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How Dare Ann Marie Burkele oppose Abortion…

Posted: January 24, 2011 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, congress, media
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Says the Syracuse “She’s 12 points down” post standard:

When asked about her renewed focus on abortion this past week, Buerkle said she is performing her duty to represent the views of the 25th Congressional District. Buerkle said she is convinced most residents of the district agree with the bills she has co-sponsored.

“I can’t give you a hard statistic,” Buerkle said. “But I heard from many people throughout the campaign who would not support me unless I was pro-life.”

The Lonely Conservative notes that the Post Standard considers it front page news that a former member of Operation Rescue is against abortion. Of course the left to whom Abortion is a sacrament, is attacking:

“Rep. Buerkle was elected to Congress because she promised to create jobs, but instead, one of her first acts is to co-sponsor and champion a bill that takes away health insurance benefits that the majority of women currently have,” DeFazio said.

Because of course repealing Obamacare and limiting what government funds are spent on has nothing to do with small government does it? Additionally having been in office for an entire 20 days, it’s undoubtedly her fault that the unemployment rate hasn’t already dropped to Bush Era levels.

NOW also attacks but that’s to be expected

Buerkle’s actions on the issue also alarm Karen DeCrow, of Jamesville, the former national president of the National Organization for Women.

“This district does not share her views on birth control, sex education, family planning and abortion,” DeCrow said of Buerkle. “She has a different view.”

Yeah the district disagrees with her so much that as the Lonely Conservative points out an attack ad used against her highlighting her opposition may have pushed her over the top:

NY25 covers all of Onondaga and Wayne Counties, and part of Cayuga and Monroe Counties. But a large portion of NY25′s voters are in Onondaga County. I did some digging and found out that there were 147,332 Catholics in Onondaga County alone in 2000 (Sorry, I searched for hours and couldn’t find any more recent data, or a breakdown of religious affiliation of registered voters.) I’m sure enough of those Catholics are registered voters who could swing the election in Buerkle’s favor. This race hasn’t been about social issues. It’s been about the economy, the direction of our country, and the failed policies of the current administration and Congress. By running this ad Dan Maffei just gave undecided pro-life voters a reason to vote for Ann Marie Buerkle.

You would think she was a Catholic or something.

The more I see of Congresswoman Buerkle the more I wish she was my congresswoman.

Update: Stacy McCain: Media Shocked — Shocked! — To Discover That Ann Marie Buerkle Is Pro-Life

That sentence says an awful lot

Posted: January 24, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news, war
Tags: ,

Now it is one of the seven corporal acts of mercy to visit the imprisoned. So I certainly can’t fault someone for visiting a person in jail, and if Firedoglake and Greenwald want to bemoan Manning’s treatment that is certainly their call and of course as a blogger I have no issue with citizen journalists covering a story.

But the Washington Post has an interesting description of the firedoglake folks who went to visit Bradley Manning in this story.

Two backers of a jailed Army private suspected of passing classified documents to the WikiLeaks website say their car was towed after they arrived at a Marine base to visit him.

David House and blogger Jane Hamsher say in a statement they had not had problems previously driving onto the Quantico base. But they say they were detained and unable to visit Army Pfc. Bradley Manning on Sunday.emphasis mine

“Backers”; that is the key word. Manning (and lets give the presumption of innocence) is accused of leaking classified documents in wartime to a foreign national who put them out there harming the US and risking lives. When they are backing Manning, it’s not because they think is wrongly accused, it’s because they don’t support the war and support any action that might cause our retreat.

Let’s make it clear. They do not back him because they think he is innocent. They back him because they believe he is guilty.

As Glenn Reynolds has said many times. They are not anti-war, they are on the other side and we are deluding ourselves if we think differently.

Interesting theory but seriously Who Cares?

Posted: January 23, 2011 by datechguy in oddities
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Hillbuzz has come out with an interesting theory as to why president Obama’s doesn’t authorize the release of his birth certificate.

As in, start asking WHY Obama won’t show his birth certificate — which is a ridiculous thing to refuse to show — and instantly the media calls you a “Birther!” and accuses you of buying into the conspiracy that Obama was born in Africa or maybe Vancouver. It was a great strategy on Axelrod’s part that kept the truth from being revealed for over three years now.

All of those conspiracy theories about Obama not being naturally born were ginned up to keep people from ever focusing on the more mundane, less sexy truth: that Obama failed to change his name BACK to Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. after it was changed to Barry Soetoro in the 1970s.

He tried gaming the system by applying for college and all of his financial aid and special treatment with an Indonesian name, but then also wanted to use the blacker sounding “Barack Hussein Obama” name when that suited him to.

An interesting theory, it is certainly possible that there is some embarrassing thing on the official doc that could be there, but in terms of the constitutional question that doesn’t matter. As long as he is born in the US it doesn’t matter if his legal name is Merlin the happy pig. Born in the US, that ends the debate.

Now Granted Abercrombie has pretty much made himself look a fool, to wit:

Abercrombie said on Tuesday that an investigation had unearthed papers proving Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.

He told Honolulu’s Star-Advertiser: ‘It actually exists in the archives, written down,’ he said.

But it became apparent that what had been discovered was an unspecified listing or notation of Obama’s birth that someone had made in the state archives and not a birth certificate.

And in the same interview Abercrombie suggested that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.

He said efforts were still being made to track down definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii. emphasis mine

Excuse me? You’re the Governor of the state, President Obama is likely the most famous person ever to be born in the state and “efforts are being made”? I’m sorry that just sounds like nonsense, either he was born there or he wasn’t and either the papers exist or they don’t. It makes one look a fool to say “efforts are being made”. This isn’t raising the U.S.S. Arizona or rebuilding ground zero. It is getting a piece of paper (that has already been seen by Director of Health for the State of Hawaii) out of storage.

Bottom line if he wanted the paper out there it would be out there, bottom line 2 if the White House wanted the paper out there it would be out there.

A privacy law that shields birth certificates has prompted Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie to abandon efforts to dispel claims that President Barack Obama was born outside Hawaii, his office says.

State Attorney General David Louie told the governor that privacy laws bar him from disclosing an individual’s birth documentation without the person’s consent, Abercrombie spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Friday.

Well then the Governor can make a formal public request to the president to release the document and the White House can say “Yes” or “No”.

Will this happen? No.

Why? Because it is to the administration advantage to continue use this issue to discredit people who oppose the president. It continues to be a club that they can use against foes. As long as that is true the form will not be released.

As for “embarrassing the president” count me uninterested.

First of all I see no reason to embarrass any person based on something that happened when they were a kid.

Second of all I can’t see how any nonsense about his parents can be any more embarrassing than the last two years. I mean c’mon how stupid do you have to be to fall for something like this:

The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, “When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle.” The “jackal” in the song is the United States.

The name of the song is “My Motherland,” originally titled “Big River.” In an interview broadcast on Phoenix TV, the first thing Lang Lang is quoted as saying is that he chose the piece.

He then said, “I thought to play ‘My Motherland’ because I think playing the tune at the White House banquet can help us, as Chinese people, feel extremely proud of ourselves and express our feelings through the song. I think it’s especially good. Also, I like the tune in and of itself, every time I hear it I feel extremely moved.”

Because nothing says “I’m a competent president of the US ” like having a song referring to the US as a “jackal” played at a state dinner honoring the man holding the winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize prisoner.

So I’m going to file this under “interesting but who cares”

Oh and one final thing. There was one laugh out loud line in the Hillbuzz post.

He tried gaming the system by applying for college and all of his financial aid and special treatment with an Indonesian name, but then also wanted to use the blacker sounding “Barack Hussein Obama” name when that suited him to.

And look where it got him.

Look where it got him? Look where it got him? HE’S PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!

Words fail me.

P. S. I have tagged this post with the tag “birthers” A friend of mind considers this an insulting title and at her request I’ve made a deliberate effort not to use that word to describe people who believe the president is not born in the US by that title. In terms of the wordpress search it is the most relevant tag for the post.

I was wrong about the Nation and Katrina Vanden Heuvel

Posted: January 23, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news
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It was a few years ago when I first saw Katrina Vanden Heuvel on panel shows. I was shocked. Considering how far left the Nation and Vanden Heuvel I thought was rather disgraceful that they were given attention as if they were a source of anything resembling mainstream thought.

But has time has gone on I’ve seen that the Democratic party has become more and more left it Vanden Heuvel opinions have become more and more typical within the party. Yet to the great public, the true nature of their beliefs were obscured hidden by quiet and reasoned words and the comments of friends in the MSM.

Which brings us to Francis Fox Piven.

Francis Fox Piven has for decades preached a far left and dare we say revolutionary agenda in Vanden Heuvel’s magazine. As a person of the left, she clearly and unabashedly proclaimed a desire to see what has happened in England and Greece happen here, to wit:

Local protests have to accumulate and spread—and become more disruptive—to create serious pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

Now the riots in Greece resulted in blood as the Blaze pointed out. The further took the liberty of showing Piven on TV condoning violence. Glenn Beck took the trouble of pointing out Piven philosophy as a Marxist and her willingness to condone violence. The public not caring for this has been outraged, and the NYT being the NYT is angry at the reaction and blames…Beck:

The Center for Constitutional Rights said it took exception to the sheer quantity of negative attention to Ms. Piven.

“We are vigorous defenders of the First Amendment,” the center said in its letter to Fox. “However, there comes a point when constant intentional repetition of provocative, incendiary, emotional misinformation and falsehoods about a person can put that person in actual physical danger of a violent response.” Mr. Beck is at that point, they said.

The irony level here is earth shattering as Powerline notes:

Glenn Beck has pulled back the curtain on this disgraceful specimen by quoting her accurately. No one has identified any statements he has made about Piven that are incorrect, or claims that he has in any way threatened her. Unlike Piven, Beck is a staunch opponent of political violence. But the mis-named Center for Constitutional Rights–another Orwellian touch–thinks there is such a thing as too much free speech. They want Fox News to shut Beck up because of the “sheer quantity” of Beck’s references to Piven.

Just as a lot of American’s projected their beliefs on the president I think the radical left looked at the election and deceived themselves concluding that their time had come with one of their own in the White House to openly advocate what they’ve said all along. This week on ABC and Morning Joe seeing the president’s numbers and the apparent power of the left included these their voices that they

When speaking to and among their own the left do not restrain their true feelings. Anyone paying attention to any ANSWER march or can tell you this. When I covered the Mayday march in Boston the 300 marchers there, when asked directly did not hide the fact that they wanted open borders, supported socialism and opposed capitalism.

Piven and their crowd have no cause to object, they have expressed these opinions for years, the only difference now is that the public at large is now exposed to them and doesn’t like the view.

So in the end I was wrong. Put the Nation and its editor out there. Let her defend every word she publishes. It is a visible and unapologetic left that we need, not hidden in obscure magazines and only excerpted by their friends, but out in the open for all the world to see their true colors melt in daylight.

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