2. His spiritual mentor for 20 years has been Jeremiah Wright whom Obama personally chose out of many Chicago pastors. It strains credibility that he didn’t know about Wright’s views. He listened to tapes of Rev. Wright when he was at Harvard Law! So why did he choose him and stick with him for so long? The only possible explanation is that he approved of Wright’s tirades.
4. He is a target for assassination, not because he is black but because he is a Muslim apostate, according to devout Muslims around the world. Therefore, he cannot be a good Chief Diplomat to the Middle East.
6. His economic plan will harm the US economy and create more fiscal irresponsibility with the Congressional Budget. Why do we want to return to the days of Jimmy Carter?
7. He is in favor of unilateral disarmament, leaving America defenseless against its enemies.
8. He is unaccomplished. He hasn’t really done anything of worth relative to the office of the US presidency. He’s only been in the Senate for about two years (assumed in office Jan of 2005 and announced his candidacy for the presidency in Feb 2007). One can’t be simultaneously a full-time senator and a full-time presidential candidate. Soon he will have campaigned for almost as long as he has been in the Senate.
9. He is willing to personally meet with hostile dictators like Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad with no preconditions. They don’t deserve such a privilege of meeting the President of the USA. Reagan negotiated from a position of strength, when he thought he could gain something. What does Obama hope to gain?
Sen. Barack Obama (D.-Ill.) portrays himself as a thoughtful Democrat who carefully considers both sides of controversial issues, but his radical stance on abortion puts him further left on that issue than even NARAL Pro-Choice America.
In 2002, as an Illinois legislator, Obama voted against the Induced Infant Liability Act, which would have protected babies that survived late-term abortions. That same year a similar federal law, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, was signed by President Bush. Only 15 members of the U.S. House opposed it, and it passed the Senate unanimously on a voice vote.
Both the Illinois and the federal bill sought equal treatment for babies who survived premature inducement for the purpose of abortion and wanted babies who were born prematurely and given live-saving medical attention.
When the federal bill was being debated, NARAL Pro-Choice America released a statement that said, “Consistent with our position last year, NARAL does not oppose passage of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act … floor debate served to clarify the bill’s intent and assure us that it is not targeted at Roe v. Wade or a woman’s right to choose.”
But Obama voted against this bill in the Illinois senate and killed it in committee. Twice, the Induced Infant Liability Act came up in the Judiciary Committee on which he served. At its first reading he voted “present.” At the second he voted “no.”
The bill was then referred to the senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, which Obama chaired after the Illinois Senate went Democratic in 2003. As chairman, he never called the bill up for a vote.
Jill Stanek, a registered delivery-ward nurse who was the prime mover behind the legislation after she witnessed aborted babies’ being born alive and left to die, testified twice before Obama in support of the Induced Infant Liability Act bills. She also testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
Stanek told me her testimony “did not faze” Obama.
In the second hearing, Stanek said, “I brought pictures in and presented them to the committee of very premature babies from my neonatal resuscitation book from the American Pediatric Association, trying to show them unwanted babies were being cast aside. Babies the same age were being treated if they were wanted!”
“And those pictures didn’t faze him [Obama] at all,” she said.
At the end of the hearing, according to the official records of the Illinois State senate, Obama thanked Stanek for being “very clear and forthright,” but said his concern was that Stanek had suggested “doctors really don’t care about children who are being born with a reasonable prospect of life because they are so locked into their pro-abortion views that they would watch an infant that is viable die.” He told her, “That may be your assessment, and I don’t see any evidence of that. What we are doing here is to create one more burden on a woman and I can’t support that.”
As a senator, Obama has opposed measures to criminalize those who transport minors across state lines for the purpose of obtaining an abortion.
At a townhall meeting in Ottawa, Ill., Joanne Resendiz, a teacher and mother of five, asked him: “How are you going to vote on this, keeping in mind that 10, 15 years down the line your daughters, God forbid, could be transported across state lines?”
Obama said: “The decision generally is one that a woman should make.”
The American people will not reject abortion until they can see what it is. So go ahead. See what an abortion really is from a purely empirical perspective. The first two methods are the most common.
A Suction Abortion
“When we do a suction curettage abortion, you know, roughly one of three things is going to happen during the abortion. One would be that the catheter as it approaches the fetus, you know, tears it and kills it at that instant inside the uterus. The second would be that the fetus is small enough and the catheter is large enough that the fetus passes through the catheter and either dies in transit as it’s passing through the catheter or dies in the suction bottle after it’s actually all the way out.” (Sworn testimony given in US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison, WI, May 27, 1999, Case No. 98-C-0305-S), by Dr. Martin Haskell, an abortionist. He describes legal activity.)
Question: Can the heart of a fetus or embryo still be beating during a suction curettage abortion as the fetus or embryo comes down the cannula? Answer: For a few seconds to a minute, yes.
(Sworn testimony given in US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison, WI, May 27, 1999, Case No. 98-C-0305-S), by Dr. Harlan Raymond Giles, an abortionist. He describes legal activity.)
A Dismemberment Abortion (aka D&E)
“The procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because the fetal tissues become much more cohesive and difficult to dismember. This problem is accentuated by the fact that the fetal pelvis may be as much as 5cm in width. The calvaria [head] is no longer the principal problem; it can be collapsed. Other structures, such as the pelvis, present more difficulty….A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus…” (From the medical textbook Abortion Practice – Dr. Warren Hern, p.154)
“The doctor grips a fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely re-moved.” (US Supreme Court, Gonzales vs. Carhart, April 18, 2007, describing the D&E procedure).
“Let’s just say for instance we took a different view, a different tact and we left the leg in the uterus just to dismember it. Well, we’d probably have to dismember it at several different levels because we don’t have firm control over it, so we would attack the lower part of the lower extremity first, remove, you know, possibly a foot, then the lower leg at the knee and then finally we get to the hip.”
“And typically when the abortion procedure is started we typically know that the fetus is still alive because either we can feel it move as we’re making our initial grasps or if we’re using some ultrasound visualization when we actually see a heartbeat as we’re starting the procedure. It’s not unusual at the start of D&E procedures that a limb is acquired first and that that limb is brought through the cervix and even out of the vagina prior to disarticulation and prior to anything having been done that would have caused the fetal demise up to that point.”
“When you’re doing a dismemberment D&E, usually the last part to be removed is the skull itself and it’s floating free inside the uterine cavity…So it’s rather like a ping-pong ball floating around and the surgeon is using his forcep to reach up to try to grasp something that’s freely floating around and is quite large relative to the forcep we’re using. So typically there’s several misdirections, misattempts to grasp. Finally at some point either the instruments are managed to be place around the skull or a nip is made out of some area of the skull that allows it to start to decompress. And then once that happens typically the skull is brought out in fragments rather than as a unified piece…” (Sworn testimony given in US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison, WI, May 27, 1999, Case No. 98-C-0305-S), by Dr. Martin Haskell, an abortionist. He describes legal activity.)
In a previous post, I pointed out Noriega’s shameless attempt to deceive Texans. He is starting to feel the heat from this reckless ploy.
It looks like the Cornyn campaign is driving home the point about the necessity of transferability of unused benefits to military spouses and children. Good for him.
Will Noriega finally stop stonewalling and “answer the call” to support this improved G.I. Bill?
“My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived,” quipped John Adams of the vice presidency over 200 years ago.
Not much has changed since the late 1700s (Dick Cheney is quite an anomaly historically), but the VP slot is surely more important the older the presidential nominee is. Thus, more so than Barack Obama, John McCain had better choose well his VP and that choice should be Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a real up-and-comer in the party.
Why? First of all, the guy can talk. Just look him up on YouTube and listen for yourself. Jindal speaks quickly and powerfully on his feet. His is not the fluffy eloquence of a pre-packaged Obama speech, but he can do that too. He is just the kind of talent the McCain camp is going to need if it is to exploit the hypnotic change-mania that has gripped much of the country.
If there was ever a state that needed change, it is Louisiana, and he has capitalized on the change rhetoric in his own campaigns. “I suspect that some of those who oppose making big changes in Louisiana government will try to mount a counter-offensive…. But before we can change the direction of our state, we all have to change our current mindset. We have to defeat cynicism…. We can change. We must change. We will change…. [C]hange is not just on the way: Change begins tonight!” declared Jindal upon claiming victory for the governorship.
Next, McCain can’t win the election without a better outreach to the conservative base, and he has done a poor job thus far. If anybody can excite the base and get them out to the polls for McCain, Jindal is the one to do it. He has a 100% pro-life voting record and an “A” from Gun Owners of America. He campaigned for governor on cutting taxes among other issues. Rush Limbaugh has gone so far as to call him “the next Ronald Reagan.” The battle against Obama for independents will be formidable, so finding a way to win over staunch conservatives is a must.
At 37, Jindal is even younger than Obama by about a decade (helping McCain diffuse the age issue) yet has a much longer and more impressive resume than the Democratic nominee. Brace yourself for a deluge of experience: He graduated with honors from Brown University in biology and public policy and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford who turned down admission to medical and law schools at both Harvard and Yale. At McKinsey and Company, Jindal consulted Fortune 500 companies. Two years later he was appointed the Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals and another two years later appointed Executive Director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare. Jindal’s particular background in health care, which is sure to be an important issue this election, couldn’t be more timely.
From there he went on to serve as the president of the University of Louisiana System and then the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in 2001. Only then did he begin a career as an elected representative to Congress serving two terms and winning his reelection with an incredible 88% of the vote! As governor of Louisiana, his approval ratings have reached as high as a whopping 77%.
And to top it off, no matter how hard we try to ignore it, race will likely be an issue in the presidential campaign. It can only help to have a person of color on the Republican ticket when campaigning against an historic opponent, an African American. Don’t expect much of a shift in the black vote, but it will be much easier to deflect the perennial accusations of Republican racism with an Indian-American at McCain’s side.
In short, Jindal is the youthful, articulate, reforming, conservative, and accomplished rock star that the Republican Party desperately needs in the fight against the predicted blue political tide this November and in the effort to bring the party itself back to its winning principles.
Dobson is right about Obama distorting biblical teaching. Hopefully, every Christian will recognize this.
At the same time though, I can’t help but laugh ironically at conservative Protestants like Dobson who try to argue with liberal Protestants like Obama based on the “traditional understanding of the Bible.” Tradition?! What happened to sola Scriptura? Surely, Obama can read the Bible for himself and reach a correct conclusion inspired by the Holy Spirit and by his own private judgment and reason, no? Seems like an arbitrary appeal to obedience to tradition when it suits one’s own personal preferences. Obama and his church embody the real and deep divisions within Christianity that were created by Protestantism and sola Scriptura.
Dobson is right, but his own theology leaves him helpless to combat the false doctrines and interpretations of Obama. When will Protestants realize that sola Scriptura inexorably leads to theological relativism which in turn leads to moral relativism which in turn strengthens liberalism and corrupts American politics?
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – As Barack Obama broadens his outreach to evangelical voters, one of the movement’s biggest names, James Dobson, accuses the likely Democratic presidential nominee of distorting the Bible and pushing a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution.
The criticism, to be aired Tuesday on Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio program, comes shortly after an Obama aide suggested a meeting at the organization’s headquarters here, said Tom Minnery, senior vice president for government and public policy at Focus on the Family.
The conservative Christian group provided The Associated Press with an advance copy of the pre-taped radio segment, which runs 18 minutes and highlights excerpts of a speech Obama gave in June 2006 to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal. Obama mentions Dobson in the speech.
“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teachin the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” referring to the civil rights leader.
Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy – chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”
“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.
Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.
“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.
“… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”
At the recent Republican Party of Texas Convention, Senator John Cornyn and his campaign showed a great video. Sure, it is slightly cheesy and over-the-top, but it was meant to be and that’s what makes it so fun. The idea itself is very clever and helps convey what a great, conservative leader Cornyn has been in the Senate.
Strong and repeated evidence indicates that the regular practice of religion has beneficial effects in nearly every aspect of social concern and policy. This evidence shows that religious practice protects against social disorder and dysfunction.
Specifically, the available data clearly indicate that religious belief and practice are associated with:
* Higher levels of marital happiness and stability;
* Stronger parent-child relationships;
* Greater educational aspirations and attainment, especially among the poor;
* Higher levels of good work habits;
* Greater longevity and physical health;
* Higher levels of well-being and happiness;
* Higher recovery rates from addictions to alcohol or drugs;
* Higher levels of self-control, self-esteem, and coping skills;
* Higher rates of charitable donations and volunteering; and
* Higher levels of community cohesion and social support for those in need.
The evidence further demonstrates that religious belief and practice are also associated with:
* Lower divorce rates:
* Lower cohabitation rates;
* Lower rates of out-of-wedlock births;
* Lower levels of teen sexual activity;
* Less abuse of alcohol and drugs;
* Lower rates of suicide, depression, and suicide ideation;
* Lower levels of many infectious diseases;
* Less juvenile crime;
* Less violent crime; and
* Less domestic violence.
No other dimension of life in America-with the exception of stable marriages and families, which in turn are strongly tied to religious practice-does more to promote the well-being and soundness of the nation’s civil society than citizens’ religious observance. As George Washington asserted, the success of the Republic depends on the practice of religion by its citizens. These findings from 21st century social science support his observation.
Well, well, looks like liberals actually do believe in the existence of something called obscenity. No, it’s not pornography. It’s not government financial support for disgusting and sacrilegious art. It’s not any of the vulgarities that characterize modern culture.
Profits and salaries are obscene! Of course! Money is obscene! How could we conservatives be so blind? Sure, one can know obscenity when one sees it.
The fact of the matter is that it is not any of government’s business how much profit any business makes, regardless of size and productive capacity. If workers at a certain company feel that they are not compensated enough or that their superiors are excessively compensated at their expense, then they are free to quit and seek another job where their talents are more justly compensated.
You see, the market works. It rewards companies that allocate their profits where such funds are most needed and deserved. A company headed by a CEO who takes a larger salary than is necessary or just is only hurting himself and his company. He is taking away funds that could be reinvested in the company to increase future earnings and maintain a competitive advantage over other firms. He is also driving good and talented people, human capital, away to other companies who will more justly compensate such people. Or at the very least (or worst?), the CEO is creating justified bitterness and complaining among employees who feel they are not receiving their fair share. This corporate cultural disruption can only hinder productivity and competitiveness.
The capitalist system works. We don’t need government stepping in and creating unintended problems.
But what unintended problems? asks the naive liberal and statolatrist.
Glad you asked. Wealth creation (before it can even be distributed) is really a product of reinvestment of profits. The most successful and wealthy corporations reinvest their profits in human, technological, and various other kinds of capital. Thus the corporation uses its money to make even more money for all its stakeholders! Wealth grows at a rapid rate with such freedom to make wise investment choices.
Now what do you think happens when the government comes along and confiscates “obscene” or “windfall” profits from corporations? It stifles this wealth-creating reinvestment! It puts these corporations at a competitive disadvantage nationally and globally. Ultimately, it hurts the working man who depends upon the success of his employers and their ability to reinvest in him and his productivity.
What makes you think the government can more effectively reinvest the profits of companies within a particular industry or generally throughout the economy?!
You think that politician in D.C. knows anything about creating, marketing, and distributing a product or service? Hate to break it to you, but most of those politicians graduated from law school, not business school or the school of hard knocks. They are mostly lawyers who are talented in using the law to coerce others and steal the fruits of their labor. They are skilled in marketing of a certain kind (read: demagoguery), but they have no know-how in producing any great physical product. I’d like to see Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and other liberals get oil out of the ground, refine it, and then distribute it worldwide! Last time I checked, they weren’t petrochemical engineers of the caliber that Texas A&M produces.
“My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived,” quipped John Adams of the vice presidency over 200 years ago.
Conservative Colloquium 