Obama's State of the Union

I forced myself to suffer through the anointed one's state of the union speech last night and have come to the conclusion that Obama is even more arrogant than Bill Clinton. First of all, is there ANY need to drone on for an hour and ten minutes on anything? Second of all, while Obama was "feeling our pain", which he incidentally helped to create in large part, he also exuded a smug and arrogant demeanor in parts of his speech. Overall, he did not come across as very presidential and rather seemed to be back on the campaign trail once again. That being said, below are my thoughts on the good, bad, and the ugly from this mess of a speech.

The Good (as Obama stated; whether he is being honest and actually intends to carry out these things is a completely other matter.)

1. Will grant small business tax credits

2. Will eliminate capital gains tax for small businesses that reinvest

3. Call for more nuclear power plants

4. Call for more offshore gas and oil development (I don't believe this for a second!)

5. Call for more clean coal technology (Yeah, I doubt this too.)

6. Call for doubling exports in the next five years. (Good suggestion but no specifics given.)

7. Enforce trade agreements. (Well, duh!)

8. Starting in 2011, freeze all discretionary government spending for the next 3 years (good start but needs a hell of a lot more cuts than this to even make a tiny dent in the deficit.)

9. Restore pay as you go law (ABSOLUTELY!)

10. Earmark reform - all earmark requests listed on a single website before a vote. (Great idea!)

The Bad/Ugly

1. Bank bailouts - "not popular but necessary" (Not when you reward Goldman Sachs especially)

2. TARP

3. Call for placing fees on biggest banks (This will only decrease lending and increase our costs)

4. "Taxes not raised by a single dime" (His policies, whether called a tax or not, have drastically now and certainly in the future taken more money from our wallets)

5. Tax-payer subsidizing of high speed railroads etc. (Let private industry fund this, if viable)

6. Clean energy products (Again, if this is viable, private industry will lead the way)

7. Call for passing an energy and climate bill (This is one of two biggest job and economy killing ideas he has proposed, let alone the fact that a climate bill is not needed!)

8. Obama's arrogance and smirk after proclaiming the "overwhelming scientific evidence" shows that climate change is occurring. (Thanks Al Gore Jr., but this is NOT so and you know it!)

9. Cookie cutter federally mandated education reform. (Let this be done by local or state jurisdictions)

10. Call for $10K college tax credits and Pell grants where debt is forgiven for student loans in 20 years (10 for those in public service). (This only encourages the government to pick up the tab for loans that are already the highest defaulted by type.)

11. Health insurance reform (Yes, but not anything like what Obama or the Democrats want. He asked for suggestions. Go to the GOP website for REAL suggestion that will work!)

12. Iran and North Korea are more isolated (No they are not. Both are still belligerent, antagonistic and dangerous. Obama has done nothing to lessen this!)

13. Call for the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" policy for the armed forces. (This is hugely disruptive and provides for a large issue in discipline and morale of troops if enacted.)

14. Scolding of the Supreme Court on recent decision regarding corporate freedom of speech. (Whether this is something agreed upon or not, a state of the union speech is not the place to scold a co-equal branch of the federal government!)

President Obama near the end of his speech said, "America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity." It is too bad that these lofty words are often betrayed by the actions of Obama and the Democrats with their dependency-creating policies and their lack of support for the affirmation of life and American values. Unfortunately, the state of the union, regardless of our president's speech last night is not good right now. Hopefully, it will begin to get better come November though.

America Rising

Mugged by Ultrasound

I wanted to share another email that my brothers at the Knights of Columbus have sent out this last weekend. Please be warned that the following text may be graphic and disturbing to read.

Further, I am proud to say that the Knights are a part of the effort to fund the purchasing of ultra sound machines in order to help reduce the amount of abortions conducted in our country.

Lastly and most importantly, I pray that God is with those considering abortion as an option so that they may change their minds, and that He will comfort and show mercy and His love to those that have undergone this horrible procedure.

Mugged by Ultrasound

Why so many abortion workers have turned pro-life.

Abortion rights activists have long preferred to hold themselves at some remove from the practice they promote; rather than naming it, they speak of “choice” and “reproductive freedom.” But those who perform abortions have no such luxury. Instead, advances in ultrasound imaging and abortion procedures have forced providers ever closer to the nub of their work. Especially in abortions performed far enough along in gestation that the fetus is recognizably a tiny baby, this intimacy exacts an emotional toll, stirring sentiments for which doctors, nurses, and aides are sometimes unprepared. Most apparently have managed to reconcile their belief in the right to abortion with their revulsion at dying and dead fetuses, but a noteworthy number have found the conflict unbearable and have defected to the pro-life cause.

In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, second-trimester abortions were usually performed by saline injection. The doctor simply replaced the amniotic fluid in the patient’s uterus with a saline solution and induced labor, leaving it to nurses to dispose of the expelled fetus. That changed in the late 1970s, when “dilation and evacuation” (D&E) emerged as a safer method. Today D&E is the most common second-trimester procedure. It has been performed millions of times in the United States.

But although D&E is better for the patient, it brings emotional distress for the abortionist, who, after inserting laminaria that cause the cervix to dilate, must dismember and remove the fetus with forceps. One early study, by abortionists Warren Hern and Billie Corrigan, found that although all of their staff members “approved of second trimester abortion in principle,” there “were few positive comments about D&E itself.” Reactions included “shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear, and sadness.” A more ambitious study published the following year, in the September 1979 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, confirmed Hern and Corrigan’s findings. It found “strong emotional reactions during or following the procedures and occasional disquieting dreams.”

Another study, published in the October 1989 issue of Social Science and Medicine noted that abortion providers were pained by encounters with the fetus regardless of how committed they were to abortion rights. It seems that no amount of ideological conviction can inoculate providers against negative emotional reactions to abortion.

Such studies are few. In general, abortion providers have censored their own emotional trauma out of concern to protect abortion rights. In 2008, however, abortionist Lisa Harris endeavored to begin “breaking the silence” in the pages of the journal Reproductive Health Matters. When she herself was 18 weeks pregnant, Dr. Harris performed a D&E abortion on an 18-week-old fetus. Harris felt her own child kick precisely at the moment that she ripped a fetal leg off with her forceps:

Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.

Harris concluded her piece by lamenting that the pro-choice movement has left providers to suffer in silence because it has “not owned up to the reality of the fetus, or the reality of fetal parts.” Indeed, it often insists that images used by the pro-life movement are faked.

(Pro-choice advocates also falsely insist that second-trimester abortions are confined almost exclusively to tragic “hard” cases such as fetal malformation. Yet a review of the literature in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that most abortions performed after the first trimester are sought for the same reasons as first-trimester abortions, they’re just delayed. This reality only intensifies the guilt pangs of abortion providers.)

Hern and Harris chose to stay in the abortion business; one of the first doctors to change his allegiance was Paul Jarrett, who quit after only 23 abortions. His turning point came in 1974, when he performed an abortion on a fetus at 14 weeks’ gestation: “As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart,” he would recall. “And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.”

In 1990 Judith Fetrow, an aide at a Planned Parenthood clinic, found that disposing of fetal bodies as medical waste was more than she could bear. Soon after she left her position, Fetrow described her experiences: “No one at Planned Parenthood wanted this job. .  .  . I had to look at the tiny hands and feet. There were times when I wanted to cry.” Finally persuaded to quit by a pro-life protester outside her clinic, Fetrow is now involved in the American Life League.

Kathy Sparks is another convert formerly responsible for disposing of fetal remains, this time at an Illinois abortion clinic. Her account of the experience that led her to exit the abortion industry (taken from the Pro-Life Action League website in 2004) reads in part:

The baby’s bones were far too developed to rip them up with [the doctor’s] curette, so he had to pull the baby out with forceps. He brought out three or four major pieces. .  .  . I took the baby to the clean up room, I set him down and I began weeping uncontrollably. .  .  . I cried and cried. This little face was perfectly formed.

A recovery nurse rebuked Sparks for her unprofessional behavior. She quit the next day. Sparks is now the director of a crisis pregnancy center with more than 20 pro-life volunteers.

Handling fetal remains can be especially difficult in late-term clinics. Until George Tiller was assassinated by a pro-life radical last summer, his clinic in Wichita specialized in third-trimester abortions. To handle the large volume of biological waste Tiller had a crematorium on the premises. One day when hauling a heavy container of fetal waste, Tiller asked his secretary, Luhra Tivis, to assist him. She found the experience devastating. The “most horrible thing,” Tivis later recounted, was that she “could smell those babies burning.” Tivis, a former NOW activist, soon left her secretarial position at the clinic to volunteer for Operation Rescue, a radical pro-life organization.

Other converts were driven into the pro-life movement by advances in ultrasound technology. The most recent example is Abby Johnson, the former director of Dallas-area Planned Parenthood. After watching, via ultrasound, an embryo “crumple” as it was suctioned out of its mother’s womb, Johnson reported a “conversion in my heart.” Likewise, Joan Appleton was the head nurse at a large abortion facility in Falls Church, Virginia, and a NOW activist. Appleton performed thousands of abortions with aplomb until a single ultrasound-assisted abortion rattled her. As Appleton remembers, “I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. .  .  . After the procedure I was shaking, literally.”

The most famous abortion provider to be converted by ultrasound technology, decades ago, is Bernard Nathanson, cofounder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the original NARAL. In the early 1970s, Nathanson was the largest abortion provider in the Western world. By his own reckoning he performed more than 60,000 abortions, including one on his own child. Nathanson’s exit from the industry was slow and tortured. In Aborting America (1979), he expressed anxiety over the possibility that he was complicit in a great evil. He was especially troubled by ultrasound images. When he finally left his profession for pro-life activism, he produced The Silent Scream (1984), a documentary of an ultrasound abortion that showed the fetus scrambling vainly to escape dismemberment.

This handful of stories is representative of many more. In fact, with the exception of communism, we can think of few other movements from which so many activists have defected to the opposition. Nonetheless, the vast majority of clinic workers remain committed to the pro-choice cause. Perhaps some of those who stay behind are haunted by their work. Most, however, find a way to cope with the dissonance.

Pro-choice advocates like to point out that abortion has existed in all times and places. Yet that observation tends to obscure the radicalism of the present abortion regime in the United States. Until very recently, no one in the history of the world has had the routine job of killing well-developed fetuses quite so up close and personal. It is an experiment that was bound to stir pro-life sentiments even in the hearts of those staunchly devoted to abortion rights. Ultrasound and D&E bring workers closer to the beings they destroy. Hern and Corrigan concluded their study by noting that D&E leaves “no possibility of denying an act of destruction.” As they wrote, “It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment run through the forceps like an electric current.”

The 2nd Amendment and Left-wing Hypocrisy

This editorial was forwarded to me by a friend. Evidently this incident occurred in late August of last year in North Carolina and serves as another example of left wing hypocrisy in this country.

Long time Anti-Gun Advocate State Senator R.C. Soles, 74, shot one of two intruders at his home just outside Tabor City, N.C. about 5 p.m. Sunday, the prosecutor for the politician's home county said.

The intruder, Kyle Blackburn, was taken to a South Carolina hospital, but the injuries were not reported to be life-threatening, according to Rex Gore, district attorney for Columbus, Bladen and Brunswick counties.

The State Bureau of Investigation and Columbus County Sheriff's Department are investigating the shooting, Gore said. Soles, who was not arrested,declined to discuss the incident Sunday evening.

"I am not in a position to talk to you," Soles said by telephone. "I'm right in the middle of an investigation."

The Senator, who has made a career of being against gun ownership for the general public, didn't hesitate to defend himself with his own gun when he believed he was in immediate danger and he was the victim.

In typical hypocritical liberal fashion, the "Do as i say and not as i do" anti-gun activist lawmaker picked up his gun and took action in what apparently was a self-defense shooting. Why hypocritical you may ask? It is because his long legislative record shows that the actions that he took to protect his family, his own response to a dangerous life threatening situation, are actions that he feels ordinary citizens should not have if they were faced with an identical situation.

It has prompted some to ask if the Senator believes his life and personal safety is more valuable than yours or mine. But, this is to be expected from those who believe they can run our lives, raise our kids, and protect our families better than we can.

I would like to add that this is not atypical of the left with their elitist attitudes. California's Senator Diane Feinstein has long been an anti-gun activist and yet reportedly has her own hand guns.

The same is true with many Hollyweird leftists. You may recall Rosie O'Donnell purportedly inviting Tom Selleck to come on to her TV talk show years ago to plug a new movie he was doing at the time.

Mr. Selleck was a spokesman for the NRA back then and Ms. O'Donnell decided to ambush him about his support for our 2nd amendment Constitutional right to keep and bear arms. The public debate that ensued in the following weeks brought to light the fact that Rosie, while not owning a gun herself, hired an armed body guard to protect her. Again, evidently only the rich and powerful should have the right to defend themselves. Just another rare instance of liberal hypocrisy for you.

Happy Birthday to My Baby Girl

Today my baby girl turns eighteen. Where in the world did these past eighteen years go to so quickly? Heck, it seems like just yesterday that I brought her home from the hospital with her mom. She really has grown up so quickly from being the funniest little girl into the beautiful young lady that she is now. (Thank God that she got her beautiful looks from momma!)

I am very proud of the person she has been in the past and has become in the present. She has always been very bright and had a quirky sense of humor. (No idea at all where the humor part comes from! :) )

More importantly though she has always strived far harder than most people I know to do the right thing, particularly when it comes to being a good Christian and helping others. (That she gets from her mom too.)

I have seen her dedicate so much of her time to help those less fortunate than her simply for the joy of doing so. She spent her last two summers helping out people living at two of the poorest Indian reservations in the country by doing any number of things from taking care of children there to helping paint houses of the people living there. She WANTED to spend part of her summer vacation doing this.

Her sense of justice is more highly tuned than mine ever was at her age, and perhaps so even at my current age. I have tried to teach her what I know over the years, along with her mom. In doing so, it is not unusual for her to end up teaching me even more than I ever taught her. She truly has grasped the best parts that we had to offer as her parents. I am very proud as her Father, and thankful to God to be blessed with such a wonderful daughter.

Happy birthday, honey! I love you with all of my heart!

What Brown Can Do For You?

Well the impossible and unthinkable for the Democrats actually happened! The liberal lion of the senate, Ted Kennedy, "who worked his whole career so that we might have universal health care" must be rolling in his grave as Republican Scott Brown pulled out a very unlikely win in what is arguably the bluest state in the nation. He will sit in the "people's seat" that was formerly held by Ted Kennedy.

Senator-elect Scott Brown has promised that he will be the 41st vote needed to deny the Democrats in the senate the ability to overcome the filibuster and thus proceed with their illegal health care legislation. This is a huge reason why Scott Brown will be senator.

The Democrats are panicking and looking at options of how they can still pass their ugly health care bill despite this huge set back. They are seeing if they have the votes in the house to pass the senate's version, with the promise to go back and "fix" the items that aren't socialist enough for the left later on down the road. By doing this they would only need 51 votes in the senate.

Democrats, let me tell you something right now. This election absolutely was a referendum on Obama-care. If you proceed down this path and pass this in its current form or worse, you will absolutely reap what you sow. Come November the Republican margins in the Senate and House of Representatives will be even larger than they are already trending currently.

Of course, I expect the brilliant Democrats in congress, that know what is best for us, will ignore the people's will in this. The unemployment rate in November will spike up sharply as a result, but only for these congressional Democrats. Now THAT is some change I can believe in!

Dumb and Dumber

I heard some commentary the other day that basically made the point that I have been making for years. It seems that the Democrats and the state-sponsored media have this evil and slanderous penchant for portraying all Republicans as ignorant and/or down-right stupid, while all Democrats are portrayed as enlightened and brilliant.

This never holds more true then when one examines our presidential and vice-presidential candidates and office-holders in the last few decades.

The case has always been made by the left, and echoed in the redundant left-wing socialist media, how "brilliant" such Democrats were from Carter (the intellectual), to Clinton (the Rhodes Scholar), to Al Gore (the saviour of the planet), to John Kerry (the Brahmin intellectual), to the anointed one, Barrack Hussein Obama.

Contrast that with the characterizations of their Republican counterparts. Gerald Ford (couldn't even walk without tripping and stupidly pardoned Nixon). Ronald Reagan (simpleton and "amiable dunce" that provoked the USSR). George H.W. Bush (office place holder and not really qualified for office). George W. Bush (the "true village idiot" that followed his own whims without knowing what he was really doing; also was so dumb that Cheney and Rove had to run and control things).

And then the latest slander job was done on Sarah Palin. Here is a successful governor that stomped out corruption in BOTH parties in her state, cut un-needed expenses and was wildly popular with both parties in Alaska that was touted as nothing more than a stupid, un-educated hokey mom. (She got her degree in Idaho? Why she is not even an ivy league graduate!)

Well do you know what? Forget for the moment that none of the lies perpetrated by the left regarding the intelligence of any of the Republicans mentioned are true. Rather lets look at the HUGE failures that these intellectuals of the left have wrought.

Carter by any standard ranks as one of the poorest presidents in the history of the republic. His economic policies were such abject failures that he was responsible for the creation of a new economic term... stagflation. His appeasement of the Soviet Union was dangerous at best, and his fecklessness lead to our embassy in Iran being held hostage for more than a year.

While Clinton was no doubt smart, his complete lack of any moral compass, and his ambition to hold on to power regardless of the cost let him bob back and forth on the sea of the latest poll's opinion. Our nation bobbed up and down with him accordingly and many opportunities to do great things were lost by Clinton's lack of leadership.

Gore, who has delusions of grandeur, decided after inventing the Internet that he would save the planet with false and largely debunked science intended to do nothing more than line his own pockets through fear mongering. His arrogance made him declare the debate on global warming was over and then he brow-beat and used Alinsky tactics to demonize any of those that would dare speak contrary to this "brilliant Nobel-prize winning" politician. He was a political opportunist that changed from pro-gun and pro-life as a congressman to being anti-gun and pro-abortion as a senator on the rise. This kind of brilliance, America does not need.

John Kerry, who had college grades (along with Gore's) that were lower than George W. Bush's, always portrayed his elitist intellectualism without having a single significant accomplishment to point to as fruition of his intellectual work. This man always was a stuffed suit and got where he was through lying and connections.

And finally our eloquent and yet incompetent current president. The community organizer that sounds brilliant, as long as no one unplugs the teleprompter has accomplished even less than what John Kerry has. That is, unless, you wish to count the destruction he has done to our republic through his Marxist, un-Constitutional, and un-American polices. Obama, when looking at his resume, was not even fit to run a fortune 500 company let alone the greatest country in the world.

No. As far as I am concerned, I will side with the Republicans that have restored the economy several times now, won the cold war, liberated millions of people from tyranny, and by and large stuck to American values and the U.S. Constitution.

You leftists can keep your economy-killing, dictator appeasing, terrorist rights supporting, Marxist brilliant intellectuals.

I'll side with the dummies that have actually made this country, and the world, better off.