Choice: Time to Choose a New RNC Chairman

You know, I was a Michael Steele supporter and thought he was a great up-and-coming leader of the Party — a few years ago, when he was the Republican Party Chairman in Maryland. But ever since he became a talking head on the TV, soon after he left the Maryland Lieutenant Governor's office, he has been little more than a disappointment. Too much smoozing with the enemy, due to wanting to be liked, I suppose. Now this interview with GQ:

GQ: How much of your pro-life stance, for you, is informed not just by your Catholic faith but by the fact that you were adopted?
Steele: Oh, a lot. Absolutely. I see the power of life in that—I mean, and the power of choice! The thing to keep in mind about it… Uh, you know, I think as a country we get off on these misguided conversations that throw around terms that really misrepresent truth.
GQ: Explain that.
Steele: The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.
GQ: Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?
Steele: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.
GQ: You do?
Steele: Yeah. Absolutely.

He’s made questionable remarks about abortion before, after appearing to be solidly pro-life. But this goes too far. And what with the other disastrous things he’s said recently? Time to show him the door.

This is not the first time that Steele has exhibited fairly pro-choice leanings, all the while making a complete mash (at best) of exactly what his position is. From Meet the Press, October 30, 2006:

MR. RUSSERT: Would, would you encourage — would you hope the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade?
LT. GOV. STEELE: I think that that’s a matter that’s going to rightly belong to the courts to decide ultimately whether or not that, that issue should be addressed. The, the Court has taken a position, which I agree, stare decisis, which means that the law is as it is and, and so this is a matter that’s ultimately going to be adjudicated at the states. We’re seeing that. The states are beginning to decide for themselves on, on this and a host of other issues. And the Supreme Court would ultimately decide that.
MR. RUSSERT: But you hope that the Court keeps Roe v. Wade in place?
LT. GOV. STEELE: I think the Court will evaluate the law as society progresses, as the Court is supposed to do.
MR. RUSSERT: But what’s your position? Do you want them to sustain it or overturn it?
LT. GOV. STEELE: Well, I think, I think, I think Roe vs. Wade, Roe vs. Wade is a, is a matter that should’ve been left to the states to decide, ultimately. But it, it is where it is today, and the courts will ultimately decide whether or not this, this gets addressed by the states, goes back to the states in some form or they overturn it outright.
MR. RUSSERT: Is is your desire to keep it in place?
LT. GOV. STEELE: My desire is that we follow what stare decisis is at this point, yes.

And by now, if he wants to be the head of the RNC, and if he wants to be the number one face and voice of the Party, as is evident from him being on way too many TV shows, and now giving way too many interviews, then he should know by now how to give clear and coherent answers.

As it is, at best, his position can be characterized as something along the lines of: personally opposed but . . .

What the pro-life movement does not need is someone who is Cuomo-lite, some super-big tenter who tries to be all things to all people without any bedrock principles. That is hardly the model of an effective advocate (for the pro-life cause). Looking to Lee Atwater as your model, saying that “Lee Atwater said it best: We are a big-tent party” — said it best!, not Atwater had a point, not Atwater had an interesting approach, but Atwater said it BEST — is the exact reason that the Republican Party no longer firmly stands for anything and, consequently, has sunk into the abyss.

I can understand a position of “it’s a woman’s personal choice,” but as a philosophical/theological matter, not as a public policy one. I can understand a “leave it to the states” position, but only as a compromise, not as a principle in and of itself. Indeed, being in a multi-state federalist system, where different states can do different things on various issues, that is probably the best that the pro-life movement can get as a practical matter, but only by recognizing that, in protecting life in some places, it is left attacked in other places.

But isn't he simply saying with his "choice" language that we need to convert people? that we need to change hearts and minds? And isn't he right?

Yes, the battle for life absolutely is a hearts and minds battle. We must convert hearts. And, indeed, I have long and repeatedly said that current pro-lifers will not win the fight, that today’s pro-choicers will win the fight - for the pro-life side. That is, today’s pro-choicers will be tomorrow’s pro-lifers and they will win the war.

But you do not convert folks, you do not win hearts and minds, by mish-mash confusion and comments that can be best interpreted as saying that abortion is an individual choice. I know that some of the Obama crowd is pushing this “pro-choice is pro-life” argument, but that is nonsense. And it is doubly nonsense when it is coming from our own. Maybe that is not what Steele meant, but that is the clear interpretation. Whether he meant it that way, or whether he is nothing but a sower of confusion, either way, that is not the way to convert the other side. So, it now looks like it is time for a more effective advocate to replace him.

And it is hardly “rushing” to show Steele the door when I have long (several years) been a supporter of his, an enthusiastic supporter. He has said a LOT of right things, but he is increasingly saying a lot of the wrong things, and apparently coming from a wrong philosophy. And eventually, there is that last straw, and this is it, especially when one adds in his multiple other “gaffes” in recent weeks (e.g. remaining silent and thereby giving implicit agreement with the characterization of Republicans as Nazis).

As for the GQ interview, I wasn’t too thrilled with several other statements: (a) his indictment of the Republican Party as offering non-white Americans “nothing” and giving the impression that “we don’t give a damn about them,” (b) his indictment of the Republican Party as being composed of nothing but closet racists who “don’t see the chairman of the Republican Party, they see a black man just walked into the room,” (c) his apparent endorsement of Eric Holder’s indictment that we don’t talk about race, (d) his total and abject confusion (for an ex-seminarian no less!) on the nature of marriage, that male-female marriage is just a matter of opinion (”that’s just [his] view”), not sociological, much less theological/moral truth, and hence, a matter for state reinvention, (e) his slam at a couple of commentators as “bomb-throwers,” (f) his disingenuous claimed inability to remember who his first presidential vote was for, Ford or Carter (it is not the least bit believable that a person does not remember his first presidential vote, unless he is purposely trying to forget who it was for, whom I suspect was Carter), and (g) his disturbing swooning for Academy Award red carpet fashions.

Again, these are hardly the comments of an advocate, much less a faithful and zealous believer. Rather, they give the enemy bucketfuls of ammunition to use against the Party and conservatives in general. There is too much bad mixed in with the good that he says.

At the “end of the day,” Steele no longer inspires me; he is not doing the things and saying the things that lead me to want to follow him. And THAT IS HIS JOB, to rally people in a positive direction in advance of the Party. He is a poor advocate, notwithstanding his years of experience in public commentary. If he is failing to rally people and, indeed, is alienating his own people, perhaps he is not the right person for the job after all.

As for the "big tent" -- we do not need, and I am not at all interested in, a bunch of pro-choicers and pro-aborts coming into the Republican Tent. What we do need, is for those pro-choicers and pro-aborts to come into the Pro-Life Tent. We want these people to come into the Republican Tent, but with a conversion of heart and mind, so that they are no longer pro-choice and pro-abort, but authentically pro-life. The same can be said of moderates and RINOs -- we do not need them coming into the Big Republican Tent, that is, not if they are coming into the Tent and remaining as moderates and RINOs. We need moderates and RINOs to come into the Conservative Tent.

The Republican Tent is not an end in and of itself. It is merely a means by which to advance pro-life and conservative principles. To have a policy or desire of filling the Big Republican Tent with pro-choicers, pro-aborts, moderates, RINOs, etc. is to miss the point, to miss the entire reason for the tent, altogether.
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If it is simply a matter of us against them, we lose.

Someone on another site recently wrote -- "Pro-lifers will win. I'm convinced of it."

That is wrong, wrong, wrong. Disasterously wrong.

Pro-lifers are NOT going to win. Present-day pro-choicers are going to win -- but they will win it for the pro-life side.

To get into this whole idea and talk of pro-lifers defeating pro-choicers/pro-aborts is a guaranteed losing strategy. Such talk implicitly adopts a static, set-in-concrete, us-against-them worldview.

The problem is that there are more of them than there are of us - even with us having babies. There are more of them, and they have more power and resources. As such, pro-lifers will never defeat the pro-choicers/pro-aborts.

The only way to win is, not to defeat them, but to convert them -- and there is a BIG difference between the two. The war will be won for the pro-life side only by present-day pro-choicers being converted over to our side, i.e. by becoming pro-life. The war will be won for the pro-life side only when present-day pro-choicers demand an end to abortion, etc. It is only when THEY demand it, not when we demand it, but only when present-day pro-choicers demand an end, will abortion, etc. stop.

And one day they will. But not when we continue to think of their views as forever set in stone (even the views of someone like Obama). But not when the strategy is not to convert them, but to beat them down and defeat them. That only strengthens their resolve and ensures our own defeat.

Cindy is the hero in the adoption of daughter Bridget, not John

At the risk of raining all over John McCain, yet again, let me suggest that the pro-McCain people pushing the episode about the adoption of Bridget does not necessarily prove his virtuous character, much less pro-life bona fides, as much as some folks have advocated.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled, Getting to Know John McCain, Karl Rove reports that

in 1991 Cindy McCain was visiting Mother Teresa's orphanage in Bangladesh when a dying infant was thrust into her hands. The orphanage could not provide the medical care needed to save her life, so Mrs. McCain brought the child home to America with her. She was met at the airport by her husband, who asked what all this was about.

Mrs. McCain replied that the child desperately needed surgery and years of rehabilitation. "I hope she can stay with us," she told her husband. Mr. McCain agreed. Today that child is their teenage daughter Bridget."

Accordingly, Gateway Pundit declares, "Obama Talks About Lifting a Child In Bangladesh From Poverty... John McCain Already Did" Well, the truth is, not really. It was Cindy who brought Bridget home. It was Cindy who brought Nicki to America. It was Cindy McCain who lifted these children from poverty, not John McCain.

Newsweek's story on Cindy McCain gives a few more details:

In 1984 Cindy was on a scuba-diving trip in Micronesia when a friend was injured and had to be taken to the hospital. She was sickened by the filthy conditions in the ER: "There were cats in the operating room and rats everywhere," she says. When she returned home, she began collecting medical supplies and sending them to the hospital. "Finally, the hospital called and said, really what we need is a good orthopedic surgeon," she says. "So I called some friends and we planned a trip … I don't know what made me do it."

She named her charity the American Voluntary Medical Team. In 1991, she camped in the Kuwait desert five days after the end of the gulf war to take medical supplies to refugees. That same year, she visited Mother Teresa's orphanage in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where she saw 160 newborn girls who had been abandoned. The nuns handed her a small baby with a cleft palate so severe that the infant couldn't be fed. Another baby, also just a few weeks old, had a heart defect. Worried they would die without medical attention, Cindy applied for visas to take the girls back to the United States. But the country's minister of Health refused to sign the papers. "We can do surgery on this child," an official told her. Frustrated, Cindy slammed her fist on the table. "Then do it! What are you waiting for?" The official, stunned, simply signed the papers. "I don't know where I got the nerve," Cindy told Harper's Bazaar.

When she arrived in Phoenix, she carried the baby with the cleft palate off the plane. Her husband met her at the airport. He looked at the baby. "Where is she going?" he asked her. "To our house," she replied. They adopted the little girl and named her Bridget. Family friends adopted the other little girl.

That says a great deal about Cindy's compassion and virtues. As for John? Both Karl Rove's WSJ op/ed and the Newsweek story make clear that John knew absolutely nothing about Bridget's existence, much less her plight, until Cindy carried her off the plane, and he had absolutely nothing to do with bringing the children to the United States. It was all Cindy, Cindy, Cindy.

Now, it is a very admirable thing that he did say "yes" when his wife went to the trouble of bringing the girls home. But could he realistically have said "no" to her when Cindy had already told him that Bridget was going home to their house? Yes, he gets credit for acquiescing in Cindy's wishes, but Cindy is the real hero here.

As for who raised young Bridget after John agreed to her adoption --

"For most of the 20 years we've been married, he's been in Washington all week while I'm in Arizona with the kids," she told The New York Times. . . . [After Cindy suffered a stroke in 2004,] she fretted about who would take care of her kids. Her friend Sharon Harper told her she should leave town and focus on recovering. That summer, Cindy moved to San Diego, and rented a condo on Coronado Island. Friends looked after her sons and young Bridget.

Again, it has been Cindy for the most part playing the hero at home, being the one taking care of the kids, Cindy and Cindy's friends, while John has been "wrapped up too much in Washington and [his] ambitions" (John McCain's words, not mine).

OK, maybe I suffer from John McCain Derangement Syndrome. Maybe I am totally irrational and my dislike for him is so great that I can never admit to any good that he has done (at least since returning from Vietnam), and maybe folks are sick and tired of me being a "maverick" against the McCain love train and always bad-mouthing McCain -- maybe that is all true. But in any event, it is Cindy who is to be admired on this count. She's the one who deserves the credit.

Authentic Freedom of Choice

Why is it that "pro-choicers" and advocates of a "woman's right to choose" so adamently oppose authentic freedom of choice? For a choice to be freely made, it must necessarily be an informed choice, not a decision made in ignorance or, worse yet, misinformation. It must be made knowingly, intelligently, and willfully, with a full understanding of the nature and consequences of the choice and the action to be taken. Without such information, such as the living and human nature of the unborn in the womb, a decision such as whether to abort, and thereby terminate the life of that unborn, is made blindly, and to willfully and purposely withhold such information from the one making such choice and taking such action is to deprive her of the ability to make a free choice, it is to oppress her, not respect her liberty or autonomy. This is simple commonsense, and a court has FINALLY upheld the principle. --


Mike Rounds, Governor, et al. v. Planned Parenthood Minnesota, et al.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, No. 05-3093 (en banc)
June 27, 2008

The Governor and Attorney General of South Dakota ("the State"), along with the intervenor crisis pregnancy centers, appeal the district court's preliminary injunction preventing the 2005 version of South Dakota's statute regulating informed consent to abortion from becoming effective. For the reasons discussed below, we vacate the preliminary injunction and remand to the district court for further proceedings.

I.

In 2005, South Dakota enacted House Bill 1166 ("the Act"), amending the requirements for obtaining informed consent to an abortion as codified in S.D.C.L. § 34-23A-10.1. Section 7 of the Act requires the performing physician to provide certain information to the patient as part of obtaining informed consent prior to an abortion procedure and to certify that he or she believes the patient understands the information.

* * *

In addition, § 8(4) of the Act amended S.D.C.L. § 34-23A-1 to define "Human being" for the purposes of the informed-consent-to-abortion statute as "an individual living member of the species of Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation." A physician who violates the Act knowingly or in reckless disregard is guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor. S.D.C.L. § 34-23A-10.2.

* * *

In June 2005, Planned Parenthood moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent the Act from taking effect as scheduled on July 1, 2005. In support of the argument that §§ 7(1)(b)-(d) would violate physicians' free speech rights by compelling them to deliver the State's ideological message, rather than truthful and non-misleading information relevant to informed consent to abortion, Planned Parenthood's evidence consisted solely of affidavits from Dr. Ball and bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. In her affidavit, Dr. Ball described her professional background, including a board certification in obstetrics and gynecology. Without elaboration, Dr. Ball stated that the disclosures in §§ 7(1)(b)-(d) "are statements of ideology and opinion, not medicine or fact." Ball Aff. P 2. Dr. Ball also stated that she would be unable to clarify the disclosures upon a patient's request, as required by § 7, "because these are not medical statements or facts that I am trained as a Medical Doctor to address." Id. P 4. The affidavit made no reference to the Act's definition of "human being" in § 8(4).

Dr. Wolpe's affidavit included a curriculum vitae detailing his expertise in "the area of ideology in medicine and bioethics." Wolpe Aff. P 1. Dr. Wolpe stated that the proposition "that from the moment of conception, an embryo or fetus is a 'whole, separate, unique, living human being' . . . is not a scientific or medical fact, nor is there a scientific or medical consensus to that effect." Id. PP 2, 3. Dr. Wolpe further averred that "to describe an embryo or fetus scientifically and factually, one would say that a living embryo or fetus in utero is a developing organism of the species Homo Sapiens which may become a self-sustaining member of the species if no organic or environmental incident interrupts its gestation." Id. P 6.

In its opposition to the motion for preliminary injunction, the State introduced portions of the Act's legislative history and several affidavits. The legislative history includes testimony from several women who had obtained abortions in South Dakota and felt their decisions would have been better informed if they had received from their abortion providers the information required by § 7. In addition, the legislative history includes testimony from experts such as Marie Peeters-Ney, M.D., a physician and geneticist, explaining the scientific basis for the disclosure required by § 7(1)(b) that "the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being." Dr. Peeters-Ney testified that use of the term "human being" was accurate because:

Becoming a member of our species is conferred immediately upon conception. At the moment of conception a human being with 46 chromosomes comes into existence. These chromosomes, the organization, the chromosomal pattern is specifically human. The RNA, the messenger protein, the proteins are distinctly human proteins. So this new human being is a member of our species, and humanity is not acquired sometime along the path, it occurs right at conception.

Senate State Affairs Comm. Hearing at 25. Dr. Peeters-Ney also stated that an embryo or fetus is whole in the sense that "[a]ll the genetic information sufficient and necessary to mature, and the information that is needed for this human being's entire life is present at the time of conception"; that it is "separate from the mother" because "[t]he genetic program is totally complete and this human being will mature according to his or her own program"; and that it is unique because it has "a totally unique genetic code." Id. at 25-26.

The State augmented the points raised in the legislative history with eight affidavits from medical experts and eight from women who had undergone abortions or worked at crisis pregnancy centers. For example, David Fu-Chi Mark, Ph.D., a molecular biologist employed in the pharmaceutical industry, stated that the Act's definition of "human being" as an "'individual living member of the species Homo sapiens,' including human beings living in utero, makes it clear that the statement under [§ 7(1)(b)] is stated as a scientific fact and nothing more. As such, it is truthful and scientifically accurate." Mark Aff. P 1. The affidavit described in detail the DNA and RNA science supporting the accuracy of the statement. Similarly, Bruce Carlson, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine and author of a widely used textbook on human embryology, stated that "[t]he post implantation human embryo is a distinct individual human being, a complete separate member of the species Homo sapiens, and is recognizable as such." Carlson Aff. PP 1, 5.

* * *

In Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey, the Supreme Court held that "a requirement that a doctor give a woman certain information as part of obtaining her consent to an abortion" implicates a physician's First Amendment right not to speak, "but only as part of the practice of medicine, subject to reasonable licensing and regulation by the State." 505 U.S. 833, 884, 112 S. Ct. 2791, 120 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1992) (plurality opinion). However, the Court found no violation of the physician's right not to speak, without need for further analysis of whether the requirements were narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest, id., where physicians merely were required to give "truthful, nonmisleading information" relevant to the patient's decision to have an abortion, id. at 882. * * * Furthermore, the fact that the information "might cause the woman to choose childbirth over abortion" did not render the provisions unconstitutional. Id. at 883.

* * *

Taken in isolation, § 7(1)(b)'s language "[t]hat the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being" certainly may be read to make a point in the debate about the ethics of abortion. Our role, however, is to examine the disclosure actually mandated, not one phrase in isolation. Planned Parenthood's evidence and argument rely on the supposition that, in practice, the patient will not receive or understand the narrow, species-based definition of "human being" in § 8(4) of the Act, but we are not persuaded that this is so.

* * *

The disclosure actually mandated by § 7(1)(b), in concert with the definition in § 8(4), is "[t]hat the abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being," § 7(1)(b), and that "human being" in this case means "an individual living member of the species of Homo sapiens . . . during [its] embryonic [or] fetal age[]," § 8(4). The State's evidence suggests that the biological sense in which the embryo or fetus is whole, separate, unique and living should be clear in context to a physician, cf. Gonzales v. Carhart, 127 S. Ct. at 1627 ("[B]y common understanding and scientific terminology, a fetus is a living organism while within the womb, whether or not it is viable outside the womb."), and Planned Parenthood submitted no evidence to oppose that conclusion. Indeed, Dr. Wolpe's affidavit, submitted by Planned Parenthood, states that "to describe an embryo or fetus scientifically and factually, one would say that a living embryo or fetus in utero is a developing organism of the species Homo Sapiens which may become a self-sustaining member of the species if no organic or environmental incident interrupts its gestation." Wolpe Aff. P 6. This statement appears to support the State's evidence on the biological underpinnings of § 7(1)(b) and the associated statutory definition. Planned Parenthood's only other evidence, Dr. Ball's affidavit, ignores the statutory definition of "human being." Finally, this biological information about the fetus is at least as relevant to the patient's decision to have an abortion as the gestational age of the fetus, which was deemed to be relevant in Casey. See 505 U.S. at 882. As a result, Planned Parenthood cannot meet even the less rigorous requirement to show a fair chance of prevailing, much less the more rigorous requirement applicable here to show that it is likely to prevail, on the merits of its claim that the disclosure required by § 7(1)(b) is untruthful, misleading or not relevant to the decision to have an abortion. See Mazurek v. Armstrong, 520 U.S. 968, 972, 117 S. Ct. 1865, 138 L. Ed. 2d 162 (1997) (per curiam) (emphasizing that a preliminary injunction "should not be granted unless the movant, by a clear showing, carries the burden of persuasion" and presents proof even more substantial than that required on a motion for summary judgment) (quotation omitted).

* * *

Given Planned Parenthood's failure to produce sufficient evidence to establish that it is likely to prevail on the merits of its compelled speech claim, we need not address the remaining Dataphase factors. In summary, the district court abused its discretion by failing to give effect to the statutory definition of "human being" in § 8(4) of the Act. Planned Parenthood's evidence at the preliminary injunction stage does not establish a likelihood of proving that, with the definition incorporated, the disclosure required by § 7(1)(b) is anything but truthful, non-misleading and relevant to the patient's decision to have an abortion, and thus "part of the practice of medicine, subject to reasonable licensing and regulation by the State." Casey, 505 U.S. at 884. Accordingly, we vacate the preliminary injunction entered on compelled speech grounds by the district court. * * *

The larger question, raised by the implications of this decision, is whether the decision could be a vehicle by which to affirm in law the personhood of the unborn, or at least to, once and for all, torpedo Roe's reliance on "philosophy" and "theology," rather than scientific fact, to deny that the entity in the womb is a living and separate and distinct human being.

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Putting Food in the Gas Tank - Save the Planet, Kill the People

Another case of societal desolation and starvation by global warmists --


Biofuels to increase poverty among Timorese

According to a report by Oxfam, growing crops for biofuel will remove land from food production and push up prices. In East Timor the government is prepared to turn over a sixth of the country’s arable land to biofuel crops.

Dili (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The government of East Timor has come under fire over its decision to turn over 100,000 hectares or a sixth of the country’s arable land to a $100 million ethanol project by an Indonesian company, GTLeste Biotech. The reason is that the replacement of traditional fuels with biofuels has dragged more millions people worldwide into poverty, this according to a report by the Oxfam aid agency.

Under the terms of the agreement, GTLeste Biotech is granted a 50-year lease over “unproductive land” with an option for another 50 years.

The government is touting the move as a major potential source of foreign cash that could generate more than 2,000 jobs.

The foreign company plans to grow sugar cane and other plants to produce ethanol.

But East Timor’s main opposition party has complained that the plan was made with little public consultation, arguing that the land in question cannot be unproductive if there are plans to grow sugar cane. Furthermore, it stressed that increasing food production is more important and that creating 2,000 jobs is not much for 100,000 hectares.

“We have learned from other countries that sugar cane plantations will have negative impacts on agriculture and farmers’' lives. Over 80 percent of Timorese are farmers, they live on agriculture, so the land is important for them,” said Maximus Tahu, from development watchdog La'o Hamutuk. “Our concern is that the project will contribute to the destruction of land fertility.”

In its report Oxfam accuses biofuel-oriented farming of removing land valuable for growing food. This in turn has contributed to the current food price hike, pushing an additional 30 million people into poverty.

The report's author, Oxfam's biofuel policy adviser Rob Bailey, criticised rich countries for using subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the use of food crops for alternative sources of energy like ethanol.

“If the fuel value for a crop exceeds its food value, then it will be used for fuel instead,” he said. The net result is that food supplies will be reduced and prices pushed up.

Don't think that this drive for forced poverty will end with the poor countries -- the global warmists and social engineers seeking to recreate man and the world are looking to destroy all of the contemporary world and send us all back to the 18th century.

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Wow, you really don't like John McCain, do you?

Well, I suppose I have gotten a bit surly at the fact that ours is supposed to be a system of self-government and democracy, where everyone is allowed to have his or her say, and yet, by the time that I got to have my say, that is, to cast my vote in a primary, there was nothing left to vote for. The nomination had already been decided — and not by a majority of the party, but by a plurality in a handful of unrepresentative states, including a large number of persons not even in the party, much less conservative.

And, yeah, I guess I am a little, um, ticked off when I hear folks from the establishment arrogantly and presumptuously give assurances that conservatives like me will simply suck it up and fall in line come November because we have no choice but to do so, leading me to think such intemperate thoughts as, “oh yeah, well eat sh*t and bark at the moon.”

And I suppose I have reached my last “last straw” when I comprehend and realize that the war we have patiently, but steadfastly, waged for these last 35 years, a war that I have been personally invested in and an active participant, is finally lost, and it will be lost by our own hands. Of course, we are not really cutting our own throats, merely those of millions of innocents who will continue to be slain as a result of the so-called electoral choice that we have made. We will sacrifice them, once again, on the altar of politics.

Does anyone really, in their heart of hearts, truly believe that John McCain will nominate someone who is even potentially anti-Roe?

It is going to take A WAR to get a potential anti-Roe nominee confirmed. To be sure, it will be a nuclear war to get the job done. The pro-abortion crowd will do anything and everything to stop such a nominee — it will dwarf the savaging of Bork and Thomas. Does anyone really think that McCain is going to want to be commander in chief of that war? Does anyone really think that McCain would go all out, balls to the walls, and take no prisoners to get an anti-Roe justice confirmed? Does anyone really think that McCain is going to want to go head-to-head with his “good friends” in the Senate, and thereby risk alienating them on other issues? Deep down, what do folks really think that a President McCain would do?

It is a war that we have waged with patience and perseverance for many, many years. And just like the chair got pulled out from under us in 1992, when we thought that were we on the edge of victory, only to be dealt a near-fatal blow with Casey, once again, we will give up hard fought ground, and be set back yet another 20 years.

Yes, things such as these do tend to make one a bit annoyed.

But we have been assured that McCain is the only guy that can beat Obama, and Obama is surely worse than Hitler! Or at least worse than George W.

Not when his supporters consistently berate and insult those whom they are trying to get to ignore their consciences and vote for McCain for reasons of political expediency. So enough of this “shut-up and get in line” nonsense.

In fact, conservatives will vote John "Most Electable" McCain ONLY if polls show in the final days that the election is very close. If the Dem is down by 10 points, then conservatives will NOT vote for McCain because he won’t need their vote. If the Dem is up by 10 points, then conservatives will NOT vote for McCain because it wouldn’t matter anyway if they did.

Either way, whichever candidate wins, we lose. On the morning of November 5, 2008, whomever we end up electing, Democrat or Republican, at least half of this country is going to start missing George W. and they will rue the day that they ever had a negative word to say about him.

The morning after the election, we will look at the newspaper with dread, saying to ourselves, “my God, what have we done?” President Obama . . . President McCain — the very thought gives you a stomachache - both of these causes a fair amount of unease and distrust.

But it is the sad history of mankind that we turn on the good and decent in preference to the evil and mediocre. You reap what you sow.

Man, you need to relax and take a breather!

Don’t worry. We’ll take a breather. We’ll take a nice long breather. Many will come to realize that their involvement in the political process has really been little more than a life-long breather; they will withdraw completely from the political process, having become thoroughly disgusted, so folks won’t need to worry about them anymore. They will continue to work in the real world, in the world away from politics, but they have been burned way too many times (and by those they thought were their friends) to ever again trust politics.
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Election Results 2008 -- We Lose

John McCain is, at best, anti-abortion, not pro-life. There are, indeed, some folks (mostly those who really don't care too much about social issues) who are anti-abortion, but for some vague, not-thought-out reason, not because they think that it involves the purposeful killing of an innocent human being.

If they thought that it involved the purposeful killing of an innocent human being, they would not support "exceptions" like rape and incest (like McCain) and they would not support ESCR (like McCain), but of which involve such killing.

It is true that McCain has cast votes on various abortion issues, but has he really ever said much more on life issues other than the "yea" or "nay" signifying his Senate vote on those issues? Can anyone point me to any significant, substantial speech McCain has given defending life, or demonstrating that he has a profound understanding? Anytime I hear him mention it, all I hear him say is to repeat that he has a record of voting against abotion. That's it! A pro-life advocate McCain is not.

Yes, he voted for Alito and Roberts, just as he voted for Ginsburg and Breyer. On top of that, when he was part of a Republican majority in the Senate a couple of years ago, John "Gang of 14" McCain did practically NOTHING to get good judges confirmed.

As for whom President McCain might nominate, does anyone think that he will be more hardline on the judiciary than was Reagan, who gave us two of the three who wrote the plurality opinion in Casey, upholding Roe (Kennedy and O'Connor). The fact is that McCain himself is the David Souter of 2008 -- plenty of conservatives, including pro-lifers, fooling themselves and trying to fool us by insisting that he is solidly pro-life when he clearly is not.

Getting an anti-Roe justice confirmed would take a nuclear war in the Senate even if uber-prolife Pope Benedict himself were elected president. You really think that John "loves to work with Dems" McCain is going to want to go to war against a Democratic Senate just to get a pro-life, anti-Roe justice confirmed? HA!

Make no mistake -- this is 1992 all over again. With Obama, we lose. With McCain, we lose. The pro-life cause was set back an entire generation the moment that McCain reached the tipping point, and when some very foolish nationally prominent Catholics and pro-lifers decided to cast their (and our) lot with him.

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Will Things Get Worse or Better?

Let us start by going backward, to something I wrote more than a year ago regarding future prospects, electoral and otherwise. Looking at things today, what with the lightweight that is Barack Obama and the utter disaster that is John McCain, I cannot say that I was that far off --



Originally Posted May 15th, 2007

I wish it were not so, but it appears that politically and socially things will get worse -- much worse -- before they get better, if they get better.

Not only in this country, but throughout the world, we have one side who has rejected truth and another side that is too afraid to stand up for the truth. One side caught up in the dictatorship of relativism, with all its attendant horrors, and the other side is full of little more than self-interested cowardly fools -- at least on the political level.

I know that George W. and Dick Cheney both have a pair, but it is astounding that the rest of the organized Republican Party still has the ability to reproduce without a single testicle between them all. But I suppose it is even more astounding and miraculous that they are even able to live without any spine or intestines. I don't know, perhaps they are all human-worm hybrids, the product of some fantastic heretofore unreported breakthrough on the genetic front.

Now, on the other side, we have a party that clearly has the fortitude to fight, at least when the fight is not against the real enemies of the country or society, but they have abandoned any desire for truth, preferring to create their own truth to fit their objectives. They are a side that has abandoned even the truth of their own name, opening rejecting the democratic system in favor of eternal dissent when the majority vote does not go their way, advancing the cause of Marxist anarchism, or absolute rule by judges on high, destroying all concept of self-government. Everywhere you look, every traditional institution and thought is under attack. For examples, do we really need to go any further than their exultation of the slaughter of the most innocent and vulnerable among us?? For them to advance the death of one of these innocents is bad enough, but 45 million in this country alone? Is it really any wonder that their willful and knowing rejection of the truth of the life and humanity of these innocents would lead to their attack on the truth of other components of the most fundamental institution of society, namely the family?

But, previously, even that state of affairs did not prevent us all from coming together in common cause on occasion. However, since the advent of Clintonism, where truth is relative, especially with regard to language, and even "is" has different meanings, together with their "Move-on" comrades, destruction of their human-worm-hybrid opponents, and the tradition that they stand for, if they had spines to be able to stand, has been their number one objective. They are not deterred from this objective even by the fact that a very real and long-standing enemy (1,400 years) is ready and waiting to put half of them in a burka, while smiting the necks of a good proportion of the rest.

Hot, yes, but it will get a lot hotter before it gets better. After a lifetime of dissent and attack, regardless of the outcomes of democratic elections, does anyone really think that the Dems will lay down their weapons and join hands with the Republicans if the Republicans win in '08? And if the Dems win, does anyone really think that the Republicans, even being the worms that they are, will be in the mood to forgive and forget and get down on their knees and satisfy the Dems (RINOs aside)?

Things will get worse before they get better. And it would be bad enough if it was just us fighting amongst ourselves. But there is an external enemy reveling in this. People think that the war front is in Iraq. They think that the civil war is in Iraq. The problem with that way of thinking is that, for the enemy, Iraq is only a side show, a diversion. The most advantageous front for the enemy is right here in D.C., and that aspect of the war is being fought without the enemy having to engage a single suicide bomber -- our disunity and political and societal civil war right here at home has encouraged and emboldened the enemy enough to give him a generation of sustenance. And within a generation, even those anti-technology cave-dwellers will have been able to obtain at least one piece of certain highly sophisticated technology and then things will be really, really hot.