First They Came for Breast Health, Then Birth Control: Pin the Tail on the Nazi

JC Penny recently hired Ellen DeGeneres as their new spokesperson, seemingly a good move, considering how well Ellen is received in society, and how well-liked, and accepted, she clearly is by the American public.  However, the conservative group One Million Moms (OneMillionMoms.com [A Project of the American Family Association]) is bashing JC Penny for hiring an active, open lesbian as spokesperson.  JC Penny’s customers are people with traditional family values, who will be very offended by Ellen, OMM claims on their website.  JC Penny is standing by their decision to make Ellen their frontwoman.  They are standing by Ellen, which, I think, is a good thing.   

So does Bill O’Reilly.  He has a pretty big problem with the social-conservative witch-hunting of Ellen, and he said so on The Factor: “The essential question is that a conservative group in this country is asking a private company to fire an American citizen based upon her lifestyle. I don’t think that’s correct.”

In fact, it’s blatant gay bashing wrapped in a blanket of Christian family values.  I’m reminded of Max Von Sydow’s line from Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters: “If Jesus came back and saw what was going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”

Strange how, at a time when some conservatives are calling Obama a Nazi for trying to require that the Catholic Church obey the same standards as other organizations when acting as an employer (i.e., providing health insurance coverage of birth control), many of those same conservatives and conservative groups are aggressively attempting to relegate a whole segment of American society to second-class citizenship. 

Perhaps they should re-read the poem “First They Came” by Martin Niemoller, which is being grotesquely brandied about to paint a picture of the Obama administration as nothing more than a pack of brown shirts, and apply it to their own urges. 

People, newspapers, and corporations are not always what they appear to be. 

Karen Handel, former senior vice president of public policy at Susan B. Komen, may indeed be more at home at One Million Mean Moms.  She certainly wouldn’t have to lie to the public about her motivations and could actively pursue such lofty goals as cutting low-income women off from breast cancer screening at Planned Parenthood.  

Which brings me to my own urge to point out that Planned Parenthood may offer abortion services at some of their clinics, or, more commonly, access to information about how and where to obtain an abortion, but it certainly isn’t promoting abortion.  It promotes birth control, aggressively.  I think it’s fair and safe to say that Planned Parenthood has prevented far more abortions than it ever facilitated, which is another good thing. 

Komen has the right to be foundationally pro-life, and Planned Parenthood has the right to be foundationally pro-choice.  Komen can choose to associate, or not, with Planned Parenthood.  But blowing smoke up women’s arses about why it is pulling funding from Planned Parenthood is plain lying, it is offensive, and it is wrong.  Which is why supporters of Susan B. Komen need to take a closer look at this organization.  Karen Handel didn’t just so happen to trip and fall into her senior position at Komen.  Komen leaders chose to hire her as senior vice president of public policy, knowing her personal politics and goals. 

Clearly, Komen has for a long time wanted out of its relationship with Planned Parenthood because of Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the provision of — legal, by the way – abortions.  Fine.  They should have said that, and they never should have donated to Planned Parenthood in the first place, if associating with Planned Parenthood was so offensive to its pro-life values.  Instead they baited and switched.  Or tried to.  Hypocrisy can be expensive.    

The increasingly prominent social-conservative attack on the provision and availability of birth control is noxious as well.  Organizations such as Planned Parenthood, which support the availability of birth control for all women, not only help to improve the lives of women, children, and men by providing preventive health care, they help to prevent abortions. 

We the people need to start examining, very carefully, the organizations wielding so much power and influence in our country, and in our individual lives.  Groups like the American Family Association that don’t like gays marrying their loved ones and participating in society; churches that believe they are above the law; charities that claim to profess one set of values while covertly advocating for the opposite values all endanger our individual liberty.

It’s time to take off the blind folds and stick the pins in the real Nazis’ hearts. 

 

Presidential Pathos: Chance, Choice, the Ultimate Chalice

These days, and maybe always, it’s hard to decide for whom to vote for president.  We know that it is an important decision, but how much choice do we feel we have? Whether we’re democrat or republican, how much do the two candidates really differ? O, I know they differ, I know there are significant variations in their supposed philosophical approaches — and actions — to such vital issues as the economy, war, education, foreign aid, etc.  Etc.  Yeah, I really do mean etc, blah blah.  Not that I don’t care about all the ETC issues.  I do.  It’s just that, yeah, not a lot of choice, as far as I’m concerned.  So what does it matter what the Dem thinks or what the Repub wants to do?  Whatever, I think, totally feeling like that blond chick from Clueless (she is SO fab –  Alicia Silverstone, that is she!!).

The libertarians have it all right, if you ask me.  But they’ve got no experience, and they are so damn heartless sometimes.  I mean, I may not be thrilled with our present welfare situation, but I think there should be SOME help for folks on hard times.  And I don’t think anyone in our great American country should go without health care — and I mean preventive as well as emergency.  Access to health care and a sense of control over our bodies, and the knowledge that someone — actual doctors who give a damn and are able to take actual action to fix us — is there for us, to help us, when our bodies betray us and start ruining our lives, no matter what our financial means, that’s important stuff, and ALL people deserve that, not just those of us with Cadillac health insurance and cash to spare for horrific emergencies involving our horrific mortality.

That’s right.  I usually vote republican, but, yeah, I just implied I want some universal health care insurance action.  And republicans aren’t too ok with that sort of thing.  No, they’re kind of pretty overly hard-boiled, if you ask me.  Like, uh, Clueless.  But, then again.

Maybe not.  Think about it.  There ARE some things to consider.

Herman Cain is out.  I liked him in some ways.  I mean, I liked Him.  I didn’t go for the 999 stuff.  Struck me as pretty 666.  But I really liked his manly sense of humor, his no-bullshit demeanor, his grit.  I loved the ad with the dude smoking!! Totally.  Blow that smoke, dude, yeah.  Screw all of everyone who isn’t voting for us.  Give me a light! It was just some good fun.  You’ve got to love a fella a with balls, is all I’m saying.  You don’t have to agree with all of everything he’s saying, but, damn, give me some guts.

And a guy who can perform.  Who can debate.  Who can talk. Jump start us to thinking.  Even if it pisses us off a little.  Or a lot.

The allegations of sexual harassment, of butt-smacking, dirty talking, etc., have been pretty prevalent, to say the least, over the past couple of months.  At first I kind of got a kick out of it.  Like, some chick is pissed Herman Cain smacked her butt, and now that he’s running for president, she’s going to nail him.  Then I thought, o, jeez, the guy’s a jerk, he’s been smacking asses, and hitting on women, and being a schmuck.  And then I thought, he might have even tried for force himself on a woman, or women, and that’s not funny, that’s not fun, and that’s no joke.

I didn’t really seriously suspect that the guy is some kind of attempting rapist, but any kind of forceful behavior of a man upon a woman bothers me.  I mean, of course it does.  But I don’t know what the truth really is.  None of us know.

But we all knew it was over for the guy a few days ago.  There’s just no way to stay in the race when so many are so against you in such a way.

But, then again.  However.  His speech, in which he bowed out of the run for president.  O, god, that speech, with his wife there, who said she’d never be one of those women who just stand by her man, no matter what he did, o, jeez, what if he didn’t really do anything bad? What if he is an honest man? What if?

I’m not saying I think he is a rogue or is not a rogue, and I already said I didn’t agree with his 999 stuff.  But when I see him speak, when I saw the speech I’m about to reprint below, when I listen to him and watch him as he speaks, I can’t help but think we might be losing out.  On what exactly, we could talk about, but this is a man who is worth listening to, even though he’s “over.” Because maybe the good parts of him, the good he represents, the choice he represented, is just beginning.  We don’t always have to be a really two-party system in the most traditional sense, do we? We don’t always have to pick the insiders, do we? Maybe some time, someone unexpected, who is good, who is decent, and capable, and efficient, and good, could rise, couldn’t he? Or she?

Here’s the speech.  Check it out, because it’s worth it.  (Thank you, International Business Times, I copied and pasted Cain’s speech from you, at ibtimes.com [an awesome news site, by the way, readers].) Well, here it is, readers:

“Cain supporters are not warm-weather supporters. … I can’t thank all of you enough for what you’ve done, how far we have come, the things that we have done, and the things that we have been able to achieve.

The politicians in Washington, D.C., wouldn’t do their job. That’s why I chose to run. They have failed to provide economic growth. They have failed to get spending under control. They have failed to make us less dependent on foreign oil. These are some of the reasons that inspired me to run for president.

And if you look at the last 40 years, we’ve seen that same kind of failure. It’s just that the mess has gotten bigger. You were frustrated. I was frustrated. Millions of other people were frustrated, and it was out of that frustration that I made the decision to run, because the people in Washington, D.C., are either playing the blame game or pointing fingers or throwing crumbs to the American people rather than [proposing] bold solutions to fix the problems. America deserves more than that.

I thank you, and I am honored by the deep support of so many people across this country, because it expresses the frustration of so many people across this country.

I didn’t fit the usual description of somebody that ought to be running for president. I had never held public office before. I didn’t have high name ID — right now, my name ID is probably 99.9 — and I didn’t have a patrillion dollars. But the force of the people is more powerful than the force of the media! Secondly, we have learned that message is more powerful than money.

And, you know, we proved something else. You see, I grew up in a world of segregated water fountains. … We showed that you didn’t have to have a degree from Harvard in order to run for president. We showed that you didn’t have to have a political pedigree to run for president. And one of the biggest things that we have shown is that we the people are still in charge of this country.

And so today, we are one month away from the Iowa caucuses. With over 300 million Americans in our nation, we stand here, I stand here, because of you. And if you look at the top three Republican candidates right now, and you consider the president in the White House, we can say I’m in the final four. We’re in the final four! And when you think of where I came from … and now to be in the final four for the presidency? This is a great nation! That’s why this nation is so great. And I tell you what, it’s a powerful and humbling position to be in.

Proving this, that we could do this, was one of the greatest things, one of the greatest gifts that you and I could give to this country. I’ve often said one of America’s greatest strengths is its ability to change, and we have created some significant change on this journey so far. I am proof of that and you are proof of that — because I am proof that a common man could lead this nation; because I consider myself one of you, not one of them political elites. I’m one of you.

Our nation is tired of hearing the politicians blame each other. It’s time for solutions. But as false accusations about me continue, they have sidetracked and distracted my ability to present solutions to the American people. Now, I have made mistakes in life. Everybody has. I’ve made mistakes professionally, personally, as a candidate in terms of how I run my campaign, and I take responsibility for the mistakes that I have made, and I have been the very first to own up to any mistakes that I’ve made. I handled it my way because that’s the type of person that I am.

But because of these false and unproved accusations, it has paid and had a tremendous, painful price on my family. These false and unproved allegations continue to be spun in the media and in the court of public opinion so as to create a cloud of doubt over me and this campaign and my family. That spin hurts. It hurts my wife, it hurts my family, it hurts me and it hurts the American people because you are being denied solutions to our problems.

Here’s why it hurts. Because my wife, my family and I — we know that those false and unproved allegations are not true! … I am at peace with my God. I am at peace with my wife. And she is at peace with me. And I am at peace with my family, and I am at peace with myself. This is one of the most important things.

Now, that being said, becoming president was Plan A. Before you get discouraged, today I want to describe Plan B. So as of today, with a lot of prayer and soul-searching, I am suspending my presidential campaign. I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distractions, the continued hurt caused on me and my family — not because we are not fighters; not because I am not a fighter. It’s just that when I went through this reassessment of the impact on my family first; the impact on you, my supporters — your support has been unwavering and undying — as well as the impact on the ability to continue the race, the necessary funds to be competitive, we had to come to this conclusion. We had to come to this conclusion that it would be best to suspend this campaign.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news. The pundits would like for me to shut up, drop out and go away. Well, as my grandmother who lived to be 104 years old used to say when somebody was dead wrong, bless their little hearts. I am not going to be silenced, and I am not going away! And as of today, Plan B. Plan B. And I call it the Cain solutions.com.

You see, there are three audiences out there, folks, that we have dealt with, that I have had to deal with. There’s the media class, there’s the political class and there’s we the people. It is we the people that got us to this point, this far. It is we the people that wants change in Washington, D.C. It is we the people that are responsible for the massive movement that is going on across this country. I call it the citizens’ movement, the Tea Party movement, the conservative movement.

Plan B is that I will continue to be a force for the people. That’s why today we are launching TheCainSolutions.com, where the people will choose — not the media, not the politicians — and the people will show that the people are still in charge of this country. Through this new organization, I will still be promoting the biggest change, transfer of power out of Washington, D.C., back to the people since this nation began, and that is the 9-9-9 plan. It’s not going away. I will still be actively supporting and promoting a foreign policy that starts with peace through strength and clarity. I will still be promoting actively an energy independence plan for America. We can and we will become energy-independent.

And I know that many of you are disappointed. I understand that. I know that many of you all are disappointed and I certainly understand that, and I am disappointed that it came to this point, that we had to make this decision. One of the reasons that I ran for president of the United States was so that I could change Washington, D.C., from the inside. Plan B is that we are going to have to change it from the outside. It’ll take a little longer. We’re going to have to work a little harder. But we will change it from the outside.

One other thing. I will be making an endorsement in the near future. I will be making an endorsement. And I can tell you right now, it will not be the current occupant of the White House. That will not be my endorsement.

America has learned something about this process of running for president. It’s a dirty game. It’s a dirty, dirty game. But I happen to believe that the American people are sick of this mess, and if I’m not the outsider in there, I happen to believe that the day will come when the American people will reject all of the distractions, all of the false accusations and unproved accusations, and it will make a change, because that’s what we’ve got to do to get real change in this country and get it on the right track.

And as I think about my parents, who raised my brother and I right here in the Atlanta area, they taught us three very valuable lessons: belief in God, belief in ourselves and belief in the greatest country in the world, the United States of America. And even though I have had to suspend my campaign, I have not given up on America, and here’s why. Because look at our history. When we have been challenged the most is when we the people have risen to the occasion the most. And I happen to believe that we will do it again, because we the people are still in charge of this country.

Let me leave you with this. I believe these words came from the Pokemon movie. The media pointed that out. I’m not sure who the original author is, so don’t go write an article about it, but it says a lot about where I am, where I am with my wife and my family, and where we are as a nation.

Life can be a challenge. Life can seem impossible. It’s never easy when there’s so much on the line. But you and I can make a difference. There’s a mission just for you and me. Just look inside and you will find just what you can do. Just look inside and you will find just what you can do.

I’ve had to look inside to find what I can do, and here’s what I can do. Here’s what we can do. We can put “united” back into the United States of America and move the shining city on a hill back to the top of the hilltop where it belongs, and I will never apologize for the greatness of the United States of America. God bless you, thank you, and I love you.”

 

Little Girl Lost: Baby Lisa Irwin

This is a fascinating case.  Specifically because it’s not so cut and dried, is it? It’s not obvious the mother “did it,” nor is it clear the mother is innocent.  What is clear is that Debbie Bradley, baby Lisa Irwin’s mother, is a bit of a drinker, with a bit of a colored past.

It is hard to sympathize with Debbie Bradley, given her own admission of putting her baby down at 6:30 p.m. (who does that???) and then embarking on a Scott Fitzgerald–worthy boozing binge, only to wake up to her husband, home from a night shift, asking, where’s the baby, where’s the baby? But, then again, how hard is it to empathize with a woman whose baby girl is gone, if we believe that she, the mother, did not herself make the baby gone, in one horrible way or another?

I believed, for years, that Patricia Ramsey was responsible for the death of her child, JonBenet Ramsey.  I was utterly convinced of her guilt.  I had read every article in the the news, all the websites hawking the evidence, I had watched Patricia Ramsey on television, “analyzed,” (accurately, I arrogantly believed) her body language.

I don’t know exactly why, exactly, what it was that convinced me of the opposite, recently.  But something about the DNA evidence, sparse as it may be, just caused a sort of Joycean epiphany: I’m an arrogant, presumptuous person, and that poor woman was innocent: she lost her baby girl, for whom she lived, and we all accused and convicted her without a trial.  And now she is dead of ovarian cancer.

Granted, maybe the fact that she died, still young and beautiful, of ovarian cancer, that rotten sneak of a murderer, scratched at my heart and made me feel guilty for having had such thoughts about this woman, this mother.  But had I not kept up with the case, had I not learned to understand further evidence in the case strong enough to vindicate Patricia Ramsey, at least to my mind, I don’t think I would have felt soft or sad towards her just because she died of ovarian cancer, no matter how much I hate the evil illness and its attack upon two women I know, and love, and admire.  No matter how much I want to murder such a murderer.

No.  If I believed that Patricia Ramsey was in fact guilty, I would not have felt bad about her fate.  I’m harsh enough that I might have felt some kind of justice had been done.  Yes, I’m that harsh and vengeful.  I wish I weren’t.  But I am, and I might as well admit it.

But she wasn’t.  Patsy Ramsey was innocent of her baby girl’s death.  So was JonBenet’s father.  Neither parent hurt their baby.  Yes, they entered her in beauty pageants that many of us find creepy, but how many of us, secretly, even, tune in to Toddlers and Tiaras and think, omyGOD, she is SO cute???!!! Well, to many folks in America, these beauty pageants are perfectly a matter of course, perfectly feminine and natural.  Some of us might disagree with them, but what the hell, it’s all perspective, isn’t it? Isn’t it.

Maybe, what we need to do now, in regard to that poor baby Lisa Irwin, is take a step back and consider perspective.  At this point, we don’t know what happened.  We just do not know.  You might feel like you know, and I would understand that, God knows, I would.  But feeling and knowing are two separate things.  The fact is, we do not know.

I’m not writing in favor of Debbie Bradley.  I don’t feel overly fond of her.  If I had a little baby girl, I wouldn’t touch a drop of the fun stuff, as much as I like it.  I just wouldn’t.  My baby would be my life.  My whole life (well, my husband, too, of course).  Full disclosure: I’ve chosen not to have children, but if I did have a little baby girl, she’d be lucky to spend any time in her crib and out of my arms.   And I would never, ever consume alcohol or any other substance when I was in charge of her, which would be always, even if my husband was present.  I just would not ever imagine that I was not 100% responsible, at all times, for my dear baby’s life.

But part of me cannot help but think, who am I to judge? Another part of me answers, what’s wrong with judgment, of COURSE you must judge, as long as you are honest.  Ok, fine.  Obviously, I am judging just by writing what I am now writing.  But I do believe that we should all, all of us, step back.  Feeling pressure or depression or anxiety or any other “feeling” that inspires a person to drink too much once, or repeatedly, does not make a murderer, or even a mother who could have saved her baby had she not been drinking.

I know how lenient that sounds.  But all I’m saying is: we do not know what happened.  Perhaps Baby Lisa Irwin was kidnapped, and this kidnapping was long planned, brilliantly planned.  Maybe it wasn’t –  maybe it was opportunistic.  Maybe the mother or father did do something horrible.  All possibilities are, well, possible, at this point.

I’m saying we should not rush to judgment.  There is nothing wrong with judgment; frankly, I believe being judgmental has a bad rap.  But being mindlessly judgmental is not just stupid and inaccurate; it is evil.  As evil as the kidnapping, or, Christ forbid, the murder, of an innocent baby girl.

With Lisa Irwin’s first birthday just days away, let’s think about that, let’s honor her life, or the memory of her life, with this thought: she deserves the truth, she deserves the search for truth, whether that takes days or years.  This baby, all babies, deserve truth, and they, and we, are worth the time truth sometimes takes.

Everyday Halloween: The Real Terror Lying Beneath a Terroristic Surface

Tomorrow, November 5, is Guy Fawkes Day, which, to those of us in America, means absolutely nothing.  Most of us wouldn’t even have the slightest idea who or what Guy Fawkes is if it weren’t for the Natalie Portman movie, V for Vendetta, the mask from which has become a symbol of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

To make a long story short, Guy Fawkes was a terrorist.  He was a member of a little pack of English Catholics who wanted to get Catholicism back on the throne, and in order to achieve this end, they thought blowing up Parliament and murdering King James I with a pile of gunpowder buried under Westminster would be a nifty idea.  Self-righteous ideologues always think their ideas are nifty, by the way, whether they are violent murderers or peaceful  protesters.  At least the peaceful protesters aren’t hurting anyone physically, but, then again, Lenin and Stalin didn’t start out hurting anyone physically either.  Trotsky never got much of a chance to hurt anyone, unfortunately for him.  He was too busy avoiding Stalin’s hatchet to plant any hatchets of his own.

Anyway, King James survived, and people (well, the Protestants) celebrated by lighting bonfires around London.  Unfortunately, the Observance of 5th November Act, passed in response to the attempted terrorist attack on Parliament and the King, only served to light additional fires of hatred against Catholics, “malignant and devilish papists,” showing that the response to terrorism can be just as terroristic as the terrorists themselves.  Like we didn’t already know that.  What’s kind of cool is that Guy Fawkes Day would have been a mid-summer festival of fire had not threats of a Plague outbreak caused Parliament to close on July 28, 1605, delaying the attempt to blow up the House of Lords until November 5.  Of course, the Gunpowder Plot might have succeeded and King James bitten the dust.

About that mask.  I like V for Vendetta.  It’s a good movie.  It’s exciting and creepy and disturbing in a variety of ways.  What I don’t like is an angry, self-righteous mob glorifying the concept of violent revolution and adopting a symbol of the Terrorist-as-Hero for their ill-conceived, incoherent protest against a country that is hardly evil or abusive.

The very fact that the Occupy Philadelphia participants have been permitted to set up a tent city on the premises of City Hall without any government interference whatsoever is proof of the freedom, tolerance, and respect that exists for the individual, divergent beliefs, and the Constitution.  That is as it should be: the federal, state, and city governments should respect the individual and the individual’s rights under our Constitution.  And the individual, or groups of individuals, have the constitutionally protected right to hold and express divergent viewpoints.

However, when individuals or groups of individuals begin adopting the mask of self-aggrandizing terroristic figures, other individuals need to take notice.  That V for Vendetta mask is not charming or amusing or a creative approach to raising awareness of individual rights, and I don’t think the Occupy protesters intend it to be.  That mask is terroristic.  The Occupy Philadelphia protesters may be peaceful now, and they may stay peaceful, but there is a terroristic lining to their tent city cloud around City Hall, and that is worth noticing as we all try to decide on the best way to move forward from financial crisis and its consequences.

The Baptist 10: Or, We’re Going to Make Sure You Get the Lord’s Protection Even If It Means Stealing You from Your Families and Kidnapping You from Your Homeland

Hey, they meant well! Anyone who wants to help any poor starving orphan get food, shelter, and religion (well, the right religion) should be praised, right? Well, it kind of depends on who that anyone is, what agenda they have, and whether the orphan is actually an orphan.  Like, if the kid has parents, she’s not an orphan, and you don’t really have any right to swoop in like a Christian White Knight and tell the kid’s family and village that you can raise the child so much better, give the child so much more, that it is only right and decent that you should take the child away.  Nothing like guilting a poor family into handing over their children to the Better People.  Kind of reminiscent of how Madonna got herself her very own black baby from Africa (because, what the hell, Angelina was getting all the attention!!!).

What is it with rich people from the West swooping down upon these sad countries  like vultures and plucking up whatever morsels tickle their fancy? The Christian missionaries are the worst and always have been.  The deal has always been do what we say, live the way we think you should live, worship our god, and we’ll give you food, medicine, and written language.

I’m not saying these poor, messed up countries aren’t poor and messed up.  They are.  And I’m not saying the people of these places are some kind of noble savages that we should admire from afar.  They’re not.  But are the only choices glorification of primitivism or  18^th- and 19^th-century—style imperialistic religious and moral evangelism?

Not to mention kidnapping? Ok, ok, alleged kidnapping.  And, right, the Baptist 10 weren’t really trafficking in children the way “trafficking in children” is usually understood.  They weren’t going to sell them into slavery or sex services, or cook and eat them.  They probably did intend to feed, clothe, and shelter them.  And teach them the Righteous ways of the Lord.  The Baptist’s concept of the Lord, that is.  Maybe three squares a day is worth being kidnapped and indoctrinated by missionaries.  Maybe the proper paperwork shouldn’t matter when a country has experienced catastrophe and children are dying and much worse villains than moralistic do-gooders are lying in wait to get a piece of the pie.

But written permission to remove children, any children, from their country, any country, after a disaster, any disaster, is the law, and no one, not even righteous, altruistic, evangelical, imperialistic, religious packs should be allowed to function above the law.  No one, especially not righteous, altruistic, evangelical, imperialistic, religious wolves, should be allowed to roam poor countries luring children away from their families and villages with promises of better food and shelter. 

In the service of doing right, you don’t get to do wrong.  In the service of charity, you don’t get to steal.  In the service of God, you don’t get to become God.  In the service of saving lives, you don’t get to design those lives in your own image.   At least you shouldn’t get to.

Secret Service: “The More the Merrier!! Come One, Come All!!”

It would be an understatement to say that I am no big fan of President Obama or his policies.  I find him imperious (in fairness, I find most politicians imperious), I’m not convinced his motivations are what I think they should be, and I’d like my country to remain free-market based with as little government interference as possible, and it’s pretty clear he’s going to do everything he can to change that.  So, not a big fan.

However, I am a huge fan of keeping the President of the United States safe.  Michaele and Tareq Salai, the gate crashers at the White House, are yet another example of how off the rails our society has flown.  These people want to grab themselves a reality tv gig.  What better start than to crash the President’s first State dinner? Well, they looked fabulous strolling in, she attired in a gorgeous red beaded sari, long blond hair flowing gracefully down her back, and he in an elegant tailored suit, all smiles and fabulousness.

Which is I guess what influenced the Secret Service to give them a pass to go on in and hang with the president, even though their names were not on any admittance list, and, yes, I’m going to say it, despite the fact that Mr. Salai has a, um, Middle Eastern˗seeming name.  Obviously, not everyone with a Middle Eastern/Arab/Muslim name is, or should be considered, suspicious.  Obviously.  But, uh, when someone pops by the White House when the President and the Vice President are hosting an official State event, and this, um, gentleman’s name is not on the list, and he is insisting on being allowed inside, and his name is Middle Eastern, or close enough that it might as well be, then I think that maybe the Secret Service ought to do its damn job and not give this unknown person free access to the leader of the free world.

These people walked right up to our President.  They touched him.  They touched our Vice President.  Luckily, these two low-lifes were just out to diddle themselves and to grab their 15 minutes of fame.  But what about all the other people who are out to wage Jihad, to destroy America, to turn the free world into a medieval Gulag? What about them? Well, now they know that all they have to do is put on a snazzy suit, toss a blond into a pretty dress and attach her to their arm, and then play the role of imperious upper class socialite who simply cannot believe their name isn’t on The List, and in they go.  To do whatever they want to the President of the United States.  To harm him.  To hold him and his second in command hostage while they make whatever demands they want of America. 

Absolutely wonderful.  How safe do you feel? Our President is NOT secure.  He is vulnerable and exposed because our Secret Service is so penetrable that STRANGERS were allowed access to our leader simply by showing up groomed and well dressed and insisting on admittance.  That is all it takes.  I’m safer than the President because I don’t let strangers into my parties.  My friends know not to let strangers in.  I’m safer than the President, than the Vice President, and all I have is a baseball bat. 

Mr. President, it’s time to get a baseball bat.  It’ll be much more reliable than the Secret Service, and you can keep your safety in your own hands, while the Secret Service turns what should be secure private events into public open houses.

Kevin Jennings, Harry Hay, and the Slippery Slope of Expanding Sexual Boundaries

What two consenting adults, heterosexual or homosexual, do in the privacy of their own home is absolutely their private business.  No one, no individual, no government, has any right whatsoever to interfere with a person’s sexual preference as long as that preference does not extend to children. 

By “children” I most certainly mean teenagers as well as “little children.” In our society anyone under the age of 18 is a child.  I understand that the age of consent is lower in many states.  For example, in Hawaii and Idaho, the age of consent is 14 years.  That is horrific and wrong, not to mention twisted and perverse.

The desire for sex with children is either a severe mental disorder or it is an indication of pure evil residing in anyone with that desire.  Either way, it is untreatable.  It is a fatal disorder, unique in that it does not kill the disordered person, just his victims.

All sexual acts perpetrated by an adult upon a child are rape.  All sexual acts perpetrated by an adult upon a child are acts of unutterable perversion.  All sexual acts perpetrated by an adult upon a child are acts of murder.

Children violated by adults die a thousand deaths every day.  Yet it is rare that child rapists ever get much punishment for their murderous violations of the only innocent people in the world.  These sexually perverted, morally corrupt, foul soul-murderers should be executed upon their first offense, and swiftly.  The death penalty could not be more appropriately applied than to the most heinous villains walking this earth: the violators of children.

The age of consent should be 18, in all states, and this should be federally mandated, as, clearly, some states are not capable of making an appropriate determination of when adulthood begins (it most absolutely certainly does NOT begin at age 14).  Violation of children should be a federal crime, tried by federal court, and punished on a federal level. Protection of children is too important to be left to the whim of the states, most of which have proven, time and again, that they do not take violation of children seriously, that they do not consider child rape a serious crime, and that they do not even care about the rape of children.

So, Kevin Jennings.  Harry Hay.  NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association).  I cannot wrap my mind around how NAMBLA is even legal.  They openly advocate for the legalization of child molestation.  Pardon my French, but WTF?

In my high school, which ranked well within the top 15 public schools in the Philadelphia metropolitan area (according to Philadelphia Magazine) this year, there was a teacher, a much older man, who committed sexual acts upon a close male friend of mine.  My friend thought he might be gay, and went along with the sexual acts because he thought that’s what he was supposed to do.  That’s what the teacher told him: that he had to try it to see if he liked it, if it was who he was.  My friend was confused about the acts with the teacher.  He felt uncomfortable.  None of us, his friends in whom he confided, did a damn thing about it because we were all confused, too.  Because we didn’t know if it was ok to have sex with a teacher, especially when the teacher said it was ok.  Because we were easily influenced teenagers, desperate to please the adults, desperate to fit in with the adult world.

Teenagers are CHILDREN.  They need to be educated and protected by responsible adults, moral adults, adults who recognize a difference between adult and child, who respect sexual boundaries and guard all children against those who do NOT respect those boundaries.  They need to be taught that it is NOT ok to have sex with a teacher, that if a teacher tells them it is ok, the teacher is WRONG and committing a CRIME, a crime that must be reported to a parent or directly to the police.

If there were an organization of men who wanted to de-criminalize wife-beating (of wives who believe they deserve it, of course – must be consensual!!), we’d rise up in protest and horror, get treatment for those poor women who think they should be beaten up, and arrest any man who perpetrates violence against women (well, I hope we would).  But men who like to perform sexual acts upon babies, toddlers, boys and teenagers? Hey, that’s ok! They like it, we’re making those babies and kids feel good! It’s natural! It’s love! All love is good! If it feels good, it IS good!

Harry Hay is dead, died in 2002.   Although not a member of NAMBLA, as far as we know, he did support them (what do we think of people who weren’t registered Nazis, but sure liked what they were doing to the Jews?), so good riddance to him.  Unfortunately, there are many others just like him and much, much worse.  Kevin Jennings is one of them, and of course he’s one of Obama’s Czars.  Of course he is.  Now, let’s be clear, Kevin Jennings is not, as far as we know, a member of NAMBLA either, but he is a self-professed admirer of Harry Hay, a man who, clearly, did not respect or even acknowledge moral sexual boundaries.  If he did, he would not have advocated for NAMBLA, not ever, not under any circumstances.  Because it is never, not ever, not under any circumstances, acceptable for an adult to have sex with a child.

And to put some rock salt down on the slippery slope so we don’t all slide right down it, it is not ok to admire someone who admires an organization that advocates for legal boffing of children.  And it is thoroughly inappropriate to have a man like Kevin Jennings, who, as an “admirer” of Harry Hay, has boundaries that are all together too moveable, as Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.  Unless we don’t really care about children being safe, protected, and unmolested.

Hollywood Cops! Headlights, Squad Car Video Camera, Police Action!

Scene: A busy highway on a steamy, sultry Hollywood, Broward County, Florida, midnight.  Traffic is still bustling as if in the City That Never Sleeps, highbeam headlights of hundreds of cars fly at top speed beneath gigantic streetlamps illuminating the black, starless tropical night sky. 

A woman is driving.  Her car comes to a stop at a streetlight glowing Red.  After a moment, Streetlight flickers to Green.  Suddenly, without warning, BAM, KERBOOM, CRUNCH, the woman’s car is rear-ended.  The woman jolts, startled, confused.  Camera pans to reveal a police cruiser rammed like a lover against the back fender of the woman’s car.  Officer gets out of patrol car and approaches the window of the car he’s just rammed. 

Officer Rearend: You ok, Ma’am?

Woman: O, hi Officer.  I’m ok, I was  just on a beer party!

Officer Rearend: Is that so? Please step out of the vehicle and blow into this.

Woman: Whuh, blow what?

Officer Rearend takes Woman and seats her inside the back of his cruiser as two additional patrol cars pull up behind the vehicular embrace, bringing the total number of officers to five.  They huddle. 

Officer One (gesturing his hands into a video frame and scanning the scene): Okay, I’m thinking cat.  I’m thinking cat, I’m thinking leaping.  I’m thinking cat leaping ferociously through the car window in slow motion.  Definitely slow-mo.  For dramatic effect.  People like that sort of thing.

Officer Two: You’re the expert!

Officer One: Look, I don’t want to fake anything, I don’t want anything to look fake, ok, not ever.  Because that’s wrong.  But it’s such a double-edged sword, you know.  I mean, you’re stopped at a light, the light goes green, and you need the cat.  The cat has to jump out the window.  You know, because it could be a kid.  A kid jumping out the window would be perfect . . . Ok, I’m going to do the narrative, I know how I’m going to word this.

Officer Two: You’re the expert!

Officer Rearend: Sounds good to me, guys!

Officer One (slapping Officer Rearend and Officer Two on the back): We are always on the same page.  That’s why we get along so well.  We are good.  We are good. 

TLC (The Learning Channel) has been advertising a new reality show.  It’s called “Police Women of Broward County.” In the trailer, one of the Police Women declare “It’s always a good time to use a taser!” Yahoo! Let’s go git us some citizens to taser! Them there TLC camera men will put it on the TeeVee for us all to watch later!

Maybe TLC can run “Police Women of Broward County” as a double feature with “Police Men of Hollywood.”

Police violating the civil rights of the citizens they are sworn to protect is the hot new thing on film in Broward County, Florida.  Any why shouldn’t it be? It offers numerous opportunities for creativity on the job.  Don’t all people desire more creativity in their careers? Just because someone is a police officer doesn’t mean he doesn’t have creative urges, too.  And how often does the average worker get the chance to really feel enthusiasm for his duties? Tasers provide an impetus for that enthusiasm.  Tasers are dramatic.  “What Is Drama?,” TNT (Turner Network Television, home to quadrillions of Law and Order reruns) is fond of asking.  Drama is Tasers.  Drama is cats leaping from car windows.  Drama is framing civilians for car crashes caused by cops.

A double feature on television.  Sounds good.  Sounds a lot safer to stay home and watch these officers on television than to go out and risk encountering them, their tasers, and their creativity in person.

See the video and a full report at: http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/ 2009/07/hollywood_police_walt_disney_case.php.

Whose Right to Choose? The State’s, Of Course

 

21-Week-Old Fetus, Alive (from jesus-is-savior.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hyde-Weldon Amendment, enacted by the Bush administration in late 2008, and, of course, under threat of rescindment by the Obama administration, established that health care providers working for institutions or programs that receive federal health and human services funding must be protected against discrimination for refusing to provide, participate in, pay for, or provide information on, abortions. 

Fast forward to Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, a nurse who is suing Mt. Sinai Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, for being forced to assist in the late-term abortion of a 22-week-old (5.5-month-old) fetus (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=104707).  Mt. Sinai is in receipt of millions of federal funding dollars and is therefore not at leisure to require any of its employees to perform, or help perform, abortions.  Ms. Cenzon-DeCarlo, a Catholic who had previously established with Mt. Sinai, in writing, her religious and moral opposition to participating in abortion, claims that her bosses told her that if she didn’t participate, she’d be charged with insubordination and patient abandonment, which could render her unemployable in her field.  Ms. Cenzon-DeCarlo begged her superiors to find a replacement nurse for the abortion.

Despite the fact that, by the hospital’s own records, there was time to delay the abortion until a replacement nurse could be found, without harming the allegedly pre-eclamptic mother of the unborn child, they refused.  Mt. Sinai required Ms. Cenzon-DeCarlo to assist in the late-term abortion, which, it should be noted, involved dismembering the baby and removing, with forceps, the baby piece by bloody piece from her mother’s womb.       

Sadly, Ms. Cenzon-DeCarlo, under direct threat by Mt. Sinai, yielded.  She assisted in the abortion.  In an ideal world, she would have shown the courage of her convictions and walked out, flat-out refused to perform the abortion, and then sued Mt. Sinai if it fired her or in any way discriminated against her.  In an ideal world, Mt. Sinai would not have required her to violate her moral convictions in order to stay employed.  In an ideal world, doctors would at least attempt to save the lives of urgently ill pregnant women AND their unborn children, not chop babies up into bits and throw them into bio-waste receptacles like so much human slop.

But this is far from an ideal world.  That is why laws exist to protect the rights of the individual to exercise individually chosen morals.  Conscience-protection laws exist to prevent government seizure of the individual mind, to prevent government seizure of the right of the individual to decide what is right and what is wrong, the right of the individual to decide what he or she will or will not do, without fear of punishment by the men, and women, with guns.  That is, the government. 

The potential, and obvious desire, of the State to violate its citizens by rescinding conscience-rights legislation is almost as horrific as doctors dismembering infants in operating rooms.

Standing up alone against powerful corporations and governments for what you believe is morally correct is hard, and it is terrifying, especially when your living is threatened, when you are threatened, when you are suddenly faced with a shocking, heart- and mind-rending situation that you never really thought you’d have to deal with in a free country.  That is why conscience rights in health care are so vital.  Doctors and nurses, and any other health care providers, cannot be expected to participate in procedures and courses of care that violate their religious or ethical standards. 

Doctors and nurses are not State servants – at least not yet – and the law must be structured to prevent them from ever becoming the means of implementing the State’s moral code, which, presently, is perfectly comfortable with a variety of moral imperatives to end human life, and getting more comfortable with additional imperatives all the time.  The result will be State-escorted murder, mental and literal slavery, and the up-ending of every moral value upon which the United States of America was founded. 

War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.  It could, can, and will happen here if individual conscience is replaced by State conscience.

Witch-Hunting Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin will officially resign as Governor of Alaska at the end of this week.  She’s had quite a year.  She rose to national prominence as the republican candidate for vice president; she rose to national importance for many republicans, who responded to her religious faith, her firm stance against abortion, and her advocacy for a smaller government; and she became a target of vitriolic hatred. 

Is Sarah Palin the most hated woman in America? What is it about her that garners such vicious attacks?

The number of times Palin was called a hypocrite because her daughter became pregnant outside of marriage and bore the child are too many to count. What kind of logic is this? Should she have stoned her daughter, excommunicated her from the family, hung her from a goal post in a football field? Sarah Palin advocates abstinence before marriage. Well, as she said, “life happens.” She accepted that life, she embraced it. Her daughter gave birth to a child, and the Palin family lovingly welcomed new life. That this was, and continues to be, a point of not just contention but of actual fury speaks volumes about a certain contingent of society. 

This is clearly a case of Tolerance for Me but Not for Thee. Any other single mother garners support, even praise, from the Left. But not Bristol Palin. For Bristol Palin’s single motherhood, the Left has condemned Sarah Palin as a veritable Hester Prynne.

Hester Prynne committed the sin of adultery. But that is not what really earned her the infamous Scarlett Letter. No, Hester Prynne was a woman who dared to live as an independent woman in a society regimented by brutal restrictions on individual liberty, on individuality itself. If any woman, or man, dared to disobey the dictatorship by the few over the many, she and he paid grievously with their dignity, with their freedom, and even with their life. This goes not just for novels; that’s how it was in early Puritan society, before America was quite America. When there were actual witch hunts. When women, and some men, were arrested for keeping company with, of all creatures, the Devil. When women and men who dared to defy their dictators could be accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, or drowned, or pressed to death with stone planks.

What is Sarah Palin’s sin? She does not tow the modernist feminist line. She is a republican. She is pro-life. This infuriates the Left because they think they are the inventors of feminism, the gatekeepers of feminist doctrine. In their microcosm, a woman cannot be a feminist, or a decent human being, if she is not a democrat, pro-choice, and an avid fan of Maureen Dowd. If a woman, particularly one in power, defies their specific brand of dictatorial feminist dogma, she shall be burned in effigy.

Palin is, in fact, the epitome of what can result when a woman is free and equal before the law to men: She can work any job she wants and is qualified for; she can vote; she can rise to one of the highest political offices; with a supportive husband, she can raise a family of healthy, happy children; she can hunt and fish; she can do anything she wishes to do for which she is intellectually and physically capable.  She can become powerful and influential in the world. She can have a voice. 

And this is the Left’s real problem with Palin: they do not want someone like Sarah Palin to have a voice. A conservative, Christian, demonstrably pro-life woman in high political office, and aiming for higher, who enjoys traditionally male activities such as hunting and fishing, sends a dangerous message. Such a woman shows that women can be strong, independent, adventurous, successful, in charge of their own lives, while being a wife, a mother, a believer, and an advocate for the right to life. 

This message destroys the Left’s corner market on feminism. It silences their thunder and switches off their lightning.  

Sarah Palin didn’t resign because she wasn’t tough enough to take blow after blow after blow. She took the punches. She continues to take the punches. She’s still standing. She’s still talking. She still has her voice, and people are listening.

That’s not the mark of a quitter. That’s the letter of True Grit.