FAB is indebted to Dr. Frank Joseph for this excellent essay.  Please comment below!

Debating Abortion on the political stage: Carly Fioriana blew it

Carly Fiorina had a golden opportunity to blow Barbara Boxer out of the water in their California senatorial debate, but she blew it.

An abortion question was asked by a member of the panel, and of course, Boxer went according to script. Said Boxer (paraphrasing and making it short), “I am for a woman’s right to choose.” Never saying the word abortion. “Women shouldn’t have to go to jail if Roe v Wade is overturned, and that’s what Fiorina wants.”

To begin with, this is a lie. Women would not go to jail. They didn’t before Roe and they won’t if Roe is overturned. Democrats just have to lie, just like they did in the 1960s when they said that 5,000 – 10,000 women died every year from back-alley, coat-hanger abortions. Even NARAL founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson now admints that it was a willful lie. The year before Roe, only 39 such deaths were reported to the CDC. Anyhow, only the person who kills the child (the abortion doctor) would be breaking the law and put in jail if Roe is overturned.

Fiorina did not call Boxer on this lie. She did say she is pro-life, but she never mentioned that Boxer not only supports the killing of unborn children, she supports this killing for the entire nine months of pregnancy. She even supports partial-birth abortions, which 75% of the American people oppose. According to polls, more people identify themselves as pro-life than pro-choice (to kill unborn children).

They each had 2 minutes for their final summations. In her statement, Boxer again brought up a woman’s “right to choose” and again falsely stated women would go to jail if Fiorina had her way and Roe was overturned. She kept pounding on that issue.

It seems that when Democrats are in a debate, they go for the throat. Maybe Republicans just don’t want to hurt the feelings of Democrats. I think they just don’t get it.

Fiorina should have mentioned that Boxer lied about women going to jail if Roe is overturned. She should have also said that women who do not have their child killed would decrease their risk of getting breast cancer and decrease their risk of drug and alcohol abuse as well as suicides.

She could have even mentioned that abortions increase the risk of premature babies in subsequent pregnancies, resulting in low birth weights. Such children are more prone to develop physical and mental problems, including cerebral palsy.

She could also have said that she favor’s a woman’s reproductive rights, but when reproduction is over, that is where she draws the line. She could have mentioned that Boxer even supported killing babies while they are being born, at which time they would suffer excruciating pain. As Boxer repeated over and over again what little ammunition she had, Fiorina should have mentioned this over and over again. Sometimes, you have to fight fire with fire.

Can you tell the difference between a Republican, an old-line Democrat, and a Progressive Democrat?  As the election approaches, it’s important to know.

• When a Republican wants to buy your vote, he pulls money out of his own pocket.  Maybe a pint of whiskey.
• When an old-line Democrat wants to buy your vote, he sticks his hand in your pocket and promises, “I will fight to get you your fair share.”
• A Progressive Democrat grabs your money from the old Democrat, borrows even more from the Chinese, and sends the bill to your children.

1. Republicans controlled Congress during the so-called “Clinton surplus.”  It was the first Republican majority in more than 40  years and the first budget surplus in more than 25 years.
2. The Democrats had controlled Congress for two years leading up to the 2008 economic crisis.  They helped create the deficit that Pres. Obama “inherited”, and would have made it bigger if they could have.
3. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in The Obama Economy, Bush essentially governed like a Democrat during the economic crisis of 2008, cooperating with their efforts to throw away billion$ on bailouts and stimulus packages.
4. The current economic policies are merely a continuation of the policies that got us in this mess in the first place.
5. Sowell says that if we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.

But I should point out that Sowell missed a few facts that are also important.  First, there was no such thing as a Clinton surplus.  The so-called budget surplus of the mid-1990s was a surplus only if you include as revenue the money that was stolen out of the Social Security fund.  If you count it as borrowed money that has to be returned one day, the government was still running a deficit.

Second, Sowell was entirely correct that the mortgage lending crisis was created by Democrats, although it was implemented in full view of Republicans who did too little to stop them.  The mortgage crisis was like gasoline thrown on the fire of economic crisis of 2008, but there were other factors that must be remembered and corrected:

1. The ultimate cause of the economic conflagration was the widespread belief that this economic gravy train—25+ years of Reagan-Bush recovery—would never end.  This belief caused people throw caution to the wind.  They took on way too much debt to buy bigger and bigger houses and other stuff they didn’t need and couldn’t afford.  Lenders lent money to people who couldn’t afford to pay it back.  Corporations focused on short-term profits at the expense of long-term stability.  It’s very tempting to throw your money around at the casino if you get the stupid idea that the game won’t let you lose.
2. The sudden spike in world oil prices in the summer of 2008 was the match that lit the fire.  Suddenly, industries sensitive to oil prices had to cut back, the effects of which rippled through the economy.  People and corporations were way too extended, so they were vulnerable and fearful.  They panicked.  They cut back.  People’s incomes shrank.  They lost jobs and houses.  You know the rest.
3. In 2008, it became apparent that big-government socialists might occupy all three branches of government.  The leading candidate for the White House was preaching bigger and more expensive government, along with dramatic tax increases.  This caused many job-producers to keep their money on the sidelines.  People just will not risk their money in the face of such uncertainty.
4. Finally, it is going to take time to ease the panic and correct the excesses.  According to the Wall Street Journal, credit excesses built up over many years have to be wound down, and that takes time, while banks have to work down their bad assets.

But hopefully, people are beginning to learn some of the lessons of unchecked government spending.  Check out this column by Hugh Hewitt.  He describes how young teachers in California are being punished by a system that pays extravagant benefits to retired teachers, leaving too little for the teachers still on the job.  Raising taxes is no longer an option.  “The present is very much being sacrificed to the excess of the past.”  It’s another kind of excess that will take years to correct.

But not to worry.  In his piece Obama’s Shrinking Presidency, Columist Richard Cohen tells us exactly what Pres. Obama needs to do that will fix all of this.  He says, “The president needs better speechwriters.”  Well, there you have it!

Here is Dr. Alveda King speaking at the Jefferson Memorial at the Restoring Honor Rally on August 28, 2010.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtNscI-DiQI

You can watch the entire rally here.  Glenn Beck said early media reports indicated that “over a thousand” people were in attendance!

I wanted to share with you two op-ed pieces by Charles Krauthammer.  Well worth the read.

• The last refuge of a liberal – The theme of the column is summed up in two words near the end, “undisguised contempt”.
• It’s nonsense to say the U.S. is ungovernable – The Left’s contempt for American institutions.

Restoring Honor Rally at the Lincoln Memorial

I was at the National Mall Saturday.  It was a huge crowd, much larger than the “tens of thousands” reported by the MSM.  I’ve been to many football games at the U of Tennessee, so I know what 100,000 people looks like.

For comparison purposes, I saw a photo (on the world-wide-interwebs) of an Obama election rally at the Gateway Arch  (St. Louis), which was reported to be 100,000 people.  I looked at areal shots of both venues (National Mall and Gateway Arch) at the same scale.  The Beck crowd was many times larger in size, although perhaps not as dense in some areas.  My best guess is 300,000 or more were there Saturday.  No way the crowd was smaller than 200,000.  I wouln’t scoff if you told me 500,000.

The remarkable thing about the crowd Saturday is that the rally got very little pre-publicity, except on Beck’s TV and radio shows.  I’m on a bunch of e-mail lists and I frequently get appeals to do this or that, especially when somebody is trying to drive up numbers.  I never once got an e-mail to come to the Lincoln Memorial.  (I was there because I just happened to be in DC last week.)  I wouldn’t have known about it if my wife hadn’t told me about it, so I was shocked to see so many people.

More important than attendance was the actual message.  More on that later.