The Republican Platform: Fringey Stupid

Oh boy. I’ve gotten a look at the Republican platform and let me tell you, while the common sense folks of the Tea Party are making progress all over the country, the fringers who make up the inner sanctum of the Republican cult remain safely ensconced in their bunker. . . untouched by reality. Check this out.

● Priority Number One: The Economy! Well, no. Of the 18 “ideas” listed, not one of them involves improving the economy. Why? Because the retarded chimps who put this platform together don’t care about the economy. What do they care about? Read on.

● Priority Number One: Repealing Obamacare! Well, no. That’s number six on the list, after such high priority issues like “making the internet family friendly.” Yes, you read that right. These dipsh*ts think it is more important to let people know that the Republican Party wants to censor the internet than it is to repeal Obamacare.

● The Homosexual Menace: So what is the first priority listed? This year’s most important priority, apparently, will be stopping gays from marrying. Why? Because “studies” show that children from married couples stay off drugs, get married and don’t commit crimes. Ergo, gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry. Don’t worry if that makes no sense, just accept the idea that Jesus hates gays. By the way, this same group of the self-righteous is opposed to civil unions too because gays are yucky.

● Fix Welfare. . . Somehow: Next our slow friends have decided that welfare doesn’t work, especially because Obama wants to discourage people on welfare from working. So they want someone, somewhere to fix the current system somehow to encourage people to work. . . which it already does.

● Internet “Freedom”: Apparently, the platform will include some highly technical sounding, yet utter nebulous plan to support internet freedom. Reading the definition will make your head spin, but the lawyer in me had to laugh at all the caveats and interest group sops already obvious in the definition. It sounds like the Republican “internet freedom” platform will be about protecting ISPs (who support Republicans) over net companies (who support Democrats). Any freedom resulting from this will be purely coincidental.

And just in case some freedom should accidentally result, the platform makes sure you can't misuse your freedom because it includes a nifty little section on censoring the internet to make it “family friendly.” See, the internet is EVIL. Apparently, “millions of Americans suffer from . . . pathological gambling” and “the Internet must be made safe for children.” So it’s time to shut down gambling sites, ban sex offenders from the internet, and force ISPs to save the children. . . all “while respecting First Amendment rights.” No, I’m not making this sh*t up.

● Americans with Disabilities: Forget the economy, it’s more important that we make sure Americans with disabilities are included in all aspects of our national life. Well, not all aspects. In fact, all we really care about is two things: (1) we need to force insurers and doctors to treat people with disabilities (I’m told doctors in particular like to tease the disabled with fake cures), and (2) when will somebody finally stop the government from taking children away from people with disabilities? Seriously! This national crisis just dominates the news and it's time someone had the courage to address this! Be brave Platform monkeys, be brave.

Oh, we should also support some nebulous sounding employment programs which we didn’t have the time to examine, but their titles sound nice.

● Repealing Obamacare/Abortion: Finally, we come to repealing Obamacare. Why repeal it? Well, because it’s not right. Also, “Through Obamacare, the current Administration has promoted the notion of abortion as healthcare. We, however, affirm the dignity of women by protecting the sanctity of human life. Numerous studies have shown that abortion endangers the health and well-being of women, and we stand firmly against it.” Yep, they talk about repealing Obamacare because it promotes abortion.

● Fixing Our Healthcare/Abortion: So how do we fix the nation’s healthcare? Simple: “health is an individual responsibility” and people need to take better care of themselves. That means you fatboy! “Chronic diseases [are] related to lifestyle [and] drive healthcare costs.” So we need to “promote healthy lifestyles.” No doubt, these will be based on being abortion-free and internet porn free. And lest you think I’m joking, two paragraphs into this one, they call upon states to stop “subsidies for abortion.” I guess abortion makes you fat.

Then they give the usual sop to insurance companies (big Republican contributors), which is the worst thing we could do other than what Obama did, and they want science to save us by making record keeping cheaper. Maybe we should ban 16 oz. drinks?

● More Abortion: Then we do two more “healthcare” related points – “supporting” research and protecting individual conscience in healthcare. The first involves banning stem cell treatments and stopping abortion, and the second involves stopping abortion. Are you starting to see a pattern here?

● Reforming the EPA: Oops, sorry, the EPA is cool. . . everybody likes the EPA. We need to reform the FDA. Why? Because drug companies are Republican contributors and they are having a hard time with the current EPA.

● Oops, forgot, more Healthcare: Yes, we’ve mentioned healthcare several times, but we forgot to mention that we want to reduce costs through tort reform. That should fix everything, even though Andrew pointed out that tort reform will only cut a couple billion dollars in a multi-trillion dollar system. Yep. . . problem solved! (Especially once we stop fat people from getting abortions.)

● Education: We’re opposed to “the crippling bigotry of low expectations.” Hell, who isn't?! So how do we fix that? We want reform! But we don’t believe in one-size-fits all, so we can’t really tell you what we want, but it must involve traditional values.

● “Fixing” College Costs: College costs suck. They are “unsustainable.” We should get private companies to issue student loans (fyi: they already do) and we should tell people more about what they are paying (fyi: they already know). Also, maybe not everyone should go to college? Problem solved!

● Prison Reform: Yes, this issue which just dominates the nation’s headlines day after day after day finishes this amazing platform. Basically, we support what we’ve been doing because liberals oppose it and that makes it reform. Yay reform!

● Other Points: Also, while we're at it, let's keep them dirty Mexicans out and let's think about the gold standard because the 500% inflation in the price of gold in the past decade sure makes gold seem awfully stable!


There you have it. A declaration of idiocy. This is the kind of document I would have written if I wanted to lampoon the Republican Party as being dominated by cultists. Gays, abortion, abortion, abortion, some stuff nobody cares about, abortion, stupidity and the status quo described as reform. Not only has this gang of fornicating monkeys completely missed the issues of the day, they’ve proven that (1) they remain obsessed with gays and abortion, (2) they are obsessed with controlling everyone’s private lives, and (3) they know NOTHING. At least they didn’t include Islamophobia or suggest that women get pregnant and stop taking jobs that belong to men. I guess that's something.

It’s time to purge the party of its moronic fringe and force the party hierarchy to at least join the 20th Century, if not the 21st. Fortunately, Romney doesn’t believe any of this crap and is more likely to wipe his butt with this document than he is to read it.

As an aside, if you want to know what the platform should have looked like, how about this:

1. Replace Obamacare with free market healthcare.
2. 10% across the board cut in federal spending and federal wages.
3. Flat tax.
4. Strict anti-lobbying/graft laws.
5. Repeal of all regulations not necessary for public safety.
6. Comprehensive immigration reform.
7. School choice using vouchers.
8. Internet Anti-Censorship Law plus Privacy Rights.
9. Banning government funding for abortion, imposing reasonable restrictions and otherwise leaving this decision to the individual.

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Republican Wacko Should Resign Now

This is going to be a nasty article and some of you won’t like it. I don’t care. I’m finding myself really pissed off at the retard who will be representing our side in the Missouri Senate Primary. His name is Todd Akin and he seemed pretty decent until his dogma shut down his brain. He needs to resign.

Akin was asked this weekend during a television interview about his view on whether or not abortion should be allowed in the case of rape. His answer was this:

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

By which he meant that victims rarely get pregnant from “legitimate rapes.” He then stated that he thinks abortion should be banned in the case of rape.

Uh... f*ck you.

First of all, what is a legitimate rape? And what kind of piece of sh*t would believe that rape comes in degrees of legitimacy? I hate the word “insensitive,” but I can’t imagine a better use for it than the way Akin just smeared rape victims. This is so reminiscent of Texas gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams, who obnoxiously said about the rain: “It’s a lot like rape. As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”

That a human being would utter either of these statements is frankly incomprehensible to me. How f*cked up do you need to be to believe that only certain rapes matter or that rape is something women should enjoy? Where does the Republican Party keep finding these sex-obsessed troglodytes?

Secondly, what is this crap that somehow the female body “has ways to shut the whole thing down”? Where does this medical quackery come from? If a doctor said this, they would lose their medical license for incompetence. If a teenager said this, we would laugh at them for being stupid. Yet here a grown “man” says this? This is dogma, this is not science. This is a man who believes in witchcraft, who sees women as unclean deceivers, and who fears the atheists under his bed. This is not a man whose judgment can be trusted. This is the kind of crap which gives Christians a bad name.

Akin, of course, apologized for this obscenity, but this is one of those moments where you can’t un-ring a bell. We now know what he believes, and this is not a man I would want near any female I knew and I sure as heck don’t want him in a position to represent my side of the aisle on women’s issues. He is unfit and needs to resign.

And let me say, this is exactly why young professional women will never vote Republican, but that’s not even what bothers me here. What bothers me is that a man with a Fourteenth Century understanding of sexual relations could be chosen to serve in the United States Senate. He needs to resign. If he doesn’t, I will support McCaskill.

Conservatives need to rid themselves of these people.

And while I’m at it, let me say that if you believe women should be forced to carry children to term when they’ve been raped, then you are wrong. There is no legal or moral justification for your position. You are suggesting sexual slavery. You are suggesting that you have the right to victimize these women every single day until they give birth because you think your religion tells you to use the force of law to control others. You are wrong.

UPDATED: It is now being reported that Akin will resign. Good. But there's one more bit to add to the story. The mouth-breathers at the Family Research Council have been giving strong support to Akin throughout the day. Their president Tony Perkins claims this is nothing more than an attempt to distract from the record of that unclean woman Claire McCaskill and Satan’s workshop at Planned Parenthood. Pathetic. Seriously, if you don't see the problem with this, then there is something wrong with you.

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My Advice To Social Conservatives

I said last week that social conservatives have not done a great job winning over the public on social issues. There are some minor advances here and there, but for every advance there is full retreat in some other area. I think a change of strategy is called for on all fronts.

Let me start with three broad principles:

● Principle One: It’s time to get rational about the goals social conservatives want to achieve and how to achieve them. This means putting an end to pie-in-the-sky ideas like constitutional amendments to force change. Not only is that easily lampooned in light of the conservative claim to states’ rights, but it’s pointless because there is simply no way to get any constitutional amendment through the Congress and then passed by enough states. It is impossible, and talking about it wastes time and diverts resources from better causes. Moreover, talking about changing the constitution, scares the public, who will automatically see this as extreme and dangerous. So drop the idea of trying to solve everything with one shot and learn the art of incrementalism, i.e. achieving your goal little by little. This isn’t sexy, but it’s the only effective way to achieve controversial goals under our system.

● Principle Two: Drop the harsh rhetoric. The fiery pulpit speeches may work well in church, but the public sees them differently. To the public, they are evidence that social conservatives are hateful people who can’t deal with the modern world and who want to judge everyone else. This is a self-inflicted wound.

● Principle Three: You can’t win with religion-based arguments. Those simply don’t work with the modern public because the vast majority of the public doesn’t see the Bible as the thing which runs their day-to-day lives. Indeed, while 90% of the public claims to believe in God, only 40% claim to go to church “regularly” (there is reason to believe the real number is closer to 20%). And even of those who go, there is a disconnect between what the churches teach and how people live their lives -- the classic example of this are Catholics, who love the Pope, but ignore his rules. And even then, different denominations and different religions have different views about what their religion tells them, e.g. some accept gay marriage, some don’t. So premising arguments on religion is a bad start because you lose most of your audience. Moreover, in making these arguments, social conservatives end up bypassing the stronger arguments they should be making.

Ok, now let’s look at specific policies.

● Abortion: Abortion is an area where social conservatives are largely doing it right because they’ve adopted incrementalism. In the 1980s and early 1990s, abortion opponents kept looking for the home run, and it never came. It wasn’t until they learned to take the issue step by step that they began to make progress. The goal right now should be to entirely eliminate public funding, which is what keeps the abortion lobby alive, and to impose restrictions which the public will find reasonable.

One thing that needs to be dropped is this ridiculous idea of extending 14th Amendment rights to fetuses. Not only does this scare people, and thus is counterproductive, but it cannot pass, and it is almost the classic example of unintended consequences. Give fetuses rights and they can sue pregnant women if they don’t stop smoking or drinking or otherwise fail to follow doctor’s orders. This is a Pandora’s box of legal insanity which liberal interest groups will gleefully use to invade families. Think twice people.

● Gays: The gay marriage battle is lost. Yes, it won’t gain any more support in conservative states for the moment, but this issue is inevitable because the younger public really doesn’t see gays as a threat. Indeed, gays have pretty much proven there is nothing to fear from gay marriage. So so-cons better find proof fast to refute this.

A better strategy would be to switch over to a religious freedom argument. Right now, social conservatives have let themselves by placed on the wrong side of the gay marriage debate because gays have argued they are the ones seeking “freedom.” The reality is they have freedom and they are really seeking to use government power to impose their beliefs on others. But so-cons aren’t arguing that. Instead, they talk about “morality,” which is a loser. What they need to do is argue the religious freedom aspect, i.e. that gays are seeking to take away freedom by forcing others to accept them. Americans always vote for whoever is offering the greater freedom, so-cons need to learn to explain this better.

I also recommend giving serious thought to getting the government out of the marriage business entirely, as I discussed HERE.

● Drugs: Social conservatives are losing the drug war, particularly marijuana, because they’ve adopted the wrong argument. They’re arguing that drugs are bad for you/society. But that’s a nanny state argument. And indeed, the pro-pot people have merely had to argue that pot isn’t that bad to slowly win over a near-majority. The better argument involves civil freedoms. If we allow people to take drugs, then we either need to change negligence laws dramatically (in ways people really won’t like), or we will end up imposing huge costs on employers, employees and the economy because of the need for widespread drug testing. Why? Because any company that makes any product or provides any service which can injury someone (i.e. any company) will need to take steps to ensure that their workers are not high when they are working. That means widespread drug testing of everyone with a job. Right now the argument is “should the government be allowed to stop Person X from smoking pot at home.” But the argument should be, “are YOU willing to undergo constant drug testing to protect your employer from lawsuits just because the government decides to legalize drugs for the few who want it?” That’s a very different matter. I’ve discussed this HERE.

● Religious Freedom: This one’s a can of worms. A lot of social conservatives are going down a very dangerous path with the idea of religious freedom laws. Specifically, they are pushing bills which prohibit employers from stopping employees from engaging in religious practices or wearing religious items, e.g. crucifixes. This should send up huge red flags for conservatives. For one thing, conservatives have opposed employment-discrimination-based lawsuits almost across the board when it comes to gays, blacks, women and disability. Why make an exception for religion? Shouldn’t a private employer be entitled to impose whatever restrictions they want on the people they pay to be their employees? Can’t the employees just go elsewhere if they don’t like it?

Further, there is an obvious flaw here which social conservatives are overlooking because they tend to equate the word “religion” with their brand of Christianity: our Constitution doesn’t allow discrimination amongst religions. Thus, if you give people absolute power to act out their religious beliefs at work, that would include things like the wearing of the Islamic veil or separation of men and women, the handling of snakes, the smoking of peyote and whatever other crazy ideas these fringe religions can dream up.

This also applies to things like prayer in schools. If you seek legislation to allow that nice Protestant Principal to say a prayer each morning, except that your kids may also find themselves forced to sit through an Islamic prayer or Buddhist ritual or even an atheist’s speech. Unless you want other religions forced upon you and your children, it is best to always keep in mind that any new power you give yourself can be used by others as well.

Frankly, the best bet here is to vote with your feet and your wallets. Don’t support businesses which are hostile to your religious beliefs. Do support friendly ones. Stop seeing movies, watching television shows, or buy videogames with bad messages in them. Use the power of boycott. Send your kids to religious schools and volunteer to make sure those schools are the best (a shining example). In this regard, support legislation which lets federal money follow the students to whatever schools they choose -- trust people to make the right choices rather than trying to use the government to force the right choices upon them. Remember, you have to win people over, you can’t force them to believe what you want them to believe.

The big takeaway here is that social conservatives need to learn to speak to people who don’t share their religious beliefs -- framing things in religious terms simply will not work for anyone who doesn’t agree with your religious beliefs. They need to learn that a thousand small victories are better than the false hopes of complete victory in fell swoop. And they need to think more about the unintended consequences of the policies they propose and they need to realize that others will get to use the same powers they create in the law.

Thoughts?


P.S. Don't forget, it's Star Trek Tuesday at the film site.
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Isn’t That Special?

President Barack Hussein Obama this week presented the Medal of Freedom to a mixed bag of recipients. The medal is the highest civilian award that can be granted. This time around the award went to an occasional worthy like John Glenn (pre-savings and loan scandal), doggerel-writers such as Toni Morrison, iconic music figures like Bob Dylan, and one former Supreme Court Justice whose largest claim to fame was legitimizing the slaughter of the innocents.

Pictured is President Obama pulling the string at the back of Steven’s neck which triggers his toy voicebox that says “I love abortion in every form.” Roe v. Wade was in itself a horror of a decision, based on social engineering, “pro-choice politics” and judicial activism. In other words, pretty much everything except law, precedent and the Constitution. But it’s the murderous progeny of Roe that have resulted in helpless living beings being slaughtered wholesale in the name of “a woman’s choice.”

Standing alone, Roe is bad science and worse law, but the cases which grew out of it are much worse, and Medal recipient John Paul Stevens played a major role in giving the assembly-line murders constitutional cover. The freedom, indeed the God-given right of life, was not of any concern to Stevens and four of his Supreme Court colleagues.

Obama attempted to humanize this inhuman jurist with little tidbits like “At his vacation home in Florida, he was John from Arlington, better known for his world-class bridge game than his world-changing judicial opinions.” Cute, huh? Good old John. He was just doing his job. No evil intent whatsoever. Just a friendly old guy who puts his imprimatur on death warrants for millions of nearly-born babies.

The award itself contains the words: “ . . . his commitment to the noble vision of our nation’s founders.” I’m not sure which Founder’s ghostly screams I’m hearing. Could be Jefferson. Could be Washington. Could be Madison. But I’m hearing “that’s a goddam lie, we never envisioned the vicious and violent death of babies ready to emerge from the womb.”

Good old Justice John wrote the majority opinion in the 2000 case which said that a woman’s choice includes choosing a doctor who will hasten the birthing cycle so that the live baby can emerge, feet first, ready to have its brain entered by surgical scissors and scalpels in a barbarous procedure known as “dilation and extraction,” aka partial-birth abortion. From the time he was a back bench Illinois legislator, Barack Obama has agreed with that position.

Stevens opined that the anti-partial-birth abortion law at issue in Stenberg v. Carhart was indistinguishable from the “legal” procedure “dilation and evacuation” an equally barbarous form of murdering a baby in the womb at a slightly earlier stage of the healthy pregnancy. Therefore, Stevens said, it would be impossible for a good doctor to know whether he was performing a lawful procedure or a medical murder. God forbid we should put MD assassins at risk, and partial-birth abortion was approved by the high court. The calmness and ordinariness with which the opinion describes the various forms of baby murder that must be allowed is reminiscent of Adolf Eichmann calmly describing the methods he used to kill Jews at the extermination camps.

Stevens cited all the various and despicable forms of baby-murder which were allowable in order to show that partial-birth abortion was just another form of medical treatment. Stevens concluded that the dismemberment of a living human being, partially removed by the doctor from the mother’s womb in order to kill it, is “a question of the liberty protected by the 14th Amendment as recognized in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade.”

Finally, in 2007, Stevens found himself joining in a baby-murder opinion again, this time the minority opinion. He joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Gonzales v. Carhart in stating that “In sum, the notion that the Partial-Birth Abortion Act furthers any legitimate government interest is, quite simply, irrational.” Ginsburg also quoted Stevens's concurring majority opinion in the earlier Stenberg case, repeating Stevens’s words that the “state has no interest in protecting a child against a partial-birth abortion." Well, the idea that murdering a living human being during the birth process should be legal is just plain crazy. Living Constitution, millions of murdered babies.

Essentially, Obama placed the ribbon with the Medal of Freedom around Stevens’s neck, celebrating the liberty to slice and dice innocent human lives. If that’s “freedom,” give me tyranny.

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Democratic Wedge Issues

I said a long time ago that the Democratic Party really isn’t a political party anymore. It’s become a collection of tribes held together by some common interests. The thing is, their common interests are really quite narrow and they glossed over significant disagreements in forming the coalition. Recent events, such as Obama’s embrace of gay marriage against the wishes of blacks and Romney’s discussion of education with Hispanics highlight this more than ever. It’s time for conservatives to start driving wedges into this coalition.

Conservatives need to spot the disagreements that were glossed over and start pointing those out relentlessly. The idea would be to cause enough friction within the Democratic alliance that the party ruptures into ineffective smaller groups. Here are some thoughts on where those disagreements might be and how to attack them.

1. Gays v. Feminists: At one point, gays should have been natural allies of conservatives. Conservatives believe in less government and individual rights, and the problems gays faced until the mid-1980s were sodomy laws, which made gay relationships criminal. But now that those laws have been struck down, the gay agenda has switched to forcing others to accept their lifestyles. That puts gays at odds with conservatism. Feminists similarly are at odds with conservatives because they too favor big government schemes to reshape society. So neither groups is likely winnable for conservatives. But that doesn’t mean we can’t drive a wedge between them.

The big issue for feminists is abortion. And as I mentioned the other day when discussing sex selection (something Planned Parenthood just got caught promoting), abortion means the end of homosexuality once genetics locates the “gay gene.” It would behoove conservatives to keep pushing this idea to the gay community that abortion = gay-genocide, and suggesting they seek to limit abortion.

2. Blacks v. Feminists: Blacks have very much tied themselves to the Democrats by making themselves wards of the state. Through either direct money transfers to poor blacks or race-based preferences in loans, housing, schools and jobs for middle and upper-class blacks, blacks as a group have come to rely on the government. So they are unreachable as a group. But as I pointed out the other day, abortion is killing blacks in massive numbers compared to all other races. Conservatives need to beat this drum that abortion = black-genocide to separate them from feminists. It would also be smart of conservatives to start pointing out that affirmative action has by far benefited upper-to-middle class white women more than it has blacks. This has the potential to set up a bloody fight between feminists and blacks over how to divide the spoils of affirmative action.

3. Blacks v. Gays: Blacks as a group are socially conservative when it comes to gays. Conservatives should push the message to blacks that the Democratic Party, which is dominated by the gay lobby, is looking to force the gay agenda on them and their churches.

4. Hispanics v. Everyone: Hispanics are an odd group to be jammed into the Democratic coalition. They are socially conservative and largely Catholic, yet the Democratic Party hates religion (atheists) and is dominated by the gay lobby (gay marriage) and feminists (contraception). Moreover, they are the second biggest victims of abortion, so they should be uneasy with that too (feminists). Unions have worked hard to keep them out of the country, to keep them from getting jobs, and have kept them out of the well-paying union jobs. Further, as Romney noted, the teachers unions are hurting their kids. They run a large number of small businesses, who find themselves attacked by unions, who are unable to obtain financing from the Democrats’ Wall Street friends, and who are crushed by environmental and labor regulations. Each of these issues should be made clear to them.

5. Bankers v. Socialists: By and large, the Democratic rank and file hate business, hate capitalism, and HATE banks. They despise Wall Street. Yet, most of the money the Democrats get comes from that very same Wall Street. And right now, Wall Street is upset at being vilified by the Democrats. Conservatives should keep pushing the Democrats on this point. They should force elected Democrats to make a choice, support Wall Street or do the bidding of the rank and file, by bringing up legislation which splits this coalition, such as elimination of banking fees. The more the Democrats are made to dance, the greater the chance they will lose one group or the other.

6. Environmentalists v. Farmers/Miners/Workers: Since the days of FDR, the Democrats have done their best to buy farmers, coal miners, and skilled-labor workers with government handouts. But in the past thirty years, as ivory tower intellectuals and white-collar professionals have come to dominate the Democratic Party, they’ve adopted environmentalism as a religion, and with it they’ve put in place insane rules which cripple farmers, miners and workers. It’s time for Republicans to push this issue hard. They need to point out to auto-workers in Detroit and coal miners in West Virginia how much regulation the Democrats have imposed on their fields and what the cost is and why this lets China steal their jobs. Also point out how Democratic friends like GE are shipping their jobs overseas. Similarly, Republicans need to become fluent in the regulatory burden imposed on farmers and they need to go farm by farm explaining to these people how the Democratic agenda is crushing them.

7. The Elderly v. the Poor: The elderly are abandoning the Democrats already, and Republicans need to help push that along. Republicans specifically need to talk about Medicare. Fewer and fewer doctors are willing to take Medicare because it doesn’t pay enough. Despite this, Obama plans to steal another $500 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare and its subsidies to the poor. Republicans need to make this clear that the Democrats are stealing from the elderly to hand out the money to other groups.

8. Jews: The Republicans have had little success winning over Jews. There are two reasons for this. First, many Jews are simply scared of the Religious Right starting a second inquisition. I know that specific outreach has begun on this issue and that needs to continue. More importantly, as I mentioned with Hispanics the other day, Republicans have wrongly been treating Jews as a single-issue people, with that issue being Israel. But Israel clearly isn’t that strong of a pull. A better approach would be to talk to them about issues like Medicare (which resonates in Florida), the attacks on Wall Street (which resonate in New York), and this: the Republicans need to establish a counterpart to the Anti-Defamation League to focus exclusively on all the anti-Semitism coming from the left these days. We’ve seen this at Media Matters, at OWS and just generally from the left.


If Republicans do these things right, they can create tremendous friction within the Democratic alliance, perhaps even enough to shatter the party. The way to do this is to relentlessly point out the issues above. Do that through targeted advertisements, in speeches, on webpages/blogs and through media stunts by having our talking heads demand explanations from the Democrats on these wedge issues. Further, the Republicans should start crafting legislative proposals which put the groups above on opposing sides and forces the Democrats to pick sides.

At the same time, as I said the other day, Republicans needs to start reaching out to each of these groups on the issues that we have in common. Even taking away 5% of Democrats would guarantee a permanent Republican super-majority.

Thoughts?

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Where’s Howard Beale When We Need Him?

ABC, CBS, and NBC all recently had breathless stories about Mitt Romney performing an unwanted haircut on a boy forty-seven years ago. There were “news” stories galore on the nets and their affiliates, and a few editorial comments besides. But when forty-three Catholic dioceses filed lawsuits against Obamacare on May 21, the silence was deafening.

After months of pleas, negotiations, meetings and conferences, the Catholic Church got absolutely no cooperation from the Obama administration on religious exemptions from Obamacare for religious institutions which oppose abortion and birth control. Unless an Obamacrat is passing out condoms during mass or performing an abortion on the altar, the administration’s position is that the government’s activity cannot be thwarted by the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom.

Religious hospitals, church-sponsored insurance companies (there are more than you might think), homeless and women’s shelters (even on church grounds) and church schools are not religious activities which should be allowed exemptions from the Obamacare mandates, according to the administration. The official position of the Catholic Church is, and has long been, that artificial birth control violates church doctrine. Along with that, traditional Catholics and a great many Protestants oppose abortion in any form, including abortifacients.

Nevertheless, the administration says that only sermons and activities within the church worship facilities are proper subjects for exemption. No matter how intimately the church-sponsored activity is tied to its religious base, if it takes place outside the sanctuary, it is not a religious activity. This leaves the church hospital, for instance with two options—either cure all disease through Vatican-sanctioned exorcism, or participate in the government’s insurance program. The third option is to seek redress in court, which is the actual subject of this article.

Regardless of which side a news reporter might come down on, it is still extremely big news when forty-three Catholic dioceses file suit in federal courts on the same day. But when big news conflicts with the networks’ officially unofficial love affair with Barack Obama, out come the blinders. On the night that the lawsuits were filed, ABC and NBC made zero comment about them during their national news segments. CBS gave the subject nineteen seconds. And in that brief nineteen seconds, CBS framed the issue as a “contraception lawsuit” with no mention of either religious conscience objections or the First Amendment right of the free exercise of religion.

It should also be noted that leading clerics in the Catholic Church, along with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and some evangelical leaders have declared that they will go to jail rather than comply with the birth control/abortifacient mandates of Obamacare. These lawsuits reflect a much deeper commitment to religious belief than the birth-control and abortion zealots in the Obama administration were expecting. These are not nuisance suits that can be dealt with by a quick payoff or a federal jobs program. The nets would like to report that they are nuisance suits, but then they would be required to discuss the actual issue, which might get their viewers thinking. Better to ignore it.

So what was more interesting than the church lawsuits that would require spiking the religious news in favor of something “more important?” ABC gave three and a half minutes to the sentencing of the Rutgers student who posted photos of his unsuspecting roommate having gay sex, which resulted in a suicide. CBS and NBC both ran lengthy stories about prostate cancer screening, including the reasons why Medicare shouldn’t routinely cover the screening. NBC did a big feature piece on the “ring of fire” solar eclipse.

Fortunately, the big three networks are fading as fast as their counterparts in the print media. Dan Rather’s “fake but true” story about George W. Bush was probably the swan song for network news anchors. People who were once considered nearly sacrosanct are now regularly taken with a grain of salt by a doubting public that has access to cable news and the internet. People watching the national network portion of the news are outnumbered by those who wait for the late affiliate news to see what’s going on locally.

I wish the Catholic Church every success in court, and I pray for a really hot place in hell for the Obama News Corps (that’s pronounced “core” even though network news is pretty close to being a corpse).

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So Is Abortion A Right Or Not?

We’re told abortion is a right. It’s no big deal. You’re just removing a collection of cells. . . a tumor. And to force a woman to have a child she doesn’t want is an outrage! It’s a violation of her human rights! Right? Then why do liberals want to restrict abortion now in certain cases?

The liberal position on abortion has been that abortion is a right. Indeed, they’ve argued since the 1960s that abortion is both a fundamental human right and an absolute right guaranteed under the Constitution. And when something is a right, that means you can exercise it without permission because if you needed the government’s permission to exercise a right, then it wouldn’t be a right, it would be a privilege which could be revoked at any time.

So riddle me this. How do we square the liberal position that abortion is a right with the newly-developing liberal position that women must be stopped from aborting fetuses for sex-selection reasons? Here’s the deal:

When people are given the chance to abort their babies, they do so for a variety of reasons. Those reasons include prejudices, like the preference for boys. This has been going on in China and India and other parts of Asia for decades now and has resulted in millions of missing girls. In China alone, 40 million women are missing from the current generation. That means there are 40 million men who will never find wives because they simply don’t exist because they were aborted. (LINK)

Well, now it’s happening in Canada and probably the United States. Indeed, many of these dirty foreigners who have come to these enlightened lands of abortion have apparently not given up their evil ways. Thus, a recent study in Canada found that while the ratio of first born children in Canada’s immigrant population was similar to what nature creates, the second child skewed significantly toward males and third children skew overwhelmingly toward males. In response, Canada made it illegal to obtain an abortion if the reason is sex selection -- otherwise there are no limits on abortion in Canada. The Economist and many liberal groups are now urging a similar law in the United States to prevent those dirty Canadians from sneaking across our borders to have illegal abortions. Oh the irony.

Think about this. If abortion is a right and you can have it for any reason, then how can the government decide that you can’t have one if you are trying to off a girl? Does this make sense to you? Either abortion is a right or it is not, and if the government is going to tell you that you can have an abortion for any reason whatsoever except reasons they don’t like, then it’s not really a right anymore, is it? And if forcing a woman to have an unwanted child is akin to slavery, as many liberals have argued, how is it any less slavery just because you don't want them to get rid of girls? Is there really "good slavery"?

The reality is that liberals don’t see abortion as a right, they see it as a tool for social engineering to help women economically. And when that goal clashes with other liberal social engineering goals, abortion must give way to the cause. Maybe, it’s time we called them on this and demanded that they clarify how this can be a right if they can restrict it when they don’t like how it gets used?

Moreover, perhaps it’s time to point out other problems with abortion to our liberal friends to split their coalition. For example, as I told you a long time ago, once science locates the gay gene, that will be the end of gays because the combination of abortion plus being able to identify gay children will mean parents will eradicate gay children. Other traits will probably follow as well as we learn to identify unwanted traits. Perhaps we should ask gays how they feel about this?

Similarly, I suspect that blacks will soon catch on that they are the biggest victims of abortion. There have been 50 million abortions in the US since 1973. And while 60% of those have been whites, blacks are disproportionately more likely to have an abortion. In 2004, for example, there were 50 abortions per 1,000 black women, 28 abortions per 1,000 Hispanic women, and 11 abortions per 1,000 white women. So blacks were five times more likely than whites to be aborted. At some point, blacks will realize what this means and they will call this “genocide.” At that point, it would be easy to see calls to ban abortion for certain ethnic groups, wouldn’t it?

Perhaps the time has come to ask liberals to explain themselves on this issue?

Thoughts?


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“Post-Birth Abortion”. . . Seriously

Let’s talk about a shocker from the British Medical Journal. In a recent BMJ edition, Oxford University’s Francesca Minerva, a medical ethicist, and Alberto Giubilini, a bioethicist from the U. of Milan, argue in favor of “post-birth abortion.” Specifically, they advocate a right to kill newborn babies if they are disabled, unwanted, or if they would be too expensive for the family. Yes, you read that right.

Here is their argument:

1. Like an unborn child, a newborn has yet “to develop hopes, goals and dreams.” Thus, while the newborn is human, it is not yet “a person – someone with a moral right to life.”

2. In the case of disabled children. . . while the child may be happy, it will not reach the full potential of a normal child: “To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole. . . On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion.” In other words, if you aren’t perfect, your don’t have a right to live.

3. Parents, siblings and society have goals that could be affected by the arrival of the child, and those goals should take precedence over the child’s rights. Therefore, “post-birth abortion” is justified if the mother “no longer has the time, money or energy to care for” the child.

Wow, chilling.

The abortion movement has always hidden behind the idea that fetuses aren’t “alive.” Ergo, aborting a fetus is not like killing a child and abortion is no big deal. This argument has worked to the extent we have been unable to define when life begins. That’s why many people are indifferent to early-term abortions, but oppose late-term abortions because the more the fetus looks like a human the more likely it is to be alive. That’s also why partial-birth abortion was such a disaster for feminists because no one could help but grasp that this was a child being killed.

But now Minerva and Giubilini lay bare the real thinking behind the pro-abortion position. They don’t care if the child is alive or not. All that matters to them is the economic progress of the mother.

Moreover, the mental gymnastics Minerva goes through are stunning. First, she redefines life to have value only if a person has “hopes, goals and dreams.” But that’s not really her test because babies have hopes, goals and dreams, as does my dog. What she’s really saying is life only has value when people have “hopes, goals and dreams” which she considers worthwhile. That is a justification for mass murder of undesirables.

And while she limits this to newborns to make her theory seems less dangerous to readers, the fact is her logic does not account for an age limit. Indeed, what difference does it make using her test if someone is 6 weeks, 6 years, or 6 decades old? If they don’t have the right “dreams”/goals to be considered human, then logically there is no reason they couldn’t be exterminated using her same justification. The sick, the infirm, those on welfare or without useful skills, or even old people who are beyond trying to achieve their goals could all be exterminated using her logic.

She also really twists herself to dismiss adoption as an alternative. Indeed, if the mother doesn’t want the child, why not just give it up for adoption? Well, Minerva says we can’t do that because adoption could cause undue psychological distress to the mother. Think about that. There is no psychological distress with killing your child, but there would be psychological distress in letting someone else have it. How sick is that?!

What she’s really worried about is that unless the doctor exterminates the child, the mother might want to keep it, and that would expose the atrocity of her theory once the mothers realized that these newborn things actually turn into people that matter.

Not surprisingly, our Hitlerian genius Minerva was shocked at the negative reaction, which included death threats. Boo hoo. She claims that her argument has been “taken out of its academic and theoretical context” and that she’s not advocating this policy. But the fact is, she is advocating this by issuing a paper in which she claims this is an ethically/ philosophically correct position. Whether she likes the backlash or not, she has tried to justify infanticide and she even provided the euphemism: “post-birth abortion” (as if you could abort something that has already happened).

Remember this the next time some abortion advocate tells you they only support abortion because “it’s not alive.”

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Rick Santorum’s Abortion Hypocrisy

I’m sick of talking about Santorum. He’s a sleazy socialist hiding behind religion. But if Republicans want to ensure that Obama gets a second term by picking him, then there’s not much I can do about it. Nevertheless, one of our readers has sent me two articles worth discussing. Why? Because they show just how hypocritical Santorum’s being on the pro-life issue.

The two big attacks on Romney by conservatives are his support for RomneyCare and that he’s supposedly soft on abortion.

As you all know, the beef with RomneyCare is that it included the same individual mandate as ObamaCare, which violates conservative principles. However, the attacks on Romney for RomneyCare are highly hypocritical because (1) he’s stated he will repeal ObamaCare, i.e. he’s not proposing to bring RomneyCare to the rest of the country, and (2) all of the conservative contenders who claim his support for RomneyCare makes him suspect (i.e. Gingrich and Santorum) not only supported the same individual mandate as a “conservative” idea until 2009, but they also supported massive expansions of the government’s role in the healthcare system including the creation of new medical coverage entitlements. In other words, they did the same and worse.

But today’s issue is the second issue, Santorum on abortion.

Romney claims to be pro-life. He wasn’t always. He says he became pro-life as a matter of conscience. Specifically, he states that after he got into office as governor, he was faced with an embryonic stem cell bill and decided, “I simply could not sign on to take human life.” He vetoed the bill, which would have authorized embryonic cloning, would have defined human life as beginning at implantation rather than fertilization, and would have made the morning-after pill available without a prescription. He thereafter promoted abstinence education and vetoed a bill which would have required Catholic hospitals to offer abortion-inducing drugs to rape victims.

But that’s not enough for Rick Santorum. Rick argues that Romney can’t really be pro-life because he wasn’t always pro-life. . . forget that Reagan and George W. Bush both claimed similar conversions on abortion. Think about the illogic of this: unless you are pro-life your entirely life, then Rick would forever tar you as pro-choice and therefore untouchable to Republican voters. That’s wrong and self-defeating on a great many levels. Indeed, how in the world can such an approach win anyone over when you’re telling people you will always view them with suspicion?

More importantly, let’s take a look at Rick’s own history on this issue.

On October 28, 1990, the Pittsburgh Press put out an article about young Rick Santorum, who was running for the House of Representatives. Rick was about to be elected in a huge anti-incumbent wave which wiped out people who supported the Bush/Darman budget ("no new taxes"). To fuel his campaign, Rick relied on religious conservatives to whom he promised he would outlaw abortion. So he was always pro-life, right? Actually, no.

Prior to the campaign, Rick put out a campaign manual in which he described himself as a “progressive conservative” who took no position on the issue of abortion. And a few months before that, Rick put out a paper in which he said that his opposition to abortion was limited only to the final three months of pregnancy, when the fetus was considered viable. That paper was quietly withdrawn when Santorum changed his mind. Said Rick: “For me, it was just a lot of education, a lot of soul-searching.”

In other words, he had a Romney moment. So why should we trust Rick any more than Romney? And how in the world can he argue that Romney’s conversion isn’t genuine?

There’s more.

In 1998, Bill Clinton tried to appoint a pro-abortion liberal activist to the Second Circuit. This appointment was considered important because conservatives believed it would put this person on the fast track to the Supreme Court. Indeed, Rush Limbaugh noted that Clinton was “putting her on a rocket ship to the Supreme Court.” Consequently, conservative Trent Lott delayed this person’s confirmation vote for more than a year, hoping to get the votes needed to block her. That ultimately failed when only 29 Republicans voted to oppose the nomination. These 29 include all the usual conservatives, including people the Tea Party now hates like Mitch McConnell and John McCain.

Ricky. . . staunchly anti-abortion Ricky. . . supported the Democrats and voted to confirm this person. That’s right. He went against the conservatives in the Senate to support a pro-abortion liberal activist, knowing she would likely end up on the Supreme Court. Who was Ricky’s friend? Sonia Sotomayor, who now sits on the Supreme Court as a reliable leftist -- just as conservatives predicted. Call me crazy, but I think Ricky would be beside himself with (self)righteous indignation if Romney had been the one supporting Sotomayor.

And Rick’s pro-abortion credentials aren’t finished there. In 1995, Rick endorsed pro-abortion “Republican” Arlen Specter in his run for President. Significantly, Specter made being pro-abortion a centerpiece of his campaign. Indeed, he referred to pro-life activists as a “fringe” group who had hijacked the Republican Party. Yet, Rick endorsed him in the primaries.

Rick then endorsed Arlen Specter again in 2000 against Tea Party conservative Pat Toomey. Ricky even did television ads for the pro-abortion, pro-big government, soon-to-switch parties Specter.

The point here is simple. Rick is a hypocrite. He’s denigrating Romney’s beliefs on a basis which applies equally to Rick himself, and he’s doing it so he can keep people from seeing the real sleazy, insider, influence-peddling, Big Government progressive that is Rick.

Support him if you want to, I won’t.

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Involuntary Charity For Abortion

You’ve probably heard about this scandal involving the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation and Planned Parenthood (“PP”). On the one hand, I find this positively shocking. On the other hand, every aspect of this is what I’ve come to expect from intolerant modern liberalism.

Here’s what happened. The Komen Foundation is a charitable group that spends about $90 million annually on breast cancer research, education and screening. The Komen Foundation has been giving around $700,000 a year to PP so PP “could provide poor women with breast cancer screening, mammograms and education.”

Last week, the Komen Foundation announced that it would stop giving money to PP because PP was under investigation by Congress for using federal money for abortions and for failing to report child abuse. Komen has a policy that it will not give money to any organization under investigation by any state or federal agency until the organization is cleared. Simple enough. Only it wasn’t.

Every liberal from the abortion wing of the Democratic Party to Hollywood went apesh*t. They screamed that this was an outrage, a political decision, and the evil Komen Foundation was (insert nonsense claim here). Sadly, Komen folded under the pressure and agreed to continue funding the abortion lobby in violation of their own policies. Here are my thoughts:

● Liberals do not understand the concept of charity. Charity is something you give voluntarily. Liberals have taken the position that PP is entitled to money from Komen in perpetuity, even though PP has no right whatsoever to a single penny in charity from Komen. This is a perversion of the concept of charity and turns a good deed into perpetual slavery.

● Liberals claim this was a political decision. That’s wrong. Giving money to a controversial organization in the first place was the political decision. Stopping that money is NOT a political decision. It is the opposite. It is a depolitization decision.

● Also, the real political decision was restarting the funding. Komen has a policy, which it applies to all organization to which it contributes. Carving out an exception for PP because some liberals got upset is a political act. And how typically liberal to demand special rights for a liberal group.

● Don’t believe for a moment this won’t fund abortions. Money is fungible. That means giving money on the condition it won’t be used for some specific purpose is delusional because all that does is free up other money which can then be used for the forbidden purpose.

● PP is an abortion clinic and they only offer other services so they can pretend they are a women’s health clinic who just happens to provide abortions. When the government and charities fund these other activities, they are not only freeing up money for abortions, they are helping provide a smokescreen for PP to claim it’s something greater than just an abortion clinic.

● This is going to be a mess for Komen. Giving in to the left will stop the whining (for now... see next point), but will anger many more conservatives who don’t want their money going to PP and who probably had no idea they were funding PP through Komen. Conservatives give to charity, liberals don’t. So Komen may have placated the whiners, but it will anger the people who actually support it. It will be interesting to see what happens with their donations.

● Finally, pro-abortion groups were already upset at Komen because the founder of the group, Nancy Brinker, served as George W. Bush’s ambassador to Hungary and last year she appointed Georgia’s former secretary of state, Karen Handel, a pro-life Republican, to a senior policy post with the foundation. Expect these groups to try to use this incident as a pretext to force political change at the organization.

There are some lessons to be learned here. For one thing, if you don’t want to become a slave to a liberal cause, don’t ever start donating to their groups. Apparently, as with the mob, you can’t leave once you start. Also, it will be interesting to see who wins the funding war. Make no mistake, this is a political war and it will be between whiny-but-cheap liberals and blind-but-generous conservatives. If conservatives make a statement by closing their wallets, the ability of liberals to impose their will by whining may start to fail. On the other hand, if funding doesn’t drop, expect further aggression from the left to be aimed at controlling other charities.

Thoughts?

Also, don’t forget it’s Star Trek Tuesday at the film site.

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Her Holiness Holds Forth

This is the day which the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. "Good Catholic" Nancy Pelosi has been very busy recently correcting the Papal stance on issues involving faith and morals. In her discussions with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Pelosi has divined that abortion is a good thing, and ought to be paid for by the federal government.

Since her word on faith and morals is both infallible and superior to that of the Pope, she regularly damns opponents to eternal purgatory for exercising the independent thought that abortion might actually be wrong under most circumstances. She reserves some of her best vitriol for those who believe that no public money should be spent on abortion even if lawmakers and courts have decided that a baby doesn't become a human until the beginning of the second trimester of pregnancy.

Obamacare, pushed through the House in the middle of the night by Pelosi and the Democrat Curia, left the issue of how private insurers would be treated when it comes to paying for abortion procedures. That brought the public payment and private payment issues for abortions to the forefront. The 2700 page (plus or minus) Obamacare law doesn't expressly require that private insurers cover abortions, but it doesn't leave private insurers the option not to cover them either. That omission didn't deter the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department announced without any quibble that private insurers must cover abortions, birth control devices and medications, and abortifacients (essentially, the "morning after" pill).

This is a direct assault on the "conscience clause" which was instituted in health care legislation starting after the horrendous Roe v. Wade decision and continuing through the Bush administration. The conscience clause exempts doctors, nurses, and hospitals which have deep religious opposition to abortion from having to perform abortions or prescribe birth control medication. The lack of any such conscience clause in the Obamacare bill was not an oversight.

Given the HHS decision and the Obamacare mandate that all citizens purchase health insurance, it quickly became apparent that insurance companies would have to cover abortion and insurance agents religiously opposed to abortion would have to sell policies covering abortion. Without a conscience clause, opponents of abortion including traditional Catholics and a large number of Evangelicals and old church Protestants would be selling and/or paying for something they deeply despise.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops quickly came forward with a statement that such a mandate offends the conscience of practicing Catholics (with or without the conscience clause) and violates the First Amendment right of freedom of religion. Her Primateness Pelosi had spent years trying to squelch the conscience clause in any health care legislation which even tangentially touched on abortion (euphemistically known as "a woman's right to choose"). Until she finally succeeded with Obamacare and the back door HHS rulling, her efforts had gone unrewarded.

In order to clear up the vagueness and ambiguity of the Obamacare bill and to quash the HHS decision, in October of 2011 Republicans proposed HR 358, known as "The Protect Life Act." It is basically a reiteration of the conscience clause, applying it to health care providers and insurance companies specifically facing the Obamacare law. Pelosi jumped to the fore, skewing Catholic doctrine and mocking "the Catholic conscience thing."

The Conference of Bishops had said: "Indeed, such nationwide government coercion of religious people and groups to sell, broker, or purchase 'services' to which they have a moral or religious objection represents an unprecedented attack on religious liberty." They further cited the conscience clause inserted into all previous Congressional health care legislation: "Public officials may not require individuals or entities who receive certain public funds to perform abortion or sterilization procedures or to make facilities or personnel available for the performance of such procedures if such performance would be contrary to the individual or entity's religious belief or moral convictions."

If you can't attack the principle, attack the persons advocating the principle. Pelosi is no stranger to that kind of attack. This past Thursday, unable to find any Catholic doctrine to support her views, Pelosi simply called the Conference of Catholic Bishops "lobbyists in Washington DC." So much for the efficacy of Church discipline, doctrine, dogma, and Papal authority. Her Catholicness speaks, and the Bishops should just shut up. In a masterpiece of illogic, bad grammar, and un-Catholic thought, Pelosi said: "I am a devout Catholic. As a devout Catholic (second time, in case you didn't get it the first time), I have great respect for our bishops when they are my pastor. As lobbyists in Washington DC, we have some areas of disagreement."

Pelosi is simply an idiot. I understand Church decisions and Papal authority better than she. And I'm Lutheran. It's OK, even expected, that as a Protestant I will have differences of religious opinion with Papal decisions on faith and morals and am free, perhaps even obligated to dispute those decisions publicly when they offend my personal conscience and reading of scripture. That's not how it's supposed to be under Catholic apostolic succession doctrine. Pelosi is determined to flout the doctrine of her own Church, while at the same time forcing millions of non-Catholics to support abortion with their tax dollars and eventually to buy insurance that covers abortion.

If that's being a devout Catholic, I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Is There Anything This Woman Won't Say?

Just a short time before the House took a vote forbidding the use of federal funds to pay for any part of a health plan that covers abortion, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the bill would mean that "women can die on the floor." Fifteen House Democrats joined the Republicans in voting for what the president of NARAL called The Let Women Die Act.

The bill is aimed at one portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Prior law forbade direct use of federal funds for abortion, but Obamacare slipped in provisions which did by the back door what it couldn't do through the front. Rather than pay for the abortion directly, Obamacare allowed abortion to be paid for by insurance plans which accept federal funds. The bill bans that practice.

The bill also covered another problem created by Obamacare. It prevents punitive action against any health care provider who refuses to perform or assist in performing an abortion based on moral or religious objections. It's important to note that as we review the Democratic hysteria over the bill, it doesn't ban abortion, just direct or indirect federal funding of it. Multiple polls have shown that somewhere between 65% and 70% of Americans who may otherwise have divergent views on abortion itself oppose federal funding of abortion in any form.

The Republican position on the bill was that Obamacare contains loopholes galore that allow the use of federal subsidies and stimuli for the purpose of purchasing insurance plans that cover abortion. Many of the supporters of the new bill (called the Protect Life Act) clearly believe that Obamacare must be repealed in its entirety, but wanted to take an early step in that agenda by eliminating one of the most egregious of Obamacare's flaws. Unlike many of the provisions of Obamacare which are purely economic nostrums or bureaucratic "solutions," this flaw flagrantly allowed federal funding for a medical procedure abhorrent to a substantial number of Americans.

Pelosi went off on a journey of free-association in discussing the bill. "Under this bill, when the Republicans vote for this bill they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene. It's just appalling. It falls right into their--all, it's a health issue." In other words, if the doctors don't perform a procedure which would terminate a perfectly normal pregnancy, a woman will die on the floor while the doctors stand by and swap golf stories.

Perhaps she doesn't realize that if a woman comes into a Catholic hospital bleeding heavily from a botched abortion performed elsewhere, those Catholic doctors will do everything in their power to save the mother (and the baby, if it still lives). But what can you expect? This is a practicing Catholic woman who lectures the bishops and the Pope on their misinterpretations of the Bible and their incorrectness on Church doctrine.

For a woman her age, Pelosi has amazing lung power. She can string together thoughts in random order and pronounce them without taking a breath. Example: "This is a health care issue and it falls right in with a lot of other initiatives that they [the Republicans] had coming up on the floor (where the women are dying?) about clean air, clean water, mercury, you name it--America's families deserve better than this and, again, today is another example of a wasted opportunity, instead of taking up even an aspect of the president's job bill that could create jobs they're--I can't even describe to you the logic of what is is that they are doing, I just know that you will see a large number of women on the floor today (dying women?) fighting for women's health issues, as well as to point out how savage this is about withholding care for a woman because of this legislation." Whew! I'll bet she could blow out a 150 birthday candle cake without taking a second breath.

Pelosi also went on to say "this is not a jobs bill." No, really? "Everybody in America has the creation of jobs as their top priority and what we are doing is wasting time. Every woman in America should be concerned with this assault on women's rights. This is just one aspect of women's health. But it has an impact across the board on how women get their health insurance. It's a waste of time." So if I'm hearing her right, women's health and access to abortion is vitally important, but it's a waste of time because jobs are at stake.

National Right to Life Director Douglass Johnson said: "President Obama won enactment of Obamacare in 2010 partly by pretending that the bill did not expand abortion. But now the mask is coming off. Obamacare contains multiple provisions designed to authorize federal subsidies for abortion." The Protect Life Act removes those subsidies. But it does not prevent any woman who wants health care insurance with abortion coverage from purchasing it. It just prevents them from purchasing federally-subsidized insurance which provides coverage for abortions.

The bill passed the House on a vote of 251-172 (236 Republicans and 15 Democrats in favor). There are two hurdles remaining. First, the Senate helmed by Democrat Harry Reid may never even get to vote if Reid uses his parliamentary tricks to keep the vote away from his colleagues. Even if Reid doesn't manage to table the bill, passage in the Senate is far from a sure thing. And in the event that the bill does pass the Senate, there's that final roadblock in the White House.

President Obama will have to do some serious spinning to come up with a reason to veto the bill. But spin he will. He spent months on the political trail obscuring the Obamacare loopholes for abortion because he claims to believe that federal funding should not be used for abortion. He can't veto the bill on that basis, then, without having another lie added to the long list of lies he has told. He might try to do his new "capitalist" thing, and claim that the bill interferes with the right to private contract. Who knows? But it is highly likely that he will veto the bill if it ever gets to his desk.
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Planned Parenthood A Pelosi Quandary

It's Sunday, and for once I'm going to do my religious duty and rest. But not before I throw out a topic for you readers to kick around and bring me up to speed on your thinking. We're once again up against a Congressional deadline for passing a budget, or passing a continuing resolution, or shutting down non-vital government functions until one of the previous two is accomplished.

On Wednesday, Republican House Speaker Boehner lost a vote on his proposed continuing resolution (they're not even close on an actual budget). Conservative Republicans joined Democrats in defeating the bill 230 to 195. Whatever one may think of their reasoning and their votes, the basic problem was that the conservatives thought the resolution didn't make enough deep cuts and wanted FEMA disaster funding handled separately. Democrats wanted to keep FEMA in the formula in order to demagogue Republican heartlessness. They also wanted some offsetting new taxes to balance the cuts ("revenue enhancement" in Democrat parlance means "higher taxes").

In fact, there was a more complicated reason for why the Republicans seemed to be susceptible to the claim of being heartless. They actually originally wanted to keep FEMA disaster funding and named the figure of $1.5 billion. But to keep that funding, they wanted an equal cut in funding for the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loans Program. In other words, the Democrats would rather kill funding for FEMA disaster relief than to allow cuts in their precious experimental toy cars program.

Former House Speaker and now very-minority Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday did her usual incoherent discussion of the impasse, blaming recalcitrant Republicans for just about everything except the extinction of the passenger pigeon. Subtly admitting that she simply doesn't like cuts in federal programs that produce Democrat voters and ever-larger deficits, Pelosi said she was opposed to cuts in any programs in order to protect the FEMA disaster funding.

Says San Fran Nan: "Let's hope they're [Republicans] not playing games with us--and now we are getting into games. Why don't we just come back and have another press conference after they say what they're are going to do. Because it's a waste of your time and my time to speculate on the horrors that they could come up with--because we know they are endless and we could be here a long time." Pelosi is much more concerned with what she calls "games" (others call it hardball politics) and news conferences than she is with admitting that cuts have to be made and that the nation can't afford to keep all the Democratic pie-in-the-sky, something-for-nothing programs.

Given her tendency to hyperventilate over any proposal to downsize the federal government giveaway programs, her reaction was not exactly unexpected. Her failure to propose an alternative that the nation could afford was likewise not a surprise. And her incoherence was simply standard Pelosi. But that's not what I'm hoping you will edify me and enlighten me about.

Pelosi was sure that she would advocate against and vote to reject any Republican proposal that funds necessary government functions by cutting Democratic pork and wasteful government programs. She was in a quandary about only one thing (surprisingly). When asked directly if some government programs in a continuing resolution could be funded by de-funding Planned Parenthood, Pelosi said she wouldn't speculate on what she would if that proposal were made.

So there it is. I have no idea why Pelosi would have any hesitation about preserving the funding for the abortion mill that she has so often and strongly supported. I would have expected her to give up all funding for the Defense Department or fetal stem cell research before even considering cutting or de-funding Planned Parenthood. So what do you think? Should she be in a quandary about Planned Parenthood? Is she really in a quandary, or is she simply stalling for time until she can think of an answer favorable to Planned Parenthood? And finally, if everything else could be worked out, do you think Pelosi would fight a continuing resolution solely on the basis of de-funding Planned Parenthood?
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I'm Not Second Guessing Your Repugnance!

Slow Joe is at it again. Last time he was calling Tea Party supporters terrorists. Before that he was calling women lacrosse players “gazelles” and complaining that “the wrong people end up collecting the women” in the financial crisis. Now he's praising China’s “repugnant” forced abortion policy.

Starting in the 1970s, China introduced a policy that limits families to one child per couple. This includes criminal sentences and forced abortions for parents who violate the policy. Ostensibly, this was done because China was facing an over population problem -- although China’s population was actually declining at the time the policy was put into place.

As an interesting consequence of this policy, China is now facing two of the world’s most extreme demographic problems. First, the elimination of several generations of young has left China with the world’s worst retirement problem, as China’s elderly population far outweighs its productive population (4 retirees per worker) -- this is much worse than in the United States (3 workers per retiree). Secondly, because the Chinese prefer boys over girls, this meant that mostly girls were aborted or killed as infants. Thus, China is about to face the problem that there are 40 million more eligible bachelors than there are wives. To get a sense of how large this problem is, consider that this is the same number of marrying age males in Britain, France and Germany combined. It is also the entire population of California.

China’s single-child policy is largely responsible for both of these problems and there is serious pressure to end the policy. Even China’s official press is questioning the policy, which is highly unusual. Moreover, last month, one entire province demanded a waiver of the policy. It seems that the policy will soon end.

So what does this have to do with us?

American liberals were initially big fans of China’s one-child policy. Why? Well, the 1970s was the age of the next Global Ice Age, the Population Bomb, and fantasies of global famine. We were all going to starve by 1992. And let’s face it, liberals have always loved Eugenics.

But at some point, most liberals realized that forced abortion was not a very defensible thing. So they decided that China’s policy was not something they could publicly praise, even though many continue to support it in private. Indeed, even now, you will occasionally find liberals who openly defend the policy. For example, there was a laughable AP article last month that claimed that girls had it better under the one-child policy than they did before. Of course, that’s only the girls who aren’t killed as children or fetuses and aren’t imprisoned or forced to abort their own children. Moreover, the article failed to grasp that economically, the whole premise of its argument was crap. But hey, these are liberals, what do you expect?

Enter Slow Joe Biden.

Biden is in China for reasons unknown, possibly to get him out of town until the election or maybe as collateral for our bonds or maybe he just got lost on his way to see Santa? And let me tell you, the Chinese are not pleased. They have already had to cut off one of his speeches because it was too idiotic to be translated. Then they asked him what he thought about China’s one-child policy. Here is what Joe said:

“The Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China's coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The vice president believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the one child policy to a Chinese audience.”

Oops, sorry, that’s what Biden’s spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said (and no, I did not make that name up). Here’s what Biden actually said:

“Your policy has been one which I fully understand--I'm not second-guessing--of one child per family.”

Feel free to compare the quotes, you may find a slight discrepancy. Either Barkoff is lying or Biden is “not second-guessing” China’s “repugnant” policy. . . or both. Who keeps letting this idiot out of his rubber room? Seriously, if I were Obama, I would have Biden shot to the moon and then get Huntsman to run as my VP.

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Conservatives Should Embrace Indiana Abortion Bill

On Friday, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana indicated he would sign a law defunding Planned Parenthood in Indiana. Many are speculating that Daniels only agreed to sign this law to rebuild his relationship with the religious right after the damage done by his comment that it was time for a “truce” on social issues. That could well be. But this is a law all conservatives should support and seek to duplicate.

The law in question provides that the state may not give money to any organization that provides abortions. This will cut off funding to seven entities in Indiana including Planned Parenthood (“PP”), which is not happy about this.

There are three aspects of this law that I find particular interesting. First, this is a direct assault on yet another Democratic funding source. Just like the unions and ACORN, PP uses taxpayer funding to support Democratic candidates and lobby for leftist causes. This law, which is now being copied in other states, will cripple PP’s ability to continue doing that. Nice work state-Republicans!

Secondly, this issue has exposed that PP’s primary concern is abortion, not the other services they hide behind like a facade. Indeed, as usual, PP’s defense is not that this law will restrict abortion, but that this law will affect other services. Says Betty Cockrum (seriously) of Planned Parenthood of Indiana, this law is “unconscionable and unspeakable” and will “leave as many as 22,000 patients without access to pap tests, birth control and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.”

Gee, that sounds horrible. But it’s not true. First, let’s think about this logically. How in the world do you get 22,000 people? The state of Indiana has 6.5 million residents. So if those other 6.48 million people still have access to these services, what has gone wrong for the other 22,000? Why can’t the 22,000 go to the same places as the other 6.48 million? Do they live in a bubble? Or is Cockrum really talking about “less convenient” and just trying to spin that into “without access”?

And let’s not forget that birth control is available at every 7/11, most high schools, most truck stops and within your own mind’s ability to avoid stupid decisions. Pap tests and treatments for VD are available almost anywhere there’s a hospital, clinic or doctor’s office. So how is it that 22,000 people suddenly can’t find these services?

Perhaps the issue is one of economics rather than distance travelled? Well, no. These services would be covered by Medicaid for the poor and Mitch Daniels has specifically ordered his health department to “take any actions necessary to ensure that vital medical care is, if anything, more widely available than before.” Why would PP consider that as anything less than a step up. . . unless they only care about abortion?

But here’s the real kicker, i.e. the ingenious exposing part of this law. For while Cockrum pretends that her real concerns are these other services and not abortion, there is no reason PP can’t continue to get government funds to provide those services. . . all they have to do is spin off their abortion operations. Indeed, as Daniels points out:

“Any organization affected by this provision can resume receiving taxpayer dollars immediately by ceasing or separating its operations that perform abortions.”

So what’s the problem? PP claims they don’t use taxpayer funding to support abortions, so there’s no reason for them to insist on keeping the abortion function grouped together with the other services, is there? And certainly not if that happens at the expense of losing all of these other “vital” services. So what gives?

Well, there are two problems. The first is that PP is lying; they do use taxpayer funding to support abortion. Here’s how. When money is given to PP to cover their non-abortion costs, that frees up money for use on their abortion operations. Think of it this way. Assume a drug addict spends $200 a month on food and $200 a month on drugs. You want to help them buy food, but you don’t want your money used on drugs. They agree and spend your specific $200 on food. . . receipts and everything. You feel good about yourself. But money is fungible and the reality is that all you did was free up the $200 they had been using on food to now be used to buy drugs. Thus, while you kid yourself that you only bought their food, every dollar you gave them actually supported their drug habit. It’s the same thing here. All that money paid for birth control and pap tests went to cover overhead, rent, salaries, etc., and freed up money to be used to subsidize abortions. And without that taxpayer support, the abortion business could not survive on its own.

Secondly, right now it’s very easy for PP to lobby and to get celebrity support by hiding behind the myth that their primary function is healthcare, with abortion being only a minor, minor side-offering. But if PP broke into two companies, how many celebrities would want to be seen donating their time, money or name to the abortion portion of PP? Not many. Thus, separating out the abortions deprives PP of the cover of being able to claim that abortions are something they “kind of sort of also sometimes do” in addition to the meaningful services.

Finally, I find this law interesting, because this is an issue that all conservatives should be able to agree upon, i.e. both religious conservatives and libertarians. Why? Because it doesn’t matter what your stance is on abortion or government involvement in people’s lives, there is no justification for using taxpayer funding to support the practice.

That’s why this is an interesting law and Republicans everywhere should be emulating it.

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Eugenics Central In Trouble Again

Courtesy of Planned Parenthood, you're looking at a photo of a regular event at the organization that plans unplanned pregnancies. It's called "Sexy Tuesdays." They're not misogynistic, so there's a matching event for the men. Given what it seems to be promoting, particularly the cocktail glass, I'm assuming they also have an event called "Get Rid of the Problem Wednesdays."

One of their clinics in New Jersey got a little too "sexy," and got caught on tape helping a person posing as a pimp who was trying to hide his underage sex-for-hire ring and obtain advice on what to do if one of his prostitutes got pregnant and had to have some hideous surgery called "family planning." The videotape was made by two undercover operatives, one posing as the pimp and the other posing as his underage female "employee." Perth Amboy Planned Parenthood apparently got its best tips from ACORN about how to encourage illicit sex and promote illegal businesses.

Amy Woodruff, the future ex-clinic manager, greeted the two "business people." They said they were involved in "sex work," and naturally Ms. Woodruff wanted to help them plan (that's their job, isn't it?). The fake pimp informed Ms. Woodruff that the girls are about 14 or 15 years old. Ms. Woodruff apparently knows that adult sex with minors, for pay or not, is illegal. But her primary job is to help the clients of the clinic, so she replied: "So long as they just lie, we just kinda play it stupid." Play?

Ms. Woodruff's excuse, which appears later in the video, is that these girls still need the "help," even if they are underage. She then proceeded to tell the fake pimp where girls under the age of 14 can get an abortion with no questions asked. One wonders what Ms. Woodruff's previous employment was (is?), since she knew the answer to the next fake pimp's question. "What do I do with them when they're recovering from the abortion?" We certainly wouldn't want to experience any down time, would we? Ms. Woodruff came right back with the answer: "Just be that extra action walking by." In other words, even if you can't have sex for pay with strangers, you can still advertise the wares.

President Lila Rose of Live Action says that this proves conclusively that at least one Planned Parenthood office breaks state and federal laws and covers up the abuse of the young women it claims to be protecting. I'll go the next step, and conjecture that Ms. Woodruff didn't just pull her answers out of her hat. More likely, she has had training and memos covering this exact subject. The fake pimp and prostitute work for a group that has been attempting to get the federal government to de-fund Planned Parenthood since its primary business is facilitating and performing abortions--of a baby of any age and for a mother of any age or legal status.

Live Action has reported these incidents to local and state authorities, with little success. They also produced eleven other similar tapes at multiple other Planned Parenthood offices to federal authorities. Not much luck there either. Naturally, Planned Parenthood denies everything. They call the tapes "edited," and claim that as soon as the fake pimp left, the employees immediately reported the visit to Planned Parenthood management. Needless to say, they didn't report it to the police, until they found out about the other eleven visits at other locations. Then, being the good moral citizens they are, they finally reported the one incident to law enforcement in New Jersey.

Planned Parenthood will seemingly do anything to protect the "right to choose," even if the underage prostitutes quite literally have no choice and even if it requires giving business-saving advice to a pimp. They deny aiding and abetting child sexual abuse. Lila Rose and other Live Action employees claim they have received death threats since this story broke. I have no way of confirming the truth of that, but considering how easily they kill millions of babies each year, what are a few adults? These people are beneath contempt and beyond any civilized moral code. Simply put, they are scum.
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