by Smitty
A: Tulips on an organ of the state: Continue reading Q: What Is Better Than A Rose On A Clavier? →
In New Audio, Charles Johnson Al Gore Osama bin Laden Blames U.S. for Climate Change
The al-Qaida leader blamed the United States and other industrialized nations for climate change and said the only way to prevent disaster was to break the American economy, calling on the world to boycott U.S. goods and stop using the dollar.
“The effects of global warming have touched every continent. Drought and deserts are spreading, while from the other floods and hurricanes unseen before the previous decades have now become frequent,” bin Laden said in the audiotape, aired on the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.
The terror leader noted Washington’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gases and painted the United States as in the thrall of major corporations that he said “are the true criminals against the global climate” and are to blame for the global economic crisis, driving “tens of millions into poverty and unemployment.”
In response, the U.S. Marine Corps is developing plans to reduce al-Qaeda’s carbon footprint by “blasting those terrorist bastards to smithereens,” according to Pentagon source.
I might have made that last part up.
UPDATE: Dan Collins on Twitter:
Dude, do you even read my blog?
Great minds think alike. Sorry.
Jill Stanek on the Battle of Fitchburg
America’s leading pro-life blogger features the story today:
I had no direct knowledge that pro-lifers would pitch a fit, I just knew no pro-life group anywhere would ever let [Planned Parenthood] into their community without raising the roof.
As I reminded readers yesterday, this all began last week when Da Tech Guy picked up a copy of the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise and discovered that Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts — with a grant of federal stimulus money — was planning to open a new clinic on Main Street in his hometown. This was indeed “a highly visible location,” as the Worcester Telegram & Gazette called it.
All politics is local and for six days I was based at Da Tech Guy’s home in Fitchburg while covering the Scott Brown Senate campaign. During that time, I visited Da Tech Guy’s parish church:
St. Anthony of Padua Church has traditionally served an Italian blue-collar congregation and the politicial views of those in the pews at 8 a.m. mass may not be indicative of all Catholics in Massachusetts. With that disclaimer, however, Martha Coakley may be on the verge of the most brutal Catholic backlash since the Inquisition.
The Democratic attorney general’s adamant support of late-term abortion obviously puts her at odds with faithful Catholics . . .
This was the context that made the story so striking. As I explained to someone at last night’s Brown victory celebration in D.C., Coakley won the Democratic primary on terms that ultimately doomed her in the general election. Coakley had declared that the health-care bill must include federal funding for abortion, including late-term abortion. This earned her support among Democratic primary voters, but it ceded the middle ground to Scott Brown.
Maybe you’re generally pro-choice and maybe you’re generally in favor of government health-care, but mandating federal funding for abortion? That’s certainly not a majoritarian position, and Scott Brown didn’t have to take a hard-core pro-life stance to put Coakley on the defensive on that issue. Blue-collar Catholics like the parishioners at St. Anthony’s lean toward Democrats on many issues, but Coakley had staked her candidacy on an issue that would cost her badly among such voters.
So in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s victory, Planned Parenthood announced it was going to open a clinic on Main Street in Fitchburg — heckuva coincidence, eh? The fact that this is funded by a reported $397,000 in federal stimulus money makes it a story of national consequence. Pro-lifers were fired up and ready for a fight, and despite a snowstorm yesterday, turnout was strong for their first protest:
A crowd of about 70 to 80 anti-abortion protesters waved signs and prayed Thursday on both sides of 391 Main St., where the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts plans to open an office this spring. . . .
Christine Hanley, who organized the protest as the chairwoman of the Fitchburg-Leominster Chapter of Mass Citizens for life, had hoped for a minimum of 20 protesters, so she was pleased to find the crowd exceeded her expectations.
“More people are coming all the time,” Hanley said during the protest on a snowy afternoon.
Father Robert Bruso, of St. Anthony de Padua Church in Fitchburg, participated in the protest.
“It’s really nothing the city of Fitchburg stands for,” said Bruso.
Expect many of Father Bruso’s flock to attend the City Council meeting in Fitchburg next week, and certainly you can expect to hear more about this battle in the near future. Da Tech Guy is on the story.
UPDATE: Don’t forget — Send Da Tech Guy to CPAC!
Sex vs. Babies
“In every society, there are two critical lists: acceptable conditions for having a baby, and acceptable conditions for having sex. . . . It was only with the widespread acceptance of contraception in the middle of the 20th century, creating an upheaval in the public psyche in which sex and babies no longer went hand-in-hand, that the two lists began to diverge.”
— Jennifer Fulwiler
Feminists OK With Women in Panties Selling Beer. Pro-Life Ads? Not So Much
Sarah Palin nailed the National Organization of Women for trying to prevent CBS from airing a pro-life ad during the Super Bowl:
“My message to these groups who are inexplicably offended by a pro-woman, pro-child, pro-life message airing during the Super Bowl: please concentrate on empowering women, help with efforts to prevent unexpected pregnancies, stay consistent with your message that for too long women have been made to feel like sex objects in our ‘modern’ culture and that we can expect better in 2010.”
The man-haters whine that they’ve been misunderstood:
NOW President Terry O’Neill said that Palin is “missing our point.”
“The goal of the Focus on the Family ad is not to empower women. It’s to create a climate in which Roe v. Wade can be overturned,” O’Neill said. “There are always going to be women who need abortions. In this country, one in three women will have an abortion.”
“Focus on the Family has cynically set it up so they can say anyone who disagrees with airing this ad is disrespecting one woman and her choice. NOW respects every woman’s right to plan her own family and insists our laws do the same,” said O’Neill.
Feminists against cynical manipulation of issues? That would be something new.
The ad in question shows Tim Tebow and his mother discussing the medical difficulties of her pregnancy, during which she was urged to abort the future University of Florida quarterback — a decision that would have spared her child the unbearable pain of losing the SEC title to Alabama.
OK, you knew I had to take that shot at Tebow. (Roll Tide!) But seriously, while the man-haters at NOW tried to prevent the Tebow ad from being shown during the Super Bowl, they haven’t mounted a similar protest against Budweiser ads featuring scantily-clad babes. Chris Stirewalt of the Washington Examiner explains:
In terms of Super Bowl ads, “sexist” is code for “anti-abortion.” But “sexist” does not apply to parading women around in their underpants to sell beer.
Got it?
Yeah, but real men don’t need women parading around in underpants to sell them beer. NTTAWWT.
UPDATE: Liberals have developed a brilliant new communication strategy: Twitter trolls. They lurk on the #TCOT (Top Conservatives On Twitter) feed, then post derogatory responses. After I Tweeted this post, one such creature responded by calling me “Bullshit artist” and “Douchebag,” before Tweeting this:
I triple dog dare you to print my comment on your blog, Mr. Dishonest Fuckwit. 🙂
The comment (submitted with a bogus e-mail address, of course) was approved:
As usual conservatives like yourself and Palin can’t even argue the issue at hand. You develop a strawman . . . and then present that to your ignorant followers as fact so that they never face the inherent nihilism of conservative “values.”
Exit question: Does feminism deprive people of a sense of humor, or are humorless people just naturally attracted to feminism?
UPDATE II: In the comments, Amanda Read links to her post on this subject, featuring video of Americans United for Life’s Charmaine Yoest debating Erin Matson of the National Organization for Women Parading Around in Their Underpants:
The Astroturf ‘Expert’
Ed Morrissey highlights how an Obama administration health-care consultant was also a major media source on the health-care plan:
When MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber allowed himself to be quoted by numerous media outlets about his sunny analyses of ObamaCare, including a big push by Peter Orszag on his OMB site and in challenging reporters to use Gruber’s conclusions, Gruber never bothered to mention that he was receiving money through HHS to provide consultation on health-care reform.
Sen. Chuck Grassley is now asking questions. Read the whole thing.
‘You Convicted Him on Twitter’
Andrew Breitbart gets into a fascinating argument with MSNBC’s David Shuster here.
Via Nice Deb. Much more blog reaction at Memeorandum.
UPDATE: Jill Stanek notes that the Washington Post has already been forced to correct and clarify its first report on James O’Keefe’s arrest.
Hopeless Choice
“President Obama’s book is called The Audacity of Hope. Abortion is the abandonment of hope. When a person chooses abortion they are saying they don’t have hope for the future, not for their child or for themselves.”
— Fr. Robert Bruso