The Progressive, September 1980. Abortion: The Left has betrayed the sanctity of life many liberals and radicals accepted this view without further question. Perhaps many did know that an eight-week-old fetus has a fully human form. They did not ask whether American slaveholders before the Civil War were right in viewing blacks as less than human and private property; or whether the Nazis were correct in viewing mental patients, Jews, and Gypsies as less human and therefore subject to final solution.

The abortion issue, more than most, illustrates the occasional tendency of the Left to become so enthusiastic over what is called a "reform" that it forgets to think the issue through. It is ironic that so many on the Left have done on abortion what the conservatives and Cold War liberals did on Vietnam: They marched off in the wrong direction, to fight the wrong war, against the wrong people.
Some of us who went through the anti-war struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s are now active in the right-to-life movement. We do not enjoy opposing our old friends on the abortion issue, but we feel that we have no choice. We are moved by what pro-life feminists call the "consistency thing" -- the belief that respect for human life demands opposition to abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, and war. We don't think we have either the luxury or the right to choose some types of killing and say that they are all right, while others are not. A human life is a human life; and if equality means anything, it means that society may not value some human lives over others.
Until the last decade, people on the Left and Right generally agreed on one rule: We all protected the young. This was not merely agreement on an ethical question: It was also an expression of instinct, so deep and ancient that it scarcely required explanation.
Protection of the young included protection of the unborn, for abortion was forbidden by state laws throughout the United States. Those laws reflected an ethical consensus, not based solely on religious tradition but also on scientific evidence that human life begins at conception. The prohibition of abortion in the ancient Hippocratic Oath is well known. Less familiar to many is the Oath of Geneva, formulated by the World Medical Association in 1948, which included these words: "I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception." A Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1959, declared that "the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth."
It is not my purpose to explain why courts and parliaments in many nations rejected this tradition over the past few decades, though I suspect their action was largely a surrender to technical achievement -- if such inventions as suction aspirators can be called technical achievements. But it is important to ask why the Left in the United States generally accepted legalized abortion.

One factor was the popular civil libertarian rationale for freedom of choice in abortion. Many feminists presented it as a right of women to control their own bodies. When the objection was raised that abortion ruins another person's body, they respond that a) it is not a body, just a "blob of protoplasm" (thereby displaying ignorance of biology); or b) it is not really a "person" until it is born. When it was suggested that this is a wholly arbitrary decision, unsupported by any biology evidence, they said, "Well, that's your point of view. This is a matter of individual conscience, and in a pluralistic society people must be free to follow their consciences."

Unfortunately, many liberals and radicals accepted this view without further question. Perhaps many did know that an eight-week-old fetus has a fully human form. They did not ask whether American slaveholders before the Civil War were right in viewing blacks as less than human and private property; or whether the Nazis were correct in viewing mental patients, Jews, and Gypsies as less human and therefore subject to final solution.
 
 
Class issues provided another rationale. In the late 1960s, liberals were troubled by evidence that rich women could obtain abortions regardless of the law, by going to careful society doctors or countries where abortion was legal. Why, they asked, should poor women be barred from something the wealthy could have? One might turn this argument on its head by asking why rich children should be denied protection that poor children have.

But pro-life activists did not want abortion to be a class issue one way the other; they wanted to end abortion everywhere, for all classes. And many people who had experienced poverty did not think providing legal abortion was any favor to poor women. Thus; 1972, when a Presidential commission on population growth recommended legalized abortion, partly to remove discrimination against poor women, several commission members dissented.


One was Graciela Olivarez, a Chicana was active in civil rights and anti-poverty work. Olivarez, who later was named to head the Federal Government's Community Services Administration, had known poverty in her youth in the Southwest. With a touch of bitterness, she said in her dissent, "The poor cry out for justice and equality and we respond with legalized abortion." Olivarez noted that blacks and Chicanos had often been unwanted by white society. She added, "I believe that in a society that permits the life of even one individual (born or unborn) to be dependent on whether that life is ?wanted' or not, all citizens stand in danger." Later she told the press, "We do not have equal opportunities. Abortion is a cruel way out."
Many liberals were also persuaded by a church/state argument that followed roughly this line: "Opposition to abortion is a religious viewpoint, particularly a Catholic viewpoint. The Catholics have no business imposing their religious views on the rest of us." It is true that opposition to abortion is a religious position for many people. Orthodox Jews, Mormons, and many of the fundamentalist Protestant groups also oppose abortion. (So did the mainstream Protestant churches until recent years.) But many people are against abortion for reasons that are independent of religious authority or belief. Many would still be against abortion if they lost their faith; others are opposed to it after they have lost faith, or if they never had any faith. Only if their non-religious grounds for opposition can be proven baseless should legal prohibition of abortion fairly be called an establishment of religion.

The pro-abortion forces concentrate heavily on religious arguments against abortion and generally ignore the secular arguments -- possibly because they cannot answer them.

Still another, more emotional reason is that so many conservatives oppose abortion. Many liberals have difficulty accepting the idea that Jesse Helms can be right about anything. I do not quite understand this attitude. Just by the law of averages, he has to be right about something, sometime. Standing at the March for Life rally at the U.S. Capitol last year, and hearing Senator Helms say that "We reject the philosophy that life should be only for the planned, the perfect, or the privileged," I thought he was making a good civil-rights statement.

If much of the leadership of the pro-life movement is right-wing, that is due largely to the default of the Left. We "little people" who marched against the war and now march against abortion would like to see leaders of the Left speaking out on behalf of the unborn. But we see only a few, such as Dick Gregory, Mark Hatfield, Jesse Jackson, Richard Neuhaus, Mary Rose Oakar. Most of the others either avoid the issue or support abortion. We are dismayed by their inconsistency. And we are not impressed by arguments that we should work and vote for them because they are good on such issues as food stamps and medical care.

Although many liberals and radicals accepted legalized abortion, there are signs of uneasiness about it. Tell someone who supports it that you have many problems with the issue, and she is likely to say, quickly, "Oh, I don't think I could ever have one myself, but . . . ." or "I'm really not pro-abortion; I'm pro-choice" or "I'm personally opposed to it, but . . . ."
Why are they personally opposed to it if there is nothing wrong with it?

Perhaps such uneasiness is a sign that many on, the Left are ready to take another look at the abortion issue. In the hope of contributing toward a new perspective, I offer the following points:

First, it is out of character for the Left to neglect the weak and helpless. The traditional mark of the Left has been its protection of the underdog, the weak, and the poor. The unborn child is the most helpless form of humanity, even more in need of protection than the poor tenant farmer or the mental patient or the boat people on the high seas. The basic instinct of the Left is to aid those who cannot aid themselves -- and that instinct is absolutely sound. It is what keeps the human proposition going.

Second, the right to life underlies and sustains every other right we have. It is, as Thomas Jefferson and his friends said, self-evident. Logically, as well as in our Declaration of Independence, it comes before the right to liberty and the right to property. The right to exist, to be free from assault by others, is the basis of equality. Without it, the other rights are meaningless, and life becomes a sort of warfare in which force decides everything. There is no equality, because one person's convenience takes precedence over another's life, provided only that the first person has more power. If we do not protect this right for everyone, it is not guaranteed for everyone, because anyone can become weak and vulnerable to assault.

Third, abortion is a civil-rights issue. Dick Gregory and many other blacks view abortion as a type of genocide. Confirmation of this comes in the experience of pro-life activists who find open bigotry when they speak with white voters about public funding of abortion.

Many white voters believe abortion is a solution for the welfare problem and a way to slow the growth of the black population. I worked two years ago for a liberal, pro-life candidate who was appalled by the number of anti-black comments he found when discussing the issue.

And Representative Robert Dornan of California, a conservative pro-life leader, once told his colleagues in the House, "I have heard many rock-ribbed Republicans brag about how fiscally conservative they are and then tell me that I was an idiot on the abortion issue." When he asked why, said Dornan, they whispered, "Because we have to hold them down, we have to stop the population growth." Dornan elaborated: "To them, population growth means blacks, Puerto Ricans, or other Latins," or anyone who "should not be having more than a polite one or two `burdens on society.' "

Fourth, abortion exploits women. Many women are pressured by spouses, lovers, or parents into having abortions they do not want. Sometimes the coercion is subtle, as when a husband complains of financial problems. Sometimes it is open and crude, as when a boyfriend threatens to end the affair unless the woman has an abortion, or when parents order a minor child to have an abortion. Pro-life activists who do "clinic counseling" (standing outside abortion clinics, trying to speak to each woman who enters, urging her to have the child) report that many women who enter clinics alone are willing to talk and to listen. Some change their minds and decide against abortion.

But a woman who is accompanied by someone else often does not have the chance to talk, because the husband or boyfriend or parent is so hostile to the pro-life worker.

Juli Loesch, a feminist/pacifist writer, notes that feminists want to have men participate more in the care of children, but abortion allows a man to shift total responsibility to the woman: "He can buy his way out of accountability by making `The Offer' for `The Procedure.' " She adds that the man's sexual role "then implies-exactly nothing: no relationship. How quickly a `woman's right to choose' comes to serve a `man's right to use.?" And Daphne de Jong, a New Zealand feminist, says, "If women must submit to abortion to preserve their lifestyle or career, their economic or social status, they are pandering to a system devised and run by men for male convenience." She adds, "Of all the things which are done to women to fit them into a society dominated by men, abortion is the most violent invasion of their physical and psychic integrity. It is a deeper and more destructive assault than rape . . . .
"
Loesch, de Jong, Olivarez, and other pro-life feminists believe men should bear a much greater share of the burdens of child-rearing than they do at present. And de Jong makes a radical point when she says, "Accepting short-term solutions like abortion only delays the implementation of real reforms like decent maternity and paternity leaves, job protection, high-quality child care, community responsibility for dependent people of all ages, and recognition of the economic contribution of child-minders." Olivarez and others have also called for the development of safer and more effective contraceptives for both men and women. In her 1972 dissent, Olivarez noted with irony that "medical science has developed four differ ways for killing a fetus, but has not "developed a safe-for-all-to-use contraceptive."
 
 
Fifth, abortion is an escape from an obligation that is owed to another. Doris Gordon, Coordinator of Libertarians for Life, puts it this way: "Unborn children don't cause women to become pregnant but parents cause their children to be in the womb, and as a result, they need parental care. As a general principle, if we are the cause of another's need for care, as when we cause an accident, we acquire an obligation to that person a result .... We have no right to kill order to terminate any obligation."

Sixth, abortion brutalizes those who perform it, undergo it, pay for it, profit from it, and allow it to happen. Too many of us look the other way because we do not want to think about abortion. A part of reality is blocked out because one does not want to see broken bodies coming home, or going to an incinerator, in those awful plastic bags. People deny their own humanity when they refuse to identify with, or even knowledge, the pain of others.

With some it is worse: They are making money from the misery others, from exploited women and dead children. Doctors, business and clinic directors are making a great deal of money from abortion. Jobs and high incomes depend on abortion; it?s part of the gross national product. The parallels of this with the military industrial complex should be obvious to anyone who was involved in the war movement.

And the "slippery slope" argument is right: People really do go from accepting abortion to accepting euthanasia and accepting "triage" for the hunger problem and accepting "lifeboat ethics" as a general guide to human behavior. We slip down the slope back to the jungle.

To save the smallest children, save its own conscience, the Left should speak out against abortion.

Abortion - A Liberal Cause? Margaret Sanger searching for a way to prevent colored races from reproducing Not only is the founding of the abortion rights movement anti-liberal, but it may have been an attempt to promote racial genocide.

Abortion has been numbered among the liberal causes of modern politics. Abortion is identified with women's rights just as the Civil Rights Movement was identified with equal rights for African Americans and other minorities. But is abortion really a liberal cause? A careful examination of the history of the abortion rights movement would shock even the most ardent defender of a woman's right to choose. The founders of the movement were in fact racists who despised the poor and who were searching for a way to prevent colored races from reproducing.

 Rather than defending the rights of the poorest of the poor, which is the tradition of liberalism, the founders advocated abortion as a means of eliminating the poor; especially Blacks, Jews, Slavs, and Italians. And rather than desiring to help the poor through welfare programs, they wanted to eliminate all charities and government aid. Today, most liberals would be shocked to know of this racist heritage. Not only is the founding of the abortion rights movement anti-liberal, but it may have been an attempt to promote racial genocide.

The modern day abortion rights movement began as the American Birth Control League in 1921. Among its founding board members were Margaret Sanger, Lothrup Stoddard, and C. C. Little. The latter two people were known for their racist views, but Margaret Sanger continually shows up in the company of other racists. In fact, she was the guest speaker at a Ku Klux Klan rally in Silverlake, N. J. in 1926.[1] Not only did she not disassociate herself from these racist views, her own writings leave little doubt as to her sympathies. In implementing a plan called the "Negro Project," that was designed to sterilize Blacks and reduce the number of Black children being born in the south, Sanger wrote:

"[We propose to] hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." [2]
Sanger also viewed welfare as a detriment to society because it increased the number of poor blacks and foreigners. "Organized charity (modern welfare) is the symptom of a malignant social disease, increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents, and dependents. My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the 'failure' of philanthropy, but rather at its success."[3] The urban poor, and their increasing numbers, she called, "an ever widening margin of biological waste."[4] Welfare, she believed, encouraged the breeding of the poor, or "human waste," as she called them. She feared that welfare would encourage the urban poor by having them give birth to those "stocks that are the most detrimental to the future of the race"[5] Therefore, she believed that the government should actively encourage the sterilization of those who are unfit to propagate the race, using as her motto: "More [children] from the fit, less from the unfit."[6]
 
No modern day liberal would dare question the need for some form of government aid to the poor. But Margaret Sanger wanted more for the privileged and less for the poor. How did someone who was so obviously biased and lacking in compassion become the heroine of todays liberals? It is a strange reversal of political direction. It is as if the Democratic Party suddenly turned around and supported David Duke for Supreme Court Justice.

Margaret Sanger also continued to advocate for her racial prejudices in her magazine, Birth Control Review. In six successive issues of that magazine, she advocated limiting the racial quotas of immigration of "Slavs, Hebrews, and Latins,"[7] because of their lower intelligence! Although Ms. Sanger was the editor of the magazine, she shared its pages with the racist co-founders of the American Birth Control League. Board member Lothrup Stoddard wrote the racist book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy [8], which was reviewed favorably in Birth Control Review.[9] Co-founder and board member, C. C. Little, was president of the Third Race Betterment Conference, and he advocated preserving the purity of "Yankee stock" through limiting the births of non-Whites.[10]
 
Margaret Sanger was also strongly anti-Semitic. She started a similar birth control organization with a man named Henry Pratt Fairchild, who wrote The Melting Pot Mistake, in which he accused "the Jews" of diluting the true American stock.[11] In his book, Race and Nationality, (1947), Fairchild blamed anti-Semitism and the holocaust in part on "the Jews."[12].

Finally, Margaret Sanger and her organization began to be primary sponsors of abortion rights during her lifetime. But because she had associated herself with Adolph Hitler, praising him for his racial politics of eugenics, she changed the name of American Birth Control League to Planned Parenthood during WWII in order to disguise her racist past.[13] Today, her organization, Planned Parenthood, is still in the forefront of advocating abortion as a means of eliminating the unwanted and "unfit." Not only does the organization perform thousands abortions each year, it also receives 100's of millions of tax dollars each year through Federal and State Governments.[14] And rather than being in the forefront of a woman's right to choose, International Planned Parenthood is a primary advocate for the Chinese Government's policy of forcing women to have abortions against their will, and it also advocates for the sterilization of Third World non-Whites across the globe.[15] It seems that PP is "pro-choice" when trying to impress the U.S. media, but anti-choice in the actual implementation of its world-wide agenda.

But has Planned Parenthood changed? It is significant to note that Planned Parenthood has never distanced itself from the vision and ideology of its founder. Successive presidents of the organization have praised her work, including Faye Wattleton, who said, "As we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our courageous leader, we should be very proud of what we are and what our mission is. It is a very grand mission; abortion is only the tip of the iceberg."[16]
 
One can only wonder how abortion rights came to be adopted by liberals in the Democratic Party, or any other party. It is difficult to image how it came to be identified with other liberal causes. Through a slick media campaign and effective sloganeering, Planned Parenthood painted abortion as a compassionate and caring alternative to childbirth. Their motivation however may be altogether different. It seems that abortion still today, rather than being seen as a way of helping the poor and minorities, is considered the easiest solution for our economic problems. Don't help the poor, just eliminate them.

Jeff Peterson writes for the Scholars' Corner and is the author of "Pardoned or Paroled?" from Isaiah House Publishing.

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Footnotes:

• 1) Emily Taft Douglas, Margaret Sanger; Pioneer of the Future, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, N.Y., 1970, p. 192.
• 2) Margaret Sanger, letter to Clarence Gamble, Oct. 19,1939. - Sanger manuscripts, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.
• 3) Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, Brentano's, N.Y., 1922, p.108.
• 4) Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, p.134.
• 5) Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, pp. 116-117.
• 6) Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization, p.104 & 179.
• 7) Birth Control Review article:"Racial Quotas in Immigration," Margaret Sanger, editor, Aug. 1920, pp. 9-10. Article continues in next 5 issues.
• 8) Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, Grossman,N.Y., 1976, p. 283.
• 9) Birth Control Review, Margaret Sanger, editor, Oct. 1920.
• 10) Gordon, Woman's Body, p. 283.
• 11) Fairchild, The Melting Pot Mistake, 1926, pp. 212 ff.
• 12) Fairchild, Race and Nationality, 1947, pp. 137-161, esp. p.147.
• 13) Gordon, Woman's Body, p. 347.
• 14) Based on 1984 figures compiled by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, Issues in Brief, 4:1 (March, 1984).
• 15) Planned Parenthood Review, 5:1 (Winter 1984/85) & 2:4 (Winter 1982), p. 16. Report of the Working Group on the Promotion of Family Planning as a Basic Human Right, International Planned Parenthood Federation, London, 1984, pp. 21-23.
• 16) Faye Wattleton, president Planned Parenthood Federation of America, speech, February 5, 1979.
  
  
  

Washington hoards government jobs to maximize pain of ‘shutdown.

The nation’s capital has managed to spare itself many of the supposed troubles of the partial government shutdown.

More than 661 Park Service police, a fifth of the 3,266 employees nationwide deemed essential, are currently on duty in Washington, D.C. alone, according to a copy of the shutdown contingency plan leaked to The Daily Caller.

The preponderance of D.C.-based park police makes some sense given that the capital had a large share of taxpayer-funded sites long before the government spending gap. But the figure raises the question of why that number is not sufficient to maintain access to open-air exhibits and monuments, many of which previously had no guards.

Many national monuments are getting a police presence for the first time in recent memory. The Lincoln Memorial was open 24/7 without overnight staff until the shutdown, according to its website. Since the shutdown a night watchman has been installed. (Related: Seven stupid things the gov’t spent money on during the shutdown)

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, too, was also open 24/7 with no overnight staff, according to its website, but now is fenced off.

This is all apparently part of the plan.  “Day use visitors will be instructed to leave the park immediately as part of Phase 1 closures,” the plan detailed. “Visitors utilizing overnight concession accommodations and campgrounds will be notified to make alternate arrangements and depart the park as part of Phase 2. Wherever possible, park roads will be closed and access will be denied.”

In fact, road authority doesn’t go to the parks but to the Department of Transportation. The language of the closing plan is also instructive: not “wherever possible” but “wherever necessary.”

Signs during the 1995 shutdown apologized for the “inconvenience” but the current shutdown is different. Mass-produced signs like those before the World War II memorial declare, “Because of government SHUTDOWN all national parks are closed.

This isn’t an accident. Joan Anzelmo, a former spokeswoman for Grand Teton National Park told the San Jose Mercury News that shutting down the parks was a tactic used by the White House to turn public opinion against Congress.

“The park closures in 1995 made a tangible difference. The visual of park rangers closing down national parks, closing down the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument — keeping Americans out of these iconic American sites — those visuals were really a strong factor in people understanding what a government shutdown meant. People got mad.”

Many Americans are simply ignoring the ban or committing acts of civil disobedience. A driver removed the barricades at the Yellowstone National Park arch, laid the shutdown sign on the ground and drove right into the park. (Related: Anarchy at Yellowstone: ‘Road Closed’ sign knocked over, thrown aside)

n San Francisco’s Fort Point, cyclists hopped a fence and continued cycling, defying the government warning and threat of a fine.

In D.C., federal playgrounds are also shut down.

Save us from this terrible playground, Obama! #shutdown #MakeDCListen pic.twitter.com/1WC68goSFG

— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) October 3, 2013

The Department of Interior and Park Service did not return a phoned and emailed request for comment, although only fifty people from the Department’s headquarters have been furloughed.

The Park Service is also using taxpayer money to barricade scenic overlooks, another set of resources that typically need no security presence and do not cost anything to maintain.

Although multiple polls indicate most voters blame congressional Republicans for the partial shutdown, there is ample evidence that the Obama administration is trying to maximize the spending gap’s pain to Americans. In addition to the rapid posting of barricades and dissemination of professionally made closure signs, the administration intentionally created a fight with World War II veterans hoping to visit the World War II memorial this week. (Related: Obama admin. knew about WWII veterans’ request and rejected it)

The Obama administration has also gone to great lengths — and at great cost — to close off public areas that had remained accessible to the public during previous shutdowns. (Related: Monuments and memorials remained open during previous shutdown)

The administration’s claims that the Republican move is unprecedented also aren’t accurate. A CNN transcript from 1995 shows a younger and less fat Al Gore calling Newt Gingrich an “extortionist” over the 1995 shutdown.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/04/washington-hoards-government-jobs-to-maximize-pain-of-shutdown/#ixzz2glpakKts

Liberals Going Off the Rails Fearful GOP May Be Winning Argument:

ou can always tell when someone is losing an argument. He or she resorts to personal attacks and outrageous rhetoric. More often than not the tactic works since the general public is used to arguing in the same way.

California Democrat congressman George Miller repeatedly accused his GOP colleagues of waging “jihad” on Americans.

On PoliticsNation, a typical MSNC tirade show, Joe Madison, “The Black Eagle” who can be heard on Sirius Satellite radio, called Rush Limbaugh a “fat ass” for comparing programs like ObamaCare to “drug addiction.”

When you can’t deal with a person’s arguments, denigrate him or her. Look what they tried to do to Sarah Palin because she was connecting with the American people. The media destroyed her (at least they tried to), the same media that are propping up Obama and telling us how intelligent he is.

I know a lot of very intelligent people, many with earned PhDs, and I can assure you that I would not want some of them to run for political office. Intellect does not always lead to good policy decisions, especially when it’s power and control they want.

David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest was published in 1972. “The focus of the book is on the foreign policy crafted by the academics and intellectuals who were in John F. Kennedy’s administration, and the consequences of those policies in Vietnam.” The phrase “the best and the brightest” referred to President Kennedy's “‘whiz kids’ — leaders of industry and academia brought into the Kennedy administration — whom Halberstam characterized as arrogantly insisting on ‘brilliant policies that defied common sense’ . . .”

These so-called intellectuals got us into Vietnam, got more than 58,000 Americans and 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. The iconic scene of people desperately trying to escape by helicopter is a fitting image of what some of the “best and the brightest” can do.

You know Madison is worried since he brings up the issue of race multiple times. It’s always a winner in a losing argument. For the record, Madison is black.

“Let me tell you,” Madison said, “they just can't stand the fact that they've got a very smart, intelligent black man that has out-thought them, out-campaigned them, beat them twice without any controversy.”

He wasn’t finished with the race thing. “So here you have these folks who primarily live in these lily white congressional districts for the most part, and then they're trying to use black vernacular to try to sound like they're hip and that somehow Obama is just too black to be president of the United States.”

Could it not be said that Madison would support any Obama program because the President is black? Other blacks have said as much.

The programs to “help” blacks have been devastating on poor black and white families. Consider these comments from Thomas Sowell. For the record, Sowell is also “a very smart, intelligent black man” given the fact that that he has published 40 books and thousands of articles on numerous topics for more than 40 years:

“There has been much documented racial progress since 1963. But there has also been much retrogression, of which the disintegration of the black family has been central, especially among those at the bottom of the social pyramid.

“Many people — especially politicians and activists — want to take credit for the economic and other advancement of blacks, even though a larger proportion of blacks rose out of poverty in the 20 years before 1960 than in the 20 years afterwards.

“But no one wants to take responsibility for the policies and ideologies that led to the breakup of the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination.”

Dr. Ben Carson, also another black man, has been critical of President Obama’s policies. For his efforts, he was audited by the IRS.

ObamaCare is going to suck the lifeblood out of our nation. Fixing healthcare did not need a 2700-page law and more than 10,000 pages of regulations (so far).

When Henry Waxman (D-CA) was “asked by CNSNews.com whether he had read all 10,535 pages of the final Obamacare regulations that have been published in the Federal Register,” the congressman “asked in return whether it was ‘important’ the he read them, dismissed the inquiry as a ‘propaganda question,’ and did not ultimately answer.”

No one knows what this bloated program will do since almost no elected official has read the law or the regulations.

We don’t know if Americans will be addicted to the new government program like people are addicted to cocaine since not even the people who voted for the program don’t how what’s in it.

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Read more: http://godfatherpolitics.com/12748/liberals-going-rails-fearful-gop-may-winning-argument/#ixzz2gi9JFRpq
Read more at http://godfatherpolitics.com/12748/liberals-going-rails-fearful-gop-may-winning-argument/#IXgz8aWbFaStoESd.99

Ruthless: Obama doing what Clinton NEVER did in '95 shutdown

A government shutdown nearly prevented World War II veterans from visiting the Washington memorial built in their honor, but Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Miss., and several of his colleagues removed the barricades. Their actions allowed the veterans to experience the memorial and instantly made the site a focal point of the shutdown debate.

Palazzo became a leading figure in this debate because an Honor Flight from his home state happened to be planning a visit to the World War II Memorial the morning of Oct. 1. Palazzo told WND he and the rest of the Mississippi delegation routinely meet Honor Flight passengers from their state when they come to Washington. He said it was clear ahead of Tuesday’s scheduled visit that there could be a problem if a government funding compromise could not be reached.

“The concern was will the memorial be open, and we couldn’t answer that,” he said. “So we reached out to the Park Service and Interior. They said, ‘If there’s a shutdown, they will be barricaded and there will be no admittance. So, of course, the government went into a shutdown. We contacted the Park Service again and said, ‘Can you not make an exception for members of the Greatest Generation, our World War II heroes?’ They said, government is shut down, barricades will be up, no admittance.”

“We then wrote a letter to the president, asking him to make an exception for these World War II men and women, many who have waited 50-60 years to see this memorial that was erected in their honor for their courage, for their sacrifices, their commitment and their patriotism to this country. The White House liaison was not cooperative and pretty much stuck to the guns, ‘Hey, what do you expect in a government shutdown?’” he said.

When he learned the Honor Flight had landed and the veterans would not be granted access to the memorial, Palazzo rallied the rest of the Mississippi delegation and recruited other House members to head down the National Mall to meet the vets and thank them for their service to the nation. After arriving, however, it was clear that wouldn’t be enough.

“It was a heartbreaking feeling when these veterans were lined up and what they saw was a steel barricade with a yellow ribbon that said, ‘Police Line Do Not Cross.’ We huddled together, and we just decided to take the matters into our own hands. We physically pushed the barricades back and we allowed the veterans to march in and enjoy their memorial,” Palazzo said.

The congressman said, regardless of the shutdown, open-air memorials that usually remain open to the public at all hours should not be blocked off since no government personnel are needed for people to experience them. Palazzo eventually concluded this challenge was purely political.

“At first, I thought this was a bureaucratic oversight,” he said. “Someone’s not reading the shutdown memo correctly. The more that we worked with these federal agencies, the more we felt like there was definitely petty politics involved in their decision to barricade our veterans from entering their memorial.”

On Wednesday, the same scenario played out with Palazzo playing a supporting role as an Honor Flight from a different state came to see the memorial and even more barricades were in place. This time he watched as lawmakers from the same state as the second group of veterans moved the barriers.

The congressman said the National Park Service will now allow all World War II veterans to see the memorial. The rest of the public will not be given permission to enter. Palazzo said that’s a step in the right direction but not good enough.

“What about our Vietnam veterans? What about our Korean veterans? Are they going to barricade them out as well?” asked Palazzo, noting that the monuments were never blocked off during the 1995 government shutdown.

Some critics of the GOP suggest members like Palazzo only leaped into action to score political points, but he strongly rejects that allegation.

“This is all about the veterans,” he said. “It’s not about us. It’s not about the president. It’s showing our appreciation for them. We tried to bring as little attention to what we were there for, but typically we’re there anyway – when there’s no cameras, there’s no lights – thanking our veterans for their sacrifice, their courage and their service.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/10/lawmaker-obama-still-blocking-heroes-from-memorials/#LgXmDX7gPFKhgbB1.99

House passed measure guaranteeing no default; Reid stripped it out

he next time you hear Democrats shrieking about how irresponsible it is for Republicans to “risk default” on the nation’s debt obligations, know this: Default would be impossible if the Senate passed, and if Obama signed, a House measure that makes debt payments the government’s top priority in the event the debt ceiling is not raised. But they refuse.

The Wall Street Journal:

The McClintock-Toomey bill replicates the guarantees that state constitutions have had for hundreds of years to strengthen investor confidence. It gives the Treasury Secretary discretion to prioritize among other federal obligations until the political deadlock ends, tempers cool and the parties can reach a deal. But it makes his first priority to protect the full faith and credit of the U.S.
Yet instead of embracing thisinsurance against default, Democrats have voted to kill it even as they cry havoc about the risk of default.The House passed McClintock-Toomey in May, but only on a 221 to 207 party-line vote after a raucous debate. The White House issued a formal veto threat, calling it “unwise, unworkable and unacceptably risky.”

House Republicans have continued to press the measure, attaching it to a continuing resolution last week. But Mr. Reid moved to strip it out, and his motion passed the Senate 54 to 44. The Majority Leader denounced McClintock-Toomey as the “Pay China First Act.”

Nice, Harry. You xenophobic jerk.

Obviously Democrats have two objections to this, one substantive and one political. The substantive one is really political too. They live to dole out government goodies to loyal Democratic voting blocs. If the government has to exist solely on tax revenues, and they have to pay their debt service, they can’t possibly find enough money from what’s leftover to make entitlement payments, fund federal programs, pay farmers not to grow food, pay special subsidies to congressional employees to relieve them of the cost of ObamaCare . . . you get the idea. The blatantly political objection is that you can’t launch into hysterics about how your opponents want to default on the debt if you’ve just signed a measure they sponsored preventing that from happening.

Now it’s certainly true that a lot of committed federal spending would go unfunded if the government couldn’t borrow any more money. And yes, that would create a lot of problems for people who have become conditioned to depend on that money. But what does that tell you? It tells you 

that Washington has made a habit of refusing to make choices, instead choosing to simply spend on everything without regard to the reality presented by limited revenues.

Responsible people understand that you can’t say yes to everything, because you don’t have enough money for everything. The federal government sees no reason to operate under such constraints when it can just borrow endlessly and rack up debt. The real reason Democrats are so horrified at the prospect of not having the debtceiling raised is that, for once, it would force them to prioritize and choose. They absolutely do not want to do that.

The debt ceiling is the law of the land too

By the way, the Journal’s James Taranto made a great point about this the other day. Democrats are always insisting that ObamaCare should be untouchable because it’s “the law of the land.” The debt ceiling is the law of the land too. Every time Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling, it essentially repeals the previously set ceiling and demonstrates to all the world that it was never serious about setting a “ceiling” in the first place. If Congress insists that the last ceiling it set needs to stay in place and actually mean something, official Washington goes ballistic.

But it’s the law of the land! And it would also be the law of the land that we won’t default of Democrats would get on board with a Republican measure that ensures what they insist they want. But of course, what they really want is to beat up Republicans about risking the very thing Democrats just might guarantee.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/58315?utm_source=CFP+Mailout&utm_campaign=12a86e63aa-Call_to_Champions&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d8f503f036-12a86e63aa-297703129

Baltimore Superintendent Acknowledges Common Core is a Catastrophe

Robert Small is a prophet.

The Baltimore parent, who was arrestedwhen he questioned his district and state school leaders in violation of meeting rules two weeks ago, tried to warn us that Common Core would be a disaster in Baltimore County.

Baltimore Superintendent Dallas Dance wouldn’t admit it at the time, but he obviously understood the same fact.

So maybe that’s why Small was arrested?

The Baltimore Sun reports that Dance sent a letter this week to teachers, acknowledging the “glitches” in the rollout of Common Core academic standards this fall, saying they would be worked out and that everyone will adjust.

In the letter, he also acknowledged that the development and implementation of the program has been rushed and out of sync.

“We are building the plane as we fly it,” he said, adding, “but let's be clear our passengers are safe.”

That’s the same analogy Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis used for Common Core, and she’s not a big fan of the program.

No one would fly in a plane that isn’t fully constructed or tested before taking off, but that’s exactly what the Gates Foundation, the federal government, Jeb Bush and schools across the country are expecting our students and teachers do to.

Meanwhile, the Sun reports Baltimore County teachers received their Common Core-aligned curriculum just days before the new school year, they’ve had problems accessing necessary materials online and school officials “are still writing” some lessons.

Parent Carmita Vogel said the school district’s “approach to this is shoddy at best.”

“I can feel the high levels of anxiety throughout our organization,” Dance says in the letter, according to Fox 45. “Please know that I understand what is occurring throughout education is indeed challenging...I wanted to make sure that I work with teachers in bringing down that anxiety level around all the initiatives that are in fact taking place.”

Buckle up. If the plane even makes it off the ground, it promises to be a bumpy ride. And rest assured the school employees will put their oxygen masks on first before assisting others.

http://townhall.com/columnists/kyleolson/2013/10/03/baltimore-superintendent-acknowledges-common-core-is-a-catastrophe-n1715226