Month: December 2014

Reason vs. Emotion ~ Special Rights and the Power of the State

Published by Papa Giorgio

“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it. Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”

Dale A. Berryhill, The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (1994), 172.

Gays shouldn’t be the only one’s to worry! Continueright

Gay Patriot makes short points in regard to the above by showing some recent examples:

Emotion:

  • “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!”
  • “Stop Global Warming!”
  • “Smash the Patriarchy!”
  • “Behead those who insult Islam!”

In another post GP makes the point of the hypocrisy of those led not by reason and law but by emotion, and how the tables can turn easily on them. This is important, because when you have laws written for special interest groups rather than the equal application of all people… whomever is in charge can use or twist that law against their opponents.

A Christian group went to thirteen gay-owned bakeries and requested each of them to bake a cake promoting traditional marriage; and of course, recognizing that they were obligated to serve any customer regardless of ideological differences, they happily obliged.

Nope, just kidding. All thirteen not only refused, but some were very nasty about it.

[….]

And you know what… I completely defend their right to refuse to bake a cake in support of something they don’t believe in; because I don’t believe people forfeit their Constitutional rights when they open businesses. [BAM!]

It’s the gay fascist left who are the hypocrites.

…read more…

You see, the winds are for a more politically-correct [left-leaning] view of cultural issues. But if the State has the power to run Christians out of business… that means the State has the power to run gays out of business depending on the prevailing winds of the body-politic. Which is something our Constitution was written to stop, mind you.

Continueright (Word of the day: femicide) Here is part of a growing issue in America as we speak, a real war on women, via National Right to Life News:

…Lu reminds us that sex-selective abortions, while most commonly associated with China and (increasingly) India and Singapore, other nations, such as Great Britain, are admitting they have a similar dilemma. [Of late we’ve written about the situation in Great Britain many times, most recently here.]

There was evidence, even before the newest study which purported to prove there wasn’t sex-selective abortions in the U.S., that they are occurring. As NRLC discussed back in 2012

Dr. Sunita Puri and three other researchers at the University of California interviewed “65 immigrant Indian women in the United States who had pursued fetal sex selection.” They wrote: “We found that 40% of the women interviewed had terminated prior pregnancies with female fetuses and that 89% of women carrying female fetuses in their current pregnancy pursued an abortion.” This powerful study discusses in detail the multiple forms of pressure and outright coercion to which such women are often subjected: “Forty women (62%) described verbal abuse from their female in laws or husbands. . . . One-third of women described past physical abuse and neglect related specifically to their failing to produce a male child.” As a result, “women reported having multiple closely spaced pregnancies with terminations of female fetuses under pressure to have a male child.” (“‘There is such a thing as too many daughters, but not too many sons’,” Social Science & Medicine 72 (2011), 1169-1176)

Another study examined American-born offspring of foreign-born Chinese, Korean, and Indian parents. According to Lu

“the really significant finding concerned third births in families who already had two daughters. Among these children, there were 151 boys for every 100 girls. Almond and Edlund drew the obvious conclusion: when expecting for the third time, a significant number of Asian parents preferred an abortion to a third daughter.”

What about the new study–“Replacing Myths with Facts: Sex Selective Laws in the United States”? It’s been hailed as bigger and better and disproving (hence the “myths” language) that there are sex selective abortions here at home. That was the “takeaway” trumpeted by the usual suspects. Only it wasn’t true.

This was obscured because, as Lu writes, the authors “bur[ied] the single most important piece of information in a forest of far-less-relevant facts, graphs, and meanderings about methodology.”

She notes

“It’s got to be frustrating when you bring together a lot of important-sounding organizations to do a big, splashy study, and it ends up confirming the piece of data that most sticks in your craw. But now that we’ve descended to throwing around accusations of racism, I think the truth should be spoken. Asian-born American parents with two daughters are significantly more likely to have a son for their third child. Combined with Puri’s qualitative study, and ample data confirming the use of sex-selective abortion in some Asian cultures, that constitutes strong evidence that it also happens here in the United States.”

Lu adds (tongue in cheek?), “My compliments to the University of Chicago for confirming this with their new, comprehensive study.”

Of course, the last thing the authors of this study and others of a similar ilk will concede is what the evidence tells anyone willing to read it. But assuming they did, what do they do with it? The options are not promising.

“America is a big country and the relevant sub-cultures are fairly small. So pro-choicers could bite the bullet and suggest that even if sex-selective abortion happens and is sort of distasteful, maybe a few hundred or thousand aborted daughters either way just aren’t that big of a deal? Hey, I’m just laying out your options, if you happen to be a pro-choice feminist.”

But the one option, Lu write, which is not available for anyone interested in truth is to permit

“further deception about what the data is really saying. Even less should we permit disingenuous attempts to dismiss the struggle against femicide as racist or misogynistic.”

The Government Continues It’s Case Against Religious Freedom

Published by Papa Giorgio

Three main points from the brief, via Westword:

  1. The brief lays out three main complaints about the procedure. The first? Since the form “designates, authorizes, incentivizes, and obligates third parties to provide or arrange contraceptive coverage in connection with the plan,” the brief contends that “once the Little Sisters execute and deliver the Form, the Mandate purports to make it irrevocably part of the plan by forbidding the Little Sisters to even talk to the outside companies that administer their health plan, ‘directly or indirectly,’ to ask them not to provide the coverage.”
  2. In addition, the brief allows that “regardless of whether the government sincerely believes EBSA Form 700 is morally meaningful, the relevant legal question is whether the Little Sisters do. And on that point, there is no dispute: the Little Sisters cannot execute and deliver the contraceptive coverage form without violating their religious conscience. The government may think the Little Sisters should reason differently about law and morality, but their actual religious beliefs — the beliefs that matter in this case — have led them to conclude that they cannot sign or send the government’s Form.”
  3. Finally, the government’s so-called “scheme” is said to violate the First Amendment, because it has “exempted a large class of religious organizations based on unfounded guesswork about the likely religious characteristics of different religious organizations. The government has no power to discriminate in this fashion, allowing some religious organizations to survive while crushing others with fines for the identical religious exercise. This violation of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses is compounded by a clear violation of the Free Speech Clause: the Mandate both compels the Little Sisters to engage in government-required speech against their will, and prohibits them from engaging in speech they wish to make.”

Another short commentary on what took place just a couple days ago via The Daily Signal:

Some organizations are fighting back against the accommodation because it simply shifts responsibility for purchasing coverage away from the employers, and it is still the employer’s action that triggers the objectionable coverage. This bureaucratic tweak to the accommodation, issued this past August, still does not adequately protect the religious freedom of many charities, schools and other religious organizations.

Writing for the court, Judge Cornelia Pillard found that CUA and Priests for Life failed to show that the accommodation substantially burdens their religious exercise. Instead, Pillard concluded that the only harm was Priests for Life’s feelings of being genuinely “aggrieved by their inability to prevent what other people would do….” Pillard recognized that though the accommodation may violate the challengers’ conscience, it allows the challengers to “wash their hands of any involvement in providing insurance coverage for contraceptive services.”

Essentially the court determined that the accommodation is fine because it doesn’t directly force the groups to violate their conscience.

Yet a regulation can still be a substantial religious burden even if the effect is only indirect.

The U.S. Supreme Court said as much in Thomas v. Review Board over 30 years ago. In this case, a Jehovah’s Witness steelworker was denied unemployment benefits after quitting his job because he was transferred to a part of his company that made weapons. Because of his belief in non-violence, Thomas could not participate in the manufacture of weapons. In siding with Thomas, the Supreme Court noted that “[I]t is not within the judicial function and judicial competence to inquire whether [Thomas] correctly perceived the commands of [his] faith. Courts are not arbiters of scriptural interpretation.” Instead, the Court would defer to a religious believer’s interpretation unless the claim was so bizarre or had a non-religious motivation, elements even the government concedes do not apply to Priests for Life or the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Thus, what Judge Pillard calls “a bit of paperwork” is exactly what Priests for Life find morally wrong.

What may seem trivial to one person may give rise to a serious religious dilemma for another. For example, Orthodox Jews may not flip light switches or press buttons on the Sabbath.

In short, courts should not be in the business of line-drawing when it comes to theological questions. Though the Obama administration won the round in the battle over the abortion-inducing drug mandate before the D.C. Circuit, the fight continues with the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Anthropological/Historical Monotheism (+ More) ~ John Blanchard

Published by Papa Giorgio

Here is a quote I love and have used from John Blanchard, for seminary work and otherwise:

[p. 25>] The theory has often been put forward that religion evolved slowly over many millennia, beginning with very primitive ideas and gradually developing into today’s concepts. Wrapped up in this theory, and an important element in the thinking of many atheists, is the idea that monotheism (belief in one God) is a comparatively recent refinement. In the nineteenth century, two anthropologists, Sir Edward Tyler and Sir James Frazer, popularized the notion that the first stage in the evolution of religion was animism (which involved the worship of spirits believed to inhabit natural phenomena), followed later by pantheism (the idea that everything is divine), polytheism (belief in a multitude of distinct and separate deities) and eventually by monotheism.1

However, recent studies in anthropology have turned this scenario on its head and show, for example, that the hundreds of contemporary tribal religions (including many which are animistic) are not primitive in the sense of being original. Writing from long experience in India, and after extended studies of ancient religions, the modern scholar Robert Brow states, The tribes have a memory of a “High God”, who is no longer worshipped because he is not feared. Instead of offering sacrifice to him, they concern themselves with the pressing problems of how to appease the vicious spirits of the jungle.’2 Other research suggests that tribes ‘are not animistic because they have continued unchanged since the dawn of history’ and that The evidence indicates degeneration from a true knowledge of God.’3 After working among primitive tribes for many years, one modern expert says, The animism of today gives us the impression of a religion that carries the marks of a fall,’4 while another bluntly refers to ‘the now discredited evolutionary school of religion’ as being ‘recognized as inadmissible’.5

[p. 26>] The evidence of modern archaeology is that religion has not evolved ‘upwards’, but degenerated from monotheism to pantheism and poly­theism, then from these to animism and atheism, a finding confirmed by the Scottish academic Andrew Lang in The Making of Religion: ‘Of the existence of a belief in the Supreme Being among primitive tribes there is as good evidence as we possess for any fact in the ethnographic region.’6 In History of Sanskrit Literature, the Oriental expert Max Muller, recog­nized as the founder of the science of the history of religions, came to the conclusion: ‘There is a monotheism that precedes the polytheism of the Veda; and even in the invocations of the innumerable gods, the remem­brance of a God, one and infinite, breaks through the mist of idolatrous phraseology like the blue sky that is hidden by passing clouds.’7 In The Religion of Ancient Egypt, Sir Flinders Petrie, universally acknowledged as one of the world’s leading Egyptologists, claimed, ‘Wherever we can trace back polytheism to its earliest stages, we find that it results from combin­ations of monotheism.’8 In Semitic Mythology, the Oxford intellectual Stephen Langdon, one of the greatest experts in his field, said, ‘In my opinion the history of the oldest civilization of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits. It is in a very true sense the history of the fall of man.’9

These statements make it clear that the scenario suggested by Tyler and Frazer will not fit the facts. There is no convincing evidence for any devel­opment in nature religions from animism through polytheism to mono­theism. The idea that religion itself is something man invented has proved just as baseless. When the British naturalist Charles Darwin went to Tierra del Fuego in 1833, he believed that he had discovered aborigines with no religion at all. There are atheists today who still lean heavily on this, in spite of the fact that a scholar who went to the region after Darwin, and spent many years learning the language, history and customs of the Fuegians, reported that their idea of God was well developed and that he found ‘no evidence that there was ever a time when he was not known to them’.10

The same overall picture emerges in studies centred on the traditions of the oldest civilizations known to man: original belief in a ‘High God’, fol­lowed by degeneration into polytheism, animism and other corrupt reli­gious notions.

To trace all the currents in the ebb and flow of man’s religious thinking over the centuries is beyond anyone’s ability, but it is possible to track down some of the people whose ideas not only made a marked [p. 27>] contemporary impact but still affect the way many people think today on the issue of the existence of God. In this and the next eleven chapters we will make a high-speed pass over the last 2,500 years or so and identify some of the most influential characters and concepts. One point before we begin: animism, pantheism, polytheism (and some of the other `-isms’ we shall touch on as we go along) are usually treated as facets of theism, but for the purpose of this book I want to draw the line elsewhere and to treat them as aspects of atheism, on the grounds that they fail to square with the definition of God proposed in the introduction….

Footnotes

1) See especially James George Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890), which examined the development of human thought with reference to magic, religion and science.
2) Robert Brow, Religion: Origins and Ideas, Tyndale Press, p.11.
3) Ibid.
4) Johann Warneck, The Living Forces of the Gospel, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, p.99.
5) Edward G. Newing, ‘Religions of Pre-literary Societies’, in The World’s Religions, Norman Anderson, Inter-Varsity Press, pp.11-12.
6) Andrew Lang, The Making of Religion, Longmans & Green, p.18.
7) Max Muller, History of Sanskrit Literature, 559.
8) Flinders Petrie, The Religion of Ancient Egypt, Constable, p.4.
9) Stephen Langdon, Semitic Theology, 5 in Mythology of All Races, Archaeological Institute of America, p.xviii.
10) Edward G. Newing, ‘Religions of Pre-literary Societies’, in The World’s Religions, 14.

John Blanchard, Does God Believe In Atheists? 2nd Edition (Darlington England; Carlisle, PA: EP Books, 2011), 25-27, footnotes 640.

My favorite portions of the above biography, the first is about the surety we have in salvation and God’s finished work on the cross. The second portion is about the depth we have in studying the Word of God and living the Christian faith.

  • Romans 11:33 ~ “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

Dr. Blanchard’s books can be found on his Amazon bio page ~ What a blessing this man has been to my life and many others.

Biden Didn’t Want to Join the Conversation (ISLAM)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via Truth Revolt:

In a recent interview with the Washington Examiner, human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali discussed the “real war on women” being conducted by adherents to radical Islam and the need for the American left to acknowledge that reality. During the conversation, Hirsi Ali recalled a particularly telling encounter she had with Vice President Joe Biden in which he attempted to correct her on “one or two things about Islam.”

Hirsi Ali explained to the Examiner that in the left’s attempts to protect anyone they perceive as “victims of the white man,” they have failed to look honestly at the true war on women waged by radical Muslims.

“They feel all religions are the same, and they’re not,” she said. “I think if I adopt the position in good faith to multiculturalists and leftists, I would say [they take the position they do] because they see them [Muslims] as victims. They see them as victims of the white man and so they think: ‘Let’s protect them from the white man. Let’s protect them from capitalism.’… That is misguided at best and malicious at worst.”

Hirsi Ali’s organization provides some disturbing statistics on the treatment of women under Islam, including 5,000 honor killings occurring worldwide each year—between 25 and 28 of those occurring in the United States—and an estimated 800 million women and girls living under the constant threat of such consequences. WHO estimates that more than 125 million women and girls alive today have undergone female genital mutilation.

“Wherever [Islamists] gain power, you see exactly what they do: The first thing they do is they chase women out of the public space, force them to cover up, beat them up, rape them, sell them into slavery,” said Hirsi Ali.

The purpose of her organization is to expose reality such as this, particularly to Western liberals, who she said must “review their thinking.” But getting the left to do so is no easy task, as Hirsi Ali’s encounter with Vice President Biden exemplifies.

At a dinner in Washington, Biden attempted to correct her perspective on relationship between the Islamic State and Islam, saying, “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” When she pushed back, Biden said, “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam…”

“I politely left the conversation at that,” Hirsi Ali said. “I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents.”….

Trey Gowdy Grills Jonathan Gruber ~ Truth 1/Gruber 0

Published by Papa Giorgio

“The pervasiveness of your quotes is so much that it has to be more than that. It has to be more than an episodic mistake that you made,” Gowdy grilled. He went on, “What did you mean when you said you wish that you had been able to be transparent, but you’d rather have the law than not?”

via Legal Insurrection

“Arson And Looting Are ‘Not Violence'” ~ Melissa Harris-Perry

Published by Papa Giorgio

NewsBusters h/t

American Thinker has this commentary on the above:

Obviously, Professor Harris-Perry has never known anyone who has poured his or her life into starting and keeping open a business, such as a beauty supply store or cell phone outlet. The endless hours and sacrifice of family life necessary to make a business work through thick and thin constitute the very essence of a person’s life, and the loss of a business to arsonists and looters constitute an attack on that person’s life. When he or she loses the business, part of that person’s life is lost, too.

But how would she know that? She would have had to talk to such people and listened sympathetically to their stories. She would have had to understand that meeting a payroll when sales are down, or shoplifters have overwhelmed the retail margin, means sacrificing other important things, selling off precious possessions so that employees can be paid, or working a second job on the graveyard shift to put food on the table when the business is failing.

I would wager a substantial amount of money that Harris-Perry considers herself a caring and compassionate woman. But progressives have a way of dehumanizing people with whom they disagree, and regarding people who actually seek to create and maintain a business as exploiters, and therefore subhuman.

She is Al Sharpton with a PhD.

How bout when a cop-hating liberal progressive honky is punched in the face for trying to protect property? Via Gateway Pundit:

Democrats Heavily Partisan Report Gets Keelhauled By CIA

Published by Papa Giorgio

CIA_ARTICLE

(ABC) Six former Directors and Deputy Directors of the CIA fired back at the Senate Intelligence Committee with a vehemence almost never seen in the intelligence world.

The former CIA leaders — including George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden — blasted the Senate report as “one-sided and marred with errors” and called it “a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks.”

Their 2,500-word rebuttal was posted as an op-ed on the Wall Street Journal website once the report was released. The former intel chiefs are also launching their own website to respond to the attacks on CIA’s post-9/11 activities.

Via CIA Saves Lives website:

….We, as former senior officers of the Central Intelligence Agency, created this website to present documents that conclusively demonstrate that the program was: authorized by the President, overseen by the National Security Council, and deemed legal by the Attorney General of the United States on multiple occasions. None of those officials were interviewed either. None. CIA relied on their policy and legal judgments. We deceived no one. You will not find this truth in the Majority Report.

Absent from the report is any discussion of the context the United States faced after 9/11. This was a time we had solid evidence that al Qaida was planning a second wave of attacks against the U.S.; we had certain knowledge that bin Laden had met with Pakistani nuclear scientists and wanted nuclear weapons; we had reports that nuclear weapons were being smuggled into New York City; and we had hard evidence that al Qaida was trying to manufacture anthrax. It felt like a “ticking time bomb” every single day.

In this atmosphere, time was of the essence. We had a deep responsibility to do everything within the law to stop another attack. We clearly understood that, even with legal and policy approvals, our decisions would be questioned years later. But we also understood that we would be morally culpable for the deaths of fellow citizens if we failed to gain information that could stop the next attacks.

The report defies credulity by saying that the interrogation program did not produce any intelligence value. In fact, the program led to the capture of senior al Qaida leaders, including helping to find Usama bin Ladin, and resulted in operations that led to the disruption of terrorist plots that saved thousands of American and allied lives…

This from the Wall Street Journal in regards to that last emphasized sentence:

…First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:

• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.

• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.

• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.

A powerful example of the interrogation program’s importance is the information obtained from Abu Zubaydah, a senior al Qaeda operative, and from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, known as KSM, the 9/11 mastermind. We are convinced that both would not have talked absent the interrogation program.

Information provided by Zubaydah through the interrogation program led to the capture in 2002 of KSM associate and post-9/11 plotter Ramzi Bin al-Shibh. Information from both Zubaydah and al-Shibh led us to KSM. KSM then led us to Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, East Asia’s chief al Qaeda ally and the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia—in which more than 200 people perished.

The removal of these senior al Qaeda operatives saved thousands of lives because it ended their plotting. KSM, alone, was working on multiple plots when he was captured.

Here’s an example of how the interrogation program actually worked to disrupt terrorist plotting. Without revealing to KSM that Hambali had been captured, we asked him who might take over in the event that Hambali was no longer around. KSM pointed to Hambali’s brother Rusman Gunawan. We then found Gunawan, and information from him resulted in the takedown of a 17-member Southeast Asian cell that Gunawan had recruited for a “second wave,” 9/11-style attack on the U.S. West Coast, in all likelihood using aircraft again to attack buildings. Had that attack occurred, the nightmare of 9/11 would have been repeated.

Once they had become compliant due to the interrogation program, both Abu Zubaydah and KSM turned out to be invaluable sources on the al Qaeda organization. We went back to them multiple times to gain insight into the group. More than one quarter of the nearly 1,700 footnotes in the highly regarded 9/11 Commission Report in 2004 and a significant share of the intelligence in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on al Qaeda came from detainees in the program, in particular Zubaydah and KSM….

Some Statistics About Race and Police Shootings (Will Update w/New Info)

Published by Papa Giorgio

These have been some stats going around as of late… but there were some unanswered issues in my mind dealing with them. First, read these stats via TruthRevolt, and then we will continue with my issues:

…O’Reilly slammed Dyson’s claim and laid out data refuting the volatile assertion: 

  • Police killings of blacks down 70% in last 50 years
  • In 2012, 123 blacks were killed by police with a gun
  • In 2012, 326 whites were killed with a gun

(Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, CDC)

  • In 2013, blacks committed 5,375 murders
  • In 2013, whites committed 4,396 murders
  • Whites are 63% of the population blacks are 13%

(FBI, Census Bureau)

O’Reilly took these statistics to mean that “anyone thinking clearly can see that the homicide rate among blacks is way out of proportion.” O’Reilly asserted that the disparity of homicide rates explained the “police intrusion into black precincts.”…

Take note as well that police killings of blacks are down 70% in last 50 years. A worthy statistic indeed.

Here are my questions, and they have to do with the 123 stat. That is a total, and how many of that 2012 stat is “unarmed” suspects, and who were SHOT, some were tazed. I have found 18-unarmed suspects being killed, but some of those are while being tazed ~ for instance: Raymond Luther Allen was arrested 20 times by the Galveston police and once by DPS between 1994 and 2010 on charges that included unlawfully carrying a weapon, assault, evading arrest and drug possession. He died two days after being tazed in order to be handcuffed while resisting arrest. I have been trying to find his toxicology results to no avail.

Some of these 18 in one year were killed by non-police officers~ for instance: Dante Price was shot by security guards, not police. So this answers some of my following questions:

  1. How many black officers shot and killed black suspects;
  2. How many of these were unarmed;
  3. How many officers were killed by unarmed suspects;
  4. How many of these by their own gun;
  5. How many “unarmed” suspects total have been killed.

The NAACP has a list of 76 unarmed black men and women who have been killed since 1999-2014. Of which my 18-came from in the above discussion. Breitbart has this stat regarding the death of officers by unarmed suspects, and keep in mind Michael “the Gentle Giant” Brown had already wrestled for the gun in Officer Wilson’s patrol car — a shot even being fired during the felony struggle:

The recurrent expression of outrage by critics and the mainstream media about the use of deadly force by police officers against unarmed individuals fails to recognize that since 2000 at least 57 suspects have taken officers’ weapons and murdered the police officer with it.

[….]

While statistics for officers murdered with their own weapons are difficult to research, we know from the Los Angeles Police Protection League, the FBI and www.odmp.org that between 2000-10, at least 51 officers were killed by alleged perpetrators who used the officer’s own gun. Four officers were killed in 2011, one officer was killed in 2013. Moreover, so far in 2014, it has been confirmed that Johnson City (New York) Police Officer David Smith was murdered in March with his own weapon. Smith had served in the police department for over 18 years.

In Smith’s case, according to the Officers Down Memorial Page report, before he was able to exit his patrol car or radio for help, the alleged assailant was able to disarm Officer Smith and shoot him while he was still in the patrol car….

Another stat that I believed spanned the 2010-to-2012 year period is this:

  • Black officers account for a little more than 10 percent of all fatal police shootings. Of those they kill, though, 78 percent were black.
  • White officers, given their great numbers in so many of the country’s police departments, are well represented in all categories of police killings. White officers killed 91 percent of the whites who died at the hands of police. And they were responsible for 68 percent of the people of color killed. 

About fifty black folks are struck by lightning each year. The next question from the Left would be, “is God racist?”

This Day Choose Life (*GRAPHIC* Not Intended For All Audiences)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood Director, said she knows of no one surviving an abortion:

…UM…

Death Follows Liberalism

“I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don’t know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a [baby].”

~ Faye Wattleton, former president of U.S. Planned Parenthood

Below are some GRAPHIC images and videos. Near the bottom is a filmed partial-birth abortion. To be clear, this needs to be seen, but if you are not the person to handle this, then this is not the post for you

Life Follows God

“…that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that… your children may live”

~ Deuteronomy 30:19

Conversation Series

The first part of this post is an import from my old blog and is a post about a conversation with a young gal in and area we called the “pit,” the specialty cheese, wine, and meat section of my old employer — Whole Foods. What took place was a glowing example of many years of work by the left-leaning establishment that is often called “higher education,” which has turned out a zombie of non-thought who would rather use the seven words in Dennis Prager’s article. Like, “what about the mentally ill or deformed kids in the womb, shouldn’t the woman have the choice to abort them?” Even at my friends site you will often here a horror story about a child not having health-care and then the label, “[you] Bush doesn’t care about the children.” These are non-statements. There is no critical thinking involved.

When talking about abortion, for instance in our “pit,” I hear some position stated and then I merely respond, “that’s fine, but that doesn’t deal with whether the ‘fetus’ is a life or not.” Then I hear some grand tail about a women’s choice, and I respond, “that’s great, but that doesn’t deal with the issue of whether the ‘fetus’ is a life or not.” That is the question. Then the “you’ll never know what it is like” line comes out, referring to me being a man, ergo, I cannot have as valid an input on the matter, to which I responded/respond with examples of people who do have the personal capability to respond. Like Norma McCorvey, who was “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade (1973), she wrote a book that is pictured here (as well as a DVD).

I brought up Gianna Jessen, who was herself a survivor of an abortion, her story (and book) are very compelling, and often, when young university minds are being steeped in feminist philosophies, rarely is there ever time taken to study or reflect on the other side of the issue, as I was told after I asked a this question, “so at 24-years old you have looked at both sides of the issue and all the evidence and arguments and have concluded that you are right and there is no evidence left to compel you,” the response was “yep!”

A great 40-minute video can be found here. This presentation is rational, well thought out, and rarely responded to by the Left. Another personage that I typically bring up is Bernard Nathanson, who,

…as a younger man, he had been strongly pro-choice, and he performed an abortion on a woman who had become pregnant by him. He later gained national attention by then becoming one of the founding members of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. He worked with Betty Friedan and others for the legalization of abortion in the United States. Their efforts essentially succeeded with the Roe v Wade decision. He was also for a time the director of the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health (CRASH), New York’s largest abortion clinic. Nathanson has written that he was responsible for over 75,000 abortions throughout his pro-choice career.

He likewise wrote a book. Is he someone who would have some valuable input on the matter? Of course, his sex has nothing to do with it… unless you’re sexist. Dr. Nathanson is best known for his “Silent Scream” video (it is very dated), where a baby is shown being aborted via ultrasound images. What the video details is as the abortion procedure gets under way, the baby starts to literally scream, except there is no air to carry the cries of agony and pain. The entire video is linked above, but I will show the poignant part here. CAUTION, this video to the right is GRAPHIC as well, as it is ending a perfectly viable life… unless you are pro-choice, then this is just like any other operation — like removing your appendix, or tonsils.

I doubt the person in conversation with me has done much in the way of reading and contemplating this issue much beyond what she deems to be liberating feminist theory rebuffing the patriarchy. People who are protecting their emotional belief very rarely go out and pick up a book like Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice, by Francis Beckwith. Which is too bad.

(The above Facebook video is via THE FEDERALIST)

I mentioned Kathy Ireland and her appearance on Bill Maher’s show, Politically Incorrect, where she responded to a question (from a discussion a few years back):

Kathy Ireland, many years ago, was on Bill Mahers Politically Incorrect and the discussion that ensued shows the frailty of the liberal/relativistic position:

Bill Maher: Kathy, why do you oppose a women’s right to choose

Kathy Ireland: Bill, when my husband was going to medical school I underwent a transformation. Because I used to be in favor of abortion. But I noticed when I was reading through some of his medical teaching books, that according to a law in science known as the law of biogenesis, every living thing reproduces after it own kind. That means dog produce dogs, cats produce cats, humans produce humans. If we want to know what something is we simply ask what are its parents. If we know what the parents are, we know what the thing in question is. And I reasoned from that because human parents can only produce human offspring, unborn human fetuses could be nothing but human beings, because the law of biogenesis rules out every other alternative. And I concluded therefore that because human fetuses were part of our family, we should not harm them without justification.

Bill Maher: Well Kathy, that’s just your opinion!

In October 2002, Kathy Ireland made a compelling argument against abortion on the Fox News Channel’s Hannity and Colmes political debate show. Alan Colmes described Ireland’s opinions as religious, but Ireland said that her views on abortion do not stem from faith. She asserted that even atheists could realize that abortion is wrong. Kathy told Alan that her belief is founded in science and technology, which she says, “has come a long way since Roe vs. Wade.”

Ireland also defended her values as being pro-women, stating, “We need to support these women who are in crisis pregnancy situations.” She claimed that because scientific evidence proves that abortion is murder, “I have no choice but to defend the most vulnerable among us.”

Here I will again link to Dennis Prager’s article that bears on this whole discussion and hashing it out rationally and responsibly instead of using invectives to rebuff some perceived sexism or racism or some other label.

A lot of progressive liberals do not know what they mandate as legal often times, in our day and age many have to see video to know what Obama fought against banning and Clinton legalized as one of his first actions as President. One woman saw the video without realizing what she saw (this GRAPHIC video will be at the end) and describes her emotions.

1997: Obama opposed bill preventing partial-birth abortion

In 1997, Obama voted in the Illinois Senate against SB 230, a bill designed to prevent partial-birth abortions. In the US Senate, Obama has consistently voted to expand embryonic stem cell research. He has voted against requiring minors who get out-of-state abortions to notify their parents. The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) gives Obama a 100% score on his pro-choice voting record in the Senate for 2005, 2006, and 2007.

Obama opposed legislation protecting born-alive failed abortions

Obama has consistently refused to support legislation that would define an infant who survives a late-term induced-labor abortion as a human being with the right to live. He insists that no restriction must ever be placed on the right of a mother to decide to abort her child.

On March 30, 2001, Obama was the only Illinois senator who rose to speak against a bill that would have protected babies who survived late term labor-induced abortion. Obama rose to object that if the bill passed, and a nine-month-old fetus survived a late-term labor-induced abortion was deemed to be a person who had a right to live, then the law would “forbid abortions to take place.” Obama further explained the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not allow somebody to kill a child, so if the law deemed a child who survived a late-term labor-induced abortion had a right to live, “then this would be an anti-abortion statute.”

…Within the next year and half, the claims above were bluntly discredited by abortion providers:

  • Ronald Fitzsimmons, the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, told the New York Times and American Medical News that he “lied through [his] teeth” when he appeared on Nightline because he was afraid that the truth would erode public support for abortion. Disowning his previous statements, he stated that partial-birth abortions are “primarily done on healthy women and healthy fetuses….”
  • Two doctors at a New Jersey abortion clinic spoke with a North Jersey newspaper under condition of anonymity. Both independently stated that their clinic was performing roughly 1,500 partial-birth abortions per year, most of which are elective and not for medical reasons….

(Life News)

Again, here is the video… if you cannot handle a GRAPHIC MEDICAL PROCEDURE ending a HUMAN’s life that most Democrats want to legalize, then do not watch what it means to be a part of the PARTY OF DEATH! The first video is merely a presentation of the procedure in a medical class, the second is the procedure in real life.

The reader may want to familiarize themselves with Planned Parenthood and their founder, Margaret Sanger.