of using minors in a sexual performance or pornographic work and one count of possessing child pornography. Both are felonies.

His attorney, James Fleming, said he was confident that authorities would not come up with any additional evidence and the case will focus on the images recovered from the cellphone.

'So now we are dealing with: Are these images in fact, child pornography?' Fleming said. 'And I believe that it's going to be shown very clearly - they are not.'  The videos include images of Hoffner's children behaving 'silly' after a bath, Fleming said.

Prosecutor Mike Hanson did not return phone messages seeking comment.

Hoffner was arrested after the videos were found and escorted off a football practice field in August. He remains on leave pending a university investigation.

At a hearing on Friday, Fleming pressed for greater access to the cellphone videos, saying he needed them to mount his defense. Fleming has seen the images but must go to the Blue Earth County Sheriff's Department to view them - with officials looking over his shoulder.

Blue Earth District Court Judge Krista Jass took that request under advisement.

According to an affidavit in the case, audio on one of the videos includes a child saying: 'Dad, that's not the show, make him do it right,' and a man's voice says, 'Do it over.'

Fleming said the suggestion that Hoffner was directing his children is 'absolutely wrong.'  'I've seen that affidavit. And I have seen the video. And that representation is wrong,' he said.

The affidavit says university officials also came across a video of a roughly 40-year-old 'naked adult male jumping off a boat skinny dipping.'

Fleming said Hoffner is frustrated, and the publicity has made the case difficult.  'He's very protective of his family,' he said.

Hoffner is entering his fifth year as head football coach at Minnesota State, Mankato. He led the team to the playoffs in 2008 and 2009 and a share of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference title in 2011.

He has a 34-13 record at Minnesota State, Mankato, and was named NSIC coach of the year in 2009.

SOURCE






British Leftist leader talks conservative talk

Tony Blair did the same, with no obvious effect

Ed Miliband today declares that Labour will be on the side of capitalists who want to get rich, provided they work hard for their money.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the Labour leader pays tribute to Baroness Thatcher for creating an era of aspiration in the 1980s.

Mr Miliband says he will not “pass moral judgment” on those who accrue significant personal wealth but insists they have a responsibility to play by the rules.

His comments represent a moderation of Lord Mandelson’s now infamous boast that New Labour was “intensely relaxed” about people becoming “filthy rich”.  Both Mr Milband, and Lord Mandelson, have accepted that this sentiment no longer applies in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Mr Miliband says that the last Labour government was too ready to accept that businesses and financial services needed “light touch” regulation.

However, he says the “creativity” of capitalism should be harnessed and made “more decent” and “humane”. “I believe capitalism is the least worst system we’ve got.”

Asked whether it is good to be rich, he replies: “Yes, if you make it the hard way. It’s not for me to pass moral judgment.”

Mr Miliband has sought to shed the “Red Ed” caricature which his opponents invented after he beat his brother David to the Labour leadership in 2010 with votes of the trade unions.

His father, Ralph, was a leading thinker of the Marxist Left who made capitalism his enemy, but Mr Miliband insists he does not subscribe to the same doctrine.

“My Dad was sceptical of all the Thatcher aspirational stuff,” he says. “But I felt you sort of had to recognise that what she was talking about struck a chord. I want to save capitalism from itself.”

SOURCE





Depending on Dependency

    Thomas Sowell

The theme that most seemed to rouse the enthusiasm of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte was that we are all responsible for one another -- and that Republicans don't want to help the poor, the sick and the helpless.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

Yet the notion that people who prefer economic decisions to be made by individuals in the market are not as compassionate as people who prefer those decisions to be made collectively by politicians is seldom even thought of as a belief that should be checked against facts.

Nor is this notion confined to Democrats in America today. Belief in the superior compassion of the political left is a worldwide phenomenon that goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But in all that time, and in all those places, there has been little, if any, effort on the left to check this crucial assumption against facts.

When an empirical study of the actual behavior of American conservatives and liberals was published in 2006, it turned out that conservatives donated a larger amount of money, and a higher percentage of their incomes (which were slightly lower than liberal incomes) to philanthropic activities.

Conservatives also donated more of their time to philanthropic activities and donated far more blood than liberals. What is most remarkable about this study are not just its results. What is even more remarkable is how long it took before anyone even bothered to ask the questions. It was just assumed, for centuries, that the left was more compassionate.

Ronald Reagan donated a higher percentage of his income to charitable activities than did either Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ted Kennedy. Being willing to donate the taxpayers' money is not the same as being willing to put your own money where your mouth is.

Milton Friedman pointed out that the heyday of free market capitalism in the 19th century was a period of an unprecedented rise in philanthropic activity. Going even further back in time, in the 18th century Adam Smith, the patron saint of free market economics, was discovered from records examined after his death to have privately made large charitable donations, far beyond what might have been expected from someone of his income level.

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.

Although the big word on the left is "compassion," the big agenda on the left is dependency. The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

Optimistic Republicans who say that widespread unemployment and record numbers of people on food stamps hurt President Obama's reelection chances are overlooking the fact that people who are dependent on government are more likely to vote for politicians who are giving them handouts.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that, back during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He was reelected in a landslide after his first term, during which unemployment was in double digits every single month, and in some months was over 20 percent.

The time is long overdue for optimistic Republicans to understand what FDR understood long ago, and what Barack Obama clearly understands today. Dependency pays off in votes -- unless somebody alerts the taxpayers who get stuck with the bill.

The Obama administration is shamelessly advertising in the media -- whether on billboards or on television -- for people to get on food stamps. Welfare state bureaucrats have been sent into supermarkets to tell shoppers that food stamps are available.

The intelligentsia have for decades been promoting the idea that there should be no stigma to accepting government handouts. Living off the taxpayers is portrayed as a "right" or -- more ponderously -- as part of a "social contract."

You may not recall signing any such contract, but it sounds poetic and high-toned. Moreover, it wins votes among the gullible, and that is the bottom line for welfare state politicians.

SOURCE





"Culture of Like Minds" in the media  -- admits NYT

It is not often that members of the liberal national media admit their biases. Americans know that the media is not impartial and that objectivity is not a priority when reporting on current events. Americans need and deserve a balanced media.

The New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane gave us insight into the Times’ liberal slant in his final column after two years with the newspaper. He criticizes the Times for being “powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds.” The members of the liberal national media are surrounded by others who share their beliefs and political prejudices. This one-sided worldview leads to biased reporting that favors their views.

Which way do the newspapers and many news outlets lean politically? Many Americans already know the answer to this. Brisbane continues that “across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism…that this worldview virtually bleeds though the fabric of the Times.” He then uses issues such as gay marriage and the Occupy Wall Street movement as examples of this, which he states “seem to almost erupt in the Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.”

This is not breaking news. Eight years ago, the very first public editor of the Times, Daniel Okrent, wrote a column about the political leaning of the newspaper. Okrent agreed that a tone of “implicit advocacy” was apparent in the newspaper on social issues such as “gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others.”

Politico’s Executive Editor Jim VandeHei also admitted to the media’s bias. In his analysis of the recent media coverage of the political arena he stated, “the mainstream media tends to be quite smitten with the Obamas.” The liberal media’s bias is becoming so apparent that prominent members of the media can no longer defend the media’s impartiality. Even those who are notoriously seen as unapologetically biased like CNN’s Soledad O’Brien don’t deny the fact that bias in the national liberal media is out of control. She recently cited the administration for its tactics against Republican ideas for Medicare reform by pointing out their strategy amounts to a scare tactic aimed at seniors.

If the media were to be truly impartial, it would have reported more widely how the deficit just surpassed a historic $16 trillion. It would have reported that President Obama’s budget was voted down by every single member of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. It would have reported that the auto bailout of GM and Chrysler cost taxpayers $25 billion, and that much of that money went to pay off auto unions.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCHAUSTRALIAN POLITICSDISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine).   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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