politics

New at Live Action – How Low Can You Go? Salon Writer Accuses Rick Santorum of Wanting Her Daughter Dead

Calvin Freiburger abortion, Left, liberalism, Live Action, politics, pro-choice, Salon, Santorum, slander
My latest Live Action post:
Once again proving how hated those who stand for life are in some corners of society, Sarah Fister Gale at Salon explains how Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum “would have killed my daughter.”
She explains how a prenatal test of her unborn baby’s amniotic fluid revealed that she had Rh negative disease, which would have been fatal to her if left undiscovered. The prenatal testing saved the child’s life by enabling Gale’s doctor to track her development, ensure that she was delivered at the safest time, given a full blood transfusion, and monitored to make certain the disease was eliminated. Thankfully, little Ella is alive and well today.
What does this have to do with Rick Santorum, though?

If Rick Santorum had his way, I wouldn’t have been able to get that test, and she most likely would have died. Because according to him, tests that give parents vital information about the health of their unborn children are morally wrong. Though he has no medical training, and no business commenting on the medical decisions that women and their doctors make, he argues that such tests shouldn’t be provided, or that employers at least should be allowed to opt out of paying for them on “moral grounds.”

Santorum’s position is that “People have the right to do it,” but not “to have the government force people to provide it free” because prenatal testing often leads to abortion. He noted that he was speaking from experience: “I have a child that has Trisomy 18. Almost 100 percent of Trisomy 18 children are encouraged to be aborted.” The facts support Santorum—92% of positive Down syndrome diagnoses, for instance, result in abortion.
Read the rest at Live Action.

Around the Web

Calvin Freiburger blog, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, politics

Not content to parrot the Left’s cultural agenda with a gay marriage/DADT story, the writers of Archie are apparently going to follow up with the Occupy movement. Remember when comic books were, y’know, comic books?

At Townhall, Daniel Doherty takes a look at a new plan for saving Social Security.

Pat Buchanan says Israel is more dangerous to America than Iran is. Why do conservatives still give this clown a platform?

Here’s the libertarian case against the Confederacy. Given the root of “libertarianism,” you’d think that’d be self-explanatory. Wacky libertarians.

A Wisconsin man decides to protest the new voter ID law by….not voting. I wholeheartedly endorse this effort, and encourage the rest of the state’s liberals to do the same.

My alma mater, Hillsdale College, is the fifth most prude school in the country? Having spent four years there, I can reassure you that there was no mass confusion or ignorance about sex among the student body.

Rick Santorum: Fiscal Conservative

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, Erick Erickson, fiscal responsibility, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, politics, Santorum, spending, Weekly Standard
Among conservatives, the knock on Rick Santorum is that his record on spending doesn’t live up to his record on social issues or foreign policy – that he’s a “pro-life statist,” as Erick Erickson characteristically put it back when he was carrying water for Rick Perry. But a new Weekly Standard piece takes a closer look, and found that Santorum actually had one of the most fiscally conservative voting records during his time in the Senate, despite representing a more liberal state than many of his Republican colleagues:
NTU’s [National Taxpayers Union] scoring paints a radically different picture of Santorum’s 12-year tenure in the Senate (1995 through 2006) than one would glean from the rhetoric of the Romney campaign.  Fifty senators served throughout Santorum’s two terms:  25 Republicans, 24 Democrats, and 1 Republican/Independent.  On a 4-point scale (awarding 4 for an A, 3.3 for a B+, 3 for a B, 2.7 for a B-, etc.), those 50 senators’ collective grade point average (GPA) across the 12 years was 1.69 — which amounts to a C-.  Meanwhile, Santorum’s GPA was 3.66 — or an A-.  Santorum’s GPA placed him in the top 10 percent of senators, as he ranked 5th out of 50. 

Across the 12 years in question, only 6 of the 50 senators got A’s in more than half the years.  Santorum was one of them.  He was also one of only 7 senators who never got less than a B.  (Jim Talent served only during Santorum’s final four years, but he always got less than a B, earning a B- every year and a GPA of 2.7.)  Moreover, while much of the Republican party lost its fiscal footing after George W. Bush took office — although it would be erroneous to say that the Republicans were nearly as profligate as the Democrats — Santorum was the only senator who got A’s in every year of Bush’s first term.  None of the other 49 senators could match Santorum’s 4.0 GPA over that span.
The Standard article compares and averages a lot of grades, but doesn’t go into a lot of detail about what Santorum voted on. For that, check out the Club for Growth’s Presidential White Paper on him. Their conclusion: while Santorum backed a number of bad policies, his overall economic record was “above average.”

Ron Paul Can’t See the Difference Between the Other Republicans and Obama

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, Obama, politics, Ron Paul
An addendum to my post on why Paulites aren’t reliable GOP voters: Ron Paul suggesting to his fans that if the Republican nominee is anyone other than him, they might as well sit out the election:
“I think they’d all be better on taxes,” he said. “No, I don’t think any one would be a lot better [than Barack Obama]. That’s my problem and that’s the problem with the country. When you put people in office — you put a Democrat in, he acts like a republican too much, and when you put a Republican in, they act like a Democrat and they spend too much money. So I just don’t see a whole lot of difference with them.” 
Sure, unless you count stimulus, healthcare, abortion, infanticide, marriage, federalism, judges, religious liberty, gun control, immigration, unions, DOJ corruption, bailouts, national security, foreign policy, the Constitution, regulation, global warming, cap & trade, entitlement reform, or education. But other than that, the Republican candidates are exactly like Obama.
Ron Paul’s not a presidential candidate. He’s a cult leader.

Return of the Daniels Delusion

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, defense spending, GOP, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, illegal immigration, Mitch Daniels, moderates, politics, social issues, unions, value-added tax
So there’s a new website collecting signatures to urge Mitch Daniels to throw his hat into the presidential ring.

Er, why?

This is the guy who 1) issued an idiotic call for a delusional, undefined “truce” on social issues; 2) wasn’t exactly a fiscal crusader either as Bush’s OMB director or as Governor of Indiana; 3) caved on Right to Work in Indiana; 4) pushed an ObamaCare-stylestate health plan of his own; 5) came out against an Arizona-style immigration law, and advocated dropping the “law enforcement provisions that have been the ones that have bothered most people”; and supports 6) a value-added tax, 7) a tax on imported oil, and 8) risky defense cuts. 
So please, explain to me what void in the current field Mitch Daniels fills? What qualities does he bring to the table that make him particularly well-suited to either defeat Barack Obama or be a particularly effective president?

GOP Negligence Largely to Blame for Gay Marriage’s Rising Public Support

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, gay marriage, GOP, homosexuality, politics, social issues
Note: the following article was originally written in early June for another venue, but I’ve reprinted it here because I think its point is still relevant.
What a difference a couple of election cycles make. In 2004, with solid majorities opposing gay marriage, Republicans aggressively campaigned on the issue, contributing significantly to the reelection of President George W. Bush and the passage of marriage protection laws in over 40 states. Congressional Republicans introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment repeatedly between 2002 and 2006.
Fast-forward to 2011. Support for gay marriage has been steadily rising since 2006, finally reaching a 53% majority in a March 18 ABC News/Washington Post poll. On May 6, Gallup found that just 15% of Republicans consider social issues their top priority.
Granted, most of the current GOP presidential field rejects Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ call for an ill-defined “truce” on social issues, and there are no serious Giuliani-style liberals in the race this time around, but overall the Republican Party and conservative punditry have put the issue on the backburner, allegedly to focus on wasteful spending. And in this observer’s opinion, this trend of Republicans taking their eye off the ball is the biggest factor to blame for public opinion’s leftward shift on marriage.
You see, liberals long ago figured out how to multitask with their economic and social agendas. As they fight for ObamaCare and cap & trade on Capitol Hill, they know they can leave their cultural causes to the courts, where judicial activists strike down traditional marriage definitions as discriminatory, to the schools, where radical sexual morals are increasingly embraced, and—most importantly—to the natural consequences of the Right’s comparative silence on the issue.
The arguments for gay marriage are intuitively appealing, since they tug just the right emotional heartstrings. It’s easy to recognize the deceptively simple appeal of the common rebuttal, “How does my marriage threaten yours?” Simple: it doesn’t. By contrast, the conservative argument that marriage’s man-woman definition serves a vital social purpose, and that dismantling it will have devastating indirect consequences, is less intuitively obvious to apolitical Americans. It needs sustained public explanation and debate.
The American people aren’t interested in telling gay people how to live, or keeping them from sharing property or visiting one another in the hospital, and as long as liberals frame the narrative as a choice between redefining marriage and treating gays like second-class citizens—and as long as conservatives aren’t loudly, visibly exposing it as a false choice and explaining the true point of marriage—it’s only natural that a significant portion of the populace will accept the Left’s scare-mongering and oversimplifications at face value. Lies don’t correct themselves.
And wouldn’t you know it, even with its schedule free of those distracting social issues, our Tea Party-charged Republican House has been somewhat less than effective at unshackling the economy or solving the debt crisis. We shouldn’t be surprised by the correlation between indifference on social issues and ineptness on economic ones—the link between conservatism’s social and fiscal aspects runs far deeper than many want to admit.
Our Founding Fathers understood that self-governing societies cannot endure if the virtues necessary for an independent citizenry—responsibility, independence, morality, work ethic—aren’t instilled in each generation, which marriage does by binding husband and wife to each other for the sake of their children’s upbringing, so future citizens can take care of themselves without Uncle Sam’s aid. And with scores of social ills, from poverty and academic failure to teen pregnancy and crime, linked to the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family, the verdict is in: children need both a mother and a father.
For years, society’s conception of marriage has been drifting away from the needs of children and toward the wishes of adults. By erasing procreation from marriage’s definition entirely, same-sex marriage would hammer the final nail in the traditional family’s coffin. Conservatives who are serious about reforming our paternalistic government can’t afford to sit this fight out. As marriage goes, so goes the nation.

Hey, Let’s Subsidize Crack!

Calvin Freiburger Canada, cocaine, conservatism, crack, drugs, health care, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, hypocrisy, insanity, Left, liberalism, libertarianism, nanny state, politics, responsibility, socialism, statism, Steyn

Hat tip to Mark Steyn for today’s example of Canadian healthcare insanity:
Vancouver health officials will distribute new crack pipes to the city’s non-injection drug users this fall as part of a pilot project aimed at engaging crack cocaine smokers and reducing the transmission of disease such as hepatitis C.

The program, part of Vancouver’s harm reduction strategy, is expected to start in October and run for six months to a year, said Dr. Reka Gustafson, a medical health officer with Vancouver Coastal Health.

The intent is to connect health care workers with crack cocaine smokers to evaluate how many of the drug users are in the city and what equipment they need to lower their risk of catching diseases such as hepatitis C, HIV and even respiratory illnesses.

A kit with a clean, unused pipe, mouthpiece, filter and condoms will be handed out to the participants, Gustafson said. It’s not known at this time how many drug users will take part in the pilot, which is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $60,000.

“There’s been a shift to crack cocaine smoking and we want to make sure the services we provide are the services they need … if we’re providing syringes and what we need are pipes, we’re not serving them,” Gustafson said […] “It’s just understanding and knowing the health consequences of crack cocaine smoking.”
Which is why they’re going help facilitate its continued practice with taxpayer dollars. Because as long as you’re using a clean pipe, cocaine’s pretty much harmless, right?

I guess Canada has abandoned all pretense that self-destructive behavior shouldn’t be encouraged. And too bad they still haven’t figured out that prevention doesn’t decrease healthcare costs. One of Steyn’s commenters, Henry Hawkins, knocks this one out of the park:
The reason they want to get clean needles and crack pipes out on the street is because 95% of addicts don’t keep theirs clean, of course. However, once you’ve passed out a clean pipe or clean needle, **it’s only sterile for that first use**. From then on it’s dirty and stays that way. It will be used again. And again, and again, and again.

But Henry, they’ll teach them all about the importance of sterile works! They have a program and everything! And the addicts will ignore them. Such education programs have been common for over forty years. I’ve been working with addicts since 1986. There is a uniquely evil kind of ignorance that tells would-be do-gooders that the addict who won’t change his behaviors despite the likelihood of death by gunshot, overdose, AIDS, organic damage, mugging, and a thousand others ways an addict manages to die, will for some reason see the light and change out of fear of contracting hepatitis. If you want to kill an addict, give him uncut heroin or a government health department social worker. They are equally deadly.

So now, thanks to Vancouver Coastal Health, there will be many, many thousands more dirty pipes infected with hepatitis and other nasties out there in the addict community than there were before. Same number of addicts, just several thousand extra infected crack pipes, so the individual chance of infection is significantly raised.

But, but, but.. we give them pamphlets!

Arrrgh.
If you think it can’t happen here, think again. The nanny-state mentality is deeply entrenched in the minds of our ruling class, and where drugs are concerned, something tells me libertarians’ steadfast anti-government principles will evaporate right before our eyes.

Around the Web

Calvin Freiburger abortion, blogosphere, Boehner, debt, drug legalization, gay marriage, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, politics

“No amount of head-shaking disapproval is going to make gays and lesbians disappear from our midst as a society, from our colleagues at work, our circles of friends, or from within our own families.” Says…a Pajamas Media writer? Since when did conservative websites start publsihing HuffPo’s leftovers?

Tea Party Nation and Tea Party Patriots say we need a new Speaker of the House. Meanwhile, our current Speaker is giving House Republicans who disagree with his crappy debt plan a shining example of leadership: “Get your ass in line.”

When Cracked Magazine is showing greater objectivity on an issue than the average “serious” political publication (on either side), you know there’s a problem.

Wow: Father Frank Pavone holds an open-casket funeral for an aborted baby outside Orlando City Hall. That’s about as powerful as messages get.

Here’s a great snapshot of just some of the things pro-lifers do for unwed mothers. Think it’ll motivate Rob Taylor to inform himself a little before trashing the pro-life movement in the future? Me neither.

Good Job News for Wisconsin

Calvin Freiburger conservatism, economy, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, politics, Scott Walker, Wisconsin

Well, what do you know:

Using seasonally adjusted data, the 12,900 private-sector jobs created in June marks the largest one-month gain in Wisconsin since September 2003. The state’s net new job gain for June is 9,500 jobs, more than half of the nation’s net gain of 18,000 jobs for the same month.

Somehow, I don’t think we can expect any gratitude – or apologies – to Scott Walker or state Republicans from those who’ve been heralding Wisconsin’s complete capitulation to the rich. 

So, How’s the Economy Doing?

Calvin Freiburger Democrats, economy, employment, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Obama, politics
As Tom Blumer explains, not so good. Read the whole thing for the details, but here’s the summary:
So, after considering civilian population growth, employment is a painful 4% worse. Also, after considering population growth, GDP is only 2% better. If you give each factor equal weight (why wouldn’t you?), the economy is 2% worse almost 2-1/2 years after Barack Obama’s term as president began. And this is all before considering the frightening and potentially economy-crippling debt overhang and unprecedented deficits as far as the eye can see that Obama’s stimulus and other programs largely created, which would obviously move the meter even further in the “worse” direction.