A group of young women learn the two facts that are most important to abortion attitudes. They are (1) the humanity of the preborn child and (2) the inhumanity of abortion.

We returned to Market Square in Knoxville earlier this week for another edition of Urban GAP.  It was hot hot, with a temperature in the 90s and a wind-chill of nearly 100 degrees.

Media coverage.  All day long, passersby studied the abortion photos intently.  WBIR-TV ran a story on TV.  The video version is not available online, but you can read the text version here.  There were a number of comments, and you can see that I have responded to many of them.

Monument to Motherhood.  My favorite part of Urban GAP at Market Square is to go over to the monument to leaders of the woman’s suffrage movement in Tennessee (story here).  I figure that the ACLU will have it removed the first chance they get, but for now, we get to enjoy Knoxville’s very own City-owned, pro-life, pro-family, pro-God monument.  On it, you can read the words of suffragette Lizzie Crozier French (1851-1926):

Thanks be to God that in giving Woman the crown of motherhood He made her the giver not the taker of life.  Woman has no greater claim to the rights of the ballot than that she is the producer not a destroyer of life.

Is that awesome or what?  My interest in motherhood is not just professional, but  personal as well.  I’m not a mother myself, but I have one and so does my son.  I’ve watched them both work and they’re pretty good.

Fr. Frank Pavone just issued this urgent video message about our Key States Initiative (KSI), which aims to educate voters in key states for the upcoming elections.  You don’t need a special license to drive; anybody can do it.  Fr. Pavone says:

We want to elect public servants who know the difference between serving the public and killing the public.

To volunteer for KSI, click here.  Here’s Fr. Pavone:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwINEFYf0f0

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.

From CBR’s Seth Gruber:

ANSWERED PRAYER!  We made a mocking parody (watch video here) of Northland Family Planning Centers infomercial and they sued us for copyright infringement.  The judge just issued a final ruling in our favor, holding that our Fair Use defense was so strong that he was granting us a Summary Judgment victory without even allowing the case to go to trial! He wrote that “Though Northland [abortion clinics] may have suffered pecuniary or reputational losses as a result of the accused [CBR] Videos, those injuries are not recognized under the Copyright Act. On balance, Defendants’ use of the Northland Video was fair.”  The order itself read “For the foregoing reasons, Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED, and Northland’s Motion for Summary Judgment is DENIED.

In an email message we forced Renee Chilean, owner of Northland abortion clinics, to release pursuant to her lawsuit against us, she told another abortionist that “I know that they [CBR] preach to their own choir but I am worried about this

.” Then she admits that the source of her worry is the possibility that we will use our video to lobby for “… anti-D&E legislation.” The term “D&E” refers to dilatation and extraction (or evacuation) abortions in which the arms and legs of babies are torn off and removed one appendage at a time. The baby goes into shock and bleeds to death. She explains that “They [anti-abortion activists] are looking for new ammunition since PBA [partial-birth-abortion] is pretty much done.”

We thank God and our two stellar lawyers, Rob Muise and David Yerusalmi, for this win, which is an important victory for the entire pro-life movement.  We plan to make a lot more videos of this sort!  Northland will most likely appeal this ruling and God willing we will crush them on appeal as well!

CBR press release here.

Watch video here.

Register and vote pro-life

CBR is at it again!  We are launching our 2012 Key States Initiative (KSI) for 2012, perhaps the most dramatic and effective pro-life voter education project every conceived!  And you can be a key part of this historic event!

VOTER EDUCATION FOR 2012

The media describes pro-life candidates as “ultraconservative” and “extreme,” but they describe pro-abortion candidates as “moderate” on abortion. We will show voters the truth, so they will know that killing babies is extreme.  Saving them is not extreme; it is compassionate.

DRIVER QUALIFICATIONS NEEDED

No special license required.
Must have a good driving record.
Must be 21 years old.

COMING TO A STATE NEAR YOU

Must be available to travel to a nearby state, teeming with voters who need to know what abortion is and does. Immediate need for drivers willing to go to Florida, Virginia, Colorado, and Iowa.  Wisconsin and other states may also be targeted later this year.

INTERESTED IN JOINING US?

Contact Leslie Sneddon
Call 207-607-3488
lsneddon@cbrinfo.org

Pro-life activist and CBR operative Todd Bullis is at it again!  The founder and perveyor of Pro-LifeTube.com has now launched ProLifeBook.com, a social networking site for pro-life people!  Story in WorldNetDaily here.

As of today, ProLifeBook has more than 3200 members, including yours truly!  I was one of the very first.  Of course, I never understood Facebook … and ProLifeBook works a lot like Facebook.  Yikes!  All of a sudden, with this one new invention, I reckon I’m twice as far behinder as I was before!  Woe is me.

Which advertisement inspires you?  Free stuff or an equal opportunity?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbH8XnAEmZI

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqGlutCQNFA

On this day (June 12) in 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate and uttered one of the most memorable phrases of my lifetime.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate!

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

As it turns out, the “experts” at the State Department deleted this exhortation from the speech on multiple occasions—they thought it would be too provocative—but President Reagan kept putting it back in.  On his way to the Brandenburg Gate, he told an aide, “It’s gonna drive the State Department boys crazy, but I’m gonna leave it in.”  The rest, as they say, is history.

Entire text of speech here.  Video below:

Anybody remember this song? (video and lyrics below)

I love the guy on the left yelling out something in German at the very beginning of the song.  Don’t know what he’s saying, but it sounds cool!

The Royal Guardsmen came from Ocala, Florida.  The lead singer on the video is Barry Winslow, who is now a Christian singer (testimony here).

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxzg_iM-T4E

Lyrics:  Snoopy vs. the Red Baron

After the turn of the century
In the clear blue skies over Germany
Came a roar and a thunder men had never heard
Like the screamin’ sound of a big war bird

Up in the sky, a man in a plane
Baron von Richthofen was his name
Eighty men tried, and eighty men died
Now they’re buried together on the countryside

Chorus:
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The Bloody Red Baron was rollin’ up a score
Eighty men died tryin’ to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany

In the nick of time, a hero arose
A funny-looking dog with a big black nose
He flew into the sky to seek revenge
But the Baron shot him down–“Curses, foiled again!”

(chorus)

Now, Snoopy had sworn that he’d get that man
So he asked the Great Pumpkin for a new battle plan
He challenged the German to a real dogfight
While the Baron was laughing, he got him in his sights

That Bloody Red Baron was in a fix
He’d tried everything, but he’d run out of tricks
Snoopy fired once, and he fired twice
And that Bloody Red Baron went spinning out of sight

(chorus, to fade)

Maybe the biggest change enacted by Gov. Walker, and now confirmed by the Wisconsin electorate, was ending the practice of deducting money from public employee paychecks and giving it to unions.  It seems that the unions are having trouble getting people to pay up.  Michael Barone wrote:

Walker’s law … gave public employees the choice of whether to pay union dues.  The membership of AFSCME, the big union of state employees, fell from 62,818 to 28,785.

Apparently, half the members didn’t really want to be members, after all.

This will, in turn dramatically decrease the amount of money they are able to take from public sector employees and give to Democrats.  Michael Barone wrote:

Public employee unions insist that dues money be deducted from members’ paychecks and sent directly to union treasuries. So in practice, public employee unions are a mechanism for the involuntary transfer of taxpayers’ money to the Democratic Party.

This is a huge blow to socialist fundraising, and it might get even worse.  Charles Krauthammer reports that in Indiana, similar reforms have reduced public-sector membership by 91%!

There is perhaps one more victory in Tuesday’s vote that is bigger than every other victory put together, and that is the whole notion of school choice, which is another reform put into place by Gov. Walker.  Dick Morris commented on this victory in his “Lunch Alert” yesterday.  When schools have to compete for students, you can bet that Planned Parenthood, socialism, and a host of other evils will fall by the wayside.

Fascinating video on the founder of the modern-day entitlement state.  It was none other than Otto von Bismarck, who invented social welfare to frustrate the demand for democratic rule.

The people wanted the power of self-determination.  Von Bismarck did not want the poeple to have that power, so he bought their compliance with free stuff.  Sound familiar?

Here’s the video from DickMorris.com:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb34etEVIFw

Just before the Wisconsin recall election on Tuesday, the Real Clear Politics website posted its final average.  It was a 6.7 % lead for Gov. Walker.  Walker won by 6.9 %. That’s close.

In the final hours of the election, theleft-wing media gleefully announced that the exit polling indicated a dead heat, meaning that Mayor Barrett had real shot at winning.  The exit polling wasn’t necessarily wrong, it was the reporting.  Raw exit poll data should never be reported, because they mean nothing until they are corrected to mitigate the inevitable sources of bias in the sampling.

For example, Jon Cohen wrote yesterday that different types of people vote at different times of day.  It’s not hard to imagine that a lot of people who work for a living will vote after they get off work, resulting in a big surge in Republican votes later in the day.

Mr. Cohen identified several sources of bias, but he missed the biggest one.  He made several references to “random” sampling.  In practice, exit poll sampling is anything but random.  I was at the Shannondale Elementary School on Election Day in 2004.  Nationally, early exit poll numbers were erroneously being reported to suggest a huge John Kerry win.  Democrat operative John Schrum famously asked Sen. Kerry, “Can I be the first to call you Mr. President?”

I heard the reports, but I didn’t believe them because I saw how the exit polling was being done.  Process matters.  The woman doing the polling, obviously an untrained temporary worker, waited behind a table for people to walk over to her.  The people who responded tended to look like her … young, female, and minority.  They also appeared to be the people not in a hurry to get back to work.  All of these factors would have skewed the exit poll results toward the Democrats on the ballot.  There was nothing random about it.  I’m sure the scenario I observed was repeated in many other places.  Temporary workers would be (I’m guessing) disproportionately young, female, and minority, resulting in more exit-poll respondents from those groups.

Biases in the sample can be corrected, but that process surely takes hours, if not days, to accomplish.

The process for correcting exit poll data was described by Sean Trende:

In other words, the exit pollsters in the field missed a lot of Walker voters. Now, exit pollsters have ways to fix this. For one thing, they weight different regions of the state to the actual vote returns. For example, if northeast Wisconsin exit polls are showing a 50-50 race, and the actual results are 60-40 for Walker, they will simply assign greater weight to a Walker respondent in the region, bringing the reported result in line with the actual result.

… if the non-respondents are disproportionately male, white, and older, the exit pollsters will make sure that the final weights account for those discrepencies.

Going back to Cohen, his bottom line was this:  Exit polls tally how different groups voted in an election.  They do not predict results.

I wouldn’t get too exited about the suggestion that Tuesday’s exit polling indicates a huge lead for Pres. Obama in the November election.  First of all, that election is months away.  Further, we never know if they are reporting raw (biased) data or corrected data.  Gov. Haley Barbour said Wednesday that the corrected numbers indicate a dead heat.  Trende also talked about this in greater detail.