Rachel Carson, killer of over sixty million people

Link to story BY DOCTOR ZERO

Who is the worst killer in the long, ugly history of war and extermination? Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Not even close. A single book called Silent Spring killed far more people than all those fiends put together.

Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exaggerated claims (sound familiar?) to push for a worldwide ban on the pesticide known as DDT – which is, to this day, the most effective weapon against malarial mosquitoes. The Environmental Protection Agency held extensive hearings after the uproar produced by this book… and these hearings concluded that DDT should not be banned. A few months after the hearings ended, EPA administrator William Ruckleshaus over-ruled his own agency and banned DDT anyway, in what he later admitted was a “political” decision. Threats to withhold American foreign aid swiftly spread the ban across the world.

The resulting explosion of mosquito-borne malaria in Africa has claimed over sixty million lives. This was not a gradual process – a surge of infection and death happened almost immediately. The use of DDT reduces the spread of mosquito-borne malaria by fifty to eighty percent, so its discontinuation quickly produced an explosion of crippling and fatal illness. The same environmental movement which has been falsifying data, suppressing dissent, and reading tea leaves to support the global-warming fraud has studiously ignored this blood-drenched “hockey stick” for decades.

The motivation behind Silent Spring, the suppression of nuclear power, the global-warming scam, and other outbreaks of environmentalist lunacy is the worship of centralized power and authority. The author, Rachel Carson, didn’t set out to kill sixty million people – she was a fanatical believer in the newly formed religion of radical environmentalism, whose body count comes from callousness, rather than blood thirst. The core belief of the environmental religion is the fundamentaluncleanliness of human beings. All forms of human activity are bad for the environment… most especially including the activity of large private corporations. Deaths in faraway Africa barely registered on the radar screen of the growing Green movement, especially when measured against the exhilarating triumph of getting a sinful pesticide banned, at substantial cost to an evil corporation.

Those who were initiated into the higher mysteries of environmentalism saw the reduction of the human population as a benefit, although they’re generally more circumspect about saying so in public these days. As quoted by Walter Williams, the founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, Alexander King, wrote in 1990: “My own doubts came when DDT was introduced. In Guayana, within two years, it had almost eliminated malaria. So my chief quarrel with DDT, in hindsight, is that it has greatly added to the population problem.” Another charming quote comes from Dr. Charles Wurster, a leading opponent of DDT, who said of malaria deaths: “People are the cause of all the problems. We have too many of them. We need to get rid of some of them, and this is as good a way as any.”

Like the high priests of global warming, Rachel Carson knew what she was doing. She claimed DDT would actually destroy all life on Earth if its use continued – the “silent spring” of the title is a literal description of the epocalypse she forecast. She misused a quote from Albert Schweitzer about atomic warfare, implying the late doctor agreed with her crusade against pesticide by dedicating her book to him… when, in fact, Schweitzer viewed DDT as a “ray of hope” against disease-carrying insects. Some of the scientists attempting to debunk her hysteria went so far as to eat chunks of DDT to prove it was harmless, but she and her allies simply ignored them, making these skeptics the forerunners of today’s “global warming deniers” – absolutely correct and utterly vilified. William Ruckleshaus disregarded nine thousand pages of testimony when he imposed the DDT ban. Then as now, the science was settled… beneath a mass of politics and ideology.

Another way Silent Spring forecast the global-warming fraud was its insistence that readers ignore the simple evidence of reality around them. One of the founding myths of modern environmentalism was Carson’s assertion that bird eggs developed abnormally thin shells due to DDT exposure, leading the chicks to be crushed before they could hatch. As detailed in this American Spectator piece from 2005, no honest experimental attempt to produce this phenomenon has ever succeeded – even when using concentrations of DDT a hundred times greater than anything that could be encountered in nature. Carson claimed thin egg shells were bringing the robin and bald eagle to the edge of extinction… even as the bald eagle population doubled, and robins filled the trees. Today, those eagles and robins shiver in a blanket of snow caused by global warming.

The DDT ban isn’t the only example of environmental extremism coming with a stack of body bags. Mandatory gas mileage standards cause about 2,000 deaths per year, by compelling automakers to produce lighter, more fragile cars. The biofuel mania has led resources to be shifted away from growing food crops, resulting in higher food prices and starvation. Worst of all, the economic damage inflicted by the environmentalist religion directly correlates to life-threatening reductions in the human standard of living. The recent earthquake in Haiti is only the latest reminder thatpoverty kills, and collectivist politics are the most formidable engine of poverty on Earth.

Environmental extremism is a breathless handmaiden for collectivism. It pours a layer of smooth, creamy science over a relentless hunger for power. Since the boogeymen of the Green movement threaten the very Earth itself with imminent destruction, the environmentalist feels morally justified in suspending democracy and seizing the liberty of others. Of course we can’t put these matters to a vote! The dimwitted hicks in flyover country can’t understand advanced biochemistry or climate science. They might vote the wrong way, and we can’t risk the consequences! The phantom menaces of the Green movement can only be battled by a mighty central State. Talk of representation, property rights, and even free speech is madness when such a threat towers above the fragile ecosphere, wheezing pollutants and coughing out a stream of dead birds and drowned polar bears. You can see why the advocates of Big Government would eagerly race across a field of sustainable, organic grass to sweep environmentalists into their arms, and spin them around in the ozone-screened sunlight.

Green philosophy provides vital nourishment for the intellectual vanity of leftists, who get to pat themselves on the back for saving the world through the control-freak statism they longed to impose anyway. One of the reasons for the slow demise of the climate-change nonsense is that it takes a long time to let so much air out of so many egos. Calling “deniers” stupid and unpatriotic was very fulfilling. Likewise, you’ll find modern college campuses teeming with students – and teachers – who will fiercely insist that DDT thins egg shells and causes cancer. Environmentalism is a primitive religion which thrives by telling its faithful they’re too sophisticated for mere common sense.

The legacy of Silent Spring provides an object lesson in the importance of bringing the global-warming con artists to trial. No one was ever forced to answer for the misery inflicted by that book, or the damage it dealt to serious science. Today Rachel Carson is still celebrated as a hero, the secular saint who transformed superstition and hysteria into a Gospel for the modern god-state. The tactics she deployed against DDT resurfaced a decade later, in the Alar scare. It’s a strategy that offers great reward, and very little risk. We need to increase the risk factor, and frighten the next generation of junk scientists into being more careful with their research. If we don’t, the Church of Global Warming will just reappear in a few years, wearing new vestments and singing new hymms… but still offering the same communion of poverty, tyranny, and death.

How to censor others for the benefit of your own ideology.

Link

Has society really become quite thin-skinned, or is acting “offended” a new tactic that is being used to shut down legitimate political debate? Progressives are increasingly claiming to be offended whenever those on the right disagree with their left-wing positions. It doesn’t matter what the issue is; the left will divert a legitimate political debate into an accusation that the right disagrees with them because they are full of hate towards them. This puts the right on the defensive, and removes the real debate from discussion. It then becomes difficult for the right to ever prevail with their position, because to do so would mean “hate” had won.

Economics? Disagree with welfare, and you’re full of hate and intolerance towards the poor. Social issues? Disagree with the left on abortion or gay marriage, and you don’t like women or gays. Foreign policy? Disagree on foreign policy, and you hate Muslims, Palestinians, and the poor in less fortunate countries. Second Amendment? If you support gun rights, then you have a cold and callous view towards the victims of gun violence. Affirmative action? If you disagree with affirmative action, then you’re a racist. Unions? Disagree with them, and you despise working-class Americans.

The offended attitude ploy has become stifling. The left has brainwashed thousands of people across the country into seeking out chances to be offended. Meanwhile, these same people who act hysterically offended by a differing political view will pay $90 to attend a comedy show, laughing the hardest of anyone at the comedian’s racist, misogynist, and obscene jokes. This is evidence they’re not really offended by those who merely harbor different political positions on issues.

Try to make a joke about any of these issues with one of these thin-skinned victims and they will tear into you at best, report you to your employer or appropriate government agency at worst. We’re seeing more and more people lose their jobs over simply posting an outspoken viewpoint on Facebook. The left will whip up its victims into a frenzy and have them bombard the employer with angry complaints until the employer complies and terminates the employee.

The left is expanding its victims to include almost all Americans. Now everyone has something to be offended about. Even the right is falling into this victim mentality. Fat? You’re a victim. Smoker? You’re a victim. Single mom? You’re a victim.

The left has turned generations of Americans into wimpy fourth graders ready to start whining at any minute. At the same time, those same offended folks are walking around on eggshells at work, in public, and on social networking programs, paranoid of someone else catching them saying something “insensitive.”

It is a dishonest stretch to assert that because someone has a differing political opinion than you on an issue, they hate you. Look at all the people on the right and the left who are friends with each other. They don’t hate each other, or they wouldn’t be friends. Sneakily, the left will point to a handful of hateful individuals around the country, and use a broad brush to paint everyone on the right as sharing their views. This is lying. Lying in order to convince Americans of your viewpoint is despicable and shows how desperate the left has become.

Using the ruse of being offended to shut down legitimate political debate is censorship. If you try to point this out, however, the left will bring up an extreme example, such as terrible words used against blacks in the pre-civil rights era. This is a red herring, because virtually no one today agrees that racial slurs are acceptable. If someone is using disgraceful slurs against someone on welfare, or against gun control proponents, that is one thing. But to merely disagree with the concept or welfare or gun control is not the same as being full of hate towards those people.

The absurdity of this concept can be seen by looking at some of those on the right. Mark Mattioli, the father of 6-year-old Sandy Hook victim James Mattioli, has been speaking out against gun control. He doesn’t “hate” the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, in fact, he and his wife loved their son more than anyone. To equate him with hate merely for opposing gun control is a pretty cruel tactic by the left.

Many blacks speak up against affirmative action and are viciously attacked by the left. Blacks don’t “hate” themselves; there has never been a quote by a conservative black saying they dislike themselves, nor have there been hate crimes committed by conservative blacks against themselves. The entire concept is the height of foolishness. Yet the left routinely goes after outspoken conservative blacks more viciously than they go after, say, doctors who mutilate girls’ genitalia in Africa, supposedly one of their key causes and something truly abhorrent. It has become so bad that the word “blacklash” has been coined.

The latest victim of the left’s attacks on conservative blacks is Dr. Benjamin Carson. Carson, the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., dared to express a few political opinions as a speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast, for which he was highly praised later by theWall Street Journal. The left has gone after him hard ever since.

The hypocrisy can be seen by visiting the White House website shortly after Carson gave his speech. The website wasn’t even viewable until you clicked through a huge gun control message from Obama. There was no massive outrage, it was merely mentioned on a few conservative websites. Apparently for the left, it is O.K. for a left-wing black man to use the national government’s website to promote an overtly political message, but not for a conservative black man to use the national prayer breakfast to also declare some political opinions.

The phony offensive ploys must stop. We are not a nation of crybaby fourth graders. Don’t buy into the victim mentality, and call out the tactic when the left uses it. The left is not the harmless crybabies they appear to be at first. If we don’t speak up now, they will bully us into giving up our First Amendment rights by threatening our jobs, licenses and reputations. As Charlton Heston once said, “Political correctness is tyranny with manners.”

Fr. Baron on the Breakdown of Moral Argument.

"We have lost the capacity even to have a coherent moral argument"

Earth day! Do you really want to join this club?

“Angry Coordinator of Earth Day”, New York Times, April 23, 1970
“Treading Lightly: One Small Step at a Time”, Seattle Times, April 21, 2002
“Gaylord A. Nelson, Founder of Earth Day, Is Dead at 89”, New York Times, July 4, 2005
“Earth Day: The Rough Draft”, The Nelson Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society
“The Gaylord Nelson Newsletter”, November 1969
Bunyan, James and Fisher, Harold Henry, “The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1918: Documents and Materials”, pg. 129
Shtil’mark, Feliks Robertovich, “History of the Russian Zapovedniks: 1895-1995”, pg. 34
Von Liebig, Justus, “Organic Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology”
Marx, Karl, “Das Kapital”


Thanks to the fine folks at The Blaze

What the Media is willfully Censoring.

Link


From Roe to Gosnell
The case for regime change on abortion.


By JAMES TARANTO

Here is incontrovertible proof that Kirsten Powers and Conor Friedersdorf are correct in arguing that the murder trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell has received insufficient media coverage: On Friday, Snopes.com was compelled to publish a page confirming that the story is real, not merely an urban legend.

Gosnell, as we noted in January 2011, is charged with eight counts of murder. One of his alleged victims, Karnamaya Mongar, was a 41-year-old woman. The other seven did not live long enough to acquire names. They were infants who were born when Gosnell induced labor in their mothers. According to the Philadelphia grand jury report, he or his employees then killed them by using scissors to sever the neck and spinal cord:

He called that "snipping."
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.
The trial opened March 18, as the New York Times reported on page A17 of the next day's paper--its last word to date on the topic.

What accounts for the media's lack of interest in a trial that not only is sensational but implicates the most divisive social and political issue in America? PJMedia.com's Roger L. Simon has the answer: "The trial of Dr. Gosnell is a potential time bomb exploding in the conventional liberal narrative on abortion itself." He demonstrates via self-reflection:

I can give you two guinea pigs to prove this point--my wife Sheryl and me. We were in the kitchen last night, preparing dinner, when we saw a short report of this story on the countertop TV.
Both lifelong "pro-choice" people, after watching only seconds, we embarked in an immediate discussion of whether it was time to reconsider that view. (Didn't human life really begin at the moment of conception? What other time?) Neither of us was comfortable as a "pro-choice" advocate in the face of these horrifying revelations. How could we be?
Yes, Dr. Gosnell was exceptional (thank God for that!), but a dead fetus was a dead fetus, even if incinerated in some supposedly humane fashion rather than left crying out in blind agony on the operating room floor, as was reportedly the case with one of Gosnell's victims. I say blind because this second-trimester fetus did not yet have fully formed eyes. (Think about that one.)
So I don't think I'm "pro-choice" anymore, but I'm not really "pro-life" either. I would feel like a hypocrite. I don't want to pretend to ideals I have serious doubts I would be able to uphold in a real-world situation. If a woman in my family, or a close friend, were (Heaven forbid) impregnated through rape, I would undoubtedly support her right to abortion. I might even advocate it. I also have no idea how I would react if confronted by having to make a choice between the life of a fetus and his/her mother. Just the thought makes my head spin.
Anyone who he thinks he knows how he would respond in these situations--and hasn't--is doing nothing but posturing.
Welcome to the mushy middle, Roger. This columnist has been here for quite some time, as you can see from this 1999 piece. But we too, when we were very young, were a "pro-choice" libertarian. We came to question, and ultimately rejected, that position, although fully accepting the "pro-life" side of the argument remains a bridge too far for us.

Our path was more cerebral and less visceral. It started with our education in constitutional law. Although we thought abortion on demand was a good policy, we knew how to read, and the Constitution had nothing to say about the matter. We came to view Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that declared otherwise, as a gross abuse of power by the Supreme Court, notwithstanding that it was in the service of a cause we agreed with.

Related Video


Best of the Web Today columnist James Taranto on the murder trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell. Photo: Getty Images

A funny thing happens when you dissent from Roe v. Wade: You come to see that there's not much else by way of intellectual content to the case for abortion on demand. Roe predates our own political consciousness, so we have to assume there were once stronger arguments. But these days the appeal to the authority of Roe is pretty much all there is apart from sloganeering, name-calling, appeals to self-interest and an emphasis on difficult and unusual cases such as pregnancy due to rape.

So totemic is Roe that on one recent day two top New York Times commentators, editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal and columnist Bill Keller, cited it as if it were still the law and ignored the 1992 case that supplanted it, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The latter was pretty much a complete do-over, although the "core holding" was the same.

When you dissent from Roe v. Wade, you notice that people committed to the pro-abortion side almost never acknowledge that the question of abortion poses a conflict of rights or of legitimate interests. Try to pin them down as to where they'd draw the line--at what point in fetal development does abortion become unacceptable? It's pretty much impossible. The court in Casey said abortion could be restricted after 23 to 24 weeks, earlier than Roe's 28 weeks, but groups like Planned Parenthood oppose restrictions on late-term abortion, too. All they care about is "a woman's right to choose."

The line-drawing exercise is indeed a vexing one. We aren't "pro-life"--which is to say that we do not favor the outlawing of all abortion--and not only because of the difficult cases Simon notes. Our own moral intuition is that an early-term abortion, or the use of an abortifacient to prevent implantation, is different in kind from a late-term abortion or infanticide.

But we concede that intuition is irreconcilable with the scientific fact that the difference between a zygote and an infant--or, for that matter, an adult--is one of degree: All are the same human being at different stages of development. (To be sure, the natural occurrence of apogamy, or monozygotic twinning, makes that last statement a bit of an oversimplification, as do recent and prospective technologies like in vitro fertilization and cloning. That doesn't make the puzzle any easier to solve.)

Any line one could draw between acceptable abortion and homicide would be an arbitrary one. Both extremes in the abortion debate are united in rejecting the line-drawing exercise in principle for that reason. But either "principled" position leads to monstrous results.

A law protecting every human life from the moment of fertilization would be draconian or unenforceable, and probably both. Would a free society really tolerate its government's forcing a rape victim to carry her attacker's child to term? Surely not--but an exception for rape would also create a loophole, an incentive for women seeking abortions to claim rape falsely. Norma McCorvey, the anonymous Roe v. Wade plaintiff, did just that, albeit unsuccessfully, before filing her lawsuit.


Associated Press
Abortionist Kermit Gosnell

The reductio ad absurdum of the pro-abortion side is Kermit Gosnell. That is why the Gosnell case has crystallized our view that the current regime of abortion on demand in America is a grave evil that ought to be abolished. It is murderous, if not categorically then at least in its extreme manifestations. Maintaining it requires an assault on language and logic that has taken on a totalitarian character. And it is politically poisonous.

Some pro-abortion commentators have denied that the horrors of the Women's Medical Society implicate their ideology. While they have little to say about the babies Gosnell allegedly killed, they certainly don't approve of the way he treated his pregnant patients, at least two of whom, according to the grand jury, ended up dead, with untold others mutilated or infected. No, these advocates assure us, they want abortion to be "safe and legal." (The Clintonian "rare" is not heard anymore. In a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed last month, Kate Michelman of NARAL Pro-Choice America came right out and said that she wants abortion to be "common.")

But the grand jury--which described its members as covering "a spectrum of personal beliefs about the morality of abortion"--directly blamed "pro-choice" politics for the regulatory failure that allowed the clinic to remain open for decades. The Pennsylvania Department of Health had conducted occasional inspections of the clinic starting in 1979, although it failed to act on the violations it found:

After 1993, even that pro forma effort came to an end. Not because of administrative ennui, although there had been plenty. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor [Bob] Casey to Governor [Tom] Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be "putting a barrier up to women" seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.
It's worth noting that the governors in question were both outliers in their parties: Casey (the respondent in the 1992 Supreme Court case) was an antiabortion Democrat; Ridge, a pro-abortion Republican. But Ridge's lassitudinous policy was bipartisan, continued by his successor, Democrat Ed Rendell. Inspections of Pennsylvania abortion clinics resumed only after a 2010 raid at the Women's Medical Society--initiated by the FBI, which was following up on a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation into suspected illegal narcotics prescriptions.

The grand jury also faulted the National Abortion Federation, "a professional association of 400 abortion providers nationwide that offers referrals and services to member providers." In 2009 Gosnell applied for membership in the NAF, a sort of Good Housekeeping seal of abortion:

When asked if she had ever seen anything like the conditions and practices she observed at Gosnell's clinic in any of the roughly one hundred clinics she has visited in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the evaluator answered: "No."
Based on her observations, the evaluator determined that there were far too many deficiencies at the clinic and in how it operated to even consider admitting Gosnell to NAF membership.
The NAF rejected the clinic, but that's all it did. As the grand jury observed: "We have to question why an evaluator from NAF, whose stated mission is to ensure safe, legal, and acceptable abortion care, and to promote health and justice for women, did not report Gosnell to authorities."

Gosnell worked one day a week at another clinic, Delaware's Atlantic Women's Medical Services, which was NAF-certified. "At least six patients were referred from Atlantic to Gosnell's clinic in Philadelphia for illegal late-term abortions," the grand jury reported. The federation suspended the Delaware clinic's membership only after the grand jury urged it to do so in its January 2011 report. (The clinic later closed.)

The grand jury report does not name any other clinic that referred women to Gosnell, but it implies that he had carved out a lucrative niche for himself in the abortion industry. He had a bad reputation in Philadelphia:

As a result, Gosnell began to rely much more on referrals from other areas where abortions as late as 24 weeks are unavailable. More and more of his patients came from out of state and were late second-trimester patients. Many of them were well beyond 24 weeks. Gosnell was known as a doctor who would perform abortions at any stage, without regard for legal limits. His patients came from several states, including Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, as well as from Pennsylvania cities outside the Philadelphia area, such as Allentown. He also had many late-term Philadelphia patients because most other local clinics would not perform procedures past 20 weeks.
Karnamaya Mongar, the woman Gosnell is accused of murdering by overdosing her with drugs, was likewise referred by an out-of-state clinic because her pregnancy was so far along. Again the report does not name the referring clinic, and it's unclear if it was in Virginia, where she lived, or the District of Columbia.

The abortion lobby opposes restrictions on late-term abortions. But surely at least they agree that infanticide--the killing of a child after birth--is murder. Or do they?

Two weeks ago John McCormack of The Weekly Standard reported on a shocking exchange between Alisa LaPolt Snow, a lobbyist for the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, and members of the Florida House who were holding a committee hearing:

"So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I'm almost in disbelief," said Rep. Jim Boyd. "If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?"
"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician," said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow.
Rep. Daniel Davis then asked Snow, "What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving. What do your physicians do at that point?"
"I do not have that information," Snow replied. "I am not a physician, I am not an abortion provider. So I do not have that information."
Rep. Jose Oliva followed up, asking the Planned Parenthood official, "You stated that a baby born alive on a table as a result of a botched abortion that that decision should be left to the doctor and the family. Is that what you're saying?"
Again, Snow replied, "That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider."
One full week later, ChristianPost.com reports, "Planned Parenthood clarified . . . that it is not in favor of killing babies who survive a botched abortion." Are you reassured?

YouTube has an audio recording of a 2001 exchange in the Illinois Senate between a sponsor of a bill to protect infants born alive in an "abortion" and a colleague who worries that such the bill's requirement of a second physician would be too burdensome for the abortionist. It's chilling to listen in light of the Gosnell allegations. The second senator, who voted against the bill, is now president of the United States. In 2008, according to FactCheck.org, Barack Obama said he would have supported a similar federal law that was enacted in 2002 and accused his critics of "lying." Are you reassured?

Last year the Journal of Medical Ethics published a paper by two academics who argued that "what we call 'after-birth abortion' (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is [allowed], including cases where the newborn is not disabled."

There is a brutal logic to that position. As an abstract matter, birth is as arbitrary a point as any to draw the line between abortion and homicide. If a woman has a "right to choose" to hire a doctor to kill her baby in utero or partway down the birth canal, why should she lose that right simply because he's slow in getting the job done? Or, to put the shoe on the other foot, if infanticide is murder, how can an abortion of a child at the same stage of development be acceptable?

To avoid confronting the reality of what they were doing, Gosnell and his employees spoke in an elaborate euphemistic code. A baby wasn't born, "the fetus precipitated." Gosnell didn't slash it to death, he "snipped" it to "ensure fetal demise." The Times, in that A17 story, adopted the Gosnell code, referring repeatedly to the babies Gosnell is charged with murdering as "fetuses."

So did Roger Simon, we're guessing out of "pro-choice" habit. This Orwellian use of language was a commonality between the Gosnellites and the "safe and legal" abortion crowd. "Pro-choice" itself is one such euphemism. Lots of political movements are in favor of one or another form of "choice," but this is the only one we can think of that cries foul if you specify the choice that they're pro. The National Rifle Association surely would not object to being characterized as "pro-gun." (We should add that we're not wild about "pro-life" either. But it is merely tendentious. Its aim is to persuade but not to conceal.)

Most news organizations have adopted this pro-abortion doublespeak as a matter of style. The New York Times, for example, characterizes the two sides as "abortion-rights" and "antiabortion." That at least has the virtue of acknowledging that the debate is about abortion, but it still tips the scale in favor of the pro-abortion side by acknowledging its claims of rights but not the antiabortion side's. And then there's the ever-popular "procedure whose opponents call it partial-birth abortion." What do its supporters call it? And who are they?

The most jaw-dropping example of pro-abortion Orwellianism is the one we cited last week: the fierce objection to the assertion that life begins at fertilization. As we noted, that is a simple statement of scientific fact--a tautology. MediaMutters responded, in essence, that human embryogenesis is just a theory. The proof was--you guessed it--an appeal to authority, namely the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade:

The law has been reluctant to endorse any theory that life, as we recognize it, begins before live birth or to accord legal rights to the unborn except in narrowly defined situations and except when the rights are contingent upon live birth.
Justice Blackmun says it, I believe it, and that settles it!

We'd like to cite one more example because we find it especially neuralgic, though we must acknowledge this is one that professional abortion advocates typically have the sense to avoid. It is the characterization of an unborn child as a "parasite" because it depends for sustenance on its mother. Again, this is at best scientifically illiterate: In biology, a parasite by definition is a creature of a different species from the host. At worst, calling a baby a parasite is an act of rhetorical dehumanization, of a piece with likening hated minorities to insects or rodents or pigs.

Which brings us to the poisoning of American politics. In this respect neither side is innocent, though it is our impression that the pro-abortion side is far more aggressive. We hasten to acknowledge that our observation here may be biased by experience. We have lived almost all our life, and the entirety of our professional career, in big cities or upscale suburbs where the "pro-choice" view is dominant. Someone from Houston or Salt Lake City might have a different perspective. Then again, we are very widely read, and it seems to us that, say, National Review is a lot more respectful toward opposing viewpoints than the New York Times editorial page, and that antiabortion news sites are models of civility and reason compared with leftist and feminist ones.

Perhaps the most pernicious manifestation of this incivility is the effort to turn the sexes against each other--or perhaps more accurately the effort to cow men into submission. The imaginary "war on women" rages on: "Man, the feeding frenzy over Gosnell is a sobering reminder of how much hatred there is out there towards women," tweeted Slate's Amanda Marcotte Saturday. Over at Salon, Irin Carmon casually dismissed critics of the media's noncoverage as "almost uniformly male," a gendered argumentum ad hominem and quite a thigh-slapper given that she, like this column, opened by citing Kirsten Powers.

If you're a man and you're opposed to or uncertain about abortion, you've almost certainly had a woman tell you that because of your sex, you have no right to your opinion about the subject. (We've heard it from antiabortion women too, though much more rarely.) It's idiotic, offensive and indicative of a war on men.

The gist of Carmon's argument is that the horrors of the Women's Medical Center were caused by "politicized stigma, lack of public funding or good information, and a morass of restrictive laws allegedly meant to protect women." She favorably quotes a Philadelphia writer, Tara Murtha: "The bottom line is that politicizing abortion led to Gosnell. Their answer? Politicize it more."

In other words, if only abortion opponents were out of the picture, abortion would be safe and legal in no time. Problem solved. That conclusion, while arguable, strikes us as dubious. But the premise is delusional.

We live in a free society. People have an absolute right to form opinions about matters of public concern, and a nearly absolute right to express those opinions, individually or in concert with others of like mind. "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The Supreme Court, by interpreting (or misinterpreting) the Constitution, has the capacity to impose vast and sweeping changes in the law, as it did when it decided Roe v. Wade. What it cannot do--what it lacks not only the authority but the slightest ability to do--is control people's thoughts.

One suspects that when the justices decided Roe, they expected a consensus would quickly jell in favor of legal abortion. That is certainly what they hoped for when they decided Casey 19 years later. "The Court's interpretation of the Constitution calls the contending sides of a national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution," Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter wrote in their joint opinion.

That was a wish, not a command. There was no consensus on abortion in 1973, nor in 1992. Nor is there in 2013. If the Supreme Court, with all its authority and majesty, cannot conjure a consensus into being, it is silly and vain for Irin Carmon to imagine that she can.

All of which is to say that the bitter polarization around the question of abortion is inseverable from the Roe regime.

A variant of the if-only-the-other-side-would-disappear argument appeared in Michelman's Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed. One Gosnell patient, she wrote, "told the Associated Press that she had intended to go to a Planned Parenthood clinic but was scared away by antiabortion protesters."

Well, why were the protesters there? Again, the answer comes back to the Roe regime. Normally if you think a law is unjust, you take your case to lawmakers. But a march on Harrisburg would be futile. Even if Pennsylvania legislators agree with the protesters that abortion is murder, they can't do anything about it. The Supreme Court has tied their hands. So the protesters, driven by a sincere belief that innocent children are in jeopardy of being murdered, go to the scene of the "crime" to try to stop it before it happens, through the power of persuasion.

And what were the prospective patients afraid of? In her next paragraph, Michelman describes their "fear of violent protesters." But she provides no evidence to support her characterization of the protesters as violent, and a National Abortion Federation list of incidents of "extreme violence" against abortion providers and facilities, which goes back to 1997, includes not a single incident from Pennsylvania. Maybe Planned Parenthood frightened potential clients away by slandering the protesters as violent.

But maybe the prospective patients were averse to the message rather than the messenger. In a fascinating piece last week for LiveActionNews.com, Sarah Terzo (whose shirttail bio describes her as "a member of Secular Pro-Life and Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians") reports that "pro-choice counselors at abortion clinics occasionally have to deal with a woman who asks, point blank: 'Is abortion killing my baby?' "

The clinic workers are trained to say no, naturally:

Linda Couri, who worked at Planned Parenthood, described how she responded when a teenager considering abortion asked her the following question: "If I have an abortion, am I killing my baby?"
Couri said: " 'Kill' is a strong word, and so is 'baby.' You're terminating the product of conception."
You're terminating the product of conception. The fetus precipitates. Again the Orwellian doublespeak, in this case employed therapeutically. Euphemism is an analgesic for the psychological pain that "strong words" aggravate. And the protesters exercising their First Amendment rights outside Planned Parenthood refuse to stop administering "strong words." It's not hard to understand, or to sympathize with, the woman who decides to go elsewhere.

But strong words can be therapeutic too. They promote wakefulness as well as inflammation:

Couri was haunted by the girl's question and troubled about her [own] response. She began questioning whether providing abortions was really moral. She recalls asking her supervisor if she had done the right thing. The supervisor did not deny that abortion was killing a baby but told her that in the teenager's case, abortion was a "necessary evil." Struck by the use of the word "evil," Couri continued to question her position at the clinic. Eventually, she left, and now she is a pro-life speaker.
Here, then, is another reason it is vain to expect opponents of abortion to disappear: The abortion industry itself is a breeding ground for them. Even Norma McCorvey became an antiabortion activist later in life.

One advantage the abortion lobby has is widespread complicity. If abortion is evil, almost everybody is at least a little bit guilty. There have been more than 50 million abortions in America since 1973, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Maybe you've had, or facilitated, one. Very likely someone you know has had one, and do you want to call her a murderer? (If no one you know has had an abortion, what makes you think you know that?) Probably you've had sex for the pleasure of it, not wanting a baby to result. People were doing that before Roe, of course, but the nationwide deregulation of abortion made it a lot less risky, or at least made it seem so.

The Linda Couri story illustrates the antiabortion side's corresponding advantage: Sometimes the guilty repent. Many abortion opponents, being Christians, recognize that as a central insight. And the guiltiest, by virtue of having borne direct witness, can be the most zealous penitents.

One of the strongest practical arguments in favor of the Roe regime is that abortion has been around since time immemorial and outlawing it only drove it underground, leading women to endanger themselves by seeking out the services of back-alley quacks. The Philadelphia grand jurors recounted a powerful example from their own city's history.

It was called the Mother's Day Massacre. A young Philadelphia doctor "offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother's Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy." The women didn't know that the doctor "planned to use an experimental device called a 'super coil' developed by a California man named Harvey Karman."

A colleague of Karman's Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as "basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball. . . . They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman's uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, . . . the gel would melt and these . . . things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus."

Nine of the 15 Chicago women suffered serious complications. One of them needed a hysterectomy. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It would be 37 more years before the Philadelphia doctor who carried out the Mother's Day Massacre would go out of business. His name is Kermit Gosnell.

Back-alley abortions were indisputably a problem before 1973. That's no defense of the Roe regime, which failed to solve it.

What do we mean when we call for the abolition of the Roe regime? Simply this: a reversal of Supreme Court precedent, an acknowledgment by the court that it erred when it decided Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. That would turn the question of abortion back to the states and the people, where the 10th Amendment makes clear it belongs.

The abortion debate needs more politics, not less. As we noted above, drawing the line between acceptable abortion and homicide is necessarily an arbitrary exercise. For judges to issue arbitrary rulings is a corruption of the judicial function. But the production of arbitrary results--imperfect but workable arrangements that can be revised if necessary to adapt to new circumstances or knowledge--is the essence of politics.

A reversal of Roe and Casey would no more yield a consensus than the decisions themselves did. Neither the worst pro-abortion fears nor the fondest antiabortion hopes would be realized. Abortion would remain legal in many states, and any hope for a "Human Life Amendment" to the Constitution would be a pipe dream, the same as it is today. But in the absence of consensus, politics in a democratic republic would produce that least bad outcome: compromise.

Some will say it's unrealistic to call for a reversal of Roe and Casey. But Casey was decided 5-4, and, as we noted last July, it reportedly came within a hair's breadth of going the other way. Although several new justices have yet to weigh in on the abortion question, it is generally believed that the balance of the court is similar today to what it was in 1992.

Look at it this way: For Irin Carmon to succeed in realizing her dream of Safe and Legal Utopia, all those who disagree with her have to change their minds, and supporters of her view have to lock in their agreement permanently. For us to succeed, a change of one well-placed mind would suffice. The odds are probably against us, but they look awfully good by comparison.

Boston

Probably the best recap of this news item I found.

Sick gutless individuals who deserve Capital punishment, is my thoughts at this time.

Already we see the conspiracy's being thrown together.  We see the right glomming onto the background of the individuals.  We see the left wondering why and trying to see how the US is to blame.  The spinmeisters are second guessing those in the trenches.  The view from the top seems so clear, right?

Muslim extremist ideology is the label waiting to be applied.  Which, of course, is an indictment on a group for the actions of individuals.  The ideology is a tool used to fuel the action?  Tough argument to make when there are extreme ideologies that will neatly work as a variable in the same argument.

We have already had way too much editorializing, conclusion jumping and spin on this story.  One feels as though the Media is playing into the hands of those who would perpetrate these Cowards.

I rue what comes next.  The gorification and justification by media.  If only they would paint them as the cowardly losers they are.

When God answers.

I am a Catholic in good standing with the Holy See in Rome.  (full disclosure)

With any faith based belief there are times of crises that makes you ponder said faith.  I would like to share this week's incident.  I asked a question of the almighty and yesterday I saw something that connected a series of dots in my mind that provided an answer that astonished me in its clarity.

It has been a difficult journey.  Last November I had a conflict with a co-worker, this resulted in my being discharged, which resulted in no Unemployment Benefits, which resulted in losing our house and culminated in our plans to move out of country.

The job was one of the most enjoyable ones I had ever had.  I loved going to work, every day.  No longer working there put me into a deep depression and grief.  Fiscally it has taken quite a toll, my family has been a rock of support. However, being a man of faith and prayer, I pondered the meaning, if any.  Earlier this week while on a run (I have become a runner for health and mental reasons).  I was overcome with memories of the incident, loss, guilt, depression, what have you...  I sat on the side of the road and flat out asked God why this happened.  In my best Gideon I required some answer.  I waited, got up and jogged on, telling myself over and over again, that I would know in Gods time, and not quite being convinced.

Tuesday word came down that my attacker had run afoul of the law. In dramatic fashion.


A reported domestic disturbance at a residence in Oakland ended with a police officer firing his weapon and another deploying a taser Monday night.

The Sutherlin Police Department says no one was injured in the incident that took place around 7:15 p.m. at a home on NE Pine Street. Officers were responding to a reported domestic disturbance between an adult male and female. Police say they were informed that children were present in the residence and a firearm was also known to be in the home.

When officers arrived at the home they made contact with a 49-year-old man inside one of the bedrooms. According to Sutherlin Police, the man made statements to the officers indicating he had a handgun. Police say they made several requests for the man to show his hands, but he did not comply and instead attempted to make stealthy movements toward an unknown area beside him.

The Sutherlin Police Officers reacted to his motions with force. Authorities say one officer fired his weapon at the man, but he was not hit. A second officer used his taser to subdue the man and place him in handcuffs.

Sutherlin Police put the man, identified as Marshall Lanier, into protective custody, pending a mental evaluation, after he reportedly made statements of self-harm. The Douglas County Major Crimes Team has been activated to investigate the incident. The involved Sutherlin Police Officers were placed on paid administrative leave, in accordance with Sutherlin Police Department Policy.

This vindicated me in my own mind, and scared me as well.  This is not the actions of a rational person.  The dot that was connected in my mind was a sobering one as well. The last place I worked in California, before moving up to Oregon had suffered a tragic shooting a little over a year after I left.

Was this an answer as to why?  I am pragmatic enough to argue both yes and no.  On the yes side, it became a reason that is acceptable.  On the no side, it was just coincidence.

Lies and Dishonesty. The Administrations policy?

There was a resounding victory for the Constitution of the United States and the Second Amendment today. There was also a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the MSM.

President Obama, who invested heavily in limiting our rights, yet did nothing more then speak ad nauseum to the concern.  Someone may want to point out Lyndon Johnson's ability to pursue votes. To my mind Obama came of rather petulant.  I actually wonder if this was another in the long line of campaign style sympathy ploy to leverage voters against the GOP.  Not unlike the sequester ploy.

Here is the thing, only one of the amendments had the chance of stopping a Sandy Hook.  None of the legislation would have impeded a criminal from getting a gun.  NONE, zero, nil, nix, naught, nothing...

Rhetoric  over substance?  Loss of Freedoms for zero gain in safety?

You look at the sludge that is Washington DC and wonder what happened to America...

Liberals Victory over the American Family?

When you make “marriage” mean anything, you make it mean nothing.  And when marriage means nothing, the family means nothing.  And when the family means nothing, the state steps in to make it mean whatever arbitrary force and power wills it to mean.


Homosexual Activist Admits True Purpose of Battle is to Destroy Marriage
At least its on honest appraisal?

Gay marriage: Giving up freedom for love
Homosex!  The source and summit of all that is noble, good, true, and beautiful!  We must praise its manifold glories!  All who doubt or question must be punished.

Legal Equality or Marriage Redefined?

When you make consent the sole criterion of the good and “Do your own thing” the highest conception of the good you are, like a goose running toward the farmer who calls “Dilly! Dilly!  Come and be killed!” playing into a timeless military strategy: “Divide and conquer.”

The big winner in the gay “marriage” struggle will be Caesar.  Because our Ruling Class never forgets that the dynamic is Our Ruling Class vs. the rest of us.

If you support your President, how can you explain...

Gitmo Is Killing Me
"No charge. No trial. And I’m being force-fed while bound to a chair."

If you voted Obama in for a second term you bear full responsibility for Gitmo. Obama is fond of saying Bush started it, Almost as fond of shirking his responsibility,

Let us not forget that, your man is on his second term and he could have ended this on January 20, 2009.  He has not only refused to do so, he has voted himself the power to indefinitely detain and murder anybody he likes. Much to the support and adoration of his flock...

So: own this, Obama supporter.  You are the one who chose to support this.

Media Consent by Omission

 Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial is an horrific example of a man's cruelty towards mankind.  This is the sort of evil that makes one wonder about hope for humanity.  Sadly, the news channels either do not care or are actively avoiding the issue.  Why?  good question.

What we know so far:
Gosnell allegedly treated his minority clients with much less respect than his white patients. Considering that he was named, according to the AP, in more than 40 malpractice suits, the clinic head would purportedly perform abortions for caucasian women in cleaner locations (he assumed whites were more likely to complain about him)..

In addition to the murderous allegations being waged against Gosnell, eight former employees of the clinic have pleaded guilty (some to third-degree murder) and have spoken in great lengths about the terrifying conditions at the clinic.

A 15-year-old girl allegedly helped facilitate abortions — including on potentially live babies — at the clinic. Ashley Baldwin, now 22, claims she worked nearly 50 hours per week. Even more shocking, she allegedly helped give women the drugs needed for the procedure — and apparently assisted throughout. Baldwin said that she saw aborted babies move on at least two occasions following abortions (in one instance, she said “the chest was moving”).

Gosnell purportedly used untrained and low-paid staff to conduct nearly 1,000 abortions each year. The charge for a procedure in the horrific conditions mentioned? Between $350 and several thousand, depending on how far along the pregnancy was. Prosecutors believe he made millions from the practice. Authorities claim the clinic brought in about $15,000 per day.  Speaking of “untrained,” prosecutors claim, according to the Gospel Coalition, that Gosnell is not certified to work in either gynecology or obstetrics.

In the grand jury report, the clinic was said to smell of animal urine and blood stains were on blankets and furniture inside of the office. Not surprisingly, sterilized instruments were unheard of inside the establishment. And somehow the state had failed to inspect — or even visit — the clinic since 1993.

In March, Adrienne Moton, a medical assistant at the clinic, provided sickening details about her alleged actions at the clinic, claiming that she snipped the spines of at least 10 babies; she said that another worker — and Gosnell himself — did the same. But that’s not the worst part. Moton also claimed that she once killed a baby after it was delivered in a toilet by cutting its neck with scissors. Moton plead guilty and has been in prison since 2011.

 Another former employee, Sherry West, shared yet another horrifying story. She claims that she was once called to the back room at the clinic, where aborted babies’ bodies were apparently kept on a shelf. Once there, West heard a live baby among the bodies cry out. The screaming child “really freaked” her out, she told the court. “I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” she said, noting that she previously referred to the babies as “specimens,” because it was easier to mentally handle what was going on at the clinic.

Then there’s Robyn Reid’s story. She was only an 87-pound teen when she went to the clinic in 1998. Accompanied by her grandmother, she was looking for an abortion. But once she made it to the office, Reid changed her mind. But Salem-News.com writes that the doctor allegedly forced an abortion on her. ”Gosnell ripped off her clothes and restrained the girl. When she regained consciousness 12 hours later at her aunt’s home, she discovered that an abortion had been performed against her will,” the website reports.

Documentary The 3801 Lancaster Film Project is an ongoing documentary series about Kermit Gosnell, the Women’s Medical Society, and the cover-up by state and local oversight agencies.
As we continue to follow the story, there are three goals:

First, to make the public aware of what happened at the Women's Medical Society.
Second, to give Gosnell's victims an outlet to tell their stories.
Third, to help find and shut down clinics that continue to operate in the same manner as the Women’s Medical Society.

The Washington post's Erik Wemple asked why as well.

Would this have anything to do with the left leaning media's abortion rights stance?

Politically Correct Pecking order?

Source:   By Exra Levant, Canadian media personality, conservative political activist and author.


High school can be a tough place for awkward teenagers to fit in, and being gay would make that even tougher.

Which is the rationale behind gay-straight alliances — student clubs set up to normalize being gay.

Same idea behind pink shirt day, which was in February.

But what about freedom of religion, specifically for schools that teach Bible-based sexual morality?

Of course, no one should be bullied at any school, for being gay or anything else.

But should Catholic schools be forced to positively affirm homosexuality?

Isn’t commanding a Catholic school to let same-sex couples go to the prom sort of like ordering a Jewish school to serve pork in the cafeteria?

This question was answered with a sledgehammer last June in Ontario, when that province passed the Accepting Schools Act.

So now the Archbishop of Toronto oversees a Catholic school system that, to quote the law, must be “more equitable and inclusive for all people, including LGBTTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirited, intersex, queer and questioning) people.”

LGBTTIQ and intersexed. Those are words now.

But what about Muslim schools?

Will they be asked to put the Qur’an second and “transgender acceptance” first?

The Valley Park Middle School in Toronto hasn’t. It’s not even a Muslim school — just a public school with a lot of Muslim students.

But each Friday, the cafeteria is handed over to a Muslim imam to lead weekly prayers. What makes the school’s mosqueteria even more remarkable is that students are segregated: Boys sit in the front, girls sit in the back, and girls who are menstruating are told to sit at the far back.

Do you think the Valley Park Middle School has a gay-straight alliance?

Do you think if one of the boys in that cafeteria announced he was two-spirited, and wanted to sit with the girls, that he’d be “accepted”?

Or, look to another province, the Edmonton Islamic Academy that claims to be the biggest Muslim school in North America.

It’s run by the Al-Rashid mosque, whose clerics often visit to give lectures in shariah law. Including on the subject of homosexuality.

Here’s a transcript of some comments made by Sheikh Mustafa Khattab of Al-Rashid. He’s proud of his lectures at the school — he puts videos of them on the Internet.

Like this one: “The worst thing about the west is too much freedom … Homosexuality is against everything. It is against Akhlaq (moral values). It is against nature or the way we are created … For me, someone who is homosexual is like someone who has diabetes or someone who has cancer or AIDS … Personally, I don’t like to be associated with them.”

The video then shows Khattab doing a little dramatic acting. He pretends he was sitting next to someone gay, and he awkwardly shuffles away from them, saying, “I was sitting next to the guy, I just moved my chair.

“I didn’t feel comfortable sitting next to this guy.”

The students love it, and burst out laughing.

Now, many people share Khattab’s views — not just fundamentalist Muslims.

He did not preach capital punishment for gays, as the Qur’an prescribes and as countries like Iran do. But he led his students in a good mocking laugh at gays — and compared being gay to having cancer.

We believe in freedom of religion in Canada. The Edmonton Islamic Academy has received millions of dollars of taxpayers money, including from gay taxpayers, but then again so have Catholic schools (though it’s hard to imagine a Catholic school teacher laughing at gays and comparing homosexuality to cancer).

What is so curious, though, is why Canada’s anti-bullying squads are practically dispatching the national guard to escort gay couples to the prom at Catholic schools, but don’t dare whisper a word of concern about the Edmonton Islamic Academy or the Valley Park Middle School or a dozen others.

It’s the politically correct pecking order.

To politicians, gays trump Christians.

But Muslims trump gays.

Lets legislate beliefs! Welcome to the Liberal world of State the State Run Church!

Gay “marriage” is not about what people want to privately believe marriage means to them.  It is about bringing the armed might of the state to bear on punishing people who will not pretend that there is such thing as gay “marriage”.  

It will create three classes of people.  Those who lie to themselves, those who lie to others, and those who will not lie and will be punished, sued, and jailed accordingly.  

It is about force, not freedom.   And it will be used to punish the Church for its moral teaching.

Source:

Liberal Questions, Progressive Answers.

Back during the Bush years, I had many a debate about Guantanamo.  Lots of rancor thrown about, talk about the Shredding of our Constitution etc.  When Obama ran for President this was a main plank in his platform.  Question:  Are the Liberals out there screaming about this forgotten issue?

Answer: Poll finds broad support for Obama’s counterterrorism policies.
The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.

There was also a lot of concern over the Bush\Cheney assault on civil liberties.  Primarily that if the president accuses someone of being a terrorist can be detained without due process, or even killed without the same.  Not to mention Bush’s mere due-process-free eavesdropping on and detention of American citizens. This  caused much liberal outrage.  Question: Are the Liberals out there similarly outraged with Obama?

Answer: Liberals, Dems approve of drone strikes on American citizens abroad
The number of those who approve of the drone strikes drops nearly 20 percent when respondents are told that the targets are American citizens. But that 65 percent is still a very big number, given that these policies really should be controversial.

And get this: Depressingly, Democrats approve of the drone strikes on American citizens by 58-33, and even liberals approve of them, 55-35. Those numbers were provided to me by the Post polling team.

Lets go back to 2006 and see what was being stated on the left.  Do Bush followers have a political ideology?
Whether one is a “liberal” — or, for that matter, a “conservative” — is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush. . . .

People who self-identify as “conservatives” and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. That’s because “conservatism” is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as “liberal” is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.

That “conservatism” has come to mean “loyalty to George Bush” is particularly ironic given how truly un-conservative the Administration is. . . . And in that regard, people like Michelle Malkin, John Hinderaker, Jonah Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt are not conservatives. They are authoritarian cultists. Their allegiance is not to any principles of government but to strong authority through a single leader.

To sum it up: Do you surrender your autonomy by joining a political party?
“under the leadership of a President who campaigned with the promise to close the facility, . . . support for the detention center may be at its highest level ever.”


So this was not about Bush being evil or Obama being Evil it is about the notion that Evil depends on who is running the show...

Light at the end of the Global Warming scam?

Relief from the Global Warming scam?

Original source:

Climate Depot Note: “The mainstream media cannot maintain the official man-made global warming narrative any longer. With the lack of warming and the failure to shift the climate debate to “extreme weather”, warmists are now losing once stalwart members of the media in promoting man-made climate fears. These are not good times for the promoters of global warming. Earth is failing to follow global warming predictions and the new study claiming current temperatures are the “hottest ever” may be facing a full scientific retraction.  The great warmist retreat has officially begun.”

#

Shock: The Great Warmist Retreat Has Begun! UK Telegraph: ‘Global warming: time to rein back on doom and gloom?’ — Global temp lull ‘raises the possibility that Carbon dioxide may be less potent than has been thought in heating the planet’ — UK Telegraph’s Geoffrey Lean: ‘Some recent research suggests that climate change might not be as catastrophic as the gloomiest predictions suggest…Until now, they have therefore placed much weight on the rapid temperature increases in the Eighties and Nineties. But for at least a decade, these have dramatically slowed, even as carbon dioxide emissions have continued to increase. None of this justifies the frequent claim by climate sceptics that global warming has stopped, and may now reverse. Long lulls have occurred before, only for temperatures to resume their relentless rise…But it may be less guilty than once supposed. And this is reinforced by recent findings that emissions of soot, or black carbon – which patient readers may remember I have been banging on about for years – are causing twice as much warming as previously estimated, meaning that the contribution of CO2 must be correspondingly less.’

Full retreat? ‘Geoffrey Lean at the Telegraph has, somewhat belatedly, picked up on the low climate sensitivity news. Yes, you read that correctly, Geoffrey Lean. Who will be next to turn sceptic?’ – ‘When even zealots like Lean are in retreat it’s fair to say that something significant has changed. One can only wonder whether this change of tune is a function of the Economist’s coverage of the issue or of what Lean’s contacts are whispering to him about the Fifth Assessment Report’

Is the media waking up on global warming? ‘Tic, tic, tic. The sleeping MSM is stirring. Headlines no one could imagine seeing a few years ago are popping up on a regular basis. The backdown is beginning’ – ‘What caused the shift? [UK Telegraph's] Lean noted in late December that the UK Met Bureau reduced its forecasts, that there has been a long pause in warming, and he points out here that there are now, increasingly, new lower estimates of climate sensitivity…The meme that skeptics do have a point has made it through to a new circle of journalists’

UN IPCC’s Kevin Trenberth redefines global warming: Warming No Longer Requires Warming –’Global warming is continuing but it’s being manifested in somewhat different ways,’ said Kevin Trenberth, of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. Warming can go, for instance, to the air, water, land or to melting ice and snow…’pauses in surface warming could last 15-20 years’

Retreat?! Et Tu Wash. Post?: WaPo Opinion writer Ed Rogers: ‘Voters are cool and the planet is too’ — ‘Fewer and fewer Americans say global warming is a serious problem’ & ‘the globe is not getting warmer — or at least, it hasn’t in the last 15 years’ — ‘Just as voters are cooling to global climate alarmists, the planet has stopped warming…Politically, the bottom line is that global warming is fading as an issue. Given the bad economy and the undeniable temperature stasis, it will be interesting to see if the Democrats who must face voters in 19 months will continue to stay silent as Obama pursues higher energy prices and bogus government spending on useless ‘green energy’ boondoggles’

Global Warming — ‘The End of an Illusion’: ‘A theory with this many holes in it would have been thrown out long ago…can’t we all just stop calling this ‘science’ now?’ – ’I've grown old waiting for the promised global warming.’ Literally: ‘I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather.’ — ‘So basically, all that the global warming advocates really have, as the evidentiary basis for their theory, is that global temperatures were a little higher than usual in the late 1990s. That’s it. Which proves nothing. The climate varies, just as weather varies, and as far as we can tell, this is all well within the normal range’ — ‘A theory with this many holes in it would be have been thrown out long ago, if not for the fact that it conveniently serves the political function of indicting fossil fuels as a planet-destroying evil and allowing radical environmentalists to put a modern, scientific face on their primitivist crusade to shut down industrial civilization. But can’t we all just stop calling this ‘science’ now?’

Media Sea Change?! Der Spiegel Stops Believing…’Hot Debate Over Climate: How Reliable Are The Prognoses?’ Growing Doubts Over Models! — The flagship German news magazine writes: ‘Global warming has stalled for 15 years. Experts thus are having doubts on the reliability of their prognoses. The temperature development is moving along the lowest margins of the UN scenarios.’ Science reporter Axel Bojanowski at Spiegel here looks at the performance of climate models, claiming that some aren’t doing too bad, while the alarmist ones are failing…’For this reason some scientists now harbor the hope that the pessimistic climate prognoses could be wrong.’

Forbes Mag.: ‘Global Warming: Was It Just A Beautiful Dream After All?’ – ‘I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming. I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather’ — ‘Climate panic, after all, is fear of dramatic, life-altering climate changes, not about tenths of a degree. We are told that we must ‘take action right now before it’s Too Late!’

Russian Scientists Warn Global Temperatures To Fall 1.5°C By 2050. Strong Doubts About Warming 

‘Meet the new climate deniers’ — The promoters of man-made global warming! — ‘The new climate deniers are the liberals who, despite their obsession with climate change, have managed to miss the biggest story in climate science, which is that there hasn’t been any global warming for about a decade and a half…What is beginning to seem more likely is that the “sensitivity” of the global climate to carbon emissions has been overestimated. If so, the deniers will be the last to admit it’

Where’s the warming? ‘The ocean ate my global warming’

Analysis: ‘The models are broken, by the standards warmists set’ — ‘The global warming pause extends by every measure to more than 15 years’ — ‘For RSS the warming is not significant for over 23 years — UAH the warming is not significant for over 19 years — For Hadcrut3 the warming is not significant for over 19 years — For Hadcrut4 the warming is not significant for over 18 years — For GISS the warming is not significant for over 17 years’ ‘Once warmists said 15 years of no statistically significant warming invalidated their models’

New paper finds climate models are ‘inconsistent with past warming’: Published in Environmental Research Letters — Study ‘finds that climate models exaggerate the upper end of projected global warming because the models are ‘inconsistent with past warming.’ The paper adds to many other recent peer-reviewed studies demonstrating that IPCC projections of global warming are exaggerated’

‘If we get no warming for another year or two, there will be no school children who have experienced global warming’

Shock News: World’s Hottest Temperature Occurred At 300 PPM CO2

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Prominent scientist known as ‘Einstein’s successor’ declares himself a global warming skeptic — Rips colleagues: Freeman Dyson: ‘I just think they don’t understand the climate’ – Freeman Dyson on climatologists: ‘I just think they don’t understand the climate. Their models are full of fudge factors’

Dyson on Journalists: ‘They’re absolutely lousy… I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed’ 

More Dyson: ‘CO2 is good for vegetation. About 15% of ag yields are due to CO2 we emit… it’s a real plus to burn coal and oil’ 

‘Some of the most formidable opponents of climate hysteria include politically liberal physics Nobel laureate, Ivar Giaever; Freeman Dyson; father of the Gaia Hypothesis, James Lovelock – ‘Left-center chemist, Fritz Vahrenholt, one of the fathers of the German environmental movement’

Flashback: Left-wing Env. Scientist Bails Out Of Global Warming Movement: Declares it a ‘corrupt social phenomenon…strictly an imaginary problem of the 1st World middleclass’ 

Top Swedish Climate Scientist Says Warming Not Noticeable: ‘The warming we have had last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all’ — Award-Winning Dr. Lennart Bengtsson, formerly of UN IPCC: ‘We Are Creating Great Anxiety Without It Being Justified…there are no indications that the warming is so severe that we need to panic…The warming we have had the last a 100 years is so small that if we didn’t have had meteorologists and climatologists to measure it we wouldn’t have noticed it at all.’