After the pitifully poor debates in 2012, the Republican debates this time have been refreshingly lively and constructive. And unbelievably, I think the CNN debate tonight was moderated better than the Fox News debate last month. The questions were rattled off quickly and the candidates were able to banter back and forth on the issues.
The down side was the moderators kept trying to engineer attacks between the candidates, usually involving Trump, but mostly the candidates didn't take the bait. There were some lively arguments between Trump and Carly Fiorina, Trump and Bush, Trump and Paul, and some spats between others, but when the debate stalled on Trump and Fiorina's wealth and business success, Chris Christie brought it back in order by saying the debate needed to concentrate on what they were going to do for the middle class and the economy.
Bush had a lot more energy and made a joke about himself and the energizer rabbit which was well received, and Marco Rubio was on fire about foreign policy. Fiorina and Scott Walker also tried to keep the debate on track by attacking Hillary and Obama, but the high point of the evening may have been when Fiorina made an impassioned to defund Planned Parenthood. It received a largest applause of the evening. Huckabee also spoke against Planned Parenthood. Ted Cruz was once again solid, although I don't think his performance was as good as in the first debate. Kasich had the best argument for himself and the economy since he engineered the balanced budget during the Clinton administration. In the end all of them showed themselves to be worthy debaters with strong positions, and most of them probably helped themselves to some degree.
The winner was most likely Carly Fiorina who showed herself to be tough and focused. Her downside may have been that she was too stern, and when she stood up to Trump on his comment about her looks and he gave what would be the closest thing to a Trump apology that anyone could hope for, she refused to look at him or be magnanimous in the least. She looked angry most of the night. She probably also won the sympathy vote when the discussion came to drugs and she told of her son who had died of a drug overdose. Two others who really shined were Christie and Rubio.
The losers ironically I think were the two that are on top of the polls. Trump's self-confidence will probably still take him a long way but his brash, condescension towards other candidates is starting to wear thin. He keeps talking about putting together a plan, but we've yet to hear very much of it, and people are going to grow tired of that eventually. The same is true for Ben Carson in the opposite direction. Yes he's intelligent, and yes he's humble, and yes he's got the right position on about all the issues, but his soft spoken manner is also getting tiring, and I think people are going to want him to speak up and get a little more animated or he isn't going to go far. Rand Paul did better than the last debate but I don't think he made many points.
Scott Walker, although he had good presence and solid answers, and won a dust up with Trump when he said we don't need another apprentice in the White House, was given the least amount of time to talk which couldn't have helped him, although that wouldn't be his fault. It makes you wonder if he's the one the left fears the most.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Planned Parenthood
When I was in the Navy they held a fund raiser every year called the Combined Federal Campaign. Raffle tickets were sold to both enlisted and officers for a number of prizes including TVs, stereos, washing machines, and occasionally a car if you were at a large enough base with a lot of people on board. The officers bought the majority of the tickets to finance the program but the enlisted troops won all the prizes. We all suspected it was rigged because every year one officer would win a coffee pot while all the valuable prizes went to the troops. We didn't mind, it was designed to help them.
Along with the drawing in 1990 a list of hundreds of charitable organizations was handed out that we could choose from if we wished to support any of them by having an amount garnished direct from our paychecks every month. The list had information about the organizations including how much in charitable contributions they received on average annually, and how much of their receipts went to administration and salaries, and how much went to actual charity. When I came across Planned Parenthood I was struck by the fact that 49% of their contributions went to salaries and administration. I was sitting in the Ready Room at our squadron going over the list when I decided to support National Right to Life. Only 13% of their contributions went to salaries and administration, and it was a cause I am strongly in favor of. As I filled out the form somebody asked me what I had chosen and the debate was on.
In my years in the military I found that the vast majority of servicemen and women were generally conservative and voted Republican. Ronald Reagan was very popular. But the conservatism of most of them ended at economics, foreign policy, patriotism and American exceptionalism. Most had a very New Age view of morality, and while they might be respectful of religion (many attended chapel services), they had no biblical conviction on morals. Relative truth ruled the day, and when it came to abortion, most favored "a woman's right to choose."
Any discussion on the right to life would of course include abortion, and the debate that day migrated to Planned Parenthood. I knew about Planned Parenthood. Even in 1990 it was a major abortion provider under the deceitful guise of being a family planning organization. While everybody else defended it for non-existent mammograms and other things, one pilot in particular denied that Planned Parenthood did abortions and smirked and laughed at me for suggesting it did. (I wonder what he thinks now that it has been proven Planned Parenthood is the leading abortion provider in the entire country.) I blew my stack and got so animated I was waving my arms at him while I let him know how uninformed he was. A couple of the other pilots jumped in and asked me what I was so excited about. "Because," I said, "he's wrong, he got my goat, and I'm not reacting well. I'm sorry."
I never had the discussion with that particular pilot again, but everybody knew where I stood on abortion. I was almost alone in my conviction in the squadron. I never lost my cool again, but the subject always makes me angry. I've heard all the arguments. In the eighties people were still sanctimoniously saying, "How do you know when life begins?" That's the most asinine of all abortion questions. The Bible is clear life begins at conception (Psalm 51:5). That being rejected, however, the physical argument still proves it. When the sperm fertilizes the egg and the zygote is formed the first thing it immediately does is duplicate. Then it does it again. In seconds the one cell has become two, then four, then eight, then sixteen. It is growing. Only live things grow. Dead things don't grow. Viability is not the issue. The baby is a living human being from conception.
The whole case on abortion rests on the inconvenience the baby may be to the mother and/or the father. They don't want to be bothered. In most cases the babies being aborted belong to unwed mothers. For many it may be a hard choice to make. It is understandable. For others there is no question. For Planned Parenthood it is a money making opportunity and that's all they care about.
We live in a culture where people are so oversexed that they want to be free to live out whatever sexual desires they have without facing any responsibility for their actions. If you disagree with this decadent lifestyle you're often called hateful and a prude. The defense for this licentious living is always to ask about exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Surely you can't be so uncompassionate that you can't make room for those exceptions they argue.
Okay, let's consider a couple of cases. In one, the mother is over forty, the father has syphilis, and three older children are already sickly and mentally unstable. The so-called compassionate argument is to let her have the abortion. Why take a risk on another sick child whose life would be miserable, not to mention the burden on the parents? If you agree to an abortion, you just killed Beethoven.
Let's try another. The mother is forty-four. The placenta has attached low in the birth canal and has torn loose. When it tore the mother hemorrhaged and was in the hospital for a month. The baby was barely hanging on. Now the mother has to be on bed-rest for the entire pregnancy which includes two more bleeding spells and trips to the hospital. To further complicate her misery the mother has a sciatic nerve problem and is in constant pain which only grows as the baby grows. In the seventh month she's in so much pain she's afraid she won't survive another six weeks to give birth. Surely the caring thing to do is end her suffering. After all, one doctor has already told her the baby couldn't survive and recommended ending the pregnancy. If you agree with this doctor to an abortion you just killed my son!
Today my son, Ethan, is seven years old, at the top of his second grade class in an advanced curriculum Montessori school, he speaks two languages fluently, plays the piano and is learning to play the guitar. Rather than being a burden, he is a blessing to my wife and I as we get older.
Another story similar to ours is Tim Tebow, the football player. Figure it out. How many Beethovens and Tebows, how many artists, athletes, doctors, writers, educators, scientists, inventors, astronauts, builders, you name it, and how many precious little children like Ethan have never had a chance to live, to dream, to accomplish, to be a blessing because of abortion? How many potential discoveries and advancements will never be made or will be delayed indefinitely because of the lives slaughtered in these greedy, money-driven, mad abortuaries?
Even if we allow for the rape, incest, and life of the mother exceptions, the truth is if these conditions were strictly followed there would only be a handful of abortions on any given day. The fact is there are over 3,500 abortions performed daily, 1.1 million annually, and well over 99.9% of these are elective abortions that have nothing to do with any of the exceptions. Over 57 million babies have been murdered by abortion since 1973. That's about the number of people who died worldwide in World War Two. This is a holocaust of unprecedented proportions.
Now a series of undercover videos by The Center for Medical Progress has emerged revealing the truth about Planned Parenthood. Starting with Planned Parenthood executives talking candidly about baby parts while eating salads, and laughing about making enough money to buy Lamborghinis, they have progressed to more serious talk of how they salvage baby parts intact, and just when you think it couldn't get any more hideous the most recent videos expose them talking about cutting the faces of babies open to remove the brain intact while the heart of the aborted child which has survived the procedure is still beating. Can it get anymore reprehensible than that? It's plain murder.
Any decent person would cringe at the thought, but not only do these Planned Parenthood abortionists not cringe, they have no compassion, they are heartless, cold, calculating and cruel. They have ice in their veins. They are godless. And what's worse, they don't care. They talk about harvesting body parts like it's picking snow peas from the garden. It's all money to them. They don't care that they are brazenly breaking the law in harvesting and selling body parts. They laugh at it. These are the most vile, heinous, wicked people in the world. The sanctity of life means nothing to them. The odious terrorists of ISIS are no more loathsome than these people. A pox on Cecile Richards, a pox on the entire Democrat Party for supporting Planned Parenthood, and a pox on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who can't find the time to bring the defunding of Planned Parenthood to the floor of the Senate for a vote.
The Heritage Foundation invited 2,000 Democrat staffers in Washington to watch a screening of the nine videos exposing Planned Parenthood. Four showed up and watched them all the way through. That's the Democrat Party. Mitch McConnell belongs in that group. They don't want to be faced with the truth because what they are doing is open rebellion against God, morality, and everything decent. Abortion is the shedding of the innocent blood of babies on the altar of paganism in worship of the devil himself. It's the theology of atheistic humanism which is the religion of God-booing leftists.
Don't be swayed when you hear someone who doesn't even believe the Bible say Jesus would have compassion on struggling mothers and approve of what they are doing, or "judge not that ye be not judged." These people have judged the life of innocent babies not to be worthy and are murdering them by the thousands every day. They don't know God. The fact is, Jesus, quite contrary to the leftist brand of compassion, has already judged them. In Matthew 18:6 Jesus said:
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Do you not think that if Jesus cares this much about children, He cares just the same about babies in the womb? The wrath of God's judgment is hanging over the United States of America like Damocles sword. As a nation we have become so wicked that I wonder if that sword will remain suspended until the next election? Is there a chance God might still have mercy on our nation after this 57 million baby holocaust? Perhaps, if we will put a stop to this abominable practice of abortion. A good place to start would be the defunding of Planned Parenthood, and then closing it down altogether.
I tremble for my country when I consider that God is just, and that His justice will not sleep forever. - Thomas Jefferson
Along with the drawing in 1990 a list of hundreds of charitable organizations was handed out that we could choose from if we wished to support any of them by having an amount garnished direct from our paychecks every month. The list had information about the organizations including how much in charitable contributions they received on average annually, and how much of their receipts went to administration and salaries, and how much went to actual charity. When I came across Planned Parenthood I was struck by the fact that 49% of their contributions went to salaries and administration. I was sitting in the Ready Room at our squadron going over the list when I decided to support National Right to Life. Only 13% of their contributions went to salaries and administration, and it was a cause I am strongly in favor of. As I filled out the form somebody asked me what I had chosen and the debate was on.
In my years in the military I found that the vast majority of servicemen and women were generally conservative and voted Republican. Ronald Reagan was very popular. But the conservatism of most of them ended at economics, foreign policy, patriotism and American exceptionalism. Most had a very New Age view of morality, and while they might be respectful of religion (many attended chapel services), they had no biblical conviction on morals. Relative truth ruled the day, and when it came to abortion, most favored "a woman's right to choose."
Any discussion on the right to life would of course include abortion, and the debate that day migrated to Planned Parenthood. I knew about Planned Parenthood. Even in 1990 it was a major abortion provider under the deceitful guise of being a family planning organization. While everybody else defended it for non-existent mammograms and other things, one pilot in particular denied that Planned Parenthood did abortions and smirked and laughed at me for suggesting it did. (I wonder what he thinks now that it has been proven Planned Parenthood is the leading abortion provider in the entire country.) I blew my stack and got so animated I was waving my arms at him while I let him know how uninformed he was. A couple of the other pilots jumped in and asked me what I was so excited about. "Because," I said, "he's wrong, he got my goat, and I'm not reacting well. I'm sorry."
I never had the discussion with that particular pilot again, but everybody knew where I stood on abortion. I was almost alone in my conviction in the squadron. I never lost my cool again, but the subject always makes me angry. I've heard all the arguments. In the eighties people were still sanctimoniously saying, "How do you know when life begins?" That's the most asinine of all abortion questions. The Bible is clear life begins at conception (Psalm 51:5). That being rejected, however, the physical argument still proves it. When the sperm fertilizes the egg and the zygote is formed the first thing it immediately does is duplicate. Then it does it again. In seconds the one cell has become two, then four, then eight, then sixteen. It is growing. Only live things grow. Dead things don't grow. Viability is not the issue. The baby is a living human being from conception.
The whole case on abortion rests on the inconvenience the baby may be to the mother and/or the father. They don't want to be bothered. In most cases the babies being aborted belong to unwed mothers. For many it may be a hard choice to make. It is understandable. For others there is no question. For Planned Parenthood it is a money making opportunity and that's all they care about.
We live in a culture where people are so oversexed that they want to be free to live out whatever sexual desires they have without facing any responsibility for their actions. If you disagree with this decadent lifestyle you're often called hateful and a prude. The defense for this licentious living is always to ask about exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Surely you can't be so uncompassionate that you can't make room for those exceptions they argue.
Okay, let's consider a couple of cases. In one, the mother is over forty, the father has syphilis, and three older children are already sickly and mentally unstable. The so-called compassionate argument is to let her have the abortion. Why take a risk on another sick child whose life would be miserable, not to mention the burden on the parents? If you agree to an abortion, you just killed Beethoven.
Let's try another. The mother is forty-four. The placenta has attached low in the birth canal and has torn loose. When it tore the mother hemorrhaged and was in the hospital for a month. The baby was barely hanging on. Now the mother has to be on bed-rest for the entire pregnancy which includes two more bleeding spells and trips to the hospital. To further complicate her misery the mother has a sciatic nerve problem and is in constant pain which only grows as the baby grows. In the seventh month she's in so much pain she's afraid she won't survive another six weeks to give birth. Surely the caring thing to do is end her suffering. After all, one doctor has already told her the baby couldn't survive and recommended ending the pregnancy. If you agree with this doctor to an abortion you just killed my son!
Today my son, Ethan, is seven years old, at the top of his second grade class in an advanced curriculum Montessori school, he speaks two languages fluently, plays the piano and is learning to play the guitar. Rather than being a burden, he is a blessing to my wife and I as we get older.
Another story similar to ours is Tim Tebow, the football player. Figure it out. How many Beethovens and Tebows, how many artists, athletes, doctors, writers, educators, scientists, inventors, astronauts, builders, you name it, and how many precious little children like Ethan have never had a chance to live, to dream, to accomplish, to be a blessing because of abortion? How many potential discoveries and advancements will never be made or will be delayed indefinitely because of the lives slaughtered in these greedy, money-driven, mad abortuaries?
Even if we allow for the rape, incest, and life of the mother exceptions, the truth is if these conditions were strictly followed there would only be a handful of abortions on any given day. The fact is there are over 3,500 abortions performed daily, 1.1 million annually, and well over 99.9% of these are elective abortions that have nothing to do with any of the exceptions. Over 57 million babies have been murdered by abortion since 1973. That's about the number of people who died worldwide in World War Two. This is a holocaust of unprecedented proportions.
Now a series of undercover videos by The Center for Medical Progress has emerged revealing the truth about Planned Parenthood. Starting with Planned Parenthood executives talking candidly about baby parts while eating salads, and laughing about making enough money to buy Lamborghinis, they have progressed to more serious talk of how they salvage baby parts intact, and just when you think it couldn't get any more hideous the most recent videos expose them talking about cutting the faces of babies open to remove the brain intact while the heart of the aborted child which has survived the procedure is still beating. Can it get anymore reprehensible than that? It's plain murder.
Any decent person would cringe at the thought, but not only do these Planned Parenthood abortionists not cringe, they have no compassion, they are heartless, cold, calculating and cruel. They have ice in their veins. They are godless. And what's worse, they don't care. They talk about harvesting body parts like it's picking snow peas from the garden. It's all money to them. They don't care that they are brazenly breaking the law in harvesting and selling body parts. They laugh at it. These are the most vile, heinous, wicked people in the world. The sanctity of life means nothing to them. The odious terrorists of ISIS are no more loathsome than these people. A pox on Cecile Richards, a pox on the entire Democrat Party for supporting Planned Parenthood, and a pox on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who can't find the time to bring the defunding of Planned Parenthood to the floor of the Senate for a vote.
The Heritage Foundation invited 2,000 Democrat staffers in Washington to watch a screening of the nine videos exposing Planned Parenthood. Four showed up and watched them all the way through. That's the Democrat Party. Mitch McConnell belongs in that group. They don't want to be faced with the truth because what they are doing is open rebellion against God, morality, and everything decent. Abortion is the shedding of the innocent blood of babies on the altar of paganism in worship of the devil himself. It's the theology of atheistic humanism which is the religion of God-booing leftists.
Don't be swayed when you hear someone who doesn't even believe the Bible say Jesus would have compassion on struggling mothers and approve of what they are doing, or "judge not that ye be not judged." These people have judged the life of innocent babies not to be worthy and are murdering them by the thousands every day. They don't know God. The fact is, Jesus, quite contrary to the leftist brand of compassion, has already judged them. In Matthew 18:6 Jesus said:
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Do you not think that if Jesus cares this much about children, He cares just the same about babies in the womb? The wrath of God's judgment is hanging over the United States of America like Damocles sword. As a nation we have become so wicked that I wonder if that sword will remain suspended until the next election? Is there a chance God might still have mercy on our nation after this 57 million baby holocaust? Perhaps, if we will put a stop to this abominable practice of abortion. A good place to start would be the defunding of Planned Parenthood, and then closing it down altogether.
I tremble for my country when I consider that God is just, and that His justice will not sleep forever. - Thomas Jefferson
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