The Jimmy Kimmel Live Show asked people on the street who won “last night’s” debate?  Unknown to those on camera is one inconvenient fact: the debate hadn’t happened yet!  They were asking the questions 4 hours before the debate!

“The Audacity of Corruption” speech by Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell to the Accuracy in Media’s Conference.

[When members of the press] decide what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know,  they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, have made themselves the enemy of the American people.

More highlights:

[Eighty persent (80%)] of the money given under the stimulus to green energy projects—the president and this administration’s great project—has gone to people who are either bundlers or major contributors to Barack Obama.  But nobody says a word.

***

We’ve had nine day of lies over what happened because they can’t dare say it’s a terrorist attack, and the press won’t push this. Yesterday there was not a single piece in The New York Times over the question of Libya.  Twenty American embassies, yesterday, were under attack.  None of that is on the national news.  None of it is being pressed in the papers.

If a president of either party—I don’t care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush—had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified!  It would have been—it should have been the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s “flying over Katrina” moment.  But nothing was said at all, and nothing will be said.

It is one thing to bias the news, or have a biased view.  It is another thing to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know …

***

We have a political campaign where, to put the best metaphor I can on it,  where the referees on the field are sacking the quarterback of one team, tripping up their runners, throwing their bodies in front of blockers, and  nobody says anything.  The Republicans don’t.

Text of speech here.  Video below:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brDZJA8j-8c

… What are they saying?

Great new video out today!

www.WomenSpeakForThemselves.com

Obamacrats at home:

By James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal (link):

Obama’s journalistic supporters live in a bizarre alternate reality in which a politician’s actual words mean nothing. When the president says something foolish and offensive, he didn’t say that.  Meanwhile every comment from a Republican can be translated, through a process of free association, to: “We don’t like black people.”

Revised: August 28, 2012, 5:00 pm / Updated: August 28 & August 31

“How do you answer the rape question?”  We get it all the time.  Our answer?  “Very carefully.”

Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin set off a firestorm last week with his answer to the rape question.  Of course Obamacrats will demagogue the issue, but I’ve been disappointed by the reaction of some Republicans.  Afraid of getting sound-byted themselves, they just want Mr. Akin to go away and take his controversy with him.

I’ve also been disappointed by the media.  Of course I expected NBC/CBS/ABC to respond in their normally superficial and partisan way, but not the fair and balanced network.  Even there, we got almost no relevant facts, just talking heads reacting out of ignorance.  Perhaps research and reason are difficult and boring.  Bombasity sells.

There are two attacks on Mr. Akin.  The first is about his use of the term “legitimate” rape.  The second is about his assertion that a woman who is raped has a very small likelihood of getting pregnant (which he qualified by saying that he had been told this by doctors).

Legitimate Rape

It is clear from the context that Mr. Akin was talking about an actual rape, perhaps as opposed to an accused rape.  Of course, the people who screamed for “context” to Mr. Obama’s “You didn’t build that” statement a few weeks ago now want no such context for Mr. Akin.  Here’s how everybody is getting this wrong:

President Barack Obama.  President Obama said, “The idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we’re talking about doesn’t make sense to the American people, and certainly doesn’t make sense to me.”

Really, Mr. President?  So, if we were to talk about alleged rapist Bill Clinton, keynote speaker at the Democratic Convention, we needn’t parse differences between an alleged crime and a real (AKA, “legitimate”) crime, right?  Applying your rule, we should simply say that Mr. Clinton is a rapist, right?

For more on Democratic rape hypocrisy, check out this column by Gregory Kane.

Republicans running for cover.  Sometimes, people should just stand up and say what’s right … even politicians.  I won’t comment whether Mr. Akin should stay in the race or not.  I would gladly throw the man under the bus myself (and jump under it with him) to get a decent Senator from Missouri.  However, Republicans shouldn’t be so hypocritical … nor hypercritical … regarding an ill-chosen word.  They’ve all done it.  By piling on Mr. Akin, they are turning a difficult situation into an impossible one.  For more about the GOP in panic, see Pat Buchanan’s piece.

I was especially disappointed that Mitt Romney called on Mr. Akin to exit the race.  Wasn’t it Mr. Romney who once said, “I don’t care about poor people”?  It was clear from the context that he didn’t mean it like it sounded.

What they should say is this:  “I am sure Mr. Akin didn’t mean it the way some want to demagoge it.  Mr. Akin simply believes that every human life is sacred and should be respected.”

Conception After Rape

I am certain that doctors have told Mr. Akin that a victim of rape is less likely to get pregnant than a woman who engaged in consensual sex.  It is an oft-repeated belief, even if it isn’t true.  We know some women get pregnant from rape (including CBR’s Virginia Director, by the way).  (The ABC Medical Unit blog reported estimates of pregnancy from rape ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 per year.)  But here’s how everybody is getting it wrong:

Todd Akin himself.  First, he needed to construct his statement based on provable facts and practice his statement, before he was asked the question.  Second, he needed to be skeptical of activists, especially those on his own side.  He listened to pro-life doctors, but pro-lifers are like everybody else; they repeat what they’ve heard (if it supports their point of view) and they rarely bother to check the facts.  In the age of Google, that’s inexcusable.  Third, he needs to stay on topic.  The percentage of women getting pregnant from rape has nothing to do with the humanity of their children.

Bottom line: He is running for the US Senate.  He needs to be more disciplined.

Critics who know nothing about reproductive science (and too little about Google).  Lou Dobbs (Fox News) said Mr. Akin’s statement was “absurd” and even invited two psychologists to analyze.  Phil Williams, a local radio personality who is nominally conservative, called Mr. Akin a liar for saying that a doctor had told him that rape victims are less likely to conceive.

Not so fast.  Dr. Jack Wilke, and OB-GYN and pro-life activist) wrote an article in 1999, Rape Pregnancies are Rare.   I don’t have a source, but some have attempted to explain this phenomenon based on stress, which has long been believed that stress can interfere with normal reproductive processes.  Certainly rape is stressful.  Based on these and other factors, some pro-lifers have believed for many years that a rape victim rarely gets pregnant.  I have heard it many times and I’m certain many doctors have repeated it.  Readers can judge Dr. Wilke’s analysis of the data themselves and I’m not trying to sell his conclusion; I’m just saying that many credentialed people do believe it and repeat it.

Here’s the science, as nearly as I can Google.  The chances of a woman getting pregnant from a single incidence of consensual sex is 3.1% (source).  The ABC News blog dutifully reported that some studies have shown that the probability of conception from a single act of rape has been reported as high as 6.4%.  What they fail to tell you is that other researchers have reported conception rates among rape victims as low as 1%, which is a despicable omission.  In his book Theories of Rape, author Lee Ellis cited one study in which “researchers were able to document only 1 pregnancy out of 232 incidences of rape that could definitely be attributed to the attack” (Theories of Rape, published by Taylor & Francis, 1989, page 47).

I don’t know whether a rape victim is more, equally, or less likely to get pregnant.  But this I know: Even if Mr. Akin’s statement is incorrect — I tend to believe it is incorrect — it is certainly not without basis.

Going Forward

Like I said, I don’t know if Mr. Akin should stay in the race or not.  If he can’t win, he needs to accept political realities and bow out.  Our country and our children are at stake.

I’m not a political expert, but if he stays and fights, I would tell him this:

1. Quit apologizing.  Enough already.
2. Regarding “legitimate” rape, say something like this: “Look, in the course of conversation, I added a word that didn’t need to be there.  I understand what they want you to think I said, but everybody knows that I didn’t mean it that way.  Rape is a serious crime; and we need to do more to understand it and prevent it.”
3. Regarding the science, “Of course I know that women get pregnant from rape.  I had been told that it was rare, but now I know it is maybe not as rare as I was told.  Deal with it.”
4. Answer the rape question this way, “I believe every human life is sacred and should be welcomed and supported by all of us.  We can’t solve one act of violence by committing another.  By the way, many victims of rape agree with me.  So do their living children (example).”

What do you say?

UPDATE – Aug 28, 2012, 10:40 am:  More recent over-the-top statements by Karl Rove, Andrew Napolitano, and others have likely delivered the coup de grace to any chances Mr. Akin had left.  The Dems will gleefully capture Republican soundbytes denouncing Mr. Akin and play them over and over again.  If he wants to make sure the Republicans can win back that seat (so they can pass a budget and stop ObamaCare), he has no choice but to stand aside and let the Republican Establishment send in a relief pitcher.  Fair or not, that’s just the political reality.

UPDATE – August 31, 3:25 am:  See Ryan Bomberger’s column on Karl Rove’s comments.  He is obviously not a friend of the pro-life movement.

Frank Cagle has a great column in the Metro Pulse commemorating the 10-year anniversary of Tennessee’s most recent defeat of the state income tax.  Cagle writes:

… someone ought to mark the occasion when almost the entire state political establishment, academia, and virtually all editorial writers were impatiently explaining to us Neanderthals that unless we passed a state income tax, the state was headed for financial collapse.

We were confidently told by University of Tennessee economists that the state tax structure could not support state government.

***

The income tax bill came to the House floor and was defeated.

Surely Armageddon would ensue.

Tennessee, 10 years on, has a current budget surplus of $600 million. The Legislature this past session eliminated the inheritance tax, the gift tax, and cut the rate of the sales tax on food. This year K-12 was fully funded and funds for higher education were increased. There will be an effort next year to eliminate the Hall income tax for those over 65, and possibly eliminate it altogether.

Name another state during this bad recession that has cut taxes. Around the country, state governments are in crisis. California cities are going bankrupt. Taxes are being raised to cover budget shortfalls.

When Tennessee state government was “starved for revenue” in 2002, the state budget was $20 billion. This coming year the budget is $31 billion.

Entire column here.

Astonishing poem by Rudyard Kipling, published in 1919.  How did he know about the Obamacrats?  I guess it goes to show that our struggles against evil and idiocy are nothing new.

A copybook was used by English school children to practice penmanship.  The heading on each page was some statement of common-sense wisdom, which the student would copy over and over again down the page.  In Kipling’s poem, the Gods of the Copybook Headings were symbols for basic immutable truths.  Examples like “Water would certainly wet us” and “Fire would certainly burn” convey the idea that some of these truths are so obvious, to dispute them would be insane.

In contrast are the Gods of the Market Place.  This is not a reference to capitalism.  The market is a reference to public spaces where people would gather to listen as demagogues tickled their ears with impossible and irrational promises.  Their proclamations might have been absurd (e.g., that pigs have wings), yet people prefered the Gods of the Market Place because the promises, however unrealistic, were appealing.

In the modern day, the Market Place is MSNBC, CNN, etc, where Obamacrats promise that we can all get more and more free stuff (free college educations, free health care, more bureacrats to run our lives, etc.), and only a few people (the very rich) will pay for every bit of it.  Such promises may sound good to teenagers and college professors, but mature, thinking people know it cannot work.

The Intellectual Activist summed it up nicely:  “The point of the poem is that the various schemes for “social progress” being promoted at the time—and most of them are still with us today—are based on denying the basic truths represented by the Gods of the Copybook Headings.”

Here is Rudyard Kipling:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings have been around for a long time, but we think we have “progressed” and have no further use for them.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

While we chased after false teachings, the Gods of the Copybook Headings never changed, nor were they blown around like clouds.  When civilizations abandoned the Gods of the Copybook Headings to chase after progressive absurdities, those civilizations died.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings were hopelessly “out of touch.”  They denied that the absurdities advanced by the God of the Market Place were true (e.g., that the Moon was made of Stilton cheese, that pigs had wings, etc.), so we worshipped the Gods of the Market.

We prefer to worship Gods which make us feel good.  I’m reminded of the many churches which won’t talk about sin and other unpleasant realities, because such old-fashioned talk will not appeal to the masses, who prefer a more “seeker-friendly” fare.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

A 1919 reference to the modern-day effort to take away our arms, so that only criminals may have guns and law-abiding citizens may live in fear.

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

“Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife”:  Liberalism tells us we must love our neighbor, which they define as giving more and more of our money to the government so they can give it to their own pet voter groups.  But liberalism sees nothing at all wrong with “loving his wive” (i.e., adultry).

“Till our women had no more children”:  Less than three weeks ago, the USA Today reported that the birth rate in America is the lowest in 25 years. The birthrate among Europeans is so low, it amounts to cultural suicide.  So ask yourself, “Is their something about socialism that causes people to lose confidence in the future and in themselves, to the point that they will quit having children?”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Obviously, Kipling foresaw the Obamacrats.  The Intellectual Activist put it this way: “That’s a concise summary of the inevitable disaster of the welfare state.  And more: it names a key part of the mentality behind it—the systematic evasion of basic, obvious truths.  Who thought this was ever going to work?  Who thought we could build a society in which an ever-increasing number of citizens are told that they don’t have to work and that their needs will be provided for by somebody else—while the burden is shoved onto the shoulders of an ever-smaller, ever-more-despised minority of producers?”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

The inevitability of what awaits us is daunting, to say the least.  But we can’t give up because the consequences of failure are so great (e.g., terror and slaughter).  Our children depend on us, and fighting this battle is just part of being good parents.

We face an alliance of theivery and stupidity on a scale that is breathtaking, but perhaps we can be encouraged with the knowledge that on this world, the struggles against evil and stupidity are timeless.  Rudyard Kipling knew them, and now so do we.  Ronald Reagan knewm them as well, when he reminded us that “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

I recently got a check from the Golden Rule Insurance Company.  It was a “refund” mandated by the ObamaCare law, the purpose of which is to drive private health insurance companies out of business so that eventually we will be forced to buy from the Government monopoly.

I sent it back.

I had purchased the policy for only a few months, way back in 2011, when my wife was laid off from her job.

Here’s my letter:

Mr. Patrick F. Carr, President
Golden Rule Insurance Company
712 Eleventh Street
Lawrenceville, IL 62439

Dear Mr. Carr,

I received your check in the amount of $103.14, apparently extorted from you on my behalf by the US Government. I refuse to accept it; I am returning the check.

I contracted with you to provide insurance coverage. I went to the market place and selected the policy offered by Golden Rule because it offered the best combination of coverage and price, in accordance with my needs. I kept my end of the bargain, and you kept yours, and that’s all there is to it.

This so-called “refund” is nothing short of organized theft, conducted on a massive scale by a lawless band of thieves known as Obamacrats. The very idea that I would share in their malfeasance by accepting stolen money is repugnant to me.

I am  happy that you were able to cover your costs and hopefully make a profit.  As long as you keep your promises, I hope you make a huge profit.  Please be assured that I have done (and will continue to do) everything I can to protect all of us from this ongoing attack on our freedoms. I hope you can say the same.

Sincerely,
C. Fletcher Armstrong, PhD

P.S.: If you happen to see any Obamacrats in the course of your day, please tell them for me that I’d thank them to keep their damn noses out of my business and their grubby hands off my health care.

Update, October 18, 2012

They sent the check back to me and said if I didn’t cash it, they would have to put it in some kind of government-run unclaimed property system.  So, I accepted the cash and gave every penny of it to the Save America Before It’s Too Late fund, also known as the Mitt Romney for President campaign.

Milton Friedman is one of the great thinkers of our time.

Politicians and the media like to talk about taxpayer greed, but few people talk about government greed.

Blaise Ingoglia says this:

Government itself is its own special interest and will do or say almost anything to protect itself.

If we don’t attack this and whip it now, we will lose our country.

Adam Smith writes about the overconfident legislator (i.e., the Obamacrat):

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamored with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.

He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.

If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

Any of this sound familiar?  How did he know?  Read entire op-ed piece by Yuval Levin.

Great column by Charles Krauthammer.  Excerpts:

Absurd. We don’t credit the Swiss postal service with the Special Theory of Relativity because it transmitted Einstein’s manuscript to the Annalen der Physik.

***

The argument between left and right is about what you do beyond infrastructure. … It’s about endless government handouts that, ironically, are crowding out necessary spending on, yes, infrastructure.

***

Julia’s world is totally atomized. It contains no friends, no community and, of course, no spouse. Who needs one? She’s married to the provider state. Or to put it slightly differently, the “Life of Julia” represents the paradigmatic Obama political philosophy: citizen as orphan child. For the conservative, providing for every need is the duty that government owes to actual orphan children. Not to supposedly autonomous adults.

Entire piece here.

What’s the difference between the Obamacrats and the Borg?

One says

“Your life, as it has been, is over.  You will service us.  Freedom is irrelevant.  Self-determination is irrelevant.”

The other is a fictional tyrant from outer space.

Listen bolow to the Obamacrats telling us that it was Government programs that made America great.  We owe them and they own us.

The Government built roads for us (that we paid for) and educated workers that we could hire (in schools that we paid for).  And because Government built roads and schools, they are now entitled to take whatever they want from us and give it to people who vote for them.

How do roads and schools that we paid for … at the state and local level, by the way … entitle Washington to get more and more of our money?  How do roads and bridges entitle Government to give our money to people like Solyndra and Planned Parenthood and millions of people who have been trained to be dependent on Government handouts?

Hear Ms. Elizabeth Warren (0:47 – 0:28) and Pres. Barack Obama (3:50 – 4:40) on this clip:

We send money to Washington; this is what they do with it. (Photo shows abortion at 10 weeks.)

LifeNews.com has reported that the Obama administration has sent a family planning grant of $395,000 to a Planned Parenthood abortion business in Memphis, Tennessee.  (Story here.)

In a related story, we constantly hear that we have a humougous federal deficit because the working people who create wealth in this country are too stingy and won’t send enough of their money to Washington.  That money is needed in Washington, they say, so the political class can claim to be compassionate to America’s poor people.  (They love to be compassionate with somebody else’s money.)

Anyway, as long as they take our money and give it to baby-killers, their faux compassion for America’s poor will remain unconvincing, to say the least.