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My First Suggestion for a Democratic Campaign Slogan

I am not watching any of the NARAL, er, the NOW, er, rather the Democratic Convention (of Planned Parenthood).  (I'm having enough trouble sleeping as it is), but by now we all know that one of the planks in the Democrat platform this year is support for the sacred right to comprehensive women's health care (free abortions for all!)  This is, after all, the party of Barack Obama, who as an Illinois State Senator spoke and voted against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act (see http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/01/top-10-reasons.html) and New York State Representative Louise Slaughter, a woman so psychopathically pro-abortion that she sees every baby born alive as a lost opportunity (her office told callers that protecting the right to abortion was her main and only interest in Obamacare). I suggest they run proudly on this plank (stained red with the blood of infants), perhaps with a slogan like "Our support for abortion will never waver, even if the little tyke is a-wavering at you on the sonogram screen!"

C'mon, Democrats!  Stand up and be proud!  Stand up and shout "We love doctors who kill babies!" 

There's
a bumper sticker for you.
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Letter to a Youngish Pro-Life Homosexual Male

My dear nephew,

Rather against my will, our relatives keep sending me what you write about politics on Facebook, that invaluable aid for finding the self-obsessed, the venomous, and the ignorant.  I am concerned that you are unknowingly destroying your own reputation, and you should be concerned, also.  If you continue to write in this way (meaning both in content and in tone), you may find yourself stuck with labels that a lifetime will not enable you to shake.  I have been assured more than once that it is pointless to try to reach you with logic, as your mind has made up by your self-perception.  However, as a courtesy due to a relative, I will give it one try, and I promise to be far more polite than you have been in your published remarks.  Make no mistake, anything posted to Facebook has been published, and there is no way to erase it.

I have been informed that one of our family members gave you very sound advice, and it was "Don't be a jerk about politics."  Very sound advice and very clearly completely ignored.

If you are going to be a success at political mud slinging, you are going to have to improve in a few areas.  I have had considerable success in this field, so please consider my advice carefully.  Otherwise, you will wear that deadly label "crank".

If you are going to insult the intelligence of Republicans (like your grandparents), you need to spell and capitalize correctly.  Publishing phrases like "brain-dead republicants" will lead unkind people (some related to you) to postulate that the last brain-dead person you saw was in your mirror.

(I add here as an aside that you should give thanks every day that you never tried to debate your late grandfather on politics.  He would have done to you (speaking metaphorically) what a steamroller does to a daffodil.)

More recently, I am told that you referred to presumptive Republican (note spelling and capitalization) presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a "robot".  This is juvenile name-calling, without point or punch.  Does being neat and clean and having a ready smile make you a robot?  Readers may end up wondering about your hygienic habits, or lack of same.  Name-calling is seldom effective; it hurts your reputation more than your target's.

In your more recent posts, you accused Romney of the usual, tired litany of supposed heartless policy goals -- meaning to end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ad nauseum.  Are you aware that your preferred candidate, Barack Obama, cuts $600 billion (that is to say, $600,000,000,000) from Medicare as part of his Obamacare program?  Can you produce one statement during the last decade by any Republican leader saying that they intend to cut the benefits of any of the three programs I mentioned earlier this paragraph?  Please note that pledging to make the programs financially sustainable or pledging to eliminate fraud and waste in the program(s) is not "cutting".  All three of these programs are going bankrupt, and they will take the country with them if something is not done quickly.  It could have been done relatively easily a decade or two ago, but now the holes are so deep that the task has grown greatly difficult.  One of the parties has consistently blocked all attempts to make the programs financially stable and self-supporting.  It isn't the Republicans.

Returning to an older post, you seemed amused by the fact that 65% of Republicans who participated in a survey in (I believe) January said they would vote for the Republican nominee no matter who it was.  Why should that surprise you?  If you were to ask registered Democrats if they are going to vote for Obama no matter whom the Republicans nominate, I predict that you would get a percentage closer to 95% than 65%.  I am depressed that only 65% of my party (if the poll is accurate, which experience tells me is not to be assumed) is unconditionally committed to voting against the most disastrous president in American history, and the first president who can be credibly accused of being a disaster for the county deliberately.

What I find most frustrating is that you proclaim your intention to vote for Obama even as you proclaim that you are pro-life.  If you were not my nephew, I would perhaps content myself with wishing you all happiness in Jews for Hitler.  Because of our family bond, I will address the subject more politely.  Hard as I try to give you the benefit of the doubt on this matter, several disquieting theories present themselves.

The most obvious and perhaps the ugliest possibility is that you are acting from supreme selfishness.  You somehow see yourself getting something from the re-election of Obama that is worth more than thousands, perhaps millions of dead babies worldwide.  Are you aware of the fact that the Obama administration spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money (at a time when inconceivably bad economic policies have already pushed our budget deficits to world-record-shattering levels) to persuade Kenya to pass a pro-abortion constitution?  At this point in his term, it seems pointless to point out that the expenditure was illegal, but I will all the same.  

The above is just one item in a frightening CV when it comes to abortion.  Keep in mind that as an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama was the only speaker against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which extended legal protection to babies who had survived an abortion attempt and were now completely outside the mother’s body.  By all precedent, that baby would not only be considered legally a person, but indeed would be a citizen of the United States, with all of the legal protections that come with citizenship.  Even radical pro-abortion groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America (who changed their name from the National Abortion Rights Action League when they discovered that that name was too honest) didn’t dare publicly oppose this act.  Barack Obama didn’t just oppose it, he stood up and spoke AGAINST extending life-saving treatment to innocent American citizen babies, gasping for breath and struggling for life.

Since that day when he voted against the BAIPA, Obama has been trying to come up with some reason for his vote that sounds at least believable.  His attempts (or ten of them, anyway) are available at http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/01/top-10-reasons.html.

Similarly, he opposed the national Partial-Birth Abortion bill, because he claimed that the bill did not include an exemption for the mother’s “health“.  That’s “health” instead of health, because they are not referring to physical health.  Pro-aborts like Obama want the “health” exemption included because experience shows that including such a clause in effect nullifies the law, since a pro-abort judge can always be found to grant the exemption regardless of the health effect alleged.  Certain judges (well-known to the pro-abortion groups) will vote to take a babies life if the mother (or her lawyer) says she’ll be depressed by the weight gain that comes with a full-term pregnancy.  

Now we have the $1 abortion surcharge mandate under Obamacare.  As Steven Ertelt explained in Lifenews.com on March 12th:

“Nestled within the “individual mandate” in the Obamacare act — that portion of the Act requiring every American to purchase government — approved insurance or pay a penalty — is an “abortion premium mandate.” This mandate requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion.  As a result, many pro-life Americans will have to decide between a plan that violates their consciences by funding abortion, or a plan that may not meet their health needs.”  (Complete article at http://www.lifenews.com/2012/03/12/obama-admin-finalizes-rules-1-abortions-in-obamacare/)

In ancient Rome, the conspirators who slew Julius Caesar all bathed their hands in his blood” so that they would all share in the guilt of the crime.  Similarly, Nazi (the radical leftist National Socialist German Workers Party) SS Chief Heinrich Himmler gave a surprise speech to his fellow Nazi leaders telling them about the Holocaust, the horrible industrialized slaughter of Europe’s Jewish population.  He did this to deprive every attendee of the “I didn’t know” alibi.  Although it never proved of any value to Himmler, the speech led to deadly consequences when the National Socialist regime collapsed and it came time for guilt to be assigned and punishments to be meted out to surviving Nazis.

What the Obama-ites are attempting is arguably worse, as they, with the $1 abortion mandate and the contraceptive mandates (which includes drugs that can cause early abortions) attempt to force all Americans to share in the financing of abortion, and thus share in the guilt for this tremendous, horrendous crime crying out to Heaven.  The Roman conspirators joined the murder conspiracy willingly, and the attendees to Himmler’s speech had joined the Nazi Party leadership.  Today, the vast majority of pro-life Americans are fighting determinedly to avoid having guilt for the abortion nightmare assigned to them.  

Since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 (I assume you’ve heard of it), over 53,000,000 babies have been slain in this country.  (If you want to know why Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going bankrupt today, you might consider this massacre of 53 million future wage earners and taxpayers.)  

What could you possibly gain from BO’s re-election that could possibly be worth more than the lives of all of those babies?  

A relative opines aloud (many others I’m sure opine silently) that your support for Obama is dictated by your sexual orientation.  I personally have never been able to understand why so many of those of your SO (to save typing) see every issue through that prism, and often see things darkly.  (I have some theories, which I will keep to myself because my purpose in writing is not to offend you.)  If our relative is right, those of your SO are a remarkable subset of the American population.  Consider:

They must not need jobs.  The bizarre actions of BO and his merry band of Keynesians have given us a situation unknown in our history -- a recovery that features higher unemployment than that in the recession from which we have supposedly “recovered” from.

They must not drive gasoline-powered vehicles.  When Barack Obama was inaugurated, the price of gasoline was under $1.90/gallon.  It is now at or over $3.80/gallon, and fixing to go higher, largely because BO and his environmentally radical administration has done everything they can to strangle domestic gasoline production.  From the Gulf Oil Drilling moratorium, which the administration has persisted with despite two court rulings that held that the President does not have the authority to unilaterally stop drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  The EPA, headed by Obama-appointed radical environmentalist Lisa Jackson, pulled a filthy trick on Sunoco by allowing them to spend $2 million dollars on an off-shore oil drilling project well off the Alaska coast, and then stopping Sunoco from proceeding for a stomach-turningly spurious reason -- they claimed that Sunoco’s Environmental Impact Statement was inadequate because they had not considered the possible health impacts of a possibly necessary icebreaker on an Alaskan village 400 MILES AWAY!  They also refused to allow construction of the Keystone Oil Pipeline from our friendly neighbor Canada, supposedly for safety concerns, despite the fact that the EPA has done a risk assessment on the project and declared it safe -- SIX TIMES!

How is it safer to ship our oil from the Persian Gulf from hostile nations in tankers?  Have you ever known a pipeline to sink, run aground, or be hijacked by pirates?

Every time you put $40 in your gas tank, you are robbed of almost $20.  I resent it.  Every American should.

They must not need to buy any products, be they food, clothes, or anything else.  When fuel prices go up, transport prices go up, and inevitably retail prices go up.  The administration so far, with the assistance of a (to put it mildly) friendly media, has managed to conceal the resulting inflation by omitting food and fuel from the official inflation rate calculation.  The rest of America has been rather less successful in omitting food and fuel from their budgets.

They must not need affordable energy.  The Obama administration is clearly attempting to destroy the domestic coal industry by imposing impossible and useless standards on emissions.  Even those pushing these industry-destroying regulations can point to no benefits from the stricter standards.

The EPA is now trying to satisfy the watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) environmentalists (who will help bankroll BO’s re-election campaign) by finding some spurious reason to oppose the rapidly expanding, wealth-creating, energy-price-dropping natural gas industry.  Hydro-fracking has been used safely for over 6 decades worldwide, but now suddenly anti-fracking zealots are trying to claim that the process is dangerous.  In fact they are transparently trying to cripple the American economy by crippling the American energy industry.  

There are words that describe the people who are attempting the crippling.  “Reasonable”, “honest”, and “Patriotic” are not among them.

Just this month, the Interior Department (headed by Obama-appointed environmental radical Ken Salazar) announced that they are “locking up” 100 million acres of land in Arizona.  This land contains the richest uranium deposits in the country.  Having crippled the domestic oil industry, the administration now appear to be “focused like a laser beam” on the domestic nuclear power industry.  Salazar did not even offer a reason for the move.


When Obama made that declaration that his energy policy is “all of the above”, apparently he forgot to add “...except the ones that work.”

Most important for you, in my opinion, is Obamacare’s orientation toward the elderly, the disabled, and the brain-damaged or otherwise disabled.  Obama’s appointees have included zealots like Ezekiel Emanuel and Donald Berwick, who believe that doctors should only provide medical care to their patients if it is also good for “the system”.  While Emanuel and Berwick have left their government posts (Berwick because his views and past statements were so extreme that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid informed Obama that Berwick could not win a Senate confirmation vote), their spirit lives on in the Health and Human Services, headed by Obama radical appointee Kathleen Sebelius, who recently publicly stated that the Obamacare health care regime (implication intended) will start saving money once the population starts declining.  How cold-blooded do you have to be to see population decline as a financial goal?

Now that we know that the Obama HHS wants population to decline, we need to consider where they will try to cut what their ideological predecessors the Nazis called “useless feeders’.  The obvious targets will be the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly.  To these dehumanizers, each of these groups uses medical resources without adequately benefiting “the system”.  To the continued massacre of the babies, we will add the massacre of the disabled (like our cousin Todd), and the elderly.

So I guess those of your SO don’t have grandmothers, either, do they, nephew?

Please consider carefully what I have written.  At lot is at stake in the election in November -- both for the country and for you personally.

This would be a bad time to be wrong.

Quite sincerely,

Your Uncle

PS I can back up every assertion I made here with evidence.  Can you do the same with your assertions?
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New York State Marches Off the Cliff -- Again

The imbecile New York State Senate has just voted to recognize "homosexual marriage" officially throughout the state.  My home state once again validates its status as the world's largest open-air asylum, and raises "HM" to the status of officially sanctioned society damaging practice, alongside of legal abortion.  Now we get to watch the ever-escalating demands of the homosexual lobby -- in hiring, in adoption, in attacks on personal and religious liberty, restrictions on free speech, and of course in STD rates as well.  Remember -- whenever liberalism advances, liberty vanishes.
 
At least when slavery was legal here, we legalized neither abortion nor same-sex "marriage".  Now we have both of the latter.  Is this progress?
 
Yes, in a way.  Down a steep place into the sea.
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In Honor of My Father's Day

Many years ago a pro-abortion push-poller called my parents' house, and Dad answered the phone.  Having consented to be polled, Dad found himself badgered for 10 minutes by a pollster determined to get him to say something that could be construed as pro-"choice".  This the pollster failed to do, as any of Dad's kids could have predicted to her, since trying to push our father off of his principles was like trying to push a mountain into the sea.  Finally the woman got sarcastic with my Dad and snapped "Well, if it was your daughter in that position you'd feel differently."
 
With perfect cool courtesy Dad replied "It was my daughter in that position.  My grandson is playing in my living room as I'm talking to you."
 
Happy Father's Day.  Rest in peace, Dad.  We love you and miss you, but thanks for leaving us so many memories and having been such an exemplar. 
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Happy Birthday, Sister Judi

Today is my sister Judi's birthday.  Since I'm a nice brother, I will not divulge her age, but I would like to turn the Crab personal for a moment.  Of course, in my family, politics is personal (so are history, sports, and everything else worth arguing about), so this will be somewhat Crab-like.  Mainly, I'm thinking about life issues.  My sister can be persuaded with evidence, but nothing else shifts her.  This is as it should be. 
 
When I think of Judi and the subject of abortion, I think of a conversation I had years ago with a then-friend named Sandy.  She tried that pro-abortion "argument" that I am not entitled to have an opinion on abortion, since I am not a woman.  Obviously, once you start substituting terms, the "logic" of the argument falls apart (try substituting "the Holocaust" and "German", for example).  Since her phone call woke me up, I didn't debate the point as well as usual.  However, I re-introduced the subject the next time we spoke.  I told her never to tell me that I am not entitled to an opinion on any subject, be it personal, moral, or political (and abortion is all three).  I added "Yes, all of the men in my family are pro-life.  All of the women in my family are ferociously pro-life.  They make the men look rather feeble."
 
I travel in pro-life circles now.  I attend marches, prayer vigils, and pro-life conferences.  I still have never met a pro-lifer more steadfast or well-spoken on the horrors of abortion.  Good for you, Judi.  I'd tell you to keep the faith, but that would be like telling the earth to keep turning.
 
Happy birthday.
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What Does a Public Catholic have to do to get Excommunicated??

The fatal 21st of March was painful for all of us, of course, but it was particularly painful for American Catholics.  Here was House Speaker Nazi Pelosi, self-proclaimed "devout Catholic" jamming through a "health care plan" which contains abortion funding in at least five sections of the bill (abortion is of course against Catholic doctrine, as even casual Catholics know)
 
...on a Sunday
 
...DURING LENT!!!
 
(As an added note, I would just mention that setting up death panels is rather inconsistant with honoring your father and mother.)
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My Favorite Supermodel -- Kathy Ireland

Usually, when I think of supermodels, I think of PJ O'Rourke's line in All the Trouble in the World.  He compared the Amazon Jungle (I don't use the term "rainforest") "...vacant, dim, and all wet."  Kathy Ireland is the exception.  I love this quote that my sister Judi sent me:
 
"I called Planned Parenthood and begged them to give me their best argument and all they could come up with that it is really just a clump of cells and if you get it early enough it doesn’t even look like a baby. Well, we’re all clumps of cells and the unborn does not look like a baby the same way the baby does not look like a teenager, a teenager does not look like a senior citizen. That unborn baby looks exactly the way human beings are supposed to look at that stage of development."
 
Go ahead and ogle, conservative boys.  It's okay for us to enjoy the site of her.
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Stupak Iscariot Sells Us Out Again

I just walked off on Rep. Bart Stupak's announcement that he's selling us out and voting yes for the Health Care Hostile Takeover Bill in return for yet another empty promise.  As you know, he and his merry band of "pro-life" Democrats furnished the margin of victory for the HCHT last time around, too.  Then the Senate passed a bill which included abortion funding in at least 6 sections of the text.  So Bart got to be famous for another few weeks, before betraying 55%+ of the American people again.  Well done, Judas.
 
Won't Bart be surprised when the most psychopathically abortion President in history reneges on his promise?  Consider this:  If the bill would actually be signed into law with a total ban on abortion funding, the militant pro-abortion Democrats like Nancy "Devout Catholic (like Hitler)" Pelosi and the appalling Louise Slaughter the Unborn (who declared early in the debate that she would only support a bill which funds abortions) would be protesting the deal.  Since they're staying on board, this tells you all you need to know about the sincerity and durability of the Stupak "deal".
 
I believe it was Ann Coulter who wrote that in the end, all Democrats are left-wing and pro-abortion.
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Quoted by Permission: Father Frank Pavone's Letter to House Members

(FAther Frank Pavone is the leader of Priests for Life, and one on the Crab's most admired people in public life.  THC)

Open Letter to Congress: The Health Care Vote and Abortion


March 20, 2010

Dear Members of Congress,

As you prepare to cast your vote on health care reform, abortion again has emerged as a momentous and defining issue in this debate. Some consider it a distraction or an unwanted obstacle to authentic health care reform. But the fact is that the abortion debate is bigger and more important than the health care reform debate, and the apparent inability of our nation to avoid wrestling with the abortion issue is another sign that until we resolve the abortion debate the right way, we will not be able to make the progress we need to make on health care or any other matter of social justice or human rights.

Today, therefore, along with countless other Americans, I urge you not to try to look beyond the abortion debate, but to look at it directly, to wrestle with it honestly, and to realize that it is the question that surpasses all others, because it involves the principle that underlies all others.

As a public servant, you are responsible to know the difference between serving the public and killing the public. The first responsibility of government is the protection of human life. To fail to do this is to fail to serve. To violate the right to life is to fail to protect every human right, including health care.

The service that we are all called to carry out to humanity embraces life at every stage and in every circumstance. To fail to respect a human life at any stage of its development is to break the principle that holds it sacred at every stage of its development.

That is why one may never use our duty to life at one stage to justify destroying it at another. Some have tried to do this in the health care debate, by their willingness to expand child killing in the process of helping adults get medical treatment. This approach is self defeating, because as soon as we tolerate the killing of children, we undercut every rationale to provide health care to both children and adults.

Despite the views of some in political office, abortion is not an aspect of health care. In fact, this destructive and violent act does not even deserve the name “medical procedure.” After all, a medical procedure is supposed to help the body to do what it is trying to do, but is having trouble doing. Abortion is just the opposite: it stops the body from doing what it is supposed to do and is doing very well. And in stopping the life of the child within by an unnatural and cruel method, it introduces numerous complications for the health of the mother. Abortion is not health care, it is not respectable, and it deserves the same kind of rejection by society as slavery, segregation, and terrorism.

We who are part of the vast pro-life movement in America call upon you, our legislators, and all our fellow citizens to listen carefully to what the practitioners of abortion say about the procedure itself.

Abortionist Martin Haskell, in describing, under oath, the suction curettage abortion procedure, said , “The fetus passes through the catheter and either dies in transit as it’s passing through the catheter or dies in the suction bottle after it’s actually all the way out” (1).

The same abortionist describes the D and E procedure by saying, “We would attack the lower part of the lower extremity first, remove, you know, possibly a foot, then the lower leg at the knee and then finally we get to the hip … Typically the skull is brought out in fragments rather than as a unified piece…" (2)

Abortionist Warren Hern writes in his medical textbook  Abortion Practice, “A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus…" (p.154).

We ask you, our legislators: When you say the word abortion, is this what you mean? Is this the kind of activity you want to fund?

We in the pro-life movement also listen to and give voice to the women and men who have lost children to abortion. Their experiences, shared through the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, draw attention to the physical and psychological damage abortion does. These are voices we cannot ignore.

Some prefer to ignore, trivialize, or relativize abortion. Others, represented by the pro-life movement, declare not only that it is wrong, but that it is a show-stopper, a deal-breaker.

It is a show-stopper precisely because the principle it breaks is the show-starter for every effort and struggle on behalf of human rights, including the great experiment in freedom and self-governance that is the United States of America.

As Pope John Paul II explained, "The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination" (3).

The United States Catholic bishops expressed it this way: “Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health care. … But being 'right' in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims to the 'rightness' of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and least powerful of the human community. If we understand the human person as the "temple of the Holy Spirit" -- the living house of God -- then these latter issues fall logically into place as the crossbeams and walls of that house. All direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house's foundation. These directly and immediately violate the human person's most fundamental right the right to life. Neglect of these issues is the equivalent of building our house on sand” (4).

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, when he was Archbishop of Chicago, explained “the consistent ethic of life,” showing that issues like health care are connected to issues like abortion and every other issue. He also explained, "A consistent ethic of life does not equate the problem of taking life (e.g., through abortion and in war) with the problem of promoting human dignity (through humane programs of nutrition, health care, and housing). But a consistent ethic identifies both the protection of life and its promotion as moral questions” (5) He also said, "The fundamental human right is to life—from the moment of conception until death. It is the source of all other rights, including the right to health care" (6).

Today, you stand again in the crosshairs of this debate whether you choose to or not. Some will continue to dismiss our concerns. Others will echo them, declaring that we can no more pay for the destruction of innocent children weeks after their life begins than we can do so years after their life begins.

Today, you have the opportunity to decide whether you will contribute to our nation’s blindness about abortion, or whether you will be part of a new awakening, by which our nation will see the abortion debate as the civil rights issue of our time and again apply its founding principles to its youngest citizens.

Fr. Frank Pavone,
National Director, Priests for Life
President, National Pro-life Religious Council

(1) Sworn testimony given in US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison, WI, May 27, 1999, Case No. 98-C-0305-S), by Dr. Martin Haskell, an abortionist. He describes legal activity.

(2) Sworn testimony given in US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison, WI, May 27, 1999, Case No. 98-C-0305-S), by Dr. Martin Haskell, an abortionist. He describes legal activity.

(3) Christifideles Laici, 1988

(4) Living the Gospel of Life n. 23, 1998

(5) A Consistent Ethic of Life: Continuing the Dialogue
, The William Wade Lecture Series, St. Louis University, March 11, 1984.

(6) The Consistent Ethic of Life and Health Care Systems, Foster McGaw Triennial Conference, Loyola University of Chicago, May 8, 1985.

Priests for Life
PO Box 141172
Staten Island, NY 10314
P:718-980-4400
F: 718-980-6515
mail@priestsforlife.org
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Day to Honor Abortion Practitioners? Why Not a Day to Honor Slave-Traders?

I'm a telephone operator, and I got a call today from a woman who was raging and speaking in all capitals because an "anti-choice" group (choice of what is what I almost asked her) dared to make a fund-raising call to her number.  I was tempted to ask Her Royal Indignity the classic riddle "How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb", but I stopped myself. 
 
To get some idea of what practice and practitioners this woman is so passionate about defending, read this article at the invaluable LifeNews.com website.  Everyone ought to realize that the practice of such a disreputable "medical" practice as abortion is bound to attract the most reprehensible doctors in any country where the grisly practice is allowed.  The linked article is a thin sliver off the top of a very deep manure pile of medical and ethical (and in many cases criminal) malpractice.
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Discounted Black Barbies

On Wednesday, James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com treated us to this story:
 

American Idol
"Walmart is raising eyebrows after cutting the price of a black Barbie doll to nearly half of that of the doll's white counterpart at one store and possibly others," ABC News reports:

A photo first posted to the humor Web site FunnyJunk.com and later to the Latino Web site Guanabee.com shows packages of Mattel's Ballerina Barbie and Ballerina Theresa dolls hanging side by side at an unidentified store. The Theresa dolls, which feature brown skin and dark hair, are marked as being on sale at $3.00. The Barbies to the right of the Theresa dolls, meanwhile, retain their original price of $5.93. The dolls look identical aside from their color.

So actually the black Barbies sell for slightly more than half the price of the white ones, not "nearly half." ABC reports that "critics say Walmart should have been more sensitive in its pricing choice":

"The implication of the lowering of the price is that's devaluing the black doll," said Thelma Dye, the executive director of the Northside Center for Child Development, a Harlem, N.Y. organization founded by pioneering psychologists and segregation researchers Kenneth B. Clark and Marnie Phipps Clark.
"While it's clear that's not what was intended, sometimes these things have collateral damage," Dye said.
Other experts agree. Walmart could have decided "that it's really important that we as a company don't send a message that we value blackness less than whiteness," said Lisa Wade, an assistant sociology professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles and the founder of the blog Sociological Images.

Blogger Eugene Volokh notes some of the ironies here:

Maybe the black doll is indeed selling less well because (as Prof. Wade is paraphrased as conjecturing) "black parents are more likely than white parents to buy their children dolls of a different race." Or maybe black parents were as likely to buy the black doll as white parents were to buy the white doll, but the store bought more black dolls than proved justified by the demographics of the store's customers. Or maybe black parents are on average unwilling to pay as much for Barbie dolls as white parents (perhaps because black parents are poorer, or because they aren't as into Barbie). Or perhaps (as the article suggests) the black Barbie doll is less attractive to blacks than the white Barbie doll is to whites. Or maybe there's some other reason.
But what puzzled me about the story is that it didn't discuss the effects of the price cut: (1) It disproportionately saved money for black parents (assuming, as is likely, that black parents are the ones who are more likely to buy black dolls). (2) It also made it more likely that white parents would buy the black doll for their white children, which might have broadened their child's racial horizons (a symbolic effect on the child, perhaps, but the article is all about symbolic effects).

Somehow, though, everyone seems to be missing the fundamental point: It's just a doll! A black Barbie is not of a "different race" than a white Barbie; it is merely made out of a different color of plastic. How could such an obvious point elude anyone?

 
Eugene Volokh is a perceptive man, but even he missed the possible explanation for the discounting of the black dolls.  Could it be connected to the fact that blacks make up only 12-13% of the population of the country, and also (tragically) because a black unborn child has a much greater chance of being a victim of the American Holocaust, aka abortion? 
 
Just thinking out loud here...
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Dr. King's Niece Weighs in on the Dream

On the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day (is that the correct name?), I think it's right to check in with his niece, Dr. Alveda King, and get a handy reminder that the Dream belongs to the unborn as well as to the born.  If you're wondering why you never see Dr. King on television speaking about her uncle or indeed speaking about anything else, I think this article on LifeNews.com will explain this.  By the way, one of the reasons the Crab hates abortion in America is that it's so racist.  Black Americans are 12% of the population, but fully 35% of the abortions in this country. 
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The Crab Loses his Cool with Senator Schumer, the Term Limits Poster Child

I am a proud member of the 9/12 movement.  Tonight I posted this to the website:
 
I confess, fellow 9/12ers. I lost my cool tonight. I had written Senator Schumer to protest the presence of abortion funding in the health care deform bill passed by the Senate. I thought I had made my point of view perfectly clear, until I received this:

Dear Mr. Crab:

Thank you for contacting me on the important issue of women's reproductive rights. I agree with you wholeheartedly that women's reproductive decisions should be personal, not dictated by the government or interest groups.

Throughout my career, I have been a strong advocate of protecting a woman's right to choose. Most recently, I took the lead in asking the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to review its decision that ruled that anti-abortion activists could not be held liable for posting material accusing abortion doctors of committing "crimes against humanity" and maintaining a website known as the "Nuremberg Files" which contained similar content. I believe that this decision undermines the legislative intent of the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances bill which I wrote and helped pass into law. I also recently introduced and helped pass an amendment to the Bankruptcy Reform Act which prohibits individuals from using bankruptcy as a way to escape paying fines for violations of the FACE law.

Because of my constant commitment to choice, The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League has given me a 100% lifetime rating. You can be confident that in the Senate I will continue to be a vigilant advocate for preserving a woman's right to choose.

Again, thank you for writing me to express your opinion on this critical issue. If I can be of any further assistance in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me.


Sincerely,

Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator

I was fuming when I read this. I immediately replied with this:

Senator,

I wrote you to object to abortion funding being in the health care bill passed by the Senate. You sent me an e-mail assuring me of your support of the "right" to abortion (which you euphemistically referred to as "a woman's right to choose"), and bragged of your 100% rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League. You even boastfully referred to your authorship of the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances act, one of the most flagrantly unconstitutional laws ever passed by the Senate. Your corruption of the bankruptcy law with your amendment specifically targeting pro-life activists (and no others) was another shameful action by the Senate, and most of all by yourself. This is viewpoint discrimination writ large, and with a poison pen.

Over 70% of Americans oppose federal funded abortion. Yet you, in the arrogance of power, spit on the wishes of the people and presume to rule them. We are Americans; we don't accept rulers. We elect representatives, and when need be chase them from power. You have become the poster child for term limits, Senator. You have lingered too long in office, and have done too much damage already. As was said of the Long Parliament, "In the name of God, go!"

VERY sincerely,

The Hermit Crab
Hilton, NY
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Impolite Thoughts -- Not Just Mine Today!

Libertarian Tony sent me a suggestion for (I'm assuming) this feature.  I like it so much I'm putting it first.  Not the exact words, though -- they're on my home computer and I'm at work.
 
The top executives at Bank of America (or one of the firms that got bailout funds) are being required by the (unconstitutional) "pay czar" to accept pay cuts of 90%.  Tony points out that since the Chinese, Japanese, and other foreign investors are in effect "bailing out" Congresses and Prez BO's profligate spending, shouldn't the leaders of Congress and Baby Barry have to take a 90-% pay cut, also.
 
Sounds good to me!
 
 
 
In the wake of the administration's declaring war on Fox News, some scribblers have compared BO to Richard Nixon.  Good Lord!  Will the slanders of Richard Nixon never cease?
 
 
 
As a long-time member of the Pro-Life movement, I am appalled at the poor judgement of pro-lifers who carry large, graphic photos of aborted babies at their protests, or print them in their pro-life literature.  When you wave a banner or sign at a demonstration, you want to make people look, not look away.  Don't carry pictures of aborted babies, carry pictures of live, adorable babies.  Virtually every time a baby is aborted, the world loses one of these, and the entire world is poorer for the loss.
 
I hate it when people on my side do stupid things.
 
 
 
 In my reading about the anti-slavery movement in America in the mid-19th century, I've run many times across the term Barnburners.  This term was applied to the Democrats in New York State who opposed the extension of slavery into the territories, and who, by bolting the Democratic fold to help form the Free Soil Party, helped Zachary Taylor defeat Lewis Cass for the Presidency in 1848.  The name was meant to be an insult, referring to the fabled Dutchman who burned his barn to rid it of rats.
 
Sounds rather like the Democrats' health care proposals, does it not?
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Some Impolite Weekend Comments

I was doing some bottom-of-the-workbag reading Thursday, and I read this in the July/August edition of the National Right to Life News:
 
"A spokeman for the Rules Committee chair, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-NY), said, "The starting point for Rep. Slaughter on the healthcare debate was protecting abortion rights."
 
Concerning this, a few observations (and I've had plenty of opportunity to observe Rep. Slaughter, since for many years I lived in her congressional district):
 
While the frank avowal of the primacy of abortion "rights" may shock some (and it ought to), it does not shock anyone who is familiar with Slaughter's years in the House.  About the only distinguishing feature of her time in Congress has been her dedicated, absolutely fanatical advocacy for the totally unfettered right to kill one's baby.  No limits on abortion at all.  Ever!  She's not known as Louise Slaughter-the-Unborn for nothing.  I've often suspected that every child born into the world strikes Ms. Slaughterhouse as a lost opportunity.
 
One can't help but wonder what the abortion-funding-by-stealth forces in the Democratic Party thought when they read the quote I just cited.  "Quiet, you fools!  You're giving the game away!"
 
Normally, I object to any man or woman being referred to as "the chair".  Most people, of course, are far smarter than a piece of furniture.  In old Louise's case, however, I'm forced to consider the necessity of admitting that my theory may have at least one exception to its universal application...
 
 
 
Also from the National Right to Life News of July-August 2009:
 

Adult Stem Cells Treat Heart Disease in Clinical Trial

Mike Jones, 66, has shown marked improvement after participating in a clinical trial that used his own adult stem cells to treat congestive heart failure. Doctors from the University of Louisville (UofL) and Jewish Hospital harvested stem cells and then transplanted them back into Jones’s heart in an attempt to repair damaged tissue, according to a UofL press release.

“We’ve studied this in rats, mice and pigs but this is the first time we’ve tried it in a human,” said Roberto Bolli, director of UofL’s Institute for Molecular Cardiology. “If it works, it will be a revolutionary treatment for heart failure.”

The cells were transplanted July 17 into Jones’s bloodstream through his leg, and then traveled into his damaged heart. In only one week, his heart function rose from 20% to 30%, according to the press release.

Jones appeared with his doctors at a press conference July 24. He said that he is now exercising three times a day, and “I may even start jogging again.”

The clinical trial is expected to involve 20 patients over the next two years, testing for the safety and effectiveness of the procedure, according to the press release.

“We continue to enroll patients in this first-of-its-kind clinical trial,” Bolli said in a press release issued by Jewish Hospital. “We hope to help the heart regenerate its own tissue and improve heart function.”
 
You may be thinking that this is the kind of promising research that we should be funding if indeed the federal government should be funding any at all (that's for you, Tony).  We were -- when the President was George Bush.  However, Barack Obama, when he decided to loudly proclaim that the government would now fund embryonic stem cell research (which many object to on moral grounds, and many others point out has never produced any cures or treatments for any diseases, and very likely never will), he also quitely defunded research being conducted with adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells (both in plentiful supply and scientifically very promising), for no apparent reason other than the fact that President Bush funded it.  I see a lot of juvenility in BO.  At a time when we face dangers on all fronts, we appear to have a President who never outgrew the petulance of youth.  He seems to be always determined to wipe out everything that his predecessor did -- especially the good things.
 
I'd rather we had elected Hillary (Boy, that wasn't easy to type.).  At least she's a grown-up!  Of course, so was Eva Peron.
 
 
 
 
 
I'm somewhat puzzled by the people asking why President BO and his lovely wife Imelda would travel to Copenhagen to lobby the IOC (unsuccessfully, as it happened) to give Chicago the chance to host the Olympic Games in 2016.  Earth to the naive -- it was just another taxpayer-paid vacation for the King and Queen.  I have read reports that Imelda even took a second jetliner for Her Royal Highness and her court.  It was just another chance to blow another few hundred thousands of dollars of our taxes on themselves and their lavish lifestyles.  It would be somewhat easier for me to take BO's "concern" for the working class seriously if he and his garishly-extravagant wife would stop blowing oceans of money they never earned on themselves.
 
 
 
When I came to the TownHall.com website the other day, I saw an ad at the side of the page that read "Help Pat Toomey beat Arlen Specter".  Sounds good to me, was my first thought.  What is he planning to beat him with?
 
Naughty Crab!  You mustn't think things like that.  Not out loud, anyway.
 
 
 
Very few modern politicians have taken more unjust abuse in recent years than President George W. Bush (oddly, the things he really did do wrong are almost never the things he's attacked for), but one of the few is GWB's own Vice President, Richard Cheney.  For me, one of the great moments of the latest Bush presidency was when the Democrat viciously partisan attack dog, Patrick Leahy (D-VT), after years of venomous and mendacious attacks on virtually every Bush policy (real or imagined), had the gall to ask the Veep to pose with him for a photo that quite likely would have been used in Leahy's mailings back home.  The website I'm blogging on won't allow me to quote the great Mr. Cheney's response exactly, so let's just say that he told Leahy to " go (rhymes with duck) yourself".
 
Now, how many of you Republicans reading this have never themselves wanted to say that to Leahy themselves?  Boy, it got quiet in here all of a sudden...
 
 
 
One final thought for you all before I'm off to bed -- where is the public outcry against Roman Polanski on the part of the feminist groups?   Do famous movie directors get even more leeway than Democratic presidents?  Will this silence on the part of the NOW and other radical women's groups work to kill off whatever credibility they have left after their failure to condemn ol' Billy Jeff Clinton for his serial abuse of women in the '80s and '90s?  Shouldn't it?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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