Mad Women
It was one of those headlines that you know is fake news, or at least extremely-manufactured news. But, like a train wreck—it’s sometimes hard to look away. A recent Yahoo News (of course) headline screamed, “Disney Princesses Show the Terrifying Reality Facing Women in Trump’s America”. It was linked to an article in Glamour magazine’s news and politics section. Who knew the magazine that feeds women (and men) unrealistic images of how women should look and act had a political section, much less can be taken seriously on a topic they say is a “War on Women”?
Nevertheless, the article sounded the alarm to the women of America that women’s healthcare in the Trump administration may all but disappear. Healthcare, by the standards of women like this, is usually defined by two things: abortion and birth control. So this article claims that any dismantling of Obamacare will be especially devastating to women. The author pointed to a couple of women who wanted to use their writing and illustration skills to help combat the supposed “GOP war against women.”
Illustrator Maritza Lugo and writer Danielle Sepulveres joined forces and imagined life for several female Disney characters if the Affordable Care Act is repealed and replaced. They depict Beauty and the Beast’s Belle (below) as no longer being able to get her birth control; Disney’s first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor, getting turned away from Planned Parenthood (by Cinderella’s evil step-sisters, no less); Pocahontas being denied overage due to a pre-existing condition, and Aladdin and Jasmine are forced to hold a funeral for their miscarried child.
First of all, what kind of a twisted mind do you have that you re-imagine these fictional, innocent ladies as going to a Planned Parenthood clinic or buying birth control? Who even goes there?
Second, what world are they living in if they believe that women didn’t have access to Planned Parenthood and birth control until the Affordable Care Act became law? Women who wanted these services had wide-open access to them long before Obamacare, and nothing is likely to change that. That last scenario with Aladdin and Jasmine is just bizarre—has Trump made some proclamation that parents who experience the pain of miscarriage must hold funerals for them? Where do these women get this stuff?
I’m guessing it comes from people like those who planned and spoke at the rabid rally of women held right after Trump’s inauguration. When you get women like Ashley Judd and Madonna pouring out venomous rants in front of largely left-wing women who take the time to march for rights they already have, you’re bound to inspire other mad women to take something good and pure and turn it into something absurd.
If only they would open their eyes from their fantasy War on Women and fight against some real-world problems that are going on while they whine. Things like the women who leave Planned Parenthood every single day, no longer pregnant, but wounded emotionally and –very often—physically. Or why don’t they cry out for all of the Black and Hispanic babies who make up the vast majority of the innocent victims of Choice inside the walls of Planned Parenthood? How about shedding some real tears for the real women, girls and boys that are lost inside the dark underworld of human trafficking and slavery? Will they be planning any marches on their behalf?
No, but they are planning to continue their “fight” sometime soon (see update below). The planners of the Inauguration weekend women’s march are said to be planning more forms of resistance, like a strike to be held sometime in the near future. No one really knows what they’re striking against or when it will be. It could possibly be held on May 1st. That’s the day that many labor groups like the SEIU will be holding a strike to “resist fascism and autocratic leadership.” Or maybe tomorrow, International Women’s Day, will inspire them to go on strike against whatever it is they’re angered over–which seems to be just about anything.
Incidentally, these women really should be thanking the GOP this week. It seems that Paul Ryan’s new replacement for Obamacare keeps all the things that make it so horrible, and ignores the free market altogether. According to the Washington Examiner, “…the GOP bill preserves much of the regulatory structure of Obamacare; leaves the bias in favor of employer healthcare largely intact, replaces Obamacare’s subsidies with a different subsidy scheme, and still supports higher spending for Medicaid relative to what was the case before Obamacare.”
Nice going, GOP. Now you can own the healthcare mess. What was that some nice lady once said about putting lipstick on a pig?
UPDATE 3/8/17 5:14 CST: They did it! Today, International Women’s Day was “A Day Without Women” where women were supposed to forgo working in an effort to protest “inequality”. Nothing like protesting the supposed pay gap and glass ceiling by not showing up to the job you have—makes sense only to progressives.
Twisted fairy tales: What’s the world coming to when fictional women have to pay out-of-pocket for their birth control?
Profits of Doom- Part 2
***UPDATE : 8/16/15: STEMEXPRESS BREAKS TIES WITH PLANNED PARENTHOOD^^^
***This is Part 2 of a 2-part posting that began last night…
The most recent video, the 6th one released by The Center for Medical Progress, begins the 2nd episode of their web series “Human Capital”. Released on Thursday, it has an interview with a whistle-blower who confirms that many women are pressured into donating their babies to research. She also claims she’s witnessed technicians go into the rooms of women who didn’t give consent and “take what they wanted”, especially in cases where the pregnancy was further along. Holly O’Donnell, former Procurement Technician with StemExpress, didn’t work for PP, but her work required her to be inside the abortion facilities every day, developing relationships with clinic staff members. She expresses sympathy and regret and speaks openly about what she was told to do: get the women to consent. If patients seemed reluctant, she often told them not to do it, even telling them not to get the abortion at all. This would get her reprimanded by her supervisors.
In one chilling segment, O’Donnell describes the PP clinic in Fresno, California as being “in an alley”, a poor area and very high-volume. This, she said, took a toll on her: “The environment was morbid, like you could feel it. You could hear…you could hear screaming, you could hear crying”.
Aren’t we always told by abortion supporters that women need this choice as a “safe and rare” alternative so that we don’t “go back to the days of back alley abortions”? A change in location doesn’t improve women’s health—the table only moved from the alley itself into a building in the alley. The end is still the same. It’s also not so rare. O’Donnell said during an 8-hour workday, the Fresno clinic would have more than 40 patients coming in for abortions.
She also mentions one doctor by name, Dr. Ron Berman, who “had a reputation for going viciously fast” in his work, and that she had to watch him or risk losing specimens. O’Donnell said he seemed agitated when he didn’t have a patient in the room, almost as if he enjoyed it. She described how he would go in, quickly do ‘the procedure” and move on.
Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger had always wanted there to be a place where poor people (especially people of color) and immigrants could go for “family planning”. She once said, “The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” She’d be happy to know her deadly legacy is continuing in assembly-line fashion in Fresno and in hundreds of other inner-city neighborhoods that are predominantly African American and Hispanic.
For their part, StemExpress, LLC, a small biotech company in California that partners with Planned Parenthood and other facilities to buy tissue and body parts for research, claims no wrong-doing. They put out a statement alleging the interview with Holly O’Donnell was “deceptively edited” and the allegations she made are untrue. CMP responded to their statement and they aren’t backing down. In fact, they’ve now raised some interesting questions about the PP-StemExpress relationship. It appears the Dr. Berman mentioned by O’Donnell was (and may still be) the Medical Director of StemExpress.
But then that raises even more questions. If Berman were profiting from intact parts as an executive for StemExpress, wouldn’t he want to take his time with each patient to make sure that was the case? Its possible Holly O’Donnell is just another disgruntled former employee with a bone to pick, but she’s making some pretty serious charges. Why would she do that if there weren’t some grain of truth to what she’s saying?
If you are someone against the use of fetal stem cells for research, visiting the StemExpress website is upsetting. They have order forms with drop-down menus and even a Wish List like you might see on Amazon or other shopping websites. The following screenshot shows there’s much money to be made in the aftermath of an abortion:
Screenshot from StemExpress site where orders for body parts are placed.
As you can see, StemExpress has no issue in putting a price on a life that never had a chance to live. I guess the high end of the spectrum would be for a more developed baby…$24,000 is a hefty sum, and how it gets divided up is one of many things that should be investigated. It certainly shoots down PP’s assertion that they don’t do this to make a profit. On the StemExpress website, where potential partners can go for information, “financial profits” is the first thing mentioned.
The words of Dr. Mary Gatter from an earlier video are eerie when you see a screenshot like the one above: “The patients don’t get anything, of course.”
Not that letting them in on the deal would make it better or more right. That would only make them one of many in the line of profiteers in what has become Big Abortion. More videos are on the way from The Center for Medical Progress. If any good is to come from the horrible things spoken of and shown in them (and I’ve barely scratched the surface), maybe women considering abortion will be repulsed at the prospect of a dollar value being assigned to the child they carry and will decide in favor of life.
Profits of Doom- Part 1
In case you’ve been away on vacation or depend on traditional newscasts for information, an organization called The Center for Medical Progress has been releasing videos nearly every week this summer that show Planned Parenthood reps at their worst. Even if you’ve only watched the short versions of each one—edited for time, not context—you can gather something very sinister going on with the nation’s top abortion provider. In the videos, they talk freely and casually about their practice of harvesting and selling fetal remains.
In one video, Dr. Mary Gatter, President of the Planned Parenthood Medical Directors’ Council, comes off as not just cold-hearted, but calculating as she talks numbers. Over lunch, the mad doctor haggles with the undercover researchers over the price of body parts like someone would haggle with a used car salesman. Incidentally, she may get to do that in time because she later laughs it off saying, “I want a Lamborghini”. Just in case you forget that Planned Parenthood is all about women’s health care, Gatter makes sure those she’s negotiating with understand where the money goes when she makes the stunning declaration, “The patients don’t get anything, of course.”
Of course. They’re just there to terminate their pregnancies and get on with their lives, right? They don’t care that PP sees them as another revenue stream. Wrong…the women don’t know going in how this is done or that people other than themselves will benefit financially from their “product of conception”, as the unborn child is called. They’re told it’s strictly for research—not profit, so it’s easy to imagine that a patient already stressed out by her situation may feel some comfort from that. Gatter seems totally detached from the idea that many of those women (and girls) are terrified, confused and heartbroken, or that being there is the last place they want to be.
If donating tissue for research is the way this is sold to the patients who come in for abortions, it’s presented in the same way to the general public. Dr. Savita Ginde, VP and Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountains, clearly admitted they have to present what they’re doing with fetal tissue as benefitting research as opposed to making a profit. According to Ginde, “..In public I think it makes a lot more sense for it to be in the research vein, than I’d say, business venture.” She continues, “Because if you have someone in a really anti state that’s going to be doing this for you, they’re probably going to get caught.”
When something is legal or good, you don’t have to worry about getting caught.
Perhaps the video featuring Dr. Deborah Nucatola, PP’s Senior Director of Medical Services, has drawn the most attention from conservative media because she’s shown eating salad and drinking wine while discussing the heinous harvesting process. She’s very matter-of-fact while giving graphic details about how she can preserve certain organs that will bring greater profits: “…we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part I’m going to basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
Nucatola candidly admits some doctors do ultrasounds with the sale of the parts in mind, and will alter their normal procedures to get what they want (which is a violation of federal law). According to Nucatola, “… for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they’ll know where they’re putting their forceps.”
I’m not sure how these people sleep at night. They must have to lie to themselves every day that what they’re doing is really helping women by ending an unwanted pregnancy that (they think) isn’t really a life at all but a mass of tissue.
How can they make that argument now? If it were just a clump of cells or tissue as they’ve always said, then why is it necessary to preserve certain parts? Why is it so valuable to them? Why, if there’s nothing wrong with what’s going on, do they cover their tracks by having their affiliates (local Planned Parenthood branches) contract directly for body parts sales? As Nucatola says, this is “too touchy an issue for us to be an official middle man.” So, if at some point (like now?) the grisly transactions are exposed, it will be the affiliates that will feel the heat, thereby shielding Planned Parenthood.
There is so much on these tapes, it’s amazing that there’s been hardly any outcry for something to be done. Even those we’ve put in power can’t agree that PP should be defunded, at least temporarily until there’s a full investigation into these activities. Women and unborn children are being abused and exploited by an organization operating under the banner of women’s health.
Part 2 of this posting will be published tomorrow (8/15) in the afternoon…video 6 just came out this week. In it, a whistleblower shares her story about what she saw inside the clinics.
Bringing Justina Home
If you’re a parent, this story dealing with parental rights should concern you. It’s been quietly unfolding for the past year, flying under the radar of most of the mainstream press as many important stories seem to do.
Imagine yourself in this scenario: you’re the parent of a 15-year-old girl who’s much like any teenaged girl, with the exception that she lives with a disorder known as mitochondrial disease, a rare genetic disorder that causes a weakening of her muscles. She received the diagnosis from Hospital One for this disease, where she then gets treatment for it. Then she gets the flu, and gets to the point where she won’t eat and can barely walk. You take her to that hospital, and her doctor suggests you take her to one of his former colleagues at Hospital Two, which happens to be a children’s hospital. However, she never gets to see that doctor before another doctor steps in, claiming she doesn’t have mitochondrial disease, but in fact has a mental illness. Much to your dismay and disapproval, Hospital Two’s doctors accuse you and your spouse of “over-medicalizing” your daughter and pretty much declare that the docs at Hospital One didn’t know what they were doing. They stop giving her the medications she had been getting to treat mitochondrial disease, and confine her to the psychiatric ward of their hospital against her will and yours. You attempt to re-gain control of your daughter’s health care, but it’s to no avail. The state has stepped in. You’re being accused of being unfit parents because you disagree with Hospital Two’s diagnosis. Hospital Two and the state won’t let you take her home. You now can only see your own daughter for one hour per week during supervised visits. Hospital Two then transfers her to another facility- a residential treatment facility where the supervised visits continue. You watch your teenaged girl go from a young lady learning to live with her disorder to a weak, frail shell of herself confined to a wheelchair. Her hairline is receding…so are her gums. She needs her family but can’t be with them and she’s not being treated for her original disease. What’s more, a judge has ordered you not to speak of your custody battle to the media. For a year, you watch her waste away, fearing for her very life. You’re then told that she will soon be sent to a “farm” of some sort which to you sounds like a place where they send people to die. You decide to do what any good parent would do: you defy the gag order and tell your story to anyone who will listen. You’re then held in contempt of court, threatened with jail time or a fine. You have no money left after a year of battling a hospital and the state for custody of your sick daughter. Now what?
If only this were a scene from some horrible futuristic film, but it’s really happening to the Pelletier family of West Hartford, Connecticut. This is how young Justina looked in January 2013:
…this is what she looks like now:
Something is rotten in the state of Massachusetts, and quite possibly at Boston Children’s Hospital. Justina isn’t your daughter…but she could be.
If you choose , you can help to be her voice. Learn more details HERE, HERE and HERE. Justina’s father, Lou, will be interviewed tonight (2/20/14) on Megyn Kelly’s show on the Fox News Channel at 9pm Eastern time/ 8pm Central.
Share this story via social media, and if you want to take it further and are in a position to do so, you can help this family financially at www.freejustina.com
Turkeys Can’t Fly
I love vintage television, and one of my favorite old shows from when I was growing up was WKRP in Cincinnati. If you’re familiar with it, you might know what I’m about to write. One of the most memorable episodes was a Thanksgiving episode where the station manager, Mr. Carlson, had planned a big surprise radio promotion at a shopping mall.
Carlson’s plan was to have a helicopter, pulling a banner proclaiming “Happy Thanksgiving from WKRP”, flying over the shopping center—while dropping live turkeys. While the station’s newsman, Les Nessman, gives the play-by-play of what’s unfolding at the mall, Dr. Johnny Fever and the other staff members are back in the studio listening to the whole fiasco. They all know what Mr. Carlson didn’t know: turkeys have wings- but they don’t use them. Later, a very disheveled and exhausted Carlson returns to the station and delivers the classic line, which is a twist on an even older classic line: “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
Maybe that’s what Barack Obama thought in the days following the launch of Healthcare.gov, the error-ridden website that serves as the gateway to his signature “reform” of healthcare for our nation. You see, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has an appearance of being both affordable (hence the name), and of increasing access to care for those most in need of it. However, there’s no wind beneath the wings of this over-sized turkey.
Millions of Americans, once content with the healthcare they’ve been receiving and the doctors and hospitals they use, are being told they cannot keep the plans they liked. Many are being steered towards other plans that, while comparable to what they had, are costing them more, and require them to give up the doctors they’ve built relationships with over time.
So bad have the bad stories been that BarackObama.com has put out a video—aimed at young people, of course—that encourages families to have “The Talk” about healthcare over your holiday meal. This is meant to encourage young healthy individuals—on whose backs Obamacare must be carried— to sign up for coverage. Coverage they can neither afford nor do they need (do young, unmarried men really need to have maternity coverage and free mammograms?). The video conveniently leaves that inconvenient information out of “The Talk”.
Bringing up a topic like Obamacare before, during or after your Thanksgiving dinner is generally a very bad idea. I have visions of mashed potatoes flying across the table and gravy boats “mysteriously” ending up in liberal laps.
Not to worry. If you chicken out of having The Talk over turkey, the media will help Obamacare rise from the ashes. One supposedly “non-partisan” organization, Families USA, was given a $1 million grant to help find people who actually have good stories to tell about Obamacare, and then make sure the media highlights them. Families USA has close ties with the administration and George Soros—so much for being non-partisan. The grant they received was from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which just so happens to be located in the same office building as Families USA and Enroll America, an organization begun by the Families USA co-founder and executive director in order to raise money to fund enrollment in Obamacare. Not only do these entities share the same building, they share the same office suite. How cozy is that?
The next deadline for having the Healthcare.gov website up and running at full steam is this Saturday. However, administration officials are encouraging people to “take turns” so to speak in signing up for it, fearing that the website will crash again from being overwhelmed by healthcare shoppers. Reports say it was designed for about 50,000 users at a time. That’s fifty thousand. If Amazon and Ebay worked this way, we would never have heard of them. Adding to the website’s problems, it was announced today that small businesses have been given a one year delay for when they must sign up.
So as you sit down to your turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, don’t think about the turkey that one party shoved down the throats of Americans via Obamacare. Think about all the things we still have that we can be thankful for like our families (even the knuckle-headed liberal relatives) and that we live in America…and for the brave men and women standing in harm’s way for us. And if you are lucky enough to have either not gotten through to sign up for healthcare, or are just planning to pay the fine— you can be thankful your name and other personal information are not yet in the hands of faceless government bureaucrats.
American Horror Story
***UPDATE 5/13/13: Dr. Kermit Gosnell was found guilty today of 1st degree murder in 3 of the four deaths of infants at his clinic and is guilty of manslaughter in the death of patient Karnamaya Mongar. The jury spent 10 days deliberating the 258 total charges that he had against him, inlcuding charges of infanticide and racketeering.
***UPDATE 2: 5/15/13: To avoid a possible death sentence, Gosnell agreed to waive his right to an appeal and will serve the rest of his life in prison.
In January of 2011, I posted an article titled “Blood Money” where I wrote about Dr. Kermit Gosnell. He’s been on trial in Philadelphia for the past six weeks, accused of over-medicating a woman who came into his clinic for an abortion that resulted in her death, and for performing illegal abortions on 4 babies who were born alive and were past Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit. He was originally charged with killing 7 children, but three of those charges were later dropped.
Witness after witness testified that Gosnell and others snipped the spinal cords of the children after they were born alive and had been breathing on their own, one as long as twenty minutes. Investigators described his clinic as a “house of horrors”, where patient files were stained with blood; the bodies and body parts of aborted babies were kept in containers (including jars, plastic milk jugs and bags) in freezers and on shelves; and flea-ridden cats roamed freely in areas where patients would be treated.
There were no nurses at Gosnell’s clinic, Women’s Medical Society, and no actual doctors other than Gosnell. Without supervision, untrained and unlicensed staff members (including a 15-year-old high school student!) routinely performed medical procedures and administered drugs to patients, most of whom were low income black women and immigrants. It’s interesting to note that Gosnell had a different set of rules for the few suburban white women who walked through the doors of his death house. The grand jury reported in those cases, Gosnell insisted that he be consulted at every step. When an employee asked him why, he said it was “the way of the world.” By the way, Gosnell himself is an African American. A former employee told the grand jury that Karnamaya Mongar, the immigrant from Nepal who died at the clinic, would have received the same treatment as the “rest of the Africans and Asians.” In other words, no doctor overseeing the medication she was given, the same filthy waiting areas and linens, and she wouldn’t have been led upstairs where the only clean room was as the white patients were. Also, the clinic had no working monitoring or resuscitation equipment, which could have made the difference between life and death for Mrs. Mongar.
All of this went on, even though multiple state and local agencies were aware of the substandard conditions. The local Planned Parenthood also knew, and in fact had been told by some of Gosnell’s former patients. What they decided to do was leave it to the women to report the incidents themselves. As a result, Gosnell’s business went on as usual for decades.
As a jury decides his fate, it’s frightening to realize that none of this may have ever become known had it not been for the raid federal agents conducted on his clinic in February 2010. The raid came about because of Gosnell’s other income stream his clinic provided to him: selling drugs. Gosnell was one of the top OxyContin prescribers in the state of Pennsylvania, his “day job” which went on in his absence when he would leave blank prescription pads (with his signature) for his non-medical staff to dispense to “patients” and their friends. He came in the evenings, often late at night, to perform abortions. He was a drug dealer by day and a baby killer by night. As long as the women could pay, they could have whatever they wanted– drugs, late-term abortions, under-age abortions—money is what mattered to him. Not the law, not the health of the women, and certainly not the babies.
I’d never heard this part of the story until I started reading the grand jury report for myself. It’s probably because what went on at night was so ghastly and heartbreaking that the details of his other grand money-making scheme seemed insignificant. The current trial is dealing only with his murder, infanticide and charges related to that part of his business.
If the jury decides Gosnell is guilty, he should go down in history as one of the biggest serial murderers of all time, particularly of Black children. It may never be known by us how many women and babies actually died there before it was shut down. From the grand jury report: “Over the years, there were hundreds of “snippings.” Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the “snipping” was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff. But all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all. Most of these acts cannot be prosecuted, because Gosnell destroyed the files.”
As Thomas Jefferson once said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
CLICK HERE to read the Grand Jury report. WARNING: very disturbing and graphic; I had to stop reading it.
Ready for a Challenge?
Our personal liberties and the Constitution were dealt a severe blow yesterday as the Supreme Court of the United States upheld Obamacare in its entirety. The real kick in the teeth to conservatives and Constitution lovers everywhere was that Chief Justice John Roberts, a supposedly reliable “conservative” justice appointed by President George W. Bush, cast the deciding vote by siding with the leftists on the Court. Progressives come in all stripes, but his decision was a shocker.
What we learned yesterday from Justice Roberts is: a.) something is a tax when it’s convenient for it to be a tax; and b.) elections have consequences.
On the first point, all we heard during Congress’ pushing through of this “healthcare” law (from those doing the pushing) was how this was NOT a tax on the American people. The biggest pusher of all was Obama himself. During an interview with George Stephanopoulos, who was mysteriously overcome with the desire to be a real journalist, Obama was pressed on this issue over whether the law is actually a tax. George even quoted the dictionary definition of what a “tax” is and asked Mr. President to explain how it isn’t a tax—at which time BO mocked him for thinking that words actually mean things and for consulting a dictionary.
The reason Roberts gave for his support was that Obamacare doesn’t work if they try to use the Commerce Clause and mandate that everyone buy it. He did, however declare that as a tax, it would fall within Congress’ powers of taxation. Tossing the ball back to Congress, Roberts said, “It’s not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” If he believed that way the day before in ruling on the Arizona immigration law, Arizonans would now be able to protect their borders without hindrance.
Roberts’ poor choice sets a dangerous precedent that Congress can tax us for anything it wants- even things we don’t do- if it wants to do so. Not only that, but they don’t have to call it a tax (when they’re trying to pass it). Congress can have their cake and eat it too.
The four dissenting judges (Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito) didn’t buy that. In fact, they believed the whole thing should be thrown out. Kennedy wrote, “It amounts instead to a vast judicial overreaching. It creates a debilitated, inoperable version of health-care regulation that Congress did not enact and the public does not expect.” [emphasis mine]…and liberals were worried that Roberts would be an activist for the right?
On the second point, one far-reaching job of all presidents is the appointing of judges. Because they’re appointed for life, it’s very important they be questioned thoroughly and pressed on issues they attempt to dodge. The mainstream media and liberal political hacks were fearful of Chief Justice Roberts and his “right-wing” court a week ago. Today, they sing his praises. Back when he was being confirmed in 2005, it’s interesting to see what people were saying about him. You don’t often find a case where then-senator and now Vice President Joe Biden agrees with the likes of Ann Coulter…but it happened then.
As reported in an AP story from September 2005, Roberts answered many of his questions with an “on the one hand, on the other hand approach.” Senator Biden said to him, “You have managed to convince Senator Brownback (a conservative) that you’re on his side, and you have managed to convince Senator Kennedy (an ultra-liberal) you’re on his side.”
In an article from July 2005 Ann Coulter raised a red flag, calling Roberts a “blank slate”, and gave these strong words of warning to conservatives that turned out to be prophetic: “…we don’t know much about John Roberts. Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever.” That surely was the case yesterday.
This is why elections matter. Every vote (we hope) matters. Are you registered? Find out here, and get other conservatives, libertarians—anyone you know who is concerned about how things have been going these past few years. I’ve heard estimates that as many as 30% of active members of Tea Party and other pro-liberty groups are NOT registered to vote. This has to change this year if we hope to begin to change the course we’re on for the nation we love.
If yesterday wasn’t enough to get you to the polls in November, consider this: Supreme Court Justice Eric Holder.
Turkeys on Parade
Just in time for Thanksgiving, I thought I’d pull together some of the more recent “things you just can’t make up” that would make the turkey on your table seem like a Rhodes Scholar. Here’s a cornucopia of idiocy from those who make the headlines:
President Obama’s been busy bad-mouthing the American people once again. A couple weeks ago, he spoke to a group of Pacific-rim business leaders and told them that “we’ve been a little lazy” in trying to get foreign investors to come here and do business. Were you using the “royal we”, Mr. President? It seems most of us have to work pretty hard just to keep up after all of your HopenChange. Most of us don’t get to take exotic vacations every other month on someone else’s dime. Incidentally, I’m sure your anti-business policies have nothing to do with turning foreigners off from the prospect of doing business here, since we have the 2nd highest corporate taxes in the world, with only Japan topping us.
…this happened after he made the big mistake of either forgetting where he was, or maybe just not knowing it to begin with when he was speaking to an audience in Hawaii. He said, “When I meet with world leaders, what’s striking — whether it’s in Europe or here in Asia…” Uh…you’d think he’d remember he was in his home state, the place where he was born. I guess he forgot that Hawaii is, in fact, one of the 57 states he spoke of back in the glory days of the 2008 campaign.
Meanwhile, his friend and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Dimwit-CA) has decided that the government should run its own babysitting service. She wants to do to child care what the government has done to health care (OH NO!). She said, “When it comes to “unleashing women” in a way that would boost the economy…this is a missing link.” So, I guess she sees women who decide to have children and raise a family as being some kind of on-going detriment to our economy because they’re chained to these ghastly children. Even more hilarious is that she, a multi-millionaire, claims to know how difficult it is to find quality child care for her children. She blathered on: “I could never get a babysitter — have five kids in six years and no one wants to come to your house. . . . And everywhere I go, women say the same thing.” Maybe the problem wasn’t a lack of good caretakers as much as it was a lack of interest in working for her. Nancy, the missing link is between the brains and the hands of the people who keep pushing the button/ pulling the lever to keep you in your position.
Finally, the Occupy Wherever movement, that once received praise from Nancy Pelosi (“God bless them”) and other Democrats appears to be growing…but not with human participants. It seems lice, fleas, TB, ringworm, scabies (yes, that’s right, scabies!) and a new condition called “Zucotti Lung” are appearing among the occupiers in various cities. The only time I’ve ever heard of scabies was in my sixth grade health class when we learned about diseases that people in Third World nations get. Furthermore, if a movement gets its own contagious disease named after the primary location of the movement, this is not an attractive selling point. I heard one occupier being interviewed tell the reporter that these camps were small samples of what they hoped society would become. God help us! He said that with a straight face, by the way.
Speaking of God, it’s time to wrap this up by wishing you, wherever you are, a very Happy Thanksgiving and God’s blessings on you and your family, even if you don’t believe in Him. He still believes in you and that’s something to be thankful for in these chaotic times.
After Midnight
As the sand runs to the bottom of the hourglass, time is ticking away on whether or not Democrats, Republicans and the White House will be able to reach a deal to fund the government for the remainder of fiscal year 2011, which ends on September 30th. The current continuing resolution expires at midnight.
It’s important to cut through all the rhetoric and realize why this is happening in the first place: the Democrat-controlled 111th Congress last year neglected to do their duty and pass a budget like they should have done. Why they didn’t, in my opinion, is they were playing their usual political games. They knew the November election was coming. They knew the mood of the country and how fed up the electorate was with their out-of-control spending. Rather than present a budget to the people (their bosses) that showed us that they really wanted to get our financial house in order, they kicked the can further down the road. They were pretty sure they’d lose their majority in the House, and possibly the Senate, so they decided to leave the mess for the 112th Congress to deal with.
Just maybe, they thought, the American public will be too stupid to realize that the Republicans didn’t actually take control of Congress until January 2011. Just maybe, people will shift the blame to them for anything that happened—or didn’t happen—since November. Gambling on the ignorance of the public, the Democrats have always known that they have no desire to stop spending, and hope you’ll forget that when Election Day 2012 rolls around. While secretly hoping for a government shutdown that they also hope will be blamed on the Republican Congress (remember 1996?), Democrats have been running to microphones and TV cameras with all sorts of admonishments to Republicans and predictions of doomsday scenarios for the American people about what will happen when the clock strikes twelve. For instance:
*Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY): “This is probably one of the worst times we’ve seen because the numbers of people elected to Congress. I went through this as co-chair of the arts caucus…in ’94 people were elected simply to come here to kill the National Endowment for the Arts. Now they’re here to kill women.” ***Apparently, over the past day or so, the budget battle has taken several odd turns. It’s currently about funding women’s health (so they say), but it’s really about the Republicans’ efforts to attempt to make spending cuts, including de-funding Big Abortion business tycoon Planned Parenthood. Lefties don’t like that!
*Harry Reid, Senate Majority leader and resident doofus said that Republicans want to shut down the government to make it harder for women, like his wife, daughters and granddaughters, to get the health services they need, such as cancer screenings, etc. He said, “They’ll throw women under the bus” if the government shuts down. ***Earth to Harry: under your leadership, the Senate hasn’t passed a budget bill in a year and a half. If anyone’s under the bus, it’s the American people, and you, Nancy Pelosi and the president are in the driver’s seat. I repeat: this is the 2011 budget that should have been passed last year if the Democrats, with complete control, had done their job.
*Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Speaker: “In one of the bills before us, six million seniors are deprived of meals — homebound seniors are deprived of meals. People ask us to find our common ground, the middle ground. Is middle ground three million seniors not receiving meals?” ***So which is it, Nancy- 6 million or 3 million senior citizens who won’t have anything to eat because of the evil Republicans? Turns out it’s neither, and even the liberal Washington Post corrected her crazy math.
* Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC): “We are absolutely outraged. This is the functional equivalent of bombing innocent civilians.” ***HUH???
*Not to be outdone, Al Sharpton moaned that this is “making the government dysfunctional” on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. ***This comment is too dumb to comment on.
In the midst of all of this, the real (not conjured up) tragedy of a government shutdown is that those fighting for our nation in the now 3 wars we’re fighting will not be paid. This, in spite of the fact that yesterday, the Republican-controlled House passed another week-long continuing resolution. This would cut more federal spending but ensures that our troops will continue to be paid until the end of September. Harry Reid promised it will get nowhere, and Obama promised to veto it should it get to his desk.
President Obama could, on his own, make sure that those defending our freedom get paid, but he won’t. Presidents Reagan and Clinton both made sure of it when they presided over government shutdowns, so there are precedents. Why won’t Obama? Surely he’s not looking at our men and women in uniform simply as pawns in a power game? No one wants to believe that the person who asks these brave warriors to go into harm’s way would be so low as to also expect them to do it for free. We’ll find out soon…after midnight.
Liberty Belle Blog 