October 2008 Archives

Any vote for Barak Obama is a vote to free and unfettered access to abortion for any reason by any woman under any circumstances. I’ve been told by one person that this statement is “ridiculous,” but what’s ridiculous is that anyone can believe differently. I will explain and use lots of fact checking sources so you can confirm that what I’m saying is true. I’ve already made the case for abortion being homicide, so I won’t restate my position here. Today I focus on how a vote for Barak Obama is a vote to make it easier to commit this form of homicide.

First, if we only check his voting record, we find that Obama has voted for every bill he could have to increase women’s rights in abortion and against every bill that might have. He did so by voting “present” rather than “nay”, but that’s just a technicality and the official voting policy of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood rated him as 100% pro-choice. Here’s the list of things he voted against (by voting “present”):

• Voted “present” against SB 230, Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act
• Voted “present” against HB 1900, Parental Notice of Abortion Act
• Voted “present” against HB 562, Parental Notice of Abortion Act
• Voted “present” against SB 1093, Law to protect Liveborn children
• Voted “present” against SB 1094, Bill to protect children born as result of induced labor abortion
• Voted “present” against SB 1095 Bill defining “born alive” defines “born-alive infant” to include infant “born alive at any stage of development.”

But don’t take my word for it, please see Obama’s voting record on abortion. You can also check Barak Obama on Abortion at OnTheIssues.org for additional information showing how this strategy of voting “present” was the official strategy of Planned Parenthood for trying to stop these bills.

Next, if we look at what he said, we find he is pro-abortion. My “ridiculous” critic stated that Obama has said that he’s not pro-abortion. However, there are a couple problems with making that statement. First, Obama does not believe that abortion is a moral issue, but an issue of women’s rights. To Obama the ability to get an abortion is required to support women’s rights. If that’s true, then he’s for women exercising their right to get an abortion. He’s pro-abortion.

If we take the view I hold, that abortion is homicide, then his position becomes even clearer. It wouldn’t matter at all whether it harmed women’s rights or not because it becomes a moral issue. You cannot be pro-choice on a moral issue. For example, if we time traveled back to 1855 and I told you that a certain Senator did not believe in slavery, but was strongly opposed to doing anything about it and had voted several times against restrictions, would you accept my statement that he was pro-choice on slavery? What if he voted to perform additional medical research using slaves and offered to greatly expand the number of slaves available for this research? What if he even wanted to make it so that those who are completely opposed to slavery had to help finance these projects with taxes and require those morally opposed to help produce these slaves? Would you still say he was pro-choice on slavery?

This is position we find Barak Obama holding. If I replaced the words “slavery” in the previous paragraph with “abortion” and “slaves” with “embryos” we would have an accurate description of Obama’s positions. (Read the next paragraphs for the evidence supporting these assertions.) This is essentially the argument being used to push the idea the idea that he is not pro-abortion.

The second problem with the argument is that he believes abortion is essential to medical research, which is also a statement of pro-abortion. If abortion is homicide, then embryonic stem-cell research which destroys the embryos is also abortive homicide. He support embryonic stem-cell research. He goes so far as to support a bill that encourages the creation of embryos and requires the destruction of these same embryos used for research. This comes under the guise of an “anti-cloning” bill, which is actually a pro-cloning research bill that forbids allowing clones to mature. (Source: Obama’s Abortion Extremism)

While he has stated on certain occasions that he disagrees with pro-lifers, but is willing to allow that disagreement to stand, he actually supports bills that would force pro-lifers to violate their conscience to provide for and even to perform abortions. He supports repealing the Hyde Amendment, which would allow the government to pay for abortions in certain special cases when a woman is too poor to afford one on her own. If the act were repealed and the government were to pay for such abortions, those who are morally opposed would be required to pay for them. He also supports the Freedom of Choice Act, which removes the rights of pro-lifers to refuse to participate in abortions, i.e., a single-mother who works as a nurse at your local hospital could lose her job if she conscientiously objects to helping perform an abortion under FOCA.

I think Robert George best summed Obama’s position up when he said, “In the end, the efforts of Obama’s apologists to depict their man as the true pro-life candidate that Catholics and Evangelicals may and even should vote for, doesn’t even amount to a nice try. Voting for the most extreme pro-abortion political candidate in American history is not the way to save unborn babies.”

If you’re opposed to abortion, you should look very carefully to Obama’s position on this topic and make your decision carefully. This is not the only issue important to me, but it’s an issue that is very important. It is also one that seems to be misunderstood by a great many that would stand with me on the issue, but seem to think Obama is somehow the best option on this issue. I don’t think you could be more wrong.

I listened to a debate this evening during dinner regarding whether one ought to vote for Obama or McCain. The two debaters went round and round, but neither of them mentioned what was important to my vote. I’m guessing that what is important to me is also important to them, but the bout centered around the hype of the week. What’s important? The issues.

Do you believe that the right to choose is more important than the right to life? Obama is your man. If you believe abortion is murder and is not an issue that should be linked to women’s rights, McCain is the guy. Do you believe that America should expand as quickly as possible on social policies and progressive tax policies. Obama has your vote. If you believe that government is too big and taxes shouldn’t punish achievement, McCain is your pick. If you believe the news that the Iraq war is going well and needs to be pursued to completion, you want McCain. If you believe the Iraq war is a disaster and we need to pull the troops back as soon as we can, Obama is your best bet.

These are just a small samples of the issues. The scandals, on the other hand, that are being hyped regarding Obama’s relationship to Ayers or Wright or Palin’s firing of a trooper while governor or McCain’s Keating Five scandal or Biden’s plagiarism problems will come and go. Unless some allegations come out that really make a difference as to whether or not the candidate is a legitimate option, these are just superficially colorful features of the canidates that are only used to sway the shallow voters who do not vote on ideology, but purely on popularity.

As for me, I’m voting on ideology. Though, I’m not really voting for anyone. I’m voting against the person whose ideology I disagree with most since no one on this field of candidates is terribly close to my opinions across the board, but one of them is very much further away.

Cheers.

This is not about the candidates, but about my reaction to the election process itself so far. I did not bother (deign) to watch either the Presidential or the Veep debates. However, I’ve read a lot of reactions and I think this one sums up the point of view held by Obama supporters for the opposition:

SHE PRONOUNCES IT “NUKYALAR” TOO!

Yes. That’s about as much substance as you get from that side of the aisle most of the time when referring to the Republican ticket. Pronunciation errors. Conspiracy theories. Name calling. Of course, on our side there’s “Obama-Messiah” jokes. Reuters and AP photographers really helped that particular nickname stick, though.

Now, the election is about issues to the liberals who have that reaction, I realize. They are scared that a Republican might upset the balance of judges in the Supreme Court out of favor of judicial activism, which raises the possibility that abortion (particularly partial birth abortion) stands a chance of being legislated against and not struck down. They think the folks in flyover country need to give up the guns and the religious bigotry against the gays and lesbians and blacks and women.

In the middle, we have the folks that are picking who they vote for based purely on popularity. Which do I like better? Who’s nicer? Who get’s singled out on factcheck.org less? Who is richer? Whose wife dresses nicer? Who is prettier? Those people. They mostly could care less about the issues, just about how “good” the candidate is on a purely subjective level. That’s not much different than usual, but the popularity contest is a little more charged this time since that’s what the Obama ticket rode in on during the primaries. I don’t think it’s working quite as well as it did initially.

(Btw, the popularity contest is why I loath local politics. You pretty much have to be fully involved in local politics to know anything that matters about the candidates. If you expect one side or the other to actually say anything of substance publicly, you’re insane. Most of them just give you this really vague statement about really liking Kansas and having two kids at the high school and a terrier named Butch. Name recognition is more important than anything else. Pfft!)

In the press, we have them doing what they always do: screaming at the top of their lungs, “We’re going to die!” While I would say the likelihood of that is fairly high, that still doesn’t make panicking over it an election issue.

This time around we have “new media” like never before and so what? Most of the blogs out there are also screaming the same things as the “old media”. The ones that aren’t are either screaming at the screaming blogs to stop screaming so much or screaming about how disgusted they are with the screaming blogs. This pretty much sums up American politics since around the time we put George Washington into office, so the “new media” is really just a rehash of the “old media” but at least the screaming isn’t all coming from one side anymore. Unfortunately, the side I’d like to scream rather less and hand out rope more, doesn’t very often.

On my side of aisle, we have the people (like me) trying to figure out if we even like McCain, since we never really liked him before. On the other hand, even if we don’t like a him very much, he’s a lot better than Obama on the issues that count. Placing a gun toting, Bible thumping, anti-abortionist woman with a Down’s Syndrome child, to boot, does quite a bit to help smooth over some of the worries some of us had. The fact that some folks are saying that she is a horror of horrors because she didn’t abort her special needs child has a few of us riled even. Some of us think that abortion is infanticide. We really believe that and even have medical and scientific facts to back it up, if someone cares for the morality of the issue rather than just a woman’s right to choose.

On the other side of my side of the aisle, we have the blue bloods of the party who think McCain is the best thing since sliced bread. Of course, they are stuttering and dumb-founded by the pick of Palin, but they’ll probably shrug that off while sipping martinis at the country club. Some of us can’t stand that wing of the party and lump them together with all the rich white guys over in the democratic party.

Who will win? Who knows? Ask the polls today and most say Obama, some McCain, but then again, the polls have proven to be wrong in the past, often. As Disraeli/Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Given that pollsters try to guess what “likely voter means” and shift the numbers to fit that guess, who knows?

And who cares? The fact is that if you’re putting your life’s hopes and dreams into the man that sits as CEO over the most powerful monopolistic organization in the known universe, “you are a sad, strange little man and you have my pity.” All in all, it doesn’t matter very much and in all likelihood, the winner will make some things a little better and some things a little worse. If now is a time in history where massive change happens (probably for the worse since things are truly excellent today if you compare modern America with any other culture or time in history), it will probably happen regardless of who is in charge, but if not, who would be able to predict it now anyway?

There will be upheaval in your life, there will be serene times, there will be sickness, times where the budget is tight, and times when you have a surplus, and sooner or later, you’ll die. Some time after that, no one will even care because everyone that did will also be dead. I find the reassurance at the end of Ecclesiastes (a book about these very morbid things) a good salve when I am frustrated with the insanity of all this, “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

Cheers.