There probably are many more like Tricia Willoughby, aren’t there? After all, her parents are “pro-life activists,” which means they have a tendency to follow the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. People on the other political side are more inclined toward subtraction (or as they call it, “choice”), as we explained in our 2005 paper “The Roe Effect.” . . .
Scott Walker won the governorship last year by a margin of 124,638. That may not be within the margin of abortion; after all, some of the missing 316,457 would have voted Republican had they existed, and many would not have voted.
But JoAnne Kloppenburg, the left-liberal state Supreme Court candidate who was supposed to save Wisconsin’s labor monopolies from Walker’s reforms, lost by just 7,316 votes, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel . . . It’s almost inconceivable that the Roe effect alone is insufficient to account for Justice David Prosser’s victory.
Oh, and in four years, Tricia Willoughby will be old enough to vote, while an additional 54,522 will not be.
Kinda sucks to be you, doesn’t it, progressives? Meanwhile, Instapundit tips us to Miss Willoughby’s e-mail to Ann Althouse about that union bozo who shouted ugly words during her speech: “I was thinking ‘That is what you want to say to me? Really? You’re not even listening to what I’m saying, or criticizing my actual logic. You are simply just calling me names because I am on the opposite side’.”
Mashable has a nifty graphic showing major space vehicles over the last 50 years.
It was 50 years ago when people first flew in space. Here’s an infographic that shows you the spacecraft humans have flown to reach that great void over the past half-century.
With just two flights of the space shuttle left, what’s next? You can see Richard Branson‘s SpaceShipOne in the infographic, giving us a look forward at what’s waiting in the wings — vessels that might find a different financial route to space, relying on private funding rather than governmental largess.
All is not lost, though, for the U.S. manned space program. Even though NASA‘s Ares launch vehicles and their associated Constellation program were canceled because of budget constraints, NASA selected SpaceX and its Falcon launch vehicles and Dragon spacecraft for the space agency’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.
Space is one of the areas where having the federal government scoop up cash from everyone makes some sense. It’s important from a national defense standpoint, which is a proper federal task. It also drives technical innovation, for example, integrated circuits. This is the law of unintended consequences playing out in a good way.
I was born in the year that Niel Armstrong put the first human print on the moon. I hope that the Apollo program does not prove to have been the peak of U.S. space endeavor. However, the federal government has looked down to the individual on the ground, through social programs, rather than up. Sure, they’ve secured votes now, at the expense of the frontier above.
A big chunk of the national come-to-Beavis meeting over the next 18 months will have to focus on what level of government owns what tasks. Why Planned Parenthood is a federal task eludes me. If they screwed up and left me in charge, PP would be an individual state task, and those resources would go to NASA.
“We are heading to a shutdown not because of a debate over money, not because of a debate over cuts but because Republicans continue to push a radical agenda against women . . . throwing women and children under the bus.”
— Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Maryland Democrat
Ezra Klein of The Washington Post claims that a mere 3% of Planned Parenthood’s budget goes for abortion. Let’s begin by pointing out the obvious: Do you think people can (a) make a profit from killing babies and yet (b) also be so scrupulously honest that they would never lie about it? Because that’s what Planned Parenthood is doing in defense of its federal funding.
Planned Parenthood performs more than 300,000 abortions annually, accounting for an estimated 38% of revenue from its “health centers.” And to the extent that the budget battle is about funding Planned Parenthood, this is the status quo that Democrats are fighting to preserve.
So while Planned Parenthood does more $150 million worth of abortions every year, it nevertheless claims that — although federal funding is apparently so vital to its operations that Democrats will shut down the government rather than end the funding — none of the taxpayer money it receives pays for abortion.
Bullshit. And when Democrat try to claim that this debate is about “women’s health,” that’s also bullshit.
“Planned Parenthood resorts to misinformation and scare tactics to garner public sympathy,” Chairmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life said today, in response to a statement by one Planned Parenthood spokesperson. “Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the nation. But pregnancy is not a disease for which abortion is the cure. Women deserve better than what Planned Parenthood provides.”
Get the point? Abortion is “health care” only if you consider pregnancy a disease. And most Americans are against taxpayer funding for abortion, so when this issue comes up, Planned Parenthood simply lies and Democrats dutifully repeat those lies. Why? Because that’s what Democrats get paid to do:
[Planned Parenthood’s] political action committee . . . donated more than $148,000 to federal candidates — almost all Democrats — during the 2010 election cycle. The PAC spent more than $443,000 overall.
Planned Parenthood also recorded $905,796 in independent expenditures during the 2010 cycle — money spent in support of, or in opposition to, federal political candidates, largely through advertisements. The top beneficiaries of this money were Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
We could probably produce a flow chart of this process to explain it for the truly dense, but it’s really quite simple: (a) Planned Parenthood spends more than a million dollars to help elect Democrats, (b) Democrats then vote to give taxpayer money to Planned Parenthood, and (c) if anybody tries to interfere with this cozy arrangement, Planned Parenthood and Democrats tell a bunch of lies and accuse critics of a “radical agenda against women.”
Barely a week ago, Barbara Mikulski was on CNN condemning “stridency,” calling for “respect” and “decorum,” and saying, “We need to lower the decibel level.” Without any shame, however, she now accuses Republicans of “throwing women and children under the bus.” If Mikulski is against “stridency,” why isn’t she denouncing Chuck Schumer, who accuses Republicans of wanting to “stomp on women’s health and women’s rights”? If she’s all about the “need to lower the decibel level,” why isn’t she criticizing Schumer’s vow “never, never, never” to pass the House version of the budget?
We know the answer: Mikulski won’t condemn Schumer because they’re both Democrats. All Democrats are liars, and none is more dishonest than Chuck Schumer, who tells a dozen lies before he has his first cup of coffee in the morning. But it would be illogical to expect people who vote to spend taxpayer money to kill babies to tell the truth about what they’re doing. And as for Barbara Mikulski’s lectures about “decorum,” the woman eats vitriol-frosted Hate Flakes for breakfast.
UPDATE II: There are rumors of an impending last-minute deal that would save us from the horror — the absolute world-ending horror — of a government shutdown. And you know what? I don’t care either way.
It’s Friday night and I’m going to bed. If the world is still here when I wake up Saturday morning, I’ll assume that means either (a) John Boehner folded like a cheap suit or (b) shutting down the federal government was not, in fact, the end of life on Earth as we know it.
Congressional budget negotiations broke up before dawn on Friday without an agreement, putting the government on a path to a shutdown when financing for federal agencies runs out at midnight. . . .
Democratic officials familiar with the negotiations said that proposed restrictions on money for Planned Parenthood remained the chief sticking point, and that attempts to resolve the disagreement through alternatives like allowing a separate floor vote on the issue had not been successful. . . .
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, told reporters in an exchange broadcast on CNN Friday morning that “this all deals with women’s health” and that other issues had been resolved. . . .
Why is Harry so fanatically committed to baby-killing?
UPDATE III: This morning there was a brief flurry of “we have a deal” rumors, before it became clear that Democrats are insisting on a shutdown — so they can blame it on Republicans. Here is video of House Speaker John Boehner’s brief press statement today:
Here’s an idea: The Senate can pass a bill funding Planned Parenthood separately, so that federal subsidies for abortion mills don’t create a government shutdown, and let the House debate it straight up. Reid won’t do that because PP funding is not popular and such a rider might not even pass in the Senate.
Frankly, Harry Reid looks desperate. His strategy –making the shutdown about “women’s health” — is very transparently a strategy, based on Democratic Party electoral interests.
My post Saturday about the March 2010 Girl Scouts scandal — involving a Planned Parenthood “Healthy, Happy and Hot” pamphlet made available at a United Nations conference event — drew some blowback from commenter Paul Katz:
The whole thing was a far-religious right slander campaign against the Girl Scouts. . . .
Anyone or any blog reposting this slander really ought to issue a retraction.
I’ve done some follow-up reporting and, while it will take a while to turn this into a full story, I do want to pass along one item now: An open letter sent to Girl Scouts parents and supporters from Sharon Slater of Family Watch International. It was Mrs. Slater whose eyewitness report about the U.N. conference “Girls Only” panel sparked the uproar over the “Health, Happy and Hot” brouchure. In the wake of the controversy, Mrs. Slater wrote in her open letter:
Because some news outlets picked up our story and reported that the booklet was “distributed” to the girls (even though I had not witnessed the booklets actually put into the girls’ hands), unfortunately, some have tried to discredit my report by focusing on the word “distributed” rather than the fact that the brochure on the back table was available to the girls at the meeting, which is the common way of “distributing” handouts at these types of UN meetings. And more importantly, those who have focused on the word “distributed” and what the word means or does not mean, rather than the fact that the Girl Scouts were at the UN promoting a number of radical sexual rights that are outlined in the Planned Parenthood booklet, have entirely overlooked the facts, which are that the Girl Scouts were promoting abortion and other controversial sexual rights at the UN.
President Barack Obama would veto the House-approved long-term spending bill for the federal government that contains the Pence Amendment, a measure that would de-fund the Planned Parenthood abortion business. . . .
[T]he Washington Times indicates “Obama has issued a veto threat on that bill, saying House Republicans’ cuts are unacceptable.”
“Senate Democrats said the non-spending provisions of the bill — such as restrictions on Planned Parenthood and on Obama administration rules and regulations — will also have to be struck,” the Times continues.
Obama’s adamant insistence on funding Planned Parenthood contradicts his 2008 campaign statements about abortion, Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit observes, calling Obama “the most radical pro-abortion and infanticide president in the last 35 years.” (Hat-tip: That Mr. G Guy.)
This isn’t just about abortion, even though Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. Giving taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood puts the imprimatur of the U.S. government — an official endorsement — on everything the organization does, including its campaign to impose “comprehensive sexuality education” on children.
Money is fungible. Defenders of federal funding for Planned Parenthood claim that taxpayer dollars aren’t used for abortion, that tax money is only used for (supposedly benign) “family planning” services. But any accountant could see the bottom line, where the stated purpose of taxpayer funding is irrelevant. A dollar is a dollar, it’s all going to the same place, and Planned Parenthood certainly isn’t hurting for cash:
PPFA’s income for fiscal year 2008-2009 was more than $1.1 billion (up six percent from 2007-2008), with nearly one-third coming from taxpayers. This “not-for-profit” entity ends virtually every fiscal year with tens of millions of dollars in “excess revenue over expenses” (known to most people as “profit”). The “excess” for 2008-2009 alone was $64.4 million.
On June 30, 2009, PPFA had net assets valued at $994.7 million, of which $396.3 million was unrestricted (essentially a savings account) and $179.9 million was temporarilyrestricted. Despite these huge sums, PPFA incessantly claims to need more taxpayer dollars.
Someone in the White House press corps needs to ask questions about President Obama’s priorities: At a time when federal deficits are out of control, why is the president threatening to veto legislation that doesn’t include funding for Planned Parenthood?
Turns out, a 2009 study by the journal Contraception found, in a 10-year study of women in Spain, that as overall contraceptive use increased from around 49 percent to 80 percent, the elective abortion rate more than doubled. . . .
A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is lack of access to contraception. In fact, 54 percent of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant.
More contraception = more abortion. Pro-lifers have long sought to call attention to this fact, which seems so counterintuitive to those who’ve bought into the claims of the Contraceptive Culture.
The reason why abortion rates rise as contraceptive use becomes more frequent is a matter of “complex causation,” as social scientists would say. Yet the fact is that every method of contraception has a failure rate. The more often people use contraceptives, the greater the number of failures — i.e., “unwanted pregnancies.” In a society that prescribes abortion as the best response to “unwanted pregnancy,” there will necessarily be an increased number of abortions in tandem with the increase in contraceptive use.
This can be seen simply as a function of the Law of Large Numbers, especially when people are indoctrinated with the idea that sex without the possibility of pregnancy is “normal,” which is what the Contraceptive Culture would have us believe.
Click the images to see the whole 20-page “Healthy, Happy and Hot” pamphlet, which was distributed to Girl Scouts by Planned Parenthood. Because teaching Girl Scouts about “sexual pleasure” is obviously what U.S. taxpayers want, right?
The World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides hosted a no-adults-welcome panel at the United Nations [in March 2010] where Planned Parenthood was allowed to distribute a brochure entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot.” . . .
The brochure claims, “Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse… But, there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” . . . The Girl Scouts, along with the YWCA have been co-moderating a young women’s caucus that included an “Intergenerational Conversation” side event on “universal access” and “reproductive health.” One recent Girl Scout project “aims at securing the right of women, men and adolescents aged between ten and twenty-five, to better reproductive and sexual health.”
Those of you old enough to think of Girl Scouts in terms of crafts, camping and cooking are probably astonished by this, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the national Girl Scouts organization has been hijacked by radical feminists.
Might as well send them camping with Charlie Sheen . . .
Nothing is easier than to fool a liberal, and journalists do this all the time by claiming to have exposed the allegedly nefarious and secretive actions of conservatives when, in fact, (a) conservatives were doing more nefarious than the ordinary business of political advocacy, and (b) the “secrets” supposedly exposed were never secret at all. Such is the story behind this Mother Jones headline today:
Revealed: The Group Behind the Bills that
Could Legalize Killing Abortion Providers
First, it was South Dakota. Then Nebraska and Iowa. The similarly worded bills, which have quietly cropped up recently in state legislatures, share a common purpose: To expand justifiable homicide statutes to cover killings committed in the defense of an unborn child. Critics of the bills, including law enforcement officials, warn that these measures could invite violence against abortion providers and possibly provide legal cover to the perpetrators of such crimes.
That these measures have emerged simultaneously in a handful of states is no coincidence. It’s part of a campaign orchestrated by a Washington-based anti-abortion group, which has lobbied state lawmakers to introduce legislation that it calls the “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act” [PDF]. Over the past two years, the group, Americans United for Life, has succeeded in passing versions of this bill in Missouri and Oklahoma.
The article goes on to assert that the bills under consideration in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota “are far more sweeping” than the laws enacted in Missouri and Oklahoma, justifying the following criticisms:
The bills are so loosely worded, abortion-rights advocates say, that a pregnant woman could seek out an abortion and a boyfriend, husband — or, in some cases, just about anyone — could be justified in using deadly force to stop it.
A Planned Parenthood official testified last week at a hearing on Nebraska’s LB 232 that such legislation “authorizes and protects vigilantes.” . . . “This could be used to incite violence against abortion providers,” said Omaha’s deputy chief of police, David Baker.
Well, so they say, and I have no interest in refereeing this controversy. My point is that there is nothing at all secretive about Americans United for Life’s role in promoting these laws. The model legislation for the “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act” is featured on AUL’s Web site, and providing model legislation and legal advice is a specialty that AUL proudly proclaims on its Web site:
AUL attorneys are highly-regarded experts on pro-life legal language and the Constitution, consulting on bills and amendments across the country. In addition, our model legislation enables legislators to easily introduce bills without needing to research and write the bills themselves, helping ensure that their efforts will have the desired impact and withstand judicial scrutiny. . . .
We are continually working to help legislators enact new pro-life laws that will go into effect and not be unnecessarily tied up in court . . . . To do that, we educate legislators on the issues and provide them with model legislation and legal advice on legislative language. We work hand-in-hand with legislators to minimize avoidable problems . . .
So it isn’t as if Baumann and Schulman had to go sleuthing around to figure out that AUL was advising state legislators on these measures. I’d dare say there isn’t a single piece of successful pro-life legislation anywhere in the United States that hasn’t had some imput from AUL. That’s what they do.
As to the claim that the pro-life bills in South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska are a backdoor means of declaring “open season” on abortion providers, AUL denies any such intent:
“Research shows that pregnant women are more likely to be victims of domestic abuse,” said Denise Burke, AUL’s vice president of legal affairs. “It is tragic that the pro-abortion lobby maligns efforts to protect these women.”
In a statement, Burke cited statistics about violence toward pregnant women, including a 1998 study that found “pregnant women are 60.6 percent more likely to be beaten than women who are not pregnant.” Burke said “a pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause. And case after case has demonstrated that husbands or boyfriends are often the perpetrators of pregnancy-associated violence and that this violence is often directed at the unborn child or intended to end or jeopardize the pregnancy.”
