Tag: the Senate

Democrat Senators Decide That It’s Okay to Sell Aborted Baby Parts

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics2 Comments

thDSZR68GOAs Planned Parenthood continues to sell aborted baby parts, the Professional Politicians on Capitol Hill continue to play procedural games.

Fox News reports that

The Senate failed Monday to advance a Republican-led measure to halt federal aid to Planned Parenthood, but leaders of the GOP-controlled chamber appear ready to continue the fight, galvanized by a series of unsettling videos about the group.

The vote to bring debate on the bill was 53 against to 46 in favor.

The measure had not been expected to get the 60 votes needed to move it toward a final vote because Republicans needed several “yeas” from Democrats, who largely support Planned Parenthood.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was among the Democrats who voted to defund the group. Manchin, whose state has increasingly become more Republican leaning, was undecided until a few hours before the vote.

“I am very troubled by the callous behavior of Planned Parenthood staff in (the) recently released videos, which casually discuss the sale, possibly for profit, of fetal tissue after an abortion,” he said before voting. “Until these allegations have been answered and resolved, I do not believe that taxpayer money should be used to fund this organization.”

New York Sen. Joe Donnelly was the only other Democrat to vote yes. The only Republicans to vote no were Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He voted no so he could again bring up the measure.

On the GOP side, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa said, “The American taxpayer should not be asked to fund an organization like Planned Parenthood that has shown a sheer disdain for human dignity and complete disregard for women and their babies.”

The first of the videos were released late last month and show group officials negotiating the price of aborted fetal tissue for research.

Federal law prohibits the sale of fetal tissue for profit. And whether the officials were indeed negotiating a for-profit price, as critics charge, may never be settled.

Planned Parenthood says it only recovers costs of the procedures and gives the tissue to researchers only with a mother’s advance consent.

However, the videos have sparked renewed efforts by pro-life organizations and others to restrict abortions and undermine Planned Parenthood.

The group provides abortions and such health and family-planning services as contraception and sexual-disease treatment to roughly 2.7 million people annually, mostly women.

By law, federal funds are already barred from being used for abortions except for cases of incest, rape or when a woman’s life is in danger.

The White House says it would block legislation to defund the group.

Still, Republicans could try to gain leverage for the defund effort when Congress returns from August recess by threating to vote against spending bills to keep the government running after Sept. 30 if they include Planned Parenthood funds.

GOP leaders are reluctant to force a shutdown fight that could haunt them in the 2016 elections.

In 2013, firebrand Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, now a 2016 presidential candidate, led a showdown against Washington Democrats over funding for ObamaCare that resulted in a partial government shutdown that voters largely blamed on Republicans.

Planned Parenthood leader Cecile Richards told Fox News on Monday that a shutdown effort would be “politically unpopular” but that her group would be prepared for such a fight.

The furtively recorded videos released in July — with close-ups of aborted fetal organs and Planned Parenthood officials describing how “I’m not going to crush that part” — have forced the group and its Democratic champions into a defensive crouch.

Democrats are sounding a theme they have employed in recent elections, characterizing the GOP drive as an assault on health care for women.

“It’s our obligation to protect our wives, our sisters, our daughters, our granddaughters” from the GOP’s “absurd policies,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, said before the vote. “The Republican Party has lost its moral compass.”

The videos were made by anti-abortion group Center for Medical Progress, which has so far released four videos in which people posing as representatives of a company that purchases fetal tissue converse with Planned Parenthood officials.

In the longer term, GOP leaders are hoping that three congressional committees’ investigations, plus probes in several states and the expected release of additional videos, will produce evidence of PlannedParenthood wrongdoing and make it harder for Democrats to defend the organization.

Their measure calls for funneling Planned Parenthood’s federal dollars to other providers of health care to women, including hospitals, state and local agencies and federally financed community health centers.

Republicans say that transfer would enable women to continue receiving the health care they need because PlannedParenthood’s nearly 700 clinics are far outnumbered by other providers.

Planned Parenthood and Democrats contest that. They say many of the organization’s centers are in areas with few alternatives for reproductive health care or for other services for the low-income women who comprise a majority of its clients.

Have you ever heard of Peter Singer?

Peter Singer is an Australian philosopher and a visiting professor of bioethics at Princeton University. He also has worked as a lecturer at Oxford University, New York University, Monash University, the University of Colorado (Boulder), the University of California (Irvine), the University of Melbourne, and Princeton University’s Center for Human Values. Singer authored the 1975 book Animal Liberation, a landmark text that effectively launched the modern animal rights movement.

In his book, this lunatic claims that people should respect the moral worth of all animals…not on the basis of the animals’ intelligence, but instead, because of their ability to experience pain and suffering. He equates the denial of animals’ basic “rights” as a form of discrimination called “speciesism,” which he erroneously compares to racism and sexism.

According to Singer, it is wrong to value the life of human beings more than the lives of animals. Singer, an atheist, of course, rejects the scripture from Genesis that man has been given dominion over animals and that people are made uniquely in the image of God. He also believes that all animals have souls who are just as worthy of life. as ours’:

All three [of the foregoing axioms] taken together do have a very negative influence on the way in which we think about animals.

Singer goes on to explain that his mission is to challenge “this superiority of human beings”.

Singer, in 1979, wrote and published Practical Ethics, in which he continued his rant that animals are equal to human beings. He also states (hold on to something) that human parents should be legally permitted to kill a “severely disabled” infant up to 28 days after its birth if they deem the baby’s life unworthy of preservation.

According to this nutjob,

There are some circumstances…where the newborn baby is severely disabled and where the parents think that it’s better that that child should not live, when killing the newborn baby is not at all wrong.

Singer wrote an article for scotsman.com, in August of 2008. Here is an excerpt.

Abortion receives extensive coverage in developed countries, especially in the United States, where Republicans have used opposition to it to rally voters. But much less attention is given to the 86 per cent of all abortions that occur in the developing world. Although most countries in Africa and Latin America have laws prohibiting abortion in most circumstances, official bans do not prevent high abortion rates.

In Africa, there are 29 abortions per 1,000 women, and 32 per 1,000 in Latin America. The comparable figure for Western Europe, where abortion is generally permitted in most circumstances, is 12. According to a recent report by the World Health Organisation, unsafe abortions lead to the death of 47,000 women a year, almost all of them in developing countries. Restricting access to legal abortion leads many poor women to seek abortion from unsafe providers. The legalisation of abortion on request in South Africa in 1998 saw abortion-related deaths drop by 91 per cent. And the development of the drugs misoprostol and mifepristone, which can be provided by pharmacists, makes relatively safe and inexpensive abortion possible in developing countries.

Opponents will respond that abortion is, by its very nature, unsafe – for the foetus. They point out that abortion kills a unique, living human individual. That claim is difficult to deny, at least if by “human” we mean “member of the species Homo sapiens.”

It is also true that we cannot simply invoke a woman’s “right to choose” in order to avoid the ethical issue of the moral status of the foetus. If the foetus really did have the moral status of any other human being, it would be difficult to argue that a pregnant woman’s right to choose includes the right to bring about the death of the foetus, except perhaps when the woman’s life is at stake.

The fallacy in the anti-abortion argument lies in the shift from the scientifically accurate claim that the foetus is a living individual of the species Homo sapiens to the ethical claim that the foetus therefore has the same right to life as any other human being. Membership of the species Homo sapiens is not enough to confer a right to life.

We can plausibly argue that we ought not to kill, against their will, self-aware beings who want to continue to live. We can see this as a violation of their autonomy, or a thwarting of their preferences. But why should a being’s potential to become rationally self-aware make it wrong to end its life before it has the capacity for rationality or self-awareness?

We have no obligation to allow every being with the potential to become a rational being to realise that potential. If it comes to a clash between the supposed interests of potentially rational but not yet conscious beings and the vital interests of actually rational women, we should give preference to the women every time.

I know that I will be called a “‘Christianist’ Right Wing Reactionary Idiot”, by any Liberal, who happens to read this. But, frankly, Scarlett…well, you know.

I find it sadly fascinating that the Main Stream Media had to be forced by those of us in the New Media, to cover the Baby Parts Selling Scandal involving Planned Parenthood. They wanted, as sworn members of the Obama Propaganda Corps (pronounced “corpse”) to ignore PP and their callousness, because it did not fit the safe, antiseptic version of the abortion procedure, which they have been pushing since before Roe vs. Wade.

What they have been slapped in the face with is a harsh reality. The Planned Parenthood Scandal has placed the National Spotlight straight on the purveyors of American Infanticide. There is nothing that they can do to defend it.

I find it horrifying that there are Americans, who believe as Singer does, that we are no better than the toad in our front yard. Therefore, it is perfectly acceptable to “get rid” of us, while we are defenseless, in the same manner that an animal shelter gasses its unwanted animals.

But, God help you, if you shoot a lion.

Mankind wase given dominion over the animals. We Are different. Within each of us is that Divine Spark”, which eternally links us to the Creator. As King David said,

For Thou didst form my inward parts; Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to Thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Thy works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from Thee, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Thy book they were all written, The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them. (Psalm 139:13-16)

Pray for our nation. God shall not be mocked.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

The Tsunami Hits! Republicans Control Congress!

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Obama-Shrinks-2Well, it happened.

Americans, in their anger and disgust over the direction which President Barack Hussein Obama, his enablers, and his minions have taken our country, spoke in a loud and clear voice in the Midterm Elections yesterday, giving the Republican Party control of both the House of Representative and the Senate.

The Associated Press reports about the aftermath of this Political Tsunami…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Riding a powerful wave of voter discontent, resurgent Republicans captured control of the Senate and tightened their grip on the House Tuesday night in elections certain to complicate President Barack Obama’s final two years in office.

Republican Mitch McConnell led the way to a new Senate majority, dispatching Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky after a $78 million campaign of unrelieved negativity. Voters are “hungry for new leadership. They want a reason to be hopeful,” said the man now in line to become majority leader and set the Senate agenda.

Two-term incumbent Mark Pryor of Arkansas was the first Democrat to fall, defeated by freshman Rep. Tom Cotton. Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado was next, defeated by Rep. Cory Gardner. Sen. Kay Hagan also lost, in North Carolina, to Thom Tillis, the speaker of the state House.

Republicans also picked up seats in Iowa, West Virginia, South Dakota and Montana, all states where Democrats retired. They had needed a net gain of six seats to end a Democratic majority in place since 2006.

In the House, with dozens of races uncalled, Republicans had picked up 11 seats that had been in Democratic hands, and given up only one.

A net pickup of 13 would give them more seats in the House than at any time since 1946.

Obama was at the White House as voters remade Congress for the final two years of his tenure — not to his liking. With lawmakers set to convene next week for a postelection session, he invited leaders to a meeting on Friday.

The shift in control of the Senate, coupled with a GOP-led House, probably means a strong GOP assault on budget deficits, additional pressure on Democrats to accept sweeping changes to the health care law that stands as Obama’s signal domestic accomplishment and a bid to reduce federal regulations.

Obama’s ability to win confirmation for lifetime judicial appointments could also suffer, including any Supreme Court vacancies.

Speaker John Boehner, in line for a third term as head of the House, said the new Republican-controlled Congress would vote soon in the new year on the “many common-sense jobs and energy bills that passed the Republican-led House in recent years with bipartisan support but were never even brought to a vote by the outgoing Senate majority.”

Legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada is likely among the disputed issues to be debated.

Said outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, ” The message from voters is clear: They want us to work together.”

There were 36 gubernatorial elections on the ballot, and several incumbents struggled against challengers. Tom Wolf captured the Pennsylvania statehouse for the Democrats, defeating Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn lost in Illinois, Obama’s home state. Republican Larry Hogan scored one of the night’s biggest upsets, in Maryland.

How did all this come about?

According to the Washington Post,

…From the outset of the campaign, Republicans had a simple plan: Don’t make mistakes, and make it all about Obama, Obama, Obama. Every new White House crisis would bring a new Republican ad. And every Democratic incumbent would be attacked relentlessly for voting with the president 97 or 98 or 99 percent of the time.

But none of that would work if Republicans did not get the right candidates, a basic tenet that had eluded them in recent elections. This time, party officials pushed bad candidates out, recruited and coached contenders with broad appeal and resuscitated two flailing incumbents, Roberts and Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi.
Rival organizations also improved coordination with each other and beefed up their opposition research to wreak havoc on Democrats, while the party closed the gap on data, digital and voter turnout programs.

“We had to recruit candidates, and we had to train them,” said Rob Collins, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). “We had to bring back our incumbents. We had to modernize creaky campaigns. And we had to prevent the mistakes that have plagued our party.”

Democrats began the 2014 campaign with a big disadvantage: They had to defend seats in six deeply Republican states — enough to lose the Senate — and a handful of others in swing states.

Burdened by the climate, Democrats believed they still could win if they localized races and framed each as a choice between two candidates. The strategy worked in 2012. On his office windowsill at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the group’s executive director, Guy Cecil, displayed a beer mug shaped like a cowboy boot with the name “Heidi” on the side — a reminder of how Democrat Heidi Heitkamp won a Senate seat that year in heavily Republican North Dakota.

Senate Democrats calculated that to win in red states, they also had to alter the midterm electorate.

“There’s basically two Americas — there’s midterm America and there’s presidential-year America,” White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said. “They’re almost apples and oranges. The question was, could Obama voters become Democratic voters?”

Evidently not.

The Democrats never realized that it was too late to separate themselves from their fallen messiah, the “clean and articulate”, unvetted candidate, who, through media manipulation and outrageous propaganda, they foisted on an American public, thanks to America’s Low Information Voters, who desperately wanted to make history, by elected the first Black President (Bubba Clinton, notwithstanding).

Last night, the Democrats paid for their deception and their arrogance, in believing that they could take our country in a direction which the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want to go.

They reaped what they have sewn.

Now, the Republicans have to prove their trustworthiness to all of us who voted them in.

Their actions  will have to reflect our wishes, not their own. They must hold the line against the egregious Executive Orders which will surely be coming from the desk of the Petulant President Pantywaist, since he has lost the ability to get his socialist brand of legislation passed through Congress.

The first one will be a massive Amnesty Order, which White House Officials claim will be put in action by Baracky Claus before Christmas.

If Republicans wish to win the Presidential Election in 2016, they had better pay attention to what the majority of Americans want.

Last night showed what happens  to “public servants” when they only serve special interest groups…and themselves.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The 2014 Midterms: Is There a Political Tsunami Approaching?

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

AFBrancoWreckingBall1132014Tomorrow is the most important Midterm Election in our lifetimes.

I’m are not being hyperbolic. I am simply stating a fact.

The New York Times reports that

Republicans entered the final weekend before the midterm elections clearly holding the better hand to control the Senate and poised to add to their House majority. But a decidedly sour electorate and a sizable number of undecided voters added a measure of suspense.

The final drama surrounded the Senate, which has been a Democratic bulwark for President Obama since his party lost its House majority in 2010. Republicans need to gain six seats to seize the Senate, and officials in both parties believe there is a path for them to win at least that many.

Yet the races for a number of seats that will decide the majority remained close, polls showed, prompting Republicans to pour additional money into get-out-the-vote efforts in Alaska, Georgia and Iowa. Democrats were doing the same in Colorado, where they were concerned because groups that tend to favor Republicans voted early in large numbers, and in Iowa.

While an air of mystery hung over no fewer than nine Senate races, the only question surrounding the House was how many seats Republicans would add. If they gain a dozen seats, it will give them an advantage not seen since 1948 and potentially consign the Democrats to minority status until congressional redistricting in the 2020s.

In a sign of a worsening climate, Democratic officials shifted money to incumbents in once-safe districts around Las Vegas and Santa Barbara, Calif. And over the weekend, they put more money toward television ads in districts held by Democrats in Iowa and Minnesota, including that of longtime Representative Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota. Though there are fewer competitive House seats than in past elections because of gerrymandering, party strategists were still airing ads in 40 districts.

“It’s a grim environment,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Mr. Israel was spending the weekend pleading with his caucus to contribute to imperiled colleagues to minimize losses. Trying to soften the blow, he noted that losses were expected: The party in control of the White House has lost an average of 29 seats in midterm elections in the last century.

Just two years after he won a second term by a commanding margin, Mr. Obama haskept his distance from the most pivotal congressional races. On Saturday, he was to address a heavily African-American crowd in Detroit to bolster Michigan’s Democratic nominee for governor.

Senate Republicans are confident. A senior party official called Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, on Saturday at his Louisville home and, after running through voting projections, told Mr. McConnell that he would be the next majority leader. Mr. McConnell’s initial reaction was only a long pause.

According to Nate Silver’s blog, fivethirtyeight.com,

The GOP’s chances of winning the Senate are 68.5 percent, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast, its highest figure of the year.

Among the 20 new polls released Thursday — it looks like there will be no Great Poll Shortage after all — two were principally responsible for Republican gains. The first was in Kentucky, where a SurveyUSA poll for the Louisville Courier-Journal had Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell ahead 48-43 over Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes. The poll represented a shift from SurveyUSA’s previous two polls, which had a 1 percentage-point lead for McConnell and a 2-point lead for Grimes. With SurveyUSA (a highly rated pollster) now more in line with other polls of the state, we have a clearer story in Kentucky. It’s one that probably ends in a victory for McConnell, whose chances of winning are up to 87 percent.

The other poll was in Arkansas, which hasn’t been surveyed as often as other key Senate races. That poll, from the University of Arkansas, found Republican Tom Cotton up by 13 percentage points over Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. No other poll of the state has shown Cotton with a double-digit lead, but he hasn’t trailed in a nonpartisan poll since Sept. 22. When the choice is between polls that show a candidate with a small lead and polls that show him with a large lead, he’s usually in good shape just a few days before Election Day.

Speaking of which, it’s not too early to look ahead to election night (along with our partners at ABC News, we’ll be covering everything; we hope you’ll join us). The number you’ll be hearing about all night is six — as in, Republicans need to net six seats from Democrats to win control of the Senate.

As we’ve pointed out before, the “net” part of that phrase is key. Republicans will have to win more than six Democratic-held seats if they lose a couple of their own. Their incumbent in Kansas, Sen. Pat Roberts, is only even-money to win re-election (although there’s a chance independent Greg Orman, even if he wins, could caucus with Republicans). The GOP candidate in Georgia, David Perdue, is ahead by only about 1 percentage point against Democrat Michelle Nunn, and that race could go to a runoff. McConnell is likely, but not certain, to survive.

Can the Republicans win control of the Senate and pick up more seats in the House of Representatives tomorrow?

It all depends on the following factors:

1. How mad are American Voters at President Barack Hussein Obama and his Congressional Enablers in the Democrat Party?

Since Obama assumed the presidency for the second time, he has doubled-down on his mission to “radically change” America into something that it was never meant to be. We all hear our fellow Americans venting their anger to us about the purposeful ineptness of President Pantywaist. But, will this motivate the average American to go to the polls tomorrow and vent their frustration?

2. How big will tomorrow’s turnout be?

Will American Conservatives stay home, as they did when the Republicans ran the severely Moderate Mitt Romney as their Presidential Nominee, or are they sufficiently motivated by Obama’s actions to vote straight Republican…even for snakes like Mississippi’s Thad Cochran, who won his State Party’s Nomination as Senatorial Candidate by enlisting Black Democrats to vote for him in the state’s Republican Primary?

3. Will Voter Fraud be better controlled than it was in the 2012 President Election?

Will Democrats vote early, vote often, and “vote post-mortem”?

If all the stars align and Americans exercise some common sense, tomorrow’s Midterm Elections could turn out to be a Political Tsunami of epic proportions

As you contemplate casting your vote tomorrow, think about this:

Our Founding Fathers designed our government for a very specific purpose: to give Americans a voice in the direction in which direction their country should go.

Tomorrow’s election will be a referendum on the epic failure that is the Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.

The greatest United States President in my lifetime, Ronald Wilson Reagan, said,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

In order to preserve our nation for future generations, it is time to restore the System of Checks and Balances which our Founders, through deliberation and with foresight, so ingeniously put in place over 200 years ago.

Our freedom requires it.

Until He Comes,

KJ