A long time ago I asked a pro-choice friend, that if technology advanced to the point where an unborn baby could safely be transferred to the womb of another woman, allowing the original mother to "terminate" her pregnancy without terminating the life of the baby--would she then agree that abortion should be illegal. Her answer surprised me. She said no. It was still the woman's "choice", and that "choice" shouldn't be taken away.
I imagine if one were to pose that same question to the vats majority of pro-choice people, you'd get the same answer. Given the ability to end the pregnancy without ending the life of the baby, they'd still demand the right to end the life of the baby.
Because it has never been about choice.
China forces women to undergo abortions on a daily basis. Does Planned Parenthood or NARAL care? No.
Because it has never been about choice.
Underaged girls are being forced to have abortions by their molesters, a practice that can easily be stopped, but pro-choice forces scream bloody murder whenever anyone tries to ensure that underage girls are not forced to have abortions. Why?
Because it has never been about choice.
The real reason has always been that many people do not want there to be any power higher than the state. If there is nothing sacred, nothing define, then they can pretend that they themselves are the ultimate value, the highest authority, and that imagined autonomy would be reinforced by the state. That that actually makes the state god, they ignore, as long as they can maintain the illusion that there is no higher power than that which they can convince themselves that they can control. The one and only reason to not allow abortions would be that human life possess a value beyond what any single person or group of people can designate. The alternative would be to acquiesce to an authority outside our control.
The illusion that we are in control is too alluring for some people, and therefore they denigrate anything sacred to common. As C.S. Lewis put it...
"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and then bid the geldings to be fruitful."
What the pro-choice crowd may never get is that by denigrating the value of the unborn, they denigrate the value of themselves as well. It's not a matter of gaining height for yourself by pushing down on another person or group, because when it comes to human dignity, that method always lowers both parties.
Kerry’s loss was, in part, to an independent group’s attacks on him. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ran ads that misled voters about Kerry’s own military service. His campaign was slow to react, and by the time they did, many voters believed Kerry lied about his war record.
The Swift vets never misled anyone. The Ass. Press are the liars. Every claim the swift Vets made was backed up by witness or official documents. They told the truth. The MSM now wants to create its own "truth" just as it did in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra trials, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and the Clinton impeachment hearings.
Around 60 years ago we were at war with Japan and Germany. It took a lot of effort, a lot of lives, but we stuck it out and won.
Fifty some-odd years ago we were at war in Korea, aiding South Korea in maintaining freedom as China was trying to help North Korea turn all of Korea into another Communist nation. It took a lot of effort, a lot of lives, but we stuck it out and won.
Forty or so years ago we were at war in Vietnam, trying to aid the South Vietnamese in maintaining freedom as China and Russia were trying got help North Vietnam turn all of Vietnam into another Communist nation. It took a lot of effort, a lot of lives, but then, on the very threshold of victory, Liberal Democrats and Liberals in the Media were finally able to badger the government into abandoning the war and South Vietnam fell.
Three nations we freed. One nation we cowardly turned our backs on.
WWII veterans and Koreans veterans were able to come home from the battle, worn, weary, saddened by the loss of their buddies, but thanked for a job well done. They were heroes.
Vietnam veterans came home worn and weary, saddened by the loss of their buddies and then were spat on by cowards and idiots. In spite of their heroism, they were treated by many as criminals, and often felt that way because they knew that by ending the war, all their sacrifice had been completely in vain.
Vietnam remains a Communist dictatorship. With an average income of just over $3,000 a year, the Vietnamese people suffer from economic depression as well as the tyrannical rule of Communist totalitarianism. In the 80s it became known that most Vietnamese existed on so little food that they were unable to work. The Vietnamese government addressed the problem by ensuring such news could no longer be available to outside countries.
Meanwhile per capita income in South Korea is $24,500, in Japan $33,100, in Germany $31,900.
Because the three nations enjoy economic and political freedom they thrive and contribute to the global economy. We are able to export goods to those nations and their people are free do work, earn and purchase. In 2006 South Korea imported $36.49 billion worth of goods from the United States, Japan imported $66.56 billion from the US and Germany $60.48 billion. Vietnam? $88 million.
When WWII ended we faced a Germany in economic ruins, ravaged by a diabolical cult-like mentality that had rationalized the horrors of the holocaust, and continued violence from the remaining Nazis, bent of getting the allies out of Germany. Their violence continued for years, but we remained steadfast, and we can see how Germany is today.'
Japanese society in the mid 1940s was dominated by a religious belief that suicide on behalf of Japan meant returning in the next life as a higher being. But in spite of that we were able to convince the Japanese people that peace was a better option.
The voices of those who want us to abandon Iraq, just as we abandoned Vietnam are rising. The Elite Media, just as they did 40 years ago are crying for retreat. They won't be concerned about the suffering caused by such a retreat, and certainly won't report it, just as they have failed to report the suffering in Vietnam over the past 40 years. But one big difference here is that unlike Vietnam, the enemy in Iraq has the resource and the motivation to attack us, and unless we defeat them there, we will face them here. Sixty years ago defeating the Nazis meant we wouldn't have to face them on US soil, because we most certainly would have, had we not defeated them in Europe. The Japanese had already shown their willingness to attack us on our own soil, as have the Al Queda.
So which history will we repeat, the victories of the 40s and 50s or the defeat of the 60s? Because we will repeat one of them.
In the fiscal year '07, ending Oct. 1, military members serving in Iraq and Afghanistan reported 131 cases of rape and assault. The Department of Defense recorded 2,688 cases of sexual assault last year; 60 percent were allegations of rape....
According to a Government Accountability Office report released July 31, incidents of rape and sexual assault in the military are under-reported by nearly half. Many soldiers fail to report assaults because they worry "that nothing will be done; fear of ostracism, harassment, or ridicule; and concern that peers would gossip."
Some victims argue that the military chain of command would punish or move them if they complained, rather than discipline the person responsible for the assault.
A Department of Defense 2006 Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members shows 34 percent of all female service member respondents were sexually harassed, and 6.8 percent indicated experiencing unwanted sexual contact including rape, nonconsensual sodomy or indecent assault.
...41% (45) of the total disposed rape cases (109) were officially declared false during this 9-year period, that is, by the complainant’s admission that no rape had occurred and the charge, therefore, was false. The incidence figure was variable from year to year and ranged from a low of 27% (3 out of 11 cases) to a high of 70% (7 out of 10 cases). The 9-year period suggests no trends, and no explanation has been made for the year-to-year fluctuation....
Quite unexpectedly then, we find that these university women, when filing a rape complaint, were as likely to file a false as a valid charge.] Other reports from university police agencies support these findings (Jay, 1991). In both police agencies, the taking of the complaint and the follow-up investigation was the exclusive responsibility of a ranking female officer. Neither agency employed the polygraph and neither declared the complaint false without a recantation of the charge.
For those who don't know how to translate words into numbers, if there were as many false reports as legitimate reports, that would make the rate of false reports 50%.
When I was assigned to Headquarters, US Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID), I read every report of investigation that CID agents produced. There were a lot of rape accusations. Here is a very typical scenario, and if you called the Special Agent in Charge of most any Army post's CID office, you could confirm what I am writing.
Young female soldier, 18-20 years old, becomes friendly with an equally young male soldier. Their friendliness is considerably enhanced by their good friend, Al K. Hall (say it fast). They wind up in his barracks room or other private place. Neither are in full possession of their faculties. They have sexual relations.
Later - in many cases, weeks later - the female soldier accuses the male soldier of rape. There is absolutely no physical evidence of any kind. The male soldier claims the sex was totally consensual. They both admit they were drunk. There are no witnesses. A female CID agent told me that this scenario was so commonplace at her post that she and her office categorized them as "Fort Bliss rapes" to distinguish them from the real kind.
What really went on? A large number of investigative manhours are expended that lead nowhere. The trial counsel (military prosecutor) isn't about to go to trial with no evidence. The male soldier's commander, who is the only one who can actually draw up court martial charges, hears this story practically once per month, maybe more. S/He counsels, cajoles and threatens his troops about this kind of thing every week, but boys will be boys and women will be women no matter what he says. And in such cases he's not really in charge, anyway, and neither are the young men and women. General Hall, Al K., is.
I was a company commander at Fort Jackson in the early 1980s. One evening I went to the barracks to observe how well evening curfew was being obeyed (my soldiers were AIT students, one step out of basic training and one step away from the real Army). Curfew was 9 p.m. At 9:05 p.m. in straggle two female soldiers. My brigade had a strict "buddy system" and these two young women were each other's buddy for the evening.
The NCO serving as charge-of-quarters that night stops them and demands to know why they are late. Female soldier #1 immediately responds, "I would have been on time, but I was raped on the way back from the club."
The CQ turns to the other female soldier and says, "What about you?" She replies, "Oh, I was with her the whole time. We didn't break the buddy system!"
So we have to go through the whole, useless rigamarole of calling the MPs and CID and taking statements and the whole bit, because the commanding general's policy was that all rape claims would get the full treatment. Period. The soldier who said she was raped was white, so her story - naturally - went like this:
My buddy and I were walking back to the barracks from the junior-enlisted club when up the street, as we passed some large bushes, a big black man jumped out from the bushes. He grabbed me and dragged me back under the bushes, where he raped me.
No kidding, that really was her story. Her buddy that night was a black soldier; I wonder how she felt about the story. She had to confirm it because she had already said it was true, before the white soldier supplied the embellishment. (It was always a big, black guy, even if the female soldier making the claim was black herself.) Investigation shows no soil or damage to clothing, no footprints under the bushes concerned or other disturbance of the ground or mulch, and there is no DNA evidence to be found anywhere.
Another female soldier in the next company claimed she was gang-raped in the barracks and named four male soldiers as her attackers. In that case, CID was actually able to prove her story was false. My battalion commander court martialed her, as he darn well should have, and she was convicted.
In my tenure in command I had at least 80 young women claim they had been raped. All but three were false, the claims used being used as an excuse for not obeying some other instruction or in some cases as retribution against the man for some offense she took for some other reason.
Political Correctness defies logic for the most part, but the ranking of "causes" can be observed among adherents of PCism from time to time. While Blacks and Women are both minorities and (according to the religion of PCism) deserving of special allotment of rights, Blacks are obviously considered more PC than women (thus Hilary's fall). "The Poor" is also a PC victim group, but being black and poor makes one more of a victim than being white and poor. But even being black and poor, apparently, comes as a distant second to issues of the environment, as one California legislator rudely illustrates in the following clip (warning contains profanity)
Pastor Robert Jones of Oak Park United Methodist Church was appearing before an informational hearing on California's efforts to cut automobile emissions. Pastor Jones was arguing that government imposed mandates and taxes hurt the poor and vulnerable. Before he could finish, Democrat Senator Pat Wiggins, interrupted and said, "Excuse me, but I think your arguments are bull----."
What Pastor Jones obviously didn't understand is that the poor, even the black poor are considered dirt compared to environmental issues. Democrats don't care how much people suffer while the government protects a minnow in a Colorado stream or an Owl seen nearby the proposed location for new housing. Animals are more important than "The Poor".
C'mon Pastor Jones, read the back of the victim card they handed you. It clearly states "...all rights, privileges and benefits presumed to accompany The Victim Card are hereby null and void when conflicting with environmental issues, whether real, imagined or invented."
Found this linked from Boortz.com. It's absolutely amazing. I can't believe anyone went to this much effort to say something that made such sense, but goes completely contrary to the status quo.
Internet giant Yahoo is set to announce today that it will allow users to shut off targeted advertising on its Web sites, a move that comes as a congressional committee continues to air concerns about privacy.
Last week, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce asked Yahoo and 32 other Internet companies to provide more information about the surfing data they collect from Web users and how that data is used to customize advertising.
As many media companies struggle to make money from their Web sites, members of Congress and the industry appear to be in the early stages of a high-stakes negotiation over what kind of advertising ought to be allowed.
While Yahoo's new policy may make it harder for the company to make money from ads - targeted pitches generally fetch higher prices - company officials said offering privacy options could attract more users.
My daughter recently saved up her money and bought an American Girls doll, then began surfing the web to find sites about the dolls. For weeks we saw an overabundance of ads on many sites for American Girl dolls.
My wife's been spending the last week trying to locate homeschool curriculum at a good price, specifically BJU HomeSat books. Again, the ads began to focus on BJU homeschool books.
Was our privacy invaded? No, of course not. Only some who is seriously paranoid would think so. It makes no sense to want to hide your browsing habits, unless, of course, you're going to sites you really shouldn't be going to and you wife or mother may notice an odd trend in advertising. In that case it seems really silly to demand that Yahoo and other sites forego millions in advertising revenues to accommodate your porn habit.
This is prediction I made a while back, and have lately been wondering if I was wrong. It appears Alicia Colon of the New York Sun predicts the same things...
Is America ready for a black president? Absolutely; it has been for some time. We probably would have had one by now if the black community had ever supported a conservative the way they are now supporting one of the most liberal. More than likely the first black president will be a Republican....
The blacks who have attained the strongest national leadership roles have been Republicans: the first black secretary of state, Colin Powell, and the first black female secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
Republicans have been ready for a black president since Lincoln.
Another big problem that she doesn't mention is that the MSM routinely ignore black Republicans, and pretend they don't exist, even though there are quite a few of them. Somehow typecasting blacks as always Democrats doesn't fit the "standard" definition of racist. Wonder how that works?
It is worth noticing that when a black Republican achieves notoriety it's someone immensely qualified. When black Democrats achieve notoriety is is almost always someone of questionable if not miniscule qualifications. Handing positions to blacks because of their skin color presumes they lack the ability to achieve it any other way. Democrats obviously believe this while Republicans obviously don't. Yet look who the MSM consistently portray as friendly to blacks.
SB 1322, a plan by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, was approved by lawmakers and forwarded to Schwarzenegger for his signature or veto, officials with the pro-family Capital Resource Institute said today....
Officials said the bill "will banish from current law the ability of schools to fire teachers for being Communists. It will also allow Communists to use public school property for their meetings."
"During floor debate on the bill Monday afternoon, minority Republican lawmakers attempted to at least insert language banning terrorists from teaching in schools or using government property as they conspire against innocent American citizens. The amendments to SB 1322 were voted down by the majority Democrats," the group said.
Hollywood has been screaming against the idea of blacklisting people based on political ideology since it was discovered that there were so many Communist spies and sympathizers there. Liberals see Communists as people that have simply taken "good" ideas a tad too far. Therefore they don't see them as a real threat, even though there has never existed a Communist country where the people were free and didn't suffer abuse and deprivation.
However, it seems Hollywood doesn't mind the idea of blacklisting some people.
The political blogsosphere, of course, went ballistic. Then Jeffrey Wells, who runs the movie and pop culture site Hollywood-Elsewhere.com, took [ actor John] Voight to task for his [political] right turn and wrote that, if he were a studio executive, he might think twice before hiring Voight for any future film work. “[Voight is] obviously entitled to say and write whatever he wants,” wrote Wells. “But it's only natural that industry-based Obama supporters will henceforth regard him askance. Honestly? If I were a producer and I had to make a casting decision about hiring Voight or some older actor who hadn't pissed me off with an idiotic Washington Times op-ed piece, I might very well say to myself, ‘Voight? Let him eat cake.'"
While Wells was condemned by some Hollywood people, one has to wonder whether it was for his idea of blacklisting conservatives, or simply his foolishness in publicly voicing something Hollywood has been doing for decades.
JackLewis.net is in all my experience -- and don't get me wrong -- I don't mean to overstate the matter, but
after all things considered, I can unequivacably state that it is. At least in my book. -- Glenn Reynolds
