Abortionist Obama: "The First Thing I’d do as President is, is Sign the Freedom of [Abortion] Choice Act"
Coming soon Planned Parenthood’s Barack Obama as the Abortionist President.
Fred
Barack Obama before Planned Parenthood Action Fund, July 17, 2007
Dessa Cosma: [W]hat would you do at the federal level not only to ensure access to abortion but to make sure that the judicial nominees that you will inevitably be able to pick are true to the core tenets of Roe v. Wade?
Barack Obama: Well, the first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.
[http://lauraetch.googlepages.com/barackobamabeforeplannedparenthoodaction]
Obama Strongly Endorses Partial-Birth Abortion
[Barack Hussein Obama] said, "for the first time in Gonzales versus Carhart, the Supreme Court held—upheld a federal ban on abortions with criminal penalties for doctors. For the first time, the Court’s Obama an abortion restriction without an exception for women’s health. The decision presumed that the health of women is best protected by the Court—not by doctors and not by the woman herself. That presumption is wrong."
Notice, he doesn't use the words, "Partial-birth Abortion, " because just the name is disgusting and probably because 80% of the American people want it banned and here is why:
In this late term gruesome procedure, the entire baby is delivered except for the head, which they make sure stays in the birth canal (otherwise it would be murder), then the back of the baby's head is stabbed with scissors, the hole is enlarged, a rube is inserted and the baby's brains are sucked out with a powerful machine. All the while the baby suffers excruciating pain. It's enough to make you cry. How in the world, can a society condone such barbarism? Barack Obama can.
He said, "It is time for a different attitude in the White House. It is time for a different attitude in the Supreme Court. It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history."
The change Obama wants is to keep torturing and killing little children. Notice, he doesn't mention that it could be done to save the "life" of the mother, he states, "health," which is so broad that it could mean, "doctor, since Ive been pregnant, I don't feel good, or it makes me nervous, or I've been nauseated." It's all subjective.
Besides, a partial-birth abortion is not an emergency procedure as the cervix has to be dilated over a 2-3 day period. It's just a means for a mother to have her child killed late in her pregnancy, if she changes her mind and deems the child would be an inconvenience at that time.
He mentioned the swing vote of Justice Kennedy: "Without any hard evidence, Justice Kennedy proclaimed, It is self-evident that a woman would regret her choice.”
Obama ignores the women who have taken to alcohol and drugs after having their child killed. Too bad he hasn't read the reports of women who have killed themselves after having their child killed. One just last week.
He cited medical uncertainty about the need to protect the health of pregnant women. He said, "even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found no such uncertainty. Justice Kennedy knows many things, my understanding is he does not know how to be a doctor."
Ah, but the doctor that Obama speaks of is the doctor who is going to kill the baby, for a fee, of course. When he mentions Obstetricians and Gynecologists finding no uncertainty, he lies. The American College of Christian Obstetricians and Gynecologists found much uncertainty. They say abortion increases the risk of drug and alcoholic abuse as well as suicides. The Catholic OB AND GYN doctors found the same. But, he ONLY mentions doctors who have no respect for human life. The ACOG.
Barack Hussein Obama is so evil that he voted against giving aid to a baby who survived being killed. Just let him/her die, he insists.
Obama keeps mentioning Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the most liberal justice on the Supreme Court.
He said, "we’re a country founded on the principle of equality and freedom." This is true, but we're not a country that kills innocent little babies because they are an inconvenience.
He loves to say a women's reproductive freedom. As if pro-lifers are against that. Women can reproduce at will, but once the reproduction is over, then do not kill the child.
He is so backward in his thinking that he still thinks that condoms are the answer to stem STDs and pregnancies and abstinence teaching is a waste of time. Apparently he doesn't know that the more condoms that are handed out, the more STDs and the more pregnancies. Planned Parenthood knows this which is why they pass them out. The more they pass out the more abortions they can do and the more money they make. They're not stupid.
Obama, even mentioned the name of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, a woman, who if she had her way would have people like Obama killed.
On the rights of married couples to bear children, Sanger wrote, "Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child." On the rights of racial minorities, the handicapped and the mentally ill, she said, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit - that is the chief aim of birth control."
On the extermination of blacks, she cautioned, "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," Margaret Sanger referred to blacks, immigrants and indigents as "human weeds," and "reckless breeders." She wrote that they were, "spawning... human beings who never should have been born." By virtue of their numerical superiority, she saw poor people and the newly immigrated Slavs, Latins, and Hebrews as a real threat to Anglo-Saxon political and economic power.
Sanger responded to this "threat" by developing her own "Plan for Peace." In it she outlined her strategy for the eradication of those she deemed "feeble minded," including Catholic and Jewish immigrants. In addition to immigration restrictions and the administering of a special IQ test, her evil scheme advocated compulsory sterilization AND segregation to a lifetime of farm work under "competent instructors"...Practically speaking, she envisioned Concentration Camps!
There was little difference between Margaret Sanger and the German Nazi...In fact Hitler and Sanger were both proponents of Eugenics, a social philosophy which advocates the creation of a race of human thoroughbreds.
At the same time, Hitler spread birth control and abortion propaganda in the eastern territories outside Germany. Himmler, carrying out Hitler's orders, directed an intense propaganda campaign to persuade these so-called "inferior" people that having children was harmful.
Margaret Sanger believed that most people were not intelligent enough to share in the right to govern and wanted a totalitarian rule similar to Adolf Hitler's. She constantly attacked the Catholic Church and referred to it as "immoral" for opposing her evil schemes for "social progress." In 1942, this evil woman, the infamous Margaret Sanger, founded Planned Parenthood!
This is the organization that Obama has a love affair with, an organization founded on the principle that people like Obama should be eliminated and NEVER be given a chance to run for the presidency of the United State.
The fact that Obama heaped praises on Planned Parenthood means he does not do his homework or he is just plain stupid. Either way, besides his penchant for baby killing, stupidity is not a good trait if one wants to be president of the United States, especially during war time.
There is so much more that I can write about Obama's speech, but time does not permit.
Below, is the full text of Barack Hussein Obama's speech before the baby killing organization known as Planned Parenthood:
Frank Joseph MD
DrFrank@abortiontruths.net
http://www.abortiontruths.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://lauraetch.googlepages.com/barackobamabeforeplannedparenthoodaction
Barack Obama before Planned Parenthood Action Fund, July 17, 2007
Transcribed by Laura Echevarria, www.lauraechevarria.com, (view the video of this speech at www.imoneinamillion.com)
Barack Obama: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, well, Ariana, thanks for stealing the show. [Laughter] That’s how, that’s how we teach young people at Trinity United Church of Christ. They’re not shy. It’s so wonderful to see and thank you for the wonderful introduction and the great work that you are doing. You’re representing the church and the city of Chicago very, very well. All right—give her a round of applause [Applause].
I heard, Ariana, I heard your folks are here, where are they—Oh, I see, the one with the camera [Laughter] video taping everything. All right, I should have figured that out. Well, you should be proud, she’s extraordinary.
Thanks to all of you at Planned Parenthood for all the work that you are doing for women all across the country and for families all across the country—and for men, who have enough sense to realize you are helping them, all across the country. I want to thank Cecile Richards for her extraordinary leadership. I’m happy to see so many good friends here today, including Steve Trombley and Pam Sutherland from my home state of Illinois. We had a number of battles down in Springfield for many many years and it is wonderful to see that they are here today.
You know it’s been a little over five months since I announced my candidacy for President of the United States of America and everywhere we’ve been, we’ve been inspired by these enormous crowds. We had twenty thousand people in Atlanta, twenty thousand people in Austin, Texas, fifteen thousand people in Oakland, California and I would love to take all the credit for these crowds myself, to say to myself that it’s just because I’m just so fabulous, but [Laughter] my wife says otherwise. Michele, I think, confirms that these crowds are not about me. It’s about the hunger all across America for something different. It’s about the sense that we can do better—that we’ve come to a crossroads, that we’re not pointed in the right direction.
And as I look out over these crowds—and they are a wonderful cross-section of the country, male, female, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, disabled, gay, straight, old, young—what I’m heartened to see is particularly the young people who are getting their first chance to be part of a larger movement of Americans. I see young women who are Ariana’s age and younger, and I think about my own two daughters, Sasha and Malia, and sometimes it makes me stop and makes me wonder: what kind of America will our daughters grow up in?
What kind of America will our daughters grow up in?
Will our daughters grow up with the same opportunities as our sons? Will our daughters have the same rights, the same dreams, the same freedoms to pursue their own version of happiness? I wonder because there’s a lot at stake in this country today. And there’s a lot at stake in this election, especially for our daughters. To appreciate that all you have to do is review the recent decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. For the first time in Gonzales versus Carhart, the Supreme Court held—upheld a federal ban on abortions with criminal penalties for doctors. For the first time, the Court’s endorsed an abortion restriction without an exception for women’s health. The decision presumed that the health of women is best protected by the Court—not by doctors and not by the woman herself. That presumption is wrong.
Some people argue that the federal ban on abortion was just an isolated effort aimed at one medical procedure—that it’s not part of a concerted effort to roll back the hard-won rights of American women. That presumption is also wrong.
Within hours of the decision, an Alabama lawmaker introduced a measure to ban all abortions. With one more vacancy on the Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a woman’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe versus Wade and that is what is at stake in this election. The only thing more disturbing than the decision was the rationale of the majority. Without any hard evidence, Justice Kennedy proclaimed, “It is self-evident that a woman would regret her choice.” He cited medical uncertainty about the need to protect the health of pregnant women. Even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found no such uncertainty. Justice Kennedy knows many things, my understanding is he does not know how to be a doctor.
[Laughter and Applause]
He dismissed as mere preferences the reasoned judgments of the nation’s doctors. We’ve seen time after time these last few years when the president says otherwise, when the science is inconvenient, when the facts don’t match up with the ideology, they are cast aside. Well, it’s time for us to change that. It is time for a different attitude in the White House. It is time for a different attitude in the Supreme Court. It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history.
[Applause]
We know that five men don’t know better than women and their doctors what’s best for a woman’s health. We know that it’s about whether or not women have equal rights under the law. We know that a woman’s right to make a decision about how many children she wants to have and when—without government interference—is one of the most fundamental freedoms we have in this country. We also know that there was another voice that came from the bench—a voice clear in reasoning and passionate in dissent. The voice rejected what she called, quote “Ancient notions of women’s place in the family and under the Constitution. Ideas that have long been discredited.” Unquote. One commentator called the decision in Gonzales, “An attack on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s entire life’s work.” And it was. But we heard Justice Ginsburg and we know what she was saying. She was saying, “We’ve been there before and we are not going back. [Applause] We refuse to go back. [Applause]”
We know, we know it’s not just one decision. It’s the blow dealt to equal pay in the Ledbetter [v. Goodyear] case, it’s the blow dealt to integration in the school desegregation case, it’s an approach to the law that favors the powerful over the powerless—that holds up a flawed ideology over the rights of the individual. We don’t see America in these decisions—that’s not who we are as a people. We’re a country founded on the principle of equality and freedom. We’re the country that’s fought generation after generation to extend that equality to the many not restrict it to the few. We’ve been there before and we’re not going back.
I have worked on these issues for decades now. I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan on reproductive freedom when I taught Constitutional Law. Not simply as a case about privacy but as part of the broader struggle for women’s equality. Steve and Pam will tell you that we fought together in the Illinois State Senate against restrictive choice legislation—laws just like the federal abortion laws, the federal abortion bans that are cropping up. I’ve stood up for the freedom of choice in the United States Senate and I stand by my votes against the confirmation of Judge Roberts and Samuel Alito [Applause]
So, you know where I stand. But this more is than just about standing our ground. It must be about more than protecting the gains of the past. We’re at a crossroads right now in America—and we have to move this country forward. This election is not just about playing defense, it’s also about playing offense. It’s not just about defending what is, it’s about creating what might be in this country. And that’s what we’ve got to work together on.
There will always be people, many of goodwill, who do not share my view on the issue of choice. On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find common ground. Because we know that what’s at stake is more than whether or not a woman can choose an abortion.
Choice is about how we lead our lives. It’s about our families and about our communities. It’s about our daughters and whether they’re going to have the same opportunities as our sons. There are those who want us to believe otherwise. They want us to believe that there’s nothing that unites us as Americans—there’s only what divides us. They’ll seek out the narrowest and most divisive ground. That is the strategy—to always argue small instead of looking at the big picture. They will stand in the way of any attempt to find common ground.
At a time when a real war is being fought abroad they would have us fight cultural wars here at home. But I am absolutely convinced that culture wars are so nineties; their days are growing dark, it is time to turn the page. We want a new day here in America. We’re tired about arguing about the same ole’ stuff. [Applause] And I am convinced we can win that argument. If the argument is narrow, then oftentimes we lose. But if you ask everybody—you ask the most conservative person—do they want their daughters to have the same chances as men?, most will answer in the affirmative. The vast majority will answer in the affirmative.
We can win that argument. We can turn this page.
It is time to turn the page on policies that fail to deal with tragedy of ten thousand American teenagers getting an STD everyday. Of fifty-five contracting HIV and another twenty-four hundred becoming pregnant. It’s time to turn the page on a stance that refuses compassionate support of victims of rape and sexual assault. Not even to the brave servicewomen fighting for our country who aren’t getting the support they need when they come home as veterans of the United States of America. [Applause] If they’re fighting for us, they should be getting the services that they deserve. It’s time to turn the page on a policies that provides almost 1.5 billion dollar to teach abstinence in our schools but refuses to teach basic science and basic contraception.
Pam, we’ve been through these fights in Illinois, we’re going to be in these fights here in Washington. There’s nothing wrong with science. It’s actually made our lives better. [Applause] Let’s teach science to our kids. We need, we need to make choices about what happens before pregnancy. It’s a false argument to say that the only way to prevent disease and unintended pregnancy is abstinence education. Just as it is a false argument to say that the only way is through contraception. As Martin Luther King used to say, “It’s not either/or it’s both/and.”
There’s a moral component to prevention. And we shouldn’t be shy about acknowledging it. As parents, as family members, we need to encourage young people to show reverence toward sexuality and intimacy. We need to teach that not just to the young girls, we need to teach it to those young boys. [Applause] But [Applause] But even as we are teaching those lessons, we should never be willing to consign a teenage girl to a lifetime of struggle because of a lack of access to birth control or a lifetime of illness because she doesn’t understand how to protect herself. That’s just commonsense. There’s common ground on behalf of commonsense—there we have an opportunity to move forward and agree.
People of all faiths—from members of Ariana’s and my church, Trinity United Church of Christ to United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, understand that we cannot ignore that abstinence and fidelity may too often be the ideal but often not the reality.
We need more programs in our communities like the National Black Church Initiative which empowers our young people by teaching them about reproductive health, sex education and teen pregnancy within the context of the African-American faith tradition.
We need more leadership at the federal level. That’s why I’m an original co-sponsor of the Prevention First Act. [Applause] To guarantee equity in contraceptive coverage, provide comprehensive sex education in our schools and offer rape victims factually accurate information about emergency contraception.
We need to tackle the tragedy of unintended teen pregnancy. When seven hundred and fifty thousand teens become pregnant every year, and half of Latina and black teens will become mothers before reaching their twenties, it’s not just a public health problem. If we reduce teen pregnancy, we can also reduce poverty.
Now the good news is that there has been a decline in the teen birth rate,in part due to the outstanding work of Planned Parenthood. But we all know that we can do more. That’s why I’ve been working on this in Congress. Today, I introduced the Communities of Color Teen Pregnancy Prevention Act to increase funding for programs to combat this problem in communities all across this country working with grassroots organizations [Applause] to increase education. We need, we need to ensure that pharmaceutical companies can offer discounted drugs to safety net providers like Planned Parenthood [Applause] and university clinics so that access, so that access to affordable contraception is not just a privilege for the few but an option for all women. It’s amazing how many women tell me the stories of how important it was for Planned Parenthood to provide them services when they were in college and they did not have the health insurance or the access to a regular doctor that they needed. To be able to have somebody they could trust to deal with so many of their basic and essential health issues.
And we can’t stop there because we know that there is more at stake. The struggle for equality is also a struggle for opportunity. You’ve worked in the communities. You’ve seen women and families trying to keep pace. You’ve seen our daughters hit the glass ceilings and come to closed doors.
The social contract in this country was made for a time when most women stayed at home with the kids. But even though this time is long passed, we still have social policies designed around the old model. The, as Justice Ginsberg said, “Ancient notions of women’s place in the family,” and so women still receive less in pay, less in health benefits, less in pensions, less in social security. When women go on maternity leave, America is the only country in the industrialized world to let them go unpaid.
If you’re a single mom, like my mom was, and you can’t afford health insurance for yourself and you’re trying to figure out whether your kids are going to be covered or not, the message from this current administration is: tough luck, that’s the breaks.
The truth is, too often our daughters don’t have the same opportunities as our sons. But that’s not who we are. That’s not the America we want for our children and I am absolutely convinced that we can make this change. We can update the social contract so that caring for a newborn baby isn’t a three month break, it’s a paid leave—so that all of our children have basic health care. [Applause]
We should be ashamed that the President of the United States is fighting providing health insurance coverage to all children because he’s worried that’s socialized medicine. He would rather fight an ideological battle than make certain that children who have preventable illnesses, like asthma, are getting regular checkups instead of going to the emergency room, which is costing all of us more money.
We can update the social contract so that our kids can go to school earlier and stay longer; so that a mom can stay home with a sick child without getting a pink slip; we can go to work, she can go to work—knowing that there is affordable quality child care for her children; so that more families can stay together and prosper and our daughters have no limits to the shape of their dreams.
We can make these changes but first we gotta get rid of the can’t-do-won’t-do-won’t-even-try style of government that we’ve had in Washington over the last several years. An administration that says, “We don’t have the money to do it.” But we’ve got ten billion dollars a month to fight a war in Iraq that should have never been authorized [applause] and should have never been waged. We can find the money to make sure our daughters have the same rights as our son.
We can make this change.
We can make this change but first we have to get rid of the politics that’s obsessed with who’s up and who’s down. A politics that is power for power’s sake. A politics of cynicism and fear—fear, above all, of the future.
This kind of change is about more than any one judicial appointment or law—as important as they may be—it also about leadership.
It’s about not settling for what America is but working for what America might be.
You know, I’m here as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America because I had a grandmother who never got more than a high school education. But she worked on a bomber assembly line—she was Rosie the Riveter—and then went to work after she and my grandfather had married, and her daughter had been born, she went to work as a secretary. And worked her way up to become vice-president of a bank, the same bank where she started as a secretary, and ended up being the financial rock for our entire family.
I’m here because of a mother, who for most of her life was a single mom, and yet was able to put herself through school and get a Ph.D. and end up specializing in women’s development and starting micro-enterprises for women in Africa and Asia and all around the world. And still somehow added, had the time and capacity to fill up her children with love and affection.
I’m here because of my wife, who as many of you know, is smarter, and tougher and better-looking than I am [laughter]. And many people ask why she shouldn’t be the Obama running for President and I explain that she’s too smart to want to run for president. She’d rather tell the president what to do. [laughter]
But most of all I’m here as a candidate because there are these two little girls that I try to tuck in every night—it’s harder during the campaign season—whose futures depend upon us creating a more equal society.
I want my daughters to grow up in an America where they have the exact same opportunities as America’s sons. I want Sasha and Melia to dream without limit. To achieve without constraint. To be absolutely free to seek their own happiness.
At this crossroad, we need to talk about what America might be—an America of equality and opportunity for our daughters. We need to talk about what Justice Ginsberg called, “A woman’s ability to realize her potential.” Because when we argue big, we win.
I am convinced of that.
I am convinced that Republicans and Democrats and Independents, Blue-state voters and Red-state voters, they want a fair shake for their daughters.
In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America gave its first Margaret Sanger Award to Martin Luther King, Jr. And in his acceptance speech, which was delivered by his strong and wonderful wife Coretta, Dr. King wrote, “Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by non-violent, direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.”
That struggle for equality is not over and now we are at one of those rare moments where we can actually transform our politics in a fundamental way. But it’s going to take people as resolute as Mrs. Sanger and Dr. King—people like your own Cecile Richards—it’s going to take young people like Ariana. It’s going to take millions of voices coming together to insist that it’s not enough just to stand still. That it’s not enough to safeguard the gains of the past—that it is time to be resolute and time to march forward.
I am absolutely convinced that we stand on the brink of that kind of achievement. And if we succeed in raising the awareness all across America that what is good for our daughters is also good for our sons. That when we expand opportunity for some, we expand opportunity for the many.
When we have achieved as one voice a strong call for that kind of more fair and more just America, then I am absolutely convinced that we’re not just going to win an election but more importantly we’re going to transform this nation.
Thank you [applause] very much, appreciate you guys, thank you.
Thank you.
[applause continues]
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you, Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you guys, you’re very gracious, thank you.
Thank you.
Obama Said his First Priority is Killing Unborn Babies
Barack Obama before Planned Parenthood said "The First Thing I’d do as President is, is Sign the Freedom of [Abortion] Choice Act."
[http://lauraetch.googlepages.com/barackobamabeforeplannedparenthoodaction]
This man is the hope of the world?
Fred
http://lauraetch.googlepages.com/barackobamabeforeplannedparenthoodaction
Barack Obama before Planned Parenthood Action Fund, July 17, 2007
Transcribed by Laura Echevarria, www.lauraechevarria.com, (view the video of this speech at www.imoneinamillion.com)
Barack Obama: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, well, Ariana, thanks for stealing the show. [Laughter] That’s how, that’s how we teach young people at Trinity United Church of Christ. They’re not shy. It’s so wonderful to see and thank you for the wonderful introduction and the great work that you are doing. You’re representing the church and the city of Chicago very, very well. All right—give her a round of applause [Applause].
I heard, Ariana, I heard your folks are here, where are they—Oh, I see, the one with the camera [Laughter] video taping everything. All right, I should have figured that out. Well, you should be proud, she’s extraordinary.
Thanks to all of you at Planned Parenthood for all the work that you are doing for women all across the country and for families all across the country—and for men, who have enough sense to realize you are helping them, all across the country. I want to thank Cecile Richards for her extraordinary leadership. I’m happy to see so many good friends here today, including Steve Trombley and Pam Sutherland from my home state of Illinois. We had a number of battles down in Springfield for many many years and it is wonderful to see that they are here today.
You know it’s been a little over five months since I announced my candidacy for President of the United States of America and everywhere we’ve been, we’ve been inspired by these enormous crowds. We had twenty thousand people in Atlanta, twenty thousand people in Austin, Texas, fifteen thousand people in Oakland, California and I would love to take all the credit for these crowds myself, to say to myself that it’s just because I’m just so fabulous, but [Laughter] my wife says otherwise. Michele, I think, confirms that these crowds are not about me. It’s about the hunger all across America for something different. It’s about the sense that we can do better—that we’ve come to a crossroads, that we’re not pointed in the right direction.
And as I look out over these crowds—and they are a wonderful cross-section of the country, male, female, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, disabled, gay, straight, old, young—what I’m heartened to see is particularly the young people who are getting their first chance to be part of a larger movement of Americans. I see young women who are Ariana’s age and younger, and I think about my own two daughters, Sasha and Malia, and sometimes it makes me stop and makes me wonder: what kind of America will our daughters grow up in?
What kind of America will our daughters grow up in?
Will our daughters grow up with the same opportunities as our sons? Will our daughters have the same rights, the same dreams, the same freedoms to pursue their own version of happiness? I wonder because there’s a lot at stake in this country today. And there’s a lot at stake in this election, especially for our daughters. To appreciate that all you have to do is review the recent decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. For the first time in Gonzales versus Carhart, the Supreme Court held—upheld a federal ban on abortions with criminal penalties for doctors. For the first time, the Court’s endorsed an abortion restriction without an exception for women’s health. The decision presumed that the health of women is best protected by the Court—not by doctors and not by the woman herself. That presumption is wrong.
Some people argue that the federal ban on abortion was just an isolated effort aimed at one medical procedure—that it’s not part of a concerted effort to roll back the hard-won rights of American women. That presumption is also wrong.
Within hours of the decision, an Alabama lawmaker introduced a measure to ban all abortions. With one more vacancy on the Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a woman’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe versus Wade and that is what is at stake in this election. The only thing more disturbing than the decision was the rationale of the majority. Without any hard evidence, Justice Kennedy proclaimed, “It is self-evident that a woman would regret her choice.” He cited medical uncertainty about the need to protect the health of pregnant women. Even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists found no such uncertainty. Justice Kennedy knows many things, my understanding is he does not know how to be a doctor.
[Laughter and Applause]
He dismissed as mere preferences the reasoned judgments of the nation’s doctors. We’ve seen time after time these last few years when the president says otherwise, when the science is inconvenient, when the facts don’t match up with the ideology, they are cast aside. Well, it’s time for us to change that. It is time for a different attitude in the White House. It is time for a different attitude in the Supreme Court. It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter in American history.
[Applause]
We know that five men don’t know better than women and their doctors what’s best for a woman’s health. We know that it’s about whether or not women have equal rights under the law. We know that a woman’s right to make a decision about how many children she wants to have and when—without government interference—is one of the most fundamental freedoms we have in this country. We also know that there was another voice that came from the bench—a voice clear in reasoning and passionate in dissent. The voice rejected what she called, quote “Ancient notions of women’s place in the family and under the Constitution. Ideas that have long been discredited.” Unquote. One commentator called the decision in Gonzales, “An attack on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s entire life’s work.” And it was. But we heard Justice Ginsburg and we know what she was saying. She was saying, “We’ve been there before and we are not going back. [Applause] We refuse to go back. [Applause]”
We know, we know it’s not just one decision. It’s the blow dealt to equal pay in the Ledbetter [v. Goodyear] case, it’s the blow dealt to integration in the school desegregation case, it’s an approach to the law that favors the powerful over the powerless—that holds up a flawed ideology over the rights of the individual. We don’t see America in these decisions—that’s not who we are as a people. We’re a country founded on the principle of equality and freedom. We’re the country that’s fought generation after generation to extend that equality to the many not restrict it to the few. We’ve been there before and we’re not going back.
I have worked on these issues for decades now. I put Roe at the center of my lesson plan on reproductive freedom when I taught Constitutional Law. Not simply as a case about privacy but as part of the broader struggle for women’s equality. Steve and Pam will tell you that we fought together in the Illinois State Senate against restrictive choice legislation—laws just like the federal abortion laws, the federal abortion bans that are cropping up. I’ve stood up for the freedom of choice in the United States Senate and I stand by my votes against the confirmation of Judge Roberts and Samuel Alito [Applause]
So, you know where I stand. But this more is than just about standing our ground. It must be about more than protecting the gains of the past. We’re at a crossroads right now in America—and we have to move this country forward. This election is not just about playing defense, it’s also about playing offense. It’s not just about defending what is, it’s about creating what might be in this country. And that’s what we’ve got to work together on.
There will always be people, many of goodwill, who do not share my view on the issue of choice. On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find common ground. Because we know that what’s at stake is more than whether or not a woman can choose an abortion.
Choice is about how we lead our lives. It’s about our families and about our communities. It’s about our daughters and whether they’re going to have the same opportunities as our sons. There are those who want us to believe otherwise. They want us to believe that there’s nothing that unites us as Americans—there’s only what divides us. They’ll seek out the narrowest and most divisive ground. That is the strategy—to always argue small instead of looking at the big picture. They will stand in the way of any attempt to find common ground.
At a time when a real war is being fought abroad they would have us fight cultural wars here at home. But I am absolutely convinced that culture wars are so nineties; their days are growing dark, it is time to turn the page. We want a new day here in America. We’re tired about arguing about the same ole’ stuff. [Applause] And I am convinced we can win that argument. If the argument is narrow, then oftentimes we lose. But if you ask everybody—you ask the most conservative person—do they want their daughters to have the same chances as men?, most will answer in the affirmative. The vast majority will answer in the affirmative.
We can win that argument. We can turn this page.
It is time to turn the page on policies that fail to deal with tragedy of ten thousand American teenagers getting an STD everyday. Of fifty-five contracting HIV and another twenty-four hundred becoming pregnant. It’s time to turn the page on a stance that refuses compassionate support of victims of rape and sexual assault. Not even to the brave servicewomen fighting for our country who aren’t getting the support they need when they come home as veterans of the United States of America. [Applause] If they’re fighting for us, they should be getting the services that they deserve. It’s time to turn the page on a policies that provides almost 1.5 billion dollar to teach abstinence in our schools but refuses to teach basic science and basic contraception.
Pam, we’ve been through these fights in Illinois, we’re going to be in these fights here in Washington. There’s nothing wrong with science. It’s actually made our lives better. [Applause] Let’s teach science to our kids. We need, we need to make choices about what happens before pregnancy. It’s a false argument to say that the only way to prevent disease and unintended pregnancy is abstinence education. Just as it is a false argument to say that the only way is through contraception. As Martin Luther King used to say, “It’s not either/or it’s both/and.”
There’s a moral component to prevention. And we shouldn’t be shy about acknowledging it. As parents, as family members, we need to encourage young people to show reverence toward sexuality and intimacy. We need to teach that not just to the young girls, we need to teach it to those young boys. [Applause] But [Applause] But even as we are teaching those lessons, we should never be willing to consign a teenage girl to a lifetime of struggle because of a lack of access to birth control or a lifetime of illness because she doesn’t understand how to protect herself. That’s just commonsense. There’s common ground on behalf of commonsense—there we have an opportunity to move forward and agree.
People of all faiths—from members of Ariana’s and my church, Trinity United Church of Christ to United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, understand that we cannot ignore that abstinence and fidelity may too often be the ideal but often not the reality.
We need more programs in our communities like the National Black Church Initiative which empowers our young people by teaching them about reproductive health, sex education and teen pregnancy within the context of the African-American faith tradition.
We need more leadership at the federal level. That’s why I’m an original co-sponsor of the Prevention First Act. [Applause] To guarantee equity in contraceptive coverage, provide comprehensive sex education in our schools and offer rape victims factually accurate information about emergency contraception.
We need to tackle the tragedy of unintended teen pregnancy. When seven hundred and fifty thousand teens become pregnant every year, and half of Latina and black teens will become mothers before reaching their twenties, it’s not just a public health problem. If we reduce teen pregnancy, we can also reduce poverty.
Now the good news is that there has been a decline in the teen birth rate,in part due to the outstanding work of Planned Parenthood. But we all know that we can do more. That’s why I’ve been working on this in Congress. Today, I introduced the Communities of Color Teen Pregnancy Prevention Act to increase funding for programs to combat this problem in communities all across this country working with grassroots organizations [Applause] to increase education. We need, we need to ensure that pharmaceutical companies can offer discounted drugs to safety net providers like Planned Parenthood [Applause] and university clinics so that access, so that access to affordable contraception is not just a privilege for the few but an option for all women. It’s amazing how many women tell me the stories of how important it was for Planned Parenthood to provide them services when they were in college and they did not have the health insurance or the access to a regular doctor that they needed. To be able to have somebody they could trust to deal with so many of their basic and essential health issues.
And we can’t stop there because we know that there is more at stake. The struggle for equality is also a struggle for opportunity. You’ve worked in the communities. You’ve seen women and families trying to keep pace. You’ve seen our daughters hit the glass ceilings and come to closed doors.
The social contract in this country was made for a time when most women stayed at home with the kids. But even though this time is long passed, we still have social policies designed around the old model. The, as Justice Ginsberg said, “Ancient notions of women’s place in the family,” and so women still receive less in pay, less in health benefits, less in pensions, less in social security. When women go on maternity leave, America is the only country in the industrialized world to let them go unpaid.
If you’re a single mom, like my mom was, and you can’t afford health insurance for yourself and you’re trying to figure out whether your kids are going to be covered or not, the message from this current administration is: tough luck, that’s the breaks.
The truth is, too often our daughters don’t have the same opportunities as our sons. But that’s not who we are. That’s not the America we want for our children and I am absolutely convinced that we can make this change. We can update the social contract so that caring for a newborn baby isn’t a three month break, it’s a paid leave—so that all of our children have basic health care. [Applause]
We should be ashamed that the President of the United States is fighting providing health insurance coverage to all children because he’s worried that’s socialized medicine. He would rather fight an ideological battle than make certain that children who have preventable illnesses, like asthma, are getting regular checkups instead of going to the emergency room, which is costing all of us more money.
We can update the social contract so that our kids can go to school earlier and stay longer; so that a mom can stay home with a sick child without getting a pink slip; we can go to work, she can go to work—knowing that there is affordable quality child care for her children; so that more families can stay together and prosper and our daughters have no limits to the shape of their dreams.
We can make these changes but first we gotta get rid of the can’t-do-won’t-do-won’t-even-try style of government that we’ve had in Washington over the last several years. An administration that says, “We don’t have the money to do it.” But we’ve got ten billion dollars a month to fight a war in Iraq that should have never been authorized [applause] and should have never been waged. We can find the money to make sure our daughters have the same rights as our son.
We can make this change.
We can make this change but first we have to get rid of the politics that’s obsessed with who’s up and who’s down. A politics that is power for power’s sake. A politics of cynicism and fear—fear, above all, of the future.
This kind of change is about more than any one judicial appointment or law—as important as they may be—it also about leadership.
It’s about not settling for what America is but working for what America might be.
You know, I’m here as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America because I had a grandmother who never got more than a high school education. But she worked on a bomber assembly line—she was Rosie the Riveter—and then went to work after she and my grandfather had married, and her daughter had been born, she went to work as a secretary. And worked her way up to become vice-president of a bank, the same bank where she started as a secretary, and ended up being the financial rock for our entire family.
I’m here because of a mother, who for most of her life was a single mom, and yet was able to put herself through school and get a Ph.D. and end up specializing in women’s development and starting micro-enterprises for women in Africa and Asia and all around the world. And still somehow added, had the time and capacity to fill up her children with love and affection.
I’m here because of my wife, who as many of you know, is smarter, and tougher and better-looking than I am [laughter]. And many people ask why she shouldn’t be the Obama running for President and I explain that she’s too smart to want to run for president. She’d rather tell the president what to do. [laughter]
But most of all I’m here as a candidate because there are these two little girls that I try to tuck in every night—it’s harder during the campaign season—whose futures depend upon us creating a more equal society.
I want my daughters to grow up in an America where they have the exact same opportunities as America’s sons. I want Sasha and Melia to dream without limit. To achieve without constraint. To be absolutely free to seek their own happiness.
At this crossroad, we need to talk about what America might be—an America of equality and opportunity for our daughters. We need to talk about what Justice Ginsberg called, “A woman’s ability to realize her potential.” Because when we argue big, we win.
I am convinced of that.
I am convinced that Republicans and Democrats and Independents, Blue-state voters and Red-state voters, they want a fair shake for their daughters.
In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America gave its first Margaret Sanger Award to Martin Luther King, Jr. And in his acceptance speech, which was delivered by his strong and wonderful wife Coretta, Dr. King wrote, “Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by non-violent, direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger and people like her.”
That struggle for equality is not over and now we are at one of those rare moments where we can actually transform our politics in a fundamental way. But it’s going to take people as resolute as Mrs. Sanger and Dr. King—people like your own Cecile Richards—it’s going to take young people like Ariana. It’s going to take millions of voices coming together to insist that it’s not enough just to stand still. That it’s not enough to safeguard the gains of the past—that it is time to be resolute and time to march forward.
I am absolutely convinced that we stand on the brink of that kind of achievement. And if we succeed in raising the awareness all across America that what is good for our daughters is also good for our sons. That when we expand opportunity for some, we expand opportunity for the many.
When we have achieved as one voice a strong call for that kind of more fair and more just America, then I am absolutely convinced that we’re not just going to win an election but more importantly we’re going to transform this nation.
Thank you [applause] very much, appreciate you guys, thank you.
Thank you.
[applause continues]
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you, Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you guys, you’re very gracious, thank you.
Thank you very much, alright I think we have a couple of questions.
Cecile Richards: We do have a couple of questions, thank you Senator Obama. Thanks for being here with Planned Parenthood today. We have three folks from the audience that are going to ask questions and I think we’re starting with Brian Howard who is our CEO from the great state of Arizona. Brian?
Brian Howard: Senator Obama, thank you for being here today.
Senator Obama: Thank you, Brian.
Brian Howard: Um, you know that rights and access and rights and ability have to go hand in hand. Um, and we know that health care reform is an important part of your agenda. Could you talk—and give us some specifics about how reproductive health care and women’s health care is going to fit into and be a part of primary care for women in your health care reform plans and how Planned Parenthood, as a safety net provider, will continue to be a part of the health care safety net for women and families across the country.
Senator Obama: Well, look, in my mind reproductive care is essential care, basic care so it is at the center, the heart of the plan that I propose. For those of you that are interested in the details, not plugging my website, [laughter] feel free to go to BarackObama.com.
But, essentially, what we are doing is to say that we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It’ll be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services, as well as mental health services and disease management services. [scattered applause]
Because part of our interest is to make sure that we put more an more money into preventative care. And so many of women’s diseases are preventable if they’re getting access to regular care. So we subsidize women who don’t have health insurance or can’t afford health insurance at affordable low group rates. We also subsidize those who prefer to stay in the private insurance market except that insurers are going to have to abide by the same rules in terms of providing comprehensive care, including reproductive care and mental health, mental care services and they won’t be able to keep people out as a consequence of pre-existing conditions. So that’s going to be absolutely vital. [Applause]
Now, I know I’m limited on time but I just want to expand on that second part of your question which is role that organizations like Planned Parenthood play. Obviously, my hope under a universal health care system is that everybody’s got access to basic care and we have less of a patchwork quilt of services. That—I still believe that it is important for organizations like Planned Parenthood to be part of that system. Because, many young women, for example, may be much more comfortable when they are in college or universities or other places, going to Planned Parenthood clinics and services to get contraception, for example. So, my hope is that we still have non-profit participation under my plan.
But, in the meantime, what I’ve said is that I believe we can have universal health care in this country by the end of the next president’s first term. By the end of my first term as president [applause] of the United States of America. But that’s five years away and in the interim there are just some basic things we can do. The notion that since the Deficit Reduction Act that we have seen Congress essentially make it much more difficult by drastically increasing prices for women to have access to the basic services they need, make absolutely no sense. And that’s the something we can change right here and right now in Congress. And that’s something I’m going to be fighting, fighting to make sure happens. [Applause.]
Cecile Richards: Sir, we have a lot of political organizers here today so the next question is going to come from Dessa Cosma (spelling?) from Michigan. One of our political organizers from the great state of Michigan.
Dessa Cosma: Thank you for being such as inspiration as a community organizer, by the way.
Barack Obama: Thank you.
Dessa Cosma: I’ve really learned a lot from you. I want to ask you right now about
[Barack Obama opens his mouth to say something] Supreme Court nominations?
Barack Obama: I thought you were going to ask me about how community organizers could get paid a decent wage. [Laughter]
Dessa Cosma: They take care of me. [Laughter] They do that.
Barack Obama: No, I remember, I remember folks asking me when I was organizing, saying, “You know, if you’re so smart, how come I always see you in the same clothes everyday? How come you got that beat up ol’ car?” I said, well, anyway, I’m sorry. [laughter] I’m sure, I’m sure benefits have improved.
Dessa Cosma: They do great. They do great with Planned Parenthood.
Barack Obama: Yeah. Okay.
Dessa Cosma: Um, as you were talking about earlier, the recent Bush Supreme Court’s decision really took away critically important decisions from women and put them in the hands of politicians. And as a result of this, we’re expecting, and have already seen, so much anti-choice legislation at the state level. Um, what would you do at the federal level not only to ensure access to abortion but to make sure that the judicial nominees that you will inevitably be able to pick are true to the core tenets of Roe v. Wade?
Barack Obama: Well, the first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. [Applause.] That’s the first thing that I’d do. Um, but the, okay, but, but your question about the federal courts is absolutely on target. I taught Constitutional Law for ten years and I have to say after reading this latest decision and the series of decisions that the Supreme Court has been putting forward that I find it baffling.
Because sometimes they are striking down acts of Congress like the Violence Against Women’s Act showing very little deference to Congressional decision making and that somehow when it comes to a piece of legislation that is not taking into account clear doctrine that the Supreme Court has laid out, they say, “Oh, that’s fine. Congress can make those decisions.” There is an inconsistency and I believe a hypocrisy in terms of how we see many of these decisions issued.
That’s why I think it’s important for us obviously to get not only a Democratic White House as well as a stronger Congress to protect these rights. But I also think it’s important to understand that there’s nothing wrong in voting against nominees who don’t appear to share a broader vision of what the Constitution is about.
I think the Constitution can be interpreted in so many ways. And one way is a cramped and narrow way in which the Constitution and the courts essentially become the rubber stamps of the powerful in society. And then there’s another vision of the court [sic] that says that the courts are the refuge of the powerless. Because oftentimes they can lose in the democratic back and forth. They may be locked out and prevented from fully participating in the democratic process. That’s one of the reasons I opposed Alito, you know, as well as Justice Roberts. When Roberts came up and everybody was saying, “You know, he’s very smart and he’s seems a very decent man and he loves his wife. [Laughter] You know, he’s good to his dog. [laughter] He’s so well qualified.”
I said, well look, that’s absolutely true and in most Supreme Court decis--, in the overwhelming number of Supreme Court decisions, that’s enough. Good intellect, you read the statute, you look at the case law and most of the time, the law’s pretty clear. Ninety-five percent of the time. Justice Ginsberg, Justice Thomas, Justice Scalia they’re all gonna agree on the outcome.
But it’s those five percent of the cases that really count. And in those five percent of the cases, what you’ve got to look at is—what is in the justice’s heart. What’s their broader vision of what America should be. Justice Roberts said he saw himself just as an umpire but the issues that come before the Court are not sport, they’re life and death. And we need somebody who’s got the heart—the empathy—to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges. Alright?
[Applause.]
Cecile Richards: Okay, so now for the last one is the teens. We talked a lot about teens and with—basically the loss of sex education in this country. Planned Parenthood PEER educators have become like the Underground Railroad of Sex Education [laughter]. They’re the front lines giving kids information they can’t get anywhere else. So the question is from Melissa Carrera from Anacostia who is a PEER educator [garbled].
Melissa Carrera: Buenas tardes. My name is Melissa Carrera and I’m seventeen and I’ve been a PEER educator with Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington for two years. Um, getting real sex education for my generation is not only about preventing teen pregnancy but also reducing the rates and sexually transmitted infections and HIV AIDS. With the AIDS rate in Washington being ten times the national average, what would you do to make sure that schools and programs like mine to treat, are encouraged to teach, sorry, medically accurate, age appropriate and responsible sex education.
Barack Obama: Well, first of all, I want to congratulate you for your participation and your leadership. Um, and we [applause], you, young people like you are making an enormous difference all across the country.
Step number one, I am an original co-sponsor of the Prevention First Act which will provide money for comprehensive and medically accurate, age-appropriate sex education in the schools.
Now keep in mind that we’ve been in this fight, Pam and I, back in Illinois when I was the chairman of the Health Care Committee, helped to push through legislation. And I remember Alan Keyes, I ran against Alan Keyes [laughter] I don’t know if you guys remember Alan Keyes. But I remember him using this in a, his campaign against me saying, [mimicking Alan Keyes] “Barack Obama supports teaching sex education to kindergartners.” [Laughter] And, which I didn’t know what to tell him.
But it’s the right thing to do, you know, to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in the schools. You, as a peer, can have enormous power over your age cohort but you got to have some support from the schools. You certainly should have to be fighting every instance by providing accurate information outside the classroom because inside the classroom the only thing that can be talked about is abstinence. Yeah, that is sending a mixed message [applause].
Eh, eh, and yeah, keep in mind, look, I honor and respect teenagers who choose to delay sexual activity. I’ve got two daughters and I want them to understand that sex is not something casual and that’s something I think we want to communicate and should be part of any curriculum. But we also know that when the statistics tell us that nearly half of 15 to 19 year olds are engaging in sexual activity that for us to leave them in ignorance is potentially consigning them to illness, pregnancy, poverty and in some cases death and that’s absolutely unacceptable.
So, some of this is legislative but some of this also having a president who’s willing to talk about these issues in an honest and reasonable way. [Applause] And, um, you know, the longer I’m in this race for the presidency the more I realize that so much of leadership is about using the bully pulpit to frame the issues in a way that allows us to draw on the best impulses of the American people.
And the one thing that I want to insist on is that, as I travel around the country, the American people are a decent people and they get confused sometimes. They listen to the wrong talk-radio shows [laughter], watch the wrong T.V. networks [laughter], but, but they’re basically decent, they’re basically sound, they’re making decisions trying to figure out what’s best for our children. And that is something that I think spans parties and we just have to make sure that the, the, bitter ideological debates that are taking place here in Washington are not mistaken for how the American people think. In fact, they are fed up with it, they are tired of it and they want to give young people like you, who are showing leadership and wisdom and are trying to sort yourselves, sort you ways through a sometimes difficult and confusing world, they want to give you the best possible chance and that’s what I want to encourage as President of the United States.
[Applause]
Thank you very much everybody.
[Applause]
Gay Mafia and ACLU Vs. Boy Scouts
Boy Scouts Still Under Siege
Texas Gov. Rick Perry's 'On My Honor' Explains Attack on the Beloved Youth Organization and Leftist Attempts to Redefine American Values
AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 26 /Christian Newswire/ -- In his new book, On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts are Worth Fighting For, [Stroud & Hall Publishers] Texas Governor Rick Perry, examines the "scorched earth" attacks on the Boy Scouts of America over the last three decades by the secular leftist forces, explains the wider impact of this battle on the culture, and offers a rousing defense of this iconic institution and its impact on millions of young American men.
As a governor and an Eagle Scout, Perry tells of the Boy Scouts' growth and most importantly, its role in the development of character and leadership in young men. Yet, in recent years, the Scouts have been targeted by those who scoff at the Scouts' values and want to reverse its time-honored virtues such as "duty to God" and the Scout Oath's requirement to be "morally straight."
"Although the first attacks on the Boy Scouts seemed isolated and uncoordinated thirty years ago, we now see them as part of a larger movement to redefine American values," writes Gov. Perry. "If seen in the wider context of a great debate taking place in our society, then one is more likely to join the once silent majority who are now speaking out about the role of faith and family in society."
Readers of On My Honor will learn about:
The nature of the litigation brought on by the ACLU regarding the Boy Scouts' commitment to God.
Efforts of radical homosexuals to become Scout leaders and twist the founding principles of the organization.
The tactics used to stop the Boy Scouts from meeting in schools and camping in public parks.
How the United Way and employee-giving campaigns are excluding the Scouts from receiving donations.
Gov. Rick Perry hails from Paint Creek, Texas. Governor Perry was active in scouting and earned the high distinction of Eagle Scout. He assumed the office of Governor in 2000 and was elected to four- year terms in 2002 and 2006.
To schedule an interview with Governor Perry, please contact Kevin McVicker with Shirley & Banister Public Affairs at (703) 739-5920 or (800) 536-5920.
Christian Newswire
"Alleged Homosexual Relationship Between [ New York Times] Executive Editor Bill Keller and Liberal Columnist Paul Krugman...Incredible? Absurd?"
Sex Scandal At The New York Times
By Dinesh D'Souza
Monday, February 25, 2008
Imagine reading an article that began like this: "The New York Times has been rocked by reports that its coverage of the 2008 election has been sorely compromised by an alleged homosexual relationship between executive editor Bill Keller and liberal columnist Paul Krugman.
"Waves of anxiety have swept through Times staffers who have been concerned about Krugman routinely showing up by Keller's side. Convinced that the relationship had become romantic, some senior staff at the paper have been trying to keep the two apart. These staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they warned Keller not to keep his office door closed especially when Krugman was inside.
The front page of the Thursday Feb. 21, 2008, edition of the New York Times featuring a story about presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, is shown in this photo in New York, Thursday Feb. 21, 2008. McCain denied a romantic relationship with a female telecommunications lobbyist and said a report by the paper suggesting favoritism for her clients is "not true." (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Related Media:
VIDEO: Congressman Bachus Weighs in on McCain Allegations
"Concerns that Krugman's strong support for the Democrats have shaped New York Times coverage of the upcoming election underscore a paradox. The newspaper is widely suspected of tailoring its news coverage to support its political ideology--'all the news that fits'--even though the Times likes to portray itself as objective: 'all the news that's fit to print.'
"Both Keller and Krugman have denied the allegations although such denials are to be expected in such situations. Now some staffers are worried that Keller's coverage of the election may be influenced by his feelings for Krugman. 'We're worried that Krugman is threatening to break it off,' one reporter noted, 'if Keller doesn't give favorable treatment to his candidate and stick it to the Republicans.'"
Incredible? Absurd? Actually, this fictitious article is very, very similar to the actual article that the New York Times ran on John McCain. The key phrases in my made-up account are directly lifted from the Times' actual account. In that story, the newspaper alleged that McCain was having an affair with a 40-year-old lobbyist, naming her as Vicki Iseman. The Times also suggested that McCain gave special treatment to Iseman's clients.
What evidence that the newspaper produce for these explosive allegations? None, and this is after months of investigation by a whole team of reporters. It cited unnamed McCain staffers who said they had become concerned about appearances of impropriety. (None alleged any actual impropriety.) It cited two former McCain staffers who were by their own admission disenchanted with McCain, although even they refused to give their names.
Stung by criticism that followed this irresponsible piece, Keller told the public editor of The Times, "If the point of the story was to allege that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist, we'd have owed readers more compelling evidence than the conviction of senior staff members. But that was not the point of the story. The point of the story was that his close aides felt the relationship constituted reckless behavior and feared it would ruin his career."
I can testify from personal experience that this sort of weasel-behavior is entirely in keeping with the way the New York Times does business. Note that in the episode that follows I am giving actual names and not citing any anonymous sources.
Several years ago one of the paper's leading reporters Fox Butterfield did an article on The Dartmouth Review, which I edited as an undergraduate in the early 1980s. Seeking to discredit me, Butterfield quoted me as having written in the paper, "The question is not whether women should be educated at Dartmouth. The question is whether women should be educated at all."
A witty line, perhaps, only I didn't write it. The line was actually written by another student, Keeney Jones. When I called Butterfield to point this out, the man insisted, "No, you wrote it." So I demanded, "Where did I write it?" Butterfield pointed out that I had written an article about the Dartmouth Review in another magazine where I had quoted the line. I protested, "But I was merely citing controversial lines that had appeared in the student paper. How can you say I wrote that line when I made it very clear that Jones wrote it?"
To this Butterfield responded, "But by quoting it you have made it your line." I was dumbstruck. The best I could say to him was, "And I guess that since you have now quoted the line yourself, it has now become your line." The important point here is that we are dealing not with some dimwit but with a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter for America's leading newspaper. Yet apparently such dishonesty is the way they operate at the Times.
Some critics have been calling for Keller to be fired but I suspect that a much wider fumigation is required to clean house over there. The Times has long become a liberal rag and as incidents like these pile up, more and more people will recognize that the New York Times is no longer the great newspaper it once was.
Bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza's new book What's So Great About Christianity has just been released. His book The Enemy at Home will be published in paperback in February.[http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2008/02/25/sex_scandal_at_the_new_york_times]
Schwarzenegger Vs. California Republican Party
California Republican Party Endorses 'Save Our Kids' and Protect Marriage Initiatives
SACRAMENTO, Feb. 25 /Christian Newswire/ -- The California Republican Party overwhelmingly endorsed the Save Our Kids initiative to overturn SB 777 at their spring convention last weekend.
Republican delegates from all across California gathered for their biannual meeting and showed their strong opposition to Governor Schwarzenegger's signing of the homosexual indoctrination law.
"We are thrilled that the Republican Party is lending its influential support to our important campaign," declared Karen England, executive director for Capitol Resource Family Impact, the proponent of the Save Our Kids initiative. "Special thanks are owed to Assemblyman Bob Huff for presenting the initiative to the delegates and successfully arguing for an endorsement. As soon as we receive title and summary from the attorney general, we will capitalize on this momentum and begin gathering signatures.
The CRP also endorsed the Protect Marriage initiative, which has petitions circulating the state right now.
"The defense of marriage is vital to the stability of our state and nation," stated England. "With these endorsements, the CRP has boldly taken a stand for traditional marriage and the family. We are grateful for their support."
In other good news from the CRP's gathering, delegates approved a platform that maintained its pro- family and pro-life principles. There had been an effort by homosexual activists and "moderates" to strip the party's platform of these important beliefs. "This was an important victory for pro-family voters and candidates," explained England. "The platform contains the beliefs and principles that hold elected officials accountable. Removing the marriage and pro- life principles would alienate millions of voters that care very deeply about these essential issues."
To request Protect Marriage petitions, please contact La Tanya Wright, ltgwright@gmail.com or (916) 498-1940 x10.
More on SB 777:
Just the Facts - The Truth About SB 777
Who Voted for SB 777 in the Senate
Who Voted for SB 777 in the Assembly
Text of the Initiative
Christian Newswire
Gay Fascism Persecutes Catholic Publisher
Canadian Gay fascism is persecuting the Catholic Insight magazine. The new Aryan is the homosexual and the new Jews are Christians or Jews who uphold their traditional moral teachings.
Gay fascism is coming to the USA if Hillary or Obama win.
Fred
Canadian Catholic magazine faces 'Human Rights Commission' for opposing homosexual conduct
1/15/2008
Catholic News Agency (www.catholicnewsagency.com)
“From its beginning in 1993, the magazine has traced and exposed homosexual activists for their attacks against Christians defending the traditional order in law and society and their use of derogatory language against all who stand in their way,” the magazine said.
Advertisement
TORONTO (CNA) - A Catholic magazine in Canada faces severe legal attack and possible censorship after a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleged it made derogatory comments about homosexuals.
In February 2007 Rob Wells, a member of the Pride Center of Edmonton, filed a nine-point complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging that Catholic Insight had targeted homosexuals as a powerful menace and innately evil, claiming it used inflammatory and derogatory language to create a tone of “extreme hatred and contempt.”
Catholic Insight responded to these charges in its January 2008 issue, saying the complaint consists of “three pages of isolated and fragmentary extracts from articles dating back as far as 1994, without any context.”
Catholic Insight continued, saying, “these isolated quotes are not meaningful without the contexts of the articles themselves from which they were culled; in fact, most of them are even out of context from the sentences from which they were taken.”
“C.I. regards all of these charges as unfounded and made with the intent to harass. It intends to defend itself vigorously should the CHRC proceed. The magazine has continually emphasized that, with the respect to homosexual activity, it follows the guidance of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has made clear that persons with same-sex attraction must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity and that every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
The magazine also reiterated its support for Catholic teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, noting its long-time coverage of the political manifestations of the issue.
“From its beginning in 1993, the magazine has traced and exposed homosexual activists for their attacks against Christians defending the traditional order in law and society and their use of derogatory language against all who stand in their way,” the magazine said.
The human rights complaints process in Canada currently funds the legal costs of complainants, but defendants must pay for expenses out of pocket. Rules of evidence for criminal court proceedings are also not followed in human rights hearings.
Catholic Insight said that the complainant Wells had also sought to shut down other websites, and had targeted Ron Gray, leader of the Christian Heritage Party. The magazine reported Gray’s claims that in his conversations with the CHRC, an official of the agency had admitted to him that the Human Rights Act is about censorship.
Alan Borovoy, general counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said he never imagined the human rights commissions would be used to undermine freedom of speech. He said that acting as censors was “hardly the role we had envisioned for human rights commissions.”
In a Catholic Insight editorial, the magazine said,
“Today, Catholic Insight magazine has also become a victim of the new anti-religion. We, too, have been denounced to the Canadian Human Rights Commission in Ottawa for speaking out against the activists who agitated for adding so-called sexual orientation to the Hate Crimes Act in 2003 and the legalization of same-sex "marriage" in 2005. The politically correct activists brook no opposition.”
[http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:43G_38rUGEsJ:www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php%3Fid%3D26444+catholic+insight+same-sex+marriage+persecution+of+publisher&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us&ie=UTF-8]
Is the New York Times the Voice of the Gay Mafia?
By Fred Martinez
Why does the New York Times infer John McCain had an affair with a woman because of appearances, but when Juanita Broaddrick accused Bill Clinton of raping her ignored it?
The reason is the Clintons and Obama are the most Gay agenda presidential candidates in United States history.
McCain is too pro-family, as compared to the Democrat candidates, for the Gay Mafia and it's voice the New York Times.
Bernard Goldberg in his book "Bias" said, "The problem is that so many TV journalists simply don’t know how to think about certain issues until the New York Times and the Washington Post tell them what to think. Those big, important newspapers set the agenda that network news people follow."
In the case of the newspaper of record, the gay movement appears to hold in bondage the New York Times in more ways than one. NewsMax ran an article about Accuracy in Media's Reed Irvine's inquiry into the Times' bias. (See: New York Times on Defensive.) Irvine said Richard Berke, a national political correspondent for the Times, spoke at a gathering of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.
Irvine says that Berke assured the homosexual group that the Times would remain very receptive to the gay agenda because "three-fourths of those who regularly attend the daily meetings that determine what will be on the front page of the Times the next morning are 'not-so-closeted' homosexuals."
Goldberg unwittingly in analogy showed a similar situation at CBS when he said, "If CBS News were a prison instead of a journalistic enterprise, three-quarters of the producers and 100 percent of the vice presidents would be Dan's [Rather's] bitches."
Norman Mailer explains why the totalitarian relationship Rather had with his CBS News producers and vice presidents, as well as his denial of natural objective truths, can lead to a Nietzschean will-to-power situation.
In his book "Prisoner of Sex," Mailer showed why this moving away from natural objective truths such as heterosexual sex can lead to the homosexual prison totalitarian will to power:
"So, yes, [homosexuals] in prison strive to become part of the male population, and indeed – it is the irony of homosexuality – try to take on the masculine powers of the man who enters them, even as the studs, if Genet is our accurate guide, become effeminate over the years. ... Homosexuality is not heterosexuality. There is no conception possible, no, no inner space, no damnable spongy pool of a womb ... no hint remains of the awe that a life in these circumstances can be conceived. Heterosexual sex with contraception is become by this logic a form of sexual currency closer to the homosexual than the heterosexual, a clearinghouse for power, a market for psychic power in which the stronger will use the weaker, and the female in the act, whether possessed of a vagina or phallus, will look to ingest or steal the masculine qualities of the dominator."
This is the end result when universal truths and responsibility toward those truths are denied. The only "currency" left to the left is stealing of power, because they are insecure in any truth including their own objective masculinity.
Unsure of their own objective masculinity – or any objective truth, for that matter –they will not tolerate truth, calling it intolerance. They will not tolerate the truth of the purpose of sex, which is married love, with the creation of a secure family for the children of that love.
Leftists replace the traditional family with sexual power struggles that lead to the death mills of the abortion industry and the graveyards of AIDS and the abandonment of children and women at the altar of free sex.
Sex is not free. It was once a responsibility that a mature man entered into for life, for the security of his beloved children and wife.
Gay Mafia Power Tactics
Likewise, liberals replace the Constitution with sex and ethnic power struggles that lead to the breaking of the rule of law. If a president can sexually abuse women and possibly even rape them, then obstruct justice and lie under oath, are we under the rule of law? If our society will not tolerate truth, then men and women are not secure in their "inalienable natural rights that used to be the traditional ground for a free society," as Bloom said.
If we reject the rule of law and natural rights, our society will progress toward the Mafia power tactics of prison homosexuals. The leftists in the Church and the media rejecting objective truth no longer want to be identified as men of objective faith and reason, but rather as Nietzschean post-modernists to be identified with the "culture" of the gay and Clintonian playboy slogans of the media elite.
The media elite uses management tactics on anyone who wants to be identified as a man of objective morals, faith and reason. They redefine the meaning of words like morals, faith and reason through association and repetition, then isolate those who don't accept the new definitions, after which they ostracize the good name of any person or group that doesn't accept the new "culture" and isn't a "team player."
The very respected scholar Edgar H. Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management explains the process in "Organizational Learning as Cognitive Re-definition: Coercive Persuasion Revisited":
"It may seem absurd to the reader to draw an analogy between the coercive persuasion in political prisons and a new leader announcing that he or she is going 'to change the culture.'
"However, if the leader really means it, if the change will really affect fundamental assumptions and values, one can anticipate levels of anxiety and resistance quite comparable to those one would see in prisons. The coercive element is not as strong. More people will simply leave before they change their cognitive structures, but if they have a financial stake or a career investment in the organization, they face the same pressure to 'convert' that the prisoner did. ... Consider, for example, what it means to impose a 'culture of teamwork' based on 'openness and mutual trust' in an individualistic society."
By using this process, the leftists with the media's marketing ability learned they could create massive peer pressure – some would call it a "mob mentality," which changes the worldview of people with weak morals, weak faith or the Judas mentality. These types of people see themselves as the "elite" because they accept the "culture of teamwork" and have "openness" to the new definitions.
These persons wishing to be part of the "culture" or "team" are open to cognitive re-definition. Schein explains how the process works:
"'Cognitive redefinition' involved two different processes. First, concepts like crime and espionage had to be semantically redefined. Crime is an abstraction that can mean different things in different conceptual systems when one makes it concrete. Second, standards of judgment had to be altered. Even within the western concept of crime, what was previously regarded as trivial was now seen to be serious. The anchors by which judgments are made are shifted and the point of neutrality is moved. Behavior that was previously judged to be neutral or of no consequence became criminal, once the anchor of what was a minimum crime was shifted. These two processes, semantic re-definition and changing one's anchors for what is good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, are the essence of cognitive re-definition."
"Father who was Handcuffed and Arrested after Objecting to . . . [Gay] Indoctrinating"
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
February 21, 2008
Dad challenging 'manipulation' of kids
'Their little minds should not be the battleground for culture wars'
By Bob Unruh
A Massachusetts father who was handcuffed and arrested after objecting to teachers and school managers indoctrinating his 5-year-old son in the homosexual lifestyle will be appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his case because of the "national significance" of the precedent.
"[Unless the case is overturned,] it now would allow teachers in elementary schools to influence children into any views they wanted to, behind the backs of parents, to a captive audience, and against the will of the parents if need be," David Parker told WND.
He and his lawyers, of Denner Pellegrino LLP in Boston, recently confirmed they will be seeking permission to submit the dispute to the U.S. Supreme Court, following an appeals court decision that, as Parker described, allows the "indoctrination" of small children.
"The teachers do not have a constitutional right to do that," he told WND. "That, to me, is the crux of this."
He said the ruling from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals essentially concluded that it is no burden on parents' free exercise of religion to have their children taught ideas at a public school that violate the parents' religious teachings.
"They can just teach the children at home," Parker said the court found regarding parents.
"But that ignores the fact that the most basic free exercise is your teaching your children right from wrong in their formative years," he said. "That is completely being undermined by the rulings of these federal courts so far.
"Teachers are being postured to have a constitutional right to coercively indoctrinate little children [into whatever they choose to teach,]" he noted.
"It's not just exposure to an idea, to the [offensive] books, It's the teacher's manipulating the mind of children to embrace dangerous ideologies, because the teacher happens to believe it's a good ideology.
"It brings these battlegrounds to the psyches and minds of little children," Parker said. "Their little minds should not be the battleground for culture wars.
"Proper boundaries have to be established. This is absolutely of national significance. No parent wants to put their very little children in positions in which they're minds are being used as battlegrounds," he said.
"What the pro-homosexual camp has done is positioned so-called 'gay' rights' to completely trump parental rights and parental authority in public schools," he said.
He said such a plan eventually will cause those schools to "implode," because so many concerned parents will see they have no alternative but to remove their children from public schools.
That's an issue that California already is facing, as WND has reported. There, a coalition of organizations is encouraging parents, and providing resources for them to be able to remove their children from public schools. The coalition's goal is to take 600,000 children from California's public districts, because of a new state law there requiring indoctrination that not only is pro-homosexual, but also affirms bisexuality, transsexuality and other alternative lifestyle choices.
"The human secularist religion of the [National Education Association,] buttressed by the power of the state, will now turn public schools into the next secular synagogues," Parker said. "[They say], 'We're just preparing the kids to be citizens.' But it's a religion. It is a devious and evil form of religion."
He said it is the responsibility and right of parents, not schools, to "keep the boundaries."
"That is how you raise children. If you wipe the boundaries away, that's the worst thing for children," he said.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Lexington, Mass., school district can teach children contrary ideas without violating their parents' rights to exercise religious beliefs.
"Public schools," wrote Judge Sandra L. Lynch, "are not obliged to shield individual students from ideas which potentially are religiously offensive, particularly when the school imposes no requirement that the student agree with or affirm those ideas, or even participate in discussions about them."
Lynch's reasoning was based on the Massachusetts Supreme Court's groundbreaking 2003 decision ruling "that the state constitution mandates the recognition of same-sex marriage."
As WND reported in 2006, U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf originally dismissed the civil rights lawsuit by David and Tonia Parker, concluding there is, in fact, an obligation for public schools to teach young children to accept and endorse homosexuality.
The case, which has been chronicled extensively by the non-profit advocacy group MassResistance, poses great dangers, Parker told WND, because if homosexuality and bisexuality can be taught by public school teachers to children as young as age 5, there is virtually no topic, up to and including Nazism, that educational precedents would not allow to be taught to young children.
"There is a history of civil rights and First Amendment cases losing badly in the local and federal courts and then winning in the U.S. Supreme Court, including the famous Hurly South Boston Parade case (parade organizers vs. homosexual activists) in the 1990s which won 9-0 after losing 17 times in state and federal courts," Mass Resistance said.
The appellate ruling reflected the same attitude that the trial judge did, Parker said. The appeals court said that if the parents were "offended," they "may seek recourse to the normal political processes for change in the town and state."
The trial judge had suggested the parents could provide homeschool or another alternative as a solution.
The dispute began in the spring of 2005 when the Parkers then-5-year-old son brought home a book to be shared with his parents titled, "Who's in a Family?" The optional reading material, which came in a "Diversity Book Bag," depicted at least two households led by homosexual partners.
The Parkers filed suit against the Lexington school district in 2006 and later were joined by Joseph and Robin Wirthlin, whose second-grader's class was read a story during class time about two princes who become lovers.
Bob Unruh is a news editor for WorldNetDaily.com.
Please Pray for John Mallon. He is an Honorable man and a Good Catholic.
I got this email today. Please pray for John Mallon. He is an honorable man and a good Catholic.
Fred
Dear Friends,
A personal matter. I need a miracle. I ask for prayers. One of my worst “green martyrdom” nightmares has come true. I received a letter from the bank today that unless I come up with $10,404.32 by the middle of March I will lose my home. I am not asking for that money as I know few on this list can afford much. (But donations are gratefully welcomed, as always at PayPal button on my website: http://johnmallon.net !) There is nowhere I could live as cheaply.
I will however, state without flinching that I am in this position because of my fidelity to Christ and his Church, and that it was clergy members who forced me into this position. Some will scoff at this (the clergy involved certainly will, this is no doubt a victory for them) but no matter.
I knew the terms when I signed on to follow Christ. I have accepted the trauma and the poverty willingly as the cost of following Christ in today’s world and today’s Church. I knew then that martyrdom is a genuine possibility for anyone attempting to do this in this day and age, but the truth is worth losing all for. It hasn’t come to that yet. (I have yet to receive death threats as some priests have from other priests, if they threaten to blow the whistle on them and their evil doings). But I really don’t want to lose my home!
Some reading this will be incredulous thinking I’m overly dramatic at best or weak. I gave up trying to explain to those who don’t understand the terms of our cultural battle long ago. Others of you will understand. I should add that I have even had people in the “orthodox” camp close doors on me when I was in need, who could have easily helped me with work, etc. They don’t understand... Yet. God bless them.
So I share my dilemma with you, my friends in the Body of Christ, asking your prayers for a solution, as I leave it in the hands of God to direct me to His will.
Thank you,
In Christ,
John
"We Borrow from the Nations we Defend so that we may Continue to Defend them"
"We let Europe to get away with imposing value-added taxes averaging 15 percent on our exports to them, while they rebate that value-added tax on their exports to us. Thus, the euro has almost doubled in value against the dollar in the Bush years, as NATO Europe begins to bail out on Iraq and Afghanistan.
We sat still as Japan protected her markets and dumped high quality goods into ours and China undervalued its currency to suck jobs, technology and factories out of the United States. Now, China and Japan have $2 trillion in cash reserves. The Arabs have an equal amount of petrodollars. Both are headed here to spend their depreciating dollars snapping up U.S. assets -- banks, ports, highways, defense contractors.
America, to pay her bills, has begun to sell herself to the world. "[http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PatrickJBuchanan/2008/01/15/subprime_nation?page=full&comments=true]
Subprime Nation
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Since it began to give credit ratings to nations in 1917, Moody's has rated the United Statesw triple-A. U.S. Treasury bonds have been seen as the most secure investment on earth. When crises erupt, nervous money seeks out the world's great safe harbor, the United States. That reputation is now in peril.
Last week, Moody's warned that if the United States fails to rein in the soaring cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's credit rating will be down-graded within a decade.
A KB Home development still under construction is seen in Los Angeles Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2008. KB Home, the nation's fifth-largest builder by volume, forecast another rough year for homebuilders, saying weak demand for new homes and falling profit margins will continue to plague the industry for the foreseeable future. Adding to the housing industry's woes is the potential for a slew of mortgage defaults in coming months.
Our political parties seem oblivious. Republicans, save Ron Paul, are all promising to expand the U.S. military and maintain all of our worldwide commitments to defend and subsidize scores of nations.
Democrats, with entitlement costs drowning the federal budget in red ink, are proposing a new entitlement -- universal health coverage for the near 50 million who do not have it -- another magnet for illegal aliens. Moody's is telling America it needs a time of austerity, while the U.S. government is behaving like the governments we used to bail out.
California has already hit the wall. With an economy as large as a G-8 nation, the Golden State is looking at a $14 billion deficit in 2009 and a $3 billion shortfall in 2008. Gov. Schwarzenegger has called for slashing prison staff by 6,000, including 2,000 guards, early release of 22,000 inmates, closing four dozen state parks and a 10 percent across-the-board cut in all state agencies. The Democratic legislature is demanding tax hikes, which would drive more taxpayers back over the mountains whence their fathers came.
Meanwhile, Washington drifts mindlessly toward the maelstrom. With the dollar sinking, oil surging to $100 a barrel, the Dow having its worst January in memory, foreclosures mounting, credit card debt going rotten, and consumers and businesses unable or unwilling to borrow, we appear headed into recession.
If so, tax revenue will fall and spending on unemployment will surge. The price of the stimulus packages both parties are preparing will further add to the deficit and further imperil the U.S. credit rating. This all comes in the year that the first of the baby boomers, born in 1946, reach early retirement and eligibility for Social Security.
To stave off recession, the Fed appears anxious to slash interest rates another half-point, if not more. That will further weaken the dollar and raise the costs of the imports to which we have become addicted. While all this is bad news for the Republicans, it is worse news for the republic. As we save nothing, we must borrow both to pay for the imported oil and foreign manufactures upon which we have become dependent.
We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy.
We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called "isolationism."
And the chickens of globalism are coming home to roost.
We let Europe to get away with imposing value-added taxes averaging 15 percent on our exports to them, while they rebate that value-added tax on their exports to us. Thus, the euro has almost doubled in value against the dollar in the Bush years, as NATO Europe begins to bail out on Iraq and Afghanistan.
We sat still as Japan protected her markets and dumped high quality goods into ours and China undervalued its currency to suck jobs, technology and factories out of the United States. Now, China and Japan have $2 trillion in cash reserves. The Arabs have an equal amount of petrodollars. Both are headed here to spend their depreciating dollars snapping up U.S. assets -- banks, ports, highways, defense contractors.
America, to pay her bills, has begun to sell herself to the world.
Its balance sheet gutted by the subprime mortgage crisis, Citicorp got a $7.5 billion injection from Abu Dhabi and is now fishing for $1 billion from Kuwait and $9 billion from China. Beijing has put $5 billion into Morgan Stanley and bought heavily into Barclays Bank.
Merrill-Lynch, ravaged by subprime mortgage losses, sold part of itself to Singapore for $7.5 billion and is seeking another $3 billion to $4 billion from the Arabs. Swiss-based UBS, taking a near $15 billion write-down in subprime mortgages, has gotten an infusion of $10 billion from Singapore.
Bain Capital is partnering with China's Huawei Technologies in a buyout of 3Com, the U.S. company that provides the technology that protects Pentagon computers from Chinese hackers.
This self-indulgent generation has borrowed itself into unpayable debt. Now the folks from whom we borrowed to buy all that oil and all those cars, electronics and clothes are coming to buy the country we inherited. We are prodigal sons, and the day of reckoning approaches.
Pat Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative magazine, and the author of many books including State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America
[http://www.townhall.com/columnists/PatrickJBuchanan/2008/01/15/subprime_nation?page=full&comments=true]
