President Obama told University of Notre Dame graduates Sunday that he was inspired by their maturity and responsibility in dealing with the controversy surrounding his giving the school’s commencement address. Too bad more national groups and commentators — both pro-choice and pro-life — don’t always model the same behaviors.
Obama, who was welcomed by the students with loud cheers and respectful applause, spoke about the need to find common ground and to extend the presumption of good faith to others. He called for open hearts, open minds and fair-minded words. And though he acknowledged that some viewpoints about abortion are irreconcilable, differing sides should be able to make their cases with passion and conviction but without “reducing those with differing views to caricature.” As Obama told the students — and everyone should heed — “religion and conviction can co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality, and especially love.”
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“religion and conviction can co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality, and especially love.”
————————————————–
I don’t disagree.
But why does the President push legislation to silence religion as in his youth corps bill?
SEC. 125. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.
(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:
(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.
“I don’t disagree.
“But why does the President push legislation to silence religion as in his youth corps bill?”
“SEC. 125. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES AND INELIGIBLE ORGANIZATIONS.
“(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:
“(7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.”
Same reason I can not push my religion (or lack of same) as an employee of a school district.
This bill doesn’t ban people from religious activities, it bans them from using their status as a representative of the youth corps to engage in these activities.
Obama told the students — and everyone should heed — “religion and conviction can co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality, and especially love.”
Oh my!
Some one have a flower for my hair and some love beads?
“differing sides should be able to make their cases with passion and conviction but without “reducing those with differing views to caricature.”
Well, that’s not possible.
VERY few of the people who claim to be “pro life” actually are. It is impossible to reach common ground with those who cannot admit where they are really standing.
Kia,
“But why does the President push legislation to silence religion as in his youth corps bill?”
To help them stay true to their faith of course! Matthew 6: 1-6
Blue,
“VERY few of the people who claim to be “pro life” actually are.”
Sorta like all those people who voted for prohibition and then spent their Saturday nights in a speakeasy and went to church next morning praying to be cured of their hangovers.
What was really fun to watch was a fundie sneaking into the clinic for her abortion. They really didn’t want to be seen!
What was really fun to watch was a fundie sneaking into the clinic for her abortion. They really didn’t want to be seen!
==========================================
Why are you hanging out at abortion clinics, Jed?
First marker for a “pro life” poser? And I do mean poser not poster:
Membership in the “suffer the little children!” Republican party.
Kia, if it makes you feel better you can pay me to promote Atheism.
Funny thing about Kia’s complaint:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?dbname=2009_record&page=H3607&position=all
Kia also claims the bill would forbid belonging to a political party, a union, or a business. I guess it would help if Kia actually read the bill, it just prohibits public funds from being used for such purposes. The people are still free to do whatever on their own dime.
Typical con paranoia. Hence the reason fundies can’t co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality and love.
Hence the reason fundies can’t co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality and love.
=============================================
I wouldn’t say you Maggotpunk are a shining star of those traits either.
““But why does the President push legislation to silence religion as in his youth corps bill?”
I don’t know why I’m gonna waste my time….
Kia? If you went to a job everyday and spent even a minor percentage of your time there evangelizing, praying, reading the bible, etc. do you imagine you would remain long employed?
Even if you worked for yourself, your customer would find significant devotion of part of your day to religious practice unacceptable.
The whole controversy was silly. A person can listen to someone without adopting their views. Especially whe it is the president. Sounds like Obama was respectful.
Notre Dame allowed the speech and the students well-behaved.
A different story in some liberal institutions, those bastions of free speech. Conservatives, even invited speakers, are shouted down. University of TX, University of North Carolina, Emory University, UConn, Cal-Irvine have all had incidents. Mostly egged on, I’m sure, by their 60s radical flower children professors.
“What was really fun to watch was a fundie sneaking into the clinic for her abortion. They really didn’t want to be seen!”
What is sad is that nobody brags about having an abortion at parties. It’s shameful no matter who your parents are. Since when are 16 year old girls
“Fundies” anyways? It’s appalling that Jed gets some kind of pleasure from standing at abortion clinics and mocking at those who have made the choice to abort their child. The sad joke is that These are the very women that a pro-choicers like Jed claim to champion and defend.
Yet they stand, point and laugh.
“I wouldn’t say you Maggotpunk are a shining star of those traits either.”
I’m not the one demanding taxpayers fund the promotion of my beliefs. Keep in mind we are still fighting a holy war in Iraq because of some fundies in the White House. It was also some fundies who crashed airplanes in the WTC which led to another war.
I’m not the one demanding taxpayers fund the promotion of my beliefs.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
Aren’t you an Obama supporter?
Ruffles,
“It’s appalling that Jed gets some kind of pleasure from standing at abortion clinics and mocking at those who have made the choice to abort their child. The sad joke is that These are the very women that a pro-choicers like Jed claim to champion and defend.”
No, these aren’t. You need some work your reading comprehension skills.
The women I mock are the ones who sneak past their friends they were protesting with the week before, and will be back out there screaming insults and threats at women who are making exactly the same choice they did the week before. They’re called hypocrites- a fairly standard affliction among christians- and would be worth a few laughs if they weren’t so pathetically nasty!
Ant,
“Why are you hanging out at abortion clinics, Jed?”
In case you hadn’t heard, I’ve spent some few years as a volunteer escort at several clinics, helping women get past those mini-hordes of howling fundie hyenas that also hang around the clinics.
In case you hadn’t heard, I’ve spent some few years as a volunteer escort at several clinics…
=======================================
I hadn’t heard.
“Aren’t you an Obama supporter?”
What does that have to do with anything?
My gosh Jed are you some kind of plant at abortion clinics? How do you recognize these women and see them three weeks in a row?
It makes me think you are just making up a story to match your ingrained ‘prejudices’.
Ant,
Sorry, I guess you’re new around here. I assumed everybody here knew by now.
Jed
Posted May 18, 2009 at 4:33 pm | Permalink
Ant,
Sorry, I guess you’re new around here.
===================================
No, I just don’t usually participate in the abortion issues.
I think every-one’s mind is already made up.
Well i will agree that Obama made a point we should pay attention to. He believes that abortion is legal and should be allowed when the women chooses. I believe that life begins at conceivement and killing that child after that is murder.
Now will someone tell me where the middle ground is here?
This is a subject that will never be solved by the government.
The blame here is not on Obama but on a catholic school that has a set of beliefs and one of those is the scantity of life.
Heh
scantity.
“In case you hadn’t heard, I’ve spent some few years as a volunteer escort at several clinics, helping women get past those mini-hordes of howling fundie hyenas that also hang around the clinics.”
Jed this sounds like a very intolerant position. How does this line up with what Obama said. Do these protestors not have a right to stand up for an innocent life they see as being in danger?
Where is the middle ground here?
Granny,
Some kind of plant? I was right out there in front with an escort vest on! I helped women past those nutcases for years; got to know a lot of the protesters, some of them more than they wanted to be known. I recognized the fundies immediately, checked their ID’s, scanned them for weapons and checked off their names on the appointment sheet, and helped them to their cars afterward.
Jed I believe I addressed you by your correct name and since I don’t know you I am sure I am not your ‘grannie’. Did I strike a nerve. You are probably a little antagonistic yourself when out on that line. Maybe you are only getting back what you give.
And Jed in all of your words you still failed to show me that middle ground Obama referenced.
There can be no common ground in the abolition of abortion. There can be no tamping down the righteous anger of pro-lifers, no yielding or compromise or respect or honor to those who demand the legalized and profitable contract mangling, dismembering, poisoning, and beheading of babies – the babies that they don’t know whether are entitled to human rights. (They are undeniably entitled, but their rights are denied in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and the Declaration of Independence.) Must we respect or honor those who oppose required medical information on sonograms and fetal pain because it might upset a mother who wants her baby dead? Hardly.
Common ground is burial ground for babies.
Obamanation is strictly two-faced empty rhetoric. He has done absolutely nothing since taking office to reduce the number of abortions or to afford respect or credit to pro-lifers. On the contrary, his HSD appointee Napolitano has attempted to officially demonize pro-lifers as likely domestic terrorists, he has taken considerable time and effort to increase the number of abortions by adding taxpayer funding and eliminating restrictions, and intends to do more of the same. His actions and federal appointees show he intends to specify unlimited taxpayer-funded abortions in any healthcare reform proposal, and to force participation of medical professionals in abortions and abortion referrals and abortifacient prescriptions, regardless of moral, ethical, or religious objections. His only promise of attempting to reduce abortions is to funnel taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood abortion mills for high-failure-rate condoms and contraceptives, which is proven, not to reduce pregnancies or abortions, but to instead increase STDs. He has diverted taxpayer funding from successful, ethical adult stem cell research, producing new cures and treatments every year, including a forthcoming cure for juvenile diabetes, instead funding useless, unethical embryonic stem cell research which has never cured anything, and likely never will.
The abortion lobby that bought Obamanation promised that legalized abortion would solve America’s social problems. After mangling, dismembering, poisoning, and beheading 50 million American babies, we have a shrinking economy, over a third of pregnancies are killed, nearly half of babies born are illegitimate, most marriages end in divorce, juvenile crime and all crime is high, unemployment is high, retiring baby-boomers lack enough young people entering the work force or achieving peak earning years to support federal retirement and medical assistance, and the nation is as divided over abortion as it once was over slavery – where there was no common ground, either, until Gettysburg burials consecrated the dead of both sides as common bloody retribution for the blood drawn by the slavemaster’s lash, just as one day we shall witness the retribution for the blood drawn by the abortionist’s knife – hopefully repaid by God’s hand, far more merciful than our own.
With the time and effort he has recently put into increasing abortions and abortion mill profits, pro-lifers will never, ever trust anything Obamanation says or does.
Sorta like all those people who voted for prohibition and then spent their Saturday nights in a speakeasy and went to church next morning praying to be cured of their hangovers.
Oh Jed I did not know you lived in Rush Springs too! LOL
Parkay–
How many unwanted, uncared for children have you adopted?
beheading of babies
How does one behead something without a head?
Granny,
No, you aren’t my grandma. She was a decent person, a Universalist who was kind to everyone. I call you granny from your former nic here.
I don’t begin to give back what I got on the line. I had fundies offer to track me down and shoot me, I had my truck vandalized, I had anonymous calls at 2am for weeks at a time. That doesn’t begin to bother me as much as what they tried to do to the patients. They’re why I put up with the continuous fundie curses and threats to be out there in whatever weather to protect them from the likes of you!
Parkay is just upset because he can’t have children, ever since the donkey he was trying to have sex with kicked him.
Dawg,
One of my earliest memories is of my dad pulling up to a house in Riverside, handing money through the window and getting a bottle of bootleg gin. That would’ve had to be before 1948 when prohibition was repealed in Kansas.
MP,
Don’t tell me he was having an affair with Flip Benham’s favorite girlfrind! No wonder relations between them are strained.
It’s probably not too far from the truth. Neal Horsley admitted to having sex with a donkey.
The women I mock are the ones who sneak past their friends they were protesting with the week before, and will be back out there screaming insults and threats at women who are making exactly the same choice they did the week before.
Nice use of your imagination there Jed. You did not refer to even one particular woman. This tells me you are lying.
A woman sincerely protests at an abortion clinic and then decides to go to the SAME clinic out of hundreds to choose from to have an abortion? yeeeeeeah.
#
okobserver
Posted May 18, 2009 at 4:37 pm | Permalink
Now will someone tell me where the middle ground is here?
==================================================
Here is a link to the transcript of the speech:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/chi-barack-obama-notre-dame-speech,0,2951798.story
“Nice use of your imagination there Jed. You did not refer to even one particular woman. This tells me you are lying.”
Sorry RFL, clinic escorts agree to protect patient privacy. Maybe you could try your goading with one of the dishonest fundies.
Oh, and Granny,
Check out Parkay/Troyboy’s post above for reasonableness and civility. He is one of the Fairweather Fundies who sent his pack of howlers to the clinics and didn’t stay or sat in his SUV in bad weather. Some committment huh?
Lawmakers Push Ultrasound Bills as More Americans Say They’re Pro-Life
Fox News
The number of Americans who consider themselves “pro-life” has climbed significantly — and some doctors say the shift might be linked to widespread use of ultrasound, which allows pregnant women to see images of their babies before they’re born.
A Gallup poll conducted May 7-10 found that a majority of Americans consider themselves “pro-life” for the first time since Gallup began polling the issue in 1995.
Fifty-one percent of those surveyed said they were pro-life, while 42 percent identified themselves as pro-choice — a startling shift from just one year ago when 50 percent said they were pro-choice and 44 percent said they were pro-life.
But abortion rights advocates are strongly opposed to such legislation, arguing that technology is being used to generate guilt among women who choose to abort.
(They can’t handle the truth!)
Regular, perhaps you ought to look at that study, you might be surprised to find that your pro-lifers approve of abortion in some cases. The militant antis, who disapprove of abortion in all cases is only 23%.
Actually Maggot, I was more interested in the attempt by the Pro-Deathers in squashing pre-natal ultra-sound tests so the mothers can’t see their baby is actually alive.
Ruffles,
” You did not refer to even one particular woman.”
Unlike you fundies, I don’t do that. The women who come to the clinics get the privacy to which they are entitled, even the hypocrites. Believe me I’ve been tempted a time or two, but I respect the rules of privacy and seen too much fundie harassment to ever name names.
reggie,
At any clinic I’ve been at, any woman who wants an ultrasound gets one. You simply want to force women to look at them. You refuse to credit them the right to decide for themselves what they want to see or do. That’s just plain insulting!
#
Jed
Posted May 18, 2009 at 5:34 pm | Permalink
reggie,
At any clinic I’ve been at, any woman who wants an ultrasound gets one. You simply want to force women to look at them. You refuse to credit them the right to decide for themselves what they want to see or do. That’s just plain insulting!
=================================
Yeah, denial that something is alive I’m sure helps in the decision in killing it.
Jed this sounds like a very intolerant position. How does this line up with what Obama said. Do these protestors not have a right to stand up for an innocent life they see as being in danger?
Where is the middle ground here?
Good points OKO, not all that are pro-life are religious fundamentals. Though Jed does have a valid point in the sense that some groups did block and harass women entering the clinic. Both though are standing up for what they strongly believe is important. Even if both sides can do things that do more harm then good for the cause.
Where is the middle ground? Pro-life claims it is the life of the child and it’s welfare that is their concern.
Fair enough buts does that child’s life end after birth? There is the counter from pro-choice, it maybe easier to think that all abortions are simply the woman not taking responsibility for their actions. And choosing the easy way out by aborting the child. It’s easier to think that then to think about the larger reasons and the real effects of giving birth to the woman and or the child. It would redundant to bring up the weight and responsibilities of having children to you. LOL just because all my children are all grown and out of the house have not lessoned my fears, concerns and thought about them.
Obama did address the reasons and solutions for abortions, Abortion is not the illness it is the symptom.
At this point those on both sides are like a Doctor who has a patent with lung cancer and only treating the cough!
But the middle ground comes in the whole story of the child, pro-life said they are thinking of the welfare of the child. Pro-choice in a real sense can be said to be doing the same thing in that if the child’s life after birth will be one of sorrow and suffering with untold hardship. Being a parent is a one way street once you start down it there is no turn-a-rounds. Your life has but one purpose and that is the child, adoption is a real answer but can not solve the entire question. How many children can you take in? Are there enough childless couples to take in All the unwanted and unable to care for children? How many warehouses would need to be building to handle those that there is no one to adopt them?
If the reason a woman choose abortion over giving birth because of the hardship that child or any others she already has would face. Can that and we include those who already think there are too many on some welfare program? Willing to support them, whether it be aid to the mother who keeps them. Or to those willing to take them in?
A child may mean the end of the mother’s education and as a result she is forced to suffer the child to an impoverished life. Could both Pro-life and pro-choice agree to see to it that the mother is free to continue their education till done and able to support the child?
The hard issues that cause Abortion are not easy to settle or face. The solutions will take agreement of the solutions. A middle ground if you will on what it will take to end the reasons a woman chooses to abort.
But abortion rights advocates are strongly opposed to such legislation, arguing that technology is being used to generate guilt among women who choose to abort.
==============================================
What legislation is that, Regular? I don’t see anything in your posts that references specific legislation.
Reg, there’s one abortion clinic in town and they provide ultrasound upon request, and it’s mandatory when in the 3rd trimester. So what’s your problem? Oh right, you’re the big government guy who wants to make medical decisions instead of the doctors. Perhaps Jenny McCarthy will have you on her show.
Pro-deather? Isn’t that the bunch of fundies who think a woman should die rather than have an abortion because of a tubal pregnancy?
More Polls
Fox News
Abortion
The poll finds 49 percent of voters today describe themselves as “pro-life” and 43 percent as “pro-choice” on the issue of abortion. This is the first time more voters have described themselves as pro-life in the poll since April 2004.
Last year, the numbers were essentially the reverse of the current findings — at that time 41 percent said they were pro-life and 49 percent pro-choice (September 2008).
Over the last 12 years of polling on this question, more people identified as pro-choice in all but four polls.
#
Maggotpunk
Posted May 18, 2009 at 5:39 pm | Permalink
Reg, there’s one abortion clinic in town and they provide ultrasound upon request, and it’s mandatory when in the 3rd trimester. So what’s your problem? Oh right, you’re the big government guy who wants to make medical decisions instead of the doctors. Perhaps Jenny McCarthy will have you on her show.
———————————-
Got make sure that little wiggler is alive before they crush the skull and scrape it out eh?
#
CapnAmerica
Posted May 18, 2009 at 5:00 pm | Permalink
Parkay–
How many unwanted, uncared for children have you adopted?
————–
Real nice Capn. This is about the 3rd time in 24 hours Capn has thrown that crap upon the wall. The inference to be drawn, in case you missed it, is that you don’t have standing to object to a baby being killed unless you are willing to adopt it. After all, according to this “logic” the little b*stard would just be a burden on society and might not have a “good life” (however you define THAT). So, you should just shut up and let TTK (Tiller the killer) do his thing.
Ridiculous, eh?
Reggie,
Are you also saying that since there are more southern baptists than presbyterians, you have the right to force them to convert? That’s exactly what you’re doing here. Whether to abort or carry to term is the woman’s choice to make, not yours. If there were 99% anti’s in the country it would still be her constitutionally protected choice.
Why is it that the anti-choicers want more babies to be born but are against gays adopting those children? Maybe they are just pro-orphan.
Orphans can grow to adulthood – aborted fetuses cannot.
Jed when I read that I remembered setting in my patrol car at 3 AM. watching the cars coming back into town from a night of drinking and God forbid DANCING. Then the next morning many of those same cars setting in the Assembly of God and Southern Baptist church parking lots on Sunday morning. To be correct I do not see my fellow Christians so much hypocrites as simply human beings. But yes it is wrong that the same people who forbid the High School seniors from having their prom in town since boys and girls dancing together was a sin to them. Were the regulars at the dance hall 5 miles outside of town on Saturday night. I was not too popular with them even though I attended the Southern Baptist church. As I was freely pointing out this oddities.
MP,
They sure do place a high value on misery, don’t they?
#
Jed
Posted May 18, 2009 at 5:53 pm | Permalink
Reggie,
Are you also saying that since there are more southern baptists than presbyterians, you have the right to force them to convert? That’s exactly what you’re doing here. Whether to abort or carry to term is the woman’s choice to make, not yours. If there were 99% anti’s in the country it would still be her constitutionally protected choice.
=============================================
Sure as medically necessary or to preserve the life of the mother, or in rape/incest, etc.
But not as a method of birth control…
BTW you analogy sux as usual.
#
writerdog
Posted May 18, 2009 at 5:57 pm | Permalink
Jed when I read that I remembered setting in my patrol car at 3 AM. watching the cars coming back into town from a night of drinking and God forbid DANCING. Then the next morning many of those same cars setting in the Assembly of God and Southern Baptist church parking lots on Sunday morning. To be correct I do not see my fellow Christians so much hypocrites as simply human beings. But yes it is wrong that the same people who forbid the High School seniors from having their prom in town since boys and girls dancing together was a sin to them. Were the regulars at the dance hall 5 miles outside of town on Saturday night. I was not too popular with them even though I attended the Southern Baptist church. As I was freely pointing out this oddities.
———————————–
Get their license plates or are you just BEE ESSING again Dog?
Willing to testify in court that those are the same cars?
I didn’t think so.
“some doctors say the shift might be linked to widespread use of ultrasound, which allows pregnant women to see images of their babies before they’re born.”
What about AFTER they’re born?
Does the “pro life” crowd plan to stick around? Will they be there when the boss says, “Sorry, you are going to have to put your job ahead of your kid.”
No. Because they will BE the boss saying “Sorry, you are going to have to put your job ahead of your kid.”
That’s quite a bender you went on there parkay. We so rarely get you in your own words. Now I guess we know why.
Tell me, where are you on health care for children? Do you advocate for day care for working parents?
Is ketchup still a vegetable?
“Orphans can grow to adulthood – aborted fetuses cannot.”
I think Reg is telling us he’s still in his aborted fetus stage. Eventually he’ll be an orphan and can grow up.
Is ketchup still a vegetable?
To some Native American tribes it is and it was presented before Congress in the early 1900s, slated to become a vegetable.
I think so regular Heck I knew the people in the car and could have taken the court to their houses too!
The pop of Rush is like 13 hundred, it is amazing that I can not tell you their underwear size! There are no secrets in such a small town. I was a pretty good cop but such a lousy Politician!
Ketchup is made from tomatoes and tomatoes are fruit. I guess that makes grapes a vegetable too if tomatoes are veggies.
OKo, middle ground? aren’t you the one who has a good friend who had an abortion? Is she still your friend? cause for me murder would be grounds for ending a friendship, should your friend be prosecuted and imprisoned even put to death?? If the answer to those questions is no then you already have reached some middle ground
are you just BEE ESSING again Dog?
Regular I wish I did BEE ESSING it would make coming here so much easier. I could be like so many here and add on and take away from important issues. I try to stick to the truth in a blog where no one likes the truth so they make up their own reality. I do joke on occasion! But then I might not be too good at it because it is so easy to tell when I am joking. It is a sad thing that I do not in some many issue on here have to change the reality to make it look so much worse then it was.
Nancy is lying and we did torture could I make that worse?
This topic, Abortion is the ending of a human life but to allow the birth or to stop it and would mean that this country would fail and become flooded with unwanted human being that No one could care for and drag down the Government. How could I make that worse by BEE ESSING?
Even if the “pro life” people were honest in their motives (which aint never gonna happen) I don’t think there can BE a common ground.
Just as a woman can’t find herself a little bit pregnant.
We are presented with two extremes:
Make abortion completely illegal. Anything short of that is hypocritical and illogical by the very arguments the “pro life” side presents.
Make abortion available on demand and publicly financed. Again, anything less is contrary to the intentions of those who are truly pro choice.
If we make abortion entirely illegal, women will still get abortions. This is demonstrated through thousands of years of history.
If we make abortion available on demand and publicly financed, those who are TRULY pro life or those who can be won to that cause will rally and invest ALL of their efforts into preventing as many abortions as possible.
Middle of the road is just going to get us 30 more years of the same tired debate.
Reggie,
“To some Native American tribes it is and it was presented before Congress in the early 1900s, slated to become a vegetable.”
Ooh, this is rich! A con quoting a tax decision as gospel in a botanical matter?
When I was at the clinics, one of the most accurate predictors of how heavy a day we would have was the local economy. When the aircraft companies started a layoff, we had considerably more patients than when the job market was good. If you really want to cut the number of abortions, get to work on the economy!
#
Jed
Posted May 18, 2009 at 8:08 pm | Permalink
When I was at the clinics, one of the most accurate predictors of how heavy a day we would have was the local economy. When the aircraft companies started a layoff, we had considerably more patients than when the job market was good. If you really want to cut the number of abortions, get to work on the economy!
————————————–
Yeah Jed, productivity at the Tiller Scrapem shop was probably at an all time high. I bet heads were held high and with pride, when those corpses stacked up as high as an axe handle!
Woo
Hah…
Y’know reg, the one thing that convinces me there is a merciful goddess is that I don’t know you in person. You are one sick puppy!
We told you guys the fundies were screaming but nobody was paying any attention except the media.
Much ado about nothing.
RUSH: As we start with the audio sound bite excerpts of President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame yesterday, I want you to understand what this is. This is an outstanding demonstration of the low art of political seduction as practiced by the master, and that master is Barack Obama. He is good. He excels at the low art of political seduction. Here’s our first sound bite.
OBAMA: How do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles and fight for what we consider right without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side? And of course nowhere do these questions come up more powerfully than on the issue of abortion. Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision, for any woman, is not made casually. It has both moral and spiritual dimensions. So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. (applause) Let’s reduce unintended pregnancies.
RUSH: You see how that got applause? Why? I ask again, why do we want to reduce the number of women seeking abortions if there’s nothing wrong with it? If a position of pro-choice is just as valid as the pro-life position, if we shouldn’t demonize, what’s wrong with it? Why limit it? Why reduce unintended pregnancies? What’s wrong with it? ” Even though the decision to have an abortion may be gut-wrenching…”? What’s wrong with it? I always thought it was a matter of liberty — a matter of liberation, a matter of independence. So why in the world go through the farce here of wanting to reduce the number of pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies and reduce the number of abortions?
See, this is how good Obama is at the low art of political seduction. ‘Cause, as I mentioned, several years ago he made the case for killing babies born alive and giving legal protection to the doctors that did it, and it did not cost him politically. So Obama, after advancing his case for infanticide and the protection of the doctors, he went on to become United States Senator and then president. He talks about the debate about abortion. What’s the debate? Seriously, what’s the debate? Obama’s position in the debate is that a baby that survives an abortion is fair game to be killed, and the doctor should have legal protection. And his excuse at the time that he advanced this barbaric argument was that it was necessary to protect a woman’s right to choose.
Okay, so… Now, I want to know, folks. I want to know where it is that we compromise — and I want to know why it is. Why is this “a difficult moral and spiritual decision” for women to make? Why? I don’t understand the left’s reasoning. I don’t understand why we should have to reduce the number of abortions, if there’s nothing wrong with it. I don’t know why we should have to reduce unwanted pregnancy if there’s nothing wrong with it, and I don’t understand why making the decision to go through with abortion is “a moral and spiritual question,” if it’s not a baby. The only thing that can make abortion a tough decision is what’s being aborted, correct? So here’s the low art of political seduction. The low art of political seduction is: “Both sides have legitimacy, and we’re never going to agree. These are irreconcilable differences, but we must not attack personally, and we must try to get along with one another.”
What do we do in the process? We blur something that’s crucial: the definition of life. We blur morality. Just as Orwell had his Newspeak, immorality is now morality. Death is now freedom! This is one of the foundations of liberal reasoning as a means to advance any of their beliefs which you and I would find to be questionable, unjust, or immoral. This is how they justify it. It’s the low art of political seduction. But we look at Obama, and he’s such a nice man. He’s got a great family, and he wants us all to respect each other the same way he respected secured creditors for Chrysler, the same way that he respects retention contracts. Those are Fifth Amendment rights that Barack Obama stomped on at AIG and at Chrysler, but we need to have an open mind and an open heart about that, too. And by all means we must not open up and be critical. Because, you see, the extreme position here, according to Obama, is the pro-life position — and extreme because liberals do not share it, and anything not liberal, by definition, is extreme.
Well Rush is never gonna need an abortion.
None of his many wives ever needed one. Rush either never took the field or he is firing blanks.
He will never have a daughter with an unplanned pregnancy. (See above)
In short, Rush has no place commenting on the matter.
JR would have Rush shut-up (no place commenting on the matter)!
Why? I ask again, why do we want to reduce the number of women seeking abortions if there’s nothing wrong with it?
If a position of pro-choice is just as valid as the pro-life position, if we shouldn’t demonize, what’s wrong with it? Why limit it? Why reduce unintended pregnancies? What’s wrong with it? ” Even though the decision to have an abortion may be gut-wrenching…”? What’s wrong with it? I always thought it was a matter of liberty — a matter of liberation, a matter of independence. So why in the world go through the farce here of wanting to reduce the number of pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies and reduce the number of abortions?
“Why? I ask again, why do we want to reduce the number of women seeking abortions if there’s nothing wrong with it? ”
This is some strange new strategy indeed.
Rush wants to ban abortion (even though it has absolutely NO impact on his life) SO his strategy is to argue that any efforts to mitigate abortion are an argument for banning it entirely.
It’s SORT of clever.
Like a three year old.
I do not believe that Mr. Limbaugh would be a fit parent and I am glad he recognizes that. He HAS the wealth to adopt a hundred kids if he wanted to.
He’d rather tell me and others how to live.
Jimbo,
“Why? I ask again, why do we want to reduce the number of women seeking abortions if there’s nothing wrong with it?”
Easy! To deprive you perverted christians of that many more people to blame for your own failings.
#
Regular
Posted May 18, 2009 at 5:56 pm | Permalink
Orphans can grow to adulthood – aborted fetuses cannot.
*****
James McCluer is contrary evidence to this, one more, false assertion…
reggie,
“Orphans can grow to adulthood – aborted fetuses cannot.”
Yeah. I’m sure this kid’s glad of that.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. May 19, 2009 (AP) The Associated Press
A 4-year-old California boy may be permanently blinded after police say his father bit out one of his eyes and mutilated the other.
Bakersfield police say 34-year-old Angel Vidal Mendoza appeared to be under the influence of PCP when he attacked the boy April 28. Afterwards police say Mendoza rolled his wheelchair outside and began hacking at his own legs with an ax.
Four-year-old Angelo Mendoza Jr. told police, “my daddy ate my eyes.”
The spam troll gives us a quotation from the drug addicted DJ that demonstrates the art of straw manning.
“Okay, so… Now, I want to know, folks. I want to know where it is that we compromise — and I want to know why it is. Why is this ‘a difficult moral and spiritual decision’ for women to make? Why? I don’t understand the left’s reasoning. I don’t understand why we should have to reduce the number of abortions, if there’s nothing wrong with it.”
And I am sure that this was accompanied with a lot of paper rattling.
Rushbo’s statement that “the left” argues that there is “nothing wrong with it” (abortion) is a simple demonstration of the art of building the straw man. That is not the argument for the pro-choice position. The argument for the pro-choice position is that legally compelling women to carry a pregnancy to term is a greater evil than abortion. Most people, who are not an activist on either side, also see the balance between allowing abortion and protecting the interest of the fetus change as the pregnancy advances. Reducing abortions is the aim people on both sides of the issue have. The irony of the drug addicted DJ calling Obama out on the “low art of political persuasion” is extreme here. The DJ is a true practioner of the “low art” of political persuasion, because he bullsh*ts about the position of people who disagree with him. Obama didn’t do that, which is why his speech was as well accepted as it was, and why Rush Limbaugh is held in such contempt outside of “ditto head” circles.
Jed, the article you quoted doesn’t shed light on this issue. It is a tragedy, and since abortion is legal in California, there is no reason to assume that this tragedy would have been avoided with greater access to legal abortion. Hopefully, this child will have the best possible outcome to his life after such a horrible and senseless…crime doesn’t do the horror of this justice.
Agnatha Admits Abortion is Evil!!!
You finally got something right.
“The argument for the pro-choice position is that legally compelling women to carry a pregnancy to term is a greater evil than abortion.”
Agnatha
Agnatha, you working covertly for the Pro-Life people?
“Agnatha Admits Abortion is Evil!!!
“You finally got something right.”
Re: The spam troll
Don’t feed it.
Thanks Agnatha for finally admitting the truth about abortion being evil.
And when I complement you on your honesty (or was it a slip on your part?), you call me a name.
Ouch!
LMFAO!!!!
If Abortion is evil, then why is it allowed?
If Abortion isn’t evil, then why limit it at all?
Is Abortion like Torture? A necessary Evil?
Ag,
“Jed, the article you quoted doesn’t shed light on this issue.”
It was intended to address the fundie meme that any life, no matter how horrendous is better than no life, quite a strange notion to worm it’s way out of the christian mythos! I’ve certainly been around long enough to have seen quite a few things that are worse than death.
It also addresses the fact that getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant does not make someone a parent. So far anyway, the fundies have insisted that every zygote must get born. They have failed to come to terms with anything after that point, other than to say it’s in god’s hands. Well apparently, god’s hands aren’t so big as to contain all the children fundies insist be born. We see that every day in the misery that’s inflicted on children. Of course fundies love misery and see it as somehow cleansing. What a crock! Misery is misery, and to insist that more misery be brought into the world for the glory of god doesn’t speak well of their god.
They talk about a moderate position on abortion, which at the root means that legislatures get to decide who gets an abortion and who doesn’t. A frivolous woman who is upset about ruining her perfect figure and who would likely take out her frustration on whatever kid shows up in her life is told she can’t abort a kid who will in all likelyhood suffer abuse. A woman who already has kids and no prospect of adequately supporting another is told that she is required by law to add to her problems.
The fundies’ responses seem to be to refer to some ephemeral adoptive parents (most definitely not them), and to tell the mother that god never gives them more than they can handle. Somehow they’ve forgotten about the many thousands of kids in our wonderful foster care system that will never know the love a child needs because there are no adoptive families for them. Apparently they’ve never seen a cemetery either or noted that under each of those cold stones lies someone who got more than they could handle at least once.
Now if fundies want to use adoption as the solution to their abortion problem, I would suggest they provide the christian paradigm and start adopting all the alredy born and neglected children. When they’re done with all those, then they can start in adopting the “pre-born.”
As someone who has seen considerably more of illegal abortion than I ever wanted to, I feel that any solution that legally restricts abortions will eventually take us back to those bad old days when unqualified quacks butchered women in back rooms. I really don’t want to see that happen again.
If you really want to reduce abortions, the only way to do it successfully is through social means; comprehensive sex and relationship education, as well as general education; adequate and available birth control, preferably for both genders; economic aid for financially strapped families and some form of universal healthcare coverage; abortions reserved for when all else fails. That’s the only truly workable moderate position on abortion.
Jed: “It was intended to address the fundie meme that any life, no matter how horrendous is better than no life, quite a strange notion to worm it’s way out of the christian mythos! I’ve certainly been around long enough to have seen quite a few things that are worse than death.”
As horrible as that story was, and of course we have no idea how it will turn out, it is not a given that that fate is, from that child’s point of view, “worse than death”. I still don’t think your story sheds any light on this issue other than, “geez, that was awful!” And I have seen some awful things myself.
“It also addresses the fact that getting pregnant or getting someone pregnant does not make someone a parent.”
Actually, that is pretty much a given.
“So far anyway, the fundies have insisted that every zygote must get born. They have failed to come to terms with anything after that point, other than to say it’s in god’s hands.”
That would be true of most of the fundamentalist extremists (even there, I have seen people who would qualify for that label who do adopt and care for children, including most certainly difficult to care for children.
(snipped the bit about “fundies” loving misery, because it is a digression I don’t want to go down)
“They talk about a moderate position on abortion, which at the root means that legislatures get to decide who gets an abortion and who doesn’t.”
That’s one modererate position out of many. One moderate position, as far as I am concerned, is the policy staked out by the Roe v. Wade decision.
“The fundies’ responses seem to be to refer to some ephemeral adoptive parents (most definitely not them), and to tell the mother that god never gives them more than they can handle. ”
Your constant referral to “fundies” here, Jed, is a convenient straw man. But not all the opposition to abortion comes from your fundies, even if some of the louder and more obnoxious opposition does. Not all of the people who oppose abortion, probably not even most of them, are the sorts of nitwits you would have encountered as a clinic escort. More to the point, there are people who take strong stands on one side or the other of the middle.
As for the saying, “God never gives you more than you can handle”, I certainly agree that this is bullsh*t. People get more than they can handle all the time, and the last thing believers in that position need is some fool telling them that if they can’t handle what they are dealing with, the problem is with them. I have been in grief groups where people have been twisted into additional knots they really didn’t need because of this nonsense. And as you said, the graveyards are full of memorials to people who were given more than they could handle.
“Now if fundies want to use adoption as the solution to their abortion problem, I would suggest they provide the christian paradigm and start adopting all the alredy born and neglected children. When they’re done with all those, then they can start in adopting the ‘pre-born.’”
Like I’ve said, I’ve seen people put their money where their mouths are on this. Doesn’t change my stand from being pro-choice, but I certainly respect those people as living their beliefs. And I think that these are the folks with whom common ground can be achieved.
“If you really want to reduce abortions, the only way to do it successfully is through social means; comprehensive sex and relationship education, as well as general education; adequate and available birth control, preferably for both genders; economic aid for financially strapped families and some form of universal healthcare coverage; abortions reserved for when all else fails. That’s the only truly workable moderate position on abortion.”
I agree with your entire paragraph here. Well said.